Radiant_sir_radiant @ Radiant_sir_radiant @beehaw.org

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7

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327

Joined

2 yr. ago

Long-time Opera user here (I paid for Opera 5 - yes, that long ago). Opera was a truly visionary browser up to version 7 or so based on its own Presto engine, but nowadays it's just another Chrome clone with dubious features IMHO.

Opera's successor in spirit is probably Vivaldi. I use it as my standard browser on Windows and Android and am very very happy.

Metro 2033 Redux. Bought it a while ago when it was on sale on Steam and didn't enjoy it much as it was incredibly hard and the performance was sluggish. Gave it another try this week with the new graphics card and now it's actually a great cross between fighting, strategy and adventure.

Each chapter of the story has its own world, rich in details and atmosphere, often with several ways to advance and uncover new parts of the story. The controls take some getting used to - most keys do two different things depending on how long you press them - but once you get the hang of it, it all makes a lot of sense. The graphics are very well done and organic, and the engine chugs along at a steady 60fps at 4k and full settings on my Ryzen 5700X and RTX 4060 even during intense fighting out in the open. What more could one ask for?

My only gripe is that there's no save button. The game will silently auto-save at certain points in the story, and when you die or exit the game you can restore to that last checkpoint (and only then will you discover where in the story that is). Everything after that point is lost.

It's a good thing that super-manly stunts like this one would only ever be done by definitely, positively 100% straight guys who'd never ever feel the need to hide their secret love for cock behind extravagant displays of ill-guided 'masculinity'.

That would be lovely! I actually still own some DOGE, albeit more for teh lulz than because of sound financial reasons. Though I've yet to encounter one single place where I could spend them for something I actually need.

I'd be slightly disappointed if the bill simply read "69.99" instead of "very such wow point wow" though.

Maybe if your account is big enough to make money off TwitX some day, you'll be paid in Dogecoin.

Aw man, having to quit when you can already smell the finish line is extra mean. I hope you were still able to finish your courses, even if it had to be elsewhere. But...! Spectacularly belated congratulations for the happy couple! If the festivities were in Buenos Aires it must have been quite an event.

This probably also gives you a unique insider view of the country from the outside, the culture and the people. I would imagine it to be quite interesting to get you talking over a good Merlot (or a still water if you prefer) and some empanadas (make mine jamón y queso).

Save for a short one-day stop between flights in September, we've last been in Buenos Aires around New Year 2019/2020. It is an impressive city in many aspects. My sister-in-law who is a cop accompanied us. Even then, we were advised to leave La Boca before 5 pm. I'm not sure I'd want to go there at all in the current climate, even though it was one of the more enjoyable and pretty parts of town. But then again, everywhere I go there's that huge imaginary billboard hovering above my head that says "Gringo with money who's unfamiliar with how things work here" in huge letters. Or maybe I'm just slightly paranoid.

See the biggest issue is that there isn't an easy way to test any hypothesis here.

If I had to speculate I could see both turning out to be true. There are probably some pedophiles whom AI CP will help handle the urge, and some for whom the readily available content will make actual abuse more morally acceptable. But then again, we'll probably never know for sure unless we find some criteria like in your nice battery example. Criteria such as "is the building on fire" give you quick and near-immediate feedback on whether or not you've been successful.

The discussion reminds me of the never-ending debate on whether drugs should be legal though. If there should be tests with AI CP, could there be a setup similar to that of supplying recovering heroine addicts (and only them) with methadone? This would allow the tests to be conducted in a controlled environment, with a control group and according to reproducible criteria.

I remain hopeful but doubtful that the people will eventually pick up on this and change tactics.

Same here. I'm not going to hold my breath though - I personally know too many people who voted for Fernandez/Kirchner even though the Kirchner clan is arguably the apex of corruption and directly responsible for one of the worst bankruptcies in the country's history... just because they were unhappy with Macri's budget cuts (which funny enough were way less far-reaching than what Milei wants to do) and Kirchner double-pinky promised to do better this time.

