Assuming all is above board, the main concern I have is if it’s worth that much to them, wouldn’t it be worth that much to me?

Yes, and then some. It sounds like you’d do better randomly selecting a realtor to throw it up on MLS “as-is,” and even better if you followed the usual, admittedly annoying, process. These companies are not literal “risking jail” scams, but they’re not your friends either, and they will not be offering you anywhere close to market value. My sister and I looked into a couple of them when our dad passed, and the offers were far below what we pulled with a Realtor, even priced to move and with a kind of costly “turnkey” arrangement where they arranged cleanup and inspections.

I have a halfway decent woodworking setup, plus a 3D printer and a cheap laser, but metalworking is just not really an option. The space dedication, plus the oils and the fire hazards and the scraps/shavings/slivers/chaff/god-knows-what-else all being completely incompatible with sharing a space with the rest of it. Sigh, just not likely to happen until and unless I can get in with the makerspace mafia. I am thinking of trying to figure out designing for mills and using metal-bending workbenches in CAD, though, and sending more designs off to be fabbed.

Good for the recall folks, though I’m sure there’s a share of pure NIMBYs in there and some folks definitely having the day they voted for. That’s funny that the supporters think the 1000 construction jobs will be for locals and not the specialized oilfield-like firms that are already staffed up to work these projects, or that Google will have 200 permanent staffers tied to the location and contributing to the town’s tax base.

I was around almost at the beginning of Eternal September. In December of 1994, I posted to a newsgroup that google eventually archived on the web. Beyond that, my eBay account predates y2k. The first purchase I recall was a parallel port ethernet adapter so I could use Arachne for DOS on my 386SLC33 laptop in the university library. I mailed out a money order and hoped this “buying shit on the internet” thing wasn’t going to be a scam.

Imagine if that one fire were the series finale. All-time great show if you end it there.

They say they used a paid actor. Of course, even if that’s true, it’s not particularly hard to find someone with a similar pitch, accent, and timbre, and then finish fixing it to make sure it’s as confidently soothing as the NPR voice you wanted to steal in the first place. I suppose in one sense it’s not utterly different from hiring a soundalike, but now the soundalike is damn near perfect (the clips in the article are VERY similar and feel more like the difference in recording equipment than anything else) and doesn’t need to actually be available to perform for new impressions. Yet another example of “withstand motion for summary judgment, string it out, lobby against future guiderails” as the totality of Silicon Valley’s legal philosophy.

Ahh, but which one? LOL, I’m just kiddin’, they all have serious issues.

I grew up in the suburbs of the Florida one. It’s… fine? Go Jags!

Maybe it can repost racist MAGA slop, creep on the granddaughters of ex-girlfriends, and put private messages into the public feed, just like your dad!

When we were not-quite engaged and doing long-distance, my wife ganked my dumbphone and quickly edited my contact from {her name} to {her name}-mywife, no spaces, no capital letters. So now, twenty+ years later, that’s what it still says, and that’s how I address greeting card envelopes to her.

This is pretty much what I said to my wife while scritching my dogs. First it’ll just be expanded to missing kids and olds, because of course everyone wants to reunite families, but eventually it’ll be something that “law enforcement” can request for whatever the hell they want, because after all they’re the good guys keeping us safe!

Deep cut here, but the old Rocky and Bullwinkle had a “Fractured Fairy Tales” that was often pretty fun.

I was using a 2012 “vintage” minitower PC that originally came with Win7 as a crappy little plex/local FTP/Minecraft server, and I had been wanting to try MacOS after not seeing it for a while, so I got a Mac Mini with an M2 in it, and while I’ve hardly stressed it, it seems really nice. It’s small and completely silent, and if I did want to use it more, Apple has certainly tried to keep their walled garden pretty and well-organized.

Both things could be true.

7-11 theoretically already has it for their app; you scan with your phone and pay with Apple or Google Pay. The only thing is that you’re supposed to sort of wave the completed transaction at the cashier as you go, but the only reason you’d really need to use portable self-checkout is if the cashier is busy, and when they’re busy they don’t want you breaking in line or to stop what they’re doing to see that you’re showing them a plausibly legitimate checkout screen.

In a completely, utterly, definitely unrelated story, I got accused of shoplifting by a 7-11 cashier the other day.

I hadn’t actually looked up any numbers on the RAM shortage. Less than a year ago I got 2 8GB sticks of no-name PC3200 DDR4 for less than $25. I didn’t even really need it for my use-case, but it was so cheap that “why not” felt like a perfectly viable reason to upgrade to 32GB total. Six years ago I got the original two-pack of 8GB sticks for $75. Now that same amount of old-ass DDR4 would be $90-$100. Jeezus. No upgrades for me for a while.

https://youtube.com/shorts/UO_whAN302s

Sounds like he’s made peace with its living on in forks as well. Nice to see he’s doing okay.

LLMs shall prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory.

This may not go how they think it will. As an aside, for the moment at least, this is only for AI used/procured by the federal government.