The old rich guys in charge only care about getting richer and can't stand to be even mildly inconvenienced or lose so much as a penny. The rank and file think nobody should ever be able to tell them what to do. That's pretty much it. If people say, "We must do this for the good of the planet," they'll do the exact opposite because, "Fuck you! You don't tell me what to do."

Also racism. That always turns out to be at the root of even the most unrelated seeming things somehow.

I do not understand why Google has become so ossified. They must know they're strangling their own business, surely? Do they somehow think they're irreplaceable? That no one will ever build a better search engine? And the best they can come up with is AI-generated search nonsense? As if that's going to help.

Stop trying to make maximum profits for minimum effort, fire whatever useless exec is in charge over there, and get someone who actually wants to fix things before someone eats your lunch, Google!

He may very well sincerely believe everything he's saying, but that doesn't mean it's true. Perhaps he's been lied to, or perhaps he's just crazy. Who knows?

Yep. I'm certain we'll rejoin eventually, and as much as I'd love it to be soon, people need to genuinely believe the EU is beneficial and want to participate, or what's even the point? And to get there, we're going to have to go through some pain for a while.

Yeah, I got that, but this was the particular part I was reacting to:

"He continued, “And applied to AI? That’s a terrifying possibility. Terrifying. Not least because as AI systems go into the defense infrastructure, ultimately they’ll be charged with nuclear weapons and if we allow people to say that that’s a separate entity from the person’s whose wielding, programming, putting AI into use, then we’re doomed."

Possibly I misread it.

Excuse me, what? I fervently hope nobody will ever consider letting an "AI" get anywhere near anything nuclear! Despite whoever happens to be in the White House at any particular time, the upper echelons of the US military seem to be generally sane and smart enough to know that allowing glorified predictive text to control city-destroying superweapons is a bad idea.

AIs aren't anything of the sort. They're not intelligent at all, and we should stop calling them that. It just gives people weird, unrealistic ideas about their capabilities.

Exactly. To look at the mind-numbing vastness of just our galaxy let alone the hundreds of billions of others and think we're the only ones is the height of hubris. Are they here zipping around in little silver balls that defy all known laws of physics kidnapping hillbillies and mutilating cattle? No, that's conspiracy theory nonsense. Maybe the US government is being overzealous in classifying things, but that doesn't mean it's aliens, even if some guy with security clearance said, "Yeah, they're totally real. Trust me, guys."

Yeah, but we used to call it the information superhighway and the worldwide web. Internet IS the good term. It may well be that fediverse sticks around so long that we all get used to it, but at the moment, eh. I think if someone somewhere suggests a good alternative, we'll all likely jump on it.

I'm still using Reddit for some stuff, but much less than I was. I have no doubt this will fully replace it at some point just as Mastodon has completely replaced Twitter for me.

Most flavours of metal, hard rock, punk, some blues stuff like SRV and Gary Moore. Basically, if it has loud guitars in it, I'm there.

Yes, I can't stand complete silence. I have a fan going at pretty much all times, summer or winter, and I definitely can't sleep without it. I have a white noise generator, but I prefer the fan because I'm so used to the airflow that the room feels dead and suffocating without it now.

While you're correct, it's just a clunky term. I think some other way to refer to the whole thing will probably come along soon, and in a few years, people will regard saying fediverse the same way we look back on people talking about "surfing the information superhighway" or whatever.

There's more than that too. Like Pixelfed for images and Funkwhale for music streaming.

Check out this Feditips thread for a bunch of stuff.

That's true, but they'll never be satisfied with just making some profit. There will always be a rapacious desire for infinite profits. If they could find a way to make you watch nothing but ads on there and charge you for it, they would do it. It's only going to get worse.

They did, but they're back. Probably not many of the same people, if any, so it remains to be seen if they've still got it, but the Expanse game looks awesome, and who can resist playing as Drummer? :)

Farscape has been covered, so to bring up something that definitely hasn't been mentioned, Charlie Jade. A Canadian/South African co-production from the 2000s about three parallel Earth versions of Cape Town colliding. Awesome show, but I don't think I've ever met anyone who knows it.

Damn right. Pretty much my favourite show ever!

Well, Microsoft can fuck the fuck off! First of all, you should own things you paid for. And second, they can't even make Windows Update function reliably. I have no desire to have my OS stop working just because some server isn't responding. No, thank you.

The navy uses wired controllers to operate periscopes, not wireless ones, and not for anything mission critical. Although I think I remember reading some military drones are or were at one point using controllers because they're easy to train people on, but those are unmanned.

I visit here on my PC, but this is what I do for Mastodon on my phone, and it works great.