I'm not going to pretend to have the answer to all (or even most) questions. It's just insert adjective for 'argh!!!' here to watch a country with such natural riches and resources so skillfully flush itself further and further down the crapper. But I'm going to have to agree with your assessment and there's probably not much that can be done from outside the country.

On the upside: thanks to Western Union basing its exchange rates on the dólar blue, supporting my niece's studies now costs five times less than what it cost two years ago, so there's that!

I went to grad school in Buenos Aires and lived there for about 5 years

This is a bit off-topic and just personal curiosity: what made you choose Argentina, resp. Buenos Aires? Do you know somebody there, did you want to see the city/country, or is it just the logical choice where you're from?

This is a difficult one to get morally 'right', but I can see how legal (or at least not-all-out-illegal) AI CP could make the situation worse. Given today's technological advances, it will be next to impossible for law enforcement to reliably distinguish between illegal real CP and not-illegal artificial CP, meaning images and videos of actual child abuse cannot be used as evidence in court anymore, as the defendant can just claim that it's AI-generated.
\ Second, while a lot of consumers of CP might be happy with AI material, I expect that for a substantial number, the real thing will be considered superior or a special treat... much as many consumers of 'normal' porn prefer amateur porn over mass-produced studio flicks.
\ The two combined would mean there's still a considerable market for real CP, but the prosecution of child abusers would be much, much harder.

The past few weeks have been what the ancient Chinese would reportedly have called "interesting times".

The hardware for the new server at work has finally arrived and been installed after seven weeks, so now I'm super busy setting everything up. It's a Hyper-V host with a Windows terminal server, a Linux Jitsi server and a FreeBSD web/VPN server (because of reasons), and of course everything works except the Windows server won't talk to the DC in the same subnet unless both firewalls are completely disabled, which isn't really an option for internet-facing machines. This is not going to be good for my mental health.

I fear that my older stepdaughter is heading towards a depression fast - she's been under a lot of pressure lately, and she's showing all the signs. She desperately wants to see a therapist but the earliest appointment we could get so far is in January. Hopefully SO and me will find a way to stabilize her and take some of the pressure off in the short term.
\ Her younger sister and me have had a long talk about mental health and handling conflicts in general. She's very understanding of the situation and mature for her age, and I'm immensely proud of her.

Other than than I've used this week to not do much, walk the dogs when it's not raining and re-read a couple of books that I'm particularly fond of.
\ I've finally started a small project that I've been wanting to do for a long time - a doggy stick library (basically a wooden board with small shelves where dogs can 'borrow' sticks). It's coming along nicely and I can't wait to put it up at that place where lots of dog owners start their evening round. I hope it'll brighten someone's day.

My sister-in-law from Argentina is visiting us. I wish we could chat more. My Spanish still leaves a lot to be desired, and she speaks a (to my ears) particularly difficult 'Spanish'. But it's still good to have her here, she's pleasant company and a great cook.

the practice decidedly does not correspond with their stated principles for most of them

No argument here. It just bugs me how some people misappropriate words. It's a bit like Swiss neo-Nazis having resorted to calling themselves "patriots". Being a racist bellend doesn't make you a patriot, just as wanting to roll back several decades of gender equality doesn't make you a libertarian.

I just wish that people would understand that if you're afraid to call yourself what you really are in public, you should probably reconsider your ideology, not the word you use to describe it. Yes, I'm aware that that's asking too much.

I agree with you on the healthcare, but that's not where I'd start changing things. The main problem I see (and our friends/relatives in Argentina tell us about) is that the state is expected to pay for a lot of basic necessities because people, even those with a full-time job, can't afford them... and the various governments have a habit of doing the worst possible thing.
\ For instance when electricity prices exploded in 2019/2020, the government apparently paid out 5000 pesos to every household but did nothing to address the root cause. Another time retired people got a flat fee of 6000 pesos. No money went into improving the country's electricity grid or power efficiency (or no money that wasn't somehow 'lost' underway, anyways).

