Eh, I just switched to audiobooks. I get them from my library and listen while I drive, work in the yard, ride my bike, etc.

I’d really like a self-hosted smart speaker though that I could call out a song and it would play. So like Alexa, but all the AI is local. I’m willing to pay for the music service, but I need to own the platform and be able to change music services easily. The only time I really listen to music is when entertaining friends/family, and using my phone is getting old.

Yup, both are difficult. But you can at least use maps anonymously if you do it from a separate profile, which can help a little.

But just knock one out at a time and eventually it won’t seem as hard to switch to a competitor.

Honestly, the live traffic information is pretty bad in my area anyway. It’ll say a road has high traffic or an accident long after the traffic has cleared, or it’ll say it’s clear when it’s clearly not.

So if that’s your hangup, try going without it for a week or two and see if it really impacts you.

I think that’s mostly true, but people can and do get off on 4th amendment defences, even for serious crimes like murder. So if the court recognizes that a search violated the 4th amendment, it’s not going to be admitted just because it’s a “serious crime.”

But the police can and do pay private parties to do things that would be illegal for them to do. That loophole should be closed. Any use of information as evidence by law enforcement should require a subpoena, and maybe even requesting it for a lead should also require a subpoena.

So if someone tips law enforcement off that I have a controlled substance on my property and are willing to provide evidence, law enforcement should be required to bring that in front of a judge along with their own evidence for why that source is trustworthy, especially in this age of AI when people can easily generate believable images. The standard for probable cause should be higher than it is.

So as a mostly law abiding citizen, I’ll resist that nonsense. It’s the least I can do to look just like those who may be targeted by the police.

The hypothetical here is that the child sought out the adult, not the other way around, and the child is near legal age and presents as if legal age. Given that set of assumptions, how much liability does the adult have?

That is the philosophical part of it. But reality isn’t that neat. Here are some questions that need to be asked:

• how did the child get there?
• how much did the adults know? How much should they have assumed?
• what kind of pressure, implied or otherwise, was the child under?

I don’t think Stallman considered that, I think he only considered the hypothetical.

You can survey users of photo editing software and ask something like:

• have you heard of GIMP?
• have you used GIMP?
• if not, why? name, features, ux, etc

Yup, that’s what I do.

Yup. The only surveillance on my computers is what I put there, and it never leaves my network.

I block pretty much everything else. I have ad-blockers, firewalls, routing rules, etc. If the government wants to surveil me, they’re going to need to put in some effort.

Do it!

I’m still working on it, but I’ve cut out quite a bit. Start with Chrome, and work your way down.

When you get to email, Gmail has a very convenient forwarding feature so you can forward all email to the new one while you change accounts and whatnot. I made a new account elsewhere, and I have a separate folder for email from my old Gmail and my new email. Every so often I’ll go fix an account or two, so I’m making steady progress.

For me, docs/drive is the hardest, so I’m doing it last. I’m playing with self-hosted options, and am still in an adjustment period.

IDK, I agree with Stallman in a philosophical, pedantic sense on some of his gross views, but I reject it from a policy perspective.

On pedophilia, Stallman went on the assumption that a child can consent to an adult, and I agree with the conclusion that, if they consent, it’s totally okay, regardless of age. But he missed the most important bit: children can’t consent. So I agree with the conclusion philosophically, I just disagree with the assumed premise. He didn’t seem to understand the age of consent and why it exists. When he made that statement, I understood where he was coming from, and I also understood that it would be a bad look and that he shouldn’t have opened his mouth.

I disagree with him a lot too, especially politically. But I feel like I understand his reasoning, and in many cases we just disagree on some fundamental assumptions. I like that he’s a very logical person, but being highly logical can end very poorly when you’re dealing with shaky assumptions.

Eh, AI is over hyped imo, and I’m not particularly interested in running it at all. But local models do exist, and I hear they’re pretty decent, so Linux users can get most of what they want today.

Linux shouldn’t brand itself as anti-AI, and it really shouldn’t brand itself as anti-anything, it should brand itself as being pro-user. If you want AI, Linux can handle that, and if you don’t, Linux doesn’t force it. It’s the option for user choice. Oh, and if you don’t want choice and just want it to work, there’s a distro for that.

Those trees always getting in the way…

I propose September 17, the day of the first Linux release.

As someone in Utah as well, who exactly measures that? Can I get their job?

