I’ve been assured that AGI is right around the corner and will solve climate change (in a way that is economically palatable to the rich and powerful)

The process is supposed to be sustainable. That doesn’t mean you can take one activity and do it to the exclusion of all others and have that be sustainable.

Edit:

Also, regretably, I’m using the now-common framing where “agile” === Scrum.

If we wanna get pure about it, the manifesto doesn’t say anything about sprints. (And also, you don’t do agile… you do a process which is agile. It’s a set of criteria to measure a process against, not a process itself.)

And reasonable people can definitely assert that Scrum does not meet all the criteria in the agile manifesto — at least, as Scrum is usually practiced.

It’s funny (or depressing), because the original concept of agile is very well aligned with an open source/inner source philosophy.

The whole premise of a sprint is supposed to be that you move quickly and with purpose for a short period of time, and then you stop and refactor and work on your tools or whatever other “non value-add” stuff tends to be neglected by conventional deliverable-focused processes.

The term “sprint” is supposed to make it clear that it’s not a sustainable 100%-of-the-time every-single-day pace. It’s one mode of many.

Buuuut that’s not how it turned out, is it?

US once again beaten by rest of world.

The real question is all the stuff beyond just having the distro installed. The packages, the services, the configs, the application data.

If you leave all that stuff the way it was installed via the old package manager, it may have some bad assumptions baked in and may be incompatible with packages you install with the new package manager.

And if you clear all of it out and reinstall it, have you really gained anything vs. just doing a clean install?

There’s a reason you have a home dir. Just copy that forward along with whatever other config files you might’ve customized.

Btw, if the ability to make drastic changes while still maintaining continuity is an important feature for you, maybe check out NixOS.

Behind the Bastards had a Christmas special non-bastard episode on the Tupamaros of Uruguay and Pepe Mujica. It does seem like they have some decent politics there.

thousand’s*

Wind of change: did the CIA write the cold war’s biggest anthem?

The dichotomy of “freedom to” and “freedom from” is pretty well-worn territory in philosophy, although there are many different formulations of it (including options beyond just these two), but the simplest model is this:

“Freedom to”: The protected right to do something, like fire a gun in the air.

“Freedom from”: The enforced guarantee that you will not be impacted by the actions of others, like your neighbor’s falling bullets.

An egalitarian society can’t grant “freedom to” all actions to all people while also guaranteeing them “freedom from” the consequences of all others’ actions.

If I have the freedom to drive a monster truck on any public motorway, I necessarily lose the freedom to walk those streets without worrying about monster trucks.

The only way around it is to have a privileged class that has extra “freedom to” do things when the consequences mainly impact the underclass, and extra “freedom from” the actions of the underclass.

Like, most states allow you the “freedom to” openly carry a firearm, but also employ police to protect your “freedom from” people being an immediate threat to your life.

In theory, you can’t have both. So in practice, this means that only white people get to openly carry guns. Black people get disarmed or shot.

—

That said, I’d disagree that labor freedom reduces economic security in general, but if you got more specific I’m sure there are some instances where that’s true.

Just specifically don’t take an employer’s word when they say “if you unionize we can’t protect you anymore”.

So many great opportunities for light rail around here, especially because of the geographical constraints. If there were big subsidies for doing it, I think the city would get interested.

I was thinking about that while watching a true crime doc the other day.

Perp killed his girlfriend, cops had a hard time apprehending the guy, but eventually he killed himself rather than be captured.

Victim’s family was angry cuz they were denied even the last bit of justice they might get. Perp’s family lost a member permanently instead of being able to visit them. Perp never got a chance at rehabilitation. Victim is just as dead as before — maybe even more, cuz one more person who knew them well is dead too.

And I’m like… Who actually wins here???

You lose a loved one, you know who did it, but you can never get to them and ask why, because contact is life-threatening for them. How do you heal?

Bob’s Burgers

I like how every single character is incredibly weird in at least one way, but their weirdness is usually a source of joy and hardly ever used as the butt of a joke.

Except for the last season. There are some lines that really feel like the writers talking to themselves about how they painted themselves into a corner.

A cheap ARM laptop.

Pinebooks have been sold out for ages, and then it’s a massive leap up to MNT Reform or Copilot+.

I just started watching eBay for used Pinebooks, but nothing has popped yet.

Edit: Actually, there are some decent options for Snapdragon 7/8 refurbs on Amazon. Mass market brands can be so hit or miss by model, so this’ll take some research, but it looks like there are 20-30 results to consider.

Damn, my bad for mentioning a thing that may become relevant if they need new hardware.

I guess I’ll just leave them along with the other comments, which… suggest they’ll probably need new hardware.

It won’t work on Android, but you could probably replace Android or attach a mini PC.

Idk if this helps, but I recently learned Plasma BigScreen is a thing.

They are frequently interviewed.

Which means they are frequently asked: “Why’s everything fucked up?”

They can’t give the real answer, which is “ultra-rich people”.

So they give no answer at all (in which case you don’t hear about it) or they cite the Enemy Of The Day.

PSA: Lots of public libraries (Idk about college ones) have separate printers that are specifically for books. They can help you with binding and everything.

Everything is open source if you can read assembly.