Even when I'm by myself, I often get the feeling like I'm in a "bubble," and everything I'm looking at outside of myself is some other reality different from my own. It's not a positive or a negative feeling, just kind of weird.

So to answer your question: Yes.

I don't consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, although unless things change drastically in American politics, I can't see myself ever voting Republican by the time I'm dead and gone. With that said, I mentioned to someone yesterday that if I didn't have the experience of living through Trump's time in office, this debate would make me seriously consider voting for him.

I really don't believe that this debate is going to sway many undecided voters toward Biden. If you compare their performance at face value, Trump was unusually well-spoken, and Biden seemed like he belonged in a nursing home. Half of what Trump said was complete bullshit, but how many undecided voters are actually reading articles that show how full of it he really is?

What you have is a person who stated lies as fact and did a decent job of being convincing and a person who was generally truthful but seemed like he "wasn't all there." Undecided voters who "don't follow politics" are going to see this and say "You know, I think I understand why people support Trump." That's a very scary prospect.

I don't dislike Biden, but my personal opinion is that the best thing he could do for the country is step aside and let a different Democrat take the nomination. Geriatrics like Trump and Biden need to retire, do whatever they feel like in their golden years, and let someone else take the reins. A competent politician in his 50s or 60s would absolutely destroy Trump, and that's exactly what we need right now.

I was actually thinking about something similar today. We've already had an actor as president, then with Trump, we had a reality-TV star. Social media is the new "TV" for the younger generation, so it's only a matter of time before we have an influencer or a YouTube creator as a candidate, right? Let's see MrBeast go toe-to-toe with Trump.

Microsoft knows that the addition of adds to Windows, Recall, data mining, etc are not suicide. As far as tech news goes, Lemmy really exists in an echo chamber. The vast majority of us at least have some interest in technology. For the majority of the population, though, this isn't true. The typical person sees a computer as a tool to be used for other things. They're not reading articles about the latest release of Windows, new CPU technology, the latest GPU, etc. They're using their computer, and when it's time for an upgrade, they buy whatever suits their needs.

If I was to ask any of my family, or most of my coworkers, about any of the latest "controversies" surrounding Microsoft, they would have no idea what I was talking about. Microsoft obviously thinks that the added profits gained by monetizing their customers will offset the loss of 1% of their users that switch to Linux. They're probably right, too.

I like Windows, personally (well, Windows 10 at least). My unofficial rule has always been if it needs a GUI, then it runs Windows, otherwise, it runs Linux as a headless machine. Once Windows 10 is no longer a viable option, my unofficial rule will be "it runs Linux." Most people will not make this switch.

If any appliance manufacturer says that accessing your own appliance (that you own) outside their software ecosystem is financially "damaging" to them, they might as well be saying "Hey, just so you know, we're collecting and selling your data." If you have already purchased the appliance and their software is free, there is absolutely no other way that using a 3rd-party application could damage their bottom line.

Thanks, Haier, for letting me know never to purchase your products.

The problem I have always had with voice control is that it just doesn't really seem to fit into my home automation. I don't want to give Home Assistant a verbal command to turn on the lights. I want it to detect that I've entered the room and set the lights to the appropriate scene automatically; I haven't touched a light switch in weeks. For selecting an album or movie to play, it's easier to use a menu on a screen than to try to explain it verbally.

Don't get me wrong. I'm hugely in favor of anything that runs locally instead of using the "cloud." I think that the majority of people running a home automation server want to tinker with it and streamline it to do things on its own. I want it to "read my mind." The people who just want a basic solution probably aren't going to set up HA.

Maybe I'm missing a use case for voice control?

Or perhaps people are starting to realize that you don't need a new car as soon as your 5-year loan is paid off.

I do okay financially; if I wanted a new car, I'd buy one. I bought mine brand new off the lot 15 years ago, and I intend to keep driving it until I can no longer repair it. Why would I possibly want to buy a new, 5G-connected, spyware-infected plastic shitbox when what I have works perfectly well and probably has another 100k miles of life with a few minor repairs and maybe an engine swap at 2-300k or so?

COVID-19. People simply refused to do the absolute minimum to stop the spread of the virus. At least in my community, everyone was still socializing with friends and family (without a mask, of course), going out to eat, taking part in recreational activities with other people. Something as simple as "stay away from other people until we get this under control" was too hard for the American public. It certain changed my view of the people around me.

It seems like "we're protecting the CHILDREN!" is supposed to make any kind of bullshit legislation acceptable. It's the parents' job to protect the children. It's the government's job to maintain order, provide public services, and ensure the security of the country.

If you want to protect children from "legal but harmful" content online, maybe don't allow your 12-year-old to have a smartphone. How about blocking sites like TikTok and Facebook on the devices that children do have access to. Monitor your children's online activities. I have said for years that until a child is able to purchase their own tech devices and pay for the service, let them use the family computer.

