For anyone else lost, apparently there’s a song named “They Call the Wind Maria”.

Experiencing mental distress.

How? Did you have ancestry somewhere that let you immigrate back? Family still there? Something else?

I’d love to find a way out for my family, but don’t know of any options.

It stands for Large Language Model, and that’s what ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, etc are. They are all LLMs. They are also called ‘AI’ (Artificial Intelligence) but they are not at all intelligent, they just match patterns and produce one word at a time like a very complex autocomplete in a phone keyboard.

They very often get facts wrong, but they are designed to sound confident and knowledgeable even when completely incorrect, which is a problem because humans tend to assume honesty.

Arachnophobia​

It doesn’t actually still haunt me (I’m the family spider hunter) but I did get nightmares for a while from that one.

Is that a particular Andrew that I don’t recognize?

And some people think memes started on the Internet.

Absolutely. Anyone who has done any programming should recognize that changing what’s in the quote is corrupting the data.

If I’m quoting a question though, then it makes sense to include the question mark in the quote.

I laughed when Joe asked "That's the hill you chose?".  

Who says it’s not?
(/s)

The only area I know well is the NW corner of the USA, but there is indeed public transit. I can’t say how it compares to even other parts of the US, let alone other countries, but I can say that in the urban and suburban areas it’s generally possible to walk or bike to a bus stop and with some transfers, get within a walkable or bicycle-able distance of where you are going. Some rural areas have a system called “dial-a-ride” which are basically on-demand small buses if I understand correctly. Similar systems exist for people with disabilities in the urban areas also.

Besides buses there are also ferries, and local train systems (light rail) which connect neighborhoods and cities in the same major metropolitan area. Trains between major metros (such as between states) also exist, but typically it’s just not worth it: If you aren’t going to just drive it by car, then flying is both faster and cheaper than the train, and flying isn’t cheap.

There are also commuter trains between the downtowns of major (nearby) cities separate from the light rail, but I’ve never actually tried that myself.

Turkey

Yes, better batteries that don’t spontaneously combust, and last for far more charge cycles

I don’t expect it so quickly, but hopefully lithium ion batteries (and variants like Li-poly, LiFePO4, etc)

AAAAAAAAAAHH!

Like what?

They are already doing renewables, which don’t have steady output. This is to provide a steady baseline.

It helps in 30 years. Which is much better than never.

Trusted local news

My local news, like in many US cities, is Sinclair.

It’s a problem.

TIL “walking bass” is the name of something.

Looks good actually.

But how does it handle the door opening early? Does it still leave unused time sitting on the time dial?

I would agree with you, but I still want to own a microwave. There are none with reasonable UI behavior as far as I can tell.

(Edit) For example: Opening the door a few seconds early always leaves time on the display which should just automatically clear after a minute or two. Obviously if the user doesn’t use that leftover time immediately then they aren’t going to.