sylver_dragon

For a similar story, which isn’t a urban legend. My mother used to be the main resource for an archeological information center in the US Southwest. When work crews dug up a body, she’d get a call from the coroner to ask, “is it yours or mine?” While both are going to want to know the cause of death, the coroner isn’t going to open a criminal case for a Native America burial.

Do you think it’s okay to not have an opinion on something?

Yes, absolutely. There are enough issues in the world that you probably don’t know about a lot of them. And even once you are made aware of an issue, you likely don’t have enough information to form a well considered opinion. It’s also possible that you will never have enough information on an issue to have a well formed opinion. You only have so many hours in a day and, unless an issue impacts you directly, it’s quite possible that you just won’t have the time to put into it. There’s no reason to feel bad about this, the issues that are most important to me may not be the issues which are most important to you.

How important is it to educate myself and ask questions?

Very important. If you are going to have an opinion on something, you should try to have a basic understanding of the issue. You’ll never be an expert on everything; but, for issues which you truly care about, you should have at least a passing understanding of the subject matter. Also, asking questions is always good. If someone is trying to shutdown your asking questions, you should start questioning that person’s motives.

Do you feel that pressure to have an opinion on everything?

Nope. One of the big secrets of life is learning to set boundaries. Just because someone else is incredibly passionate about something doesn’t mean you need to be. Learn to tell people “fuck you and the horse that came on you”. If that bothers them, then that’s their problem, not yours. This isn’t carte blanche to be an asshole, you should still strive to be a good person and act in pro-social ways. But, it does mean that you can draw a line and not have to own everyone else’s problems all the time.

Brussel Sprouts. Absolutely hated them as a kid, which I blame my mother for. She “steamed” them in the microwave in a dish with water. Turned them into a slimy, horrible mush. My wife sautes them in a pan, with bacon. It’s one of my absolute favorite dishes now.

I don’t see in what way having a PSN account would make Horizon Zero Dawn safer on PC.

It’s safer for Sony’s stock price, as they can report higher numbers of people on the PlayStation Network and greater “player engagement”. What, you thought this was about improving the experience for the customer? No one gives a fuck about them.

Do you really want Musk starting a game console company?

It’s a dick move, but I can kinda understand why SpaceX would make it. There has been a push to “de-risk” supply chains, after the disruptions caused by Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukranie, and other world events. This type of de-risking was partly responsible for the CHIPS and Science Act. The US Government has a strategic incentive to have a stable and resilient supply chain for semiconductors.

For SpaceX, having critical components be only available from fabs in Taiwan is a risk to business. China has been more and more vocal about it’s desire to annex Taiwan. With Trump taking office, one can imagine that the US commitment to protect Taiwan may not be quite as iron clad as it has been in the past. It’s not hard to imagine a future where China launches an invasion of Taiwan and the US does little more than shrug. At that point, any business which is solely reliant on Taiwan for semiconductors is going to see major disruptions.

So ya, it’s a complete dick move. But, I suspect SpaceX will be far from the last company looking to build a supply chain outside Taiwan.

What do having sexl in a canoe and American beer have in common? It’s fucking close to water

Hey now. Those Clydesdales are doing their absolute best to piss out Bud.

Can we follow this up by murdering most of the generic Top Level Domains (gTLD)? I have yet to see anything except spam and malware coming out of the .top domain.

Ya, in fairness to MS, Windows XP was a good release (post SP1, like most “good” MS releases). But, the fact is that MS is going to push the latest version, regardless of how ready it is for use. MS was hot for folks to switch to Windows ME. And holy fuck was that a terrible OS. MS also did everything short of bribery to get folks to switch to Vista (anyone remember Windows Mojave?). The “upgrade, or else” mantra has always been their way. Not that I blame them too much, it does need to happen. It just sucks when the reason for the new OS is more intrusive ads and user tracking.

Many years ago, I attended a Windows XP launch event. The Microsoft presenter had the perfect line to describe how MS views this:
“Why should you upgrade to Windows XP? Because we’re going to stop supporting Windows 98!”