This appears to have only 30% porn, thus it’s okay…

But how many people skip it due to the name? What are the actual numbers?

You’ll generally get less from a defined benefit plan vs a defined contribution plan. A defined benefit plan is an insurance product, so the managers are encouraged to be more conservative with investments to limit risk. A defined contribution plan is an investment product, so the managers are encouraged to maximize returns.

Would you rather have a 5% yield guarantee or a very high chance at 10% return? (as in, 10% has been consistent in the past) In almost every scenario, a defined benefit plan will have much lower usable cash and no inheritance vs a defined contribution plan.

The US actually has both. Social Security is a defined benefit plan, and a 401k is defined contribution. Social Security is intended to replace ~40% of pre-retirement income (more for lower income, less for higher income), and the 401k is intended to fill in the gaps.

It’s not, bonds (i.e. TIPS) and real estate are. As inflation goes up, so do coupon rates to counter inflation. As inflation goes down, so do rates, meaning older individual bonds can be liquidated for more money to free up cash for other investments.

Gold is a hedge against stocks. People think gold has value, so they buy it if they think there will be a recession. Inflation often goes up when stocks go down because the Fed slashes rates to encourage spending, and more spending (demand) drives up prices. So gold may appear correlated to inflation, but it’s really more inversely correlated to stocks.

So if you want to speculate on stocks going down, gold is a decent option. But if you think inflation will go up, bonds are the way to go.

But not all data is relevant. For some reason you’re comparing gold and inflation, but gold isn’t a currency (anymore) and thus isn’t really related to inflation.

Gold prices largely reflect concern about the direction of the economy, they don’t reflect currency valuations or costs of things. People move to gold when they think stocks are going to collapse, they don’t move to gold when prices for things go up.

In the words of Warren Buffett (from memory, not a direct quote):

Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.

The way I read this is:

• gold is high (people being greedy)
• stocks are recovering (hit in 2022)
• bonds are down (rates have been going up)

So I think gold will see a correction in the next 6 months, and those people will likely flock to stocks. But that depends on economic indicators remaining strong, inflation figures dropping, and bond rates staying steady or dropping a little. Depending on the election outcome, we may see stocks correct a bit as well.

But I don’t think we’ll see a “housing meltdown” because inventory is still low in many areas and new construction isn’t keeping up with demand. I think we’ll see housing level off once builders can catch up and real wages recover from the cash injection in 2020.

So in general, I’m bearish on gold, and “wait and see” on stocks until after the election. None of this impacts my investing strategy though, which is the same as it has always been, it only impacts my speculation budget.

Why do you think gold and inflation are related in any significant way? Nobody buys anything with gold, so I don’t see how it’s relevant.

how does that not crash and burn

It does. A lot of people try to get into leveraged investing and end up in bankruptcy. What you’re seeing from finfluencers is selection bias: either they’re one of the few who didn’t crash and burn (largely luck) or they’re lying.

A lot of real estate leverage strategies go after other loan options after banks stop giving them mortgages. That means hard money lending, angel investing, etc, where you’re taking on high loan rates and giving up equity in a business in other to try to generate enough cash flow to outrun the payments. If everything works perfectly, you can stabilize and pay off the higher interest loans. But if you have any issues (higher than expected vacancy rates, needed repairs, etc), you absolutely can crash and burn.

The best option imo is to house hack. Here’s a leveraged strategy with far less risk than those finfluencers, but still quite risky and hinges on you doing a lot of work:

1. buy a multi-unit property, live in one of the units, and rent the rest - you get primary residence rates, and you can move out in a couple years
2. repeat step 1 on a new property
3. sell property 1 after 2-ish years of moving out to get the maximum tax benefits
4. buy an investment property or two with proceeds from 3
5. repeat until you’re tired of living in multi-unit properties

Congratulations, you now own multiple multi-unit properties all with mortgages you can actually afford because your risk is diversified across several properties and your loan rates are relatively low.

However, you’ll need decent income to do steps 1&2 to qualify for the mortgages, and you’ll need to spend a lot of time dealing with tenants, so you’ll basically be working two high stress jobs.

This is still incredibly leveraged, but you’re reducing risk a bit by being physically present and thus can react to problems more quickly. It’s not for me, since I much prefer passive investing (stocks) to real estate leveraged strategies, but some people see success with it.