Even when I’m by myself, I often get the feeling like I’m in a “bubble,” and everything I’m looking at outside of myself is some other reality different from my own. It’s not a positive or a negative feeling, just kind of weird.

So to answer your question: Yes.

I have a decently-sized homelab, and a large home network. I also have IPv6 disabled everywhere. Compared to a normal home network, my config is very complex. (Extensive firewall and routing rules, multiple gateways, multiple subnets and VLANs, inbound traffic filtering, and plenty more.) With the exception of VLANs, IPv6 would require reconfiguring EVERYTHING. What’s the advantage?

The specs say it replaces a traditional 500w-1500w light source with a 200w LED fixture. I’m honestly surprised at how low that is overall. I would expect that a lighthouse would be using at least 10kw of power or more, especially in areas prone to fog. I can only assume that there are lenses to focus it down to a tight beam.

For comparison, I recently installed LED lights in a moderately-sized industrial area. Total power consumption is a little over 2kw, or 10 lighthouses.

People do this because they’re crackheads (or heroin addicts, or methheads, you get the idea). It’s not a poverty issue, it’s a drug issue. The person working a minimum wage job and sharing a studio apartment isn’t going to dispose of their old bicycle in the river. The person who steals a bike and realizes they can’t sell it to get their next fix probably isn’t going to have a problem dumping it in a lake or river. They’re already leaving needles on the playground, shitting on the sidewalk, and assaulting innocent people for not giving them a cigarette. Do you really think they give a damn about the environmental impact of dumping their stolen goods in a waterway?

I really think this depends largely on who you are and what you do with your phone. I have face recognition and fingerprint recognition both enabled on my phone. It’s good enough to prevent a thief from gaining access to my device, and if law enforcement asked, there’s nothing on my phone that could possibly be incriminating. Realistically, I’d have no issue just unlocking my phone and giving it to a police officer, although I do know well enough to always get a lawyer first. Biometrics add an extra layer of convenience; it’s nice to just look at my phone and it unlocks. My concern personally is more about someone stealing my phone and accessing my accounts than self-incrimination.

If I ever was going to put myself in a situation where I’d run afoul of the authorities, I’d leave my phone at home anyway.

My feeling is that our justice system exists to do exactly what the name implies: to enact justice. I think where my thinking differs from a lot of people is in what I consider “justice” to be.

Sometimes, justice is rehabilitating an offender. If someone steals so that they can pawn the stolen items and get some money for food, then of course they deserve rehabilitation. Give them an opportunity for an education or to learn a useful skill so that they have a better chance of being able to support themselves without stealing.

On the other hand, sometimes justice is punitive, and sometimes death is an appropriate punishment. I think it ultimately comes down to if your own personal moral code says that everyone deserves a second chance. I personally believe that not everyone does.

An executioner is not a murderer if the condemned is guilty.

I don’t hate children. They’re brought into the world whether they like it or not, and they should have every chance to succeed as long as they put forth some sort of effort. What I do hate are parents who have a child without any consideration to what they’re doing. No couple should ever have more than 2 children, at least until the population declines. Children should not be punished because of their parents poor reproductive choices. Parents should be punished, not rewarded.

I was a drain on society until I started working. My parents should have paid higher taxes to compensate, or perhaps thought twice about having a child in the first place. I can’t go back in time 40 years and change tax laws to support what I’ve learned as an adult, but I can certainly advocate for better laws now.

Furthermore, I will not be a drain on other people’s children once I reach the age that I can no longer work. At some point, I will reach an age where my physical and mental state no longer allows me to be a productive member of society. With any luck, that will be very close to my death; hopefully, I’ll die while still gainfully employed. If that doesn’t happen, though, my retirement savings will be more than enough to last me through the very few years between the point that I stop working and pass away.

I dislike consoles. I hate the controllers, and I hate being stuck in front of the TV; I’ll play a game on PC or not at all. That being said, the gaming industry is the perfect example of where free-market capitalism should be allowed to take its course. Nobody needs to play games; it’s a luxury and a recreational activity. If a development studio wants to release a game just for one specific console, let them. Maybe it will be a good business decision, and maybe it will fail miserably and cost them millions in lost revenue. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter one way or another. Play a different game.

