However, the Federal government has limited options when it comes to influencing the provincial health care programs. They can offer money with strings attached, and that’s about it. Given the hostile atmosphere from some provinces… they may not have been able to offer dental care by working through this traditional means.

Home Assistant invested quite a bit into the technology to create a FOSS voice assistant over the past year. It still needs quite a bit of work, but the foundation is there; it supports wake words (“Hey …”), speech-to-text to hear your command, interpretation and command processing, and text-to-speech to return results.

The downsides are that it’s still quite technical to set up primarily due to the lack of commercially available hardware, and the command library is fairly small at this point.

With some of this foundational work out of the way, I expect Home Assistant to move forward quickly to improve, and other projects can work off the same pieces if they desire to as well.

Here’s their year-end post about it: https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/12/13/year-of-the-voice-chapter-5/

Pre-orders that include a Graphics Module with an eligible AMD Radeon™ GPU will receive a free download code for one of the biggest games of the year: Starfield™ Premium Edition. Quantities are limited*, and we’ll be sending out the code prior to the game’s early access launch.

So… I’ve made a $100 deposit for the pre-order… which is in a batch scheduled for Q4 delivery… but Starfield releases before that. I wonder if they’ll send out the Starfield codes before they ship laptops, even though the pre-order deposit is fully refundable?

I like it, but, there are upsides and downsides.

I usually play with a team that has some remote members, so Foundry is the mechanism by which I create shared visuals and battlemaps. I don’t go as far as to run the whole game with Foundry – PCs have their character sheets, they make their rolls themselves, and I still track most elements of the game myself (except initiative-order and NPC/monster HP).

Even with just this light usage, there are downsides – for example, my prep as a DM takes longer because I have to create or adapt a map/visual for everything, as opposed to just describing it. I’m preparing an adventure right now that I might be done with if I didn’t use Foundry; it’s all documented, but not visualized.

Many (for example, the linked article) add more capabilities to Foundry until it runs and automates more and more of the game. I think I’m concerned about creating a slippery slope with that, to the point where we’re playing a multiplayer video game rather than an TTRPG, and the flexibility of the game is lost. But!, I add a thing here or there, trying to make my players’ experience better, and so far it’s all been great.

Ultimately this is the fault of the poor democratic system implemented in the US. A truly progressive option can’t be formed because it would split the support of the Democratic Party, leaving the Republicans to take everything in the first-past-the-post voting system. In the absence of electoral reform, or a progressive takeover within the Democrats, or maybe a gigantic scandal that shakes up ether party creating new opportunities… the best option for a progressive voters seems to be to support these idiots rather than letting those idiots in. And the best option for the Democrats as a party that wants power is to cater to the middle and be inoffensive, driving this entire thing into a loop where little of value gets done.

@[email protected] – Ooh, saw your post too late this time, but next year check out https://cyclepalooza.ca/event/summer-solstice-overnight-greenway-loop/. It was a blast.

😴

Hm… I think if they fucked up and were negligent, this is a reasonable slap on the wrist judgement. If they fucked up, and then were knowledgeable in a malicious cover-up of their fuck up, this seems like a light punishment. The evidence seems to weigh towards the second, but the punishment gives them the benefit of the doubt on that.

This is a sweet video. Walking through the assembly and QC process is very interesting – especially details like the DIY model being built by taking apart the built model after QC and removing components. Makes sense, but would have never expected that! Very cool.

One of the concerns I have with the Prime Directive is that it is intended to avoid a “slippery slope” problem, and so it is a very black-and-white rule. Starfleet can’t protect a developing civilization from a catastrophic planet-ending disaster… and the core reason is that “interference” can be a bad thing, so we won’t ever do it.

There are clearly situations where interference in another civilization would be immoral. There are also clearly situations where it would be moral. We can’t possibly figure out those situations and enshrine them into law? We do better today! Homicide is illegal, but there are exceptions like self-defense, and there are mitigating circumstances like causing an accidental death.

The Prime Directive should be much more complex.

Might not make for great TV, though.

For good quality, I’d recommend Boyd’s on 14th St SW - https://www.boydslobstershop.ca/

Not exactly sure that you’ll find “good quality” and “isn’t expensive” are compatible with each other…

I loved Everspace 2. I think if you enjoyed the gameplay of the first one, it’s a good bet you’ll enjoy it.

I think that the niche communities of reddit work well because of the huge number of people there to find enough niche participants. Lemmy isn’t at that point yet.

I’m playing 5e; it’s my first RPG. I’ve wanted to play D&D for most of my life and got a first group together about 6 months ago. Loving it. But I’m very interested in other systems in the future.

PF2e seems great for being similar in style, but having a deep tactical system for combat.

Star Trek Adventurers excites me for giving me a system to be a part of my favourite universe. I’ve always wanted to be in Starfleet!

And on a very different side of the spectrum, Fate seems to be a game that takes all the tactical RPG elements and throws them out, leaving just the juicy roleplay, characters, and world building. I wonder if the absence of any solid system will leave it a little… “vague”… but I think it would appeal to some players.

I run Wayland on my laptop (a Framework) and it works beautifully. But I still use X11 on my desktop where I’m a heavy Zoom user. The lack of a proper support for screensharing in Zoom is the primary blocker for me.

Wayland is great other than compatibility issues like that.