AI is a forever-in-the-future technology. When I was in school, fuzzy logic controllers were an active area of “AI” research. Now they are everywhere and you’d be laughed at for calling them AI.
The thing is, as soon as AI researchers solve a problem, that solution no longer counts as AI. Somehow it’s suddenly statistics or “just if-then statements”, as though using those techniques makes something not artificial intelligence.
For context, I’m of the opinion that my washing machine - which uses sensors and fuzzy logic to determine when to shut off - is a robot containing AI. It contains sensors, makes judgements based on its understanding of “the world” and then takes actions to achieve its goals. Insofar as it can “want” anything, it wants to separate the small masses from the large masses inside itself and does its best to make that happen. As tech goes, it’s not sexy, it’s very single purpose and I’m not really worried that it’s gonna go rogue.
We are surrounded by (boring) robots all day long. Robots that help us control our cars and do our laundry. Not to mention all the intelligent, disembodied agents that do things like organize our email, play games with us, and make trillions of little decisions that affect our lives in ways large and small.
Somehow, though, once the mystery has yielded to math, society doesn’t believe these decision-making machines are AI any longer.
Last time I checked there aren’t nerve endings in our brain, so it should be impossible to feel sensations in my brain. However, at random times during my life, like seeing the plot twist in Fight Club for example, I’ve felt feelings in my brain. I just felt it again now while doing some intense introspection, and I just...
If it’s like a pleasant tingling through your head, it might be ASMR. It can be triggered by sounds (hence the bajillion YouTube channels), but for me it’s more often when I’m really enjoying thinking about something. It’s a weird sensation for sure.
I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Ah! A fellow holder of the belief that time travel stories are better when they are internally consistent! I hate e.g. Looper for having time travel that makes no goddamn sense. It takes me out of the story when the characters are literally watching the timeline change before them as it magically radiates out from one point. And then our protagonists somehow remember the original timeline… Bah.
…So I must ask - have you seen Primer? If not, maybe you’d like it!
I like both movies, but I think The Matrix has a billion times more spectacle going for it. I still think about The Thirteenth Floor regularly, but I’d rather sit down and watch The Matrix again for entertainment’s sake.
I like Generations way more than say, First Contact.
Generations, for all its flaws, was a science fiction story passing the torch from TOS to TNG, and saying something about the characters and world of Star Trek.
First Contact was a generic action-adventure movie wearing a Star Trek uniform.
Honestly, I consider Generations to be the only interesting TNG movie.
I mean, yeah, sure. …but I’m still conflicted about the local heroin addicts standing in the frozen aisle scarfing a bucket of ice cream.
I mean, I don’t really give a shit about the theft, but they tend to stand there with the door open and thaw the rest of the ice cream while they’re at it. It’s enough of an issue locally that a couple of local chains have literally started chaining up their ice cream like it’s the goddamn crown jewels. I just want non-crystallized ice cream!
Also… In my experience, people mostly don’t steal food outside of cases like having the heroin hungries. Food banks do an okay job at keeping people fed at least. (Aside: When you donate to your local food bank, donate money, not food! They can buy much more food in bulk - your dollars will go farther that way!) Mostly, I see people stealing things like resaleable electronics or OTC drugs that have useful precursor chems.
Don’t get me wrong - I know fuckin’ Krogers can take it. I just see this meme about seeing people stealing food and like… That’s mostly not a thing. Food banks and food stamps work okay. They aren’t great, the food often sucks - but generally speaking, you don’t have to steal food to survive when you’re poor in America. You might need to steal drugs and airpods though.
Sorry, I missed one more critical detail there… This game was in space! Played on a 2D, wraparound surface, with a top-down perspective, but it was definitely in space.
The fighters were fast and cheap but weak and could only shoot lasers.
The bombers were slower but tougher and could fire missiles. (Missiles could also be scripted, come to think of it. And if you made them stop, they turned into mines)
The fleet ships could manufacture other ships. You only have a single fleet ship at the start, but as time goes on, you can build more. …if you haven’t spent all your resources on building fighters and bombers.
A 3D, first person pacman clone that I played on a 286 MS DOS laptop in the nineties. I don’t remember its name and I’ve never seen it since.
A programming game from the early 2000s called something like Fleet Commander. (But none of the many games named something like Fleet Commander that I can currently find online are it.) This game had a VB-inspired, event driven programming language. You used it to command fighters, bombers and fleet command ships. Each ship had its own AI script it would execute.
Edit: (Slice of bread with a hole cut in the middle and an egg fried in it.) I have always called them daddy-o eggs but I have recently been informed that is incorrect.-
Mad Max Fury Road. They defeat the tyrant, and get the control of the water valves. Then they open the valves and seemingly keep them open. One problem, how long is the water reservoir gonna last now?...
Ok, so the resource allocation of the moon/earth society is completely broken and the moon-dwelling oligarchs sucked. Agreed.
