I wish this were true! The problem with Linux is that it is constantly changing. I have been using it for 30 years and have built my own embedded distros from scratch. Yet every time I turn around there moving this setup file to another directory or changing out that language for a slightly incompatible newer version. Trying to configure and maintain a box is a constant battle.

Windows is the polar opposite. The ui may have some annoying changes but under the hood it is frustratingly stable, often remaining unchanged for 20+ years (even the bugs live forever). Users crave simplicity and consistency. It is something Linux still needs to figure out.

Not really, my parents voted for him twice, and will vote for him again, but they are very careful around me to act like they would not.

By this definition a how to book is intelligent.

Classic programming is just a list of instructions (steps to take) that the computer follows exactly as written by the programmer. It can appear complex or magical, but we fully understand exactly what will happen in every instance. Nothing unexpected or new ever happens.

AI as it is today mixes things up just a bit. We allow the computer to program itself by training it on lots of data while it builds up a neural network (think of it as a fancy decision tree) that it can then use to try and guess if the next data matches the training data. This is great, amazing at times, but in a lot of ways it is automated programming (auto classification) and not really intelligent in any sense of the word.

The magic happens when computers can become intuitive and make a leap. Say we show it lots of apples and lots of tennis balls and tell it one is an apple and one is a tennis ball. Then we tell it an apple is a fruit and a tennis ball is a ball. Can we then show it a soccer ball or an orange and have it intuit that they are fruit or balls. This is the challenge, and we really don’t know how to get there yet, partly because we don’t know how we do it ourselves.

Get a tin whistle, they cost nothing, are simpler than a recorder to play, and they sound great. You can find books or videos that will help you learn to play quite quickly.

My advice is to do things that bring you joy, and if there a hit then consider that an added bonus. I’m a computer programmer and some of my most popular projects were started by me being curious how something works without any intention of doing something with it. If I set out to do something amazing I would have failed outright.

So write a short story, then write another one. If you end up writing one you feel is with showing off then find a writing club to share it with, or post it to a blog. If that is successful then find a website or magazine to submit it too. Go on up the ladder till your the next Douglas Addams. But do it in many small steps, rather than setting out to conquer the world in one go.

We need to implement ranked choice voting for all of elections. A third party candidate should not be something scary we hide from.

Intelligence is a collection of multiple things. Curiosity is a contributor, but far from an integral part.

Someone can be a brilliant mathematician, capable of computing complex equations that would stump most computers (metaphorically at least), but they may utterly lack creativity and curiosity. In any definition of intelligence we would consider them highly intelligent.

On the flip side someone may be completely filled with curiosity about the world, but lack the intelligence to read or write.

Technically that is a learned skill, this is why intelligence is really a fairly useless measure. What is intelligence? Memorizing lots of facts? Having loads of education? A built in understanding of the world that others lack (common sense)?

I think what really matters is that you find the thing in life where you fit, rather than worrying about how we measure up. I have known very intelligent people who were worthless human beings, and simple minded people who made the world more special every day. We focus too much on being smart, it is one of the least important attributes.

Vegan is a very wide array of things ranging to not eating red meat all the way down to not doing anything that could hurt a plant (only scavengering fallen fruit).

https://theminimalistvegan.com/types-of-vegans-and-vegetarians/

I was a young programmer during the dot com boom. Old school companies like sears and newspapers were scared of the internet. They would occasionally try something small and half hearted on the web but never really tried to figure it out.

Sears is a great example. 20 years before the web they had a functioning mail order service with stores and warehouse all over the US. They were very close to what a modern Amazon is, without the web presence or rapid delivery. If they were brave they could have been Amazon, selling online and delivering to there extensive store network.

Newspapers had a very busy classified section. That could have been moved online easily enough. But they wanted to charge for there classifieds, while eBay or Crageslist let you post for free, making money off of add revenue or a broker fee.

They also were very popular with local advertisers, and could have transitioned there newspapers online for free with the same local advertisers. Instead they tried to charge or resisted being online at all, leaving room for other services like yahoo (later Facebook and Google news) to fill in the news business.

Finally if they had been smart they could have made a news sharing service among the papers (nexus, etc) that could have forced Google news to pay a small fee every time they shared a story, providing a steady revenue service.

I see a time in the future where traditional papers fully die, and something new rises from the ashes. My guess is it will be a return to local news, but with a very small staff running the whole show online.

Yes and no. Newspapers could be read the next day, after the original purchaser was done with it. And it was easy for a restaurant or business to share newspapers among many clients. Plus of course radio still provided free news that was quality.

The big problem now is that the best news sources are the most locked down. And the worst news sources are the most open. So it is difficult for a quality piece to make the rounds. Even if a link to an article could be shared for free, even if the website was locked down, things would be a lot better.

Finally newspapers charged for the cost of printing but made money off of advertising and classifieds. There is very little cost (per view) to digital publishing. If newspapers had embraced the Web 20 years ago they could have been Facebook or eBay, rather than having all there core revenue fall away.