Taking a trip down this particular memory lane always makes me happy. Started university science/tech studies in 94. The diverse types of networked Unix machines on campus was a whole new world opening up. Spent many nights on campus in front of an SGI Indy computer. Joined the nerdiest student organization. Not a lot of love for Microsoft in that group. Interesting group of people who would help rookies get going in the right direction - but get to the point where you should get self going, and answers to questions turned into the simple phrase "man man".

Installed Slackware from floppies in late 94 or early 95 on my 486DX 33MHz. Had to get a new compatible video card. Remember my fear during installation of setting the infamous dot clock frequency, with the supposed risk of frying your monitor.

The next year moved into campus organized housing with 10 Mbps Ethernet. Such happy times! At some point after Linux got SMP support, I got myself a Tyan Tomcat dual processor motherboard with two pentium processors. You could compile the experimental 1.3.x linux kernels - and encode MP3 files - twice as fast! Nice for experimenting with parallell algorithms and related programming frameworks.

Very interesting, thank you for the going into such detail about this!

Even if the watch gives false positive of high stress levels due to excitement, arousal etc. - an indication of low stress levels may still be a good indicator of the combined absence of stress, excitement etc. - which is actually useful. An indication of high levels are also useful, as it tells you something is going on - which through self introspection you may be able to figure out what is the cause. If "stress levels" are high for no apparent reason (you're not excited, you're not aroused), then it's probably stress. The UI should clearly inform the user what "stress" actually means, so they are able to interpret and use it accordingly - and perhaps find a better word for the concept.

For all of you worried about this very unfortunate CEO, the story has a happy ending for her; she got a USD 300k severance package (Nowegian) so she'll be fine. Which is also probably 10k times what she ought to get, so there is some poetry in that.

This technology is great! Or it is crap! Until we get to try it out, it is both. Though I'd say the mislabelled heading plus all the buzz words imply at least a partial wave function collapse skewing the probability greatly towards the latter.

Next step is to bring an El Salvador care package. I don't know much about that, so I asked Gemini what items would be good to bring with you to a prison in El Salvador.

First of all, "Navigating the prison system in any country can be complex, and El Salvador has its own specific regulations and conditions. It's crucial to understand that prison conditions in El Salvador are reported to be harsh, with severe overcrowding, limited access to basic necessities, and a strict regime. Recent reports from human rights organizations highlight concerns about the treatment of prisoners."

Stuff to bring: Basic toiletries, Clothing, Bedding, Identification documents, Important phone numbers and addresses, Legal documents, Reading material, Writing materials, Small amount of money, Photos of family. Stuff to avoid: Weapons of any kind, Drugs or alcohol, Large amounts of money or valuable jewelry, Electronics, Clothing in restricted colors or styles (e.g., black clothing, gang-related symbols), Canned food or certain types of food that might be prohibited.

I'd think one should also ensure ones spouse has access to all accounts, business relationships, bills, etc - so (s)he can keep the family going for a year or two if needed. Or making arrangements with a child care facility if you are a single parent.

Market-manipulate American Gullibles Again (on a weekly basis). It's really cute seeing various "experts" try to explain why does the US regime do things, and what is the latest thinking of the stable genius - when the simplest explanation of all is staring them in the face.

I've never had a Facebook account, people keep nagging me about it because it's a hassle for them to contact me in other channels, but I refuse. If people left their ecosystem, their rotten empire would collapse.

Full disclosure: the only reason I am effectively able to do this, is my wife has a facebook account, so she can monitor all the important information related to kids activities etc. But if I were a single parent, I would constantly be nagging every organization I am somehow forced to be involved with which uses only Facebook as a communication channel, about the implications of that choice.

At least the EU is trying to regulate some of this BS.

F***book is sitting on a gold mine here, an AI that can cut through the BS and appears to "understand" some fundamental truths about the world. Unfortunately, for them - and the world - they choose to neuter it by feeding it lies. (Disclaimer: yes, I know this has nothing to do with GAI, I just cannot resist the opportunitiy to be sarcastic about this kiss-the-ring-of-Dear-Leader move being disguised as making their AI more balanced, which I guess they mean being balanced in the Fox News sense)

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm headed over to the other /. story to comment about how F***book is using their "AI" to also ruin the movie theater experience by encouraging people to use their phones - plus making some personal notes that I can never again travel to the US because I'd probably be stopped at the border and sent to El Salvador due to this comment, which is fine as currently I wouldn't go there if you paid me money to do it.

