Yeah, it's like not being able to look away from a train wreck, but it's a humongous fiery train wreck that has been advertised and teased in every form of online media for the past two years.
The differences in sheer speed and responsiveness is something FOSS alternatives need much more publicity about. When the requirements for one product are "help the user do what they want" and the requirements for another product are "synergize the KPIs of these 53 stakeholders in our trillion dollar conglomerate, monetize our market position in every way possible, and check the minimum viable checkboxes to keep end users engaged with the brand" it shows!
Windows to Linux is of course the most significant and worthwhile. As I like to describe it, even using the most full-featured distros out there (Linux Mint Cinnamon gang represent!) any flavor of Linux is like greased lightning compared with windows. And I mean Windows 10, not even 11.
A few weeks ago I turned on an old secondary desktop PC that had been powered off for a month. It had numerous updates, everything except installing a new named version. Even the kernel. I decided to time it. From the time I opened the software update GUI -- including typing in my password, letting it download, letting it install, getting the "yo, reboot when you're ready," etc -- it was done in 5 minutes. And those were 5 minutes where the computer was totally usable. Running the current version of the full featured Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.1 on a PC from 2011!
My favorite recent example is the switch from Plex to Jellyfin. Now granted, fully self-hosting means more IT admin type stuff for me so that family members and I can securely connect remotely. But god damn if every single app I have tried doesn't feel like warp speed compared with the Plex versions. Did you know that watching my media using the WebOS app on my LG TV does not have to be dog shit slow? And don't even get me started on phone apps like Finamp. (it really whips the jelly's ass?)
I do mostly c/c++ for an embedded product, but one of the modules in the system uses an FPGA programmed w/ VHDL. So I’ve gotten to do a few deep dives into that code in the past couple years.
It’s been decades since I’ve had to write new VHDL or Verilog though.
What is even worse than how embarrassing this is, is that it’s impossible for me to tell if this was Putin’s idea or just a fortunate side effect of his stooge’s lead-addled and dying brain.
I wonder how much this affects things if you’ve already gone through Firefox’s settings to max out privacy and turn off all telemetry.
I resisted switching to Librewolf because Firefox works great (including M365 in Linux at work) and seemed to have the options you’d want for privacy and security.
This doesn’t feel like an emergency, especially in a chrome/edge dominated world. But it’s back on the list of things to investigate transitioning away from.
As I have been transitioning more and more of my stuff to FOSS, it has become clear that the infrastructure to push shit on you is a huge problem in itself, even if you block and avoid it all.
The user experience benefit in performance alone makes it worth it for me. Even if we ignore eeeeeverything else, it’s so nice to have your computer just do what you ask it to do, and not triage your request with 50 other corporate priorities.
My favorite two recent examples are replacing Windows with Linux, and replacing Plex with Jellyfin.
There’s no shame in making the best decision with all the information you could reasonably be expected to have at the time. That’s not ignorance, that’s paying attention.
There’s a legitimately sad and disappointing trajectory to Tesla. It wasn’t just a story. That place had a lot of good engineers that did great work. And I’m sure the company still has some, especially the indentured H1B types who don’t have the same options as others.
I’ve seen this image before. This time, however, I am half way through watching The Expanse. I had a much stronger reaction to it this time, for a couple reasons, lol.
Excellent post! Any time I see one of these from you I’m going to upvote and comment just in case it gets it onto more screens.
I still haven’t tried the steam deck, but it seems like such an awesome system. I won’t be in the market for one any time soon but maybe by the time I am, there will be a Deck 2.
Good stuff to think about. Thanks! I think I’ll keep the email issue on my mental list of things to address as I keep FOSSifying and self hosting things.
Not just him but undoubtedly millions of fellow Americans.
When one is dead and broken inside, they look to external quantitative factors for validation. They convince themselves that the more measurable & “objective” those factors are, the more they must be representing some underlying truth. They represent the meaning of life.
And the shitty thing is that those who only care about money and power see the worst of humanity getting rewarded with more money and more power.
Their fucked up personal lives aren’t evidence of something wrong with them. They are evidence that such silly feel-good nonsense is unnecessary at best, and a terrible weakness at worst. You know, the kind of shit you’d expect from a cartoon villain in a children’s movie.
Edit to add an anecdote: I’m sure people from conservative families will feel this one. Say in front of one of the broken people that Musk is an idiot and a bad father, and the reply will be something like “well he’s made a million times as much money as you, so that shows how smart you are!” Or maybe “his kids are set for life - have you done something like that for your kids?”
I’d say this move seems too dumb even for fiction, if that wasn’t the SOP for the entire country I live in.
Given the context though, I’m curious if one of you privacy experts can change my mind on how I approach email.
I don’t use email for any meaningful communication where I expect privacy. It is essentially the way for companies and a few other organizations to send me low priority information and/or confirm my identity to reset a password or whatever. Because of that, the only attributes of an email service I really care about are reliability and availability, including not having emails silently blocked for not coming from a “trusted” provider.
So what is the practical risk of just using a Gmail address for that stuff, equivalent to hiding in plain sight? Yeah it helps Google fine tune their advertising model for me, while I’m running Linux on all my machines and blocking ads on any device I touch. My social media is Lemmy and my streaming service is Jellyfin.
Am I risking too much if I use it as the corporate contact point that it is? Am I just letting my white/straight/cis/male privilege show through?
Ah, but that’s the beauty of employers that are wrapped up in M365: it is always Teams’ fault!
Even if it isn’t actually a problem with Teams, you can just blame it and not a single person will ever second guess you.