But the end of the movie makes the computer system unable to differentiate between the handful of moon lords vs the unwashed masses on the earth’s surface. There are not enough resources to go around in Elysium. All that medicine and food from the moon bastards is gonna run out in about ten minutes and then the last bits of society will finish collapsing. Any hope of ever rebuilding a functioning society ends about a week after the end of that movie.
There are a bajillion distros out there and you already have a lot of suggestions here, so instead, allow me to note a few things I think are handy while learning Linux.
Most Linux distros are customized versions of a few base distros. Once you learn how the base distro lays things out, that knowledge is transferable (more or less) to other distros in the same family. But solutions that work in one family of distros may not work on another!
Some common base distros:
Debian: Stability-above-all; all-rounder distro. Updates slowly, but provides a very-well-tested base that many other distros build on. Ubuntu and its derivatives are built on Debian.
Red Hat: A commercially-focused distro that I haven’t used in a looong time, so I won’t say too much about it. Slightly less popular as a desktop basis than Debian, perhaps, but also a solid all-rounder.
Arch: If computers were cars… Arch is for the Hot-Rodders. You have a ton of control to optimize and tweak Arch to precisely meet your needs. When you want to really dig into the machine and tune it to peak performance, this is where you begin. Fortunately, Arch-based distros often forego the detailed install of their parent and just provide a fast-updating, highly-tuned Linux experience. SteamOS is said to be a customized Arch.
Software installation / updating is simpler and more confusing than either the Windows or Mac worlds.
It’s very rare to have a Linux program require an installer like Windows, and it’s not as simple as drag-and-drop install like Mac. Linux has had the equivalent of “app stores” for a looong time, just minus the tracking and selling parts.
Most programs in Linux get installed via a package manager tool. There are various front ends, but under the hood, there’s usually a command line program handling installation and updates.
Generally speaking, Debians use “apt”, RedHats use “yum” and Arches use “pacman”. There are also “flatpak” and “snap” both of which are more recent managers that attempt to solve dependency hell.
The terminal is gonna come up. Love it or hate it, the terminal is still at the heart of the Linux experience. There are guis for pretty much anything you want to do, but because Linux is so highly customizable, help forums and such tend to give solutions in the one constant: bash scripts.
That said, you can get around just fine without it if you really want to. Just recognize that you might be swimming upstream at times.
You can customize anything! Your desktop environment is pretty much a given on Windows and Mac. On Linux you can install something comfy, like Gnome (customizable, lightweight, akin to Mac UI) or KDE (less customizable, very pretty Windows-style UI).
Or try something experimental like Ratpoison - a window manager that requires no mouse inputs!
Part of the fun of Linux is trying out alternatives and truly customizing your personal computer.
Gentoo is the og, “Linux from scratch” distro, where you compile everything yourself. Arch is kinda like that, except everything is compiled already. 😁
You still select all the parts of your Linux system, from the desktop environment (if any) all the way down to which initialization system you want to use. Along the way, you’ll dive into a lot of the various text files Linux uses for configuration and learn which files live where.
It’s a very thorough dive!
If you’re looking for reading material about Linux though, I don’t really have any books to recommend offhand… I will say that the basic tooling in Linux, the POSIX-standard stuff, like grep, vi, sed, and so forth remains mostly unchanged (at least in all the important ways) from year to year. Some of it has remained essentially the same since the seventies, so even a six year old book will still be able to cover all of that just fine.
The things that it would not be good for would be some of the more recent developments in, say, UI tech, like the slow, but ongoing migration from X to Wayland.
Command line scripts and config files are likely to largely be the same (though a few files have a tendency to move around depending on the distro).
Tools for administration outside of the venerable POSIX tooling is gonna be a crapshoot in book-form. Still, it’ll give you a place to start from!
Honestly, it depends on what you’re trying to do with your machines. If you are looking for a stable desktop environment, you don’t need to dive that deep. (At least, to start.) Just install the defaults, and read a basic tutorial on using the Bash shell. (Even if you move away from bash, lots of scripts and such use it by default, so a passing familiarity is highly recommended.) Especially learn about installing programs with the package manager. (‘apt-get’ for Mint and other Debian-based distros.) The defaults are gonna be generally sane, especially in Mint. If you want to get into deeper waters from there, you’ll have a stable base to start from.
But. If you want to configure your machine, top to bottom and really understand how Linux works… Install Arch. Not even joking. Arch installation docs are very detailed and walk you through setting up every part of your Linux system. Be prepared for your first time to take a few days to complete. It’s a lot to take in. Start with a computer you can leave offline for awhile.
I learned a ton by installing Arch. And then I went back to Debian-based distros because there was less active maintenance. (Note that this was over a decade ago, so things may be better now. YMMV). This is definitely Learning The Hard Way, but it’s honestly the most effective thing I can think of.
Linux is insanely customizable. You can swap out and/or customize pretty much every aspect of it. It can be overwhelming. I recommend taking things on a bit at a time, but I’ve rarely used software that’s as easy to find free support for.
