The “political” aspect of communism stems directly from the desire to radically alter the economic system. It is not tied, however, to the particular political order.

Coming from the same very Wikipedia article you cite on communism:

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers’ self-management, and an authoritarian socialist, vanguardist, or party-driven approach to establish a socialist state, which is expected to wither away.

So, communism, just as capitalism and socialism, can be combined with all sorts of governance types. It can be authoritarian (and so can be capitalism - look at fascism to see an example), and it can be democratic (early Soviets) or even libertarian (anarcho-communism). You can build a totalitarian communist hellhole, and a totalitarian capitalist one; same in reverse.

Now, an argument can actually be made that capitalism is inherently undemocratic. As your ability to exercise rights is heavily tied to your wealth (think of regular worker suing a billionaire, or all the lobbying, or corruption scandals involving the wealthiest and the way they slip out of them like nothing ever happened), people can be and commonly are silenced. Moreover, if you have money, nothing stops you from financing the media to translate your message. This way, important political messages are drowned in favor of what the rich want to translate, and certain (rather corrupt) voices are heavily amplified over others.

By extension, liberalism, even in the most ideal of its forms, is deeply flawed when it comes to a true democracy.

Finally, most communists (including Marx, since you mention him) realize that the communist society is at least very far off from the current state of affairs. This is why socialism exists as a transitory state, an economic system that grants a lot of benefits of communism (worker’s rights, a social state, socially owned industry) while keeping the monetary incentives in the economy. The absolute majority of communists support this transition and welcome a socialist state.

Never heard of NovaCustom before, but if all is true, it’s very dope!

A good sustainable privacy-centered device.

Microsoft’s Windows chief Pavan Davuluri had earlier hinted at such plans already about how the next evolution of OS will make it capable enough to “semantically understand you” as Windows will get “more ambient, more pervasive, more multi-modal”. Using features like Copilot Vision it will be able to “look at your screen” and do more.

Since when did corpos try to reframe the word “pervasive” as something positive?

Please make it slop

-Mozilla employees, probably

Aside from a really good advice on putting activity before home, make sure you sleep enough.

While it may sound tempting to have a few extra hours in the evening, the way you spend them when you’re exhausted is meaningless.

When you get proper sleep, you may have a bit less time on your hands, but you can actually turn the time you do have into something nice - and finally get the kind of rest you deserve.

Trust me - you’ll thank yourself for this when you find out you still have energy after your work.

With that energy, you can not only go to wherever you want to go, you can also make the home a nicer place. Make yourself a spa evening. Watch autumn movies with tea and cookies. Read a book. Whatever strikes your fancy and makes you relaxed and…at home.

No worry, buddy, you were very, very hot

Poowned

First they laughed at Russians

Then they laughed at Chinese

Now they laugh at Americans and Brits

Who’s gonna laugh the last?

No system is good enough to prevent abuse and dismantling of democracy. Europeans already lose footing and need radical action to stop repeating same mistakes. Authoritarians are already knocking on the doors, and they will not be quiet.

Seems like Americans also choose cars by this principle

Or a metal health room

I’d rather not taste your nut

Interesting

X11 is heavily outdated and vulnerable, but it features one thing Wayland doesn’t: it works with everything.

So, if Wayland checks your points, go Wayland. If something breaks - X11 is there to back you up.

Need to play it again for the fourth time now

It’s in the icon

deleted by creator

It is! But the extent to which it is used is limited by the efficiency losses that come with electrolysis, logistics, and reverse conversion.

I assume it could still be useful in applications that require long hauls, as dragging a heavy and expensive battery around can negate efficiency benefits over the long runs.

Nice!

Pouring out a gallon of water is an immediately identifiable thing

Yes, as in “you can impress people with that”, no, as in “it gives any sort of accurate perception”

There are plenty of things that consume orders of magnitude more water than AI. You’ll be much better off ecologically by skipping the last few seconds of your shower or eating a tiny slice of meat less every week than by not using these tools.

Besides, many of them can be run on your regular, air-cooled PC.

That’s not to say that AI training in general is not an ecological issue - but most of it actually goes in directions other than LLMs and image generation tools, and for models already trained, the footprint is straight up negligible. You likely wasted more energy reading this than getting an AI to make an image for you.

The expenses are mostly upfront though. I’ve spent like $400 on a relatively fancy NAS and two 3TB WD Red CMR drives five years ago, and since then, there was that.

Of course, depending on your use case, there could be extra expenses as well, some of them recurring:

• Bigger drives
• Backup storage (I already had a place I could back up to)
• Domain name and DNS records (if you expose it to the public Web with a URL; you can otherwise just use a VPN tunnel to access NAS from outside the home network, which is free unless you do anything fancy)
• Some kind of paid software (if you don’t enjoy the perfectly good collection of open-source apps)
• Etc.

Now, for the streaming alternative:

• Netflix Standard: $18/mo
• Spotify: $12/mo
• Total: $30/mo, or $360/yr. Just these two services alone.

Your NAS system will pay off in a little over a year (maybe two years if you go all in with huge drives, fancy NAS configs, extra expenses here and there), and it’s smooth sailing from there.

My unit works for 5 years already with no maintenance, is still fully supported by the manufacturer, and I don’t expect to replace it in a few more years.