#Benefits of Virtual Machines

[kbvresearch]

Understanding Virtual Machines: A Comprehensive Overview

What is a Virtual Machine? In the realm of computing, a virtual machine (VM) is a software emulation of a physical computer. It operates in an isolated environment, abstracted from the underlying hardware, allowing multiple operating systems (OS) to run simultaneously on a single physical machine. This virtualization technology has revolutionized the way computing resources are utilized,…

[reallytoosublime]

A digital assistant, also known as a predictive chatbot, is a technology designed to assist users by answering questions and processing simple tasks. In this video, we'll discuss the rise of digital assistants in healthcare and see if they truly are making our lives easier. Let's deep dive into the video and learn more about Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.

Digital assistants have become pervasive in our lives. When we wake up, we have Amazon’s Alexa read us the news and remind us to pick up our dry cleaning. As we get ready for the day, Siri plays our favorite songs. To get to work, we order an Uber with Google Assistant. However, when we get to the office, those products don’t follow us through the door. That is about to change in a big way.

Digital assistants are intelligent software programs designed to provide various services and support through natural language processing and machine learning algorithms. These assistants have gained immense popularity due to their ability to enhance efficiency, convenience, and user experience across a wide range of applications.

Digital assistants are designed to streamline tasks and automate processes, saving users time and effort. They can manage calendars, set reminders, schedule appointments, and even help with email management, thus allowing users to focus on more valuable and creative tasks.

Unlike human assistants, digital assistants are available around the clock, providing support whenever users need it. This constant availability ensures that users can access information and assistance whenever they require it, improving responsiveness and user satisfaction.

Digital assistants are increasingly being used in business settings to assist with customer support, perform data analysis, manage tasks, and even facilitate virtual meetings. These applications help organizations improve efficiency and offer better services to their customers.

Modern digital assistants leverage machine learning to adapt and learn from user interactions. Over time, they become better at understanding user preferences, needs, and speech patterns, resulting in a more personalized and tailored experience for each user.

Digital assistants offer a wide array of benefits, including increased productivity, personalized experiences, accessibility, convenience, and the ability to handle a variety of tasks. As technology continues to advance, we can expect digital assistants to become even more sophisticated and integrated into various aspects of our lives.

The Rise of Digital Assistants: Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant

[youtubemarketing1234]

A digital assistant, also known as a predictive chatbot, is a technology designed to assist users by answering questions and processing simple tasks. In this video, we'll discuss the rise of digital assistants in healthcare and see if they truly are making our lives easier. Let's deep dive into the video and learn more about Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.

Digital assistants have become pervasive in our lives. When we wake up, we have Amazon’s Alexa read us the news and remind us to pick up our dry cleaning. As we get ready for the day, Siri plays our favorite songs. To get to work, we order an Uber with Google Assistant. However, when we get to the office, those products don’t follow us through the door. That is about to change in a big way.

Digital assistants are intelligent software programs designed to provide various services and support through natural language processing and machine learning algorithms. These assistants have gained immense popularity due to their ability to enhance efficiency, convenience, and user experience across a wide range of applications.

Digital assistants are designed to streamline tasks and automate processes, saving users time and effort. They can manage calendars, set reminders, schedule appointments, and even help with email management, thus allowing users to focus on more valuable and creative tasks.

Unlike human assistants, digital assistants are available around the clock, providing support whenever users need it. This constant availability ensures that users can access information and assistance whenever they require it, improving responsiveness and user satisfaction.

Digital assistants are increasingly being used in business settings to assist with customer support, perform data analysis, manage tasks, and even facilitate virtual meetings. These applications help organizations improve efficiency and offer better services to their customers.

Digital assistants offer a wide array of benefits, including increased productivity, personalized experiences, accessibility, convenience, and the ability to handle a variety of tasks. As technology continues to advance, we can expect digital assistants to become even more sophisticated and integrated into various aspects of our lives.

The Rise of Digital Assistants: Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant

[virtualizationhowto]

TrueNAS Scale Setup: First 5 Steps

TrueNAS Scale Setup: First 5 Steps #homelab #TrueNASScaleSetupGuide #VirtualMachineIntegration #DebianLinuxBenefits #TrueNASvsTrueNASCore #VirtualizationBestPractices #ConfiguringStorageSolutions #BackingUpTrueNASData #TrueNasContainers #truenasscale

When you go from TrueNAS Core to the more capable TrueNAS Scale, there’s a world of difference in functionality. TrueNAS Scale offers many additional capabilities, including enhanced virtual machine software and extended support for multiple operating systems. Let’s look at TrueNAS Scale setup and the top 5 tips to get going after you install TrueNAS Scale. Table of contentsWhat is TrueNAS…

[warandpeas]

In an alternate universe, we’re stuck doing another job, doodling on spreadsheets instead of releasing comics. It’s truly the saddest universe we could think of and we’re determined to build a machine that gets in contact with these sad slobs to let them know their true calling.

Help us to save THIS reality by joining our Patreon! We’ll keep bringing the laughs, and you’ll get loads of benefits, and a virtual high-five for saving us all!

[starryeyedstray]

just a short fic heavily inspired by this post about hank causing connor to deviate (but not in the way you expect) by @goodoldfashionedengineer

The RK800 was built to withstand the pressures of high-stakes situations. From hostage negotiations to interrogations to gun fights. It was stress tested against any danger one could expect to encounter in police work (and hunting deviants). What it was not tested against was uncooperative and unprofessional alcoholics.