I have ReVanced on my phone, STN on my TVs, and uBlock+SponsorBlock on my PCs. I was looking for an alternative that I could run on a server and would replace the various different apps I’m using. TubeArchivist ended up working perfectly for me; your mileage may vary.

I decided to give up on it. Looking through the docs, they recommend that due to “reasons,” it should be restarted at least daily, preferably hourly. I don’t know if they have a memory leak or some other issue, but that was reason enough for me not to use it.

I installed TubeArchivist, and it suits my needs much better. Not only do I get an archive of my favorite channels, but when a new video is released, it gets automatically downloaded to my NAS and I can play it locally without worrying about buffering on my painfully slow internet connection.

But you seem to be of the opinion that having children is a selfish act that society should punish rather than encourage.

This is going off on a bit of a tangent, but you’re absolutely right. Having children is the most selfish act possible. Nobody on the planet asked to come into existence; we’re all here because of a choice our parents made. Regardless of your place in the world, no human experiences their entire life without pain and suffering. I am personally very happy with my life, but there have of course been ups and downs. By producing a child, you’re guaranteeing that another person will experience suffering and sadness. Nobody lives forever, so you’re condemning another person to death.

Having children (to some degree, not unchecked) is necessary for the human race to continue to exist, but the idea that producing and raising a child is a selfless act is as far from the truth as you can get. If you consider a theoretical world where everyone was suddenly sterile, the human race would cease to exist within a very short time. A lot of other things would cease to exist: Sadness and heartbreak, murder, rape, war, terrorism, poverty, starvation.

One might argue that brief periods of happiness give a reason for continuing human existence, but is this really true? Most people, if they’re lucky, go through life in a neutral state; we might not be happy or sad, but we’re “doing okay.” If suffering is a -1 and happiness is a +1, with everyday life being a 0, then every person is going to ultimately average out to somewhere around zero. By having a child, you’re making an irrevocable choice that you want another human being to live a life that’s either neutral to a point that’s statistically insignificant or predominantly negative, and you’re making this choice because something in your brain is telling you to. It’s the epitome of selfishness.

You do realize that preventing pregnancy comes before birth, right? I’m talking about increasing taxes on parents. You’re not a parent if you don’t have custody of a child, and you wouldn’t be paying a “child tax” until a child actually exists. This is all irrelevant anyway if we had a single-payer healthcare system and access to legal and safe abortion in every state.

If I go to the store for a jacket, you’re right, I only need to buy one. You may need to buy 4, but do you really think that the sales tax you spend on supplies for your children is equivalent to what they cost the taxpayers in public education? Does it offset the increased demand that your children place on the supply chain for food? Does it offset the carbon emissions that 4 more human beings produce for 18 years?

Maybe your children will grow up to cure cancer one day. Maybe they’ll spend their entire adulthood working a minimum-wage service job. As long as they don’t grow up to become drug addicts or serial killers, they’re still contributing to society in whatever way they can. Until they become adults, though, they’re not a contributing member of society. Nobody forced you to produce 4 children, and the taxpayers should not be forced to support your life choices based on the possibility that they may benefit from them in the future.

What exactly is the use-case for a laptop or a tablet with ML acceleration? I can see the need in embedded devices; a self-driving car is a good example. Large-scale AI services are going to run in a datacenter. Who exactly is the target consumer for a laptop or tablet with an NPU?

I don’t understand why people are still buying Apple products. The first few iterations of the iPhone were fantastic; I even owned an iPhone 2 or 3. iPhone is still a great device, but you can get an Android phone with similar specs for the same or less of a cost. Android in 2024 is just as user-friendly as iOS; as far as mobile devices go, there’s no advantage to going with Apple. There’s even less justification for buying an Apple computer. A PC with an AMD or Intel chip can be purchased or built with far better specs for much less than what an equivalent Apple computer would cost, and you have more upgrade and expansion options.

Apple produces good hardware, but it isn’t any better than the competition. I truly believe that a large part of Apple’s success is that they have marketed their devices as a status symbol. People buy Apple devices for the same reason that they buy a Rolex instead of a Fossil watch.

I remember when TV channels like TLC used to air educational content (The Learning Channel was actually an appropriate name). It has since morphed into a channel that airs “lets gawk at these people who aren’t like us” content. It’s no longer educational.