I think it is obvious to a lot of people, but still worthwhile

First, the idea “humans are super special” is deeply ingrained in our science and cultures. It’s dying a very slow death, and each new study like this further shifts how we see nonhuman life, and ourselves

Second, studying how to establish mutual communication with animals is how we learn to do it better. Coming up with efficient training methods to teach communication is useful in a practical way

This is a small step with unsurprising results, but it’s a small step forward

Mushrooms have chitin, so I’m guessing there’s not common trigger

I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed

That’s not the problem… The problem is Linux isn’t “normal”. Their work laptop comes with Windows or osx. Their home computer comes with the same.

Now go tell the average person to install Linux… To them, you might as well be telling them to open up their computer and snip a jumper to make their computer faster. To them, you’re telling them to take their working computer and do something they don’t really understand and is beyond their ability to undo.

It’s an aftermarket modification to them. If you want to make Linux approachable, it’s really damn simple. Hand them a computer running Linux, with a pretty desktop manager, and a GUI for everything you expect them to do with it. Better yet, add an app store so they can try out software and run updates without feeling intimidated

My point is, if manufacturers start selling Linux machines again, a lot of people will get on board

People aren’t opposed to learning, they’re just scared of breaking it, and they need to at least be able to use a web browser without going up a learning curve

Yes, most definitely. Dry and tasteless are not words I associate with falafel, it sounds like something went horribly wrong there

The base taste is pretty mild, like a baked potato, but then you add spices and eat it along with other things

Wtf is free will even? We’re chemical systems, or a metaphysical soul, that makes statistically predictable decisions based on available information as well as uncountable minor factors. If you rewind time and do everything the same, either everyone comes to the same conclusions the same way, or free will requires an aspect of chaos… And at that point you’re at predetermination - seems to me the whole idea is outdated philosophy

But here’s the thing - statistically, people respond in predictable ways. If every time you do X, the majority will respond Y… That’s just math.

Turns out, humans are super complex, but very predictable. And by that I mean policy is extraordinarily effective.

Free will matters on a personal level, it disappears on a societal level

Missiles are super inefficient. You have to overcome gravity while fighting air resistance at the same time, which requires unreasonable energy density

If only there was some way to use air resistance to fight gravity, or better yet even some sort of metal road to push against to lower required acceleration to the minimum…

Maybe if we made a super slow missile on rails? Never mind, this sounds crazy now that I say it out loud

Yep, it’s pretty amazing how much not destroying the environment helps it recover… although the closer we get to a collapse, the more that ability to bounce back diminishes

Literally every aspect of our world is in a balance… Everything wears down over time, so the current state is basically a homeostasis between biological, geological, and astrological forces. The problem is that humans act on a far shorter time scale - 100 humans could cut down trees faster than a forest can regrow, 8 billion can change the atmospheric composition in a decade or two

There’s always the ones where AI are always omnicidal and all digital tech is taboo, or the ones that predate the information age where you have very manual but powerful tech… Like sure, FTL is definitely sci-fi, but without automation (even human guided automation like ripperdocs) you end up with very unequal societies where magic tech exists, but only for the rich or large organizations

The first is a newer genre so I can’t think of anything well known, the second includes things like the time machine where the time machine is sci-fi, but technology regresses, and the last one could be things like dune. Or 1984, where we’ve surpassed the “futuristic” tech (and unfortunately was mostly used like a how-to guide in recent years)

I can. By making it technically possible, you can divert attention.

One example would be for crazy edge situations. Like letting children with terminal illnesses fulfill their last wishes, or letting hormone ridden teens make their case to a judge, keeping them from more extreme actions.

But more practically, I think this is a great idea… 99.9% of anyone asking for this either needs court ordered mental evaluation and/or a referral to CPS to do a deep dig into the situation. By making it technically possible, that means anyone seriously pursuing this has to explain themselves to a judge.

