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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • It’s the downside of open source: You’re at the mercy of companies that don’t care and developers who are primarily interested in the hardware they’re using rather than the hardware you’re using.

    The best experience is going to be hardware that’s built and certified for Linux. System76, Tuxedo, a bunch of other smaller names and the rare Dell or Lenovo. But that’s definitely not practical for everyone, or a good idea to convince people to buy new hardware for Linux.

    It’ll be a slow transition. The more enthusiasts hop on the bandwagon, the more manufacturers and hardware vendors will care about support. The more Microsoft keeps irritating their customers, the more companies will move away. The support will come, it’s been improving for a long time.

    All that said. I’d recommend CachyOS or PopOS if you get the urge to try again. I’ve tried a bunch of distributions and those seem to have the best focus on “just make consumer hardware work right out of the box.” That’s no guarantee of course, but it’s a start.





  • And then interrupting that hold music at seemingly random intervals to tell you that they care about you, or to tell you that you could do this faster on their website.

    I had to call Assurant recently because their website literally threw an error and told me to call in and wouldn’t let me proceed. I was told by the automated messages no less than 4 unstoppable times that the website is faster, and then after explaining the situation to the person she told me that the website is faster.

    She was clearly reading the script and it’s not her fault so I kept quiet, but I have rarely felt such extreme rage in my life.




  • I’m exaggerating slightly to be funny. That said, I’m the type of parent that sends my kids out to play unsupervised, and that’s really not as common as it was when I was a kid. I’ve dealt with:

    • When my daughter was 6, she did a loop around our block alone. About a quarter of a mile, most of it visible from the front or back yard. A neighbor came to tell me she saw my daughter walking alone, and I told her I knew. She insisted that my daughter was too young, and it was too cold for her to be out alone (I think around 40 degrees? My daughter was wearing a coat, anyway). I said she’d be fine. This lady then went and convinced my daughter to walk home with her. She brought her up to the door and I was completely blown away that this woman basically took it upon herself to decide what my kid can and cannot do.

    • A different neighbor posted a picture of my son on Facebook, at 8 years old, asking where the parents were because he was too old to be out playing alone.

    • One of my daughter’s friends isn’t allowed out of the house without a parent (now 9 years old) so my daughter always goes to her house. It’s weird.

    That’s not a lot. It’s not even that serious. But it’s fucking weird that we’ve arrived here, as a society.

    Some commenter mentioned people on Lemmy being scared of everything. Yeah, I combine my experiences with those stories of people being arrested for neglect or abuse because they let their kid out of their sight for a minute and it terrifies me. This is a nation of nosy busybodies, convinced by around-the-clock news that there’s a pedophile kidnapper lurking in every neighborhood waiting for the chance to strike.





  • Just saw the power armor fight last night. I just see it as application of video game logic, and kind of appreciated it that way. Ghoul dude is clearly wearing some armor or something since he tanked bullets to the back. I mean, in the games you can tank a nuke if you’re wearing the right armor.

    If you watch it as Fallout: The TV Show rather than a TV show set in the Fallout universe, it all feels very natural.



  • I have a similar one! I did house calls. I got called out on a warranty call, someone said a coworker of mine didn’t fix the problem. I look in the notes and the coworker says he did a standard virus removal, suggested virus protection but was turned down.

    I get there and sure enough it’s riddled with viruses again. Coworker was legit, notes all in order, I tell the client that this isn’t a warranty issue, the work was done, and it has now been reinfected and will need another removal. He seems fine with this, but his wife flips out and demands I prove it got reinfected.

    I suggest that we can check the web history. Since it was popping up ads, we’d see when the pop-ups started, and more importantly we’d see if they had stopped after coworker left. Guy says that’s unnecessary, it definitely got reinfected, and this time he’ll buy an antivirus. Wife is having none of it, says go ahead and check and I’ll see the problem was never fixed. I ask if they’re sure, guy kind of resignedly says to do it.

    I’m not one to kink shame, but when all the trans porn site titles came up, the dude was clearly mortified. I didn’t get very far into trying to figure out if I can prove it’s related before the wife says “just fix the damn thing” and stormed out. I hope it wasn’t too bad for him, she seemed a bit difficult to deal with.



  • There’s some inherent risk in the ad blocker as well, though. If it’s an extension, you’re trusting that this thing you installed, that can read and modify every website you visit, isn’t going to do anything sneaky. Yes, maybe it’s open source, but every once in a while something sneaks into open source projects, too. It will get caught, but it could be after the damage is done.

    I mean, I use an ad blocker. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to value security and not use one.