At some point on William Gibson's now defunct micro blog*, he's about to embark on the book tour for Pattern Recognition (so circa 2003).
I'll butcher his insightful phrasing, but he remarks to the effect of
> I think I'm going to stop blogging. The act of sitting at a laptop and writing these posts seems incompatible with my life as it exists on a book tour. The only free moments available for it to occupy would be ones where I'm sitting, momentarily caught between two scheduled activities and staring off into space. I have a suspicion these moments are crucial for my soul. So, until we meet again.
The comingled ambiguousness and specificity of the observation stuck with me.
I have to admit, I had hoped that Bluesky would have countered that 300-character limitation and been a true microblog. I'm not sure why they chose to ape Twitter's limit.
Marked me down? That was a joke about how quotes are misattributed on the internet. (I am the following person) But if you are good at your job because you see faults before humour and it happens as a personal trait, then good on you. Found another fault.
> Diversion.—When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.
> But on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.
> Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
> Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.
> Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.
> Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.
> The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.
> This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.
I'm addicted to reading, I take my kindle and phone everywhere, so will grab them when I'm walking, taking a shower, waiting in line, going to the restroom... Between my kindle and my phone, I read a lot more books than I ever did but I don't digest the information as much as I used to. I also don't make as much associations between what I read and things going on in my own life. So, in a way, despite reading a lot more, I don't think I benefit as much from it.
Now, I'm purposefully forcing myself not to reach to my kindle when taking a walk so that my mind can wander as much as I do.
This is a bit outside the point, but how do you actually read while taking a walk, logistically speaking?
Do you mean you take a walk somewhere, sit down on a bench, then take your kindle out? Or actually read WHILE walking?
I do this all the time. Hold your kindle or book far enough away that you have good peripheral vision of your surroundings. Practice widening your view so you can use your peripheral vision to guide your steps while you walk. Look up at intersections.
I can only do this with books. With my phone I am too focused on the phone to work in two visual modes at the same time, which I guess supports the claims.
For a while, I programmed while walking on a mini-laptop. Nice walking paths where I lived. I was on a hobby project and wanted to spend any minute on it. It wasn't pretty. I kept trying to design a contraption I could wear on my shoulders that worked like a laptop desk.
I also attached a laptop to a treadmill at home, but the static electricity from the rubber mat kept zapping the laptop.
The best result was a laptop on an exercise bike. But the bike couldn't have a high resistance or I would lose concentration.
I have an under-desk bike (just pedals really). Being able to just move my feet while working is nice. But yeah once it turns into an actual workout then I'd be focusing on pedaling and not work.
In my city, if the area is so crowded I can pick a stranger to follow to the common destination or if it's so empty that I don't have to worry about walking into someone, I can confidently read even the most engrossing novel on my phone. I won't dare doing that with any bigger screen because I won't be able to see the upcoming obstacle.
Read while walking, I live in a walkable city. The pedestrian way is safe. I stop reading when I arrive at any intersection then start again once I cross.
Even as a kid, I'd rush to open any magazine I bought before I got back home and would read them while walking.
I live in a walkable city, am safe, but others dont appreciate me bumping onto them. And I want to reach the destination without bumping into walls. Or stepping into bike lane or car lane.
See the above comment by pfooty who explains it better than I did. I don't bump into people nor bump into walls. I use my peripheral vision to see what's happening while reading my kindle.
Honestly, it's never seemed hard to me and I don't remember a time when I was not able to walk while reading without bumping into things. Even as a student when studying for exams, I'd walk around in circle in my room reading my textbooks, for some reason walking helped to better remember...
Printer refuses to print. "Replace toner" message.
Operating system does appear to submit to print queue. (Windows 10)
Printer toner indicator says Black is almost full (recently changed as I print mainly b/w), Cyan & Magenta are low, Yellow is empty and the one it complains about when trying to print.
I've continued messing with it for the last hour and even putting the printer into "black and white" mode, and changing the printer options in the OS to "Mono" it still refuses to print. Brothers own help page says it works [0], but I've followed these and it still doesn't print.
I've tried resetting the printer, updating the firmware and drivers, rebooting both printer and computer.
The yellow toner is needed to print the yellow steganographic dot pattern containing the printer serial number. My guess is that for Brother to comply with its agreement with the US Secret Service, the printer has to have yellow toner to print anything at all.
Also the wording in the Brother tech support article you linked to tells us how to print *using* only black toner, it does not say that this works when the color cartridges are empty. Sneaky bastiches!
I've said this before, and I stand by it. I think AI does pose a threat, but not the existential one that leads popular discussion.
Over the next few decades AI is going to take huge numbers of jobs away from humans.
It doesn't need to fully automate a particular role to take jobs away, it just needs to make a human significantly more productive to the point that one human+AI can replace n>1 humans. This is already happening. 20 years ago a supermarket needed 20 cashiers to run 20 tills. Now it needs 2 to oversee 20 self checkouts and maybe 1 or 2 extra for a few regular lanes.
This extra productivity of a single human is not translating to higher wages or more time off, it's translating to more profits for the companies augmenting humans with AI.
We need to start transitioning to an economic model where humans can work less (because AI supplements their productivity) and the individual humans reap the benefits of all this increased AI capability or were going to end up sleepwalking into a world where the majority have been replaced and have no function in society, and the minority of capital owners control the AI, the money and the power.
I wish we could focus on these nearer term problems that have already started instead of the far more distant existential threat of a human/AI war.
