I mean, it’s always been this way on the internet. Somewhere in the mid to late 90’s, a language and communication program (http and web browsers) became very popular and synonymous with “the internet.” But us old farts remember when Usenet, gopher, ftp, fsp, irc, etc. were all used daily. As the World Wide Web enshittifies, people will either stay or move elsewhere, just like they always did.

The real question in my mind is more akin to the movement between physical networks - such as when we moved away from bbs, to college proprietary connections, and ultimately to the internet. I often wonder why - with all of the portable WiFi radios we all own - why hasn’t anyone created an encrypted protocol and software where we all join our personal hardware into one big giant mesh network? I don’t even live in a city in an apartment and I can pick up 4 neighbor’s WiFi signals, never mind all the cell phones and whatnot passing by my house. You’d think we could have an encrypted and robust way of sending packets to each other by now over our personal private hardware (albeit slow and probably prone to buffering as nodes move in and out of connection range).

Oftentimes I think that’s the next frontier.

On Linux, when you update, it downloads the latest thing and installs it. 10 minutes tops. On arch you gotta watch it a bit more, but you signed up for that.

On windows it updates almost as frequently as Linux. Except it takes much longer to update. A new install can sit there churning for more than a half hour. Why? Didn’t I just download the latest iso? Even the incremental ones are painful. It also does this sequential crap where it updates, reboots, and then updates again. (Sometimes even a third time). Then you’ve got the bugs. I don’t think there’s been a single windows update in over a year that just went smoothly. I’ve run across two that flat out refused to install (blocking further updating), and one that broke things.

Windows update is bad enough for a regular use case. It’s downright painful if you haven’t booted windows in a while (think dual boot setups) where you have to pay this update tax just because you switched to windows to do that one thing.

The author is not being whiny, they are 100% correct.

Rufus like tools are becoming a near necessity to install windows these days.

I recently wiped my drive and performed a clean install. I started with fedora and about 15 minutes later I was 100% back together - programs and all.

Then I moved/installed my RETAIL copy of win11 pro to a virtual machine. It took like 4 hours, and I swear I’m not dumb! :)

• getting the iso onto a flash drive without a windows machine was way more difficult than it needed to be. Ventoy ftw.
• then you have to either: bypass the tpm stuff with Rufus, or set up a vm based secure boot/tpm module via vm additions. Not too hard, but annoying. Why it can’t be a normal option to install in a vm without a tpm module is beyond me.
• the install took forever. It asked SO many questions and shoved so much crap in my face “subscribe to 365”. “Turn on one drive”. “Try this syncing thingy with your phone.” “Here let me turn on all the telemetry - oh you don’t want that, here’s more screens to click through.” It was endless and annoying.
• activation was surprisingly difficult. It of course detected the hardware change being moved to a VM. Then I had to pick some obscured hyperlink to get to a screen where it showed literally dozens of machines (like every install I’ve ever done over decades) to pick the install I was transferring. It was not as easy to find the right install as you’d think. It kept complaining “that copy was already in use”. Or “already transferred” but they were all the same pc installed with the same retail license. I realized right there how screwed up it all is behind the scenes. I eventually clicked on one that activated thank god.
• mind you, it was REAL EASY to skip the above step and PAY for a new license. That screen is shoved right in your face.
• once it was finally installed and booted, then the worst part came - updates. It literally took like 2 hours to update. No my internet connection isn’t slow, and no, the VM isn’t resources strapped. I couldn’t believe how many times it updated and rebooted and started another update. Why a freshly downloaded iso required so many sequential updates is beyond me. It was connected to the internet during install, why didn’t you grab the latest then? /facepalm.

The whole process was extremely painful. And I gave in years ago and I login with a Microsoft account - you’d think the ONE advantage I’d get for that would be: “oh hi sir, I see you are installing your one and only retail copy of win11, HAVE A NICE DAY!” NOPE.

I’ve been installing OSes since the days of dos 5.0 and I couldn’t believe how low Microsoft has fallen with the shovelware and bad updates process.

And after all that - I don’t even use the win11 VM. I just installed it because I had a valid retail license and “why not? I can move the VM around I the future if I want”. My software runs just as fast, if not faster in Linux - but I’m much faster because my OS gets out of my way, doesn’t shove ads and crap in my face, and I’ve tailored it to match my workflow.

Windows is dead folks. If you’re stubbornly hanging on, you really shouldn’t.

I’ve said it here before and I’ll continue to say it. All the Linux nerds (myself included) have strong opinions when it comes to distros or x vs Wayland, or flatpak vs repositories, blah blah blah.

But in the end - none of it matters. You could randomly eliminate all options except for one distro - and we’d happily pick that over windows. The trick is that you could make any distro like any other - it’s just that the distro did all the work for you. So pick the one that matches how you want to use your pc.

Maybe the only thing that’s not changeable is the philosophy behind the distro. Debian - older stuff for stability. Arch - bleeding edge rolling release. Fedora somewhere in the middle. You get the idea.

I’ve been telling people since this dna testing started that sooner or later that data will be for sale, an insurance company will buy it, and then get used against people to increase their health insurance rates or deny claims.

But I’m a crazy conspiracy theorist according to everyone ;)

Same reason I don’t want to buy a new car anymore…

Their insistence on sueing the world of emulation ensures I’ll never buy another Nintendo console ever again. (And I’ve bought all of them so far). Their actions cause the opposite effect of what they want - they are creating pirates.

Just don’t connect it to the internet.

In 2010 I built a new computer. I was interested in bitcoin from a “this is technically neat” category. I set it up and was able to mine dozens of coins per day.

I did. It was all set up and working. But it generated a lot of heat in my upstairs So. Cal. Apartment. So I stopped. Just deleted the coins because they were pretty worthless then.

I don’t get too upset though because I never would have held them to $50k each. I would have sold them for a buck each.

But I “could have” if it wasn’t so hot out. ;)

I have a reef tank. In it is a tuxedo urchin. Mine has these hats as well - it’s fairly common amongst us hobbyists, and yes it’s always funny.

Urchins are fantastic and voracious algae eaters. They like to shade themselves from the lights and camouflage themselves. They pick up EVERYTHING. If it’s not glued down, the urchin will be wearing it as a hat eventually. Even if it IS superglued down, there’s a good chance they’ll rip it up and wear it as a hat.

My urchin carried a hermit crab around for days. Poor crab was like “hey man put me down!” He didn’t - a few days later the hermit crab moved to a new shell.

My urchin is one of, if not my most favorite tank inhabitant.

There hasn’t been “bitter cold” in the northeast for a decade. Climate change is a bitch. We barely get snow anymore - 2015 was a banger, but it’s been dustings since.

Social media. Both personal (instatwitface) and business (LinkedIn). Lemmy is as close as I get, and to me this is just a modern forum.

In my opinion social media has done nothing but make people stupider, and I want nothing to do with it. (It’s probably just a sign I’m old now - “get off my lawn!”)

;)

This crap is the new norm. Companies compile your data, don’t secure it, and the whole world becomes victims of identity theft. Then they get free credit monitoring from the companies that screwed then.

Use a strong password manager with unique complicated passwords.

Freeze your credit.

Assume someone is trying to impersonate you and open credit cards in your name at all times.

Sad state of affairs today.