When I can’t block the ads, I always opt for the “non-personalized ads” option, since I know they are getting paid less. Also easier to ignore an ad when it is random.

I tried the bing chat (part of the work license), asked it some random questions, asked for more accurate information and pointed out the flawed answers it gave. It told me that I was being rude and ended the session. (smh)

Some of my saltiness comes from the fact that I tried to answer questions a few times, but told I wasn’t worthy enough to participate in the conversation, and so I was confused by the system. Also, I saw people answering with lots of points, but their answers were trash and I couldn’t impact that response/point gathering, and just made me think it was just another gamified system, and engineers love to game a system. :)

This was my experience as well. They seemed to angle the system away from the casual user, which I didn’t have time to sit around and answer questions to get enough fake internet points to interact more.

Sorry, when I said “life critical”, i mean things like email, banking, self-hosted NextCloud for files, etc. For me, everything else is flexible as I don’t have business things that have to run on Windows (that is my work provided laptop), so I don’t have to have the Adobe suite for photo editing, i can use one of several open source alternatives, and all of my hobbies have open source alternatives like Blender.

The only game I cannot get to run is Space Engineers. Numerous other newer and older games work great. To be fair, I’m not an online/multiplayer gamer, so the challenges people run in to due to anti-cheating requirements don’t affect the games I play.

What was really interesting to me, is that I tried Windows 11 Pro and 6 or 7 different Linux distros over several months before landing on Pop!_OS. I mention this because it was all the exact same hardware and so I was able to compare performance in an Apples to Apples situation. There is an obvious application loading improvement. Even comparing against something like Garuda that is supposedly all about performance tweaks.

I switched to Pop!_OS earlier this year and couldn’t be happier. All apps run way faster than they did with Windows on the same hardware. All but one of my Steam games run great (one day I’ll get that last game to work). My “life critical” things are web based, everything else is adjustable.

That is 100% up to every team to decide. Version numbering is completely arbitrary.

(Hyperbole) I’m shocked! I have been informed for decades, usually at high levels of snootiness, that Macs don’t have viruses unlike those pathetic other operating systems…

(hahaha)

Recently I was thinking about how I missed webrings for websites instead of reliance on search engines, many of which aren’t even directing you to the sites anymore just showing AI summaries.

No MFA, and stale passwords up to 4 years old. And they say “anyone can do IT”…

After the recent Google AI stuff, I’d expect an AI children’s book tool to teach children how to make mustard gas with cute cartoon characters. :P

Was anyone else expecting an article talking about the subject? I was reading and then, “Oh they’ve set up an interesting topic to discuss… wait, other articles to read, where is this article?”

Also, the internet access mechanism (starlink) is incidental to the subject matter, why mention it in the title?

Also, what @paultimate14 said, “youth not respecting tradition”…

I have been ping ponging for almost two decades on the desktop. Currently on Pop!_OS (Ubuntu derivative) with a “safety blanket” dual boot with Windows. I went through a lot of these stages many times. So far, ~3 months on this has been the least frustrating Linux desktop experience. I’m still missing some of the power management controls and cloud file integration is kind of a joke, but an interesting time. For the many things that work well, the performance is so much better than Windows and all the other Linux distros I’ve tried on this same hardware.

2D/3D Simulation/Game creation Godot :)

I switched to Pop!_OS about 3 months ago and have been loving it! First Linux distribution that just worked for me, and every app works better than any other Linux or Windows 11 on the same hardware.

How many times? Every single time…

Hadn’t realized that change was in there. What a mess.

The only thing worse is New Outlook. They took away all of the power features and a good deal of the customization, and so you are left with something that feels like it was designed for a mobile app while you try to manage thousands of emails.

Over the last few months I’ve tried half a dozen Linux distros. PopOS has been the best so far for me. Plays the games, didn’t have to force the audio to work, and regular apps open way faster than even other Linux options, it is astonishing. I have used Linux on servers for ~30 years, and this is the first time I’ve been really comfortable on the desktop side.

We had a large layoff a few months ago, including people with over a decade of time at the company, and a meeting afterwards where an exec said, “Yes you were working hard before, and now with many hundreds of people let go, we are asking you to work even harder.” Not all rainbows and butterflies where I am, just that one piece about remote work. :)

Got a weird speech recently that we all need to work hard for the company to succeed, but raises and bonuses were dependent on the “economy and stock market” doing well, if “the economy” was going to continue to do poorly, then there was nothing management can do about skipping another year of raises, and we should just be glad we haven’t had another RIF.