parents should be put in charge of their own kids,

So convenient that governments and their corporate masters take such a keen interest in watching our kids, after making all their parents spend most of their lives at miserable jobs.

On your feet, comrade. This is no place to die.

Ah I see what you’re saying.

Thanks for taking the time for the clarification! I’m sure this would clear it up for some other folks as well.

I also know they’re a fraction of the size of those giants who can probably field staff specifically for FOSS contribution, but that’s still a bit disheartening. I hope things improve.

Every time they’ve seemed like a good option I find myself balking at the price though lol.

I don’t blame you. I’m even tempted to get a Quest-something unit secondhand or something, if only because I’m pretty sure they’ve cracked it a bit better on the Linux side.

They’re making some progress on WMR’s controllers right now but they’re the most troublesome. Hand tracking works now! But a lot of games expect button input.

Seriously, we just need a good code leak or something so that hobbyist VR peripherals become more commonplace. Right now everything is focused on establishing lock-in to walled gardens instead of interoperability.

VR hardware should be just like getting a monitor / keyboard / mouse / flight stick / whatever, but they want to make it closer to a smart TV / phone so they can push you to throw it out and buy a new one every 6 months.

BigSkreen

Often, when it grows past that, it can become… unsavory.

Exactly! Like the Internet, Linux is for anybody! . . .but not necessarily everybody.

Because I mainly game in VR and that’s still so far behind on LInux :(

This is a major sticking point for me too. I’ve got a dusty Win10 partition I haven’t booted in ages, and I was keeping it around mainly for VR, but then Microsoft had to go and just extinguish that too.

Monado is making impressive progress but it’s a huge pain because they have to reverse engineer stuff with zero help from the manufacturers, instead of simply interfacing with the hardware.

I refuse to let Meta have any of my money though. I hope a good affordable VR kit comes out that isn’t another hyper-proprietary blackbox.

They just expected us to know how to use them.

And they still do. The “kids these days and their compyooturs” fallacy. Irks me to my core.

I was fortunate to have a middle school typing and graphic design class, and in highschool I learned hardware troubleshooting and stuff (A+ equivalent IT work)…but that “career path” of flipping computers that people downloaded the wrong screensaver on kinda died out.

Still learned a lot though! If the I.T field was still hanging out with buddies in some dungeon nobody visited, I might be in that field today lol.

Maybe I just don’t know where to look or what.

I always hear these stories but companies in my city tend to donate old machines to charities (cool if it works that way) or trade them in to their vendor or something.

I’m actually kinda afraid with all the tarrifs and crap that we’re gonna see secondhand hardware turn into speculative inflated eBay fodder because average folks can’t afford new anymore.

Still looking for this supposed mountain of <TPM 2.0 machines that are supposed to surface for next to nothing any minute now. 😅

Alongside that, this ““backdoor”” (diagnostic/troubleshooting tool) requires physical access

Can’t have an “evil maid” if I do my own cleaning around here.

😏 <br> 👉 👉

the likes of system76 have already made their allegiances clear.

Aw crap. What did they do? :(

Been somewhat out of the loop lately.

Localization. It’s not as easy as simply translating from one language to another!

Done right, you get something of foreign origin that feels like it was done in your backyard.

Done…less than stellar, you get “All your base are belong to us, someone set us up the bomb.”

Pic related

It’s calm rational takes like this that help me remain an artist and strive to be a creative despite these tumultuous times. Thanks for the hope boost. ❤️

Really sad about the Pinephone, because you know what Pine did SO WELL? The PineTime. That device is still incredible and has lasted me a long time.

It shows time, and it shows messages, even a decent heartrate monitor! Built like a tank, too. I wish more of their products could be this awesome.

Facts. At first there was such an enthusiastic Android crowd who was having so much fun with it. (Not to mention contributing TONS of free labor and promotion.)

And now Google is just saying “NO! NOT YOURS! WE’RE GREEN APPLE NOW!”

I hope those actual genius nerds who love user-centric tech accelerate an alternative just out of sheer spite at this point.

Totally! It’s weird how it can mean the meeting spot between two things, or the separation of them.

It’s like someone started using it wrong and it just caught on.

Maybe it was the “could care less” of its day hahaha.

Do not compare evils, lest you be tempted to cleave with the least of them!

–Victor Saltzpyre

(A raw line probably inspired by somebody else lol)

My highschool was a smaller charter school that was essentially a bunch of connected / encircled modular buildings.

I actually kinda miss it because it had different vocational paths and I ended up in a student-run computer shop. We actually fixed things around the campus and other people’s machines and stuff. Shame that sort of thing kinda fell out of relevance, job-wise!

We also had a large computer lab where we played things like CounterStrike Source, Battlefield Desert Combat or 2142, and sometimes Unreal Tournament maybe?

Lol anyway, to your question: I think I might have been popular-ish. In the sense that I think I was a sort of “ambassador” between groups.

I made friends with the drama kids, the nerds, had some goth friends, stoner / skater friends, and I’d often introduce them to each other. I had my “circle” but I was that guy who sorta knew almost everybody.

I think the thing I miss most is that everyone saw each other as individuals back then. Surface level you might fit with a “group” sure, but we tended to see each other as people and for the most part they got along.

But sadly when I moved away after graduation, only like one friend really made the effort to keep up with me over the years. :( Quality best friend though!

But I still think of them often and hope they’re doing okay in this crazy world…

…which means MS is still steering the ship.

And boy, have they been drinking all the rum. :(

And just like that, Microsoft goes straight to jail LMAO.

But oh yeah, I’ve seen those. Those would also be included under this law! We can have both! Lol

Seriously though, I’m talking specifically when any little thing that stops someone from doing what they’re doing and it’ll usually say “Hey, this is why it’s not working. Please tell someone this message.”

“…it just says error?”

Hurt my soul. I’m so done with that nonsense lol.