Profile pic is from Jason Box, depicting a projection of Arctic warming to the year 2100 based on current trends.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: March 3rd, 2024

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  • It’s what the people want. There’s been several times where high speed rail in Florida was put on a public ballot, and overwhelmingly got voted for. And then the government came back and said, “wha…we didn’t think you’d want this? We don’t have the money.” The last I was involved in explored high speed from Miami through Orlando and the I-4 corridor to Tampa. Huge potential. “We’re a poor state, can’t do it.” FU FL



  • Whenever I see the 1% or 99% numbers when discussing wealth inequality, this fact is the first thing that comes to mind. We need to use decimal points to get to the real ones in power. 1% contains a lot of people who have money, but are still out of the loop as the rest of us, or as Carlin said, “not in the Club”. They are millionaires, but like they say, the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.

    And that’s US - many Americans are in the 1% in worldwide numbers, with rough income numbers being around half a million income. Again, they may or may not be comfortable depending on their expenses, but having money doesn’t mean you have power. It’s the .1 that is the beginning of that, and the .01 is moving the pieces for everyone.

    (The numbers are just estimates, there’s gray areas everywhere, the point is the top people want us to be yelling at the top middle and ignore what they do.)


  • for what it’s worth, Mbin can see and interact with both Lemmy type communities as well as the Mastodon type of broadcasts. They are still two different parts, but within a single interface. Often I see things on the sidebar from them, usually dropped into “Random” as the algorithm doesn’t know what to put it in, and have the same thoughts as you. That it seems like it’s shouting out into nothingness. But…I could respond to the commentary, and it would bounce back to them. It’s just a different way to communicate, not as “permanent” as a discussion board format.







  • I don’t know… the Moon is beautiful, but George Carlin had a point on worshiping the Sun:

    “I’ve begun worshiping the sun for a number of reasons. First of all, unlike some other gods I could mention, I can see the sun. It’s there for me every day. And the things it brings me are quite apparent all the time: heat, light, food, and a lovely day. There’s no mystery, no one asks for money, I don’t have to dress up, and there’s no boring pageantry. And interestingly enough, I have found that the prayers I offer to the sun and the prayers I formerly offered to ‘God’ are all answered at about the same 50% rate.”


  • No one mentioned (probably an assumed thing) to turn the water on full hot to let it warm up, then move it to the preferred mix position. Doesn’t waste the cold water which will stay more or less the same temp, it’s only flushing out the cold in the hot water line. And because you have it fully on hot, it takes less time.

    Or get a tankless water heater to get it almost right away. I’ve seen debates on which is a better choice when factoring everything in, and I think it’s a close tie with no clear winner, each having their caveats.










  • Ollama.com is another method of self hosting. Figuring out which model type and size for what equipment you have is key, but it’s easy to swap out. That’s just an LLM, where you go from there depends on how deep you want to get into the code. An LLM by itself can work, it’s just limited. Most of the addons you see are extra things to give memory, speech, avatars, and other extras to improve the experience and abilities. Or you can program a lot of that yourself if you know Python. But as others have said, the more you try to get out, the more robust a system you’ll need, which is why you find the best ones online in cloud format. But if you’re okay with slower responses and lower features, self hosting is totally doable, and you can do what you want, especially if you get one of the “Jailbroke” models that has had some of the safety limits modified out of them to some degree.

    Also as mentioned, be careful not to get sucked in. Even a local model can be convincing enough sometimes to fool someone wanting to see things. Lots of people recognize that danger, but then belittle people who are looking for help in that direction (while marketing realizes the potential profits and tries very hard to sell it to the same people).