I’ve seen Americans start explaining how the geography in Spaghetti Westerns doesn’t make sense, so we in Europe have to go “oh, but you see, the film doesn’t take place in real America, it takes place in America of myth and legend.”

I once heard sex noises through the wall.

So I cranked up the volume and played the samples from Sinistar.

I HUNGER. RUN COWARD.

The technology side of generative AI is fine. It’s interesting and promising technology.

The business side sucks and the AI companies just the latest continuation of the tech grift. Trying to squeeze as much money from latest hyped tech, laws or social or environmental impact be damned.

We need legislation to catch up. We also need society to be able to catch up. We can’t let the AI bros continue to foist more “helpful tools” on us, grab the money, and then just watch as it turns out to be damaging in unpredictable ways.

I’m in Finland, in my 40s. I don’t remember much. I think in the early teens we did have lessons in school about sex and reproductive biology. What I do remember is the “real” sex education stuff around 15-16 years of age, that was part of the health education classes, because, well, I think it got inadvertently weird. The physical education / health education teacher we had was retiring that year. To no one’s surprise, the stuff in the textbook was left for us to read on our own. Because “ummm I don’t think I need to cover this, uhhh heh heh, ummm, you kids probably already know about this”. And everyone was, like, thank God we were spared of that.

Sir Cumference the sphere

Oh yes, and the monastery near Camelot also had a nearly spherical oblate

Oh crap, the last time I looked at Slashdot comments, systemd didn’t exist yet

There was some old interview with Linus. He said that the first thing people usually notice about the setup is the standing desk (this was long ago, and he was a bit of a trendsetter). The second thing they notice is the wall colour. It’s used in mental hospitals. It has a calming effect on human mind.

I found a pencil holder I had in the 1990s. It has these little drawers for erasers and stuff. I was like “oh cool, I can fill the rest of these with my SD cards and USB sticks.”

So, while cleaning my desk looking for those, I found one of these. I was like “I’m pretty sure I had at least 2 of these.” …I found three.

…It’s okay. I’ve programmed in far far worse languages. …It’s got its advantages. It’s got it’s problems. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Edit: If you need a serious answer: Much like BASIC, it’s a language often used in teaching programming. In that sense, I guess it’s much better than BASIC. You can, like, actually use it on real world applications. If you’re using BASIC for real world applications in this day and age something has gone really wrong.

Yup. In theory, it’s a program to gently kick the job applicants to apply for more jobs, which sounds like a good thing. In practice, it’s yet another way for the authorities to breathe down the neck of job applicants to document the busywork they’re already doing, and make sure they’re doing nothing productive besides sitting by their phones and waiting for calls (that probably never come because you just annoyed every potential employer by spamming them with applications).

Several years ago, Finnish authorities did another experiment. Universal basic income for a few lucky recipients! People who participated in this couldn’t believe how awesome it was to freely engage in a bunch of modern freelancing options that the unemployment benefits program just straight up banned. I hear it was awesome while it lasted. Now, they decided to do this mandatory application bullshit for the rest of the unemployed populace. I’m hoping they got all of the data on which of the options was more productive, because from my point of view, this hasn’t been it!

I’m unemployed. A few years ago, the Finnish government introduced a requirement that all job seekers must submit up to 4 applications per month. (This was stupid from both the applicant and recruitment perspective. They did this anyway. Oh, companies just get swamped by applications? :surprised_pikachu:)

Then I started hearing news that major companies are screening applications based on AI analysis. And then I attended one job applicant event where one of the sessions was literally “using ChatGPT to write a cover letter”.

I’m in software development. I don’t expect to be employed again anytime soon. (Unless I bullshit my way to some AI job using ChatGPT, but hey, I have a few vestiges of morality left.)

I’m personally of the opinion that a separate app sign in is okay as an additional measure, if the app is actually useful. For example, GitHub does this well - they support TOTP, and the mobile app is okay. Steam mobile app is useful, but TOTP option as a fallback would be nice.

Maybe the most useless thing I have on this front is the Blizzard app, really. The app is not particularly useful for me, I’d rather just use TOTP, if they had the option.

I’m from Finland so technically not from Scandinavia. But yes, we do have multiple proofs of the strange and disturbing things happening in Sweden. Here, hardly a week goes by without someone asking “why is PostNord?”

Ah yes, Klarna. The proof that not everything is all right with Sweden. Proof that Nordic countries, too, are capable of incredibly dark things. …Do I need to continue?

experts warn that retrofitting it to meet presidential security standards could take years, cost hundreds of millions more, and risk national security due to potential embedded surveillance.

Oh, but that’s the mindset from before the current administration. Back when presidential whims were at least moderated by process and oversight. Back when people believed that it didn’t matter if America elected a ridiculous tinpot dictator, because they couldn’t do anything just by themselves, the rest of the government was there to see the law and procedures were to be followed at all times. Now? Nobody in the White House cares. Donnie wants a jet, Donnie gets a jet.

For illustration work at least. Photoshop is not the best for illustrations either, almost all illustration-focused apps easily blow it out of the water.

Conservatives keep saying they’re for the common people.

Are they? Are they really? Seems to me they’re really busy doing stuff that regular folks hate.

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Yeah but they’re just delirious poor bastards at this point. Can you really blame them? Reddit gives them no break. They haven’t given them a break for decades now. …hell, if Reddit tells them to remove shit, they just do it.

I’ve moderated unrelated web stuff for a bit and I can’t fathom how anyone can volunteer moderate stuff for extended period of time across a bunch of forums. Poor sods. Should have unionised or something.

The top mods

The power mods are bad, yeah, but I don’t entirely blame them for anything. They’re unpaid labour, and doing something that no one should be doing for extended periods of time, let alone without compensation. No wonder they’re totally unhinged.

(Which is why I don’t create new Lemmy communities because, oh shit, I’d have to moderate them, and, well, urgh.)