Dan Simmons is an incredible author, I really should check more of his books out. The only other ones I read (before Hyperion actually) were the Ilium / Olympos ones which were very enjoyable.
There’s 4 aren’t there? Fair enough, I liked his writing but a third of the way through the 4th book I realized I didn’t give a shit about the characters anymore.
The age dynamic between them is really fucking gross and pointless too.
That first book was amazing though, no doubt about it.
I liked his writing but a third of the way through the 4th book I realized I didn’t give a shit about the characters anymore.
xD fair point. I guess we all have different tolerances for different stuff. I was dating women in their 40s when I was in my 20s so maybe the age gap stuff flew over my head when I read them. I just finished a really enjoyable book by Stephen Baxter called ‘World Engines’, the main character also appears in other books by him and I really, really struggled with it purely based on the character.
He’s called Malenfant, and would you believe it, he’s bad-tempered! ‘Malenfant grunted:’, ‘Malenfant snorted’, Malenfant scowled, oh very subtle Stephen. He is capable of imagining such diverse creatures, thought patterns and genuine ‘hard sci’ concepts, then went with ‘grumpy old man’ for the protag. There’s enough grumpy old men running the place already, I’d prefer my fiction to be a respite from that!
Looking forward to his next book about a protaganist paralysed by indecision called Soppy McSimpleton.
Teleportation. There’s the obvious advantges like no commute. The biggest, however, is that I would just feel so much safer (as a woman). Dodgy situation? Just teleport away.
Most of the things you want to do with invisibility you can do with teleportation, but likely better. The only exception being hiding in the lockerroom of your preferred gender but bruh, c’mon this isn’t a 80’s movie. Also maybe faking a haunting since the invisibility lets you make stuff “float”.
Wanna be rich or just have loot? Teleport somewhere you know has it. Grab and go.
Wanna kill somebody? Teleport to their bedroom while they sleep and shoot them. Or for the less messy alternative, teleport in, grab them, teleport a hundred feet above Point Nemo, drop 'em, and dip.
Wanna live a life unbothered by anyone? Teleport to the middle of nowhere and slowly bring in supplies. Pop out and back in whenever you feel like it.
If I could somehow be assured that the world wouldn’t immediately turn in me when they discovered my super power and try to capture me for its own ends, teleportation. If not…definitely invisibility. Much easier to hide the power, not just myself.
I’m a geologist, but not the fun kind that gets to look at actual rocks.
I do environmental and some geotechnical work, which pretty much boils down to “Is the dirt poisoned?” and “How hard do I have to squish the dirt to make the future building not fall down?” There’s few things to get excited about, but it’s steady work and pays the bills.
For 3 or 4 seasons I completely ignored Game of Thrones - the name just threw me off. To some extend I’m happy I did - there was a lot of content to catch up to when I finally did give the first episode a shot :)
Well done for not letting the end ruin the beginning, I’ll rewatch it every so often but my god it leaves a sour taste these days. The last season is enough to undo all the good work they’d done to that point, it’s such a shame :(
The ending is not great, but it definitely was an ending. Some shows can’t even manage that. And to me it hasn’t spoilt all the previous seasons - those were solid.
Yeah I still rewatch and enjoy the heck out of it, but then the choice is either an incomplete story or a godawful ending with characters that barely resemble the ones I enjoyed initially.
I don’t hate the show as a whole but it doesn’t get near my top 10, yet it could’ve been my number 1 of all time if they turned the last 2 seasons into 4 or 5 with the same quality as the first 4 or 5.
I honestly don’t even hate the final picture, it’s just the complete lack of justification to get us there I can’t stand, and the embarrassing endings of some characters who deserved more (or should have died sooner).
Buy alternative from another company that has a less restrictive licensing scheme, make sure you are happy with the definitions in the EULA
If you want to go the legal route, see what they define “lifetime license” as in the software EULA. I am not a legal expert, so ensure you get professional guidance should you choose this
If you still have the original computer kicking around, depending on how the software licensing works they may have a license file saved somewhere (maybe in appdata, or program files). Grab that and pop it in the same location on the new system and see if that works
Funny I recently had someone ask the same thing. This is pretty much the only route you can go. And 🏴☠️ sadly the only reliable one (if the software is popular enough)
Especially check what the EULA was at the time of purchase.
I am no lawyer but I suspect you can’t just retroactively change the EULA-terms and conditions…
But this is also why Kbin is the best technology, combining both platforms.
