In 2021, writer and game designer Alex Blechman inadvertently created a meme:

Sci-Fi Author: "In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale."

Tech Company: "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus!"

AI is a big component of the new and improved Torment Nexus which is coming along nicely.

Which is why Texas (state of freedum) regulates owning said devices. Can’t let women actually experience happiness.

Windows 95/98 sucked shit. I liked the games, but the kernels were terrible.

I dual booted or ran two machines Linux (RedHat 5.2 to 6.2, wtf was up with 7?), then whatever worked (usually Debian based) for a while. Mostly used Linux alone for years, but used Win7 for a bit. That one was okay, but Microsoft can’t build dev tools on their own OS to save their lives.

It’s been Linux Mint for a long time now on desktops and Debian/Armbian on servers.

Basically, I’ve been mainlining Linux since about '97 and it’s doing me just fine. Works great for my kids and wife. We’re a mostly Linux household. It saves me a ton of headaches. Easy to install, patch, and almost no other maintenance.

Show me an ad in my own kitchen and that screen is going to be broken.

I moved to Germany. It’s been an experience because the tech status dialed back about 15 years. One area I don’t miss is the ever pervasive drive to have screens with ads on every surface.

The Linux Mint GUI updater is an interesting bit of code, or at least it was about 5 years ago. I looked at updating it a bit with a status bar for a stage I thought could use it.

I opened up the code…Python that just uses a shell call to apt. No muss, no library calls. Okay, that’ll do.

It was a functional wrapper on the command line calls, exactly as you’d hope for a tool.

I’m on a Discworld kick. Finished The Truth and am now in Going Postal.

Any time I’m reading Discworld it’s because I’m stressed and tired. It’s my penultimate easy reading choice.

It wasn’t supposed to be a pre-future documentary, people!

It’s just more right wing media distraction from The List not being released and keeping us from noticing encroaching fascism across the US.

Come to the Open Source community for ideology, stay for the better life. It’s a learning curve to get in. After that it’ll open more doors and be much more relaxing to run OSS operating environments than you think.

The real fun is when you’ve been on Linux for a few years and are forced to do some tasks on a Windows machine. It’s amazing how bad the Windows UI and tooling is, but it’s hard to see until you can look with some perspective.

I usually start a desktop on Mint since it’s got at least some new drivers and a few more tools with Cinnamon desktop.

If the hardware is finicky or there’s odd devices a distro doesn’t handle, I often just try a different distro instead of driver hacking. It’s a very big hammer, but I’d rather have things work with the distro configs instead of maintaining it myself.

Servers? Debian.

Desktops? Mint (prettier Debian out of the box)

Otherwise? Use what works with the least effort.

Since 1998, baby! Found my RedHat 3.0.3 install CD recently. It’s been such a long road, but it keeps getting better.

“Fascists enable Christian Nationalist Karens to abuse coworkers on the government’s funds.”

Given the depth of the thinking here, and the desire to have guns in all situations, it’s only a matter of time until they add a 4th box with the “armed response unit” that’s only “supposed to be used in the most dire of situations”.

Anything other than dealing with the underlying problem means anything.

That’s not a pedestrian bridge. A pedestrian bridge is designed to efficiently get pedestrians from one place to another.

That’s a monument or memorial. It’s potential a cultural art center or other city resource to make the space interesting/informative/engaging. Calling it a pedestrian bridge isn’t doing it justice.

That said, I’m in strong favor of pedestrian resources and cities building interesting architecture to make the city itself interesting & beautiful, but this one’s ugly as fuck and shouldn’t be built.

“a lot more people everywhere live paycheck to paycheck as migrant workers than you probably think”

The percentage of Americans living paycheck to paycheck is insanity. I haven’t seen Canada’s numbers, but the US is barely surviving.

Brilliant! Let’s also plan on self driving cars to increase total throughput and completely block out pedestrians on the street so the cars can go zoom zoom… Until induced demand locks it all up again.

Sample size: 1

That’ll do! Let’s hit the pub.

It’s also California: the weather is usually really good. Maybe this “Becker” should add an amendment that requires bike roads to be built instead of parking spots.

I assume he’s against being proactive in problem solving, though.

According to one of our adjuncts: “Windows just works for dev, why are we teaching Linux at all?”

He didn’t last.

And who has been appointing, then bribing, the judges for the last 30 years…