What I think is amazing about LLMs is that they are smart enough to be tricked. You can’t talk your way around a password prompt. You either know the password or you don’t.

But LLMs have enough of something intelligence-like that a moderately clever human can talk them into doing pretty much anything.

That’s a wild advancement in artificial intelligence. Something that a human can trick, with nothing more than natural language!

Now… Whether you ought to hand control of your platform over to a mathematical average of internet dialog… That’s another question.

For anybody else curious, he’s using KalibriOS.

It’s an open source, ultra-lightweight os that is not a fork of Linux… I think.

Neat project though!

Ah! A fellow holder of the belief that time travel stories are better when they are internally consistent! I hate e.g. Looper for having time travel that makes no goddamn sense. It takes me out of the story when the characters are literally watching the timeline change before them as it magically radiates out from one point. And then our protagonists somehow remember the original timeline… Bah.

…So I must ask - have you seen Primer? If not, maybe you’d like it!

I mean, yeah, sure. …but I’m still conflicted about the local heroin addicts standing in the frozen aisle scarfing a bucket of ice cream.

I mean, I don’t really give a shit about the theft, but they tend to stand there with the door open and thaw the rest of the ice cream while they’re at it. It’s enough of an issue locally that a couple of local chains have literally started chaining up their ice cream like it’s the goddamn crown jewels. I just want non-crystallized ice cream!

Also… In my experience, people mostly don’t steal food outside of cases like having the heroin hungries. Food banks do an okay job at keeping people fed at least. (Aside: When you donate to your local food bank, donate money, not food! They can buy much more food in bulk - your dollars will go farther that way!) Mostly, I see people stealing things like resaleable electronics or OTC drugs that have useful precursor chems.

Don’t get me wrong - I know fuckin’ Krogers can take it. I just see this meme about seeing people stealing food and like… That’s mostly not a thing. Food banks and food stamps work okay. They aren’t great, the food often sucks - but generally speaking, you don’t have to steal food to survive when you’re poor in America. You might need to steal drugs and airpods though.

There can be, but this one has a busted face and some other cosmetic damage. The mechanism still works fine, but this particular watch isn’t really gonna be worth anything to anyone but us.

Other watches she’s repaired have been worth up to a few hundred dollars. …Which actually isn’t that much for watches. At the high end, the really bonkers shit can cost over 100K. These sorts of watches are hand built by master craftsmen and take a really long goddamn time to make (hence the price). But they tend to be absolutely gorgeous and marvels of mechanical engineering.

So, as watches go, she’s paddling about in the shallows, repairing things like the odd Tissot or Omega, which can be valuable-ish. But usually sub-200, occasionally up to $600-700.

If it’s like a pleasant tingling through your head, it might be ASMR. It can be triggered by sounds (hence the bajillion YouTube channels), but for me it’s more often when I’m really enjoying thinking about something. It’s a weird sensation for sure.

I got the earwax but good. I usually abuse qtips too.

But.

If you want to really know what a clean ear canal is like, get a squeeze bulb. You fill it with hot water (hot like tap, not like boiled) and then hydroblast your ear holes until all the wax melts and runs out.

When you get rid of a real bad wax ball… Aww man, it’s amazing. It’s like you just removed earplugs. The world is suddenly so much louder.

Fuckin’ amazing.

…scuse me, I think Imma go find my squeeze bulb.

My wife collects mechanical wristwatches. But since we aren’t millionaires, she buys them in bulk lots online. Most times she’ll get an interesting or semi-valuable watch or two. Usually broken or damaged in some way, but often within her ability to repair.

So. One day her watch haul included a double hunter pocketwatch whose maker’s mark we weren’t familiar with - “JW Benson”. And inside the case was the text “Watchmaker by warrants to the Queen and the Prince of Wales.”

Between those two, we managed to deduce that it had been manufactured sometime around 1880 (+/- a couple years. The company was bombed in WWII and a lot of records burned. IIRC, we had narrowed it to like a five year span, but the exact dates couldn’t be determined beyond that)

Anyway. That watch - which still runs - is probably the oldest thing.

There are a bajillion distros out there and you already have a lot of suggestions here, so instead, allow me to note a few things I think are handy while learning Linux.