I kinda agree, but I think this itself represents an existential threat. Governments have a history of hard-line policies and intolerance when their populations face low wages and declining standards of living. This leads to isolationism, exceptionalism, and FUD. That's how wars start. We now have global communication at light-speed, anyone can say anything to anyone else. Dropping generative AI into that is like pouring jet fuel on a bonfire.
I have mixed feelings about that one. The building is much better than RCT (1-3, the ones that I've played) both coasters and buildings, however I don't like the art style at all and the terrain is mostly flat and much less interesting. Also the additional goods movement and service building hiding aspects that they added somewhat detract from the fun in my opinion. In the first RCT only the entrance (and possibly exit, I don't remember) had to be above ground, so with a bit of coaxing you could build rides that are underground except for a hole above the entrance, which was neat. Also, unlike RCT3, Parkitect doesn't let you move the camera to a path view (grid layout and isometric view are not really related), which is something I like to do.
One thing RCT does better than other sim games I've played is having a ton of customization options (Parkitect does this too). I like Timberborn also and wish it would have more customization possibilities like the RCT games. There are some limitations in the RCT games, like setting up a free monorail system doesn't cause anyone to use it to get to the next ride they are heading to, but in terms of decorations there is quite a bit you can do with it.
Original RCT most definitely had underground building, both for paths and attractions. I think 1 or 2 parks in the 'campaign' was even centered about being mostly underground.
You could definitely build underground in the original game.
I only ever had the original one when growing up and did stuff underground a fair bit. One of the early campaign parks came with a bunch of rides and stuff underground off the bat.
I think there were some practical changes to make it a bit easier in RCT2, but it was never hard.
I last bought a laptop (in fact any PC at all) in 2015.
It was pretty beefy for the time. A desktop 4790K CPU, 32gb RAM and a GTX 980M. It was a long time ago, but I think I paid around £1500 for it.
Shout out to https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ for a great long lasting machine that is very open for maintenance, long before Framework was around. I will absolutely buy from them again next time. Removable battery, replaceable hard drive, ram, cpu, graphics card. Easily open-able case (screws, but I've had it open). They sold me a replacement keyboard for something like £30 when I smashed a few keys by dropping my camera on it.
My inner tech geek is keen to buy something new, but this one is still going strong, and I can't justify spending money when this one works so well. It still plays all the latest games. It's only had two problems over the years. 1) Obviously, the original battery doesn't last very long now. 2) The CPU started overheating after about 5 years when pushed, so I popped the cover open, took the heatsink off and reapplied fresh thermal paste. Has worked perfectly since.
I mean honestly, the single threaded CPU performance only seems to be about 50% behind modern chips. I don't really see many machines even today with 32gb ram.
Things it struggles with these days that I suppose would require a new machine if it bothered you:
- 4k gaming.
- VR games are a bit too choppy unless you turn the settings right down. (HL:Alyx is playable at pretty much lowest settings)
- Probably going to struggle with any generative AI stuff given the older GPU, but I've not tried it.
I code on it, but I don't do high intensive stuff like video editing, 3d work, rendering, etc, so perhaps it would struggle with that kind of stuff.
I mostly agree this way of looking at it, but find 2 things distort this nice clear explanation.
1. Lack of clarity. I've no problems paying a fee I want and use. But when the fees are hidden at point of sale, and then added later it makes comparisons hard or fees I don't want getting added because I didn't know about them in advance so couldn't change behaviour to avoid them.
2. Fees that don't accurately capture the benefit Vs the cost, and are gamed. Things like "2 peices of hand luggage" with no weight specified. I once had an attendant tell my wife her hat she was carrying counted as one peice, so she had to put in her bag to walk past the check-in desk to avoid being charged a fee for extra hand luggage. And then you get the opposite with schemes like wearing vests to carry extra items without it counting in your hand luggage allowance. I once had to move ~2kg from my hold luggage to my hand luggage because one was over and the other under. Why not literally charge a per kg fee regardless where you store it that way everyone pays for exactly what they use, no gaming. The current fee structure tends to incentivise maxing out on hand luggage to avoid hold fees, which means overhead storage gets crammed full. Charging per kg would shift a portion of this to the hold and make the cabin less cramped and better for everyone.
A lot of airlines do have max weight limits on hand luggage, around 8-10kg. They almost never check, but I did get caught out once.
I travel with a laptop, portable monitor, iPad pro, switch, GoPro, moonlander keyboard, mouse, bunch of plug adapters and a multiway extension. All of that adds up to 9kg when you include the bag base weight.
One time when I was flying from Istanbul to Mauritius, they weighed the bag and it was a big headache. Eventually someone else came along and just let me on since it was all battery powered stuff that couldn't go in the hold.
Charging by weight doesn't make more room in the overhead storage though. Going by volume does, and many airlines do check volume. Especially in Europe, I've seen Ryanair and easyJet stop people many times.
If you look on Amazon, you'll see entire ranges of bags optimized for Ryanair free carry-on limits.
What are examples of hidden fees? Tickets are generally extremely clear on luggage policy, and these days you know you're paying for food on domestic flights. I haven't encountered hidden fees but maybe it depends on the country?
Surprisingly they seem very capable of taking down drones uninjured. They have very strong legs, and with a flexible attack from below they can avoid the props.
Here's a video of some french trained eagles showing how easy it is.
And I agree, not letting your mind do this from time to time results in higher stress and less ability to focus.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network
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