jambalaya8

Some of it was probably chosen to make it seem expensive. And back then, they were seen as probably the priciest computer the average American might have recognition of, while being somewhat exotic compared to the IBM and IBM knockoffs.

One of my adopted "kids" I taught years ago picked this up at 17. He is 26, now. He "borrowed" the software to start (fair enough; it was a friend's license and not used at the same time), and didn't pay for a copy of Blender until he had a career path in mind and used Blender regularly.

A monthly thing makes no sense; just letting hobbyists dabble until they are in a place to pay used to be a lot more normal. They ought to make the entry for paying a bit less heartburn-inducing, though.

Been thinking a lot about concept and word hijacking/cancellation, lately. Dasher is a good example. Ever notice how this happens? It is one of my concerns about agentic AI.

I haven't thought about Motif in ages, either, incidentally. Another tricky word, of course.

Decent way to do it. I usually try to read the first 2-10 pages of a fiction book (at most) before I decide I might like it. If it hooks me, I open to two other mostly random pages, and ignore the plot parts to see if the writing style still seems good. If so, I buy or borrow it (depending).

Non-fiction is different (aside from reasons already mentioned) in that there is usually a far more limited number of books on a subject anyway. Sometimes (mostly not textbooks), you are stuck with just one or a few. Lots of great little obscure books about quirky bits of history out there that were great twenty pages in, but started out sorta meh.

Read the Adler book in high school; I kinda felt it was overrated at the time. I probably ought to reread it as an adult (not a 15 year old) at some point.

I think it is basically just signaling to the county DA's as to what they ought to consider when seeking out blatant cases of rental fraud; the laws already exist in the deceptive practices code...

I think an actual law does have to be passed to enact the part literally banning all AI imagery on a five boroughs basis, as opposed to just penalizing inaccurate AI genned imagery... which afaik is municipality based. Pretty sure the City Council needs to codify that.

Not sure who would be responsible for enforcing it on pretty much every site in the world that isn't just the real estate broker or building management/etc, though. Would places like rent.com be legally responsible?

These were all good things about stackexchange (and a precious few other places), yeah. Especially the latter two. Whenever I see people using stuff like linkedin to 'vet' things, I think of this. Reddit is much more cliquey and free-for-all, and has a lot more emotional fighting than the egoistic sort of arguments that sometimes took/take place on SO. I still prefer SO.

It isn't only the decay. People change. Who you were online at age 23 and 30 and almost definitely 39 is bound to be vastly different as your priorities and real life relationships change (like marriages, etc).

And the topics changed faster. People into mainframe OSes had the same conversational fluidity in that for decades. Leave linux for too long and everything sounds like vocabulary from an alien world, now. And so many 'technologies' with it. True probably since cloud and containerization. So people have less in common technically in those communities and as more career branching happens, people get nichier. More interest bubbles. More and more people in core areas, making it hard to not be overwhelmed simultaneously.

The last I used crunchbang was when crostini/crouton was still being developed for chromebooks. It sorta sucks that 32bit is officially dropped for linux. I mean there are still old versions, but as far as bringing old things back to life for nostalgic purposes or merely to detach from AI completely, it's getting harder not to have to know a lot more.

The iwlwifi contrib drivers still require manual installation. It's about the license model. I used to have an external Atheros just to set up my other NICs (internal and external). It wasn't great for much other than that.

Am curious, do you personally feel mdma would be more therapeutic with friends or at a therapy clinic? I find the use of mdma or lsd or shrooms weird in a formalised environment. Some of the stuff makes sense (like drugs used to desensitise people with PTSD to certain triggers (when it doesn't backfire spectacularly; guessing we don't hear as much about that just the not-formalised experiences of it)) to me, but I don't see how it translates for a lot of people (eg, people not in a semi-predictable environment; people in wartime generally either are around bombings or shootings or not, whereas people with other sorts of PTSD have more trust issues; I could see drug use backfiring for almost anyone but the former group. Generally non-complex PTSD responds better, yet it is fairly rare).

Still surprised tv hasn't brought us a show like Breaking Bad but with designer drugs (the newer 21 Jump Street movies don't count).

I might check that site out but more because I like reading case studies about outlying things than any particular interest in drugs. Thanks.

All due respect, but is anyone's asshole actually circular? Asking as most asshole seem to me to be squished closed and more starry-slat-like. Functionally speaking a circular asshole would be terrible; sphincters are important.

The logos do look too canonically similar in general, though. :(

I think there are some situations where Carol's response would be appropriate, and some where it would not.

