Yeah, Moff is going soft in his old age 😄

I may be reading too much into the religious bit, it just jarred so much with the show's history of (granted, loosely) science based storylines and resolutions. Just yesterday I watched The daemons where the Third Doctor berates Jo for her new age-y superstitions:

Everything that happens in life must have a scientific explanation. If you know where to look for it, that is.

But I guess I'll have to ignore the biblical setting in JttW as a rare lapse, unless of course it is revealed to lead into the opening scene of Life of Brian...

The more I think about this special episode, the more I love the Doctor's year with Anita. The way it was compressed and showed their bond growing made me think of the first minutes of Pixar's Up. Just the gentle, fragmented sketching of a shared life, leading up to an inevitable but still devastating loss — and the significance of armchairs!

Finally, re "bootstrapping" — Moffat has form in this area. Yes, obligatory nod to Before the flood, but the way it was handled this episode really reminded me more of an earlier example. Only a few days ago I watched the Red Nose Day shorts Space and Time, and it's basically the same situation:

Amy Pond: Who the hell are you?

Amy 2: I'm you ... from your future.

The Doctor: Tell me exactly what's happened.

Amy 2: Well, the exterior shell of the TARDIS has drifted forwards in time. If you step into the box now you step inside the control room a tiny bit into the past.

Amy Pond: I don't understand.

Amy 2: Neither do I.

Amy Pond: But you just said it.

Amy 2: No, I'm just repeating it. I'm just remembering what I heard myself saying when I was standing where you are standing now and repeating it I'm just repeating this, too, and this ... and this.

Amy Pond: Ah, I still don't understand.

Amy 2: You still don't.

At some point you just have to trust the process and hope you don't create a new "mavity" situation, I guess 🙂

See, what I always liked the best about Doctor Who christmas episodes is when they manage to use the holiday traditions as a background for science fiction, which in itself is just a big idea way of talking about the human condition. When these specials really play well, they loop back and produce secular little narratives that join the speculative science and the human need for connection that can be at its most precarious during midwinter.

Spoilers for the episode ahead

Joy to the world(s?) had a lot of that between poor lonely Joy herself, the Doctor aching for companionship, the Time Hotel connecting people across time eras, and that cosmic nuclear football that seems to threaten it all.

Moffat can really pull at your heart strings when he wants, even with characters you've only known for minutes. Joy speaking forlornly to a fly in her depressing hotel room; eager to please concierge Trev, wanting so much to not let people down too much; and Anita from reception — in particular her bottle year with the Doctor was a significant parenthetical before he caught up with the main rush of narrative.

The Scooby-Doo conceit of running from door to unconnected door down a corridor holds up even under pressure of a holiday related trauma and time travel. The star seed, in all its Pulp fiction-y MacGuffin glory, isn't nearly as clever as the prefab conflict Villengard whipped up in Boom, but it's vaguely threatening enough to drive the story.

The climax is where they lost me, though. I was fully on board with Joy's loss of her mother, Trev infiltrating the star over the course of aeons, and the Doctor using the Orient Express to force a door open (a more convincing use of rope than Empire of death). And all of it coming together in Joy's ascension made perfect sense — until that reveal of the location.

I realise that this era of Who is more fantasy- and fairytale-prone than previous ones, but tying the ending into the actual f—king biblical nativity isn't cute, or topical, or even relevant. It's just pandering, and lower than I'd expect from a hardnosed atheist like Moffat. My entire family groaned.

All in all a very good special, bookending a beautiful sabbatical vignette in the midst of the convoluted action — all let down by tacked-on religious bullshit in the final minutes.

Oh, do watch The war games in any form you can! It is a truly well-spun end to Troughton's (regrettably largely missing) run, and I really encourage everybody to watch it.

I did a quick skip through Classic Who a few years ago, thanks to LegoK9's guide to essential episodes, and I quickly became a fan of the Second Doctor. So much of what we recognise as the Doctor's character was formed in that run.

I dislike the animated reconstructions for their lack of artistry and wooden pacing, but for the Troughton/Hines partnership they're much better than nothing. I'm going to say you haven't lived until you've seen Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines spar on screen. Possibly the best Doctor/companion pairing until Tennant/Tate!

I think you're right about the legality of watching outside Britain, and I will not comment any further 😉

Surprisingly enough, the cuts for (much shorter) airtime worked quite well. Some parts of the plot were lost, and people were inexplicably saved from certain pickles to appear unharmed — but that was to be expected. I enjoyed the edit more than I expected. There were more exterior shots added than strictly necessary, and I guess they were often used to disguise cuts.

The reason to race through most of the serial, of course, was to get to the Time Lord trial and the Second Doctor's regeneration into the Third — canonically eliminating another ambiguity from the Whoniverse that had until now allowed for the Season 6B theory.

The trial had some fun, 21st century additions that I rather enjoyed — if you know you know — but the added regeneration sequence didn't just fill a gap where fans' imaginations had run creative for 55 years. It also gave us an absolutely atrocious CGI rendered closeup shot of "Jon Pertwee".

Is anybody happier and better off that we have this new end to War Games? I doubt anybody is more than indifferent to those dreary last minutes. And I'll definitely remember season 6B fonder.

No worries. Given the season, surely it's the recurring Bahhum bug.

Probably true. I don't see anything like that in the article, though?

So what I take away after a quick skim on xmas eve is... this is an attempt at one app for all (or big parts) of the fediverse?

Works for me.

I think this is the most mature and versatile one? Bookwyrm is nice for what it does, but it's only books.

Semantics. If person A is protected by privacy rights in her jurisdiction, but her data is scraped by project B from one where such rights conveniently aren't legally respected, A should still be able to expect some way of injunction.

Correct answer, of course.

Using one LLM to fuck up a lot more is poetic I suppose. I'd just rather not use them in the first place.

I'm trying to optimise my human efficiency vs effort here, but yeah. Get your point.

Theoretically speaking, what level of nonsense are we talking about in order to really mess up the training model?

a) Something that doesn't represent the actual contents of the website (like posting "The Odyssey" to the llms.txt of a software documentation site),

b) a randomly generated wall of real words out of context, or

c) just straight lorem ipsum filler?

Yeah, terrific use for a mini PC. Will some self hosters and home labbers spit bile at the thought? Probably. It's a matter of personal requirements.

Basically, like you say, most mini PCs are quiet, power efficient, and just carry that bit more oomph than a SBC.

For context, Rock Paper Shotgun is a gaming site, which is why the reviewer focuses so heavily on game performance on different mini PCs. Unsurprisingly, the answer to the title isn't an unequivocal "yes", but some of the little lunch boxes fare quite well despite their limited specs.

A more accurate title would be "Should gamers bother with mini PCs," but given their audience that would be superfluous 🙂 I think mini PC gaming will continue to be a niche interest, but there are certainly other and probably better uses for the tiny computers.

Yeah, the only threat to Big Tech is that they might sink a lot of money into training material they'd have to give away later. But releasing the material into the Public Domain is not exactly an improvement for the people whose data and work has been used without consent or payment.

"Congratulations, your rights are still being violated, but now the data is free to use for everyone".

I guess White's Web3 is going just great updates hurt some butts? I mean, it can't be fun to be up to your neck in an elaborate scam and have somebody keep showing you receipts proving that you're in fact up to your neck in an elaborate scam.

If I understand correctly, OP is after the non-Russian Pale Moon browser start page, not the project home page.