The same goes for unemployment money. While it is important, in the long term it would make more sense to create an environment where the economy can prosper instead of paying the unemployed what is frankly a pittance. Most unemployed people would rather work than live off welfare, if given the chance.
\ But then there's the challenge of transforming the existing economy, especially industry, into something sustainable that could survive without heavy government subsidies. But that discussion is going to lead to a fundamental discussion about peronism, so let's not go there please.

A lot of these things are probably at least partially caused by incompetence, but that's not a valid excuse IMO. If you run for office, you should bring the necessary qualifications, and also be able to judge the qualifications of the people working for you

Not to defend Milei (he's a total knob), but one could argue that Argentina's social infrastructure is a big part of the problem. The state has been notorious for spending much more money than it makes for decades... and still poverty is rampant and rapidly increasing in many parts of the country. It's obvious that the established system simply doesn't work, and hasn't worked for decades.
\ Doing away with corruption would obviously be a great thing, but the fact remains that too many people are dependent on some kind of government subsidy either because it's the easiest way (heavily subsidised parts of the economy, cozy government 'job', ...) or because they simply have no other option due to the bad economy.

Personally I find it difficult to call him a libertarian when there are so many existing liberties that he wants to make illegal (see the parts of his agenda labelled 'homophobia' and 'misogyny').

Not that a label being misleading would ever have stopped a politician from applying it to themselves as long as they think it gets them votes...

I was actually considering buying those, because one of our dogs has the habit of suddenly jumping up at me, whining, desperately wagging her tail, looking at me with those huge doggy eyes, running in circles, digging at my forearm etc. - anything to make me understand that she really, really must have that thing right now. She just won't for the life of her tell me what it is that she needs.
\ So even if the buttons may be annoying in most cases, they might still make sense in our case. The challenge will be to teach the other dog not to press the food button every minute.

I hate the sound of Auto-Tune with a passion to the point where I want to break something when I'm being forced to listen to it.
\ Maybe that dates me, but I think that Auto-Tune is still exclusively used for its original purpose - make talentless twits sound less talentless.
\ If you can't sing, just don't sing. Don't filter your voice through annoying effects until it's unrecognisable. That's the musical equivalent of drawing nothing but a dick on a test and failing it 'on purpose' because you couldn't get a passing grade if you really tried, and trying to pass it off as acting cool. Either study/train harder or do something else, FFS.

I for one don't miss the unnecessary detours as international maps would only show major roads and cities (which weren't necessarily the fastest or most convenient route), navigating around new roads that the map didn't know about, the arguing / guessing between driver and passenger whether or not it'd be correct to take this unexpected exit coming up very quickly, driving around a town until you find someone to ask for directions in a foreign language, finding a phone booth to call your destination and ask for directions, making a wrong turn in a big city and finding yourself in a maze of one-way roads with no way to turn around, not even knowing where you are to begin with... yes, not to mention that "real-time traffic information" meant listening to the radio in a foreign language to get a vague idea of which areas you might want to avoid (though no mention of how you'd do that).

I for one salute our satellite-wielding overlords and am prepared to follow them blindly most of the time.

Happy to meet another member of the blanket lovers club!

The numbers are about the same as in Europe: a space heater will draw anything from 800 to 2000 watts (2300W being the theoretical limit for the very common 230V/10A circuits), blankets range from 40 to 120 watts. I suppose while the voltage and current are different across the pond, the humans and their preferences are about the same.

That's actually the best summary I've read for a long time.

Having said that, besides Milei being a right-wing misogynystic asshat, linking the peso to the dollar might actually do the country's economy a lot of good in the long term. It has been tried before - sadly unsuccessfully because the rampant corruption in other places more than negated the positive effects, so Milei's success there probably depends on a) whether he actually does what he's promising to do, b) whether the new government actually will be less corrupt than the current and previous ones (though being any more corrupt than the Kirchner clan is going to be super hard), and c) whether the people will support the changes long enough once they realize that it means they too will get less subsidies and government hand-outs.