The advice I needed and have not been able to find. I could kiss you. Or at least give you a fond nod.

The first time I ever experienced this was in a printshop with a bunch of older guys who were definitely not computer illiterate, but all gathered around the monitor for the server that ran our RIP/platemaker to watch commands appear in the terminal when I remoted in from my computer to do something or other. (They would go into the room and work directly on the machine, but it was loud in there and smelled funny, so I remoted in.)

They made jokes about me being a hacker, and although being distinctly boomer-ish, it was high praise coming from some of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with.
(I’ve worked with more accomplished people, and more highly educated people, but not with folks who had built a successful business that dealt with a variety of complex tech from the ground up with their own knowledge and effort. It was a bit charming to have them wowed by such a simple thing.)

That’s the most infuriating thing.

I’m trying to learn how to do new things, well, basically all the time.
Right now I’m stalled out on a sorta important personal project to teach myself about containers/micro-services/certs in a homelab environment. And what I’m discovering is that I don’t know enough to know I don’t know enough - it used to be that I’d take on an ambitious project, mess up, figure out how to overcome that, then learn by looking at what did work, and do better in the future.
But every technical project lately has gotten to the point where I’m trying to just get something, anything, to work or make sense, but every convincing enough AI generated page sets me back by several days as I troubleshoot the convincing enough steps and find myself realizing they’re referencing YAML settings from apps that aren’t part of the service, that every page directs me to install Python, Node, or whatever other helper app directly on my machine that would normally run in a container (which defeats the purpose of trying to containerize things - some stuff I want to use relies on non-compatible versions/configurations). There’s a very clear disconnect from what I’m seeing and what I’m understanding, and the utter lack of authoritative information/proliferation of useless info has just crippled my ability to identify and resolve the disconnect. It’s honestly soul crushing.

Dicks of Hazzard

🎵 Just good ol’ peens, never meanin’ no harm. Beats all you ever saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born. 🎵

And in a very real way, if you’re allowing customers access to source material so they can programmatically manipulate it at a time that online services are rapidly enshittifying, it’s contrary to their business goals. A ripper that upscales is probably trivially easy to use.

And plus, who knows what a client upscaler will hallucinate across multiple models and technology platforms. (Or may be intentionally configured to do.)
No one wants to have to explain to grandpa why all the faces in Dukes of Hazzard have been replaced by glans because he got a meme upscaler.

I wish I had approximately double the hours in a given day, and also vastly more coding skill to help in meaningful ways.

It seems sort of odd that comments or messages reported for spam don’t offer any tools. Even a simple url pattern match that gives mods/admins the ability to click a checkbox to remember the link and take some predefined action in the future would be a rudimentary but effective option.

I mean, heck, it’s the fediverse. In my fantasy implementation of an anti-spam approach, it would be possible to federate these lists of untrusted links and assign consensus-based confidence scores for links generated from moderator actions across instances. (With options for instance admins to tailor their own trust scores of other instances, so that each instance can choose for themselves who they trust, just in case a couple rogue instance admins try to poison the spam filter.)
Same concept can be applied to banned accounts, although in that circumstance, I’d suggest they find a way to mask the email address when sharing it. Not that folks won’t just spin up a new email. But, you know. Something is better than nothing.

Hopefully that makes sense. I’m losing my mind with sleep deprivation.

They always catch the people who search for “most popular way to get away with murder” but they rarely catch the ones who search for “most embarrassing way to die.”

The focus on piracy is a smoke screen. It’s about capacity.

Build the capacity, and then just start growing that list of reasons things are blocked.

This is out of scope for this community, but the U.S. is amidst a coup.
I mean, literally, it’s being raided by a corporate stooge that is breaking all manner of laws to just reshape it in whatever image they see fit.
In a geopolitical sense, they’re trying to break relationships with close allies, and trying to isolate the country. We see that with the tariff threats, the withdrawal from WHO, the Paris Climate accords, and now with threats to withdraw/pull back from NATO. Domestically, it’s clear that businesses are bowing to Trump or facing government punishment. That much is evidenced by social media companies filtering search results, by media companies tepid criticism of Trump and by the lack of national coverage over anti-trump sentiment. We also see it in terms of the investigations that Trump and his cronies are trying to bring against NPR, of all things.

This is a play in the move to control information access in the U.S. After the media, and social media, which are now yolked, the open web is the next biggest threat to their coup.
And now this is the legislation they’re pushing.

The council has spoken.

They may go forth, unburdened.

By the authority conferred to me through the “ownership” of approximately 25cm^2 of Scottish highland from a well-intentioned holiday present, I’m invoking my right as a Lord to grant you a pass on that one.
It would take me a few minutes, too

What if you have anxiety?

