Meanwhile in 2025:

• User: ChatGPT, tell me about $OBSCURE_TOPIC.
• ChatGPT: Sure, I will explain. You see, $CONFIDENT_EXPOSITION.
• User: Hmmm. That doesn’t feel quite right, but I’m too lazy too fact check it. That’ll do.

My town library was ridiculously small. Not everyone has the same opportunities.

But we do used books anyway, they were usually the encyclopedia, the dictionary, and text books.

I felt this warning in my bones. I am weak.

I find Jellyfin’s subtitle search much better than Plex’s. Bonus for leaving a subtitle file right along with your file, instead of buried somewhere else so you can’t easily edit it.

These comments are a shitshow. It has become not only acceptable, but the norm, to counter common sense argument with “your mom”.

Idiocracy was supposed to be a satire, we were supposed to be smart and educated, the kind of people that can’t be easily fooled. Every day we return to monke a bit more.

A guy from work (millennial) has smartphone, tablet, and gaming consoles, but no computers at home. He works in IT tech support, and is really good, but the only computer he uses is the one at work. WTF.

I suspect that from time to time, he does need things only a proper computer can do, but he simply uses the work computer.

In an ideal world, investors (and big shareholders) would be interviewed to see if they’re committed to the thing they’re investing on. “Have millions make me billions” or being a nepo baby shouldn’t be valid reasons. This is why every thing they touch converges to enshittification.

OTOH, it’s understandable given the endless apettite tech has for profiling people. The Fediverse is not Big Tech, but Big Tech wants all the data anyway, and given its open nature, it will get it eventually. Temporary accounts are a way to make it a bit harder for Big Tech, at the cost of making it worse for legitimate users.

If the Fediverse had some protection against data greed, maybe less people would be wary of leaving a long data trail. The best it can do so far is using nicknames and multiple accounts.

Link for the lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene

Those are like the most superficial layer of propaganda. The real danger of propaganda is that it doesn’t look like it, it looks like other regular people making you support their interests without you realizing it.

Do you like engines? Do you dislike electric vehicles? Do you like guns? If so, when and where did those ideas come from? You weren’t born with them.

I think the real problem is, people don’t know how to manage their emotions, and those end up swaying them left and right. Opportunistic antagonists will take advantage of those triggers.

Stop thinking with with your gut, take a pause to analyze your body response to emotions. Are you sweating? Are you afraid or is it actually warm? If you’re afraid, what specifically do you fear? Etc.

Propaganda, echo chambers, peer pressure, and even vicious cycles of self-pity, anger, sadness… will have a weaker hold on you.

Feel, but don’t stop thinking.

If humanity survives until then, we can implement 9-digit dates and delay the problem until Y100K.

Plex is more polished, but I love Jellyfin’s subtitle search; it blows Plex’s socks away.

Also, Jellyfin doesn’t nag me every effing time to enable DRM in Firefox for some unfathomable reason.

But Plex definitely wins on performance, IMO.

Take HomeAssistant for example: you’re free to use it self-hosted, but as soon as you want to expose it securely through the Internet, there’s need for infrastructure that has costs, both in materials and labor. In HomeAssistant’s case, it’s NabuCasa that does it, and costs money, and helps fund the work of HomeAssistant’s developers.

Having things free (libre) and open source is a blessing, but we have become used, entitled, even spoiled, to enjoy the work of very specialized people for free. That’s not always feasible.

Another example, Zabbix, is totally open source and free, they only charge for support and training if you ask for them. It has worked for them for many years, but if they start to struggle with funding, I’d understand if they charged for it.

Dude, tell me you haven’t been in a management position without yadda yadda etc.

They’re not genius or more valuable, their workflow is different. In development I could solve the same problem for days, and know the ins and outs of it; as a manager. When I pivoted to management, I understood I have people who know their shit, so I don’t have to worry about the details while I make sure they have everything they need to accomplish our compromises.

I had to learn to let go of the tech work so I could be more effective as a manager. I’d love to talk about Postgres optimization during dinner, but I can’t devote much time to that during the work day. That’s someone else’s job. I’ll just give them the resources.

This. OP is mistaken if he thinks all people had to carefully read all email. We techies love to explain things too much, but executives are administrators, they don’t delve into technical details unless needed.

My technique to get busy executives to answer my emails is being direct and brief.

• Subject: As concise as possible, and then more
• In bold, one thing I need from them. Asking three things is a sure way to end up with two unanswered things.
• Two line breaks
• In bold “Details”, another line break, and a bullet list of any info they might need, but not necessarily read.

That’s it. If they need more, they will ask you. If you need more, send three emails, or make it very clear in the first line that you’re asking three things, and make them a bullet list.

Also, this works surprisingly well with people other than executives.

Try it a few times, his laptop catches fire.

Tell me you’re a NRA fan without telling me you’re a NRA fan.

It was one of the jailbreaks, LLMs are just too eager to help.

Because most people are not online while pooping, right?

Right?