Dwarf Fortress, so much. But I agree; I don’t think that type of play is unintended. It’s a fantasy world simulator first and game second (if at all). There are absolutely no objectives in the game at all; it’s entirely self generated.

Like, what’s more fun than chopping down all the trees, getting the elves raging mad at you, then holing up in your giant underground+inverted pyramid “hourglass” base while completely ignoring the siege going on above/below you while digging deep to get magma pumps set up all the way to the inverted pyramid so you can flood the surface with magma and kiil all the elves with fire, without having a single military dwarf the entire time because you can’t be bothered to figure out the military menus/training when it’s not as much !!!FUN!!! as mechanical defense options (lava traps.)

Is that a game, or just a sandbox? idk, but I love it. I haven’t played in a while b/c of life commitments (kids, mostly), but I look forward to playing again.

Apparently military is a lot simpler, now, but I can’t be bothered. Traps are so much more !!!FUN!!! and I totally haven’t drowned my complete base with a failed water trap design killing all my dwarves. Not recently. (Mostly because I haven’t played recently.)

The challenge, as always, is to never underestimate a bubble’s capacity to outlast your solvency. I personally know people who have been heading against the housing “bubble” in Canada bursting since 1999. They’ve spent a lot of money with nothing to show for it, yet, and missed out on housing prices, like, quadrupling? Quintupling?

So, good luck. Buying out-of-market puts might be a safer bet, since you’re most likely to “just” lose all your money, with a small chance of a massive payout of it “properly” crashes.

Exactly right. Parent poster is conflating the investment in “AI” since 2022 (almost exclusively meant to mean LLMs, like ChatGPT) and specialized “AI” systems (almost exclusively “machine learning” systems).

A LLM is just about useless for any sort of surveillance or data analysis tasks. The bigger fear with LLM proliferation is as a propaganda machine, astrotufing the whole Internet with mass LLM-generated bullshit.

Nothing on the OP is talking about honey bees. There are many species of bees. I’m a big fan of mason bees; they pollinate like 20 times more than a honeybee, iirc.

To be fair, what did Obama do to deserve the prize? Maybe I missed something, but I remember literally laughing out loud when I first heard that news. Like, he won for campaigning on hope?

I’ve been on the flip side of this. You’re so panicked about getting your wallet back, and wondering if it was carelessness or thieves, that you don’t even think of giving a reward if you get it back.

I think the worry about thieves also primes us to not want to give money, too, but that’s just speculation.

I’ve also been the one delivering a lost wallet full of cash and got no reward, lol.

Not parent poster, and you’re totally correct… But paper-format books don’t work at all for me, or many others with accessibility needs. I read almost exclusively with TTS while driving/doing chores/walking or to fall asleep. It’s… very hard to TTS a paper book.

So, an old (<= 5th gen) Kindle works great. They’re incompatible with the newest Kindle DRM, so they still allow old methods to transfer books. For KU books, it also has built-in TTS, so you can leave the book “reading” for you after you’ve transferred the file to your “real” device. That way authors get paid for your page reads, but you can still read/store/transfer/preserve the book.

But Amazon still tracks your reading data, and you’re still supporting Amazon’s/Kindle’s self publishing monopoly… But it’s literally the only place where books from my genre of choice are available, so not really any good options until their unethical monopoly is regulated away from them.

In BC, Canada, auto insurance is managed by the government. We have low insurance rates to begin with, and then we get a cheque in the mail at the end of the year if they collect more premiums than they pay out. (It’s not a straight annual thing, of course. I don’t know the details, but over the longer term it’s how it works.)

It’s kinda weird not having any sales pressure, too. They aren’t at all light about upselling extra features. I only just found out that for ~$30/yr, I can add replacement car coverage to my plan. Over a lifetime, that’s like $2K to never need to worry about a collision leaving you unable to drive for more than like a day to get a rental.

DA:O is peak CRPG. I love that game so much. I should do another solo nightmare playthrough, with a different class this time…

Except that it is still an option to only buy phones that allow bootloader unlocking and root? That’s been a requirement for me since my first smartphone.

They’re super important. They close the loop on power in the district, so that the superintendent is accountable to the community.

Trustees have power to choose/replace the superintendent, who is the “CEO” who theoretically controls everything, but really just Directors and Principals. Directors manage principals and vice-principals. They in turn manage teachers, who manage students (who complain to parents) and communicate learning achievement to parents.

Parents, in turn, can go to trustees if they have a complaint that is not addressed by the district and they usually respond well (if it’s reasonable) since parents elect the trustees. (Trustees hardly get paid much, either. It’s not a role to pursue for wealth.)

lol. Now that’s a unique take.

