I was annoyed, like the OP, then I read your comment and now I’m impressed and have an urge to buy a copy of OED I most certainly will never open. They owe you a commission on my sale.

I’ve used it just to access Bing Chat, which has become my go to AI chatbot for a couple of reasons: 1) you theoretically get access to gpt 4 without paying 20 dollars a month, 2) it cites it’s sources, and 3) it can create images via DALLE from within the chat (which is handy, you can chat with the AI to help you think of an image prompt, the just say “ok make an image based on that description”). Other then that, i use Firefox at home. At work our choices are chrome or edge, so I use edge because of bing chat and I kind of like the layout better. It feels like choosing between buying something from Amazon or Walmart, which terrible corporation do I hate more in a given moment.

I feel like if I ever become an audiophile, I’ll probably be looking at getting a separate music player with a DAC, a Tidal subscription, and a pair of kickass wired headphones. But for now, I’m mostly listening to podcasts and for music I use Spotify for it’s discovery features, and their audio quality is subpar already. Even if I had a headphone jack, I’m not really benefiting from superior sound quality but I am getting frustrated with tangled cords and getting caught on doorknobs. I’ll take the convenience of Bluetooth, especially while working out. And Bluetooth standards have been getting better anyway, in a few years it might be on par with wired.

I know literally nothing about computers and I’ve been daily driving Linux for well over a decade. I just use Ubuntu and I’ve been pretty much using all the default settings, apart from some customization here and there. There was a time years ago when I wanted to learn and tinker, but in reality I never learned to use the command line for more than running updates (I still sudo apt-get update cause it makes me feel like hackerman).

My point is, Linux is super easy to just set up and run. If you want to learn more, there’s plenty of opportunities for that. But it’s not something to be intimidated by at all. A lot of the community is enthusiasts (who’ve I’ve found extremely helpful back when I used to have problems) so you’ll hear more jargon in these spaces. But I’m sure there are tons of others like me that use Linux just fine day to day without understanding a ton about computers.

You have it worse I promise, that sounds miserable. I’m in northern California, but what the other reply you got said is accurate here as well. Lows in the 60Fs (15C), maybe even the upper 50s, when it’s really bad lows are in the mid 70s. Most days I have a fan in the window to cool things off overnight and even if not it gets cool enough that the AC won’t work itself to death overnight. I get up early so open all the windows, fans everywhere, and I try to get my place down to 70f (21c), close it all up by 9am, then try to ride it out without ac until the lows drop again. Humidity is very low where I am too. This Sunday it’s now saying 105 (41c) for a high and 66 (19c) for a low if that gives you an idea.

Oh no doubt there, fuck Texas. I thought Texas would be hotter, actually. I’m in CA and we’re looking at 107 this weekend with some low 100s before and after, which isn’t bad compared to the 4-5 days in July when it was north of 110. But we mandate water breaks and so forth, like the big government lovers we are. Again, I’d imagine the availability of AC plays a role, 100+ where I am is mostly fine, but 90 in the bay area where a lot of home don’t have AC is a rougher.

I was kind of surprised, where I am those are pretty normal temperatures, not for weeks on end but it can hit like that for a few days in a row. We’re expecting higher temperatures this weekend.

Many Iranian cities and towns have suffered from temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days, while the oil-rich southwestern city of Ahvaz hit 50 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. [122F]

The capital city of Tehran experienced temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.

I just checked and their nightly lows are in the high 80sF so that sucks for sure. That 122F high is bonkers though, that’s pushing death valley territory. But overall it’s not worse than Arizona has been going through for like more than a month, highs above 110 and lows in the 90s. Greece’s heatwave seems like it is about on par to what Iran is going through, and I don’t remember hearing about them shutting down the country, just limiting outdoor work and deliveries during peak heat hours.

But like you said, A/C might be a difference maker. I don’t know what Iran’s climate control availability is like, and this article didn’t say.

I’d imagine official verification and so forth is yet to come.

Ah there was a time when Prime Day was kind of fun, a Christmas in July kind of feeling. But now Amazon is just so loaded with knock off junk that doesn’t work, spam postings, review manipulation, etc I absolutely dread shopping on Amazon for anything other than something I need right away, can’t get in a local store, and don’t care if it breaks in 2 months. I’ve never given less of a shit about Prime Day than I do today, and that’s even without factoring in the price manipulation noted by OP.

This is the advice I heard on the Vergecast. The best printer for anyone is whatever Brother laserjet is currently on sale.

Yes, it’s in the lawsuit and another article I read. Open AI said they used a specific dataset, and the makers of that dataset said they used some online open libraries which have full texts of books. That’s the primary basis of the lawsuit. They also argue that if you ask ChatGPT for a summary of their books, it will spit one out, which they are claiming is misuse of their copywriten work. That claim sounds dicey to me, Wikipedia and all manner of websites summarize books, so I’m not following how ChatGPT doing it is different. But I’m an idiot so who cares what I think.

Remeber that time a couple wanted to sail around the world, bought a boat but didn’t know how to sail rally, took their newborn on it, then had to get rescued at sea? People were pissed about the cost of that rescue, calling the couple dumb and entitled and whatnot. I think they had to pay some of the rescue cost back. Personally I don’t know that I’m wild about charging people for rescues, it’s hard to draw a line between legitimate adventure travel, say hiking in a national park, and a reckless stunt.