Governments should hold the parents accountable for raising the children they chose to have, and step in when they choose not to; don't enact sweeping legislation that harms everyone because the parents refuse to take accountability for their children.

I remember when TV channels like TLC used to air educational content (The Learning Channel was actually an appropriate name). It has since morphed into a channel that airs "lets gawk at these people who aren't like us" content. It's no longer educational.

I'm old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks. It was never in question that Saudi Arabia was complicit in what happened. The majority of the terrorists were Saudi. It took a bit longer for the fact that the Saudi government was complicit to emerge, but we knew within a short time that at the very least, they provided financial support to the terrorists.

The argument for starting the "war on terror" was that Al-Qaeda planned the attack, so we should attack the countries that harbor them. At the time, the majority of the country supported this; I remember George Bush Jr.'s approval ratings being in the 90s for a short time. Even then, most of us knew that Saudi Arabia was at least complicit in what happened. The lust for revenge, as much as it was justified, made people forget that.

Over the last 23 years, I feel like a lot of Americans have forgotten the role that Saudi Arabia played in the events of 9/11; after all, they're our "ally," right? I have always been on the fence regarding whether or not invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a good idea. Back in 2001, though, I felt like invading Saudi Arabia was a great idea. 23 years later, I don't feel any different. Should the United States have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd say "probably"; should we have attacked Saudi Arabia? Absolutely. Yet it never happened.

I have the utmost respect for the ffmpeg developers; writing ASM is a skill I do not possess. I do have to wonder, though, would it be easier for cross-platform compatibility to write in C instead. I have always understood that C generally compiles almost directly to assembly with little to no abstraction overhead, and it would not require platform-specific ASM code. What is the logic in choosing ASM over C? I have no doubt there is a good reason.

It HAS to be on purpose. Nobody can get to billionaire levels of wealth and be completely inept, right? RIGHT?

Vaccine exemptions should not exist at all unless a physician (MD or DO, not a naturopath or chiropractor) cites a reason why the vaccine should not be administered.

After Jessie finishes talking about the evils of socialism as he collects his food stamps and unemployment benefits.

Why are we jailing someone for traffic offenses in the first place? Unless this was something like vehicular homicide or DUI, he shouldn't have been incarcerated at all.

I run a pair of PiHole instances for DNS on my home network, and I periodically check the logs and look up blocked domains that I don't recognize. Every single time, it's a service that provides telemetry for mobile apps. It's insane how much data apps try to collect.

I run uBlock origin on every device I can. I use PiHole on my home network. I've canceled every streaming service in favor of self-hosting, and IoT devices are blocked from the internet. Incoming connections are geoblocked. Meta is blocked at the DNS level. Suffice to say I have put a lot of effort into privacy and security.

I still can't get rid of Google, though, solely because of Gmail. I've had the same address for so many years (ever since the invite-only days), it would be an absolute nightmare to try to change it.

The only person who should be able to "opt out" a child from vaccination should be a MD or DO, and they had better have a dammed good medical reason for it.

What business does a school have telling students how to cut their hair? When I was in school (over 20 years ago), I had my hair long, short, colored, and everything in-between. Nobody gave a fuck.

I think one thing that's very important for the worldwide audience to consider is what the involved countries count as "peace." Peace for Ukraine is "give us our land back and stop attacking us." Peace for Russia is "We'll stop attacking you if you let us have a significant portion of you country as our own." Obviously, the Russian "solution" is not an acceptable one. Sadly, I feel like China and other Russian-aligned countries probably support the distorted Russian version of "peace."

I'm only familiar with the "controversy" from the headlines, but I don't quite understand what pissed off the conservatives so much. Budweiser just sent this person a custom-branded 6-pack or something, right?

Every company sells their product to people from all walks of life, it's just not always publicized. The fact that they choose to rage against Budweiser of all brands is just ridiculous to me. Now if they were complaining about the quality of the beer, that I might understand.

This is a good thing, but it's hardly unique. Any advanced manufacturing facility will have remote access to their equipment in case an operator needs reconfigure it, transfer data, or in this case if they're invaded by Lesser Taiwan.

I don't understand why people are still buying Apple products. The first few iterations of the iPhone were fantastic; I even owned an iPhone 2 or 3. iPhone is still a great device, but you can get an Android phone with similar specs for the same or less of a cost. Android in 2024 is just as user-friendly as iOS; as far as mobile devices go, there's no advantage to going with Apple. There's even less justification for buying an Apple computer. A PC with an AMD or Intel chip can be purchased or built with far better specs for much less than what an equivalent Apple computer would cost, and you have more upgrade and expansion options.

Apple produces good hardware, but it isn't any better than the competition. I truly believe that a large part of Apple's success is that they have marketed their devices as a status symbol. People buy Apple devices for the same reason that they buy a Rolex instead of a Fossil watch.

