I can’t bring myself to throw anything out anymore. Someday, when all my working PCs have worn out, a $200 bottom of the barrel 32bit netbook could be the last thing standing between me and having to rent compute from some shitty tech company who doesn’t respect my first amendment rights, hides any advanced configuration from the end user, and has an AI constantly rewriting my files to remove any objectionable language, like YouTube or Facebook, but in my home. I’ll hack my toaster to run Linux before I let that happen.

Currently running a ~10 y/o Dell-XPS laptop that still runs absolutely great.

If they truly believe in their AI offerings, they should release them as an extension so users can choose to install them. You only bundle shit people don’t want. If it’s good, you distribute it stand-alone.

Yeah, when I support a social program, it’s with the knowledge and acceptance that some abuse will occur. It’s just that I think, despite the abuse, the upside is still a superior outcome to not doing it at all. Maybe one day we’ll rebuild the cultural fabric to the point where people don’t feel so desperate they immediately exploit any crack in the system regardless of the risks or long-term outcomes. With changes in culture and wealth distribution worldwide, I believe global prosperity is absolutely possible.

I can’t imagine welfare of any kind is more abused than the process by which the US government farms things out to private companies. If the poor are suckling at the teet of the welfare cow, then private industry is the wolf ripping it’s head off. Just look at the clusters of contractors that show up like flies on shit any time the money faucet is opened.

Yeah, I want my neighbors to have heat in the winter, food when they lose their job, and universal childcare. If I have to pay a few extra bucks a year for that it’s better than pouring it into the rest of the money-holes in Washington DC.

OP mentions being from another country. I don’t have a ton of experience with countries commonly regarded as corrupt, though I did go to Nigeria once; money flows >>differently<< there. But there’s also a stronger social fabric. I don’t know if I could vote for any tax when there is suck a blatant track record of shady dealings (though it’s arguable we’ve all been doing that). It was fascinating and I hope to go back some day.

If I get write-offs for my bike collection, I will also be stimulating the construction sector as I barely have room to store them all as it is. :-D

64Gb of DDR4 w/ fancy RGB lights in July 2025 for ~$160. Can’t imagine paying the current prices.

I had this happen before but not in recent times. Not sure if others have experienced the same.

For a while I had my bootloader on a single drive but I now have my Linux bootloader on /dev/sda and my windows on /dev/sdb and toggle it in the bios when I need to use Windows. I haven’t had Windows overwrite anything in a long time. Could be a coincidence though.

One of my objections is that it pushes proprietary operating systems without providing a neutral FOSS option. So in a sense, the tracking and profiling (per your Android or iOS phone) has to come along for the ride. It also opens the door to more and more invasive IDing both IRL and on the web as it will eventually be worked into a bunch of different things. Everything that’s optional now could become mandatory later. It’s like building a munitions factory but putting a “Mark’s Fruit Export & Wholesale” sign on the building. All you have to do is bust down a few walls and put a fresh coat of paint in things and the gig is up.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a D or an R because they all want this gross shit. Can I get at least one real American who believes in privacy and liberty please!

So you offer Startup Starter™ franchises so I can help startup starters in my area find startup starting ideas?

My Minecraft pals used mumble at various points. It’s less polished than some options. I like the FOSS and the simplicity but the certificates confused me as a noob. Would still recommend.

I thought for a second they were AIing their potential customers into the ad image like “picture yourself at the game”, I’m sure that’s next… unconsentually.

I wouldn’t be shocked if it was only 15% that isn’t corporate swill. Even the reasonable sounding comments can just be a bot karma farming by reposting previously popular stuff. At it’s peak, Reddit was a chaotic bazaar of experts and wannabees building actual good communities. You could find the kind of researched, in-depth info no Google search would ever unearth again. Now Reddit is clearly riding in the same boat as MySpace and others, just in it’s own stupid extra-Spezy way.

