Oxford University is older than calculus.

As a kid Amiga Workbench was my first desktop environment, and then later Win 3.11 in MS DOS.

I remember my dad toying with Linux but can’t remember which one (he did settle on SuSE though I recall). My first linux distros was Ubuntu.

Aggressive capitalism coupled with user ignorance is the main issue. The advice still remains don’t install all this shit, but people growing uo with smartphones have bought in to this idea that it’s reasonable for Google to spy on your every move, so why not every other app?

So many users have no idea how their devices work - even an inkling - now what apps do, how to keep devices secure and private, and what happens with their data. Business has taken advantage of that - people want things to “just work” so business use that as a way to abuse users and make every app a trojan horse for data mining.

Even Google, Apple etc privacy settings are bullshit - they’re just figleafs of psuedo privacy that enable them as the platform makers to dictate the terms.

I switched away from Windows to Linux on PC, and I use FOSS alternatives on my Android device (even considering replacing android with FOSS system - difficult with some work essential apps unfortunately). But even if you stay on windows/android there are plenty of things users can do to protect themselves - they just don’t know how or worse can’t be bothered by the whole issue.

I think your library is a good example of what’s going on and the key is probably what you’re buying. You have lots of games but I bet many of those are smaller games from indie studios; even if you’re not playing those games the studios are benefiting from you low price impulse purchases.

I’m guessing you’re not impulse buying £60 and £75 games from big studios and leaving them unplayed. And I doubt you’d even buy those games if they’re not scoring well; certainly not at full price anyway.

That is the story of the games industry right now - smaller studios are doing well, some very well when they produce very good games, while the big Publishing houses are producing overpriced games, which are poorly quality controlled or even just fundamentally bad.

Can you saturate a market when a £5 impulse buy on a discounted indie game or a discounted AAA game with good review scores from 3+ years ago is about the same as a coffee? Whose going to buy a £70 poorly reviewed new release when you could have bought 100 good games on discount. Even if you don’t play them all, it’s just too good a proposition.

Really well. I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 in Linux on my PC without issue, and plenty of other games on it, my Steam Deck and now a living room mini PC.

A combination of steam (and Proton), Wine and Heroic launcher (for GOG, Epic and toeht stores), plus tech like Vulkan, makes most PC gaming viable in Linux.

There remain some games that don’t work but generally they get tweaked into working with a newer version of Proton. Windows-reliant anticheat software seems to be an issue though if you like competitive fps type games.

So all our evidence about life is from a sample of 1: 1 planet and it’s development. Everything else is extrapolated from that. We don’t know what rates of evolution should be or could be.

Also in terms of civilizations leaving junk everywhere, that is potentially true. But we also only have a sample of 1: 1 planet and 1 solar system which we have barely scratched the surface of.

The absence of evidence is not evidence in itself. We will have to go out in to the universe to see what is there.

In terms of travel to other systems - in theory self replicating ships could spread across the galaxy to every system in about 500 thousand years at sublight speed. Space travel is not doable in a humans life time, but it is doable on the scale of a stable civilizations efforts to spread into the galaxy.

There are also theoretical ways to travel faster than life. Whether they are pure fantasy or potential science only time will tell. We still can’t even detect much of the universe, let alone begin to manipulate it.

We simply know too little to know what is going on in the galaxy. To say “there is nobody out there” is just a possibility, not a certainty.

Maybe. There are so many possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox.

• Radio signals may just become too incoherent at great distances that we cannot recognise meaning from noise. The evidence is too hard to detect.
• Alien civilizations that are more advanced than us, could be using energy and communication methods we haven’t even thought to try to detect yet. We’re looking for the wrong evidence.
• advanced technology for communication, travel and energy could also be much more efficient - maybe there is nothing to detect. There is no evidence to find sitting on earth.
• in theory a civilization travelling at sub light speed could cplonize the galaxy with self replicating machines in 0.5 million years. Where are they? Well what if we ourselves are the product? Life on earth seeded from elsewhere? We are the evidence?
• maybe they’re around us in space but not interested in us - we’re ants to them.
• maybe they’re around us in space but don’t want to contaminate us, letting us reach them when we’re ready.they are hiding form us.
• maybe space is vastly more dangerous than we can comprehend and civilizations keep quiet to avoid predator species - the dark forest theory
• maybe life is extremely rare and spread out, and we are an aborrhation- the great filter

The Fermi Paradox is an interesting question, but it is not an answer in itself.

You got hit by a car and your parents and SO already found a lawyer? I support the idea but I seems pretty quick - I guess people deal with stress in different ways, and it was their way of helping “fix the problem”.

I hope you’re OK, the whole thing sounds traumatic. The flash backs should ease but if they don’t, do think about getting support in the coming days or weeks to help you process what you’ve been through. Hope you’re feeling better soon!

