For me it’s branding something as “AI” as a buzzword. Almost all product marketing is full of AI hype these days.

Any front engine rear drive car going in reverse, lol.

There is always the Wikipedia style link to the definition whenever such word arrives. This is what browser tabs are for.

If that ever happens, I would start bringing duct tape to flights, tape a magazine to cover the screen.

I remember having a conversation with a former friend a while ago, and he, as a guy who worked for a certain company that makes most of its revenue from delivering ads, spoke about requiring use of front facing camera and using eye tracking technology to ensure you’re actually watching the ads and not going somewhere else while the ads play. If you aren’t looking at the ad, it will play another ad afterwards.

He spoke about it as something he is looking forward to, since it would increase revenue. Pretty sure he was pitching this idea to his boss hoping to get a promotion.

If these are signs of being old, I was born old.

They did win because of how the electoral college works. Both Trump and Bush lost the popular vote and won the election because the system is designed in a stupid way.

Personally, I would never give Reddit a single penny. Their garbage CEO does plenty to get people to leave and I am sure it will keep like that.

Your phone’s email app is a client, but I digress… I hate using the browser to access emails. I use many different email accounts with multiple email providers to compartmentalize my emails and avoid spam. I used Thunderbird for years before switching to Geary and now back to Thunderbird.

My first time trying to get my mother to switch from Windows to a Linux based OS wasn’t successful because there was too much friction and inconvenience for her, and she wasn’t willing to even entertain the idea of Linux for years after that. My second attempt was successful because Linux is much more user friendly than it used to be 13 years ago, and I changed my approach to make it as frictionless as possible.

Firefox just set to block 3rd party cookies + some basic extensions like adblocking and some easy privacy stuff is a good way to go about it, because it’s better than what she used previously and it doesn’t become inconvenient to her. She doesn’t know what an operating system is, or what cookies are… She just uses the computer to browse the web, emails, and light office work. She even says she prefers the current setup (though that’s because her old computer was chugging with Windows and runs smoothly now with a less bloated OS)

No need for noscript, deleting cookies, fingerprinting, or user agent stuff… Only introduce these to them if they express interest in privacy and are interested in learning more. If you try to thrust it upon them too suddenly they will just think “Linux isn’t a good user experience and is only good for tech enthusiasts and programmers”.

At least 60% of my internet time is YouTube. I rely on it for entertainment, news, education, discovering music, technical help, ETC…

Could I live a meaningful life without it? Probably, people have been living meaningful lives before the invention of the computer in general… But I wouldn’t give it up because there is an immense amount of incredible content there that genuinely makes my life better.

I think it depends on how good your sense of smell is. Mine is really bad, so if I had my eyes covered and was wearing noise cancelling headphones, I wouldn’t be able to tell if there are people in my area unless they haven’t showered in a while… Being able to distinguish between people? I can’t even differentiate between the smells of popcorn and peanut butter.

On the other hand, I know someone who was able to smell a “coppery” smell on someone which no one else notice. Eventually she convinced him to see a doctor and they found a rare condition that I can’t remember which.

Biological weapons don’t count unless the flush mechanism fails.

What? I was talking about Vietnam, just because they are communist now doesn’t mean they will stay communist. I didn’t mean that Russia is communist now, perhaps I wasn’t clear in phrasing.

USSR collapsed and looks at Russia now. Just because they are communists now doesn’t mean they won’t become fascist in the future.

Can you trust it would stay that way? There is no such thing as immunity from fascism.

But when the death penalty is available, it’s not just the ultra wealthy who suffer. It’s far easier for the ultra wealthy to use their resources to frame someone they don’t like as a murderer or something and get that person executed. It’s even easier for the state to do that if they are corrupt enough. I’d much rather not give the state the right to sentence anyone to death at any point. Make these ultra rich criminals go to prison for the rest of their lives, make it unpardonable too.

Yes, people do escape, but it’s extremely rare. I’m far more worried about the state having the legal power to execute someone than an individual escaping from prison.

Also, giving the prisoner the choice to either be executed or imprisoned for life would give an incentive for the operators of the prisons to treat their prisoners even worse so prisoners would choose to be executed.

Point about escaping/pardon. I acknowledge that society is ever so slightly safer when exceptionally dangerous criminals are executed.

About the risk of being pardoned by a malicious state, it’s true… But the other way could also be true that a malicious state can execute people who don’t deserve to be executed, like Snowden… Perhaps a compromise is to make particularly heinous crimes unpardonable? That would be a decent alternative to the death penalty, and it would be very difficult to repeal such a law.

As for escaping prison, it’s already rare that someone escapes from it. The solution is making better high security prisons for the most violent and dangerous criminals. I think it’s definitely possible to make escaping so difficult and dangerous that it wouldn’t be a problem. Make a prison on an island or an old oil rig, implants to track the prisoner’s location (a fancier version of the anti-theft tags in clothing stores), random X-rays to check they don’t have anything hidden in their bodies. All of these are definitely better than executing someone, though personally I think that maximum security prison breaks are already so rare it wouldn’t be worth it.

If the person goes to prison for the rest of their lives, it will keep society safe from them either way. The death penalty is not making society safer.