Maybe try ReviOS? It’s a “playbook” file you run on a clean Windows 11 install that strips out all of the telemetry and junk, and mostly “just works”. The only big potential pain point, imho, is not getting automatic driver updates from Windows Update.

I just installed CachyOS with virt-manager running ReviOS in a virtual machine. For my needs, it’s amazing. Arch Linux allows for easy updates to the latest versions of software and CachyOS further improves it with optimized, pre-compiled packages, which is particularly relevant for a smooth gaming experience. (Outdated packages aren’t a good mix with new games, and the optimized packages improve performance.)

The only “big” challenge I’ve had with Windows is getting videoconferencing working smoothly (my webcam is flickery), but that’s not a big deal. Zoom in Linux works great, and Teams/Zoom both work well in browser (in Linux). So, most of my work stuff is in the VM, but I have Zoom and a separate browser (for Teams meetings) installed in Linux.

This setup requires a bit of technical skill; you need to be able to find and follow guides. (Ex. I needed to troubleshoot why I couldn’t change the VM resolution, and the fix was to download a set of VM tools in Windows.) If you have light technical skills to search for and read guides, it shouldn’t be too challenging.

(I use Arch, by the way.)

I’m not sure about the 10.

Exactly the problem; current phones are good for the short-to-medium term, for anyone willing to use aging hardware, but what are the long-term prospects?

I’m hoping this will increase true open source phone OS development, like a Linux phone, but we’ll see. If there’s a way to really get Android or iOS apps onto a Linux phone (after these changes) then true open-source apps can fill most use-cases, but everyday users can still use the latest games/apps they expect to “just work”. That might be the ideal future option, at least until if/when Linux gets enough market share to get its own mainstream support (like the Steam Deck has brought to gaming).

Presumably, rooted users/custom ROMs should be able to get around this, but how many developers are going to continue to support development and/or release .apk files if it’s only a tiny subset of the userbase they can reach?

This is going to be one of the biggest legacies of the current Republican administration’s Project 2025 agenda. Not only the direct cuts to research, but also the massive cuts to educating the next generation of researchers. Also related: banning/limiting whole swathes of research pathways, like stem cells and mRNA (as high profile examples).

Totally agreed, though; primary research is critical for solving most (all?l of the major problems we are facing. Healthcare, of course, but we’re on a knife edge of major Earth cycles breaking down, accelerating anthropogenic climate change. The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is terrifying, as is runaway carbon escape from defrosting tundra. And the total spending on primary research trying to solve these existential crises is a budgetary rounding error.

I agree with virtually everything you said, and I still stand by my comment, too. This was Carney’s only politically-viable response.

We can still respect that anyone’s death is hard on their family. His children didn’t choose who their father was, and they’re going to grow up without him, now. I can empathize with their pain without supporting any of the (many) hateful things he’s said and done.

Similarly, condemning political violence is a pretty reasonable take, even if only for the chilling effect political violence has on democracy. Democracy only works with open sharing of ideas, including from those we disagree with. For example, identifying that Kirk was a closed-minded, hateful bigot is important when discussing his legacy, and I shouldn’t need to risk being lynched (or fired) for saying so.

It’s also fair that politicians may not want to come out openly “trash talking” someone right after their death, as that will just be used as ammunition by their political opponents to increase political polarization. Saying “our thoughts are with the family in this difficult time” isn’t taking a stance on anything, while also saying something so political opponents don’t spin silence into a manufacturer controversy.

My understanding is that businesses have more rules than individuals.

I looked into this ahead of a meeting with my boss a few years ago about my future employment (my contact was expiring). I wanted to record the meeting in case there was something said that I might want to take to my union. Based on my reading at the time, my understanding is that individuals in Canada can record any of their private communication, with no limits, for personal storage and review.

I think that any individual can record any/all of their personal phone calls made anywhere in Canada without informing anyone else that a recording is being made.

I’m pretty sure this is incorrect. I’m not a lawyer, and the person I’m quoting below likely isn’t either, but this lines up with my understanding:

In Canada we have one party consent, which means you can record a conversation you are part of. Doesn’t matter where the other people are because you are in Canada and Canadian law applies to you at that time.

If the other party is in the USA then US law applies to them and the actions they take must conform with US law… but US law doesn’t dictate what you can do and Canadian law doesn’t dictate what they can do.

However, one party consent has nothing to do with publishing. Releasing these recordings may breach privacy laws or if the information is confidential under an NDA you might be sued for revealing it.