If by "Lego set" you mean a pre-determined object that is decomposed into LEGO style blocks, and must be assembled in only one form, in order to match the photo on the box, that is some kind of modern perversion of the Spirit of LEGO.

When I was a small child, we had several kinds of kits. My neighbor had the ultimate nerd's Erector Set type building materials.

I had a set for very small children, called "Bristle Blocks". These were various plastic shapes that locked together with plastic bristles on the end. They also included rolling wheels. They were very versatile, and we could build all kinds of things, my sister and I. We had a big pile of randomly-shaped Bristle Blocks that we stored in a duffel bag.

We also had, courtesy of my grandmother, a very old set of non-LEGO. It was a house model, that was composed of the same type of blocks, and they all had specific uses and placements. It was fun to build, tear down, and rebuild, and yeah, they could be composed into different shapes if you really wanted, but the goal was to reproduce the house.

We also had Lincoln Logs. These were 100% wood, and they notched together like a real-life log cabin would. And they also included green-colored slats for the roof. There were no pre-made patterns, and so you could just build the logs in whatever shapes, but they were obviously designed for houses, and cabins, and other building-shaped things.

These were all really fun, and exercised our creativity. I have no idea why a child would "not know what to do" with a huge bin of random LEGO pieces. I believe that the vast majority of kids would find a way to make them work together. LEGOs were built because of their interchangeability.

By the same token, we also had a lot of Star Wars official merch. And some of those vehicles had many fiddly parts that you could take apart, and put back together. And admittedly, I treated some like LEGO, and I would unscrew all their panels and disassemble them completely, to see how they worked.

I was not as adept at reassembling them, and so my father tended to get pissed when I ruined a very expensive Star Wars vehicle through my curiosity. But at least it wasn't one of his radio sets.

It used to be that someone wanted unfettered Internet access, and they were disgruntled with the company's firewall or proxy policy, and so they brought in a modem, and hooked it up to their desktop PC, and started dialing out on some analog line that the company didn't even know they had. Then it's all fine for 3 years until some malware gets discovered, and then IT discovers who-all had unauthorized lines that weren't being scanned or filtered at the company firewall. Same thing happens with WiFi APs today, of course.

I was working for a company that really offered no in-house software or tools to run. But my new supervisor was asking me to closely track my time. So I signed up for some SaaS that would let me log activities and track my timeslices, so I could show a graph or table later on and see what I was doing. I used it for a few weeks. It was real effective. But what I realized down the line, was that all the notes I was typing into this 3rd-party SaaS, were revealing company confidential information. And ultimately, I felt very uncomfortable about revealing what I was doing, on an unannounced and private project, and without authorization or even notifying my employer's IT department. So I shut it all down, and I had to do it with pen and paper, but that felt secure enough.

So if people are going to feel empowered by vibe coding their own bespoke apps, I hope their IT department comes down like a ton of bricks, and tells them to knock it off. Because it is not worth the tech debt, support costs, and ultimately the massive security problems and infoleaks. If your employer won't give you what you need in these terms, then maybe it's just not important to them in the first place.

So I tried it out, and it really sometimes works, and I've overcome some real obstacles that Tech Support was unable to assist me with. However, Gemini can also become "too big for its britches" and begin explaining glitches from a systems-programming perspective, as if it has deep knowledge of the Android codebase, and deep engineer's knowledge of the Pixel system hardware. And it will spit out absolute nonsense.

I have retorted to it a few times, "that sounds more like Star Trek than a sound appraisal of the subsystem" and then Gemini smirks and says "You're right to call me out on that!" and blithely continues on its way.

So yeah. Sometimes the LLM confabulations are deeply cloaked in highly technical jargon that could not even be questioned, unless you already know it's absolute bullshit. And then the LLM freely admits it! LLMs have no shame, that's for damn sure.

Fast-forward to 2015, and I was moving in to a new place. It is also between two LRT stations. In fact, the properties right next to the stations are new, and they demand a premium. Nevertheless, the LRT is now quite convenient for me to board. But are there grocery stores?

Well, there's a pan-Asian grocery 2 miles away. There's a Fry's 4 miles away. I don't shop at Fry's. There's a Food City that is 7+ miles away, but I don't shop there, either.

