Hemingways_Shotgun

Doubt I would ever do the VR headset. I simply don’t play the kind of games that work well with (or even need) VR. Although come to think of it, a VR Civilization VI game would be wild.

But the Steam Machine would be interesting to replace the old laptop I currently have running as my multimedia box on my television (streaming, retro gaming, steam mirroring, etc…) It would be more powerful than the well worn old dude I’m currently using.

My opinion as a user:

I don’t personally care. I don’t necessarily see GIMP as being a slur at all, since to me it’s more related to a completely consentual sex thing than to something a person has no control over. It’s not called “R-word” or anything like that. If a person wants to be a gimp, more power to 'em. Let their freak flag fly, I say. And I’m not aware of the other use being at all common anymore, having been replaced with other more modern slurs.

However, in the matter of optics, sure, it still comes off as a little odd, possibly immature, etc… But the argument that “No body wants a name change” actually does hold some merit because GIMP is completely open source. There is nothing stopping people from forking it and releasing it with a new name, and even though this has been done (Glimpse) nobody jumps ship to this new, more maturely named alternative that is exactly the same. They stay on GIMP. Why…because no one really cares. We’re all mature enough to say “haha…stupid name” and then move on with our lives without getting into a huff about every little thing.

I’m going to throw in a sleeper pick and recommend the Motorola Edge 2025.

I’m still running the 2023 version and I dare anyone to tell me the difference between that series at 700 or so versus a 1000 dollar Samsung.

The reality is that once you pass the 600 dollar mark, your primary difference is whether the phone uses Snapdragon or Mediatek chipsets. And the people who tell you that make any kind of regular use difference outside of heavy gaming are flat out lying to you.

Save your money. Motorola is the last company that is seemingly still trying to price their products sanely rather than chasing Apples policy of “charge as much as we can until people say no”

https://www.motorola.com/ca/en/p/phones/motorola-edge/edge-gen-6/pmipmhp40mv?pn=PB7A0002CA&tab=techspecs

True. But I was coming at if from the perspective of an every day user coming from Windows. email, word processing, internet, etc… Even gaming and photo editing.

The more professional the needed software gets, of course the more obscure it gets.

You are correct. But you are missing the most important button. Right in the middle of that table there is a big red button that says “autopilot - Manage all these things for me and I can play with a few of those other buttons, or all, or even none, and the rest doesn’t have to be touched by the user unless they want to”

I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve come across a package that I needed that so obscure that it wasn’t found somewhere as at the very least an appimage, if not a flatpak. I haven’t had to build from source in I don’t even know how many years now.

Phonetically it’s pronounced “K-D-E-is-superior”

But hey, language is protean. It evolves and flows like a river, daddy-o.

I see no legitimate reason to let ANY AI have full access to my computer. It’s just unnecessary.

If I need to ask an AI to proofread something, or I need help sorting through a programming error. I’ll go to its website and ask it.

There is no reason (for me) to let it sit there chilling on my computer 24-7 doing good knows what.

they are usually always the enemy

It’s not that I’m disagreeing with you. I’m just not agreeing with you.

I personally think that (as unpopular an opinion as it may be) Flatpak’s largely make the choice of first distro irrelevant. The weakness in Manjaro is that you either risk using the AUR or stay on old versions of the software. Or with Mint/Ubuntu/etc… you either risk adding random repos to your sources list or you use older versions of the software.

Either way, you run the risk of a new person mucking up their system with a bad repo or a bad aur package.

The alternative, using flatpaks, largely solves both issues for when you need newer versions of a certain software, and are dead simple to install/remove/update, etc…

And I say this as someone who was super skeptical of flatpak’s for a very very long time.

Exactly that.

If I were to google how to get gum out of my child’s hair and then be directed to that same reddit post. I’d read through it and be pretty sure which were jokes and which were serious; we make such distinctions, as you say, every day without much effort.

LLMs simply don’t have that ability. And the number of average people who just don’t get that is mind-boggling to me.

I also find it weirdly dystopian that, if you sum that up, it kind of makes it sound like in order for an LLM to make the next step towards A.I. It needs a sense of humour. It needs the ability to weed through when the information it’s digging from is serious, or just random jack-asses on the internet.

Which is turning it into a very very Star Trek problem.

The fact that any AI company thought to train their LLM on the answers of Reddit users speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of their own product (IMO)

LLMs aren’t programmed to give you the correct answer. They’re programmed to give you the most pervasive/popular answer on the assumption that most of the time that will also happen to be the right one.

So when you’re getting your knowledge base from random jackasses on Reddit, where a good faith question like “What’s the best way to get get gum out of my childs hair” get’s two two good faith answers, and then a few dozen smart-ass answers that gets lots of replies and upvotes because they’re funny. Guess which one your LLM is going to use.

People (and apparently even the creators themselves) think that an LLM is actually cognizent enough to be able to weed this out logically. But it can’t. It’s not an intelligence…it’s a knowlege agreggator. And as with any aggregator, the same rule applies

garbage in, garbage out

InXile was most famously the Wasteland series, the spiritual successors to the original fallout designs (1 and 2). But they also did Tides of Numeria and Bards Tale (I think, but don’t quote me)

cries in Paradox

Had an EA Play so I could play NHL and FIFA, and the occasional ME Trilogy replay. Canceled it the moment the news broke about Kushner and the Saudis. Had paid for the year and was willing to sacrifice the final five months in the name of morality. But luckily they refunded me the difference.

He apparently has several ships, which is several more than most people can afford.

That number for the rest of us being, of course, none.

Free market, bitch.

Not the point of the meme, but where does one go about getting fresh supplies (ribbons, replacement keys, etc…) for old typewriters like this to keep them in top condition?

Because I’m not going to willingly give my creative efforts over to a corporation that will hold it hostage and only allow me to work so long as I’m using only their products.

The only way that has any accuracy is if the Linux photo has a button that quite literally manages most of the other buttons for you, and the more complicated stuff exists really only if you want to do it manually.

You can get by just fine literally never touching any of those buttons day-to-day. But they’re there for the people who want to get down in the mud with their operating system.