Unfortunately our judicial system has a lot more to do with money than justice (so most people who would actually go through with this probably have the money to protect themselves from consequences), but this law would be a sensible part of a more perfect system… Granted this should almost never be granted by the court (terminally ill child is the only situation that makes sense to me), but there’s value in it

My opinion would change greatly if this is a real path to child marriage rather than a mostly theoretical possibility

My favorite is the ones where programmers are like “they wanted someone with 5 years experience with ? Guess I’m unqualified, I wrote it 3 years ago”

Because it’s a bullet without the bullet - it’s still a directed explosion that could kill someone with air pressure alone if you’re close enough

Now let’s say there’s something in the barrel, or in this case a chunk of glue from a home made blank propelled out at the speed of a bullet. It’s a lot less force or energy than a piece of lead, but everything is pretty deadly when it’s going faster than the speed of sound

It’s checks and balances, not rock paper scissors

His power here is to set a direction and to nominate new appointees. He could write a bill to expand the bench and/or a constitutional amendment to require a code of ethics… Hell, he could even say “ok supreme Court, you say you can self-regulate… Publish your own code of conduct publicly or I’ll lead the charge in imposing one on you”

Presidents have a lot of soft power. He can write executive orders to demand the problem be evaluated, or he can use his platform to rally support… He can even go to Thomas privately and suggest he resign with dignity while he can, even try to bluff him off the bench

There’s a lot he could do - his hard power over the supreme Court is very limited, but soft power is how most everything works

Because you’re on the “told how to live” side

The world bank and the imf are the ones who told most of the world that they’re poor, and the only solution is to take loans… Pulling them into our craptastic system that cuts down a forest full of food for the taking in order to harvest something that can be sold overseas

They are indeed building huge bunkers in large numbers

Everyone can’t learn everything. When you watch the news, do you fly down to Maui to interview victims and analyze the state of power lines yourself?

You have to remember where you got something and learn to evaluate the bias of a source, but going on an active forum full of people with various levels of knowledge on the topic is the best way to get a complete picture in a reasonable time frame. They’ll call out inaccuracies in reporting, give background that might speak to problematic motivations or conflicts of interest, and argue bad takes.

Is it perfect? No. It’s DD though, more and more usernames are quoted in the news - hell, even in this video forum posts are referenced frequently

I think I’ve got it! So on install, we make a checkbox that says:

• do not install web search in the start menu, but also I consent to Microsoft collecting creepy levels of data about me

Generative AI is definitely this. You can tell by how personally offended people got instantly. How they freaked out about what this could change, and how despite their strong feelings towards it, they don’t learn to use it.

Also, it’s a paradigm shift - it basically lets you grab a random high schooler and ask them to do any task at 1000x speed. Maybe it’ll be great, maybe it’ll be done all wrong and full of made up facts. It’s a random high schooler, you’re not sure what they know and you can’t trust what they give you, and if you try to blame mistakes in your work on them no one is going to accept that as an excuse - but if you hand them appreciate tasks and properly check their work, you can accomplish tasks drastically faster

I’m not sure I agree that you have to give a chance to respond - I think context matters.

I think if you make an accusation or cover a specific incident, they should be able to give their context, not out of fairness but as this might give a more accurate view of the truth

In this case, they presented a specific series of events showing a pattern of behavior, and a timeline of communication they made with billet (including their public comments in the subject

What truth could they add here? They could add more details or make excuses, but that waters down the message - the point isn’t “Linus did something bad and made factual mistakes”, it’s “Linus has shown a pattern of doing bad things, and frequently publishes factually incorrect figures”

I think you’re coming at it from a place of “you have to give them a chance to respond out of fairness”, but journalism isn’t about fairness, it’s about distilling an easily consumed message from the endless complicated facts that make up any situation. Journalistic integrity is about making every effort to give a “good take”, and should put accuracy above all

Being fair to the people you’re covering should follow naturally by pursuing the truth, doing the opposite is what we call “softball journalism”

That’s a courtesy you can extend, but mostly it’s a protection against libel - if they take you to court about a claim they dispute, being able to say “your honor, we gave them a chance to respond before going public”

In this case, there’s no dispute over facts - they didn’t bring up any accusations, they just took what LTT posted publicly and presented criticisms of it

For example, if you report on the president being accused of misconduct you might ask the white house for comment, but if you are criticizing a speech they made or their public actions you probably wouldn’t (unless you think they’ll give you something that improves the story)