This is my semi-lazy approach. I’m sure someone is going to tell me all the ways that I’m falling down on this front, but…

I switched over to iPhone in like 2019. I started getting ‘stealth’ ads in google maps while driving, and I just could not deal with it. It made me reconsider all of Google’s products, and I made an effort to get away from them. (The stealth ads were like “In a quarter mile, continue past the [name of store] on your right” on a perfectly straight road. At the time I was giving a lot of thought to dark patterns and how they influence our behavior, and I just could not see that occurrence as anything other than manipulation. Ironically, I’ve since learned it may have actually been due to GIS errors thinking the road curved when it didn’t, and Google not having a nearby street to use for reference, but like… I don’t know, and I don’t care.)
On my iPhone I set it up to never send advertising ID/opt out of ad personalization.
I don’t give apps permissions they don’t have a clear reason for needing - Your camera can give away your location because of photo geotagging. Network access can report on what devices you have on your network as well as your network information, which is something that’s trackable and geolocatable. In an extreme edge case, network access could be used to find file shares on your network and use those to gather information about you. Bluetooth for same reasons. There are advertising networks based on Bluetooth, since your hardware MAC is not changeable and is freely shared. It can be used to track your location within a store, or figure out where you’ve been. A device that connects your identity (email login or something) to your bluetooth MAC can be used to build profiles on where you’ve shop and what sections you loiter in stores. And obviously, location access. I semi-routinely audit which apps are on my phone, and remove ones I don’t use and restrict permissions that I may have granted for a good reason but no longer need the app to have.
I don’t use the same email for anything anymore. I use an email masking service to generate emails for different services.
I never give my last name to any site unless it’s for billing. And I often don’t give my real first name. I never give my real birthday to any site that isn’t engaged with money or the law. I’ve removed or made ambiguous my profile on almost all social media. I no longer post my face to the internet.
I have used (but am not currently using) a service to request to remove me from online marketing/info sites like spokeo or whatever.
I also use a network-wide advertising blocker on my home network, and while I do have smart devices, they are blocked from internet access, with an upcoming plan to completely put them on an offline and isolated network.
The other thing that I did (accidentally) was to buy a new car that does not share data with advertisers or insurance companies. (Yet/to the best of my knowledge.) I’ve also gone through and audited my old accounts and requested not just account deletions, but data deletions. This is especially important for services that may have health, financial, or purchasing data. When I move, I never file a change of address with USPS. First - I just know what’s important to me and update those addresses. But second, the USPS maintains a database of everyone in the U.S. called the National Change of Address (NCOA) Database, and that is more or less monitored by junk mail advertisers to track where people physically are and to send them junk mail. The only time I get junk mail that’s addressed to me is when my information is shared against my will from financial institutions under this stupid exception.

My next thing that I may wind up doing is seeing if I can start acquiring throwaway phone numbers to forward to my real number, so online services that require a phone number for delivery or whatever cannot use that piece of information consistently or well.

That all does sound like a lot, I guess. But it doesn’t feel like a lot. I just live my life and try not to leak my data.
Most of that (and the issue this article is about) would be moot if the U.S. would just pass consumer privacy protections, but noooo, we can’t have that. Instead they’re going to theatrically whine about other countries and pass laws to help Facebook and bolster U.S. controlled propaganda-outlets while not doing anything to actually solve the problem(s).

I already can’t do half the things I’m trying to do on my network, now I gotta figure out DNS?!?

You’re one of the founding members of the greater Seattle area polycule, aren’t you?

I would move both of your pothos. I’d slide the one over the oven closer to the corner and find a way to allow the vines (limbs?) of it to ‘climb’ along the wall above your sink. I would also consider a way to have the other ‘side’ of it branch out between the rafters. (Maybe not screws for the rafters, but perhaps something fun like vintage clamps?) Same for the other pothos, move it over so more of the green is exposed on the wall above that bigger window.
Pick up a small bit of stained glass art and stick it in the window, too.
Mess up the design aesthetic some - Get an earth-tone placemat and a craft-y looking bowl and fill it with fruit or if you’re not a fruit person, something pretty and useful enough that it won’t get dust covered. (Grab and go snacks in bright packages?)
I’d reconsider the lights above the cooktop. Maybe find ones that are a bit more decorative, or certainly ones that aren’t just black.
Put a cork board or a chalk board over the cabinet to the left of the oven, and keep colored post-its or chalk handy.
Maybe replace the handles on your cabinets with something brightly colored or with a bit more character/individual craftsmanship.

I guess the idea behind most of what I’m suggesting is to make it look lived in, and to give it some warm tones/break up the stark whiteness of it. The individual suggestions probably aren’t as important as the overall idea.

My understanding is that they are focusing on adding in “AI” features in a big way, and that’s why they cut development on the other work. 🫤

I’m thinking about those poor suckers on the other side of the lakes, catching all the humidity the prevailing winds are going to pick up. Michigan is more or less flat from the last glacial period and it’s only just barely not one big marshland. They’d better start building houses on stilts and investing in improving their drainage systems.
Buffalo catches hell from lake effect snow, but just wait until there’s lake effect monsoons.

I haven’t yet looked at the map (I will!), but I’m struck by the idea that perhaps a map should exist that shows how USDA hardiness zones will shift. (I mean - according to best guesses.)

If I had the ability, it would be interesting to make a map that asks users what their favorite local tree or animal is, and tells them how long it will be able to survive near them. Nearly impossible to account for all use cases, but I digress. Even simpler - Go for a map of state trees, flowers, and animals with extinction times for each to let folks know how long each state can hold onto its signature species. Well, for the ones that aren’t already gone, anyway.

Build a small EMP device. Figure out how to trigger it from terminal. Delete the key bindings for vim. Map them to the trigger you have for the EMP.

… good luck…?

Well, I just realized I completely goofed, because I went with .arpa instead of .home.arpa, due to what was surely not my own failings.

So I guess I’m going to be changing my home’s domain anyway.