This makes me think of the commandment “thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” from the Dune series.

Seriously, though, I suspect a lot of technologies we currently experience in society only in the context of oppression of average people and widening of the income gap might be able to be put to better use. Not even necessarily because we have rules in place so much as because people won’t be baking their selfish asshole agendas into the tech they build.

That all kindof assumes that humanoid robots would be “tools” for humans to “use”. If of course they (or at least some of them) are more like sentient creatures with hopes and dreams and emotions, that might make for a much different conversation. And that feels like the kind of conversation that’d be hard to even comment on today.

What’s worse is when that asshole tickles my sinus nerves just a little, never actually letting me sneeze, but still being an annoying piece of shit.

Well, the whole saga is longer. We got a bathroom redone and the sink never worked right. It dripped. I took the faucet apart several times trying to fix the drip, but eventually concluded the faucet itself was just cheap crap and couldn’t be repaired.

So I bought a nicer one and replaced the faucet entirely. I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of replacing it ahead of time. Usually the drain and faucet “match”. (As in, the finish of them matches and if the finish on the drain is a different style/color/etc than the faucet, it’ll stand out.) And so they come as a set. But in this case, the drain that was part of the old/cheap faucet a) worked fine and b) was so similar in color/finish/style that you couldn’t tell it didn’t come with the new faucet. So I didn’t end up having to replace the drain, which made the whole process considerably easier.

Oh, I did need to slightly modify the drain closure plunger to fit the old faucet’s drain… lever… thing. Heh…

There was definitely a moment once I’d assembled the whole thing and was turning on the valves under the sink that I was a little worried it’d all explode and soak the whole bathroom. Lol. But everything’s been fine for months now!

As for how long it took, probably three sessions of a couple of hours each to finally convince myself the old faucet was too defective to try to salvage. And then another thirty minutes to find a new faucet on Amazon and another three or so hours to replace faucet. And about the only roadblocks were the time I spent trying to fix the old faucet and the time I spent procrastinating before undertaking the actual replacement. Heh.

Coming out the other side of that experience, I do feel like I understand the sentiment better now that “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.” And I think it largely applies even if you don’t have any particular amount of expertise. Someone who doesn’t have to live with the results may not really care about something like a dripping faucet. If they can check the “replaced the faucet” box, they can say “job’s done”, charge the customer, and be on their merry way. (And I’m not saying I blame them, really.)

(Of course, that only goes so far. I wouldn’t think you ought to DIY things that might be dangerous, for instance.)

Probably rudimentary plumbing repair? (More specifically, replacing a bathroom sink faucet.) Via Youtube.

Brag about being an Arch user (BTW.)

Depending where you are moving to, snow may not be the only sort of inclement winter weather you may have to deal with. For instance, ice may build up on trees, power lines, and/or roads.

If on roads, don’t drive unless you absolutely have to, and if you do, be way more careful than you think you need to be. Look up safety tips for driving in icy conditions before you have to put them into practice.

If you have any trees that might fall on anything of value, kindof watch their condition. If any are splitting down the middle, hire someone to treat them before the winter season to avoid major problems like this.

Or it’s possible you’ll live somewhere ice buildup is unlikely to be an issue. Maybe look into the history of the area or talk to someone who has been there a long time to find out what conditions might be an issue.

Also, the ability to work remotely is kinda nice, I guess. It’s a double-edged sword, though. If you can work remotely, you never get days off due to weather. But if you can’t, you may be pressured to drive into the office when it’s very dangerous.

At work, I switched my work machine from the PC-Support-department-imaged Windows OS (I think it was Windows 7 at the time) to Arch Linux on a foregiveness rather than permission basis. (Several of us did it at the same time and kindof dared them to fire all their best developers over it. It was glorious. But that’s a story for another time.)

Then came the day I needed to print to the network printer. I apparently misconfigured CUPS. I hit the print button. And then I got distracted by something. After that got resolved, I went to the printer, which had been printing pages of gibberish for the past like 20 minutes straight. The stack of papers in the “out” tray was approaching phone book levels of thickness.

Ewps.

Nobody ever figured out I had anything to do with it. (The printer was off in another part of the office anyway.) I fixed my CUPS configuration and was able to print correctly thereafter. But it’s a good story.

Until it makes shit up that the original work never said.

The victims of this attack should just call up their credit card companies and contest the charges.

Wait…

I wonder if when he says “necessary” he’s referring to some longtermism weird BS.

I mean, he’s definitely referring to some weird BS. But I wonder whether specifically it’s longtermism BS.

I don’t know what TTT is, but that reminds me of this story that I just posted in response to another comment.

This reminds me of a game of Bang where I was the manipulative player. It’s a hidden role game, except that the sheriff role is not hidden. The deputy, renegades, outlaws, etc were all hidden roles. The sheriff and deputy win if the outlaws all lose (get shot enough times to be out of the game). The outlaws win if the deputy and sheriff both lose. (I don’t remember specifically the rules of the renegades.) Depending how may players you have, you’ll have different numbers of outlaws and renegades, but there’s always one sheriff and one deputy. But everybody knows how many of each there are even if they don’t know who is what role.

I was an outlaw this game. And I basically just kept telling the sheriff that I was the deputy. One by one, all the other players fell, each at my insistence they’d said something suspicious and had to be an outlaw. (Basically, convincing the sheriff to start shooting a particular player is a death sentence for that player.) When only three players (the sheriff, me (an outlaw), and the deputy) remained I just kept telling the sheriff I was the deputy and trading shots with the real deputy. Eventually, the sheriff sided with me and started shooting the deputy, thinking (at my insistence) he was an outlaw.

When someone dies, they’re allowed to show their role card, so the jig was up when he died. Then it was just a grueling game of the sheriff and I trading shots until one of us was unlucky enough times to take the hit that our health went to zero. I eventually won, but it took forever.

After the deputy died, he admitted that he had suspected something had gone wrong in the shuffling/dealing of role cards and somehow we’d ended up with two deputies. I was apparently that convincing.

That was the day I learned of my talent for manipulation.

I default to ibuprofen. Feels a little more effective to me than acetaminaphen. I’ve never taken aspirin for pain.

And that document was written by a time-traveling Anita Sarkeesian.

The DMCA is such bullshit. I mean, U.S. (and other WIPO countries) copyright law is bullshit in general, but it got 100 times worse when they passed the DMCA.

Metro Station - Shake It

Of all the Justice League members you could choose to have the powers of, you chose Aquaman?

I’ve got my caps lock key remapped to escape.

I use my left pinky for ctrl, shift, a, and my remapped caps lock/escape key.

I use my right pinky for shift, enter, and I’m pretty sure that’s all.

I use my ring fingers for backspace, tilde, tab, q, backslash, quote, and that probably isn’t a comprehensive list.

I use my middle finger for semicolon/colon! I never realized that before. Wild.

Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking:

• They’re probably expecting the GM and/or other players to respond with either “sorry, that schedule won’t work for us” or “yeah, that works for us, tell us about yourself.” Like, why type up a three-paragraph introduction when there’s like a 50% (or more) chance that bit of information will quickly indicate that no, it won’t work out.
• Are you sure they didn’t just assume the chatroom owner was the GM?
• So far I think they’re just trying to gauge whether it’s going to work out logistically.
• Again, are you sure they haven’t just mistaken the channel owner for the person is most responsible for organizing?

I guess just going on that information, it does feel to me like maybe you’re reading too much into it. It’s entirely possible I’m missing something that would change my take, though.

Neat!