This needs to be higher. It’s the first comment I came to that:

1. recognized that security issues are always a concern and don’t just disappear with Linux
2. recognized that low tech savvy was part of the question and
3. gave a very practical and on-target suggestion for how to proceed (not just Team Linux rah-rah).

So for example, last night I went to see a play with my wife in the big city we live outside. 8pm show. Our location has better options than most in the US for public transit, but still not enough to fully rely upon and it’s hard to envision that changing.

We have a regional transit rail system we could have taken. It would drop us off close enough to the theater, perhaps 2 city blocks.

But the station is 6km from our house so the problem is on this end. We live in an area that’s not quite rural, more suburban, but it is out on the open countryside a bit and this natural beauty is what we love about living here.

We do have excellent bike lanes and even a network of bike trails that are separated from the roads. Our local station is about a 20 minute ride. We can do it but we’re in our 50s and it’s not our first choice when getting dressed up for a date night to begin with 20 minutes of vigorous exercise. And we would have had to repeat that ride at 11pm on the way home, tired, with a glass of wine in our bellies.

So the problem I guess is our home location. We live in a medium-to-small sized town that’s nestled up against a state park. The only public transit I can really imagine would be a bus system and it would have to cover a very wide area with many vehicles to serve this region. And even then I can’t imagine it would be quick.

I would still prefer a world without cars. I guess I’m just telling you why cars still fit into our needs and why our options are.

In the future I’m pretty optimistic that we can change the math on busses. Autonomous vehicles would allow us to move away from large busses piloted by a human driver to many smaller ones with more comprehensive coverage and better approximation of point-to-point transit.

The appeal of this path is that it’s something car-centric areas can transition to smoothly. We can get mass autonomous bus service going without banning cars and building rail lines or other large projects.

A small country that was laid out centuries ago, before cars, has a different layout and distribution of people that makes things like rail work better. The problem is that the US is huge and was built on cars, which are excellent for spreading individuals out with no regard for central planning.

Today’s generation of Americans are stuck with cars and not always in love with them. The way our population is distributed, it’s hard for mass transit to replace them, so it really doesn’t matter how great civic rail works in Lisbon.

We might address the topic of whether it’s responsible for people to be so spread out. I would certainly have a hard time saying goodbye to my beautiful natural surroundings.

I didn’t say it above but I completely agree. He sounds about half an inch from using the word “females” at some point.

Do y’all not write differently when you’re trying to be discreet on Blind?

I think you’re confused. Neither OP nor the commenter immediately above are limiting their remarks to friends only.

I was responding to OP asking about friends and relationships, so not just “young single women.” But I did also say try a dating app. Singles is pretty much all those are for.

Obviously no one can give you town-specific suggestions but are bars and restaurants the only things women do you where you live? I’d be very surprised if that’s true.

OP did say “get into relationships.”

Volunteer. Audition for community theater. Get a job. Join a hiking group. Take an adult learning class. Download a dating app. Get yourself out there.

It doesn’t even have to be per person. It can just be by time of day.

Let’s call it what it is: price discrimination.

I have a cat that looks exactly like this and is exactly as dumb.

if my own government was conducting mass surveillance on me I would be particularly furious at the betrayal. But I would also not support it conducting surveillance on foreigners either.

So no one then. I’m not trying to pin you here, just explain why it did indeed sound an awful lot like you were saying that. Conducting no surveillance is pretty much not having any intelligence operations. Are they supposed to wait by the phone for tips? This is where I was coming from. If you tell me you meant something different, I believe you, but this is how I got you wrong, and why I disagree if you thought you said nothing even remotely close.

The more I learn about this guy, the more amazed I am that his staffers stood up for him when he got fired. I guess they just hated the board more.

I know what you mean. It’s a pretty vague term though. You could argue that as soon as it enters the midsection of the bell curve at all, it’s “in the mainstream.” It doesn’t have to have captured a full 90% of the bell curve.

Yeah instead of arguing over whether Anthropic is actually good, let’s unite around “fuck OpenAI.”

I’m hardly going to defend the Pentagon, but to say a country should not even have an intelligence operation whatsoever, that this isn’t elementary to protecting its citizenry, is beyond naive and unrealistic.

Better to be skeptical about everyone here, and there are certainly no heroes.

However it should be obvious that a country’s department of war surveilling its own citizens is a completely inappropriate overreach. They exist to protect the country from outside threats. You’re casting it as some kind of discrimination, and claiming it would be more moral to treat everyone the same, but that seems willfully obtuse to me. Calling it a “special carve out” for a country to protect its own citizens… come on. Obviously since you are not an American it does nothing for you but you are working way too hard to spin that up into a sin.

Crossing off mass surveillance and automated killing isn’t everything they could have taken a moral stand on. Personally I don’t think any list will be long enough for the Pentagon, and if it were, there wouldn’t be anything left that could be worked on.

But I keep hearing you say that no mass surveillance and no automated killings is so very little - almost nothing. That doesn’t seem right to me. I think those are both pretty big things. TBH I don’t know exactly how to feel about it all but I’m not horrified that their moral stance would include only that.

vying for slightly better contract terms

Do you mean that all this about principles is a smoke screen and Anthropic are just using it as a front to squeeze for more money?

This is cool. I just hope game developers also get on this bandwagon. We could use a 4-year moratorium on increasing minimum system requirements.