Opinion

Internet Speed in the Sticks

I understand that most people have ok internet speeds but for me and my wife, it can be a daily struggle.

We live in the middle of nowhere. Comcast doesn’t come out this far and the only things we have are LTE grade cellular and satellite.

HughesNet satellites are too high up to be useful. The latency makes them almost unusable.

Enter Starlink. My wife bought this for us a while ago and it has been a game changer for us.

The only reason I am posting about it is because I just ran a speedtest and got this result.

Screenshot 2023 07 30 at 7 16 17 AM

This is very unusual for us. We’re usually lucky to get 10Mb down.

Happy Sunday!

July 30, 2023 by Opinion

Removing Twitter from My Site

I’ve had a pretty good Twitter sidebar widget for a little while now. In fact, I’m fairly certain I got it after Musk took over.

I couldn’t help but notice that it looks like Twitter decided that they didn’t want to feed these types of widgets anymore and just killed it.

Screenshot 2023 07 19 at 9 04 07 AM

Of course, I have posts on Twitter. Many of them.

I went to try and upgrade to Twitter Blue and was told that I don’t post enough to be using Twitter Blue.

Therefore, my giving a fuck about Twitter days are slowly coming to an end.

As far as I’m concerned, there are no real substitutes for it. Anything Meta is involved with is always something I run away from. So, Threads is out. I don’t trust the company at all nor do I feel like contributing to their bottom line. There are plenty of idiots who use their products to keep them in business. I’m just not one of those idiots.

Great read about how badly Threads is performing here.

Mastodon is not even close. It takes way too much to get started using it for the average user which means that the user base will always be small.

I loved the old Twitter, before Elon Musk got involved with it. I think he does most things well but I never felt like Twitter was one of them.

July 19, 2023 by Opinion Twitter

This Will NEVER Stop

Via AP…

JERUSALEM (AP) — A Palestinian gunman opened fire outside an east Jerusalem synagogue Friday night, killing seven people, including a 70-year-old woman, and wounding three others before he was shot and killed by police, officials said. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in years and raised the likelihood of more bloodshed.

The attack, which occurred as residents were observing the Jewish sabbath, came a day after an Israeli military raid killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank. Friday’s shooting set off celebrations in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, where people fired guns into the air, honked horns and distributed sweets.

The burst of violence, which also included a rocket barrage from Gaza and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, has posed an early challenge for Israel’s new government, which is dominated by ultranationalists who have pushed for a hard line against Palestinian violence. It also cast a cloud over a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region Sunday.

The only way to achieve peace is to take away the thing that the two children are fighting over. Simple parental tactics will solve this problem.

January 29, 2023 by Opinion

Article Titles to Avoid

I have a lot of ideas about what a good title should be when writing an article, book, chapters, or anything else that literally requires some sort of title.

In my most humble opinion, I don’t see the value in taking leaps or making assumptions about how the reader should “feel” about your article. Look at the following example.

19 Photos From Dumpster Divers That’ll Make Anyone Who Hates Waste Scream At The Top Of Their Lungs

Really? If I hate waste (hate is a strong word) then logically (in your mind) I should scream at the top of my lungs?

I don’t think so.

That headline isn’t even good click bait.

I don’t think that you should ever tell anyone how they should feel, how they should live, or anything else really. Why? No one is smart enough to do that. Let’s face it. People are dumb. ALL of us.

Yes. I include myself in that.

Perhaps, the article title could be written in a much better way.

19 Photos from Dumpster Divers.

That title alone peaks my interest. No need to tell me how I should feel about it. I can make that determination on my own. Thank you.

December 29, 2022 by Opinion Writing

Scary Shit

This article should scare the shit out of you.

Programming is a powerful and ubiquitous problem-solving tool. Systems that can assist programmers or even generate programs themselves could make programming more productive and accessible.

Our movie makers have made countless films about the dangers of A.I. and what that type of future would look like.

Battlestar Galactica
The Terminator

Just to name a couple of them.

December 10, 2022 by Crazy Death Opinion

Artificial Intelligence or Smart Algorithm?

I stumbled across an ad this morning in the news journal I read.

Screenshot 2022 12 08 at 6 19 59 AM

There is a small snippet that says AI-Vetted.

I want to be clear. As of this writing, there is no such thing as AI. Artificial Intelligence implies sentience which has not yet been achieved. Another way of describing it would be the term “self-aware.”

Science hasn’t built that yet. We throw around the term AI as if that is what the process should be called. How about smart algorithm? It doesn’t sound as cool as AI. However, smart algorithm is what we should be using.

As soon as someone creates AI, I’ll be one of the first people to post about it as I make my way to a remote country to escape the SkyNet that will most assuredly follow.

December 8, 2022 by Artificial Intelligence Opinion

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