It’s one of the most unevenly written works I’ve ever read. The opening chapter is absolutely harrowing,and many of the subplots are pretty interesting. It’s not like KSR is a cryptobro, he offers plenty of critique of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the novel, he just adopts “blockchain” as a handwave-y fix for financial transparency. It’s also at least interesting to see attempts at optimistic climate fiction, but I think the novel could do with a couple hundred fewer pages.

His attempts at Steinbeck sprinkled throughout, of which that chapter is the worst, are universally terrible, though.

On a semi-related note, I recently got around to reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (loved the Mars trilogy and thought I should get to his latest), and this chapter had me wanting to give up sci fi as well, so I will subject you all to it:

I am a secret so everyone can know me. First you must count every part of me, then translate those parts into signs that do not describe me. Together we are shackled, and with the sign that does not describe me you can open me up and read me as I am. People will give you their promises for me, and if wrongdoers try to take me away from you, you can find me and tell the world where I am hidden. I began as a silent speaking, a key to open every door; now that I have opened all the front doors, I am the key that locks the back doors by which wrongdoers try to escape the scene of the crime. I am the nothing that makes everything happen. You don’t know me, you don’t understand me; and yet still, if you want justice, I will help you to find it. I am blockchain. I am encryption. I am code. Now put me to use.

Likewise in Spanish, Librería is bookstore and Biblioteca is library.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/humanoid-robot-scaling

Quality sneering

Call me AGI because I am stealing this without attribution

sloppers

I recommend just using https://kiwix.org/en/

It’s… suboptimal, but it’s about the least finicky way to get a compressed local copy of Wikipedia with all the article photos (~100GB).

It’s updated less frequently than the big dumps, but easier to use.

This is Reno 911 slander

The Birate Pay

Signal? Isn’t that the app for drugs? /s

I’d be happy to write a bunch of sql for this type of thing and throw it on github if you have any more specific requests / if instance admins would find it helpful

50 years of C and still no sane standardized way of packaging dependencies 😫

Very cool!

Is this really a surprise? Do we expect the FBI to not use phones or computers?

When we use at&t’s phone lines or Microsoft’s operating system, we are implicitly relying on them to be secure. Same would go for using linux or a secure communication app running on top of it. I think most people would rather the FBI be spending time investigating crimes than developing software.

Every time I see that URL, I wince

This, but then after you can do this solidly start halving the click tempo while still playing at the same speed so you get 1 click per 2 beats, bar, 2 bars, 4 bars etc.

Benny Greb (well regarded German drummer with a lot of instructional content) has a free metronome app for this purpose called Gap click that may be helpful, he argues for this as an essential exercise in developing your internal sense of time.

This is basically my view as a Fedora user.

I use openscale and a Beuer BF700 (I think that’s the model #, it’s a model listed in the github wiki) and it works great, although I had to do the initial setup on their proprietary app to get the profiles to work right, and the scale had to be imported/was a bit hard to find. The wiki includes instructions for modifying a scale to add an arduino and the necessary bits to DIY one if you’re at all technically inclined.

I recommend it, but YMMV if you try to use a newer scale. If I ever have more time I would like to try to extend the drivers to support more scales, because openscale is very good software.

Yep, agreed! Just advocating critical thinking. Part of the problems of pseudonymous platforms with open signups is that it makes it easy and imposes low financial cost to control a bunch of accounts that people can use for ends like that.

Of course other websites and search engines themselves are doing the same, the cost for setup is just higher (hosting, SEO optimization, advertising, etc.)

I don’t really think that’s a solvable issue for open platforms, which is why I think critical thinking is crucial as an advocate for platforms. That’s why I’m here!

🫣

Nothing is impossible to compromise. It’s about making it not worth it (why go after some home lab when they can use the same methods to extort milliions of dollars?).