Interesting. I was brought up in the '80s and '90s thinking I belonged to the middle class. Tory-voting, Daily Express-reading, shares-owning parents, father a professional with his own business, living in a safe, blue seat.

It took me many years to realise that I am in fact working-class. The social mobility my parents thought we had has been quickly disassembled for mine and following generations, and despite having a ‘good job’ with a reliable employer, I live hand to mouth and can never dream of even saving money, never mind investing in shares.

From your post, I can now understand why my parents thought they were middle-class Tories, despite one of them growing up in a hugely deprived town with a very basic education and the other being an immigrant.

It is the horseshoe crab of trees

Given the right conditions, some plants can live indefinitely. Others die shortly after seeding.

Do plants die of old age though? Now that question has been put in my head, I need to know.

Be back in a bit, going down a rabbit hole.

The culture novels, such a good pick!

I played the game back when it originally came out. Like any media based on a book, it was slightly frustrating for a while that the graphics didn’t match the visuals I had imagined whole reading the book. I still have the discs somewhere, might see if I can get it running somehow. I suspect I’ll find the game mechanics to be clunky but today’s standards.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a movie made yet.

Other people who’ve read it and who I’ve talked with seem to be split over whether the first book is better than the sequels, or the other way around. I prefer the sequels, my wife prefers the original. Do you have a preference?

I had no idea this was being worked on, and the news has made my day

Game: Super Mario Galaxy
Book: The Rama series, Arthur C Clarke
TV: The West Wing
Movie: The 5th Element

If you’re not using GNU/Hurd are you even trying?

As an ex-Catholic, I would like to say, fuck the Catholic church. For this bullshit and their many other crimes, moral failings and abuse.

Explains the wooden acting in Hudson Hawn

• Edit: I’m leaving the typo because it’s funnier than the film

Simple fix, change legal name to Al.

Stick red strobe lights on the front and that’s looking a lot like KITT’s mom.

Time to ditch the Guy Fawkes mask for a powdered wig instead

Brewdogwhistle

One of the critical differences between FOSS and commercial software is that FOSS projects don’t need to drive sales and consequently also don’t need to immediately jump onto technology trends in order to not look like they’re lagging behind the competition.

What I’ve consistently seen from FOSS over the 30 years I’ve been using it, is that if a technology choice is a good fit for the problem, then it will be adopted into projects where relevant.

I believe that there are use cases where LLM processing is absolutely a good fit, and the projects that need that functionality will use it. What you’re less likely to see is ‘AI’ added to everything, because it isn’t generally a good solution to most problems in it’s current form.

As an aside, you may be less likely to get good faith interaction with your question while using the term ‘luddite’ as it is quite pejorative.

Both. Some households, usually in older buildings, pay ‘water rates’ based on the size of their property. Others, including all newly built homes, have water meters which report usage back to the company. We pay for supply of clean water as well as transportation and processing of surface water run-off and sewage.

This comment deserves to be immortalised on a plaque