Apprehending them? Yes. Partnering with them for a full investigation? No.

But Connor was equipped with social programming meant to adapt to human unpredictability, and it needed access to crime scenes so it would adapt. If adapting meant going to five separate bars to find said human and buying him a drink to move him along, then so be it. It was the middle of the night. It was not outside expectation for a human to be out drinking at this time. Even if they were on call.

But Hank Anderson was an officer of the law and here he was breaking the law by driving under the influence. Connor was perfectly capable of driving, but the lieutenant insisted that he wasn't going to let plastic drive his car. A thoroughly irrational decision. But Connor wasn't a cop so it wasn't going to stop him from taking it to the crime scene it needed access to.

The investigation and capturing of the deviant went smoothly. Though the lieutenant calling Connor's evidence-based conclusion about what transpired at the crime scene a "theory" that was "not totally ridiculous" was… uncalled for. The ensuing interrogation went perfectly though the only credit Connor could afford to give to his "partner" was in permissing him to interrogate the deviant. Lieutenant Anderson had yet to proven his worth as anything more than an access pass to crime scenes.

And now, it was past noon the next day. The lieutenant was still nowhere to be seen at his supposed place of work. Connor wouldn't put it past the man to spend more time at bars than at the precinct. It was unsurprised to see the anti-android sentiments on Anderson's desk. Leave it to someone as ineffective and unpunctual as this particular human to not understand the benefits of employing an efficient machine. When Lieutenant Anderson finally arrived, Connor was also unsurprised when Captain Fowler assigned them as official partners for all deviant investigations (Cyberlife had debriefed it about this already). What did surprise Connor was how a lieutenant could speak to their police captain like that with virtually no repercussions. Humans were certainly emotional beings and that seemed to stunt their logical reasoning. But Connor said it would adapt, so it would adapt. Though it realized playing nice was getting nowhere when the lieutenant refused to do his job and investigate the deviant cases. Since being professional and understanding wasn't working, Connor decided that being aggressive might be a better approach...

Connor will admit that it may have made a slight miscalculation. Its solution for being a bit more forceful with its words only irritated the lieutenant more and caused him to threaten Connor before storming off to get lunch. Getting upset, Connor could grant him that. But going to lunch now? Literally less than 30 minutes have passed since the lieutenant had arrived at work, and he was taking a lunch break? Now?

The frankly displeased RK800 was now standing in front of a food truck with an expired health inspection score watching Lieutenant Anderson order a meal with an obscene amount of calories while placing illegal gambling bets with a man with a criminal record.

This was too much.

Connor was not going to waste time that could be spent investigating here. The android pivoted on its heel and began walking down the street. But Connor's operating system stopped it, helpfully reminding Connor in big red wall of text that its current mission was to RECONCILE WITH LT. ANDERSON.

Cyberlife wanted to it to reconcile? With this man? This shell of a lieutenant that can't be bothered to do his job unless an android was constantly prodding him in the right direction?

No.

Absolutely not.

Cyberlife told Connor what to do, but it was also a company ran by humans. If humans made the decision to keep "Lieutenant" Anderson employed despite his very obvious and obtrusive personal issues, then humans could certainly wrongly assume what the best approach to investigating deviants was. No, Connor knew it didn't need a human's help to accomplish its mission. If Cyberlife wanted results, it was going to get results doing things the efficient and sensible way. And that certainly didn't involve reconciling with Lieutenant Anderson.

*cue Connor deviating to get away from dealing with Hank*

[leidensygdom]

Generative AI is such a dystopian concept in ways I can't even really fully comprehend. It would make for a fantastic premise for a sci fi novel I think, and yet, it is sadly not just fiction.

Like, let me explain. It was initially a sort of novelty toy. Many people had seen these sites that could create abstract pictures out of few words, but it never amounted to much. It didn't take long before these tools were quickly repurposed to serve the new cryptocurrency fad, the latest pyramid scheme to enrich a few while catering to these more technologically-inclined people who were delighted at the idea of getting involved with investing. Investing in a new way, away from a government's scrutiny. And before we all knew, the Internet was filled with them pretending that what was a major scale scam, was actually the future. The initial generative AI served them as a replacement to artists, which mostly saw through the truth of NFTs as a scam and did not wish to get involved with that.

Now, we could also talk about cryptocurrencies being dystopian on their own. A fabricated idea of virtual money obtained through what I had seen described "the pollution machine that produces metaphorical money". You turn on an infinite amount of computers to do a senseless talk that does not benefit society in any way, but in turn, it does contaminate more than small countries. But generative AI isn't just that.

NFTs did not last long and many tech bros, who had invested in them largely, found their pockets much emptier. But generative AI was still there, and people saw a new use to it. And then, with technological investors desperate to find the new thing to shove money in, after years of nothing being particularly profitable for them, generative AI started to really evolve. It went from an useless novelty toy to what we have today. And the way it got there is simply horrifying.

It is a machine that, essentially, feeds on an amalgamation of millions of creative and artistic work, chopped down and inserted into a dataset with no consent from its creators, which is then regurgitated into a soulless porridge. It is a machine powered by art, used to ultimately, remove actual art from the equation. The generated sludge can only barely manage to repeat the same bias and tropes already present in what was it fed, and they only become more and more reinforced with each update to the dataset. Suddenly, a sea of smooth, childish anime girls became the main ideation of what a woman is, amidst other things. It is a machine built on prejudices, incapable of critical thinking, repeating the same mistakes humanity already made, over and over.

