my concern is that I install a distro this year and want to switch to SteamOS later, but would have to start over with customizations, etc. in the new distro.

I wouldn’t sweat that at all.

I switched distros last week, didn’t like the new one as much as I thought I would, and switched again a few days later. It’s not that big of a deal. Install some apps, reload your files from a USB stick. It’s not a major commitment.

Stroke rate increasing as well.

My first thought: If this ever ships, I’ll eat an outboard motor.

So… back when I used Pidgin, I aggregated AIM, YahooIM, GoogleTalk, and Pre-MS Skype. What is the use case today?

I do believe that everything old was better, everything new stinks, and my feet hurt all the time.

Yeah, I try jumping around. Some are better than others, but none are great.

I probably need to switch VPNs. I currently use Surfshark and I experience 2 problems, and I want to see if it’s unique to that service.

1. Lots of sites block my traffic because they detect i’m coming from a VPN. And just not like… banks or streaming services, but stupid things like Autotrader.com. It’s silly.

2. The connection always seems to slow down over time, and I have to disconnect and reconnect to get it working at full speed again. I use it on Linux and on Android and the problem happens across devices.

Sounds like Mullvad has some good options.

Where I live, I see tons of cars every day with fake, missing, invalid, and foreign license plates every day. Enforcement would require cops to get out of their cars and expend effort over an administrative violation, so nothing happens.

These plates are “illegal”? Meh.

You are 100% correct.

Look at OPs meme and ask the obvious question: “Why is this moving to the right, and not to the left? Aren’t both options equally possible?”

The answer is that it moves to the side that wins elections.

“Why is the right winning elections” is the much much better question to ask. In the meantime, do everything you can to move the center in the other direction one step at a time, and that doesn’t come about by losing elections while standing on principle.

I experience this way too much. I have a nostaligia for when all of the problems I had with computers (broadly) were because I did something wrong… not because the computer is trying to fix something or guess something or anticipate something. Just let me type.

Yesterday, I typed out the letters of a word I wanted, and after typing a second word, I saw my iPhone “correct” the first word I typed to something else entirely. NO. Stop assuming I made a mistake. You cause more problems than you solve.

I often see a car in a crowded parking lot that is too wide or too long to fit in a parking spot, and I have to wonder if the person driving that vehicle is a complete idiot or a complete asshole.

How stupid are you that you chose a daily driver that doesn’t work? That you take up so much space that everyone else needs to actively avoid you and curse you because you are so bad at making choices?

Do you regret your choice? Do you constantly think “Fuck everyone else around me, I do what I want.”, or do you legitimately not notice how everyone else hates you?

I hate the argument that it’s not the insurance companies fault for high prices. If they are struggling so much, how come they are so fucking profitable.

Lets fix both, and not complain about the order if we make incremental progress one-at-a-time.

North Korea has stolen many billions of dollars in Bitcoin in the last 5 years due to targeting hacking efforts. However, they struggle to spend it or launder it because nobody will be the ones left holding stolen NK Bitcoin.

If we make Bitcoin strong and fungible, we empower North Korea more than anyone else. It’s a bad idea.

70% of people so far who voted on my comment understood that I was being sarcastic. Not a bad hit rate, all things considered.

I’m all for trashing Healthcare CEO billionaires, but dammit… TayTay earns her money and doesn’t intentionally kill anyone doing it.

We want to elect a president who is a convicted fraudster, found to have committed a sexual assault, who incited people to overthrow the government and murder is VP then watched excitedly while it went down, and who has promised to suspend our rights to punish anyone who questions him…

And then, we want to talk about presidential ethics?

Yeah, no. That ship has sailed. Ethics will get much much worse, because that’s what voters clearly selected. Lets not pretend anyone gives a shit.

I miss targeted advertisements. It’s important that my OS tracks what my interests are, so that I can be served more relevant advertising.

Advertising that doesn’t know my interests doesn’t hold my interest, and having no ads means that I have no idea what I’m supposed to purchase next. It’s crazy.

Top Tip: Do have a LinkedIn Profile so that employers can find you and verify that you are a person with experience and connections.

However, do not read LinkedIn. Do not post thoughts or engage with LinkedIn content. That is what desperate, soul-sucking, horrible people do.

Despite what everyone told me on message boards about lack of support for Adobe products and CAD software… somehow I’ve been really successful on linux-only for many many years now.

It’s really nice. Remember when your computer was actually yours? You choose what apps to install, what configuration you want, and who you share your data with? Those dreams are alive with Linux: Not just for nerds anymore.

Anytime you see a map of the US with “preference by county”, go ahead and pull up a map of the US at night from space next to it.

You’ll see that once choice is generally where electricity is, and the other choice is where it’s dark.