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Yeah, same. Switched my default to Duck about a year back although I've still got Google on mobile (something I only just clocked as I type).

Google search had degraded so badly pre-AI, I was already finding it equivalent for most things. The odd few searches benefit from Google, but nowhere near enough to warrant them as a default.

The article, if you'd read it, was about receiving the same response to a technical question from multiple sources, whilst seeking human assistance with a problem AI hadn't been able to solve.

I'm the UK at least, it's also common for the renter to pay council tax, which is analogous to property taxes in other countries.

I imagine this is also likely passed through in the cost of rent in other places.

That said, it's totally possible to have a legal and fiscal framework that makes renting affordable and safe.

The government, particularly in Western countries with insane pressure on the rental market, needs to act as a homebuilder and landlord of the last resort. It keeps supply up, prices and risk down.

We've had a couple of generations locked into the housing market as an investment, and it's causing demand crunches which have artificially inflated prices and are choking and dividing our societies.

I'd happily spend my life in a rental if it was affordable and safe, and part of a considerably more fair society.

Hard disagree. In the prediction market case, we're seeing many categories of people being incentivised to act on markets: soldiers, diplomats, staffers, journalists, businesses, sports and esports teams, as a quick, non-exhaustive list.

Do you think regulation of all possible categories of people who could behave adversely to influence prediction markets would be preferable to just regulating the market itself?

The best investment I've made in my mental health and productivity was a dog.

Don't know where I'd be without my executive assistant.

I've used soulseek pretty recently! There's a nice client called nicotine, IIRC.

There are message bots that spam you with racist abuse if you're sharing nothing (i.e. not even your downloads), but that's about it.

A lot of the comments focus on the platform, which is certainly relevant but only part of the picture.

There is a huge industry around political communications, which for some time now has been intensely focused on social media. You throw enough money at these platforms in the right way, and your message comes out louder.

Lots gets done quietly, often outside of formal campaigns by aligned actors.

I think a big part of 24, terrible Democrat candidates aside, was the large quantities of very tech-savvy money flowing into Republican campaigns at the national and state levels.

All this stuff can be and is bought.

I just this week bought a book I first read from AA. Though I got it from a second hand bookshop, so I guess that was unethical, lol.

> Furthermore, ads are fueling our capitalist, consumerist economy that is destroying the planet. Ads are a literal existential threat to humans.

I'm sorry, a single anecdote does not invalidate the above.

Ads are evil. They make us desire things we don't need, undermine our self-esteem, and in the large part just sell scams. I'd be happy to ban most forms of advertising. It's a plague.

Magic is best played in a shared house. We all pretty much stopped buying cards when we went our separate ways. We do occasionally get a draft box in and have a night of it when we get the chance.

Pairs particularly well with cannabis and ample free time. God I miss Magic.

Totally related to AI. You're gonna be able to spot slop whilst browsing.

Local bookshops are great, use them or lose them.

Yeah, the AI sears my eyes. Wish they'd bothered to do it properly.

He's one of the main developers behind Django.

> Jack of all trades, master of none..

"..But sometimes better than a master of one", is the oft-forgotten coda. I'm mediocre at _a lot_ of stuff, and love it. Wouldn't run my life any other way, and it's far too late to change.

I'm, of course, in awe of folks who dedicate their lives to a single craft, but there's a rich, interesting, and productive life out there for us dabblers.

Different strokes for different folks, aye.

You ever been in a war zone, son? You ever see what happens after? I assure you there's no ignorance in my comments.

Entire villages no longer exist. These are people's homes.

The rocket attacks come because Israel periodically invades, as it is now.

It has murdered UN peacekeepers, journalists, medics, aid workers, and so many civilians. And this is before what it does internally.

It is utterly transparent that land is being grabbed, up to the Litani. Next will come settlers.

There is no justifying this flagrant aggression, nor the countless atrocities Israel has committed in the last few years.

You should be ashamed.

Israel are stealing land, ethnically cleansing and flattening villages.

Hezbollah, whatever you may think of them, are the main security actor in the South. Why should they not defend their civilian population?

I came here to block ads and chew bubble gum.

There is a big leap between not resisting and using weapons that are widely agreed to be abhorrent. You're framing a false binary choice here: either deploy weapons that the majority of countries have deemed unconscionable, or lose your country in its entirety.

There is also a difference between why we fight and how we fight. Fighting in self defence does not give a state the right to conduct a war in any way it chooses.

There are numerous ongoing conflicts in which we've seen states shed hard-won agreements on how wars should be fought. It's an incredibly dangerous trend which is leading us into a new era of horror.

Where would you put the limits on Ukraine's actions? What is beyond the pale?

As someone who's worked in numerous war zones, and has had to deal with the real world consequences of UXO, I firmly disagree.

Biological and chemical weapons could help you win, nuclear weapons could help you win. We don't use this stuff for a reason.

Yeah, I left Facebook a decade back. Zero issues keeping in touch with folks that mattered. On the rare occasion I need to find someone I lost for something, it's been trivial.

Let's just take a moment to appreciate how important uBlock is for performance. I pity the fools without.

Ruled illegal in the United States.

I used to work at a VUE, my flatmate was a manager. I always complained about the awful, awful films we showed with no one watching them. Surely it'd be better to show some classics that would sell?

Apparently the deal back then was that theatres had to buy films in packages. If you wanted the latest blockbuster, you had to buy a bunch of terrible dross, and commit to showing it X times.

Yeah, OR gives a bunch of providers, including Deepseek, which does train.

I set ZDR to true, and it only calls from the third party ZDR Deepseek APIs. Bit more expensive, but my client wants it.

What I really enjoy is learning. I came back to computing after many years in another field, and was completely in love. Everything finally clicked, I'd spend hours reading everything I could, coding, trying things out, letting half-half-built projects pile up as I discovered new things.

AI has completely ruined this for me. Its boring having someone else do stuff for you. And worse, I feel I'm un-learning at a rapid rate.

The magic has gone, I'm not sure I want to be in this game in another five years.

Pro tip for securing your servers: don't allow your government to start wars of aggression.

I could barely use VB, but as a ~14 year old, I made a dialogue box that announced the computer had been hacked, stuck it in the start-up, and pranked my Mum on April 1st.

I don't think the banner is painful, it just needs to be balanced by other graphical elements. It can offset by liberal use of <blink> throughout the text, or by a few tasteful gifs.

Yeah, totally. The recent pricing changes have just made my Copilot subscription go from great deal to awful value over night.

I've been wanting to get off MS more generally and this is good motivation. Will be playing round with OR this week.