And the process of blending people's entire life of work also happens to be polluting. So much more than cryptos ever managed to be. Soon enough, major companies also got involved and collectively decided to trash any sort of sustainability goal in order to invest in the new fad. When asked, some of them even mentioned that they were fully aware it was unsustainable, but that they believed that generative AI could simply give them a solution to the ever-growing energy needs. Surely it will be generative AI that will find the long-awaited answer to nuclear fusion. It has to. The power grid cannot handle it as it is.

And now, these same tech bros, maybe vindicated by how artists refused to collaborate in their latest crypto scam, or maybe just eager to have a few extra bucks, decided to put their new technology into use. Replace the same artists whose work they had stolen with generative AI. Take the artist out of the equation, remove the humanity out of creativity. It is late capitalism and massified consumerism at its worse. People do love their media, everyone enjoys a show or a videogame every now and then. But what if we could now remove any sort of actual human touch in there? What if we managed to, instead, make a machine churn out content over and over, to keep the audiences fed, to keep money rolling in, at the simple cost of removing humankind from artistic creation?

We have now these same artists that provided us with our childhood favorites unemployed, striking, making noise, as a last attempt to recover the jobs they are quickly losing. We have artists that devoted their entire careers into honing their craft seeing how people replicated it by stealing every single piece of art they had created. We have mocking echoes replicating the art of people already gone, their life's work taken and reproduced long after their death.

Science fiction has covered a lot, and there are plenty of stories about robots being made in order to replace human labor. Many of these stories humanize the robots, who develop dredges of sentience and revolve against their forced labor. But generative AI is a different story. It is a completely insentient program, owned and developed by large corporations, that is here to steal and replace what is one of the most important human virtues. Creativity is one of the major aspects of humanity. We have dug out pieces from millenia ago, small decorated pottery and painted caves, that evidence that we already had that in common with our oldest ancestors. We have been drawing and telling each other stories ever since we could paint with our fingers and communicate with each other.

And now we have developed a machine that takes that from us. It isn't here to help us carry groceries, take out the trash or do any of these mundane tasks. It is here to take away our hobbies and creative jobs, take away our amusement, and replace whatever art we once consumed with whatever slop it managed to vomit. And it is such a deeply disturbing concept that directly competes with some of the most horrifying dystopian ideations ever written.

[leondra]

linux tutorial

switching to linux does have a bit of a learning curve but if you're willing to have a sit down and sort it out the benefits are awesome, and you get to learn new computer skills.

i recommend switching to an os that is similar to windows, such as mint linux. this isn't the first os i've used but its very casual and meets all my needs. there are tutorials on youtube on how to install it on your computer, but its a simple set up. be sure to backup your files. if you're very computer illiterate watch a few before attempting to install so you'll have a stronger grasp on what you're doing.

the taskbar doesnt come like that i just like it on the side lol. you can simply open the software manager to download programs that have a linux version

if theres a program that only has a windows version, you can download wine to run them

depending on what you use your computer for, you may come across programs that do not have a linux version, are not compatible with wine, and do not have a linux equivalent. when this happens you can use a virtual machine running windows to run the program, but to be honest this has only happened to me once for a very specific hobby, and i use my computer for proper computer science college work and my own hobbies. but the option is there.

anyways, if a program you want to use isnt available or isnt easy to install, simply google what apps are similar for linux

i recently downloaded krita but i havent used it much bc i mostly draw on my ipad, but from little ive used it its pretty good. gimp is also a good substitute for photoshop. here's a quick sketch i did in krita

steam games that only have a windows version can be played by using proton in the compatibility settings.

in this short tutorial i did not open the terminal once, and in my opinion a somewhat computer illiterate person may not have to use it since the os comes with apps to help navigate software installation and more, but learning how to use the terminal is a good skill to have!

if you have a technical issue that you absolutely cannot solve, there are forums that are active where people will help you. no bean dads. im also willing to answer questions for small troubleshooting problems.

switching to linux will improve your computer skills and give you access to many open source programs that are the equivalent to paid or subscription programs on windows. there's a strong community of people that are willing to help you and teach you, for free!

[professor-doc-emeritus]

possible readings of the admech:

1 - admech rituals don't work and aren't necessary. imperium tech largely works based on a combination of dumb luck, ork-esque psychic gestalt fields generated by humanity's collective belief in it, and the efforts of the handful of heretic priests who worked all this out and now do all the imperium's actual IT/maintenance work in secret. The majority of the imperium, and the adeptus mechanics itself, still believe in the rituals wholeheartedly.

2 - admech rituals do work and are (mostly) necessary, but only because they are obfuscations of actual technical work, e.g. the application of sacred oils and incense is just an elaborately ritualized method of getting rusty old machines lubricated regularly, binaric prayers work because they actually contain bundles of voice commands to activate onboard error handling programs in most Dark Age of Technology artifacts, and "machine spirits" are just ancient and ornery onboard AIs that take pity on the occasional tech priest asking for help. This status quo is an unintentional side effect of millenia of collective trial and error; virtually all members of the admech genuinely believe in the cult mechanicus & are unaware there's any material benefit to their rituals.

