esarbe

In a liberal democracy with many opposing viewpoints, having to elect a single "head of government" that will be necessarily beholden to only one part of the electorate is detrimental, especially in combination with something like FPTP.

A directorate where executive power is distributed over multiple people and executive policy is decided on in a concordat it a much better solution.

Between 1950 and 1980 the home market for computers was non-existent.

So of course this didn't change in the 30 years following 1980, right?

That's primary energy, of which about half is wasted as heat. Electrification will bring this down by a lot.

> I imagine those countries have sane energy prices compared to Western Europe.

No. There is no argument being made regarding "legacy hardware’s power inefficiency isn’t as big of a deal when electricity prices are lower".

That's just complaining that Western Europe has high energy prices compared to China without taking into consideration how different these economies are.

Since you didn't make this argument in this thread - how is that argument relevant to the discussion at hand?

You're comparing Europe (where the average monthly income is ~$3,184.98/mo [0]) with China (where the median monthly income is ~$431.38 USD USD[1]).

[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/15216629/24279737/KS... [1] https://wage.is/china/

No. You're comparing apples and oranges.

Lobbying corruption with lipstick and a law degree.

Nope. Nothing will last. Everything is chance. Entropy will eat us all.

That's why it's important to find joy in the moment and ways to share that joy and happiness with those around you.

I think that's be best argument one can make for environmental protections. Forget the warm-and-fuzzy-koombaya altruistic argument and appeals on mother nature or whatever.

In the end this is about protecting and preserving our own ecosystem without which we will perish.

That's conjecture.

For all we know the universe could be teeming with life, in whatever shape or form. And since we see the first signs of life about 500 million years after the plant was formed, there's a good argument to be made that life doesn't need much more than a stable energy gradient and some basic building blocks to get started.

Phenomenal deep book with layers upon layers of ideas. Not a easy read read for a single afternoon, this one really requires you to work for your meal; read, go back, reread with new context, ponder.

Probably a bit too heavy on ideas for most and those who are only used to lighter cost might find it boring. But for me one my all time favorite sci-fi books.

Russia is currently in the denial stage of losing a war.

You're describing the human condition.

That hasn't changed for the last 300k years.

The damage done by doomscrolling and social media goes far beyond the "development of the brain for reasons of economic participation". Also, you seem to think the development of the brain doesn't have any purpose beyond that - a view I don't share.

If - and that if is doing some heavy lifting; given the underlying, fundamental problems of LLMs it doesn't make any sense to assume that we'll get there anytime soon - LLM AIs will be able to dominate economy in such a way that humans cannot compete anymore, that simply means that humans will have tons of free time at their hands. ( There's a reason for the grain dole that the Roman elites handed out to the poor of the city. I assume if you have a whole population that doesn't have anything valuable to contribute to the economy, the economy will still have to find a way to sustain them. Otherwise riots.)

A well developed brain seems to be exactly what I would want in such a case.

Knowing the tools of your trade is what you makes a artist. It's not enough to know that you would like to have the shadow there and have the face pushed to the foreground, that's just being aware of the design space. To be an artist you also need to know how to navigate the design space - know how to use the colours, brushes, vertices - to actually arrive at the place you intend. That means that you know how to use the tools of your trade so that this stroke or infill completes the brow to create the gaze you were aiming for.

Just selecting from a random sampling makes you a curator at best. You know where you want to go, but don't know how to do that. If luck is not in your favor, you will never arrive. And you're wholly dependent on luck to get there.

Exactly.

If just "being involved" in the "creative process" is enough to be called an artist, then by that measure that includes the guys that are simply involved by having the money to patron the process. Maybe it also includes the guy delivering the pizza.

Apples, oranges.

Koons didn't write a two paragraph description of his ideas and then handed it over to a porcelain factory that repeatedly tried to come up with something that fit the spec until Koons cried out "Yes, that's it! That's what I had in mind!"

He drew sketches, built models, shaped prototypes, etc. He was an active participant in the creative process from the very start to the end, not just a client that checked in on what the artists were doing from time to time to give the thumbs up or thumbs down.

Not understanding the consequences and impacts of doomscrolling and instant gratification videos on reasoning, memory and abstract thinking is not limited to persons aged 15-16. I'd argue this applies to about 90% of the population using smartphones.

They are still present everywhere. They are just badly hidden behind a leaky abstraction.

We're wasting the potential of at least two generations. It's horrible.

Just describing what you want doesn't make you an artist. It makes you a client.

Just iteratively refusing what a stochastic generative algorithm presents to you doesn't make you an artist. It makes you a client with attitude.

It's not the "Gnome users" that wanted to create something different - it's the Gnome developers that did.

It's the developers prerogative to do with their project whatever they want.

I'm curious; why do you minimize windows? What's your use case for that?

I remember that I stopped minimizing windows when I stopped putting application starters and folders on the desktop - this was the one thing that forced me to minimize windows, because otherwise I couldn't access those (obviously).

> Relearning a new UI doesn't have any obvious benefits. People would have told me about the benefits by now.

Gnome for me has the benefit of being usable without ever actually touching the mouse. I can keep my fingers on the keyboard without ever having to lift my hand and push around the mouse to switch applications, to start applications, find applications. The only time I need to use the mouse is if I'm using applications that have some kind of obligatory/mandatory mouse usage, e.g. Blender or Gimp or the like.

YMMV.

> I have too many windows open to keep them all maximised.

You can have as many windows maximized as you want. There's not upper limit to maximized windows.

> Those are undiscoverable and should not be the only option.

Just do `<super> + appname` and you'll jump to the window in question. No discovery required. The WM will do the discovery for you.

> Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I manage with the programs that are, not the ones that could be. I'm not interested in developing my own DE, not redeveloping all the other programs surrounding it.

> One isn't even a GUI application. The second sees regular use with a GUI, but only for reconfigurations that take less than 10 seconds.

The not-gui application you could put into a user-defined daemon (check [0] on how to create user services). The GUI-for-reconfiguration thingy you can put on a workspace, then it's out of your way and still accessible for reconfiguration.

> Why would I want to relearn a new UI for only marginal benefits?

To be snarky; "Why would I want to relearn riding for a new horseless carriage with only marginal benefits?"

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User

I've yet to see any serious engineer make the argument that Li-ion batteries will be used for seasonal storage. I've more often seen it used as a straw man argument against renewables.

France's reactors became successively more expensive as the need for more layered safety features was exposed. The first generation (CP0, CP1, CP2) was quite inexpensive, the P4 and P'4 designs were already more expensive and the N4 was yet more expensive.

At this point I think if you want inexpensive nuclear, you just have to accept some risk. Going from 99.9% safety to 99.99% adds just too much complexity to remain economically viable.

I just keep my windows maximized all the time. What would I need minimize and maximize buttons for? If I have need for several windows next to each other, Gnome gives me handy keyboard shortcuts.

> Sorry for wanting background programs to run in the background and get out of my way.

Sounds like those "background programs running in the background" should be user daemons instead of GUI applications.

YMMV.

I think Gnome is one of the better desktops out there. It goes out of my way and I very much like the changes it brought.