I actually had the same experience as you (own it, played it only a bit for similar reasons), but FWIW I believe there is a sandbox mode to just play around in.
Another chill medieval town building game is Manor Lords. It has some management but overal is laid back.
Literally was just googling yesterday about why Windows File Explorer genuinely takes longer to boot up than microsoft edge. Insane how fast they are enshittifying.
yea I do think you're right. Really dislike that they've truly stuffed it down as everything getting auto-uploaded to OneDrive. Would be happy to use it to store certain docs but can't control how work sets it up ya know? stuck suffering instead lmao
They can be some great people but as a profession they are known more for their extroversion and soft skills than their high IQ understanding of economics lol
It also depends on how hot the housing market is at any given time. Often time a realtor is just someone who decided everything else was too much work. (My whole family has been in the business for almost 70 years, both commercial and residential.)
I'm sure some do more, but my personal experience on the sales side is that realtors do nothing except serve as gatekeepers to get your house listed in the local MLS. Then they show up at closing to collect their commission.
On the buying side, they do more such as drive prospective buyers around to look at houses, though it's been long enough since I bought a house that I don't know how much virtual tours have replaced this. Either way, it's not what I'd call difficult work.
It is "work" in the sense that you can be busy doing things. Nothing is difficult by any reasonable sense of the word. All the realtors I know who are actually successful are constantly busy, constantly taking phone calls or responding to texts, there's very little downtime. I'm sure there's some nuance to it, and it probably helps to be in the business for a long time, but it's a backup job for 99% of people for a reason.
I've bought and sold a handful of properties in a couple states through my life and have dealt with probably 2 dozen realtors in some professional capacity, and only 1 has been what I would call "good" and that was basically just him giving us insight into the market, being willing to tell us not to buy a house because it wouldn't fit our needs 5 years in the future, etc. Basically just willing to sacrifice a faster or larger commission to get us what we wanted rather than just closing a deal ASAP, which IMO should be the minimum and not the mark of a "good" realtor.
why don't we kill off Goodreads instead! Bad UI, confusing, poor features, toxic users. Letterboxd is harmless, anyone could vibecode a replacement in a day and a half.
while these examples might be easy fodder for criticism I do feel like this whole idea of talking to an LLM across multiple applications and anything your pointer is on will give it context is pretty powerful and cool idea.
I'm imagining a webpage with a link - instead of opening a new link to quickly google something or opening three new tabs based on hyperlinks, i can point at a paragraph or line and ask it to tell me about it.
Maybe I can point at a song on Spotify and have it find me the youtube video, or vice versa (of course this is assuming a tool like this wouldn't stay locked into one ecosystem.. which it will).
Point is that the concept of talking to the computer with mouse as pointer is pretty cool and i guess a step closer to that whole sci-fi "look at this part of the screen and do something"
I wonder what the smallest, still practical, application of this would be now if you could implement it locally on your machine assuming you have decent hardware.
Maybe something with the file system? Like hover over any file and instead of seeing a snapshot or some details/metadata you could get a quick 1-2 line sentence on what it is. I suppose you may want to have that saved somewhere as well to cache it... but I'm def not an expert.
This would solve the always difficult issue of finding that one document! I still have trouble with document search on both mac & windows OS sometimes.
I agree that AI audio interfaces will be the future but not because they are better UIs for users as we understand the term "user" today. The future users of UI are not users of UI at all, they want nothing to do with learning UI or what buttons to press or where to type something. They want to go to the shopping site and instead of typing anything into a search field they want to say "Find me some boots for the summer, I wanna look fresh" and then tell it to complete the purchase via voice as well once it found something. At most they'll still click some filters in the results page and on individual results but that will be it.
hey man, live on the other side of the country from you but just want to share that the collective desire for a third space is so strong that i think no matter what you do you are doing the right thing (so long as it isn't like actively harmful or exclusive, etc.).
like, i live in a big city with a tech scene and i still yearn for a space to just go and hang out to hack in that isn't a college. you are doing a service!
FWIW, not sure how you're funding it and i have no experience just offering a take: I've always felt like I would definitely be fine with spending like $15/mo on having access to a barebones space. Maybe $20-30/mo if there was more that came with it (e.g. coffee machine, occasional events). I know rent is a PITA but I get turned off by coworking spaces that charge upwards of $200+/mo, it's just not feasible obviously for a community space.