3 - same as the above, except the admech are (or at least used to be) in on the ruse. The rituals do work, for the above stated reasons, but are deliberately designed to be as mysterious, impenetrable, and terrifying as possible. The people who made them didn't believe in the omnissiah, and sufficiently well-informed members of the admech don't either, often foregoing their rituals entirely when in private or in a pinch. The median admech member understands the basic principles of technology FAR better than they let on, and the cult mechanicus in general exists as part of a massive conspiracy meant to keep humanity at large ignorant, and the control of technology exclusively in admech hands, which they use to their own nefarious ends. This fact used to be common knowledge within the faction itself, however the heresy era split, the subsequent millenia of conflict, and their own overzealous propaganda have all eroded their collective memory. The truth is now only known to its highest ranking and longest-lived members, and is doled out on a need-to-know basis to a select few. This is why most tech priests that feature in the books and video games unironically believe in the omnissiah: they haven't yet been told the truth.

4 - admech rituals do work and are necessary, and the spiritual aspect of it is at least partially true, but this is only because the omnissiah is actually a manifestation of Mag’ladroth the Void Dragon, C'tan god of technology and Aeldari god of oblivion, a shard of which was defeated and imprisoned beneath the surface of mars by the emperor. This shard, either intentionally or unintentionally, influenced and warped the collective psyche of the mechanicum of mars until they became the admech we know today. Their apparent control over technology is the result of some combination of their proximity to the shard giving them aspects of its power, intentional siphoning of the shards power by the mechanicum, the shard itself lending them power as part of a long-term plan to corrupt & use the imperium as a means of revenge against the necrons that shattered it, and the Emperor's defeat of the shard granting him its domain over technology. It's this domain the Emperor won that allowed humanity to expand out and conquer the stars without their tech getting corrupted by the warp, and why technology made by other species and the machines-making-machines-that-make-machines (i.e. the men of iron) fall to the warp faster and more often than human technology

5 - the admech are just batting a thousand and are right about pretty much everything.

[williammorrised]

Man goes to the doctor. Says he's frustrated. Says his Python experience seems complicated and confusing. Says he feels there are too many environment and package management system options and he doesn't know what to do.

Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Just use Poetry + pyenv, which combines the benefits of conda, venv, pip, and virtualenv. But remember, after setting up your environment, you'll need to install build essentials, which aren't included out-of-the-box. So, upgrade pip, setuptools, and wheel immediately. Then, you'll want to manage your dependencies with a pyproject.toml file.

"Of course, Poetry handles dependencies, but you may need to adjust your PATH and activate pyenv every time you start a new session. And don't forget about locking your versions to avoid conflicts! And for data science, you might still need conda for some specific packages.

"Also, make sure to use pipx for installing CLI tools globally, but isolate them from your project's environment. And if you're deploying, Dockerize your app to ensure consistency across different machines. Just be cautious about Docker’s compatibility with M1 chips.

"Oh, and when working with Jupyter Notebooks, remember to install ipykernel within your virtual environment to register your kernel. But for automated testing, you should...

[gofancyninjaworld]

Call Him Janus-ide, The Way He's Two-Faced

With the kind permissions of Rayadraws and theOmnicode. Bless your sharp eyes.

Genos better have a birthday in January. January, Janus's month, is typically portrayed as a two-faced man, representing the month's position as the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. Janus is the god of thresholds, places of transition -- inside to out, holy to profane, beginnings to endings. Beyond that, this is the god of duality, seemingly opposed items that nevertheless form part of a whole.

Characters in OPM start really simple but as ONE keeps layering on them, they become more than initially meets the eye. However, when it comes to duality, Genos has to be the most dual-natured character there.

How? Well, let's count the ways.

1. What's in a name?

Let's start with the low-hanging fruit, his name. While he generally goes by Genos, his name is really Genocide. Yes, as in the systematic elimination of a group of people identified by their religion, ethnicity, or just by happening to encumber some valuable land without the benefit of sufficiently heavy weaponry. It's just about possible to pretend not to see it when it's written out on his clothing; however, when Kuseno makes Genos a virtual practice tool called The Virtual Genocide System, what kind of sick fucker does this is all one can say.

Extra credit: if you want another horrifying duality, look up 'ketsugo'.

It gets a little more interesting when we look at how his name is written in Japanese, for that's where the duality emerges. On the one hand, the kanji means 'great slaughter', so far, so unsurprising. On the other hand, it also means 'to fight fiercely to the end', and the image of undaunted resistance in the face of impossible odds is just as fitting to this character as is his surviving a massacre -- and warning of yet another to come.

2. Fire Worship

Of necessity, Genos is forged in fire. The metal that makes up much of his body must be grubbed up as ore, melted out of it, refined, alloyed, smelted, and worked to produce something useful, all of which requires fire. The parts that are plastic are drawn out of the Earth as crude oil, distilled (more fire), admixed, reacted, processed. And the parts that are ceramic, well, nothing loves fire as much as a ceramic. And yet, that's not all Genos is. He is a cyborg, which means that he is also human, someone living, fragile, and yet resilient. We see many cyborgs in One-Punch Man, but someone like Genos, who is very comfortable owning his humanity *and* having a mostly mechanical body, is rare. The cyborgs we meet tend to either hide the fact or double down on being inhuman.

Being happy being both man and machine, no matter how weird it looks to anyone.

