F me…

Does no one see the propaganda potential for this? Yeah, let’s give one guy more intimate, influential control over the psyche of hundreds of millions.

Well it would be great if Steam (allegedly) didn’t pressure devs to force price parity with their store. In other words, selling at game at 30% less than Steam on some other storefront could (allegedly) get one delisted. It’s blatantly anticompetitive/anticonsumer and should be illegal.

https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/does-steam-price-fix-and-does-that

It would be like Amazon threatening to pull a brand from their store if it was cheaper somewhere else.

Prefer Steam? Totally fine. But personally I would take a 30% discount for the extra hassle, barring some game-specific benefit.

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Try it here instead, set the temperature to like 0.1 or 0.2, and be sure to set 2.5 Pro:

https://aistudio.google.com/

It is indeed still awful for many things. It’s a text prediction tool, not a magic box, even though everyone advertises it kinda like the later.

Gemini 2.5? Low temperature, like 0.2?

The one they use in search is awful, and not the same thing. Also, it’s not all knowing, you gotta treat it like it has no internet access (because generally it doesn’t).

It can be grounded in facts. It’s great at RAG. But even alone, Gemini 2.5 is kinda shockingly smart.

…But the bigger point is how Google presents it. It shouldn’t be the top result of every search just thrown into your face, it should be a opt-in, transparent, conditional feature with clear warnings, and only if it can source a set of whitelisted, reliable websites.

The irony is Gemini is really good (like significantly better than ChatGPT), and cheap for them (no GPUs needed), yet somehow they made it utterly unbearable in search.

Narrowly.

Are you guys not horrified of what’s happening south? If you interpret this as a win and go on, your country is going to be mega conservative in like a decade.

No, this is an existential crisis, and you need to shut off the propaganda machines before it’s too late.

The heck is this title?

YouTube says goodbye to decade-old video player UI, but users hate the new design

Meanwhile, the article itself just cites a few tiny aesthetic changes and like four random Reddit comments. Doesn’t seem like they even tried it themself… That’s justifications for 460 upvotes?

Eh… could be worse.

How’s the view on Brexit in the UK these days?

You’re welcome. Check out the ISW report too!

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-23-2023

Ha!

Have you seen the bloatware they ship with Windows? It somehow manages to be so much worse than base windows… it’s honestly much better if they don’t touch the OS at all, barring the absolute bare minimum of making sure input works.

I’m being cynical: I know some OEMs do make kernel contributions and such. Still, the “generic” support distros/chip makers provide for free is better, given their track record.

That literally almost happened:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group_rebellion

Backstory: there was this infamous Russian mercenary company called Wagner. They had a ton of support from Russian nationalists. During the Ukraine war, Putin decided its populist leader’s head was a little too big, so he plopped them on the front lines, undersupplied, and ground them down to keep Wagner in their place, and from growing too powerful.

The leader was not stupid.

So, seeing the existential problem, Wagner, out of the blue, rushed out of Ukraine and made a beeline for Moscow with a big military convoy. There was a lot of political noise, but basically it was a coup.

Ultimately, Wagner realized not enough of the Russian military was turning to their side and stopped (and it leader was literally blown up in a plane some months later), but the crazy thing is some Russian military did defect! Others let them pass without any resistance! And like you said, Moscow didn’t have a lot of defense.

But it was so close to working its nuts! Foreign militaries watched it very closely. The Wikipedia article and ISW reports on it are worth reading, and it’s all an interesting window into internal Russian politics/culture, as Wagner is not the only internal faction that’s a potential threat to Putin.

EDIT: Found the ISW post, so you can see how tense things felt in real time.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-23-2023

(More generally, those reports are great source for detailed Ukraine war info).

Yeah.

A bigger thing to me is that some OEMs seem to be offering Linux for a discount. That’s massive, as it will draw in “non experts” who don’t know the difference (or care), but very much know about sticker prices.

On the other hand, Microsoft is unbelievably good at screwing things up. They could totally dump 10.

I mean, they have to support LTSC anyway, so it would be easy, but still, MS be MS.

Good practice is putting anything important on an encrypted USB drive (as that stuff usually isn’t very big), and just treating the machine as “kinda insecure”

If you set up a BIOS password, someone at least needs to unscrew your computer to get stuff. But this is generally not setup because people, well, forget their passwords…

Yeah, that’s the thing. Even if you buy the idea of Trump’s policies (which TBH have a few grains of truth), the implementations of them are so full of nonsense. Like, ok, get Canada into the US, let’s just roll with that for the sake of argument… It might make Canada and the US stronger, like the openness between the states does. It would consolidate many federal functions. Canda could retain their culture like individual states do. Sounds plausible.

…And your plan is to get them to join as one state, and only if they grovel to you, by harassing them on Twitter, offering zero details? Like, what world is he living in?

Oh yeah, its more than that. Low weight helps acceleration, braking (so safety), handling, range, wear on every component, and most of all, cost. The same sized tires will need less pressure, wear much less, and grip harder. If the car is lighter, you don’t need as stiff a chassis, nor as much braking to lock the wheels, less battery, motor, which means you can take even more weight off the car… You get where I’m going.

Racecars are fast because they are light, not because they have big engines and expensive bodies. Little 1500lb cars can lap a $3 million 1500hp (and quite heavy, because of all the stuff in it) Bugatti around a track.

Heavy cars can handle OK, but the cost is big.