Take with that what you will, just offering one person's pov prob in your primary demographic. i'm also kinda cheap lol so maybe i'm the low end, lol
When you're young you're naïve, when you're old you're cursed with a false nostalgia. It's the human condition and we're all kinda stupid like that. You'll have trouble pinning down which group I'm attacking and which I'm supporting.
> When you're young you're naïve, when you're old you're cursed with a false nostalgia
How convenient! So you can dismiss any comment on the basis of them being either to young or to old. I think you're overestimating the stupidity of others to fall for your simpleton attempt of manipulating people.
Consider me (a real person) a case study in exactly this occurring.
Never heard of permacomputing until right now. Super intrigued, very interested in the topic... Saw that whole line of "anti-capitalist, post-marxist, etc." and just got turned off, man. I don't even disagree with any of the principles of those intersections I just don't want to join a movement that labels itself that way.
Maybe thats by design? If the org believes that for this to actually be effective it is inherently anti-capitalist, then it would probably want to keep people who are only there for the surface level vibes and dont understand that to stay away.
I've definitely been a part of orgs, in my case working with homeless folks, where people vaguely want to help but become hindrances when the struggle tries to actually start to address core issues like police abusing homeless folks instead of just being a food distro where they can get their pic taken and feel like they did something.
that's a valid analogy for sure, I get that and see your point. But I'm not sure it applies 1:1 here, though. Whereas the systems you refer to are often structured around this idea of like corporate contribution for good feels, this permacomputing is a novel idea & upstart movement that they want to spread to more people with the goal of a more sustainable society and thoughtful use of electronics.
> more sustainable society and thoughtful use of electronics
This is where I feel there is a difference and disagree with their overt statement of ideologies as the core of the movement. Any environmentalist worth their salt should celebrate any action or idea that just generally supports getting more people to care about, get involved with, or want to protect the environment -- regardless of their age, sex, background, whatever. See: national parks.
And then in the sense of sustainable use of electronics. Who is more sustainable in this sense than the old white dude who runs the computer repair shop or the indian dude running the phone repair place? If I'm on board with permacomputer, I want to look at these guys as the experts in long-lasting & recylable use of electronics... but what's the overlap between those guys and intersectional feminism, ya know?
> Maybe that's by design?
hey man, if they just want a group built around their values to make friends and take on the machine that's fine. who am I to say they shouldn't? anyone should gather with who they please. It's just a shame to turn people off from a movement by defining such a narrow intersection of beliefs, as the OP comment here says. I also would argue that it doesn't have to be strictly *anti-*capitalist as much as pro-socialist/communist/whateveridk.
Using your own final example: could you not argue that if you trim the edges every day to fight weeds (read: practice permacomputing as a daily lifestyle), then over time the weeds may never grow to their fullest extent? And that if you get more and more people to help you trim the edges then over time you may establish a new 'edge' so to speak? (read: status quo).
But by telling people that they aren't really welcome to help you trim unless they agree that they must attack the root of the weeds, even tho that's really hard!
I think that's the wrong way to think about the idea of environmentalism! We should encourage everyone to do whatever they find intersting and helpful. If the oil exec wants to do river clean-ups every weekend then why even balk at that? It's not black & white, it's great that in this theoretically scenario they want to even do that. Maybe over time they realize that the river keeps getting dirty because of their business actions, who knows?
> Using your own final example: could you not argue that if you trim the edges every day to fight weeds (read: practice permacomputing as a daily lifestyle), then over time the weeds may never grow to their fullest extent?
There are two parts.
1. Counter-forces overwhelming your efforts meaning you just lose because they overwhelm you (e.g. climate change acceleration)
2. Permanently (nothing in life is permanent but ya know) getting rid of the problem
I think weed trimming is insufficient for both.
What is this a counter to? All of computing, on an industrial scale. You don’t counter that by hobbyist dilly-dallying.
> And that if you get more and more people to help you trim the edges then over time you may establish a new 'edge' so to speak? (read: status quo).
You can establish a new edge. It has happened before. And then counter-forces build back the old bad thing eventually.
