Old guy in the USA. My first car was a sport motorcycle so six speed with clutch and shifter. I have a sedan with an auto trans, but also a 4WD truck with manual. When I learned to drive in my teens automatic transmissions were not as nice as they are now, just three speeds and not very smooth. Now they’re typically six speed and much nicer. I really dislike a manual trans in heavy traffic, quite a chore.

I do 76F in the summer for AC and 68F in the winter for heating. Try to use minimal heating and air and still maintain a comfortable range. Can get expensive if working the system too hard. If it wasn’t a matter of cost I’d leave it on 72F all the time.

Evaporative coolers are great if you live where you can use one, much cheaper to run and they can work pretty good as long as humidity isn’t too high. I had one in a house I lived in before along with a regular AC system. It was a good to have and saved a lot on the electric bill. If it was dry enough out the AC unit was not needed.

Haven’t used a heat pump before and don’t know much about them. If they work as well and cost less to operate that would be a good option, but I wouldn’t use one if it’s a downgrade in performance. Rather pay for the comfort.

They will get rid of all human employees and drive their companies into the ground before they realize ML is supposed to supplement jobs, not take them over completely.

Exactly, replacing jobs with robots will not end well. It’s been going on for a long time and is about to hit the steep of the curve. Problem is when machines are doing all the work, there’s nobody making money to support the consumer economy a company relies on.

Even for companies that don’t rely on the consumer market there’s a trickle down. They’re producing for companies that do and their customers will dry up when those companies fail.

In order for a wholly machine serviced industrial system to work we would need a whole new economic system. That’s not a good thing since we’re talking a situation where everyone is basically a ward of the state. We saw how well that worked for the former USSR.

Machines need to help people do their jobs, not replace them. The people running these companies have always been notoriously short sighted and it will be their end, ours too. The draw is too big to resist since labor costs are by far the biggest overhead in running a company.

These modern CEOs need to take a lesson from Henry Ford who’s goal was to close the circle, pay people to make the products they will buy. He pretty much invented the middle class. That idea died in industry a long time ago and nobody is the better for it.

Stardew Valley: I really enjoy the game and play it on PC. It saves the game only at end of turn which is a game day. If I’m not able to finish my turn I have to put the computer to sleep instead of shut it down. Also if I make a mistake which is easy to do I have to start from the last save which can lose a good amount of progress and sometimes random pickups. Though it’s my only peeve with the game so it’s still doing better than most.

Yes female action heroes are a trope now. They’ve over-played it, but of course anything from Marvel or DC is going to be shit. These days they’re just movie mills pumping out the same old rehash.

The Alien movies made a female action hero seem natural. They did it right. There’s been a few others that have done it right. More have done it wrong.

I don’t know anything about the Barbie move since I haven’t seen it. I would like to see it but will wait until it comes to streaming. My wife saw it with a group of her friends and said it was cute and weird, but definitely worth the watch. So evidently it’s not in the same caliber as Legally Blonde.

I never thought Reddit was addictive. I actually spend more time on Lemmy in a day than I did on Reddit. My browsing habits changed though. Reddit is so big I only looked at a few niche subreddits. Lemmy being much smaller I view a much wider range of topics. It’s a different and better experience for me.

Haha, most of my opinions are unpopular. Some posted in this in thread I agree with.

I think sci-fi has it right with that, I mean you’d only get up out of your chair or whatever receptacle to perform bodily functions. Most people think everyone would turn into fat blobs, but I think that’s not the case. There’s this one sci-fi where I think they got it right, most people became emaciated due to a failure to eat and get any exercise.

Oh and I’ll take the blue pill, VR all the way, reality blows. Though some might say reality is already virtual. It’s an interesting hypothesis, sure would explain a lot.

uBlock Origin forever and always.

Haha, most important program on my computer. My browser is a uBO support system.

I’ve ripped a good number of blu-rays to network storage. If you’re looking for older, less popular stuff it’s the best option. And older releases are usually just a few bucks. The new stuff I torrent because I can usually find a decent rip, but for stuff I want to put in my library a rip from optical disk is the best, but not free of course. You can even do it for free, public libraries often have a good collection of older releases on optical disk.

Strange new Worlds. I think it’s the best Star Trek series since the original. I don’t think the casting is particularly great, but Anson Mount makes up for it. Like William Shatner was born to be Captain Kirk, Anson Mount was born to be Captain Pike.

I watched the whole series recently, it’s on YouTube.

Some years ago I had the whole collection on VHS, tells you how long ago that was. Haven’t seen it anywhere since, I’ll rewatch it if I do.

I rarely use any kind of chat, but I used IRC sometimes back in the day. I was recently working on a thing where I needed to use Discord for some programming advice. I got the info I needed, but yeah that Discord is a convoluted mess. Newer hardly ever means better.

I just finished Season 2, have to say I enjoyed Season 1 more. Despite what Tennant claims the writers are pretty irreverent about traditional Christian views. He’s probably correct in saying it doesn’t outright promote Satanism, but it certainly takes it lightly. Doesn’t bother me in the least, it’s supposed to be comedic satire. Though if you subscribe to traditional Christian views and have no sense of humor (which there is a dearth of these days), don’t watch that show, it will make you really mad.

BTW, the flaming Bentley at the conclusion of Season 1 was comedy genius.

I’m not a big book reader, but a friend got me “The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla and Other Works”. It’s sitting on my nightstand when I can motivate to crack a boot. The book I finished before it was “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking.

I like reading works from Scientists. I can’t understand their research papers because of the math, but I enjoy the works they do for the layman.

I mean that’s all I can really do.

Unfortunately when my bank or other critical institution rejects Firefox for failure to use attestation, I can’t even do that. I’ll be forced to use Chrome. Firefox would have to adopt WEI to remain compatible. In that case I can use Firefox, but it would be the same as using Chrome.

I’d say the monopoly Google has with Chrome is way more threatening than in the early 2000’s with MS and IE. That threat resulted in an anti-trust lawsuit, but not a peep from any government about the destruction Google is doing.

We’re doomed. We were always doomed.

I’m afraid that’s always been the case because the mass majority just don’t a give a shit. They’ll happily conform to whatever the monopolies tell them to.

There might have be a time when Google tried not to be evil, but they’ve been Satin himself for a good number of years now. It just took them a while to realize the irony of their mission statement. It’s funny I used to get mad at Microsoft for being evil, but they’ve got nothing on Google.

This is the problem for me. If my bank or other critical institution decides to refuse me access with Firefox, I can’t use Firefox. This is the crux of the issue. Google is creating a browser monopoly with it’s market dominance and attestation scheme.

MS tried to exert control in the early 2000’s with its IE dominance and was thwarted by an anti-trust lawsuit. Google will probably skate on this one. Nowadays the consumer is only a resource to be plundered. The customer is shit.