Bill was always a dick. Read the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution to learn about how he behaved at the Homebrew Computer Club. While everyone else was just building cool things and sharing them freely, Bill went around threatening people for porting “his” Basic interpreter to different computers. He was very much the epitome of the uncool “I’m taking my ball and going home” kid.

Depends on where you’re from. Hong Kongers speak Cantonese and write in traditional Chinese, not simplified. Simplified is dominant on the mainland due to being standardized in the government-set school curriculum, though you can still find traditional Chinese used for branding and historical uses.

That explains everything! I guess I came across it too late…

It’s your super power! My pinkie finger and ring finger are linked. I can’t close my pinkie all the way while keeping the ring finger straight.

Yeah, and ultimately it’s rather silly to practice because it’s not that practical anyway, especially when everyone has a calculator on their phone.

Ahh if I do that it’s a really uncomfortable stretch feeling on the back of my hand!

I don’t have any issues with counting in binary though. If my fingers could cooperate I could do it. Adding in binary is easy enough too.

Sure, but good luck putting up 15 with that system. Just try it: raise all your fingers except for your pinkie!

Depression is the worst sort of trap because the disease prevents you from seeking the cure. Men have fewer friends, fewer relationships, weaker social support networks, and a greater social stigma against seeking help.

Very recently I’ve read at least 2 posts on Lemmy by men who opened up about a nerdy interest and about mental illness. Both faced rather severe rejection from their peers.

A lot of this rejection of course comes from other men. But it’s not on an individual man to convince their friends not to reject them for opening up.

So if we take your declaration in that light, what it amounts to saying is that men all need to simultaneously start acting differently than we’ve always acted. But you can say that about a lot of problems in society.

If that’s the case then we should celebrate. When the dump stage hits and OpenAI stock tanks we’ll see a wider selloff in the AI industry. Could burst the bubble entirely!

Only if your goal is to “win.” If it’s to explore the issues and learn something then it can be worthwhile.

I think I see the issue. You’re not just assuming that you’ve been made dictator of an existing society, you’re assuming a completely blank slate society that you get to build up from scratch. Real dictatorships don’t have that luxury. They have to work within existing relationships and power structures. They need the loyalty of powerful people to become dictator in the first place. They don’t just get to hand-pick whoever they want for every role.

That’s not how prices have ever worked, even in command economies (where black markets rule).

Then you’re not really a dictator then are you? You’re a slacker and the talent spotter is the real dictator. And then people start questioning why you’re even in the picture in the first place. No problem! They get rid of you!

How are you gonna do that?

Edit: also, how do you keep your talent spotter loyal to you when everyone they hire will be loyal to them, not you?

But are YOU good at spotting talent? Or at the least do you know someone who is?

This crucial first step (and it is only a first step) runs right up against the Principle-agent problem, and a major result of our inability to recognize talent generally leads to a Market for lemons.

Dictatorships suffer immensely from these problems because the dictator is a national focal point for decisions. Every swindler and scammer in the country is running around trying to fool the dictator. Since the benefits of being on the dictator’s good side are sky-high and the costs of being on their bad side are severe, the incentives for honesty and transparency in communications are nonexistent. This is the source of dictatorship dysfunction.

About the only thing dictators tend to be good at (if they survive) is navigating a complex web of sycophantic and untrustworthy relationships. There is a constant need for surveillance and purging of potential traitors which has the effect of inspiring fear and paranoia throughout the regime. This in turn feeds into the dictator’s own paranoia, which becomes a vicious cycle.

Same here! I actually really miss beige PCs where the operating system was simple and it wasn’t trying to do a bunch of bullshit behind your back, it was just sitting there waiting for you to use it!

If a screw is totally stripped it’s nice to use a Dremel to just cut a slot and then be able to extract the screw.

Read about black hat SEO and spamdexing / link farming. Prepare to be extremely frustrated and exasperated. Even the most benevolent and well-designed search engines struggle against the masses of (now AI-empowered) spammers and scammers out there.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Yeah definitely move ladybird over to the right. Dunno about Brave but I’m inclined to mistrust it due to being for profit.

Also Bitcoin isn’t really a privacy thing. Your transactions are broadcast to the whole network by design. You need other privacy tools to protect you from having your transactions tied to your identity.

Academic performance is about performing well on closed book written exams covering narrow subjects. The whole system is designed for 19th century teaching and testing. Using a computer does not help with that whatsoever and may in some cases hurt (by distracting someone who should be studying).

I tutor high school kids as a volunteer (next year will be my 10th year doing so). Over that time period I have noticed a sharp decline in a lot of basic academic skills: mental arithmetic (without a calculator), spelling, grammar, handwriting. These are the very skills one needs to master to perform well on closed book exams. Your ability to research a topic or get help from Google (incl. spellcheck and grammar check in Google Docs) or ChatGPT is of no benefit whatsoever when all you’ve got is a pencil and a piece of paper in front of you.