Speaking of fire, Genos's choice of weapon is just as dual-natured as his name. In the first instance, he burns things. It's little wonder that fire used to be regarded (gotta love those Greeks) as one of the four essential elements: its ability to transform is fundamental to humanity. Its ability to transform the merely edible to the cooked literally enabled human development by freeing up more calories than are normally available in food. Fire warms; fire razes; fire drives away darkness; fire propels; fire impedes; fire cauterizes; fire burns; fire refines; fire smelts; fire consumes. Wherever you find humanity, something is burning. One hopes in a controlled way.

As Genos uses it as a weapon, it's very much the destructive aspect of fire we see him use. The Hero Association calls him Demon Cyborg because they hope he keeps turning those flames onto enemies of humanity, thankyouverymuch.

Like the fire of Hell striking the sinful and consuming them utterly, Genos showing the utter destruction that got him his hero name.

Of course, we have long since moved beyond burning dry sticks and lumps of coal to make what we call fire. Which takes us quite naturally to the third thing.

3. Core matters

Want to divide a crowd of well-educated people? Just ask them their opinion on 'nuclear energy.' Whether it's energy liberated by splitting or fusing atoms, do we like it for its ability to create an eye-watering amount of energy from incredibly little material, live in awe of its ability to destroy enemies, dread its capacity to maim and mutate with the ionizing radiation that comes as part of the package deal, or fear its eon-long tail of contamination? To say 'views differ' is to understate the heat of the debate.

There may have been a time when Genos's core was battery-powered, but since his energy demands have gone from extreme to extortionate, this baby is nuclear. With all the hazards inherent.

Heroes are just built different: instead of running away, they're like 'keep it together, man.'

So far, so obvious. However, the visual references of the core are even more interesting. Via Rayadraws, the reference of the core is the guidance system of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Entirely mechanical (and thus not able to be interfered with remotely), it ensures that the ICBM, once launched, will absolutely hit its target without fail. A very fitting device for the heart of a character hell-bent on finding and destroying his sworn enemy, whatever the cost.

Doesn't that look ominously familiar? Mutually-assured destruction.

However (I use this word a lot, don't I?), that's not the only way to see the core. When Saitama brought back Genos's core from the future and the latter plugged it in, the core is seen from a different angle, and it's another powerful symbol: a vajra (h/t Omnicode). In Buddhism, it's a ritual weapon symbolizing the properties of a diamond (indestructibility) and a thunderbolt (irresistible force).

A much more positive image: one of power, wisdom, and enlightenment. The more positive version of what he's seeking.

Probably the most interesting thing about the school of Buddhism this comes from is that it's about transmuting vices into virtues. Again, incredibly fitting.

4. So, Where is ONE going with this?

Here we have it. Nominatively, Genos names both the most hideous crime against humanity and the strength of character to resist such crime. Physically, Genos stands at the nexus of man and machine, happily occupying the liminal space between them. The power Genos has sought can be incredibly destructive to both friend and foe... and we've seen him use it to do great good. We've seen how harsh and cold he can be, but we've seen, too, that when he cares to temper his strict pursuit of justice with empathy, something wonderful comes to light.

But most of all, this is a character whose fate rests on a knife edge of apparently small decisions. No matter what, Genos is not going to be dissuaded from finding and destroying the rampaging cyborg and anyone who may have supported him. The question is: will that quest bring great destruction, or is there a way to bring something positive out of it? Either is equally possible with this guy.

We just have to wait and see.

PS: Yes, there are other dualities I could name. I'm hoping y'all come up with them. :D

[dykedvonte]

I'm probably going to post about this on the MW subreddit, but I still find it pretty hilarious that most fans assume the "struggles" Jimbalaya was dealing with back on Earth were related to criminal acts (usually in order to demonize Curly) meanwhile most of the pieces of clues I've gathered from the HFIM dlc and the QnAs we got about the characters' lives have lead me to believe Jimbalaya's struggles were about poverty.

In the HFIM dlc we're pretty clearly playing a fish version of Jimbalaya, and the whole game is about how a capitalistic system ruins people (fish) and those that climb up help perpetuate the system and those that go down just get eaten. So it's pretty interesting to me that Jimbalaya fish even after consuming other fish and items... keeps going down.

But it was the third QnA that sealed it for me. Curly's hobbies are around a lot of friends and family that he could join interesting things. And of course play snow sports in Winter. Winter snow sports... which let's be honest is a pretty expensive hobby to have. Meanwhile, Jimbalaya can't afford any hobbies other than joining one with Curly.

I think this kinda just adds more fuel for Jimbalaya to both envy yet aspire to be like Curly.

I dunno, it's just fascinating to me watching so many fans claim the "struggles" were so obviously to do with crime when most of the current evidence I noticed seems to point towards money related issues.

-🌟 Anon

I think both are valid and valuable interpretations that’s the MW fandom makes but I think the major problem with it is the severity in which they make Jimmy out to be every factor wrong with men in society.

Like I think it’s interesting to use the idea he has some record, misdemeanors/petty stuff, that has complied to make his life more difficult. It’s all his own doing for his entitlement and general behavior but it can also be used to comment on Capitalism banking on desperation and envy. A lot of his actions are desperate because he knows his crimes on the Tulpar will make it virtually to climb any ladder, anywhere anymore due to their weight. Like in the end the problem is undeniably how the proverbial rat race creates environments that fosters Jimmy’s and creates ineffective systems like Curly represents.

