Technically, it’s not been my municipality that’s charged me, but those around me and where I work. I don’t vote there. My town didn’t exist when the people I’m researching were making records. And at the state level, it comes up every few years but dies in committee. Last time was in 2020, when it died due to the pandemic changes everyone’s focus. I’ll ping my local congresscritter and see if it can be revived–the person advocating for change recently retired, sadly.

Accurate. I both misread your comment and I have a bee in my bonnet about a $20 fee to take pictures of something you can examine for free.

Tell that to my town clerk, charging $20 to take pictures of documents with your own phone. This is based on Sec. 1-212 part g (the bottom) of state law And, as a local history researcher, it bites ass.

Walk someone else through editing a config file on the command-line over screenshare? Nano. Omg nano is your friend.

The problem with using nano for years is that I now try using nano shortcuts in other programs. Random new windows opening is confusing, until you figure out Ctrl+o isn’t save in that program. Then it’s just annoying because you still have your inappropriate muscle memory.

Robert Evans wrote a post on it and did multiple podcast episodes.

The TL&DR is that AI-generated children’s books are crap, without a coherent storyline or any literary niceties like “foreshadowing” and “beginning middle and end”. Kids are still learning what stories look like, so if you hand them AI-generated stuff they might know it’s unsatisfying, but they can’t put into words why their books are wrong.

I apologize, I don’t think we’re disagreeing. Fiction can, but often doesn’t, describe something in sufficient detail to be cited as “prior art” during a patent application or dispute. It comes down to how broad the claims are in the patent.

If someone were to try and patent “sliding doors”, a patent examiner could point at Star Trek and say “Sliding doors are already described in published material, your invention is not original”.

If someone were to try and patent “Mechanism X, used for making sliding doors slide”, that might be patentable because Star Trek (and other published material) didn’t describe Mechanism X.

Inventions need to be non-obvious (35 U.S.C. 103: Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter) in order to be patentable. Prior art can be used to show that an invention is obvious. The prior art doesn’t need to rise to the level of detail contained in a patent to be prior art.

I’m not saying that devices described by fiction are patentable based on the description in the fiction. But, those descriptions could be used to prove that the ‘invention’ is too obvious to be patentable. Page 7 of this document from the USPTO going over what ‘prior art’ is suggests that fiction can be used as prior art.

My understanding is that patents are to protect novel new ideas. If something’s already bean described in fiction, what innovation is protected by the patent?

So, I’d think “it’s a tablet” wouldn’t be patentable because that was described in Star Trek. But, "screen technology blah that makes tablets practical "would be patentable.

Neat post on related topic: https://fia.umd.edu/answer-can-science-fiction-stories-be-used-to-demonstrate-prior-art-in-patent-cases/

Yeah, but I bet the dumpster or poop bin is on the other side of the yard or parking lot.

A lovely southern USA gentleman showed me how to rejigger the video cable in my laptop (it had gotten pinched and was flickering intermittently). He also gently chidded the other video showing how to take apart the same laptop for doing it the hard way. The other video was a wonderful descent into cursing.

It’s a rough world out there. Let them enjoy childhood while they can!

Connect just added that (today, iirc).

(settings -> block settings)

(swapping apps) Liftoff seems to show username@non-local-instances by default, but omits the instance if the user is on your instance.

I didn’t find anything helpful in Jerboa for this use case.

In connect there is an option to always show the instance.