This was said completely unironically and with the expectation that people would just do what MS wanted them to do. That attitude hasn’t changed in the years since. Win 10 is going to be left behind. You will either upgrade or be vulnerable. Also, MS doesn’t care about the home users, they care about the businesses and the money to be had. And businesses will upgrade. They will invariably wait to the last minute and then scramble to get it done. But, whether because they actually give a shit about security or they have to comply with security frameworks (SOX, HIPAA, etc.), they will upgrade. Sure, they will insist on GPOs to disable 90% of the Ads and tracking shit, but they will upgrade.

I’ve always been highly introverted. And I struggled with talking to strangers. So, I set myself a goal of getting better at it and started forcing myself to talk with people more. I sucked at it and probably left a lot of people thinking I was some creepy weirdo. But, I got better the more I practiced. I’m still not fantastic at it, but I can generally initiate and maintain a conversation with a random stranger, without coming off too terribly. Like most skills in life, it takes practice and a lot of failure before you can rise to the level of not sucking at it.

I’d argue that the main reason you see more anime is the target audience.

Western animation is usually aimed at young children. For as much as I may have loved Disney’s Gummi Bears as a young child (decades later and I can still hear the theme song on my head), it’s now pretty painful to watch. Some shows have aged pretty well and some newer shows aren’t quite so bad. But, the target audience still seems to be younger children for much of it. There are exceptions, and several of those are pretty well known. For example, The Simpsons and Futurama are both popular animated shows, and both are not aimed at children.

Anime, by contrast is often aimed at teenagers. This means that it’s part of the audience’s formative years. People form bonds with the shows and carry some of those bonds into adulthood. And while the writing often falls into cringe inducing melodrama, there’s enough of it that is passable fun, usually simple hero stories. The shows can be like a comfy blanket that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence too much.

I’d also note that anime’s appeal goes back further than the 2000’s. My own introduction was Robotech, back in the 80’s. While it was a bastardized version of Macross, with some pretty awful writing (not that Macross’s writing is going to win awards any time soon) and a couple other shows, it was certainly a step above what most western studios were putting on for Saturday Morning cartoons. And that created a lifelong soft spot for anime. Heck, my desktop background is currently a Veritech Fighter. I still love the idea of Robotech, even if I only watch it in my memory through very heavily rose tinted glasses. And I imagine I’m not alone. The show may be different, but I suspect a lot of folks graduated from Disney and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to some type of anime as they got older and that anime was stuck with them.

writes Nestler. “We want to hear from you when you think Reddit is making decisions that are not in your communities’ best interests. But if a protest crosses the line into harming redditors and Reddit, we’ll step in.”

Translation: We don’t really give a shit what you think. Now shut up and generate that content for us to sell to AI companies.

Some employees have accused Dell of trying to shrink its workforce with this policy

There’s the real goal. Cut headcount without directly cutting headcount. Of course, the headcount which bails first will be the highest performers with the greatest ability to find other employment. But, that won’t show up on the bottom line for a few years.

The fact that the OS is replaceable sealed the deal for me.

And the default OS isn’t locked down and doesn’t try to prevent you from doing other stuff with it. What you want to do isn’t in the Steam interface? Switch over to desktop mode and you have full access to the underlying OS.

My only complaint with the Steamdeck is that I find using the touchpad on the right side for long gaming sessions hurts my hands. I 3d printed some grips which help; but, I think my hands just don’t like the orientation. Still love my deck though.

It’s getting Fark’d

No, because your vote won’t encourage investment in flipping the State. I agree that the current duopoly sucks. I was an ardent Bernie supporter and would very much like viable third parties. But, the DNC isn’t going to be looking at those third party votes. They need to believe that the Democrats have a chance of winning before they will invest in a State. If all they see are protest votes, then they won’t see a viable path to them winning and they will continue to ignore the State.

Ya, it sucks, but we really do need to just keep holding our nose and pulling the lever for the Democrat in the general election.

If you are in a deep red state, it will seem that your vote won’t matter. Because it mostly won’t. However, the way States vote changes over time. The closer the vote totals in a State, the more likely the National Democratic Party is to invest resources into building up and promoting candidates in those States. That sort of thing can shift the needle, if slowly. Keep in mind that California voted Republican from '68 to '88 (source) but shifted over time.

It sucks to vote and feel like you’re just pissing in the wind. But, each vote moves the needle just a bit more and maybe, eventually, things will swing.

I started using Summit and it was good enough that I stuck with it.

“The cloud” continues to be someone else’s computer. If you put your data up there, it’s no longer your data.