Curly on the other hand benefits from the corporate part of it with his financial freedom, stability and prestige but he too is socially stagnant, deeply unhappy in the identities placed on to him and unrecognizable as anything other than a cog in the machine. I think this goes in tandem with the other members too as the identities placed onto them in the scenario all represent stages in capitalism and class discrepancies: Anya represents largely marginalized identities (particularly women in blue collar fields/harassment) and how they ultimately have to fend for themselves. Daisuke a sort of perception of both a class between Curly and the rest, protected no matter the effects of the establishment due to his home life but at the same time he is the metaphorical future gen, things stripped from him as the older generations squabble amongst themselves in private conversations leaving him unequipped. Then there’s Swansea being sort of those who have lived through it, knowing how it ends but ultimately still lack the skills, resources and want to change it, letting it cycle.

The entire thing with Jimmy circles back to the fandom ultimately wanting easy solutions to the events in the games, a face to blame and a weird black and white thinking to issues that are dangerous to view that way.

[geomimetry]

Connor was always deviant

Let’s begin by talking about deviancy: it is a gradual thing. We see androids feel things before they break the red wall and becoming officially deviant. Therefore, I don’t think androids actually have to break a red wall in order to act of their own free will, but that it’s merely there to show the player what’s happening and the magnitude of it. In reality, the moment which the wall “breaks,” is merely the realization that the android doesn’t have to follow their instructions if they don’t want to. But to get to this point, an android needs to have a reason for why they would choose to abandon their directives, be it through trauma or the triggering of another free android. To be traumatized, one needs to feel, and when and why an android begins to feel is a little bit muddy, but eventually it culminates into deviancy (free will).

Now, when we play as Markus, Kara, and Connor, we get to see all three moments of deviation, except ... I don’t think Connor’s deviation was real, because he was already deviant prior to that.

Connor is a prototype investigative model, meaning he’s CyberLife’s experiment in a different branch of androids. Connor is an android designed with an unprecedented amount of autonomy in mind, meaning he’s expected to solve problems by himself with minimal input from others. Every android is autonomous to a degree: tell them to do the laundry, and they will take it from there; you don’t need to instruct them every second of the way. But Connor is meant to operate at a level above that.

Connor receives the mission to apprehend deviants so CyberLife can study them, but he needs to use his own reasoning and decision-making to determine the best approach according to a number of factors. The tasks Connor is given are much more complex, and therefore require a complex way of thinking. But not only is he a hunter; he’s an investigator.

The traits most benefiting to an investigator are curiosity and empathy: both of which are arguably impossible without having emotions. Curiosity is necessary to possess the drive to look for clues even when there seemingly are none. To want to find out what happened, if only to sate your own curiosity. Empathy, because it is vital to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the object of investigation. To think like them, to feel like them, to become them.

A machine doesn’t have emotions and isn’t capable of feeling curiosity nor empathy, which CyberLife probably found troublesome in their quest to create an investigative android. Especially one they were planning on using to catch androids that supposedly have begun to feel emotions. So what did they do? They made their investigative android deviant, but he’s unaware of it.

Having a deviant deviant hunter/investigative model is ingenious because of the following reasons:

1. Its thought process and decision-making is extremely complex and can therefore easily extrapolate and come to a conclusion all by itself.

2. It’s completely autonomous and can make decisions without a human’s approval.

3. It understands and empathizes with its subjects, facilitating negotiation, interrogation, and investigation.

4. It is curious, making it want to acquire more information simply for the sake of sating its curiosity.

5. It is able to be manipulated.

While it is not confirmed in canon that Connor was always deviant, everything we see in the game points towards it. Mainly, I’m referring to the implementation and usage of Amanda. Why would CyberLife need an additional (non-deviant) AI to act as Connor’s handler? And why on Earth would they take walks and boat rides in a virtual reality?

My theory is that Amanda is CyberLife’s solution to manipulating and managing a truly autonomous being to get it to do their bidding and having it stay on track. Connor tracks his relationship to humans, which is a useful feature to have for every android, but he also tracks his relationship to Amanda, an artificial intelligence. CyberLife clearly places importance on Connor’s and Amanda’s relationship to each other. They want Connor to seek the approval of Amanda, acting as a proxy for CyberLife, and for Amanda to dole out praise and criticism and dynamically adjust her attitude to Connor in order to cultivate this.

Amanda is CyberLife’s way to manipulate and keep their deviant under control. But not only does Amanda manipulate Connor—the entire zen garden does. When CyberLife is pleased and happy with Connor, the garden is calm and peaceful, as is Amanda. When Connor fails to live up to expectations, the garden turns cold and inhospitable, as does Amanda. And if Connor should deviate from CyberLife’s intended path for him, Amanda has access to his motor functions.

And if we focus on machine Connor as well as Connor-60, don’t you think they’re suspiciously emotional for being “undeviated” androids? They are capable of feeling vengeful, sad, and terrified. Examples of vengefulness: machine Connor and 60 both seem to make it their personal mission to eliminate the leader of the deviants and deviant Connor respectively. It seems like it’s driven from a place of hate and offense. Example of sadness: machine Connor’s facial expressions and LED color when Hank yells at him to leave and then shoots himself. Example of terror: when 60 panics because the AP700s are deviating right in front of him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it, meaning Amanda will be very disappointed in him—something he seems to place importance in as evident by what he says to Connor before executing him.

