There should be a bouncer who refuses entry to anybody who stinks.

That makes me wonder, does a bouncer at a club do that? I don’t think it would come up often at a club because people who go to those try to be as appealing and attractive as possible. As a result, the bouncer is keeping out people who are badly dressed, too drunk or high, who are looking for a fight, etc. But, maybe occasionally someone is trying to seem super masculine and doesn’t put on deodorant?

We were meant to be rugged individuals, but rugged individuals living in a community with other rugged individuals.

Also, farming has always been a hard job. People who garden are doing the kinds of farming that farmers did before automation became a thing, but they’re doing it on a tiny scale. One farmer using non-industrial methods is going to have to really work like a mule to keep just themselves and their family alive. So, gardening using those same methods is never going to produce enough calories and nutrients for anything meaningful.

That’s true, but it’s also nowhere near enough to live on.

They get a huge batch of something all at once, and then it’s a scramble to eat it, give it away, pickle it, can it, etc. But, the total number of calories produced throughout the season isn’t enough to even keep one person alive.

Enshittification. They have their users locked in, and now it’s about trying to make money for their advertisers.

There’s a subreddit where there are thousands of people. The equivalent community on Lemmy has a dozen. I participate there, but it definitely isn’t the same. I haven’t logged into Reddit in a couple of years, and I browse that old subreddit using old.reddit if that disappears the choice is logging in or using new reddit, neither of which is going to work for me, so I guess that’s it for me.

Yes

IMO it’s much more subtle. There are still really cold days in winter. There are still mild days in summer. You can even have a whole summer that’s cool or a whole winter that’s incredibly cold. I’ve heard that one of the effects of climate change is that the weather is more unpredictable.

Having said that, there’s a winter festival here that relies on naturally frozen outdoor water. A couple of years ago they had to cancel it because for the first time since it started it never got cold and stayed cold enough. If you look at the data, the length of that festival has been getting shorter and shorter every year. As for summer, having an air conditioner used to be uncommon, now it’s a necessity.

It’s tricky because some of that is lifestyle creep. An air conditioner used to be a much more expensive luxury, but now they’re cheaper. Technology changes, expectations change, so behaviour changes. We’re also notoriously bad at remembering what was normal in the past. We remember events and extremes, not averages. But, the number of days a festival can stay open in the winter is a much more concrete thing. It was just a given that it would be about 2 weeks when I was a kid, and they had a lot of freedom when it could be. Now it’s a matter of waiting for the weather to cooperate, and often it can’t run the full 2 weeks.

if they really really want them, at least make them electric

And very expensive.

My hope has always been that if self driving cars are successful, almost nobody will own a personal car.

Cars are massively wasteful. Put aside the idea you’re hauling around multiple tonnes of steel and glass frequently to just move one person. Ignore the pollution aspect too. They’re also wasteful because they’re used for maybe 2 hours per day, and the other 22 they just sit somewhere taking up space and getting rusty.

Just think about how many stationary cars you pass when you’re out in the world. Nobody’s getting any use out of them, they’re just sitting there in case they’re needed, meanwhile they’re taking up useful space. There are other potentially expensive things you only use for a short amount of time each day: say, a good kitchen knife. But, most of them are indoors where they’re not exposed to the elements and deteriorating without being used.

In a future with self-driving cars, owning a car could be a luxury that enthusiasts could pay for, if it was worth it to them, but everybody else who needed a car could just rent a car for an hour or two.

I’m really hopeful that Steam Boxes and Steam Decks etc. mean that peripheral manufacturers start making sure their stuff works well on Linux.

Honestly, a lot of the time all they’d need to do is document the protocol and publish it and probably someone else would build and maintain a driver for them. I think it could undo a whole chicken and egg situation. Right now, manufacturers don’t build their stuff with Linux support because not enough gamers run Linux. As a result, not many gamers run Linux, which means it’s reasonable for manufacturers not to build in Linux support.

