What VPN?

That makes sense for your use case. My use case is that I don’t want my YT watching habits being scooped up if I can help it. At one point I might not have cared too much about things like YT, but under the current administration I have a lot more reservations about that.

Are there any alternatives?

Good to know. I was using FreeTube on a Linux machine I have set up to do most of my Youtube watching, but I had to disable VPN. I got tired of trying different countries and just turned off VPN. I’ll try Swedish servers…

Is that an option on Mac or Linux?

But, I think he’s at his best when he’s in a show where there’s a script and an editor. On social media and on free-form podcasts, he comes off as a know-it-all ass.

^ This. I still am miffed at his attitude in regards to considering the issues of AI on I forget which talk show, but he took the attitude of “we’d just pull the plug”.

Maybe when in a scripted format or in writing, he might be able to extrapolate a bit, but he just sounded like a layperson when it comes to the topic, and I honestly have no idea if he’s read or considered the kinds of things that, say, Nick Bostrom has put out there. It just sounded like some hot take man-on-the-street kind of response, talking about the problem as if we are talking about someone’s server running somewhere. It was just…facepalm.

I saw Tyson take such a dismissive attitude toward the threats of something like AI, specifically, AGI/ASI with the flippant “but we’d just shut it off!” kind of thing, it really grinded my gears.

However, I guess I’m falling into the same trap that so many do - expecting this guy to be all things to every aspect of anything that smacks of “science” and that’s just not a realistic expectation. I’ll stick with him on things like the re-make/update of Cosmos and ignore his random hot takes on virtually everything else. Probably also when he’s putting pen to paper vs. the hot take kind of thing on a talk show. He seems to be a frequent guest on talk shows and I remember a few being quite cringe at times.

I seem to remember a certain kind of person (usually your local WELLAXKTUALLY guy) getting butthurt about the way Sagan was being held up (in their view) as the arbiter of science or something, repeating “he’s not a real scientist he’s just a generalist” as a constant refrain.

Fuck it, who cares. If guys like this are good at getting whole generations of people interested in science, more power to them…science could use all the PR it can get in the age of Idiocracy.

Hm, never heard of Paris Syndrome; guess you learn something every day, thanks.

Thanks. It seems maybe Italy works for the moment anyway.

Do you know of a working exit country/location? I’ve tried a few different locations with no dice, but if I know there is one that works for someone else, I’ll certainly try that.

I’m using Private Internet Access. It’s weird, because as soon as I turn it on, FreeTube fails to play anything.

I’m not understanding why it doesn’t work when I turn on my VPN, though. Is there a way to watch Youtube and have the VPN on?

Uh, I still have the same question. Linking to Wikipedia doesn’t really answer the question.

I am sure that most of the cereals I’ve tried in recent years have changed since I was a child. Not for the better.

corporate America has spent the last 15 years hiring people based on their race instead of their qualifications

Wait, in what universe did that happen?

What annoys me is that they seem to just ignore any requests to fix things that are broken. For instance, I don’t want to see everyone’s incoming video by default. I have to turn it off for. Every. Single. Meeting.

And I’m hardly the only one. Here is an example of someone asking for this, back in 2020:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msteams/forum/all/can-incoming-video-have-a-default-to-turn-off/98c198b5-e9ad-48d5-80d4-dc7051968e51

I suspect that Microsoft views Teams users as basically hostages since it’s often something forced onto a big user base at many companies. If you hate it? Too bad: if you want to stay employed, you’ll just use it.