I will resort to ChatGPT for coding help every so often. I'm a fairly experienced programmer, so my questions usually tend to be somewhat complex. I've found that's it's extremely useful for those problems that fall into the category of "I could solve this myself in 2 hours, or I could ask AI to solve it for me in seconds." Usually, I'll get a working solution, but almost every single time, it's not a good solution. It provides a great starting-off point to write my own code.

Some of the issues I've found (speaking as a C++ developer) are: Variables not declared "const," extremely inefficient use of data structures, ignoring modern language features, ignoring parallelism, using an improper data type, etc.

ChatGPT is great for generating ideas, but it's going to be a while before it can actually replace a human developer. Producing code that works isn't hard; producing code that's good requires experience.

How is it possible to wear shoes for 30 total days in 4 years? That seems like an incredibly low number.

I strongly disagree. On one side, people get to eat, yet conscious, feeling creatures are killed so that humans can eat their "preferred" source of food. On the other side, people still get to eat, animal suffering is greatly diminished, only some people may not enjoy their dinner quite as much.

I refuse to accept that the atrocities that are committed against what we call "meat animals" are worth it to satisfy someone's culinary preferences. You can get all the nutrition you need from plant-based sources.

Mask mandates never should have been lifted in the first place. We already have to wear pants, a shirt, and some kind of footwear in public; practically, this doesn't really have a good reason other than cultural norms. Adding a mask to this is such a simple request, it blows my mind that people are so strongly against it; it's one of the few requirements for personal attire that actually has a good reason behind it, and it's incredibly easy to just put on a mask if you're going to be face-to-face with another person.

Now plus the amount of time it takes a photon to move the Planck length.

And sends his 12 children to public schools.

reinterpret_cast(&a_nut)

I like to live dangerously.

Outside of obvious ethnic names, which isn't an issue here, how does the seller even know what a potential buyer looks like?

I never spoke to the previous owner of my home, and I have no idea what they look like. The opposite is also true. I have a name on various forms, but that's it. Our only correspondence was through various documents sent between our agents. I didn't even see the seller at closing; we signed the closing documents at different times.

It sounds like her real estate agent is on her side, so unless the agent was trying to sabotage the sale, how does this happen?

I'm a big proponent of self-hosting. I cancelled every streaming service years ago, and I host everything I want with Jellyfin and Navidrome. I'm very into certain genres of music, so I always make sure to buy merch or buy some albums on Bandcamp for the artists I really enjoy.

That being said, Roku does have its place. My older family members have lived their whole lives paying for shitty cable TV with 90% of the content something they have no interest in. Roku is a good alternative for them. It's easy to set up, straightforward to use, and doesn't cost much outside of the subscriptions for streaming services.

It's been years since I've consumed any media that isn't coming from my NAS, but the vast majority of people don't have the knowledge or desire to set up a home media system. Mainstream smart-TV devices like Roku and streaming services like Netflix or Hulu certainly still have their place. They're a shitty choice for people who enjoy tinkering with software and networking, but a good alternative for someone who just wants to watch TV but is fed up with the bullshit commercial-infested cesspool that is cable.

If the Youtube front page is representative of a general audience, we're fucking doomed.

I'd be okay without excess sugar, but I'm a firm believer that it is virtually impossible (for me) to function in modern society without caffeine. Our bodies want to sleep when we're tired, but I have never had a job where I could say "I'm tired. I'm going to nap and come back in 8 hours."

When you read articles like these or hear about places like Texas bussing migrants to other cities, what exactly do they mean by "migrants?"

Someone who enters the country illegally would be detained and deported, and someone who enters on a visa would be sponsored by a family member, employer, school, etc. As far as I know, refugees and asylum seekers make up a small number.

Our immigration system is broken and needlessly difficult, but it does clearly define a person who can live in the country legally. Who are all these people who enter the country and don't run afoul of ICE but also don't have a support system? It feels like there's a legal "gray area" somewhere between illegal and legal immigration.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/biden-says-it-appears-israeli-military-not-responsible-for-deadly-blast-at-gaza-hospital

What exactly is the use-case for a laptop or a tablet with ML acceleration? I can see the need in embedded devices; a self-driving car is a good example. Large-scale AI services are going to run in a datacenter. Who exactly is the target consumer for a laptop or tablet with an NPU?

Would you be willing to shatter a jaw breaking teeth or just okay when others do it?

In this case, I'd personally be happy if both were true.

This is a really interesting question. I remember a lot of very niche PCI (not PCIe) cards from the old days.

My current-day boring use-case: Multiple GPUs that have never once been used for gaming. One is an A2000 card that does video transcoding and tone mapping for Jellyfin. The other is an old Quadro card that handles encoding/decoding for my NVR.