Yellow Mountain Imports is great.

Yes, unfortunately, and it’s healthy to recognize that. Good on ya.

Some are just opportunists, but there are certainly true believers — either in specific technologies, or pedal-to-the-metal growth as the only rational solution to the world’s problems.

Andreessen is pretty open about it: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

And Lina Khan will be right there!

“Unexpected button scurvy getaway”

Humanity is so fickle, it’s impossible to tell.

In the US, we went from overwhelming opposition to gay marriage to overwhelming support in less than a decade.

On the other hand, we went from aggressively eradicating CFCs and fixing the ozone hole to dragging our feet on renewable energy for several decades.

Even further back, we went from back-to-back world wars and economic collapse to a tentative global peace and prosperity.

Monarchy seemed inevitable for ages, and then multiple democratic revolutions all sprang up in quick succession.

Equality was fundamental to the Constitution, but we still haven’t healed the wounds of slavery.

There seems to be no telling. Some problems languish for a long time, but then see massive improvements in the blink of an eye. Some obvious fixes lay dormant for an offensively long time.

When I think about this stuff, I get a weird mix of hope and despair and guilt and frustration and impatience.

It seems unfair that we got stuck with these particular crises, with no guarantee that we’re actually prepared to handle them. (Maybe that’s the entire story of humanity.)

And then I remember what Tolkien had to say about such things:

Apple’s killin it in the ARMs race.

Tin foil hat conspiracy time: I’m sure Valve has some interest in ARM, given the potential battery life gains. I’m half-expecting them to do for ARM Linux gaming what they did for x86 Linux gaming, and accidentally make macOS a viable gaming platform in the process.

My big thing is a new TV. We have a 46” LCD from 2009 that often refuses to fully power on. I’ve been dragging my feet on replacing it, just cuz I know the research is gonna be demoralizing, with how dystopian a lot of the “smart TVs” are. But now there’s some real time pressure, so I guess I have to.

Coincidentally, I was already planning on upgrading my personal dev machine (to an M4 Mac Mini) and my retro handheld (to a Retroid Pocket 5), as well as my first dip into XR glasses with the Viture Pro. So I’m kinda ahead of the game there.

I’ve been (im)patiently waiting for the next version of the Orange Pi 800, but if tariffs hit before then I’ll probably just skip it. Analogue 3D is also likely to exit my wish list.

I’ll probably move up the timeline on adding storage to my home server if I can afford to. And some microSD cards, since I seem to always need yet another one.

I’ve got a few friends who were looking at upgrading their PCs this year, so I’ll probably be helping them shop and seal the deal before things get weird.

I wouldn’t expect many outrageous Cyber Monday deals this year. Most mfgs probably wanna stretch their inventory so they can delay price increases and stay competitive. That said, there’s also bound to be companies that are poised to strike early because they have already de-China-fied their supply chains. But even they are bound to be cautious.

I used to pride myself on my tea snobbery, sampling green tea varieties from the farmers market and using a ceramic infuser.

Then one day I stopped having time for all that and found that Constant Comment was actually quite lovely and available everywhere.

Black tea with orange zest and spices. Simple, but everything I really want from a tea. Lady Grey is good too.

“Done is better than perfect.”

I thought that was the free space.

Also Hardin was a white nationalist and pushed his “tragedy of the commons” theory as a justification for eugenics.

So every time someone references his pseudoscience, they’re breathing life back into a dead fascist’s racism. Yaaaaayyy…

He and Trump deserve each other.

Sir, yes, sir!

They’re all towers. But the buttons are all pretty shallow with very light actuation force required.

And they all happen to be situated such that the corner which has the button is the corner furthest away from the desk, so when she jumps up onto the PC as a platform to get ready to jump onto the desk, her feet are all grouped up right in that corner.

And you can imagine that if she’s crouched down ready to jump, and I put my arm out to prevent her from jumping from the tower to the desk, that’s a lot of pressure all applied to her little toe beans.

It’s an unfortunate coincidence. But that experience, together with seeing this Mac Mini design, has made me wonder why we tend to put a button with such drastic effects right out in the open like this.

That sounds…

Easier to get almost right than actually learning the subject.

Much, much harder to get completely right than actually learning the subject.

So yes, basically the archetypal use case for LLMs.

If you complain about a technical thing, you’ll end up having to justify every square inch of your existence in order to prove your complaint isn’t just user error.

Two examples from yesterday:

• https://midwest.social/post/18665175/13205738
• https://midwest.social/post/18685199/13213335

Four Hundred Dollar Ashtray