I’m retired, so I don’t have to deal with this AI garbage… but I have a friend who’s a manager of a decent-sized office at an accounting firm.

He told me recently that, not only are all employees required to use AI in their daily work, but my friend has to write weekly reports to his bosses on how AI is improving workflow in the office. He’s not allowed to say, “It’s not.” Only positive feedback. They need to justify its continued use, so he needs to find benefits to report to the higher-ups.

Sadly, he’s the only one who doesn’t like/use AI. Everyone else in his office has basically replaced their jobs with it. Every report that comes across his desk is AI nonsense, which he has to spend time fixing because his subordinates don’t know how to write reports without AI assistance.

I do not envy my friend.

Thanks for this. I thought it meant “Big Booty Latina.” It didn’t make sense to me because McSexy looks way too pale and blonde to be Latina.

Change “nurse” to “housewife” and you described most US military spouses. So many of them were pushing pyramid schemes… err… “multi-level marketing” amongst one another.

My wife served in the military alongside me, and yet even she got roped into an MLM scheme at one point.

I remember software in the 90s having limits on how many computers you could use an application on (however rarely enforced)

I remember software in the '90s having “limited licenses,” but operating on the honor system. Because you could just install it on as many computers as you wanted and there wasn’t really a way for companies to stop you.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s when I started seeing licenses verified through the Internet and actually limiting their usage.

It does require a one-time connection to the Internet for a day-one patch before you can play it, but after that, you can enjoy the whole campaign offline.

It does disable some features of the game if you’re offline though, like the tactical simulation mode is inaccessible (since it’s a challenge ranking system with the community). I read that some cosmetics and in-game challenges are also disabled. But if you’re here just for the story, you can enjoy it without an Internet connection.

I have eufy for two doorbell cameras (since my house is technically 2 separate apartments), a garage floodlight camera, and a couple security cameras I put up in my house. I’ve never had any of the problems you mentioned. Sounds like your cameras might be too far away from your HomeBase; you’re not getting a reliable stream across your network.

I switched from Ring to eufy specifically to avoid paying for a cloud subscription, and to store all my security footage locally. I heard about Ring collaborating with police to hand over your video feed without even notifying customers and I said, “hell no!”

My only complaint about eufy is that the video stream is a bit delayed. The live feed is maybe a few seconds behind, even if I’m standing right next to the camera to stream. Which makes it a little difficult to chat with people over the camera.

Also, by the time the phone app notifies me that there’s a car in my driveway, the person is already standing at my door. Ring would ping me when a car was halfway up my long driveway, and the video feed was near instant.

eufy is terrible at determining movements too. If it’s a sunny day, I get pings constantly because the shadow of the trees swaying across my driveway set off the motion detection. I have to remember to switch it to human only detection so I’m not bombarded with notifications all day. Which just makes it less likely to notify me of someone in my driveway until they’re already gone. I’ve narrowed the detection area to keep the tree branches from pinging movement, but I can’t stop their shadows in the driveway. I need to know when there’s movement in my driveway.

The sacrifices I make to avoid a surveillance state…

The old story/song, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” isn’t about a young man winning a bet against the Devil that he’s a better fiddle player. It’s the devil tricking poor Johnny into the sins of pride and greed.

The Devil pretended to lose so that Johnny would think that he was the best fiddle player in the world, even better than the all-powerful devil himself. (Pride) And then Johnny claims a reward of a solid-gold fiddle. (Greed) Johnny just cursed his soul to damnation, thinking he could actually beat the devil at his own game. It was a no-win scenario; the devil claims his soul either way.

I was living in Japan when the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002) anime first released, and whereas I appreciated the deeper dive into the world of Ghost in the Shell, it was still doing its own thing separate from the original 1989 manga I grew up reading.

Just like the original 1995 movie, which was semi-loyal to the overarching plot of the old manga, but took a much darker tone and new art style. And its sequel film went off in its own direction, ignoring the manga completely.

Then Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013) came out as a prequel story. A third animated franchise that expands the world with the same characters, but still doesn’t hit on the actual story written by Shirow Masamune back in the '80s.