I got the earwax but good. I usually abuse qtips too.
But.
If you want to really know what a clean ear canal is like, get a squeeze bulb. You fill it with hot water (hot like tap, not like boiled) and then hydroblast your ear holes until all the wax melts and runs out.
When you get rid of a real bad wax ball… Aww man, it’s amazing. It’s like you just removed earplugs. The world is suddenly so much louder.
Nowadays I find a lot of games feel like too much work and/or anxiety when I just want to relax for like, 30 minutes to an hour after a long day. On the other hand, the games specifically designed to help you unwind just feel boring imo....
After the mildly stressful intro (which isn’t bad, just uses more sticks than carrots in the tutorial section), you basically just pick a direction and go.
If you wanna quest, there are quests available in (almost) every system.
If you wanna farm, pick a nice planet and get to building.
If you wanna fight, go find a planet with hostile Sentinel presence.
There’s always something interesting to do, but you can also just find a nice view on some planet, build a couch and just watch the iridescent grass blow in the wind for a bit.
“Mirroring” isn’t an insult, or necessarily manipulative. It is literally built in to us humans! Our brains have specific portions dedicated to imitation and empathy called “mirror neurons”.
These neurons help us feel what others around us are feeling. It’s why you feel sad when you see someone else being sad. Or why it can make us smile to see someone else having a great day!
The behavior of mirroring someone is a form of social bonding (“See! I’m like you!”) which is the basis of building human relationships.
Having in-jokes and picking up particular quirks of people around us probably has a special jargon to psychologists.
In fact, I made my own. It’s fugly and dorky as hell, but it’s everything I want and nothing I don’t.
I used a VuFine LCD eyepiece and hooked a raspi Zero W to it. Input via Bluetooth keyboard. Not a lot of screen real estate, so I went full CLI and wrote my own TUI with widget support so I can have an “active” app, plus a bunch of passive data widgets.
I built myself a HUD using a VuFine LCD and a raspi Zero W. It runs a custom TUI I wrote for myself that provides an interactive terminal session surrounded by configurable text widgets.
Currently, I have widgets configured to display the date/time, the weather (near-term and week), and CPU/Mem utilization. With the main display running my combined to-do/calendar app to help keep me organized.
It’s tacky as hell, bulky and exposed wires, but I love it.
Am I the only one getting agitated by the word AI?
Am I the only one getting agitated by the word AI (Artificial Intelligence)?...
If Trump loses in 2024, do you think he'd run in 2028?
Non microsoft git repo
Hello,...
Manifest v3 is Worse than I Thought (tube.kockatoo.org)
A great video about the Manifest v3 and how Google is trying to make you view ads.
Every goddamn time (sh.itjust.works)
Can anyone else feel sensations in their brain?
Last time I checked there aren’t nerve endings in our brain, so it should be impossible to feel sensations in my brain. However, at random times during my life, like seeing the plot twist in Fight Club for example, I’ve felt feelings in my brain. I just felt it again now while doing some intense introspection, and I just...
What is your unpopular flim opinion
I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
What are your "poor person" money life hacks?
Let’s get a list going. Like with a Target debit card you can get $40 cash back and it takes 1 to 2 days to be withdraw from your checking.
What is an obscure piece of media or videogame that you think nobody else here has heard of? (kbin.social)
It could even be a youtube video or movie that you don't think anyone reading this has heard of besides you.
If You Had to Worship or be the Champion of an Ancient Greek God/Goddess Which One Would You Pick?
Ngl Athena is based.
Edit: (What do you call this dish?) (sh.itjust.works)
Edit: (Slice of bread with a hole cut in the middle and an egg fried in it.) I have always called them daddy-o eggs but I have recently been informed that is incorrect.-
What are some happy endings that really wasn't all that happy?
Mad Max Fury Road. They defeat the tyrant, and get the control of the water valves. Then they open the valves and seemingly keep them open. One problem, how long is the water reservoir gonna last now?...
It's the holidays, time to impress the family. (startrek.website)
What Linux distro should I choose?
I’m moving away from Windows and I’m looking for distro for coding and occasional gaming. If more context is needed please let me know.
Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook?
Hello,...
The misuse of Q-Tips was a problem even in the 23rd century (startrek.website)
What game do you play to just chill?
Nowadays I find a lot of games feel like too much work and/or anxiety when I just want to relax for like, 30 minutes to an hour after a long day. On the other hand, the games specifically designed to help you unwind just feel boring imo....
What is that thing called where you like randomly start picking-up/doing something that you saw someone do and now its a shared "thing" about you cuz you both do it genuinely
Like when Charlie becomes/starts doing a Griecko thing or Michael Scott imitates Ryan’s ridiculous facial hair
What kind of wearable device do you want? Assuming it will work and feel like you imagine it would
It’s getting cold and so I’m fumbling with my phone and other devices....