I understand where you’re coming from, but of course the Linux I want to use is not a business with a centralized marketing department vying for market share. It’s something that I can customize and make into whatever I want it to be.

I think that’s why many people want to use Linux - they’re not pigeonholed into decisions made to gain market share, they’re free to choose whatever works well for them.

Paradoxically, 20 plus years ago people chose PCs and Microsoft over Apple for much of the same reason. We could select our own hardware from any manufacturer, easily run our own executables and develop code in any direction desired.

It’s hard to see that being a good thing

Ever since we started seeing traffic cameras showing up at intersections 15 or 20 years ago and recording license plates, I’ve had an uneasy feeling that these data pools just become a tool to move against people at any time in the future.

I’m not opposed to enforcement of rules. I want there to be rules in society and it’s important that we have resources dedicated to the enforcement of rules.

What I don’t want is a goliath unfair advantage that can be easily used to hurt people - even inadvertently - by ill-trained or malicious authorities.

The government has unlimited resources to prosecute people and destroy lives through the process. And it’s extremely expensive for people to defend themselves, even when falsely accused. The risk to everyday people, many who are following the laws, is just too high.

And if the wind blows towards fascist tendencies, that pool of data on you just became your worst nightmare.

The Fourth amendment was created in response to abuses by British authorities. At one point we wanted to protect individual privacy and property rights from government overreach.

Americans are not free if they are being detained for “probable cause” because some database + opaque lines of code said there is probable cause.

Handful of Windows desktop apps that don’t work well on Wine - WeChat desktop, LINE app desktop. I do tons of copy pasting of mocked up screenshots and stuff. It just doest work as well as in windows.

ZIP drives were a game changer at the time. We had no other (fast) way to move larger amounts of data in one shot without compressing / archiving over multiple disks.

Last year I dug a couple hundred zip disks out of my parents attic and bought an old zip drive off eBay so I could read them. They all still worked. My old data got moved to the cloud and the zip discs + drive went back to the attic. Perhaps in another 20 years I’ll dig it out again if we still have USB ports on our systems haha.

Anyways, the USB thumb drive business killed iomega overnight.

I have a laptop and a handful of desktops between my office and home. Some run Windows and some run Linux. I simply choose which one matches my task best.

Systems where I’m writing server-side code are going to be Linux. Systems that run jobs in the back end such as my self hosting stuff are all Linux. Systems where I’m doing email, documents, and general web browsing are going to be Windows.

Of course, my Windows systems have WSL, and my Linux systems can run Windows apps in virt. These days the line is super blurred and it would no doubt be possible to use only one if I were willing to give up some native app running.

Here’s an example of the split screen not running at full width on Black Ops 3

https://youtu.be/FcNHlqup4tM

And here’s how it used to look on Black Ops 1: https://youtu.be/lnF2W-e7e8Q

I’m not so sure about the latest versions, if they made local split screen better.

Black Ops 3 has the Kino der Toten map split screen but it doesn’t run full width. I’m pretty sure the same map on Black Ops 1 did run full width.

My favorite moments with these games were always playing locally, and having that keeps the game playable for as long as you own it and a working console.

A full width split screen zombies mode, and a full lobby of people who want to play Kino Der Toten are pretty much the only thing that would interest me in another COD BLOPS title.

I just can’t imagine who these titles are for now. I appreciate they’re trying to make the graphics and sound amazing, but these online experiences, as imagined by the developers, have taken away more than they’ve given.

The last modern warfare title I bought was MW2, that bizarro named one. I opened it a few weeks ago and the whole game has become a loader to other COD games and its multiplayer lobbies are empty. So stupid and I wish I could get a refund.

A lot of people buy in to the argument that authorities should be able to conveniently take down bad people, and limiting privacy expectations is a way to do that.

It’s such a short sighted perspective, outsourcing the future to men who yearn for power like that.

Interesting, I want to try some of these solutions.

I set up luks on some of my selfhosted virtualbox instances to protect against physical theft, but power issues cause all too frequent restarts that are a serious pain to physically access.

An ssh call in a script that could be remotely used to unlock and complete the boot would be so handy.

Sales taxes vary based on city, county, and state rates. They can also be waived if you, the buyer, have a reseller permit or are purchasing for a non profit.

It’s not underhanded and is annoying for sellers too because they have to know a lot about sales taxes as well. They could show you the price with local taxes included but then most customers would think their prices are too high comparing to other merchants.

So the price shown on the product in a store or online is only what the merchant is selling it for. The price at the register is what the merchant is selling it for plus the taxes they have to collect (unless you’re excluded for the reasons mentioned above).

The tax is a buyer obligation, not a seller obligation but sellers have to be an intermediary. So buyers should be educated about the tax laws that apply to them (in this system).

The receipt should be clearly marked so you know exactly how much went to the product and how much went to tax. You can itemize and deduct your sales taxes from your federal income taxes if you’re so inclined to track it (and it’s a better result than the standard deduction)

It’s more complex than a VAT system but enables local jurisdictions to levy taxes to pay for various things applicable to their area.

🤷‍♂️

A long time ago.

These days, I keep both audio and vibration turned off. If somebody needs to reach me they will want to message and then wait until I check.

UBI is probably a good idea but it’s coming too slowly for anyone to rely on. Even if UBI is fully implemented, I suspect it will be life sustaining but not a life fulfilling. So humanity still needs to find purpose.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where someone cannot be trained to do something new. Isn’t that a core feature of humans?

Next, how shall we define value? I argue that humans can always create some kind of value that machines cannot, even if only because a human is involved.

We still value actual art over AI generated art. We value uniqueness and rarity. We value the faults that are inherent from things that are natural and organic.

Tons of the jobs people did a hundred years ago in developed countries are now gone or have been streamlined down to require fewer people. Yet there are more people on earth now than there ever have been before and arguably worldwide hunger is at its lowest point. So somehow we have figured out how to survive despite vast amounts of automation already. It seems unlikely that our new “AI” tools are going to somehow dramatically disrupt this balance.

Websockets are often used for quality of life features like notifications and websites that are dynamic without needing to be refreshed. Almost went website with any kind of chat will use WS for example. Turning it off will make web browsing a little more annoying.

However websockets are also sometimes used for anti-fraud related software that can also leak information you may deem private. Disabling websockets might prevent that data from getting out but of course all this depends on your threat model.

I remember playing Quake 2 in the dorm at university. This was right as everybody was getting LAN access in their room. Absolutely nostalgic.

So it’s a plug-in for WordPress that rips wordpress.org links out?

That’s hardcore lol. The world really is pissed at Matt Mullenweg.

It always involves

sudo rm -rf *

Here in Thailand a lot of people have this cert and use it to teach. These jobs are competitive so don’t pay super well. I’d suggest you start on job boards in various places you might want to live to see what they will require.

Dammit noooo there can only be one