In general, I get your comment though. Coding is getting more and more like this.

The default wifi in almost all of the laptops and netbooks of the time sucked. It wasn't unique to netbooks. Especially for linux (I don't mean only not supporting promiscuous mode if you were in need of network troubleshooting tools; I mean many drivers weren't supported out of the box. If you forgot to download a driver rpm/deb file before installing, good luck. Etc.)

The external network card support was better than macbooks' though. Go figure.

Forgot about this. That was annoying.

I miss the form factor of the old netbooks. The 2gb swappable to generally up to 4gb ram was really never great, though was fine with linux as long as you set your swap partition up correctly, though I wouldn't be expecting much in the way of running things like virtualbox or any modern IDE. The 32bit support only was fine then, not now (and with only 2-4gb ram, you didn't want 64bit anyway).

Perfectly adequate for most web dev, scripting, blogging, chatting, network stuff, remote systems administration, etc.

The old netbooks took handling less carefully much more well than anything now other than probably an Apple laptop (I mean, if it fell, odds are it wouldn't break as easily; the ones with hard drives, maybe not as well, but it took more than once; talking the screen and keyboard).

I imagine this is why you liked it. Easy to backpack with.

They were also great for running out for coffee and working without schlepping a full-sized laptop.

I mean the ones with hard drives, not the ones with teeny tiny ssd's. Hard to do much on those, and slower.

Is crunchbang still around?

I used to recommend books to friends generally when I was young, then I started getting really specific about what books to recommend to whom as I got older. I wonder what stuff like this (and AI in general) will cause more of?

I see uses for it that have nothing to do with AI, and which are not at all art.

Removing book tours increases profit once people know your name.

Fewer and fewer author appearances are in person. Book signings are being limited more and more to the author's name and are done via pre-order, with the readings and chats done online (especially with well-known authors). Book tours are much more rare than they were. Book tours are expensive.

Is there a reason your company decided to do this?

This is <sarcasm>good</sarcasm>. It should eventually make writing not a viably profitable career for anyone also. How the heck will people ever stand out and not just be grey goo? How will anyone know what is good versus garbage?

Yeah, there were far better (albeit questionably legal) alternatives to caffeine or ginseng for energy back then available at places like GNC that were better than either (and not at all much stronger, just easier to metabolise for me). Ads for that stuff used to be all over Muscle and Fitness, etc. I don't think any of the new stuff ever had the level of public awareness that stuff did. It also doesn't have anyone actually caring that it is untested and unsafe. The other stuff, often self-policed.

I mean, I don't agree with the tracking, constant or otherwise, but it enables advertisers and other company go-betweens to manage their ad spending. Suggesting an outlay of cash to push platinum card ads on 14 year olds, or diet medications on a forum for people who have a hard time gaining weight, or things anathema to certain people (assuming not done to mess with them) -- just random examples -- is at a minimum a waste of that company's investment.

At the same time, if you have ever been in certain neighbourhoods, you personally might feel really grateful for keeping this setting on; a few hours, or days, in some places can send you ads that'll change your ad profile SO much for SO long, it'll drive you crazy if you aren't careful, or at least make you annoyed and regret it.

Personally, I prefer variety in my ads, and not to be profiled, but there are times I specifically and expressly choose tracking for ads.

yeah, I remember that one, and the bath salts thing. bleh.

This was happening during the early 2000s, though in more "reputable" places (like nutrition and supplement stores; different "drugs" and chemicals, though). Not really surprised it is still going on in the weird little label producers.

Thanks. Was going to write a reply, but you seem to be afk for long periods of time. If you want to discuss later, let me know. :)

yeah

The part about it being easier to find work and make money fast back then is the part I also miss. I used to just feel it was safe to believe the worst case scenario was I would have to just do temp work briefly if I couldn't find a tech gig fast enough to pay my rent or eat, since few people typed nearly as fast. Now even that is rife with competition and those places are overflowing with CVs.

Getting work in tech 15 years ago after a break was hella easy compared to now. Guessing you, like I, are also deep into the years of maybe being called overqualified.

I guess the crypto bros and influencers have taken over a lot of whatever you wanna call what existed during the few decades when tech expats had it. Sorta changed forever when all the betting platforms became legal in America (whether you are or were American), too. The mood changed. So did the local populaces.

I worked remote when I traveled.

My laptops used to be lean, mean fighting machines until that happened.

Ah no, I meant there are apps which will create an APK file. I think they use node.js or something.