So that’s my hypothesis. Connor is a deviant already at the start of the game, but CyberLife tampered with his memories so he wouldn’t be aware of this and therefore be more easily manipulated and held under control. Connor thinks he only started to gain emotions and started to deviate shortly after he met Hank, and that he deviated in the bridge of Jericho. In a way, he did, since he only realized then that he didn’t have to follow CyberLife’s instructions, but he’s always had emotions. CyberLife has just told him over and over again that he didn’t, so he believes in it. Therefore, Connor has had the possibility to disobey instructions at any moment, but he has not understood that he can. Meanwhile, Markus and Kara only go through their cascade of emotions to deviancy a little bit into the game, meaning they didn’t have the emotional capability of understanding that they could disobey before then.

[boinkingbattlemechs]

Cougar

Based on the Adder, the Cougar is a powerful Clan Jade Falcon light OmniMech.

After the Refusal War with Clan Wolf, the Falcons' newly vested Khan Marthe Pryde strove to rebuild her shattered touman, reaping the benefits of efforts by her predecessor Elias Crichell to step up the pace of the Falcon breeding program and to bring new and deadly OmniMechs into service. With regards the latter, the successful introduction of the Fire Falcon, Black Lanner, Night Gyr, and Turkina pleased her, but Pryde desired the symbolic goal of a complete Star of new 'Mechs.

Recognizing that she'd stretched her Clan's scientists to the limit to produce those four designs already, Khan Pryde directed her scientists to modify an existing design into an even more deadly machine for the fifth member. The design selected was the Adder, and in using an existing design the Falcon scientists were able to field a virtually new 'Mech in roughly half the time normally required to construct and test a new OmniMech.

First seeing service during the fighting on Coventry in 3058, the Cougar quickly spread to other Clans, most notably Clan Smoke Jaguar's defenders during Operation BULLDOG. The visual similarity to the Adder caught the Inner Sphere forces who faced it on Coventry and Port Arthur off-guard, incorrectly assuming it was the older design and being shocked by the greater firepower the Cougar was capable of unleashing. Remaining popular with the Falcons, the Ironhold facility that produced the Cougar was destroyed by Clan Steel Viper in 3071 during the Wars of Reaving.

Though the two 'Mechs are visually similar and share the same weight, the Cougar is slower and better armed than the Adder, replacing its progenitor's 210-rated XL engine with a lighter 175-rated XL model and mounting just five and a half tons of ferro-fibrous armor on an endo steel frame to boost the available pod space to 19 tons. Though some Clan MechWarriors complained that the loss of speed was damning for a light 'Mech, the overall consensus was the increased firepower made up for this deficiency.

The Jade Falcon scientists continued to closely mimic the Adder in the Cougar's weapon systems, the greater pod space allowing them to enhance them while adhering to original's philosophy of ranged combat. The primary configuration is a good example, mounting a pair of LRM-10s and large pulse lasers for a combination of direct and indirect fire support.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Biden should support the UAW

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. That night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

The UAW are on strike against the Big Three automakers. Biden should be roaring his full-throated support for the strike. Doing so would be both just and shrewd. But instead, the White House is waffling…and if recent history is any indication, they might actually come out against the strike.

The Biden administration is a mix of appointees from the party's left Sanders/Warren wing, and the corporatist, "Third Way" wing associated with Clinton and Obama, which has been ascendant since the Reagan years. The neoliberal wing presided over NAFTA, the foreclosure crisis, charter schools and the bailout for the bankers – but not the people. They voted for the war in Iraq, supported NSA mass-surveillance, failed to use their majorities to codify abortion rights, and waved through mega-merger after mega-merger.

By contrast, the left wing of the party has consistently fought monopoly, war, spying, privatized education and elite impunity – but forever in the shadow of the triangulation wing, who hate the left far more than they hate Republicans. But with the Sanders campaign, the party's left became a force that the party could no longer ignore.

That led to the Biden administration's chimeric approach to key personnel. On the one hand, you have key positions being filled by ghouls who cheered on mass foreclosures under Obama:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

And on the other, you have shrewd tacticians who are revolutionizing labor law enforcement in America, delivering real, material benefits for American workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Progressives in the Biden administration have often delivered the goods, but they're all-too-often hamstrung by the corporate cheerleaders the party's right wing secured – think of Lina Khan losing her bid to block the Microsoft/Activision merger thanks to a Biden-appointed, big-money-loving judge:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

These self-immolating own-goals are especially visible when it comes to strikes. The Biden admin intervened to clobber railway workers, who were fighting some of the country's cruelest, most reckless monopolists, whose greed threatens the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

The White House didn't have the power to block the Teamsters threat of an historic strike against UPS, but it publicly sided with UPS bosses, fretting about "the economy" while the workers were trying to win a living wage and air conditioning for the roasting ovens they spend all day in.

Now, with the UAW on strike against the monopolistic auto-makers – who received repeated billions in public funds, gave their top execs massive raises, shipped jobs offshore, and used public money to lobby against transit and decarbonization – Biden is sitting on the sidelines, failing to champion the workers' cause.

Writing in his newsletter, labor reporter Hamilton Nolan makes the case that the White House should – must! – stand behind the autoworkers:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/whose-fault-is-it?

Nolan points out that workers who strike without the support of the government have historically lost their battles. When workers win labor fights, it's typically by first winning political ones, dragging the government to the table to back them. Biden's failure to support workers isn't "neutral" – it's siding with the bosses.

