I'm on my second Lenovo in a row, they seem to be really good for Linux. Actually the previous one did get a drink dumped on it too, and it didn't phase it at all. The 5 key is a little sticky sometimes but otherwise works fine.

I might be tempted to get a Framework for my next one though, if I can get the cash together for a 16.

We will call it CONFORM

The Tories turned it around and won the 2024 election with "Why only Brexit the UK when we can Brexit all of Europe?"

As a European, I'd say it is very much in America's MO to come into a conflict all guns blazing and with lots of bluster, then get caught in a quagmire for an absurdly long time, then eventually randomly declare that they've won and just bail, with very little regard for whoever's left still fighting who isn't American.

It seems to happen with them pretty regularly, and for an example it was only about three years ago that they hurriedly pulled out of Afghanistan and abandoned the local translators to their fates with the Taliban.

With regards to Russia encroaching into Europe, could we be 100% certain that Trump won't win the next election and start throwing favours to Putin? I'd say it's certainly a possibility.

I like that this has become a sort of election tradition now lol.

If I can propose a slight tweak, if you know he's heading your way might I suggest buying the milkshake about a week beforehand to allow it to reach it's full potential? Let it level up, so to speak.

Mine was/is/will be:

• Windows

• Some ancient version of Corel Linux that came on a CD that was free with a magazine that I could never get to work properly

• Some version of SUSE that I bought from a computer store impulsively, that also never worked properly

• Ubuntu 6.something that finally worked!

• Several more years of Ubuntu, gradually drifting over to Kubuntu/KDE Neon as I realised I liked KDE more than GNOME/Unity

• Manjaro as an awkward transitional phase to becoming an Arch person

• A split between full Arch (btw) for my laptop which is the tinkering machine that I'm allowed to break, and Pop!OS on the desktop, which is the one other people use that has to actually work all the time

• The distant call of NixOS, which I'm currently fiddling with in a VM and is trying to tempt me into nuking my laptop once again.

As a sidenote, you can get around the VPN block with Redlib by just adding safe- to the start of most reddit URLs. So like instead of reddit.com/r/linux or whatever you can do safereddit.com/r/linux and it should work without needing a login.

I think the TV series of Station Eleven is better than the book. Not that the book is bad at all, but the show is something else.

"Nobody will go to jail for refusing national service. You'll get a fine instead."

"What happens if you can't or won't pay the fine?"

"You go to jail."

After the last decade or so, I'm not putting anything past the voting public. I'll celebrate the Tories being out of power when the election results are read out, and not a moment before.

Yeah I had the same experience. Tried it out, found it way too fiddly to set up, had to pay for stuff at every turn (and managing a bunch of subscriptions is a big part of why I hate using streaming platforms in the first place) and I really didn't find it to be worth it just to cover the tiny fraction of things I can't find on torrents (and which TBH I didn't even find there anyway.) Went back to torrents as it's like 2 clicks to download something and it covers 95% of what I need anyway.

To be fair, it's entirely possible that I was just doing it wrong and not getting optimal results, but also I don't want to start over and pay for a bunch of other stuff to find out.

For me, it was:

• You couldn't get one for ages when it came out, so I missed the initial hype period.

• When it did finally become available, it was prohibitively expensive.

• There are no real killer exclusives or features so no particular reason to upgrade, aside from games looking nicer.

• Sony is releasing all the good stuff on PC now, so if I want to play a nicer-looking version of a PS4 game I can just do that.

• Steam Deck

I really feel like we need to have a huge overhaul of copyright law in general, it seems like it's all a mish-mash of old laws from before the internet existed, patched over with half-assed rules that we've just been making up as we go along since then.

Some of it is absurd to me, like the way something can be online but geographically restricted. I've had the situation in the past where I want to watch a movie trailer, but I can't because I'm in Canada and not the US, even though the movie is also out in Canada. It's so pointless and easily circumvented, and all it does is annoy people. Or that something can still be copyrighted almost a century after the author is dead.

And to get back to the point, we also really need to make some kind of exemption for archival purposes. So much information, art and cultural heritage is lost because copyright holders don't look after the stuff they own and don't want to pay to preserve it properly. The internet could be one of the best archival tools we've ever had, if we'd just let it do its thing IMO.

To hire consultants from the private sector to dream up things like charging $50/day for a prison cell.

I had to update my laptop about two years ago and decided to go full AMD and it's been awesome. I've been running Wayland as a daily driver the whole time and and I don't even really notice it anymore.

Nothing says punk like politely asking for a user feedback survey and using the phrase "changes in our core services."

And emojis

Yeah basically, people are using AI to write applications and cover letters, and recruiters are using AI to read and filter them, so it's just robots talking to each other.

I'm heard some other horror stories too, like companies requesting a "one way remote interview" which basically means they send you a list of questions, and you're supposed to record a video of yourself answering them as if you were in a proper interview and then send it to them.

At which point I'd rather be homeless personally, but that's maybe just me lol

At my old job my boss was notorious for having last-minute epiphanies that would derail the entire project, so my cc-ing was 100% to have a written record of me advising not to do it for when they were looking for someone to blame afterwards lol

I have a bunch, but off the top of my head: Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft, Tencent, anything that's Epic exclusive. I should really have Take-Two on there as well but realistically I'm never not going to play Civilization so my principles fail me there.

I look forward to the havoc this will cause with all my themes and widgets in the coming weeks lol.