Haven’t used Mint in a while, but I think it’s mostly a function of the kernel. IIRC, there’s a nice GUI for selecting what kernel you want on Mint. Would probably only make a difference if you have new hardware and need a newer kernel.

You can check the model number to tell if it’s an OEM. I got my last phone off Swappa which allows you to filter by stuff like model number and condition.

I see an em-dash on a comment in MainActivity.kt on line 278, so I’m guessing it was used extensively. Also, a “→” character on 291.

Impossible. Signal said they have no choice but to use AWS for this kind of thing.

I think at least some are scams. I would think there are ways to design cameras to mostly mitigate this too. I’m guessing ALPRs have the ability to see license plates at night even though headlights are emitting a large amount of light over a broad spectrum (including IR).

Will be selectively enforced and they’ll gradually tighten down over time.

I’ve seen some reporting that claims the US and Israel is bombing leftist opposition in Iran. And arming Kurdish militants. Seems like they just want Iran completely destabilized.

At the most basic level, the Trump admin likely has plans to make bank on it. Perhaps bribes or “deals” with oil companies, Israel, weapons manufacturers, etc.

Also, a part of the MAGA coalition consists of Zionists (the Evangelical Christians and Zionists Jews [both are death cults, IMO]), which makes it easier for Trump to do these things without too much opposition from MAGA. And, groups like AIPAC have been somewhat successful at tipping the scales of US elections against politicians that don’t support Israel.

MAGA is a cult (and consists of previously existing cults such as Evangelical Christianity). As Trump said, there’s nothing he could do to lose their support.

Many countries are supporting these wars, death, and destruction as well (e.g. France, Germany, U.K., many countries in the region, Israel).

There are studies that show the tactile nature of books and hand written notes improves retention and encourages more thought, so it would seem likely that going more digital would have negative impacts on education.

Even that grifter Sam Altman was talking about how he takes notes a while back.

Enter The Void is pretty good.

I don’t think LLMs will become AGI, but… planes don’t fly by flapping their wings. We don’t necessarily need to know how animal brains work to achieve AGI, and it doesn’t necessarily have to work anything like animal brains. It’s quite possible if/when AGI is achieved, it will be completely alien.

A Web of Trust/friend-of-a-friend system could somewhat work. Where every person has their own personal trust scores of others, including implied trust by navigating the graph. Global trust scores are susceptible to Sybil attacks, but local ones are more resilient (still susceptible though). Hyphanet seems to have a decent WoT implementation, though the user count is so low, it hasn’t really went through a trial by fire yet.

I’ve seen them installed in pairs that watch each other. I also see them in the vicinity of store security cams or intersection cams. I don’t know of one in my area that isn’t in range of another camera.

I used to. My current router seems to handle QoS gracefully, so I haven’t found a need to. For the last year or so, I’ve been seeding everything until it gets > 2 ratio and there are > 10 seeders, otherwise I just keep seeding. I just looked, and I have one torrent with > 200 ratio, lol.

At his White House news conference, Trump announced alternative options, including an immediate 10% global tariff.

Lol, the US is a clown show.

I agree that company fundamentals don’t matter, and that the goal right now seems to be techno-feudalism.

Retail is ~40% of the stock market, and retirement is ~20%. I think it will pop whenever the next recession starts. If enough people lose their jobs, and start selling their stocks and dipping into their retirement to pay bills, these stocks will tank. It’s my theory that these stocks are held up by all the people passively investing in index funds following the SP500 and NASDAQ. During any small sell-off by active investors, a lot of people’s retirement plans will eventually automatically just buy and slowly bring it back up.

A scare, widely reported by media, could also cause people to take enough notice where a lot of people manually adjust their plans. But, yeah, the media is pretty captured now, and will avoid reporting on stuff that could cause scares.

I doubt the US would try to occupy or “nation build.” I assume they’d just bomb a bunch of people and do some small operations with special forces. The goal is to probably set their nuclear program back significantly, and try to do the same thing they did in Venezuela (cut the head off of government, replace with someone they can control, and literally steal their oil for the oligarchs).

I think I’d install proxmox on all machines because there is a proxmox provider for Terraform. Then, manually create the VMs, and to learn the barebones, use kubeadm to set everything up, and kubectl to manage it. Once comfortable and knowledgeable with that, start messing around with Terraform and Ansible.

I paid ~$180 for my used mint-condition Pixel 6 on Swappa. You have to look up which exact model numbers are bootloader unlockable, then filter on those.