You can’t get a manual gearbox here any more.

Huh, let’s see why

Another factor contributing to the discontinuation of manual transmissions is the increasing emphasis on safety features and the integration of advanced driver-assist technologies.

Ew.

Technology has never been the problem: there’s nothing wrong with genetic engineering, AI, etc. They can (and have) been used for good.

The problem has always been the “greed is good” sociopaths using it for evil.

Yeah! Like meme stocks or beanie babies.

Every city in the western world already has at least one rack of servers running 24/7. The have their own domain names, they have a web presence, etc – running a mastodon instance on existing infrastructure hardly qualifies as wasteful.

You mean like the “multi-million units sold” Linux based Steam Deck?

Any major power could easily assasinate the leadership of any other major power, but doing so is taboo for obvious reasons.The nuclear taboo is higher on the list of “things that are not done.”

Opening the door to actually using nuclear weapons represents a threat to everyone – including the rich and powerful. Whoever is dumb enough to use even a tactical nuke is going to not only find themselves a pariah, they’re going to face coordinated efforts to eliminate the threat they represent by everyone.

Imagine being in his inner circle: you’d be getting credible offers of “whatever you need and want” to remove Putin from power from every major power on the planet.

I think they’re saying Ukraine should have been given everything they needed to win the war quickly from the start. A lot of people believe the “slow trickle” of aid was designed to drag the war on.

The argument is that a long war is far more damaging to russia, whereas a losing a short war leaves them in a better position to recover and try again in the near future – beating russia to a bloody pulp vs giving it a black eye.

Hands you a random laptop.

“The thing doesn’t work.”

Refuses to elaborate and leaves.

I bought an LG microwave a few months ago to replace a dead 10 year old Sharp. My favorite “features”:

• The sticker on the door stating that by using the microwave I agree to LG’s TOS, including binding arbitration.
• The single 4 minutes and 30 seconds of use I got out of it before the magnetron broke.

When I returned it they customer service person asked if I wanted it serviced under warranty – hilarious. Bought a Panasonic instead.

I passed a 911 in an Opel Corsa at around 190kph (admittedly going downhill).

It was the highlight of my trip.

You’re not wrong, but the idea that “plant based” is “safe” isn’t right either. Plants can create all kinds of horribly toxic, carcinogenic compounds – especially when burned or heated.

Wood smoke of all things is mildly carcinogenic and we cook our food with it.

There are jobs where it’s not feasible or practical to pay an actual human to do.

Human translators exist and are far superior to machine translators. Do you hire one every time you need something translated in a casual setting, or do you use something Google translate? LLMs are the reason modern machine translation is is infinitely better than it was a few years ago.

One of the major problems with LLMs is it’s a “boom”. People are rightfully soured on them as a concept because jackasses trying to make money lie about their capabilities and utility – never mind the ethics of obtaining the datasets used to train them.

They’re absolutely limited, flawed, and there are better solutions for most problems … but beyond the bullshit LLMs are a useful tool for some problems and they’re not going away.

You could copy the manual on a xerox machine. Of course some publishers were smart and printed the manual in such a way it any copies came out as an illegibly dark mess.

So naturally you took a legitimate manual, manually transcribed it, and made copies of the copy.