BananaTrifleViolin

Yeah I agree they went too far. Season 2 was disappointing; they seemed to want to spend their time indulging themselves with musical shows and cross overs. It feels like they alternated each episode - one moment you get a serious episode and the next a silly one.

However the season also gave us Ad Astra per Aspera which was one of the best star trek episodes I’ve seen in a long time. Among the Lotus Eaters wasn’t bad; they just didn’t need to shoehorn Khan in - it undermined what was actually otherwise a nice character driven story for La’an. The “should I kill hitler/my grandad” bit at the end was something that could have been impactful but was just didn’t feel right.

Among the Lotus eaters and Lost in Translation were decent serious stories. Under the Cloak of War was an another attempt at a serious episode; it just didn’t come off in the end.

And for me, Those Old Scientists was actually one of my favourite episodes. It was not Ad Astra Per Aspera good, and it was undeniably silly, but there was just something very warm and wholesome about the episode, and it actually reflected much better on Lower Decks than SNW; Boimler and Mariner felt a bit more fleshed out by the episode and it made me more appreciative of the show and what it’s doing.

I think all in all, it was a decent season. It didn’t maintain the high level of quality of the first season, and there were some really poor episodes (the opener Broken Circle and Cherades were terrible, and the muscial episode was just too far EVEN in a season with a crossover with a cartoon) but the highs were high and most of the other episodes were decent even allowing for some silliness. Season 1 was masterful TV in my opinion. Season 2 was decent.

Did they overdo the gimmicks? Yes. I still enjoyed the show despite the flaws but I sincerely hope they reign it in in season 3.

I get where you’re coming from but I think you’re overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it’d be a big deal. Now it’s rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.

Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.

I’m less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it’s products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That’s the real problem - not losing WordPad.

At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it’s allowed to get away with abusing it’s dominant position to force it’s products on consumers.

Yeah it is also good for a bit more privacy on the internet. I have separate containers for Amazon websites, Google, banking etc. Even more powerful tool of you pair it up with a VPN - can have different VPN locations on each container so break up attempts at tracking and profiling you across the web.

Tbf I don’t think I’d hold YouTube’s enshittification against Firefox. Google is very active in trying to ensure users see adverts on YouTube on all platforms, which makes it hard for any extension to stay ahead.

What is suffering about that graph? I do most of it already and it saves me money.

For example LED light bulbs are nicer and cheaper to run - I have 60W equivalents where I used to have dingy 40W old bulbs.

Cold washing and hanging drying saves me money. My Hybrid car saves me money and I intend to move to Electric next, and that will help reduce pollution in my neighbourhood so it’s win win.

Recycling is easy enough when your council provides the tools for it. I recycle paper, metal, glass and separate out my plastics; I just separate at the time I bin stuff. I take batteries back to the supermarket where they legally have to take them for recycling, and take other items to the recycling centre when I need to and put them in the appropriate skips rather than just bag it all as general waste.

I don’t have a plant based diet and I don’t live car free, and I don’t specifically pay for eco energy yet (I’m thinking about getting solar though).But I don’t have kids and don’t want them so am doing that by default.

I lead a very good quality of life, and none of the things I do from the graph seem detrimental to it to me. What exactly am I missing out on quality of life-wise?

How do you know it said fucking? Might have said Knob-gobbling Enterprise and Cunty Millennium Falcon.

We can fill in our own expletivesa and send it back to whichever sanatised and sterile commercial place it came from.

Yeah I agree with you there. Dystopia, collapse, Humanity meeting it’s own hubris, or a few good people in an evil world - those ideas seem to fuel a lot of Sci-fi. AI is bad, and Robots are generally evil is another trope.

The Culture is refreshing in that it shows a utopia that feels like it could actually happen - AIs aren’t automaticlaly bad, but also post-scarcity really does mean something. So much Sci Fi tries to avoid the truth about post-scarcity as a concept; even in just our own Solar System there is immense wealth we can barely grasp the scale of, and with AI and Robotics the idea that humankind would be freed to a life of leisure, art and pursuit of invidual goals.

It all comes down to some fundamental questions which we as a civilization will have to answer: who “owns” an AI? Who owns a robot and it’s output? What is the point in captialism if AI and Robots can produce everything we need? Getting there may be a rocky road, but I think we really only have two end points: Utopia or complete collapse on the way. Anything in between doesn’t make much sense as a stable state when you consider meaning of a post-scarcity society or the technological singularity.

Interesting; I’ve read the whole series and am a Star Trek fan but to me they’re nothing alike.

The Culture series does show a utopian future, but one where the post-scarcity era feels more realistic to me. In an era where everyone has the wealth of gods at their fingertips, the whole shape of civilization is completely changed. There is no government, there is not structure, instead there are attempts at consensus between the AIs and the Humans. And the AIs are all powerful, meaning the Humans are redundant and have to find meaning in life.

Star Trek on the other hand shows a familiar morality and structrue we’re used to sans capitalism (supposedly). It has a very american view point in that these are the good guys, spreading the benefits of their society, knowledge and wisdom to the rest of the galaxy. As much as I like it, it’s pretty imperialistic in it’s way, with all the other species being shown as flawed compared to the enlightened federation. Individual episodes and stories can be extremely interesting, but the overall Star Trek universe is basically good guys vs bad guys and pretty simplistic.

I find the Culture series refreshing in comparison to something like Star Trek; it’s more willing to be morally ambiguous and present the Culture as both a Utopia but also hints of a Dystopia. The humans also have an illusion of freedom and self determination; ultimately they’re entirely dependent on the AIs who at times act like benevolent owners with pets. The stories explore those dynamics as well as the dynamics woith civilizations outside the culture.

