For me, the worst part of setting up some new distro or service is when it's done and everything works. Then it just... Sits there. Working. Usually at some task I don't need very often. Very anticlimactic and boring. Then I have to find some other new thing to try, which is why my HTPC has been through like 4 distros in the past year.
I feel like there's only a handful of people in the world who can "punch down" at a US senator currently running for vice president. I don't think any of them are hanging out in Lemmy.
I think people are placing too much on this. Being registered is just sending a piece of mail with a checkbox checked, I think. You don't even have to donate or anything. I registered as a Republican to vote in their primaries a long time ago, and I have literally never voted for a Republican candidate for any office.
I'm about a year in. One interesting thing is that older games seem to work better with Proton than they do on Windows. For example, after installing Psychonauts on Windows I had to Google why it wouldn't load and try a few ini changes until I found what worked. On Linux, I just started it and it worked with no issues.
I started in IT before switching to development. I have CCNA, A+, and Apple Pro certifications. I run Arch at home, btw. But when I have to contact IT, usually for something that needs elevated permissions or bad hardware, I'm just another user. It's mildly infuriating to go through all the steps again, even after explaining what I did. I get it, I really do, but it's not fun at all.
Video games. Don't get me wrong, there are still some great games, but the entire experience has degraded on average.
The inclusion of obnoxiously long, often unskippable, intro sequences with studio credits and such. There used to be maybe a logo, maybe a very short sequence at worst, and almost always skippable.
Most of the big budget games are intended to be a grindy slog, often to get you to spend more money on micro transactions. Fun takes a back seat to intentionally addictive but objectively less enjoyable experiences.
Others are intended to be cinematic experience. Some of that can be fun, but sometimes I just want something like the old Sonic or Mario games that I can just pick up, play for a bit, and put down.
Enjoy a game? You could talk to friends about it at school, or buy a magazine that talks about it. The experience now is largely an unregulated online wasteland... If you find a community, it may quickly be beset by people that you really don't want to associate with, posting crap that no magazine ever would have published. Except for some of the funnier magazines, which may have published it just to rightfully mock the person.
The graphics have improved. In some cases the gameplay has improved. I don't want to downplay those. I'm just annoyed with how the overall experience has gotten worse on average.
I'm with you in some cases. Who you take money from is not the same as who you give money or support to, necessarily. I think the worry in this case is that it's a surveillance company.
Oh that's easy. Encryption is only legal when communicating with a business that is registered with the IRS and not when doing peer to peer. There, we've hopelessly broken digital privacy while letting the US government determine who gets to exist online.
Generally when people bring up some personal detail, my immediate reaction is to assume the opposite. Especially if it begins with "as a." For example: "as a woman," this person is a man. "As a black person," this is the whitest person you will ever meet. "As a 60 year old," definitely ten.
In theory I guess it provides better security in some ways, but certainly not all over giving you hardware and a VPN. So there's that. But yeah, it sucks.
I think it's more about manager capability. A person who manages IT, for example, but has little idea what that entails will want people in the office. They have no idea if a given ticket should take 3 hours or 3 days to resolve, so it's easier to just have their people in the office where they can look at them and verify that they are, in fact, sitting at a computer.
The ideal work environment for me, and I think most people, is one where you're judged based on what you do and how well you do it, while details like when you do it and where you are when you do it get left to your discretion. Managing someone like that requires skill and knowledge in what they're doing though.
Beaches are tougher but I believe there's a nudist resort in every state in the US. You can visit the AANR website and find the closest one. If it's a "family resort" that means it's probably very welcoming, if a little boring depending on location.
We all know that the hate for Mexico is nonsense. They aren't coming over the border and stealing highly coveted jobs. The jobs that have actually been taken by immigrants are largely middle class jobs that require degrees, things like IT and medicine.
In part, this has been fine. It drives the salaries down a bit because they're willing to accept less to move to the country and even the lower salary is still much more than they would make at home. Companies win because there weren't enough qualified people to go around for a while, so immigration closes the gaps.
This is pure conservatism though. Allow foreigners to come study here in unlimited numbers, then let them stay to take middle class jobs at lower salaries in these non-union industries. It's like outsourcing but everyone is in the same time zone and they won't resist your return-to-office mandate.
I don't think I've ever gotten an ad from the OS on Android. I know some manufacturers, Samsung in particular, include ads but that's not "Android" so much as "Samsung's shitty skin of Android."
The closest I've gotten to an ad on Pixel is a thing to review new features after updates.
For me, the worst part of setting up some new distro or service is when it's done and everything works. Then it just... Sits there. Working. Usually at some task I don't need very often. Very anticlimactic and boring. Then I have to find some other new thing to try, which is why my HTPC has been through like 4 distros in the past year.