Can you explain this a little further? I was on kbin originally, but jumped to Lemmy after boost came out. From what I’ve seen they’re more or less the same experience, but I’m not super educated on the intricacies of the Fediverse
Kbin is a link aggregator with nested discussions (like lemmy, or reddit) but it also is a fully featured microblogging service (like mastadon, or Twitter).
You can microblog on kbin, engage with hashtags, etc.
kbin has been vastly lagging behind lemmy because for a lengthy period of time development has been effectively stopped as the primary dev (ernest) was going through some bad real life issues which took priority. This led to a lot of people leaving kbin or blocking it outright because of spam and bots and lack of updates.
Ernest returned a weekish ago and is back to publishing updates (including several which have already killed the spam problem, being able to transfer community ownership and more) and daily posts dictating what he's working on and pushing (including the API which should be within the next few days).
Lemmy at this point has had a huge head start and isn't basically one person so kbin lagging behind isn't surprising. Doesn't mean their statement of 'But this is also why Kbin is the best technology, combining both platforms.' is any less accurate. Kbin does combine both platforms, Lemmy doesn't. 'Best' can be subjective, but if that's their opinion then there ya go.
A lot of the devs left Kbin due to the on-man-leadership problem and started their own fork Mbin which has been progressing more quickly. A lot of instances have moved to Mbin, including kbin.run which I am on. Either way, it is performing very well overall and does enable interaction with both Lemmy and Mastodon instances. I check Lemmy instances directly periodically and don't see any advantage to returning when Mbin lets me interact with more content.
Yep. I’ve been here for one day and I’m already talking in conversations. Took me two weeks to get anywhere on Mastodon. (And exactly the same on Reddit and Twitter before… the incidents.)
Twitter doing this was by design, while Mastodon doesn’t tend to shadow ban. I might make my guesses about why, but I don’t know the actual complete reasoning as to why it seems to be better for discusion on Lemmy.
I think it’s not even about shadowbanning, I think it’s about Twitter not giving you anything to interact with (a discovery mechanism). Reddit/Lemmy has a list of subreddits/communities that have a clear focus, so you can jump right in and engage. Neither Twitter nor Mastodon have that. There, you need to find people who generally post/share things that interest you, but that’s a lot more difficult.
I had similar thoughts as OP then it took me some time to realise this. Microblogging is when you just need to say something but don’t care to have a discussion about it.
It was originally developed in 2003, just as the hat started to come back. The neck beard meme seems to have come about later in the 2000’s (knowyourmeme.com/memes/fedora-shaming).
"Artificial Intelligence". The marketing has overtaken reality and common sense. Until the datasets are re-evaluated with information given with consent, I refuse to consider this snake oil anything more than a fad.
I was in the grocery store the other day and saw a fridge pack of Coca-Cola that said “taste the new futuristic flavor that was created with the help of AI!” 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Its ONE THOUSAND PERCENT bullshit marketing. It’s like “Pink Washing” everything during Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Either Pepsi or Coke put out a new ultimate flavor. The only difference I could see from reading the label is that it has about 30% more sugar in it than regular Coke/Pepsi.
As a person who loves talking about AI I’d like to note that by AI “we” usually mean AGI (artificial general intelligence) and not generative AI like chatGPT or midjourney.
I love Sci-Fi. One of my favourite authors is Philip K. Dick and I've written stories about AI.
I cannot grant the concession that the likes of ChatGPT and Midjourney qualify for the moniker of AI. It would require lowering my standard for what I constitute to be intelligence, such as having a basic degree of awareness. ChatGPT for example will contradict itself and hallucinate information (not new information, just irrelevant and incorrect information) and can do so in the same response. This is not intelligence, this is the mere imitation of intelligence and that is not sufficient.
The AI that fascinates me is just an idea. No such thing, or really even anything close to it exists. Atleast not yet. It’s more of a thought experiment and a philosophical dilemma. That however doesn’t make me any less worried of it. This technology keeps making big leaps forward.
ChatGPT for example will contradict itself and hallucinate information
So do humans. I agree though. At best GPT4 only shows *signs of *intelligence. Still nothing close to AGI. Can’t deny it’s not impressive though.
When it comes to contradictions and hallucinations, sometimes people will put out contradictory information or act hypocritical, the difference is intention. ChatGPT can't help but make contradictions and hallucinations because it has no awareness of what information it's putting forth. It will very convincingly present incorrect information and not know that's what it's done.
It is impressive. Except it's being touted as more impressive than it actually is and that's what annoys me. The complete lack of critically evaluating these models and then giving into survivorship bias.
That's all aside from the privacy and copyright concerns.
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