I blame the idea of the 00s and 10s that there should be some "Zen" in computer UIs and that "Zen" is doing things wrong with the arrogant tone of "you don't understand it". Associated with Steve Jobs, but TBH Google as well. And also another idea of "you dummy talking about ergonomics can't be smarter than this big respectable corporation popping out stylish unusable bullshit". So - pretense of wisdom and taste, under which crowd fashion is masked, almost aggressive preference for authority over people actually having maybe some wisdom and taste due to being interested in that, blind trust into whatever tech authority you chose for yourself, because, if you remember, in the 00s it was still perceived as if all people working in anything connected to computers were as cool as aerospace engineers or naval engineers, some kind of elite, including those making user applications, objective flaw (or upside) of the old normal UIs - they are boring, that's why UIs in video games and in fashionable chat applications (like ICQ and Skype), not talking about video and audio players, were non-standard like always, I think the solution would be in per-application theming, not in breaking paradigms, again, like with ICQ and old Skype and video games, I prefer it when boredom is thought with different applications having different icons and colors, but the UI paradigm remains the same, I think there was a themed IE called LOTR browser which I used (ok, not really, I used Opera) to complement ICQ, QuickTime player and BitComet, all mentioned had standard paradigm and non-standard look.

It's not a back door, it's just a rear entryway

Sorry for the late reply, I had to sit and think on this one for a little bit. I think there are would be a few things going on when it comes to designing a course to teach critical thinking, nuances, and originality; and they each have their own requirements. For critical thinking: The main goal is to provide students with a toolbelt for solving various problems. Then instilling the habit of always asking "does this match the expected outcome? What was I expecting?". So usually courses will be setup so students learn about a tool, practice using the tool, then have a culminating assignment on using all the tools. Ideally, the problems students face at the end require multiple tools to solve. Nuance mainly naturally comes with exposure to the material from a professional - The way a mechanical engineer may describe building a desk will probably differ greatly compared to a fantasy author. You can also explain definitions and industry standards; but thats really dry. So I try to teach nuances via definitions by mixing in the weird nuances as much as possible with jokes. Then for originality; I've realized I dont actually look for an original idea; but something creative. In a classroom setting, you're usually learning new things about a subject so a student's knowledge of that space is usually very limited. Thus, an idea that they've never heard about may be original to them, but common for an industry expert. For teaching originality creativity, I usually provide time to be creative & think, and provide open ended questions as prompts to explore ideas. My courses that require originality usually have it as a part of the culminating assignment at the end where they can apply their knowledge. I'll also add in time where students can come to me with preliminary ideas and I can provide feedback on whether or not it passes the creative threshold. Not all ideas are original, but I sometimes give a bit of slack if its creative enough. The amount of course overhauling to get around AI really depends on the material being taught. For example, in programming - you teach critical thinking by always testing your code, even with parameters that don't make sense. For example: Try to add 123 + "skibbidy", and see what the program does.

You could look into automatic local caching for diles you're planning to seed, and stick that on an SSD. That way you don't hammer the HDDs in the NAS and still get the good feels of seeding. Then automatically delete files once they get to a certain seed rate or something and you're golden. How aggressive you go with this depends on your actual use case. Are you actually editing raw footage over the network while multiple other clients are streaming other stuff? Or are you just interested in having it be capable? What's the budget? But that sounds complicated. I'd personally rather just DIY it, that way you can put an SSD in there for cache and you get most of the benefits with a lot less cost, and you should be able to respond to issues with minimal changes (i.e. add more RAM or another caching drive).

Then that's changed since the last time I toyed with the idea. Which, granted, was probably 20 years ago...

I don't think accuracy is an issue either. I've been on the web since inception and we always had a terribly inaccurate information landscape. It's really about individual ability to put together found information to an accurate world model and LLMs is a tool just like any other. The real issues imo are effects on society be it information manipulation, breaking our education and workforce systems. But all of that is overshadowed by meme issues like energy use or inaccuracy as these are easy to understand for any person while sociology, politics and macro economics are really hard.

Sure thing! So glad I could be helpful! I don't blame you. It's the only thing I'm keeping a Win10 dual-boot for right now, and to their credit, it does work quite well in Windows. We've had a ton of fun with our set. In the meantime, I'm keeping up with the project but not actively tinkering with it myself, because it's exciting but also not quite there yet. It's at least given me hope that it can be done though! I'm confident we'll see significant gains sooner rather than later. Hats off to them. (Once my income stabilizes I'll gotta pitch them some funds...) Envision has made it VERY convenient to get set up, but the whole process still saps more time than "Fire it up and play." So maybe play with it at some point, but either way definitely keep your ear to the ground. I'm hoping in the future we'll get to use it for things like Godot XR or Blender integration.

XMPP is a standard and doesn't have mandated UIs. If you want a voice chat, then Mumble. It's very narrow, just for games.