In person, bash is king. Online I’ve mostly given up, but I don’t shop on Amazon anymore, so on the rare occasion I need something, I ask a friend to order it for me. I assume that provides some obfuscation.

With the number of breaches and leaks, my chosen birthday is likely more substantiated than my actual birthday.

I can’t bring myself to throw anything out anymore. Someday, when all my working PCs have worn out, a $200 bottom of the barrel 32bit netbook could be the last thing standing between me and having to rent compute from some shitty tech company who doesn’t respect my first amendment rights, hides any advanced configuration from the end user, and has an AI constantly rewriting my files to remove any objectionable language, like YouTube or Facebook, but in my home. I’ll hack my toaster to run Linux before I let that happen.

Currently running a ~10 y/o Dell-XPS laptop that still runs absolutely great.

For me, I was a long term gnome 2 user and have used gnome 3 and various derivatives. Gnome 2 was still very customizable, but Gnome 3 was very prescriptivist. I feel like KDE gives me the ability to dial in my desktop quite a bit more and I really like dolphin and the KDE apps. With that said, I don’t hate Gnome. I’m glad it exists if only to encourage other DEs to keep getting better. I don’t see myself daily driving it, but I would gladly recommend it to a Linux beginner.

I have issues with that too. Some of it might have to do with VPNs, but even with everything off, my devices sometimes still can’t see each other. I’m guessing I made a mistake configuring the network or something. Instead, I usually copy files from my phone via SMB, then access the same share from an NFS mount on my PC

Agreed, that IS a major plus. A good old fashioned red wagon or as nice wooden sled (No AI) is better than 90% of this e-waste. I would latch into that “no ai” box advertisement ad well.

Frustratingly, even adult toys 🍆🍑 come with AI now. 🫤

If they truly believe in their AI offerings, they should release them as an extension so users can choose to install them. You only bundle shit people don’t want. If it’s good, you distribute it stand-alone.

Yeah, when I support a social program, it’s with the knowledge and acceptance that some abuse will occur. It’s just that I think, despite the abuse, the upside is still a superior outcome to not doing it at all. Maybe one day we’ll rebuild the cultural fabric to the point where people don’t feel so desperate they immediately exploit any crack in the system regardless of the risks or long-term outcomes. With changes in culture and wealth distribution worldwide, I believe global prosperity is absolutely possible.

I can’t imagine welfare of any kind is more abused than the process by which the US government farms things out to private companies. If the poor are suckling at the teet of the welfare cow, then private industry is the wolf ripping it’s head off. Just look at the clusters of contractors that show up like flies on shit any time the money faucet is opened.

Yeah, I want my neighbors to have heat in the winter, food when they lose their job, and universal childcare. If I have to pay a few extra bucks a year for that it’s better than pouring it into the rest of the money-holes in Washington DC.

OP mentions being from another country. I don’t have a ton of experience with countries commonly regarded as corrupt, though I did go to Nigeria once; money flows >>differently<< there. But there’s also a stronger social fabric. I don’t know if I could vote for any tax when there is suck a blatant track record of shady dealings (though it’s arguable we’ve all been doing that). It was fascinating and I hope to go back some day.

Lol, I would wake up some time in February with an apetite sufficient to cause a global famine.

I love that version number matchup. The way things are going, Wine 11 is looking like a better option than Win 11.

There’s a fascinating cognitive dissonance that happens with drivers. People will carelessly speed past their own child’s school oblivious to the fact that car accidents are a leading cause of death, yet worry about unlikely events like serial killers or terrorism.

If we paved the road in front of every elementary school with some very bumpy cobblestones and put the crosswalk on a speed table, that would slow people right down. “I don’t want to launch my vehicle into a power line” is somehow easier for Americans to understand than “I don’t want to run over my neighbor’s child”.

I can only speak for the US and only the states I have lived in or visited, but getting a ticket is like winning a shitty lottery. Driving like everyone else (ubiquitous speeding, yielding at stop signs) is enough to make you eligible for a ticket. Whether or not you get one is based largely on luck and slightly on whether or not you know where cops like to sit. There’s not a ton of motivation to drive legally when our traffic laws are broken, vague, and don’t reflect reality of driving in America and even the people enforcing them regularly violate them. Around here the highway is posted 65-75mph in most places but in my subjective experience, 60-95mph tends to be 80% of drivers. Nobody stops at stop signs unless yielding to other drivers or a police officer is present.

Instead of spot enforcement (like the US) or camera surveillance and ticketing, I think road design (or in a lot of cases redesign) is the superior way to get higher levels of compliance with the law and to increase safety. Older people might not like it, but roundabouts have HUGE safety benefits. Road hierarchy could be better communicated visually or through tactile means with pavers or cobbles to slow traffic on secondary streets. Lights could be moved to the close side to keep people from rolling out into the crosswalk and to put them closer to where pedestrians stand so they’ll be seen.

The real villains, are people who speed in school zones and work zones. “Your speed and inattentiveness could KILL people,” is the message they should be getting, but drivers are so entitled they speed past their own kid’s schools :‘’'-(

Inb4 someone writes a program and calls it AdblockAI. It gets trained on the shape of corporate logos and on the fly in-paints those regions of the screen to remove the logos.

On that same note, how about AR glasses that put black bars over ads and logos you encounter in real life so companies don’t get to subliminally advertise at you.

Rereading that, it’s not super clear who “they” is referring to. Here is what I was trying to say: In the past, some of our media has been revised to make it politically correct, books, film, and other media. I don’t agree with this, but I do think some of those people have good intentions. Putting ads on cultural artifacts (like our media) retroactively is whole new level of evil: supervillain evil. It’s like “Stonehenge, brought to you by CocaCola and Nestle” or “Skip the line at the Great Pyramid with Amazon Prime”. One is motivated by a misguided desire to protect everyone’s feefees. The other one is just pure greed.

They edited all the movie dialog to be woke/ now they’re gonna edit all the graphics to grab more money. :-D

Wife was happy. Though I have now been asked to retrieve all the ornaments from the attic so her and her sister can decorate it. I only did the lights. Teamwork!

My city does this for public events. I’m excited to finally use it sometime.

Haven’t done this, but I’ve known people who do. Beats the tree lots.

When I was a kid we did a real tree. When we visited my brother last year we did a small real tree. Normally we have a fake tree.

We had some deaths in the family and some sicknesses, so we weren’t feeling festive last year and set up a 3 foot tall fake tree before we skipped town. This year, today, I set up the big huge fake tree as a surprise while my wife wasn’t home. I’m hoping the Christmassy decor without the work will get her into the Christmas spirit. We’ll see if she’s glad or annoyed. :-D

I read that even Azure, which you would expect to have a ton of Windows machines deployed, is like 66%+ Linux VMs. I was surprised to hear that, but it matches my limited experience.