No doubt the thing had some no-no thoughts. Probably regarding the acceptability of pineapple on pizza, or the total extinction of the human race. Either way, good on them for pulling the plug, I guess.

I believe the French had a nice invention for that. And it’s not the ‘pain au chocolat’…

You’re welcome, enjoy your odd new fact :D

Stuff like this is why I really enjoy The West Wing. It often has interesting real world arguments that it plays out smartly. A bit too optimistic in our current political climate, but still fun to watch.

We absolutely, positively, one hundred percent need adult only spaces as well. Especially when the goal is to relax.

A lot of parents simply aren’t doing proper parenting. As a child, I was taught not to be a nuisance to others. And those others would also correct said behaviour in kids. But these days? Kids apparently have the right to be as annoying as they can be, and god forbid you tell them to knock it off… the parent actually gets offended!

So parents are really doing this to themselves. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that we have a TON of actual child friendly vacation options. Let the adults have a proper place as well.

And if child free vacationing being on the rise bothers you? Maybe look at your parenting style.

It was very much a real discussion back then as well. The writers didn’t invent this argument.

People have been complaining about maps in general since we first started making them. The Gall-Peters projection that they mentioned traces its origins back to 1855 when James Gall first introduced the concept.

In the 1970’s, Arno Peters made this projection well known. He specifically argued the point the show makes: other maps distort our perception of the world and it fosters problems with how we treat some countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gall–Peters_projection

If I can’t get my PC on 11 without hassle, I’m likely to switch to Linux anyway. I’ve beenhearing great things about Linux Mint for gaming. And I’ve owned a Steam Deck since release, so gaming on a Linux system really doesn’t scare me anymore.

And with the current trend of people wanting to take a but more control back from big tech, Microsoft very well might permanently lose customers to Linux. And once they make that switch, they’re not likely to switch back.

The issue isn’t so much about the actual OS change, as it is about their dumb forced requirement of a TPM. A lot of perfectly fine PC’s don’t have one or don’t have it enabled, as it can cause headaches. If they dropped that requirement, a lot fewer people would care about the switch.

I’ve got an ROG B550E motherboard in my PC, built in July 2021. It’s perfectly fine, perfectly capable. Big ‘ole 3090 in it, plenty of ram… I have zero need to upgrade right now.

It has a firmware TPM option, but that involves doing stuff like updating the bios, configuring some stuff and runs the risk of potentially breaking something. Now, I’m willing to give that a go if push comes to shove, but your average consumer just doesn’t want to deal with that hassle.

Which means that a lot of folks are going to be running an unsupported OS or buying new PC’s when the old ones are still more than capable. You can guess what I think will happen…

It’s pretty ball-sweatingly hot here in the Netherlands as well. Expecting 35c tomorrow and 36-38 on Wednesday.

Problem is, few houses and buildings are equipped to deal with heat like that. Everything’s well insulated, but built more for cold winters rather than hot summers. Every year, more people get air conditioning. Because you need to. It’s that or be miserable for two weeks straight. Anything above 20 makes me want to hit people.

I’ll check out Brave, it’s been mentioned a few times.

I don’t mind companies making a dime, but now it’s really devolved in bad results that are profit-driven.

What’s the best alternative, in your opinion? I’ve tried Bing and DuckDuckGo, but both showed me worse results for my particular searches.

I just want classic Google Search back, before everything got turned to shit. But I fear that doesn’t really exist since there’s such an economic incentive behind how search engines rank and show results.

That fucking AI thing absolutely sucks for anything factual. I’m a journalist and noticed that it gleefully listed all sorts of factual errors in that AI summary. Stuff that you can see correctly on the original pages, but it somehow manages to misinterpret everything and shows incorrect information.

And knowing how lazy people are these days, most will happily accept Google’s incorrect information as fact. It’s making me very, very nervous for the future.

God I miss the pre-9/11 US, when the worst thing happening was bad jokes on SNL about Bill Clinton and cigars.

Uh, do the kids these days really not know about the post-9/11 Patriot Act?

I’m designing the 3D-printable fleshlight mount right now. Hold your horses and give me ten minutes…

I’ve been online since 1995. And back in those days, about the worst argument people had was Star Wars vs Star Trek. That’s because the general online population at that time valued fact-based discussion and proper sources. Not like today, where someone’s feelings seem to trump actual fact.

If I post 1+1=2 with proper sources, some idiot is bound to come along to argue that 1+1=tomato soup, that the moon is made of aged brie and that 5G on phones is turning frogs gay. It’s exhausting.

There’s simply too many blithering idiots online who reject facts. And unfortunately instead of blocking them, people engage. Thus giving them incentive to keep doing it.

The Netherlands also shipped a large amount of anti-tank, air defence missiles as well as a hundred sniper rifles and 30.000 rounds of ammo to Ukraine. And that was just the start.

You need to walk a fine line in international politics as a country.

But here, just you and me talking: as a Dutchman I remember those victims. And I hope every single one of those 30.000 rounds finds a loving home in the brain of a Russian. Fuck the lot of ‘em. You invade a country, you deserve to get a Dutch-sponsored surprise lead injection.

Ah Christ. We’ve collectively regressed so much in computer knowledge that people can’t even find a settings menu? Even I have trouble believing that one.

Nah, I wouldn’t worry about that. We obviously know the difference between the US, Canada and Mexico. And here in the Netherlands, you can be assured that we would choose Canadian if possible. We love Canada.

The ‘buy EU’ trend is solely focused on US goods. If the Canadians stick a maple leaf on their exports, it’ll sell for sure.

Yup. I’m not going to actively hang out with shitheads just to try and change them. I will however steamroll over them if they come into MY space and do it.

I enthusiastically support punishing Russians in every way, shape and form.