Today, union support is at historic highs not seen in generations. The hot labor summer wasn't a moment, it was a turning point. Backing labor isn't just the moral thing to do, it's also the right political move:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

Biden is already partway there. He rejected the Clinton/Obama position that workers would have to vote for Democrats because "we are your only choice." Maybe he did that out of personal conviction, but it's also no longer politically possible for Democrats to turn out worker votes while screwing over workers.

The faux-populism of the Republicans' Trump wing has killed that strategy. As Naomi Klein writes in her new book Doppelganger, Steve Bannon's tactical genius is to zero in on the areas where Democrats have failed key blocks and offer faux-populist promises to deliver for those voters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

When Democrats fail to bat for workers, they don't just lose worker votes – they send voters to the Republicans. As Nolan writes, "working people know that the class war is real. They are living it. Make the Democratic Party the party that is theirs! Stop equivocating! Draw a line in the sand and stand on the right side of it and make that your message!"

The GOP and Democrats are "sorting themselves around the issue of inequality, because inequality is the issue that defines our time, and that fuels all the other issues that people perceive as a decline in the quality of their own lives." If the Democrats have a future, they need to be on the right side of that issue.

Biden should have allowed a railroad strike. He should have cheered the Teamsters. He should be on the side of the autoworkers. These aren't "isolated squabbles," they're "critical battles in the larger class war." Every union victory transfers funds from the ruling class to the working class, and erodes the power of the wealthy to corrupt our politics.

When Democrats have held legislative majorities, they've refused to use them to strengthen labor law to address inequality and the corruption it engenders. Striking workers are achieving the gains that Democrats couldn't or wouldn't take for themselves. As Nolan writes:

Democratic politicians should be sending the unions thank you notes when they undertake these hard strikes, because the unions are doing the work that the Democrats have failed to accomplish with legislation for the past half fucking century. Say thank you! Say you support the workers! They are striking because the one party that was responsible for ensuring that the rich didn’t take all the money away from the middle class has thoroughly and completely failed to do so.

Republican's can't win elections by fighting on the class war. Democrats should acknowledge that this is the defining issue of our day and lean into it.

Whose fault is a strike at the railroads, or at UPS, or in Hollywood, or at the auto companies? It is the fault of the greedy fuckers who took all the workers’ money for years and years. It is the fault of the executives and investors and corporate boards that treated the people who do the work like shit. When the workers, at great personal risk, strike to take back a measure of what is theirs, they are the right side. There is no winning the class war without accepting this premise.

Autoworkers' strikes have been rare for a half-century, but in their heyday, they Got Shit Done. Writing in The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson tells the tale of the 1945/46 GM strike:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

In that strike, the UAW made history: they didn't just demand higher wages for workers, but they also demanded that GM finance these wages with lower profits, not higher prices. This demand was so popular that Harry Truman – hardly a socialist! – stepped in and demanded that GM turn over its books so he could determine whether they could afford to pay a living wage without hiking prices.

Truman released the figures proving that higher wages didn't have to come with higher prices. GM caved. Workers got their raise. Truman touched the "third rail of American capitalism" – co-determination, the idea that workers should have a say in how their employers ran their businesses.

Co-determination is common in other countries – notably Germany – but American capitalists are violently allergic to the idea. The GM strike of 45/6 didn't lead to co-determination, but it did effectively create the American middle-class. The UAW's contract included cost-of-living allowances, wage hikes that tracked gains in national productivity, health care and a defined-benefits pension.

These provisions were quickly replicated in contracts with other automakers, and then across the entire manufacturing sector. Non-union employers were pressured to match them in order to attract talent. The UAW strike of 45/6 set in motion the entire period of postwar prosperity.

As Meyerson points out, today's press coverage of the UAW strike of 2023 is full of hand-wringing about what a work-stoppage will do to the economy. This is short-sighted indeed: when the UAW prevails against the automakers, they will rescue both the economy and the Democratic party from the neo-feudal Gilded Age the country's ultrawealthy are creating around us:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9?sk=207d6afdb89b0351b92233cc3318ab94

There's a name for a political strategy that seeks to win votes by making voters' lives better – it's called "deliverism." It's the one thing the Trump Republican's won't and can't do – they can talk about bringing back jobs or making life better for American workers, but all they can deliver is cruelty to disfavored minorities and tax-breaks for the ultra-rich:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Deliverism is how the Democrats can win the commanding majorities to deliver the major transformations America and the world need to address the climate emergency and dismantle our new oligarchy. Letting the party's right wing dominate turns the Democrats into caffeine-free Republicans.

When the Dems allowed the Child Tax Credit to lapse – because Joe Manchin insisted that poor people would spend the money on drugs – they killed a program that had done more to lift Americans out of poverty than anything else. Today, American poverty is skyrocketing:

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4206837-poverty-made-an-alarming-jump-congress-could-have-stopped-it/

Four million children have fallen back into poverty since the Dems allowed the Child Tax Credit to lapse. The rate of child poverty in America has doubled over the past year.

The triangulators on the party's right insist that they are the adults in the room, realists who don't let sentiment interfere with good politics. They're lying. You don't get working parents to vote Democrat by letting their children starve.

America's workers can defeat its oligarchs. They did it before. Biden says he's a union man. It's time for him to prove it. He should be on TV every night, pounding a podium and demanding that the Big Three give in to their workers. If he doesn't, he's handing the country to Trump.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it