

While unlikely to be #1, I bet there’s at least one computer programming book in the top 100.
Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitating it, trying to be amusing and informative.
Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.
Was on kbin.social (dying/dead) and kbin.run (mysteriously vanished). Now here on fedia.io.
Really hoping he hasn’t brought the jinx with him.
Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish


While unlikely to be #1, I bet there’s at least one computer programming book in the top 100.


I reckon there’s a few of us about on here.


This. Winnie the Pooh is canonically a teddy bear, presumably only alive by some sort of magic. Likewise, Kanga, Roo, Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet.
Rabbit and Owl, however, were real, living creatures - the true inhabitants of the wood - with related magic allowing them to interact.
So basically, yes, Pooh isn’t edible.


Good call. They unprinced Andrew, they can unlord Mandy.


Sure you can, but why fabricate evidence against someone when you can trick them into making real evidence?
The hard job of fabrication begins if and only if that fails.
Around £100.
The small print: That includes delivery charges and all other household and hygiene supplies that can be bought at a UK supermarket.
How do you spell “Blind Pig”?
B-L-N-D P-G. Because if it had two eyes it could see.


Yes. The institution in question is human society. We generally grant the permission to make rational decisions over our lives to other humans who know better that we do or are more skilled than we are.
Sometimes, yes, those humans turn out to have been deceitful or dishonest, but there are mechanisms in place for when that happens.
And yes, sometimes those mechanisms are wilfully avoided by the deceitful. Politicians and rich people are especially good at this.
Guess who’s pushing “AI”? The thing that has no contract with human society and cannot be held accountable. And neither will the people pushing it.
This is why we should have as little to do with it - at least as it is in its current form - as possible.


Tangential advice: Many people use YouTube (and formerly Twitch until they nixed it) as a place to store videos. As in the only copy of a video is hosted there.
If your videos are precious to you (or you think they’re going to be), make arrangements for them to be at least stored elsewhere, if not hosted. That’s not going to be cheap what with hardware prices going through the roof, personally or third-party, but it is necessary because no host is both trustworthy and permanent.
Actually not even self-storage is as trustworthy and permanent as we’d like, but it’s still better than any alternative for data retention.
Also, donate to your chosen Fediverse host(s) if you can.


In such places, beware of the person returning their own trolley / cart and offering to take your coin in return for theirs. Because eventually you’ll get one who has used a coin-sized token and they’ve just conned you out of actual money.
But even so, were it not the case there was some kind of coin / token deposit system, would you return your cart? I know I would.


Fake AGI is like fake banknotes. Some of them are really good approximations. Nigh indistinguishable. A lot of people will be fooled by it but eventually it will be discovered to be a fake and people will get hurt in some way or another.
And it won’t be the people who are pushing for “AGI”.


The people who are seeking AGI will be happy when an LLM appears clever enough to fool them, not anyone else.
They may even realise this, because they think everyone else is less clever than they are.
This is why the whole thing has been called AI in the first place.


It’s not necessarily about “the government”, well it is, because governments often contain, or may come to contain, bad people, but they shouldn’t be the only concern.
It’s about not making it easy for bad people to interfere in your business, even if what you’re doing is all legitimate and above board; and not making it easy for bad people to harm you or those close to you either.
Mobile telephone numbers aren’t strictly a secret, especially those on monthly contracts. Names and numbers are linked in a provider’s database somewhere. But for an untrusted third party to know that information? It’s bad enough when someone who needs to know it sells it on to a telemarketing database. Imagine what would happen if any old crank got a hold of that.
Likewise we all have real names, home addresses (for the lucky majority anyway), etc. There are people who know these things. Perhaps even people we’d rather didn’t, but it would be incredibly stupid to leave that information in plaintext for anyone else to find, especially if it can be linked to our online activity.
You might be the most fair and balanced Internet user in the world, but if your name and address is public, any crank who takes exception to you anyway will be at your door shouting and raving before you know it.
If we have to give it over, presumably to a trusted individual or organisation, we need a method where it can’t be intercepted. So it’s either a slip of paper at a clandestine meeting place or you need encryption to send it over the Internet.
There’s plenty of other personal information that I haven’t mentioned here where similar rules will apply.


Nah. He has other tricks. Sending in armed goons and cheating at golf are a couple of them.
I suppose you could go to the root of all these for the real lone trick: being a self-serving piece of [redacted]


As I’ve said before, once Linus is gone, we might well end up with splits at the kernel level rather than at the distro level. And we would be wise to avoid any one organisation’s stock kernel, even if there are some very large organisations providing a lot of code for the kernel at present.
I can see a future where, say, GNOME, start producing their own kernels to support their vision of the Linux desktop from the ground up.
And it’s all but certain that Canonical and Red Hat would be very interested in things going their (respective) way(s) when the time comes.


Any C-levels, current or former, who were in charge during the unethical behaviour should be made to pay this. Either they knew or they should have known. Seize their assets, take them back to basic income and lifestyle and only then take the remainder of the fine from the company.
Yeah, I know this is a pipe dream. These people have their arms lodged so deep in politicians it makes their mouths flap, so it’ll never happen, but it would stop this sort of behaviour right quick.


And Israel only need bring up that Australia did something similar with their own brown people a while back, so why can’t they do it right now?
“That was then, this is now.” is not the greatest of arguments.
Which is why I said we should leave that can at the back of the cupboard.


Tricky prospect. If they admit Australia on that criterion, they’d have no good reason to not admit Israel if they asked to join, and that’s a can of worms I don’t think Europe would want to open. Best leave that can at the back of the cupboard.
Now, if we could find some other criterion, I don’t see why not. Sticking it to Britain by accepting all of the Commonwealth except Britain could work as an argument, and might even be popular on the continent.
It would have to be couched in cleverer language, of course, for the sake of plausible deniability.


DJT. The Big Cheeto. Fatty CIC. Narcissus Egregious. King Fake News. Forty-seven. Diaper Don. Wiggy. The Annoying Orange.
Elongated Muskrat. Trillionerk. X marks the clot. Emeraldus Egregious. King Grok. The least-nice South African. EM Interference. Plugs. Mr Makes-everyone-leave.
Newton himself might disagree, given that he said that he was only able to produce his work because he was “[stood] on the shoulders of giants”.
That could put Euclid’s Elements above Pricipia Mathematica.