Didn’t Reddit signpost that they’d signed a deal with Google over AI? Is Google driving visitors to Reddit in exchange and to their benefit?

No. I was on Facebook when I was in my early 20s but I found it hollow and vapid; everyone being fake, showing off and pretending for their feeds. I also didn’t like how much data Facebook/meta was harvesting so I deleted my account. I haven’t missed it and it’s been over 15years.

The only social media I use is Lemmy (previously reddit), and that is anonymous and separate from my life - way better than the fake shit on Facebook.

Instagram, Tiktok etc - it’s all fake and narcissistic, influencers are just shills, and the companies themselves are just stealing your data and advertising at you the entire time.

Fuck social media, it’s the surge of our age.

But people self host email today, and there are many more email orgs around including private work email and specialised services such as Proton mail focusing on privacy and security. It’s a good analogy.

An open standard like Mastodon will allow big players but also niche and small players, who can focus on specific communities or offering specific spins.

Not really. That windows is targeted more is not to do with it being closed source or necessarily less secure; it is ubiquitous and so from a hacker/malware point of view it’s the best chance of getting a financial reward from their efforts.

However it being closed source makes it harder to identify and patch the holes. We only come across those holes either because a good actor has taken the time to find them (which is hard work) or a bad actor has started exploiting the flaws and been caught - which is terrible as the horse has already bolted, and often stumbled across after damage has been done

Open source does not magically fix that problem, it just puts the good and bad actors on a more level open playing field. Software can be secure with open code as security is about good design rather than obscuration. But open source code can also be very insecure due to bad design, and those flaws are open to anyone to see and exploit. And it requires people taking the time and effort to actually review and fix the code. There is less incentive to do that in some ways as it is currently less targeted.

However there are a lot more benefits to open source beyond that, including transparency, audit, and collaboration. It’s those benefits together that make open source compelling.

Security is also more than being hacked. There are lots of examples of closed source software doing things to benefit it’s makers rather than its users - scraping user data for example and sending it home to be exploited. It’s harder to hide in open source software, but someone also has to take the time to look.

Absolutely, this is a good explanation.

And to add, so many pieces of software share code through shared libraries or systems. Open source means if there is a flaw in one library that is found and fixed, all the software that uses it downstream can benefit.

Closed source, good actors might not even know their software is using flawed older libraries as it’s hidden from view.

Plus open source allows audit of code to ensure the software is what it says it is. There are plenty of examples of commercial closed software that does things deliberately that do not benefit it’s user, but do benefit the company that makes the software.

Self discipline is a skill in itself and it is something you can learn.

At it’s most basic you restrict things you want and make them a reward for doing a task.

It can be hard to restrict things as you say. When I used to study, I used to go to a “3rd place” to do it. That is somewhere that is not home or work - I used to go to a library. In that environments you don’t have TV, or food, and hopefully you won’t be masturbating.

Mobiles can be very difficult though - if you can’t stop yourself using your phone to watch YouTube then either leave it at home (I know, shocking idea in this day and age!) Or install parental locking/anti distraction software that locks your phone down for certain periods. This can help you learn self discipline with your phone.

Similarly if you study with a laptop, then look at anti distraction tools to keep you focused on your work rather than surfing or on YouTube.

The reward side is very important. You need to be consistent and follow through on your promises to yourself. Don’t use unrealistic rewards - like “if I study for 6 hours today I’ll have dinner tonight”. You’re going to have dinner anyway, and you don’t want to go down the road of punishing yourself. Make it a favourite meal, or promise to watch next episode in a favourite TV show.

The idea is that you will be still enjoying those things because you will study and work. But be prepared to deny yourself those things if you fail to reach your goals in the beginning.

Self discipline is hard, not least because you can cheat yourself too easily. But it’s worth putting in the effort, and the forced physical separation from the distractions and rewards at home makes it easier.

Dead is not the same as gone. We are a stream of consciousness moving through time. The past isn’t “dead” it is just behind us, just as the future is not “birth”.

If you imagine yourself as a river of water, there is still a river behind you and In-front of you, but all you are aware of is now.

Whether or not we can go back or forward in that stream of consciousness - who knows. We don’t know what we perceive when we do actually die.

If you can’t get past this focus on the concept then at least stop thinking of it as “death”. That’s anthropomorphising what is happening (trying to attribute a human experience to it) but it’s adding the baggage of all those negative or anxious feelings we feel about death. Our consciousness moving forward through time is its own thing, it is not death.

A business sim that models a country and you can run any business you want, and see if you can build a successful business. I’m talking a sim that models every other business, every city, every street even. The whole economy. Way beyond what’s realistic for sim games at present.

You can do most of this in Cities Skylines - certainly pedestrian view. Not so much driving a car or a plane but there were mods that did some of that I think.

Cities 2 also has a pedestrian view and there is a photo mode which allows some flying but not a freeform driving/flying mode as you describe.