Realistically, I would grieve the loss of my children, who would never be born if I didn’t line things up just right to cause them to happen again. I’d spend more time with my parents, who are getting along in the years, and I’d make the most of my time with them while they’re healthy and happy.

There are a few specifics where I’d try to get some loved ones out of trouble before some critical tipping point that would later cause a bunch of heartache and stress.

There are general things about money and politics I’d probably do differently, knowing about how stocks have performed and what not, but that’s not super interesting to me, because I’m mostly content in my personal life (including my career) and wouldn’t want to upset that balance by doing anything too different from what brought me here.

I made an alt on each of the big instances, because I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to use long term. Then I just kinda stuck with them, each following slightly different topics, and therefore having different opportunities to participate in discussions.

I think that it’s foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further, it defeats the point of a federation.

It defeats some of the points of federation, but there are still a lot of reasons why federation is still worth doing even if there’s essentially one dominant provider. Not least of which is that sometimes the dominant provider does get displaced over time. We’ve seen it happen with email a few times, where the dominant provider loses market share to upstarts, one of whom becomes the new dominant provider in some specific use case (enterprise vs consumer, mobile vs desktop vs automation/scripting, differences by nation or language), and where the federation between those still allows the systems to communicate with each other.

Applied to Lemmy/kbin/mbin and other forum-like social link aggregators, I could see LW being dominant in the English-speaking, American side of things, but with robust options outside of English language or communities physically located outside of North America. And we’ll all still be able to interact.

So I gotta ask: what’s your plan for addressing your stress levels and your lack of sleep? A prescription from your doctor doesn’t squarely address those issues, and they should probably be addressed.

Our data centers and backbone internet/Tier 1 internet providers are basically the best in the world. The US Department of Energy maintains a network with 46 Tbit/s connections between its labs.

I disagree with your premise. The 111th Congress got a lot done. Here’s a list of major legislation.

• Lily Ledbetter Act made it easier to recover for employment discrimination, and explicitly overruled a Supreme Court case making it harder to recover back pay.
• The ARRA was a huge relief bill for the financial crisis, one of the largest bills of all time.
• The Credit CARD Act changed a bunch of consumer protection for credit card borrowers.
• Dodd Frank was groundbreaking, the biggest financial reform bill since probably the Great Depression, and created the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, probably one of the most important pro-consumer agencies in the federal government today.
• School lunch reforms (why the right now hates Michelle Obama)
• Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP or SCHIP): healthcare coverage, independent of Obamacare, for all children under 18.
• Obamacare itself, which also includes comprehensive student loan reform too.

That’s a big accomplishment list for 2 years, plus some smaller accomplishments like some tobacco reform, some other reforms relating to different agencies and programs.

Plus that doesn’t include the administrative regulations and decisions the administrative agencies passed (things like Net Neutrality), even though those generally only last as long as the next president would want to keep them (see, again, Net Neutrality).

The idea that these models are just stochastic parrots that only probabilisticly repeat their training data isn’t correct

I would argue that it is quite obviously correct, but that the interesting question is whether humans are in the same category (I would argue yes).

Harry Frankfurt’s influential 2005 book (based on his influential 1986 essay), On Bullshit, offered a description of what bullshit is.

When we say a speaker tells the truth, that speaker says something true that they know is true.

When we say a speaker tells a lie, that speaker says something false that they know is false.

But bullshit is when the speaker says something to persuade, not caring whether the underlying statement is true or false. The goal is to persuade the listener of that underlying fact.

The current generation of AI chat bots are basically optimized for bullshit. The underlying algorithms reward the models for sounding convincing, not necessarily for being right.

That’s a fair point, you’re right.

I do still think that a lot of people do use VPNs in public spaces for privacy from an untrusted provider, though, perhaps more than your initial comment seemed to suggest.

Or, for that matter, surveillance video recordings stored on a server somewhere. It’s all just ones and zeros, but some combinations of ones and zeros are quite informative.

Put another way, this means that a malicious coffee shop or hotel can eavesdrop on all VPN traffic on their network. That’s a really big fucking deal.

There’s probably very minimal sliding against that surface. From the point of view of each point of contact, it’s mostly static friction, with very little dynamic friction/slippage.

If you ever run barefoot or in socks on a regular treadmill, you’ll feel that it’s a little bit rougher than just walking around normally. But it’s still not enough to really make noticeable wear on shoes (any more than normal running on pavement is).

Basically, shoe soles are specifically made to be pretty tough, so this type of treadmill shouldn’t be worse than normal.

It might be, but I’ve noticed it has a very click baity style, and don’t find it to be very trustworthy.

Like, I can imagine a world where a smart watch replaces my phone for day to day stuff, but that’s because I’m in that weird space where I prefer a laptop for almost anything serious, but still appreciate the convenience and functionality of remaining connected wherever I am, even if I’m on the move.

But another device I need to keep in my pocket? What’s the point?

Like when AT&T copyrighted /bin/true

Used prices have plummeted in part because new prices have dropped a lot. If new prices stabilize (big if), the resale value should retain itself a bit better going forward.

It’s normal for a 1-year-old car to lose 20% of its value compared to a brand new model. But if you bought a $60,000 model a year ago, and that model dropped to $50,000 new, then your one-year-old car might only be worth $40,000 or so (20% less than a new car, but 33% less than what you paid for it).

I figure at the price point Tesla cars are they are indeed a luxury item

Tesla has luxury models and trim levels, but I’d say several variants of the Model 3 and Model Y are fairly price competitive with its competition, especially if accounting for government tax subsidies.

The average new car transaction is about $47,000, and several Tesla options fall well under that average.

A big part of parenting is simply modeling your own values. If I think it’s important for people to be beautiful, and treat beautiful people better, then the kids will pick up on that and internalize those values. Regardless of what they look like themselves.

I’d like to think my values are different from that, where I value other characteristics (intelligence, knowledge, humor, compassion, empathy) in the people around me, and tend to try to build friendships and spend quality time with those people rather than the most beautiful people I can find. And for strangers and one-off interactions (as a customer or whatever), there’s no reason to be more deferential or more kind to the beautiful people.

Yup, this is exactly it. When I praise their appearance, it’s always something my kids actively did: picked out an outfit, styled their hair, etc., or even grooming and hygiene choices.