And, unlike engineers in manufacturing whose deep-pocket corporations bought an exemption, Engineers in the A/E/C field are licensed. And if you screw up you can lose your ability to work in your field…forever.

Fun fact: the USA is the largest producer of oil in the world, extracting 50% more than it’s closest rivals (Russia and SA) annually. And we’ve been on top for years.

But what if I just like the taste?

But, also, this describes every response to a ML prompt.

You could say the same for a finite element model. A junior engineer with just 4 years of training can solve, explicitly, the deflection at the center of a slender, simple-simple beam of prismatic section and produce an exact (if slightly incorrect) answer. Building a FEM of the same can solve the problem and take longer (to make the model) with similar accuracy, both of which are good enough for design work.

Only a fool wouldn’t have a FEM around though, as it can solve problem that would take centuries for a human to solve. They may as well make a cartoon with the child digging a 3” hole in beach sand and then showing a backhoe making a jagged edged hole of the same size.

I’ve yet to find a modern use for usenet as I’m not in the habit of downloading everything as it comes out, nor of looking for content within a few days of release. Often I’m looking for 2-5 year old content or back catalog, and usenet has been a uniform landscape of incompletes, even with two blocks on independent providers (or they were when I bought the data blocks).

The best part is that it makes enough for friends to share.

A llama?!? He was supposed to be dead!

[Raises hand]

I don’t have time to fuck with managing a seedbox to make ratios and community participation bullshit (looking at you, abt). I don’t even have time to fight incompletes on a usenet block. Let me drop a Benjamin in your “donation” box every couple of years and I’ll cover part of the server as long as I can find what I need, when I want it, in the quality I’m looking for.

I have subscriptions to a few of the big boys through legal cross-marketing deals; it’s still better to know that my shows will be waiting for me on my server if and when I ever get around to watching them.

If I spend half an hour to find an implement a workaround (because finding ways around YT’s advertising is not my hobby) then I’d have to watch 60 unskippable 30 second ads to break even, every single time they upgrade their cat-and-mouse. I don’t watch that much youtube in a month, probably not in 3 months.

Interpretive dance or GTFO

11. When you die at the palace, you really die at the palace
12. Try the mulled wine
13. It’s good to be the king
14. A gentleman’s cuffs should be even with the tip of his penis
15. Jews can joke about whatever they want if they’re the scriptwriter

Re: reasonable levels - You can have fail safe or fail secure. Those are two mutually exclusive options. Locking people out of content, whether it be consumers or a partner organization (like a theater) is the price of security (fail secure).

There is no condition where mild DRM is valuable to anyone. For consumers it constitutes a hurdle to use of content they have purchased without hindering non-purchased copies from being reproduced and distributed. No DRM allows the latter; unbreakable DRM ensures the former will be substantially affected at some point.

Right? I was thinking the syntax was wrong (space in GoTo) and the og would not have accepted a string as a jump location.

But Meta can already do that through user accounts or through a honeypot/passive instance, correct? All public conversations are open, as are all public user profiles.

The only solution is to fight it and kill it.

That’s like saying the only way to get out of being hit by flying debris is to eliminate all wind on the planet. As much as we like to think of Threads as some corporate being, it’s not. It’s a hundred million people that are made of meat and have day jobs like you and me - the wind - and a few million bots and controlled accounts which attempt to influence [whatever their master wishes] - the debris. The debris is already here, and it’s people too - just people with nefarious or profiteering intent. It (debris) happens whenever there are enough people (enough wind) to stir things up.

Cutting yourself off from people is the only way to prevent it because it’s an inherent function of humanity.

I think thou dost protest too much. Perhaps not so much ace as you claim.

Yeah, US is a real backwater when it comes to data - availability, privacy, you name it. Heck, my ISP will let me install for free, but I either have to buy my own modem or pay them $15/mo to rent one of theirs. I technically get wifi roaming with the company I use, but it’s rarely useful. I won’t torrent without a VPN; my ISP is a hardass for torrenting.

There are decent plans in some areas in the big cities in the US, but outside of that it’s pretty bleak…and there’s a lot of “outside of the cities” in the US.

Knowing who your provider is would (might) help. Xfinity has a 1TB or 1.2TB soft cap, which you can exceed once or twice a year without concern. Beyond that you fall into their top (I think it’s) 1% of users and may be asked to scale back or to pay an excess usage fee (which was non-trivial the last time I looked - something like $10/50GB).

Wait, really? I’m going to have to go check next time I log into my torrenting box.