The 2017 live-action movie was basically just a remake of the 1995 anime film with a slightly altered plot. Still ignoring the source material. And because they cast a white American to play the lead Japanese role (even with an in-universe explanation for the switch), it got “cancelled” and ended up being a huge flop.

The Ghost in the Shell (2026) is the first story that’s actually loyal to the original manga, both in art style and in story. And for that, I’m extremely excited. We’ve seen so many interpretations and recreations of the original work over the years, it’s nice to finally see the original work itself being represented in anime form.

A lot of anime series are fiercely loyal to their original manga. It’s so strange that it’s taken nearly 40 years for Ghost in the Shell to get the same treatment.

DNS = Domain Name System

Computers talk in computer language. When they need to contact one another, they use an address to find each other, like we use addresses to find our homes or businesses on a map. Theirs is called an IP address, or Internet Protocol address. It’s a series of numbers (and sometimes letters) that computers recognize as an address on the Internet.

But to humans, IP addresses are complex jumbles of numbers and letters. If you want to go to Google’s website, you might type in one of their many IP addresses (e.g. 216.58.198.46, or 2a00:1450:400e:808::200e), but how are you ever going to remember all that nonsense? And for every single individual website?!

Instead, you can remember a simple little URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, that’s quick and easy to recall: google.com.

DNS is a process that keeps track of all IP addresses and their associated hostnames (or URLs) and will translate between the two of them on the fly. For example, you tell your computer you want to go to amazon.com and DNS will tell the computer to track down 98.82.161.185.

TL;DR - DNS translates between human web addresses and computer web addresses, so us humans can communicate with our computers and receive information from across the Internet.

Bonus: Google secured a very simple IP address long ago, so even humans can remember how to find them: 8.8.8.8. I worked in an IT field for 20 years, managing a DNS server (along with dozens of other servers and thousands of personal computers). If the DNS server ever went down, we’d use that simple IP address to get to Google’s website so we could search for answers while troubleshooting. To this day, it’s the only public IP address I still remember.

More true than you know. Valve won’t allow you to transfer accounts to other people, so your account is legally dead when you are.

Nice! Glad to know I’m not the only person sinking ridiculous money into my gaming habits. 😅

According to SteamDB, $18,181 over 18.6 years. I’m sure that number will be much higher when the Steam sale is over, since it pulls data from current game prices.

I can’t vote because of my VPN… but I’ll wait for a sale before purchasing Grand Theft Auto VI. I don’t agree with spending $70+ for a game that I might enjoy for a handful of hours. No game is worth that price to me. I firmly believe in voting with my money, so I won’t support the industry that keeps inflating game prices.

Plus, I never buy games at release anyway. No game seems to be perfectly polished at release now (unless it’s been in early access for over 5 years) and I’d rather wait and let others find all the game-breaking bugs and get them patched first.

I remember a time when games were strictly offline. A new game released and whatever flaws it had were just part of the experience forever. Game studios were especially careful to ensure their games were as close to perfect as they could get.

Now with everything connected to the Internet, game studios just release a messy pile of code and drop day-one patches to make it semi-playable, with the expectation that gamers will find and complain about other problems that the studio can patch out later. There’s no more pride in making a quality game anymore, it’s just pushing garbage as fast as possible and fixing it in post.

I’ll wait maybe a year or so until Grand Theft Auto VI drops to $20-30 during a Steam sale and then buy it. I have plenty of other games to play in the meantime; I’m in no rush to experience it.

Yes, Cypher was watching porn.

Don’t forget the blue silicone wedding ring. They pushed those at the BX/PX as a way to show your marital status without taking your valuable ring to a deployed site.

Ah, I haven’t even met any bosses yet. That’s probably why it’s so slow. I don’t even have engines yet.

I’ve been playing this game. It’s enjoyable, but it took way too long to get started. I was already several hours in before I was able to build my first base/ship and get moving to new islands. I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I spent a lot of time just wandering and exploring. I still feel that way, several hours into the gameplay.