1. Most Linux distros are customized versions of a few base distros. Once you learn how the base distro lays things out, that knowledge is transferable (more or less) to other distros in the same family. But solutions that work in one family of distros may not work on another!

Some common base distros:

• Debian: Stability-above-all; all-rounder distro. Updates slowly, but provides a very-well-tested base that many other distros build on. Ubuntu and its derivatives are built on Debian.
• Red Hat: A commercially-focused distro that I haven’t used in a looong time, so I won’t say too much about it. Slightly less popular as a desktop basis than Debian, perhaps, but also a solid all-rounder.
• Arch: If computers were cars… Arch is for the Hot-Rodders. You have a ton of control to optimize and tweak Arch to precisely meet your needs. When you want to really dig into the machine and tune it to peak performance, this is where you begin. Fortunately, Arch-based distros often forego the detailed install of their parent and just provide a fast-updating, highly-tuned Linux experience. SteamOS is said to be a customized Arch.

2. Software installation / updating is simpler and more confusing than either the Windows or Mac worlds.

It’s very rare to have a Linux program require an installer like Windows, and it’s not as simple as drag-and-drop install like Mac. Linux has had the equivalent of “app stores” for a looong time, just minus the tracking and selling parts.

Most programs in Linux get installed via a package manager tool. There are various front ends, but under the hood, there’s usually a command line program handling installation and updates.

Generally speaking, Debians use “apt”, RedHats use “yum” and Arches use “pacman”. There are also “flatpak” and “snap” both of which are more recent managers that attempt to solve dependency hell.

3. The terminal is gonna come up. Love it or hate it, the terminal is still at the heart of the Linux experience. There are guis for pretty much anything you want to do, but because Linux is so highly customizable, help forums and such tend to give solutions in the one constant: bash scripts.

That said, you can get around just fine without it if you really want to. Just recognize that you might be swimming upstream at times.

4. You can customize anything! Your desktop environment is pretty much a given on Windows and Mac. On Linux you can install something comfy, like Gnome (customizable, lightweight, akin to Mac UI) or KDE (less customizable, very pretty Windows-style UI).

Or try something experimental like Ratpoison - a window manager that requires no mouse inputs!

Part of the fun of Linux is trying out alternatives and truly customizing your personal computer.

…That’s it, I think!

Good luck! Have fun!

Mathollomew

Aww man, I wish I had time to type it out. One of my favorite jokes to tell is a really long garden path story about a man and a one-eyed halibut. It’s multiple minutes of setup and the punchline is just bad. It’s not even a pun. It’s the worst joke I know.

But I love telling it to people because it’s almost a practical joke by the time I reach the end.

Nobody laughs the first time. But everyone who’s heard it once, laughs when they see me inflict it on a new victim.

It’s hard to compare apples and mangos, but if we’re gonna consider favorite tropical fruits, I friggin love fresh mangosteen. It’s like a little fruity Bob-bom. Smooth and silky texture, creamy sweet flesh and just fantastic. They don’t seem to travel well, unfortunately.

Or fresh pineapple.

I had fresh pineapple off a farmer’s cart in the tropics two decades back. Afterward, I couldn’t eat pineapple in the US for almost three years. It was so much better than the canned or grocery-store stuff there was just no comparison.

Durian: tastes like Heaven; smells like Hell.

One time, I had a box of durian-flavored cookies. (Think Oreos, but with durian filling). I brought them to work to share with my coworkers (because I can’t eat a whole box by myself and I didn’t plan to leave a partially-eaten and open box to linger in my house).

I knew I was in trouble when I opened the box and realized that each cookie was individually sealed. As soon as I broke the seal on the first cookie the, err, unmistakeable durian scent began to waft through the office.

I’d only managed to convince a single coworker to join my cookie break, but even having opened only two cookies, it wasn’t long before someone walking twenty feet distant sniffed the air and asked in a worried tone, “Does anyone smell gas?”

“It’s these cookies!”

“Cookies?! No - I smell natural gas, man! Like sulphur!”

“Yeah. It’s these cookies. Want one? They’re durian flavored!”

“Uh, no.”

“They taste better than they smell!”

“…low bar. Still gonna pass on that.”

…after the third person worrying about gas leaks, I had to throw away the rest of the cookies. Outside.

The moment I realized that no one. Anywhere. Has any idea what they are doing.