Lens is a visual search tool. Take a picture, ask it to search or answer a question based on what’s in the picture. Like take a picture of a tree and ask it what species is it

Yeah. For apple users Lens is not the simple andtoid camera app (which yes can translate text on the fly and read QR codes) - Lens is a visual search tool that can answer queries based on pictures.

Like if you take a picture of a tree you can ask what species it is, or a picture of a person you can ask where the clothes are from etc.

Google Lens doesn’t just translate text, it contextually searches based on what it sees and interprets in an image. The translation stuff is already built into the Android camera app; Lens is something more

It’s its

I suspect her motives may simply be that she wants this done quickly, and to not be waiting for another 2 years to suit Donald Trump’s election bid.

Whatever we may think about the alleged crimes, they’re all innocent until proven guilty and this will be highly disruptive for their lives. I can empathise with the desire to get this done rather than allow the trial to be postponed because one person wants to.

And they all come out smeared in orange fake tan afterwards. Yuck.

If you go to the Florisboard git hub their is an easy route to install it via Google play, if you can’t use fdroid or side load apps for any reason. It basically involves signing up to “beta test” the app which you then get in Google Play as normal.

This may be an important route on some parts of the world.

I honestly don’t know why anyone uses Adobe acrobat for anything - reader or the editor. PDF is an open standard.

Plenty of open source software does a decent job of making PDFs - Libre Office for example. And if you have Microsoft Word then you can export documents to PDF without issue; or you can use Print to PDF tools too

Its unlikely any office environment doesnt already have licenses for Microsoft Office so just bin Acrobat and direct people to use office. And if you’re not paying for office then why are you paying for Acrobat?

A lot of people seem to have misunderstood the question and are offering text editors. Apostrophe as actually looks like it fits the bill for a decent markdown editor, which is what OP seems to have been asking for

I think a large part of it is inappropriately making 30 mph areas 20mph and also poor enforcement.

I live on a long wide 20mph road and I can’t stand the people going at 40, 50 or even 60 or 70 mph at times. But I don’t think my road should have been 20mph, it should have been 30mph. It seems it was easier to stick some 20mph signs up to say “we’ve done something” as a way of discouraging some people going at more rediculous speeds and hope most go at 30mph.

Instead what was needed was actual investment in the road - speed bumps, narrowing the road with choke points and passing points, physical rather than painted cycle lanes - that kind of thing.

Fortunately after years of pressure our road is now going to be in a LTZ (Low Traffic Zone). Both ends of my own long road are blocked off to allow pedestrians and cyclists only through, and my main road is being split into 3rds with X-junctions being turned into filters(Instead of X it’s now > and < with no connection). If you’re driving you can only turn into one side street while cyclists and pedestrians can pass through as normal. We’ve had a trial for a while and it’s been very effective - my whole block has been split up with filters so you can’t use it to pass through to reach the main roads around it - this has stopped the arseholes using my road as a shortcut and speeding at 60 mph.

People are still going at 30mph but the twisting and turning through the block means you can’t really get up to anything more than that and also unless you’re going to a house in the block it’s pointless to even enter.

So while I abhor speeding, I would argue these stats reflect bad road management - over relying on 20mph speed limtis as a cheap alternative to actual road management and redeisgns which are expensive (and difficult in many parts of the UK with lots of very old and narrow streets inherited from previous eras).

Interesting that while there is only 2 instead of 3 in a pack, the total weight has gone down only 22% (from 255g to 200g, instead of 170g if the weight dropped by a third/33%). So the actual salmon pieces may be bigger?

This is still shrinkflation but there has probably also been previous hidden shrinkflation in the individual salmon pieces too and that bit has been slightly undone.

It’s an interesting article but it’s also undermined by it’s own hyperbole. To call Canada a “failed state” because it left fires in remote areas to burn out is over the top.

The core message is valid but it misses the point of the problem which is that the people who will suffer the most from climate change are people living in poorer countries, not the rich world. The impact, although dramatic and highly undesirable, is manageable in rich world countries.

The US has a breadth of resources available to cope with it’s drought for example - there is no risk of people starving because of the drought and the US economy continues to grow despite a 20 year drought because farming is not the bedrock of the economy or most people’s lives. Of course there will be losers on the US but in general the US will likely adapt its way through this mess.

It’s people in less developed economies, and people without alternatives to farming the land or skills to adapt in the changing economy who will suffer. The societies at risk of collapse are not the rich western economies of North America, Europe, Australasia, and South East Asia. It’s the poorer economies in Africa, central Asia and India, and even South America that are vulnerable.

Those countries don’t have the wealth or resources to adapt to changing climate and they will suffer the price of the rich world’s greed and failure to act. I think the article is correct to predict collapses on societies but it’s not going to be a global collapse; it’s going to be uneven and chaotic. And because the rich world will suffer less, it is also likely the rich world will fail to do enough to stop the damage.

It’s already striking that the global ambition is to “slow” climate change. Stopping climate change is barely mooted, and reversing climate change isn’t even taken seriously as a proposition - it’s almost treated like sci-fi. But we could stop and even reverse climate change if we really wanted to. Reforestation for example, is a basic low tech part of the solution which barely gets a look in because it doesn’t fit with the way the economy is going now or our concept of land as a resource to use. Unfortunately we value our economy as is too much to even contemplate what it would mean to reverse the damage we’ve wrought on our world.