Look, what is the point of trimming weeds if you can get rid of them at the root? What is it? So that you can unlock the achievement of maximum participation? The goal is to clean the garden. Not to get every passerby to clumsily help.
> But by telling people that they aren't really welcome to help you trim unless they agree that they must attack the root of the weeds, even tho that's really hard! I think that's the wrong way to think about the idea of environmentalism! We should encourage everyone to do whatever they find intersting and helpful.
Environmentalists (and humanity) are up against possibly civilization-ending climate change. The goal for them at this point is not to start an inclusive social club.
> If the oil exec wants to do river clean-ups every weekend then why even balk at that? It's not black & white, it's great that in this theoretically scenario they want to even do that.
If the food conglomerate executive that issues orders to throw away tons of perfectly good food in order to not devalue their own produce wants to volunteer at the soup kitchen, why even balk at that?
The point is not to balk at that..
> Maybe over time they realize that the river keeps getting dirty because of their business actions, who knows?
Then what happens next?
They order the company to forfeit profit maximization in order to be nice to the river?
Then the executive gets fired and they are truly one of the people again.
idk man I see your points for sure but feel like you're taking a pessimistic and dramatic take on it. Doing a little something is better than nothing when it comes to climate action. And doing a little something a couple times might lead to greater involvement.
environmentalists (myself included) have tried the doomsday "we need to act now!" approach and it turns off a lot of people, clearly, as evidenced by our societal regression (in the US at least).
any attempt to help weed whack is worthy of inclusion imo
So far I’ve indulged the complaining from OP in this subthread. Here’s a contrast. I have always hated environmentalism that is solely about individual, piecemeal work.
A cause that correctly identifies the political problem is exactly something that I would get behind.
So it’s not this simplistic picture (presented by OP) of being some “inclusive” and “non-political” group that can get all the normies on board, or being a bunch of arseholes that only associate with people who intersect exactly with their interests and proclivities.
But it’s not like you can lead with that when someone says that having a political focus is “extra politics” and “polarization”. The good old “let’s leave politics out of climate change/wealth inequality/tech feudalism” chestnut.
well there's place for both, right? I think it's valid for us to agree at the end of the day that you need to have so-called radical groups that accept nothing less than what they stand for to push, what they call it, the "Overton window" of societally acceptable policies and whatnot? Sure so the radical group pushes these ideas into mainstream consciousness but you need sympathetic, but more moderate groups to make it palatteable to everyone. I think this is a good thing.
The tricky part is where to draw the line? Let's take on the behemoth of black lives matter movement for sake of discussion. Anyone with progressive ideals can get behind the base premise and of course empathize with the origin of it. Many people, whether they identify with left politics or not, maybe saw those origin moments in 2020 and agreed it was messed up and we should be better as a society. And ofc you wouldn't expect the leaders of the movement ot say, "no we dont want to scare the slightly racist people so we just want more bodyacms, its okay if there is still systemic racism" - no! they should push for the most equitable possible society. Cops should be held more accountable for bad acts, any potentially racial motivations need to be investigated, shit, while we're at it, there should be less cops since they are so militaristic in many places! (I agree).
But one thing leads to another and then that push for radical change becomes "defund the police" and all of a sudden you have a cultural backlash because now you're coming after 'good hardworking cops' and now it's a culture war! Now you've got those sympathetic, if apathetic, people who felt bad about george floyd, etc. suddenly hearing that we need to 'get rid of the police' and that could lead to safety issues or their cousin is a cop, whatever. Now they're against it.
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So, interesting thought experiment. If permacomputing folks say, no, you must be anti-capitlist and feminist and post-marxist to practice sustainable computing, essentially, now some of prime demographic who could have joined the movement (hackernews) are a little skeptical because they maybe are a little capitalist or don't understand feminism. Then the average wealthy non-tech person who buys a new phone every year hears this and instead of hearing the core principle of, huh, maybe i could buy less phones if that would foster all these positive things instead hears that by doing so they are being anti-capitlist, marxist, whatever tf it is and they get turned off, then it's "woke"!
So where is the line drawn? Do you say, eh it's fine this is for a radical group and that's how it is. Or do you try to draw in others? Quite an interesting sociological discussion actually!
Another chill medieval town building game is Manor Lords. It has some management but overal is laid back.
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