And even then, it just feels very slow paced. Like it takes forever to do anything in the game. On that note, flying between islands is also very slow. I don’t know if it’ll pick up with later advancements to ship engines or something, but it’s kind of mind-numbingly slow where I’m currently at. It could use some fast-travel options so I’m not just leaving to make a sandwich while my ship flies to the next island over.

I tried to get my friends into it so we could all base-build together, but none of them had the patience to get a character started. So I’ve been playing it solo and hoping it’ll get better in the later game.

the devs are continuing to put significant work into the game, and it’s in a good state now

It’s actually been a while since I played it. I should probably pick it up again and see if the game has improved.

I have an app from the F-Droid store called URLCheck. I set it as my default “web browser” and then it intercepts every URL I click with a pop-up menu.

The menu lets me see the URL and breaks it down into various parts, which I can selectively remove if I desire. I primarily use it to remove all tracking tags from links people share. But at the bottom of the menu, there’s a drop-down list with all the detected web browsers on your device. You can select a specific web browser before opening the link.

Sure, you may have to manually select the browser every time, but you can guarantee that every Tumblr link opens in Waterfox instead of a default browser. And it gives you a chance to review your URLs before opening them.

Most people have no idea what kind of parameters are attached to links nowadays. I basically just remove the entire “parameters” section of the URL so it takes me straight to the webpage. No tracking, no data collection on where I clicked from, no custom attributes to load on the page. Just take me straight to the link with no extra BS.

Oh, I just noticed it’s on the Google Play store now. That’s good; with Google threatening to lock down Android to only install from their store later this year, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to update URLCheck anymore.

Around 2014 or so, I used to go to McDonald’s for two McDoubles and a small soda. The McDouble was on the dollar menu, and all drinks, regardless of size, were $1. I could eat a filling meal for $3.

Today, a McDouble is $2.79 in my area and drinks are $1.59, $1.79, or $1.89 depending on size. I’m looking at a minimum of $7.17 for the same meal I used to eat a decade ago, not counting tax.

I used to go out to nice restaurants and spend around $20-30 to feed myself and my wife. Now I spend around that much just feeding the two of us at McDonald’s. Going out to a nice restaurant with my wife is easily gonna cost me $50-$100 today, plus tip.

And I always tip a minimum of $20 regardless of the cost of the meal. Much more if it goes over $70. I don’t agree with tipping, but I’m not gonna screw over waitstaff when their income is heavily based on tips.

[…] have you tried McDonalds overseas?

I lived abroad for nearly a decade, thanks to military service, and I always loved trying McDonald’s in every country I visited, just so I could compare with the US as my baseline.

[…] what item do you wish was available at US McDonalds but only remains in that country?

My favorite foreign item, which I miss dearly, was the teriyaki burger in Japan. It’s the best McDonald’s burger I’ve ever had. Japanese food in general is my favorite of all the foreign foods I’ve eaten and I’m definitely planning a trip back to Japan once day just to gorge on their local foods again. But I will definitely be making time for a McDonald’s teriyaki burger the next time I’m in the country.

Is McDonalds in other countries better or worse?

That’s kind of a complicated question, because it depends on the country and whether you’re looking for “healthier” or “tastier.”

In Europe, food regulations prevent American fast food joints from loading their food with tons of sugar, so they end up being (relatively) healthier than their American counterparts. And depending on the country and where they source their ingredients, it might be tastier too. Although it’s hard to beat a fattening greasy American burger on flavor.

But I remember being in Germany around 2011 or so when they introduced a “1955 Burger,” which they claimed was the burger McDonald’s used to sell in Germany in 1955. It was exceptionally good! I came back many times while the promotion was going on.

When I was back in America, I caught another promotional for the “1955 Burger,” but it was gross! And nothing like the German variant. Apparently, Germany made the burger differently than we did in the US back in the day, and I much prefer the German version.

I love that family sharing is enabled. Which means people who didn’t pay for it could still play it and add their name to the wall.