It's really kind of laughable how limited the choices are, in terms of grocery stores right along our LRT line. If I go about a mile and I'm willing to walk (steep incline) there's a Trader Joe's, which is great. I usually do that, but I also take a Waymo home, due to the weight of the burdens.

There's a Whole Foods a few miles away, too. It's possible to take the LRT, transfer to the Street Car, and get dropped off one block away. Then, to go home, I could reverse that. But if I purchased significant groceries, I cannot. The Whole Foods is situated in a multi-story parking garage, and this makes it a veritable nightmare for Waymo or any rideshare pickups. Therefore, Whole Foods is on my "Do Not Shop" list, because I can't bring anything home. (Oh, and on delivery they will send me expired foods.)

But he is only one aliyah away from full citizenship. He has simply not opted-in yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return

Larry’s grandfather made aliyah and dwelt there in the Holy Land. Sergei has exactly the same opportunity.

You could too, alephnerd!

They are collecting the information, whether or not you opt-out of personalization.

I am giving them permission to show me what they know about me.

If you opt-out, then you are consenting for them to hide what they know, and only hide it from you.

Isn’t that the worse of two options?

Personalized ads can often be uncomfortable or embarrassing, but anyone who disables this feature should remember that you're only denying signals to yourself.

It doesn't affect the phone's security in any way, unless you specifically tweak a security-related option in that panel. It doesn't degrade the device encryption or Google Play Services. I don't see how any app could balk while it's enabled. There are no apps I have that even run differently. I use the same banking apps and all the other things as normal, whether or not this mode is enabled for me.

Only the legislated part of law is codified. In our American common law system, case law is, by definition, uncodified. So what judges are doing, is taking the codified legislation, and applying case law decisions in layers on top, to reach a final decision.

Anyway, that is not how the fare system worked with paper transfers. There were no caps at all. You either paid full fare, or you showed a valid transfer. If you didn't have the transfer, then you paid again and again on any given day. The fare caps only came into use when the system was capable of tracking them, for example a unique preloaded or prepaid card.

Now I have limited experience with American public transit, so perhaps there were some "capped fare" systems in the 1980s or before, but I never saw one that worked that way.

I've often heard of elderly people who've got so many prescribed drugs that they begin doing really badly, and some whiz physician intervenes, sweeps away all their prescriptions at once, and suddenly the patient is doing far, far better. I've also seen friends of my parents who were so utterly bogged down by all the requirements, and my Dad valiantly authored spreadsheets and managed the regular refills and all that stuff for them. And my Dad is not an HCP by any means.

It is obvious that clinics and prescribers can effectively put a "leash" on their patients by tying them to at least one specific medication that keeps them coming back for more, on a regular basis. If you cannot live without your prescription, then you will learn to be loyal and compliant with your prescriber and your pharmacy.

The taking of medications is analogous to the sacraments of the Catholic Church. There are specific rituals to be followed for each. There are specific substances to be taken. We don't really know what these substances are (the Hebrew word "manna" actually means "what is it?") But the priestly class decrees how they are to be administered and taken. And obviously, we cannot have life within us if we do not partake in the correct sacraments.

And that is why I strictly limit the amount of medications that I take, because it is a slippery slope to being bogged down in intricate daily rituals, fasting, abstinence, and appointments to go get more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte

The metric prefix "kilo" is always lowercase. I don't know how you got a capitalized "K", but that's not how it works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo-

If you ride and pay your fare twice, then every ride after that, for the rest of the day, is free. That is very nice. So if you commute and you have a transfer, and you're taking 4 rides per day, then you're saving half of that in fares.

In the old days, you would pay a cash fare and the bus operator could issue a paper transfer ticket. The transfer would be good for a few hours. So your fare was basically per-trip. But the system couldn't track people paying cash fares like that, so there were no free rides without the transfer ticket. If you took two trips a day, like a normal commute, you'd pay at least two fares. Now, with pre-loaded cards or fares on the mobile app, you can track all that stuff, and reload when necessary.

For disabled people or whoever qualifies for "Reduced Fare", your fare costs half ($1.00 instead of $2.00) and so your daily maximum is only $2.00. A really good deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrods

And by contrast, Selfridges (among other chains) is owned jointly by a Thai conglomerate and the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfridges_Group