" the pro-Putin posters known as CopyCop, aka Storm-1516, use self-hosted, uncensored LLMs based on Meta’s Llama 3 open-source models to generate at least some of these fictional news stories" - the Article

So what? This quote is written in a way that makes it seem like that is the problem and the solution is that we need censored LLM’s hosted by massive corps (who definitely have our best interest at heart) using closed-source models and that’s how we end up with Real News™

The issue is that we’d surrounded by morons who never learned critical thinking. To be fair, we all have our own blind spots. How about instead of trying to top-down legislate truth, we focus on teaching research skills, vetting processes, and learn to better identify and label misinformation and common misinformation sources.

Maybe in 2025 all news articles should be voluntarily citing public and detailed source material so that people can better substantiate what is real?

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The wildest part of this to me is the politicians exempting themselves. It may be different in Europe, but in the US, the politicians are often the child predators this legislation claims to protect against.

The politicians claim “professional secrecy”, but shouldn’t you be increasingly auditable the more power you are given. Private individuals should have an expectation of privacy. Politicians, and those with power and influence should live in the open to protect from abuses of that power.

They’re just making a market for someone to compile a 1TB “Best of the Best Cumpilation”, copy it to a handful of cheap terrabyte drives and resell them (to legal adults) in a verification state.

• This comment should not be read as condoning copyright infringement, but rather as a commentary pointing out that prohibition instantly creates very easy to serve and lucrative black markets that will be filled by someone.

To me this sounds like a fundamental problem with their business model. Private vehicles used for public transportation by people who aren’t well-trained commercial drivers.

I have always thought it was sketchy that we let random people in the US be commercial drivers for Uber without forcing them to get a new type of license or earn some kind of state certificate because most people are absolutely shit drivers and beyond that, there are rules for dealing with people (in this case disability stuff) that you should know if you drive the public.

Would you get in a car with that dude “Chad” who hangs out behind the bowling ally, or that chick “Tammy” who learned to drive from her highschool boyfriend who was a year or two older than her and basically got a rubber-stamped license because the US doesn’t actually take driver safety seriously?

Lame, Colorado is usually one of the most reasonable states. Polis is a decent Governor too. I never saw any of the bad stuff that was allegedly supposed to happen after we forced employers to post pay ranges with jobs, so I don’t really expect anything bad to come from regulating AI.

If we put strict guardrails and penalties with teeth around AI companies, they may go elsewhere, where they can act more unethically. That’s fine with me because Colorado already has water issues and I feel like we manage to be progressive without trampling all over personal liberties. I also feel like a good portion of people in this state are real people who haven’t had the idealism trampled out if them completely and still give/get good intentions.

Shit, I’m getting the itch to submit a citizens initiative to make the whole state an AI free zone right now. As for the AI decision-making, how about real, concrete, enumerable criteria. Vibes are not a suitable way to make big decisions. Fuck-off with your AI datacenters and opaque algorithms. Coloradans deserve to know how they’re being treated. Anything that complicates that or makes it harder to understand is a tool of tyranny.

Yes, that’s going a bit overboard, but so is hammering me with AI propaganda from the moment I wake up until after I go to sleep every day.

I run a beelink mini, not the weakest one, not the most powerful one, and it handles docker containers and VMs fine. I don’t have a tkn of integrated storage, but rather this machine handles apps while a separate NAS does all the file storage. Most I ever had running was 2 VMs and a handful of negligible docker containers but I still had plenty of ram and CPU to spare. I also think the minisforum stuff looks good. Their n5 pro nas just came out and would have made a good server with room to grow. I decided against it because I have parts and I want to use them :-) so the beelink is holding down the fort while I Frankenstein together a rig from my old gaming PC in a huge case that will host all my apps and less critical media. Home assistant which will stay on the beelink because it needs high availability. I’ve been curious how the lowest priced minisforum models would fare.

Inb4 someone added Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw to the training data.

Fair enough. I was in that camp for a decade or more myself. I hope you find a solution!