wvbdmp

Eh, we still have timezones, and a spacefaring civilization will most likely at least use a time that matches their planet’s cycle.

My first introduction was The Passenger, which I greatly enjoyed. Actually it was probably some HN comment that finally got me to buy it. Obviously I followed it up with Stella Maris and his article The Kekule Problem, also great.

Then I started Blood Meridian and DNF’d it, which I almost never do. I’m sure it pays off etc. and maybe I’ll come back to it eventually, but I just didn’t see the point and decided it wasn’t for me at the time. It’s obviously entirely awful in the wanton cruelty and violence, but more importantly I found it very tedious as a non-native speaker. I respect McCarthy’s style and the details were clearly well-researched, so it’s totally on me, but between the extremely specific vocabulary and the confusing paragraphs that require a good amount of concentration and thought, the difficulty wasn’t worth it for me. I’m sure I’m doing the book injustice and maybe some interesting character or great revelation or deep connection or romantic sensibility was just waiting in the next chapter, but you know…

I do have All The Pretty Horses lying around, might actually get to it soon.

Anyway, unless maybe you’re already super into the setting, I would probably suggest not starting with Blood Meridian.

Even in German speaking forums for pregnant women it’s used liberally to abbreviate “Schwangerschaft” (pregnancy), which can result in some pretty funny phrases.

Good example of the meaningful distinction between opponent and competitor.

Also, the CEO of Mistral AI is called Mensch (Human).

I also heard a lot of people rave about Affinity and all kinds of Lightroom alternatives, but so far I found it all terribly disappointing and am back to CS5 and Lightroom 4 (because I own those on disc)… There is a lot of useless hype around.

AFAIK ArtCraft is not a decompilation and more like some kind of dodgy re-implementation that barely works.

You seem to be in agreement, because indeed such “arguments” are be “bad” and yet the Danes have made them law.

A more correct analogy would be robbing a store IRL vs. in a video game. Or murdering someone vs. directing a movie about a murder.

If you generate defamatory AI pics of actual people, there are already laws against that, and the CSAM aspect can be exacerbating.

Otherwise, you should be free to jerk it to whatever your heart desires, which seems to be the real crux of the matter.

Clean site! (With noscript on)

Why?!

Once upon a time, there was a golden age for devex, when “the platform”, i.e. Windows, was on-prem and Microsoft wanted everyone to be able to develop software for it and have it easy to set up and run. Thus, we got very nice toys like .NET and SQL Server, which is still the easiest, most batteries-included and hands-off database to this day. As much hate as Microsoft deservedly got and still gets, it’s hard to overstate what a miracle this alignment was. A corporation’s real, intrinsic, not just stated in marketing, but legitimate goals were to actually empower customers. When does that ever happen?

Of course, this had its own misaligned incentives: Microsoft didn’t own the web, so they were only interested in improving it strictly on Windows, so they put proprietary shit in their browser. Everybody saw that this was bad and a big long struggle ensued and finally Firefox came out on top.

But with the balance shifting in favor of the web, new incentive perversions arose. To sell cloud bullshit and lock people into their platforms, web companies obviously don’t want you to have a good time developing or hosting competing products, even just for yourself, so complexity exploded and any focus on developer and operations experience went out the window. They also don’t want anyone to be able to turn of Javascript or otherwise have much control via their “user agent”, so not only do they not care about advancing “progressive enhancement”, they’d probably prefer to get rid of it.

As quickly as Firefox saved the day, one of these companies came out with their own browser, and everybody saw that this was going to be a bad idea, but they ran TV ads, so everybody switched regardless.

Actually, developers were the first ones to switch, because they were promised cool new toys, lmao.

We should have rejected clouds and we should have rejected Chrome and with some luck we could this day be living in a paradise of on-prem toys and be the princes of our orgs. Well, probably not, but still.

I would buy that Lego set.