I currently use VSCode. I did use Emacs for quite a while, and it in itself is a fantastic editor (if not, an operating system :^), don't get me wrong. But I had a few reasons for switching.

• Emacs is a very rigorous editor to configure, and whilst it comes with many features out of the box, a lot of those are either broken, or highly unfinished / unpolished, so it is effectively required to manually configure your environment. This also includes that the codebase for GNU Emacs itself is, and is still built upon, a fossil, and it can show it's age in a few ways. VSCode is typically ready for development out of the box, if not, easy to get set up using plugins, and customization usually just takes tweaking a few things in the settings.json at most.
• Improved language support is a must in many cases. Emacs language support or LSP is usually good, but in some cases it can be quite unoptimized (for example, the Dart LSP client on Emacs does not run well whatsoever in my experience). On VSCode, the language plugins are quite often official, and can come with some extremely helpful features.
  • On this, Jupyter Notebook is absolutely perfect on VSCode. Yes, Org Mode works great, but Jupyter is typically the most expected in my usecase, especially in standardized data science. EIN works, but it's not nearly as smooth and efficient to use as the VSCode support is.

Again, Emacs is great, I configured my environment myself using parts from Nano Emacs, and a good Evil mode configuration is an ergonomic dream (yes, I also use VSCodeVim), but it gets tiring to maintain it after a while, and I just want something that works, and VSCode fits that bill, not just perfectly, but with flying colors to all of my other requirements.

Honestly, I don't blame them for not wanting to put up with Unity's unreliance. It took Unity 10 days after announcing this awful change to backtrack to a normal revenue cut. That 10 days was filled with justified outrage from a ton of developers to the point of Re-Logic donating $100k to Godot and FNA in protest.

Some websites seem to hardly circumvent reader view, but to the point where it can be inconvenient. Reader Mode only works with the NY Times if I rapidly click on the "Toggle reader view" button whilst it's loading, otherwise it'll cut off. But it still does work brilliantly most of the time and gets the job done.

I live in a small tourist town (Ashland, OR), so I'm kinda in a mix where everything is compact and in one place, and services are common and very handy, whilst also having a lot of that beauty that living rural comes with, my only real issue here being the expense of everything.

My father lives in a "country roads" kind of environment as of recently, and I can personally confirm that I prefer being in a population of people in general, it's beautiful there, but I definitely felt "isolated" of sorts.

Even as I'm on the more left end, I'd say not all conservatives or right-leaning people are racist homophobic bigots, though. If anything, I'd say a sizable portion have a right-leaning non-discriminatory worldview, mainly economic.

Admittedly, as much as I'm preferring the fediverse, it is definitely an echo chamber, Lemmy included.

Here is an article by one of the cited sources covering a lot more cities. Was quite surprised to see Minneapolis at number 36 and Portland at number 45, as those areas are quite well known for having good cycling infrastructure in the US.

I tried out Mastodon once, never really got into it. Fast forward to Twitter's acquisition, shit hit the fan, you know the story, but I wasn't really convinced until some of the decisions lately. Tried out Mastodon again, and whilst it was nice, it wasn't really for me. I figured I'd try looking for another instance, and I ended up landing myself on Kbin as it has Lemmy support for topical discussions, as well as microblogging capabilities for who I keep track of on Mastodon. I don't post that actively, but it's been great so far!

Cramming for a 1600 SAT? Pffff, just grind Tetris for a center 4-wide, get some real work done.

In my curiosity, I bought a Nook Simple Touch off eBay for 15 dollars a few months ago. It actually works really great for reading EPUBs off Overdrive and OpenLibrary, and it definitely makes night reading a hell of a lot more comfortable, lasts quite long on battery, even as a cheap second hand device.

I think the fact that more information is becoming readily available on federated platforms due to more people moving over to Mastodon and Lemmy for example is definitely making the platform grow as well. With Twitt- sorry, "X" locking down threads to an account, the information on there, as well as other sites eventually, I guarantee, will become less accessible over time. The fediverse hardly has that issue of it's information becoming less available, and if anything, the structure of hosted instances makes that near impossible for the time being to be phased out. If Threads, for example, went through with adding fediverse support, it probably would not be as widespread as others like Mastodon as such, because the sites that power ActivityPub were designed with users in mind instead of profit.

If you're intending to purely stream games or something along those lines, you might want to look at one of those really cheap Fire tablets, new or used. They clearly are intended with planned obsolescence in mind unfortunately, but as long as you get one from 2015 after, you probably shouldn't have any issues with app compatibility. Do note that if you plan on rooting or installing Linux, they aren't that great of an option as their process is strange and complicated.

In terms of running Linux on, there are a few Atom-based cheap 8-10 inch tablets from Dell and other manufacturers that you can buy for dirt cheap used, and they could probably serve your purpose quite well.

There are actually medical edgecases for stuff like this where they can be quite useful. That being said, a lot of people definitely also seem to view it as merely monetary, as there are literal oxygen bars in Vegas.

Certain states such as Oregon (where I live) have acts in place regarding forests in general such as the FPA that should prevent the worst, or at least the destruction of forests whether imperatively or by wildfire, from happening.

However, when it comes to other places, I wouldn't even be surprised unfortunately. On the California state border on Highway 199 crossing from Oregon where it's mostly green, you see nothing but Redwoods burned and left in shambles for a few miles, it's gives off goosebumps seeing a natural sight in this awful condition, let alone a supposedly protected state park.

I honestly think the crescents are the best pieces, a nice seasoned and crunchy contrast from the softer (but still glorious) spuds.

What I just said was that archiving for preservation often is done with piracy. You need to get the content one way or another to archive, especially with the vast library on there.

The Internet Archive, even outside of their Wayback Machine, is effectively built on digital piracy in many ways if anything. The reality is that any sort of media, whether it's physical media that was destroyed, or digital media that was deleted or had it's host platform shut down, could possibly never be accessed again unless it's archived, even if that archival was done with piracy.

Mother 3 could be considered impossible to play legally in many ways, with most of the cartridges being sold unofficially with the English ROM hack being preapplied, and the originals starting near 75 dollars on eBay, and Nintendo isn't making any money off it anymore, so in many cases unless you're a collector, it's best to just pirate the game with an English ROM translation.

The Internet Archive also has an archived online library of books that you're free to borrow from, similar to an Overdrive-like platform of sorts, which is great for finding information that isn't publicly available, or to read a book that is simply rare used and not sold anymore or where another copy isn't to be found.

Name is Brent, pals screwing around. Pal takes Mr. Krabs quote, "sponge boy bob", puts name in, "brent boy bob." Abbreviates to bbmb, "m" is pronoun.

Even as a person who's gone through the Almeda fires in Southern Oregon, this is one of the most horrifying videos I've watched. The entire area seems to be engulfed in flames, I hope everyone is able to evacuate safely.

I use a near-base model 2020 M1 Air, 512GB SSD and still 8GB RAM. One thing I can confirm is that this thing very rarely slows down. That being said, I'm a software developer that doesn't do anything THAT rigorous, but I've been able to smoothly do tasks in the background during compiling, and goes through it quickly. I have some friends that do heavy work with Logic Pro, and their base M1s have no problem as well.

So all in all, whilst it ultimately depends on the type of work and intent to be done with it, $3000 is still probably overkill, even with a Mac.

I just started using kbin.social after not really feeling satisfied with Mastodon personally, wanting something more topical like Lemmy, but I still wanted some Mastodon compatibility due to most of my mutuals on the Fediverse using Mastodon. Landed myself here, so far so good!