I saw a documentary about this. I think they called it Caprica.

“Don’t be silly, they can’t do that. That’d be antisemitic.” – Bibi Utteryahoo

In LMDE4, 5 and 6, I pretty much had to install the OEM NVIDIA driver because the open source Nouveau driver didn’t quite cut it, but for AMD, the stock driver that comes with LMDE7 has worked fine for my purposes so far.

I may change my tune if I try to run a more modern game*, but that will likely put me back in Frankendebian territory which caused me problems under LMDE6. (As you might surmise, I upgraded to new hardware and tried to do things as I’d always done them when LMDE6 was current.)

* Minecraft notwithstanding, because it both is and isn’t modern. That can get above 1000 FPS if I don’t limit it.

Literally: https://www.youtube.com/@Amateur.Chemistry

I guess no-one else thought to take the name before he did.

Usenet then Slashdot and a forum on a website that no longer exists.

Once I got Internet at home, there were a few online chatrooms that were web based, but were basically IRC. It looks like one of those sites still exists, but if it’s the same one I used (and Yahoo used as a proxy) it’s not at the URL I used it at. Also either I’ve forgotten my details or I’ve been deleted (or it’s a knock-off).

Then Digg, Reddit, Twitter and now the Fediverse.

Oh and throw Discord in there too somewhere towards the latter end.

Dishonourable mentions: MyYearbook and Tagged.com. The former was a bit like old-school MySpace, but it became a soulless dating site called MeetMe with none of the fun Flash games and chat. Tagged was basically a (surprisingly smut-free) user avatar trading site. Attractive people’s pictures (usually women) could end up worth ridiculous sums of fake money. Like vigintillions of dollars kinds of ridiculous.

Now it seems that both are part of the same company, at least based on how the websites for MeetMe and Tagged look. Very glad I’m out of there.

If you want some idea what it might have been like, it would probably be about as close to Welsh as Welsh is to Breton.

… which might not be all that helpful as a factoid, so here’s Wikipedia’s Swadesh list for the Celtic languages: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Celtic_Swadesh_lists

(In loosely related news, you know you might have been reading too much about linguistics when, while scanning the above, you recognise the Welsh word “benyw” as a cognate for the English word “queen”, (but with a meaning closer to Norwegian “kvinne”). That was a kick in the head for sure.)

One thing is certain: Your distro’s repository’s version of yt-dlp - even on bleeding edge distros - is likely out of date, and you’ll have to find and run the appimage version from the devs.

I’m not OP, but yes I hoard. For most of the non-sentimental stuff, any third party coming in would result in me saying “OK” and throwing it all out because wanting to get that third party out of my safe space as soon as possible and not have to think about it would trump the need to keep those things.

And I’d deal with the regret later. Both that I didn’t have the stuff any more and the cynical belief that the need for it is bound to be hastened precisely because I got rid of it.

For the sentimental stuff, that third party is going to quickly become an enemy, whether either of us likes it or not.

Stuff that’s in the middle ground, for example, old computer parts, maybe that third party might be able to help reason about it, but it’s going come down to one of the two above results pretty quick.

FWIW, I had a partial clear out about a decade ago and I still have regrets.

“Might be useful one day” is a real problem for hoarders.

If you find a use for one of those things you’re keeping, you won’t have another because you would have already used it, so you keep two. But if you keep two and use one, then you’ll find yourself in the situation where you only have one, so better have three just to be safe. Now multiply that for several different kinds of things and you have a house full of stuff.

And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the stuff that might have a sentimental attachment.

I have nothing against China as in the landmass, nor most of the people that live there. They have an ancient history, a fascinating set of languages, interesting culture, wildlife, natural beauty, but beyond that, the Chinese are just people, trying to get by, like everyone everywhere else.

What I don’t like is the way the country is run. Especially the fact that I’d be unwise to go there for espousing such an opinion.

I could say much the same of Russia, for that matter.

And my own government and the other parties who stand a chance of becoming a future government here all seem to be headed in a similar direction and I don’t like that either.

So now they’ll dump it in a warehouse somewhere and raise prices to pay rent on that warehouse like all good scam recycling companies do.

And they’ll tell the EU that they’re waiting for an opportunity to sell it but that hasn’t arisen yet. And thus, by and large, they won’t change how they operate.

It’s actually an infinitesimal chance per subatomic particle, so if it does happen it’s actually more likely you’ll only be partway through the wall before your luck runs out.

And if that weren’t existential dread enough, the same applies to walking on floors.

Floating in space seems safe right about now.

… except that quantum tunnelling can happen without anything in the way. Any one or more of the particles that make up a person can spontaneously resolve its wave function elsewhere in the universe.

But the odds of any of this happening, especially in a massive object with interlinked wave functions, are so close to zero they might as well be.

Dr Becky (aka Dr Rebecca Smethurst) for Astrophysics / Space news.

Any of the channels run by Brady Haran like Numberphile and Periodic Videos.

Most of my other picks have been mentioned already or else lean into spectacle which might not be appreciated by a 12-year-old girl. (Quite a few of the chemistry channels I watch are like this. In order of decreasing silliness: Nile Blue / Nile Red, Labcoatz, Amateur Chemistry, Chemical Force… Actually CF is pretty good by comparison.)

But I’m not you or your daughter. Check them out anyway and see if either of you likes what you see.

Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 1919.

This case found and entrenched in US law that the primary purpose of a corporation is to operate in the interests of its shareholders.

Therefore OpenAI, based in California, would be under threat of lawsuit if they didn’t do that.

This goose is already cooked.

Language evolves. Ð/ð made it into the very early Old English alphabet, but it didn’t last long and was supplanted by Þ/þ for both soft and hard sounds.

Bear in mind that very few people were literate at that time, and that there are very few, if any, words that were distinguished by the need of an ð (I mean, we get by just fine with “th” for both sounds), so those who could write, simplified.

S and Z have a similar kind of relationship, and we harden S in places we might otherwise expect a Z, just like what happened with Þ. One of, if not the main reason Z has managed to stick around in English is because of its use in loanwords from other languages, and we’re now so familiar with them we don’t even think of them as foreign. And likewise Z itself.

Freedom to kiss Putin’s ring? What more could you want?

The closest I get is the “release” or “drop” or similarly hard to describe thing that I could do when trapped on a hot bus on hot days that allowed me to handle the heat, but it only worked every so often.

I imagine I was triggering a change in blood pressure through conscious vascular relaxation or similar. Or maybe I was just fooling myself. But it gave a few moments of reprieve from the oppressive heat and allowed a reset before I started boiling again. (Getting off the bus would have meant being out, walking, in cooler air, but under the hot sun for even longer.)

We don’t get hot weather a lot in the UK (even if it is increasing in frequency) and even more rarely have I found myself on a bus during the brunt of it, so it’s not exactly something I have much need or opportunity to practise.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some kind of control over the “blood runs cold” fear response. That would fit with my psychology, tbh.

Blame the time vortex and an information paradox called Bad Wolf.

- or “wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff” if you prefer.

Dolphins evolved from land mammals just like we did. Kick that fish and there won’t be any dolphins.

The DDR4 sticks I got 18 months ago now cost 300-400% the price they were, so it’s not just DDR5.

… and I just realised the title doesn’t actually mean “DDR5 prices”, but that was an easy misinterpretation on my part, so I guess I’ll post this anyway.