I see a lot of comments about opt-in features being no problem/risk. Which maybe works fine at home in the short term? But at work your employer may be choosing to opt-in on your behalf. Now you could say that's not your business, but it _does_ change something about the workplace dynamic, being constantly under surveillance. Next time you send an email to your leader, they can backtrack to the minutes leading up to the sending, and see all the edits you made. So people will be changing their behavior, which means never typing anything until they are sure that is what they will be typing. Also you will not be getting those short mental breaks as you sporadically check the news for a couple a minutes. Maybe do some artificial tasks inbetween to pretend you are a super well behaved employee, like appearing to spend a lot of time on notes about why the leadership is so great, and the weekly 5 things I did this week report. And productivity will ... drop! So it's a loss all around.

BTW, today's opt-in is tomorrow's ... yeah, some of you get it.

Yes, there is a solid dose of black humor here, mixed with a little bit of it's funny because it's somewhat true; not as written, but in related contexts. And it does something for one's attitude towards the US. Some 15-20 years ago for a period I had work-related travel to the US on a monthly basis; never thought much about it. Now? Not in a million years would I want to travel to the US. Partly because how the US is currently treating the world - and even its allies - has just made me lost my appetite. Also partly because how you read about how people are treated at the border; you have to give access to your phone and what not - an invasion of privacy - and I realize I might get in trouble because I wrote a few too many sarcastic posts about orange monkey, probably being tagged in some database just for exercising basic democratic rights (nothing worse than the joke I made above) - and I would not at all feel confident about not being stopped/harassed/worse at the border for being too anti-fascist.

My country (Norway) also got slapped with a 10% tariff; we're bending over and taking it like a champion, not retaliating in any way, at least until we see where the wind blows with the EU (our biggest market) and whether to tag along with something with them. The US is our 3rd biggest export market I believe, so it's not all sunshine for us either.

We have a couple cars we'll need to replace within the next few years. It's not going to be a Tesla.

What? The US should have the oldest and bestestest citizens! I foresee an executive order which requires foreigners travelling to the US to either take a radioactive pill shaving some time off their expected lifespan, or be denied entry. Higher Bq level pill for people from countries with lower mortality. Exceptions made for people who can document they only ever eat at US junk food franchises. Illegal immigrants and people who criticized fascism on social media always have to take the pill, even though they are denied entry. The pill comes with a complimentary free ticket to El Salvador.

Our Macbook Airs do a bit shift throughout the family. As the power user I use the latest one, which is an M1. As my wife started getting problems with her Chromebook, I set up my previous Air with Linux Mint (2015 model I think) after replacing the battery, and she's quite happy using it as her main laptop. At some point it made sense for my then 8 or 9 year old son to have a laptop, so I dusted off my even older 2011 model Air and did the same thing, and it's a great solution for simple web surfing and various tasks, especially if I want him to be able to use a computer without playing games (so that can be a plus). At some point I guess I'll be buying an M5 or something, and the laptops will cycle throughout the family once again so my younger son will get his first laptop.

Seriously do not want to replace my perfectly functioning stationary PC Windows 10 setup which runs everything I need it to do, including most games with its GTX 1070 card. So that will end up as a Linux reinstall. It really annoys me that I have various Steam games and audio processing software that are Windows only, which are the _only_ things I would need Windows for - and which I cannot run even with Wine workarounds etc. I don't really have a solution for that. I guess at some point I will be buying some simple Win 11 setup to handle those, but I will do so while gnashing my teeth and hating Microsoft every single step, doing my utmost to send as little money in their direction as humanly possible.

Archiving this as People Associated With White House Menace Say Words. Gonna need another file cabinet soon, because there are currently too many such people saying too many words. Those of us who were laughing some years back when DJ spent all his time playing golf and didn't bother with governing, are choking hard on the bleak echoes of that laughter.

Have to question some life choices, including taking higher education in natural science and mathematics. In a world in which truth, honesty, integrity and logic are about to no longer matter, I ought to have studied psychology and how to become a sociopath, plus history in order to learn a blueprint for building a Reich and positioning yourself to become one of the upper echelons. Though ... Space Menace proves again and again that you can be all those things at the same time.

It's not the EU's fault that some US companies decide the world should be their playground and they should be the perpetual bullies. The hubries and nerve of those companies that they are above national or regional politics or taxation is just unbelievable. And after a failed casino owner and his far right wing sidekick are incorporating their country, you get the same from US Inc who suddently think they should own Greenland, Panama and what not, and the rest of the world should act as if their country is the sun around which the rest of us orbit. Kudos to the EU for being the responsible adult. They're not perfect and the EU got a couple rotten apples (in particular that one EU country which keeps repeatedly running earrands for a certain large non-EU power and blocks effective EU action again and again), but compared to the current US Inc flustercluck ... it's pretty darn good.

All those non-regulation lovers out there ... think about your love of no regulation the next time your kid does not get hit by a car because there was (a) a speed limit, (b) rules against driving drunk, and (c) a system to enforce those rules. And if thinking about a zero-taxation world makes your blood go pumping in an arousing way, think about that the next time you drive on a road without being charged as much as a single cent for that privilege - who or what paid for that road.