I’ll be done worrying about work today, I tell you what.

Gentoo is the og, “Linux from scratch” distro, where you compile everything yourself. Arch is kinda like that, except everything is compiled already. 😁

You still select all the parts of your Linux system, from the desktop environment (if any) all the way down to which initialization system you want to use. Along the way, you’ll dive into a lot of the various text files Linux uses for configuration and learn which files live where.

It’s a very thorough dive!

If you’re looking for reading material about Linux though, I don’t really have any books to recommend offhand… I will say that the basic tooling in Linux, the POSIX-standard stuff, like grep, vi, sed, and so forth remains mostly unchanged (at least in all the important ways) from year to year. Some of it has remained essentially the same since the seventies, so even a six year old book will still be able to cover all of that just fine.

The things that it would not be good for would be some of the more recent developments in, say, UI tech, like the slow, but ongoing migration from X to Wayland.

Command line scripts and config files are likely to largely be the same (though a few files have a tendency to move around depending on the distro).

Tools for administration outside of the venerable POSIX tooling is gonna be a crapshoot in book-form. Still, it’ll give you a place to start from!

Honestly, it depends on what you’re trying to do with your machines. If you are looking for a stable desktop environment, you don’t need to dive that deep. (At least, to start.) Just install the defaults, and read a basic tutorial on using the Bash shell. (Even if you move away from bash, lots of scripts and such use it by default, so a passing familiarity is highly recommended.) Especially learn about installing programs with the package manager. (‘apt-get’ for Mint and other Debian-based distros.) The defaults are gonna be generally sane, especially in Mint. If you want to get into deeper waters from there, you’ll have a stable base to start from.

But. If you want to configure your machine, top to bottom and really understand how Linux works… Install Arch. Not even joking. Arch installation docs are very detailed and walk you through setting up every part of your Linux system. Be prepared for your first time to take a few days to complete. It’s a lot to take in. Start with a computer you can leave offline for awhile.

I learned a ton by installing Arch. And then I went back to Debian-based distros because there was less active maintenance. (Note that this was over a decade ago, so things may be better now. YMMV). This is definitely Learning The Hard Way, but it’s honestly the most effective thing I can think of.

Linux is insanely customizable. You can swap out and/or customize pretty much every aspect of it. It can be overwhelming. I recommend taking things on a bit at a time, but I’ve rarely used software that’s as easy to find free support for.

Welcome to the party!

I’m the oldest of a big (real big. Crazy big) family.

I don’t get along with all of my siblings, but more in a “we don’t hang out” kinda way, not a “please die in a fire” way.

Our family reunions are the stuff of legend. Days of hanging out; taking turns cooking meals for an army; hours spent swapping stories and just enjoying hanging out together.

My best friend in the world is one of my brothers. I could spend years just hanging out with him. (I mean, we did, growing up, but I’m still not sick of it.)

My siblings and I don’t see eye to eye on everything. We all have gone down different life paths as the years have gone by. Some of us are very liberal and some are very conservative. Some of us live in major cities, others in the heart of the country. Some are atheists and some are devout.

We aren’t perfect. There have been cruel words spoken, tears shed. I’ve broken up fistfights (…and been in a couple myself).

Growing up, my mother taught us how to talk things through. How to start from a fight and finish as friends. She set us an amazing example that I am trying to teach to my own children.

My family is one of the best things in my life. I love my siblings and my parents. I know not everyone gets a happy family. My wife really didn’t. I’m not sharing this to brag. I just want to say that… It’s out there. A family that loves each other and largely gets along is possible. I don’t know if we’re a fluke of nature or a miracle of nurture.

But next year is our family reunion. And I can’t wait.

“Mirroring” isn’t an insult, or necessarily manipulative. It is literally built in to us humans! Our brains have specific portions dedicated to imitation and empathy called “mirror neurons”.

These neurons help us feel what others around us are feeling. It’s why you feel sad when you see someone else being sad. Or why it can make us smile to see someone else having a great day!

The behavior of mirroring someone is a form of social bonding (“See! I’m like you!”) which is the basis of building human relationships.

Having in-jokes and picking up particular quirks of people around us probably has a special jargon to psychologists.

But I think it’s really just being friends.

I suppose that’s gonna be engine dependent, but godot works fine. …assuming your project is a fit for godot!