Trying to find a phone plan that's paid by the minute, not by the month. I want a phone that only charges me when and if I use it -- no recurring monthly fee whatsoever, and no 'inactivity' fees either.

I don't use my phone much at all. Even if it costs $5 per minute, that would still be cheaper for me than even the cheapest monthly plans. And I don't need any data connection at all, ever. Just voice calls and texts.

Such a thing used to be possible, but after searching and searching, I can't find any such thing now. Do they no longer exist?

what's your biggest fear, not like spiders or heights, the real one

mine's dying without ever actually making it, like looking back one day and feeling like i failed at life overall

curious what everyone else actually carries around ...........

Be only as specific as you feel comfortable.

Interesting in this context is completely divorced from morally good/bad. Could be any group from any area at any time in history. I'll start with a few, followers of the cult of pythagoras, contemporary black Hebrew Israelites, antiracist skinheads and the Amish (neo-luddites in general). Don't be racist or a prick to other people discussing.

I have discovered a pattern that after around 3 hours of deep mental work I am exhausted and I can't do anything any more that day.

What are your strategies to get more work done, or just to not feel miserable for the rest of the day?

I know AI/LLM hate is strong here, so this is going to get some blow back. But there's a lot of Linux folk on here, so let me frame it this way....

My understand of the Linux/unix design philosophy is building small, efficient programs that do a limited set of tasks very well and that can be strung together with other programs that do other tasks very well. This is in opposition to the " be everything" program concept of Windows and Microsoft Office Suite. At least this is how would describe the difference to non technical friends: Nothing you think of as your OS in windows is actually what Linux is replacing. You're getting the Linux kernel packaged up in a distro that combines a bunch of smaller pieces (file explorer, window manager, etc) that you can still customize from there.

When I look at the approach to AI, I see the same thing. I've dabbled enough in ML/LLMs to know that LLMs are effectively very fancy next word predictors or for the case of image/video GenAI, next pixel predictors. As others have said countless times, there's no consciousness or understanding of the context, but you can ask it things in natural language and it will try to produce whatever you asked for in the same app regardless of context.

From a science project standpoint, this is cool, but it doesn't seem scalable or consistently reproducable and the energy use and easily found blunders seem to support that thought.

So, my question is why is no one building AI with a Linux philosophy? Small purpose built ML models with a language processing/triage model on top? Oh this person has a question about history, send them to the history module. This person wants to edit a photo, send them to the photo editing module. Then let those modules dig deeper from there. That's how we do customer service with real people after all. With this way we could refine each specialization individually instead of having a giant model that consumes tons of resources and is error prone.

Ideally something that wouldn't leave viewers complaining about obvious artifacts or effects, but I'm willing to make some compromises

We know that there are Europeans in the Trump/Epstein files, so why doesn't Europol ask for every single file in full to check for possible violations and then prosecute the guilty?

Have they asked and got denied? Haven't they asked? What's going on? I'm not seeing anything in the news about any Epstein-related arrests.

I'm curious to see how the compression dictionary is formed for a given piece of text, what bits are allocated for each piece, etc. Found these for Huffman, but not for modern ones like zip/gz/brotli etc.

I hope that's open-ended enough. I've seen very similar questions posted here before, and there's no compression-specific community.

Unfederated news thread? Unfederated reddit? *i then struggle to explain reddit

Is it social media? Is it a forum?

I live around more tractors than people for context of my audience. I can explain what unfederated aspect is no problem but i sould like my grandpa describing facebook to his older siblings when i try to explain what a lemmy or reddit style forum is to my peers and family.

Just curious, what do you guys actually do for a living?

Scrolling through comments here, you can tell there's a huge mix of people, some clearly technical, some more creative, some who sound like they've been in the working world for decades, others who feel like students or early in their career.

No particular reason for asking, just genuinely curious what kind of professions make up this community. Feel free to keep it as vague or specific as you're comfortable with.

Drop your profession below, and if you want, one thing about it people usually don't expect.

I use a password manager and all my passwords go into a single password database. It doesn't matter if something was important (e.g banking) or less important (e.g one time use for a forum).

I am thinking about separating into multiple data bases. Something like:

• personal data
• hobbies
• finance stuff
• throw_away (one time use for forums / downloads ...)

I want to get some inspiration and ideas how to separate the passwords.

Everyone's talking about "learn a skill" like it's some magic fix. I've tried, and nothing has stuck. What am I doing wrong?

Over the past while I've actually tried: copywriting, logo design, tutoring, SEO, social media management. Not just thought about them, actually tried them. I even reached out to businesses directly for each one, emailed a genuinely large number of people, and maybe 1% ever replied, and even then it was usually just "we don't need this right now" before the conversation closed. And every single one, I quit before it went anywhere.

I don't think it's because these skills don't work, plenty of people clearly make money from all of them. I think something in how I'm approaching this is off, and I want to actually understand what before I pick up something new and repeat the same pattern for the sixth time.

So instead of just asking "what skill should I learn," I want to ask something more specific:

For people who actually stuck with a skill long enough to see results, how long did it take before you saw any real payoff? I have a feeling I've been quitting before the "boring middle part" even ends.

Did you struggle with switching between different skills before one finally clicked, or did you commit hard to one thing from the start?

Is a 1% reply rate on cold outreach actually normal, or is that a sign my pitch, targeting, or approach itself needs fixing before I even think about the skill?

If you were in my position right now, tried five different things with nothing to show for it, what would you actually do differently, a new skill, or the same list with more patience?

I'm not opposed to learning something new, but I'd rather fix whatever's actually broken in my approach than just add a sixth failed attempt to the list...................

(In your opinion)

I'm using DDG, but I'm not satisfied with it. The quality of answers is subpar and I find myself switching to google or LLMs when I'm researching some things where community opinion matter (for some reason reddit and forums are undervalued by DDG algorithm).

I could try daily driving alternatives, but I know I will be biased and it will noticably slow down my workflows.

ngl which country is actually the best to retire in? like proper peace, good weather, decent food, not stressed 24/7 kinda vibe

not looking for the "richest" answer, just curious where people actually feel chill and healthy once they're done working.........

Specifically the ones that post like bots but are not marked as bots.

The accounts that post into all sorts of comms including many they aren't a member of. The posts are usually pretty low quality and its clear the operator is not curating anything.

I find them annoying so I block. What do you think about it?

BE

What song have you played way too many times and still aren't tired of?

Trying to find new music that isn't just algorithm recommendations. Drop yours below.

Imagine you would see a fact that contradict your deepest believes, the core of who you are. This fact is uncontestable, is evidence in its purest form, is something that happened and you know with 100% certainty that it happened. But this fact also is against what define you as a person, your most profound thoughts. Either political, religious , philosophical or moral believes, whatever sits deepetin you.

Do you think this evidence would make you change your mind, or not?