As for the unknowns, there are unknowns in Windows too. I’ve had to go into the registry many times to tweak something so it worked the way I wanted. The only difference is that my Windows install was the result of months or years worth of tweaking and customizing. Well, not the only difference. Linux is much more tweakable, and it’s something where you go in expecting to have to spend more time adjusting things. But, Windows didn’t have its unknowns too. It’s just that most of them were already behind me. With Linux, I knew I’d have to start from nearly square one. I’m glad I did in the end, but it was still frustrating at times.

its

I daily-drive Bazzite on multiple machines. It’s excellent, even on machines I rarely use for games.

If you use the console version of Bazzite (which I use on a HTPC), it runs Steam in console mode on boot. I assume that’s what SteamOS does, it seems like they designed that mode to feel identical to using SteamOS on a SteamDeck. That makes it easy to launch games etc. without needing a keyboard and mouse. Then you can go to desktop mode when you need it.

The desktop version of Bazzite is just a Linux desktop that starts Steam on boot so that it’s running in the background. It has some gaming-related things installed but if you want to use it as a machine to write software it’s basically ready to go.

The part that takes energy and effort is making the switch.

I’m really familiar with Linux. I’ve been using it on and off since the days of Slackware. My work computer was Linux-only for several years.

But, even with that, it took weird driver issues with my GPU, combined with the impending death of Windows 10, combined with the ridiculous heavy handed Copilot BS on Windows to finally convince me to switch my main desktop PC to Linux.

It was just the momentum that was so hard to overcome. I knew what worked in Windows, and I knew what didn’t. I had already found and installed all the programs I needed. My settings were all how I liked them. I knew the keyboard shortcuts. With Linux I didn’t know what would work or what wouldn’t. With Linux, there were a lot of things I’d need to install and set up, and I knew that was going to take some effort. But, worst were the unknown unknowns. I didn’t know what was going to cause me problems, and didn’t know if they were things I could resolve in a couple of hours or if they’d take weeks.

I’m glad I made the switch, and the overall maintenance load is much lower than it was in Windows. The frustration factor is 10x better. But, I did have to make a real effort to make the switch. There were a few weeks where it was pretty frustrating.

Sure professor. Keep digging that grave.

aims to

Aims to. As in, has never once reached. So, you’re suggesting that in a state that has never happened, but theoretically could happen, then it’s OK to have a for-profit business.

What about in the real world?

That’s an “if” big enough to drive a train through.

There has never been a classless society where everyone’s basic needs are met. So, pretending that that’s the starting point for this hypothetical is a sign you’re pretty desperate.

And which of them thought that communism without capitalism allowed someone to run a for-profit business?

You mean, whatever Marx says.

Copyright infringement is never theft.

And, arguably, what they’re doing with LLMs isn’t even infringing copyright. If I look at a copyrighted picture, learn from it, then paint my own impression of it, my painting shouldn’t be infringing the copyright. Do that with an LLM instead of a brain and it’s a similar argument.

The dual standard is really the issue. Meta downloaded terabytes of books from LibGen and loaded them into its model. If that’s not infringing copyright, then anybody should be able to download a book from LibGen and read it without worrying about copyright infringement because they’re just loading them into their brains. But, I have a feeling that Meta will get away with it as fair use, but individual people will still be nailed for “copyright infringement” for loading media into their brains in exactly the same way.

No, private property is things like a coat and shoes.

If someone owns an industrial lemon juicer, that’s part of the means of production, and must be collectively owned. Sorry Jenny, you can’t have a lemonade stand.

In fact, Jenny’s parents are allowed to own a small lemon juicer as part of their personal property. But, if Jenny tries to use that juicer for her lemonade stand and charges money for her lemonade, that juicer is now part of the means of production (as are the lemons) and she’s now operating an illegal enterprise.

The USSR and other supposedly “communist” governments all eventually allowed some capitalism in their economies, because 100% pure communism simply didn’t work.