BananaTrifleViolin

It’s historically interesting to maybe understand who he was as a human being. He’s often painted as a monster but he was a human, and is a warning to all of us what evil human’s can achieve.

For example, they’re revealed he had Kallmann Syndrome (which can cause a micropenis and undescended testes) - he may have essentially been essentially asexual which may explain some of his life choices and why he was so dedicated to politics and gaining power. They’ve also shown he had high genetic risks for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as ADHD, autism.

Sensationalist reporting aside, these findings do add something to our understanding of a historical figure who had massive influence on human history.

Did you set your Mint to autologin to desktop? If so then your Keyring is then locked and you get prompts to unlock it when you want to use anything that needs it - websites, software like email etc. The keyring holds your passwords and credentials to pass to on as needed and keeps your system secure. If you set your desktop to not autologin - i.e. have a login screen - your keyring is unlocked automatically as you log on to the PC and you don’t keep getting prompts to unlock the keyring. You can disable the keyring entirely or give it a blank password, but it’s better to use the login screen to keep your device secure, and let the keyring do it’s thing in the background even though “login automatically” is so easy to tick and use. The wallet is the same concept on KDE desktops.

Otherwise the only password prompts you should get are similar to windows - when you want to make system level changes.

I’d recommend OpenSuSE Leap with KDE. User friendly, stable, with a good GUI for making all system changes. Fedora KDE is also a good popular distro; I’m not sure how good it’s GUI is but I’d be surprised if you need to use the terminal. People often recommend the terminal (because it IS quicker - often one step instead of “go here, click here, click here”) but there is usually a GUI way of doing everything.

This is certainly a part of the problem. The other side of the coin is “why bother when it’s going to be streaming”. It’s a perfect storm of a terrible experience in cinemas and easy access to streaming in the comfort of your own home. At home I have a perfect view on my big screen TV, can control the lighting, the temperature, the food, and the audience. Cinemas feel like they’re in a death spiral - they make less money so they pump in even more ads and increase fees making the experience worse, which puts off even more punters, so they make even less money.

Hollywood is largely to blame as the article mentions briefly - the 90 day exclusive window for cinemas to show films created an incentive for people to go out and see them, made the cinemas and the studios lots of money, and made movies “special” - they were an event like going to the theatre or going out for dinner. Now going to the cinema feels more like an event such as catching dysentery.

Since the pandemic, the studios have devalued their own product. If you want to see a movie, you just have to wait a couple of weeks and it’ll be available to rent to stream from home. It costs less to rent a movie than go out to the cinema with a much better experience, and Hollywood gets a smaller cut of that. But lots of people don’t even bother with that - for the vast majority of movies you might as well wait until it ends up on a streaming service like Netflix, where Hollywood makes even less.

If Hollywood wants to save itself, it should listen to the cinema chains and extend the exclusive period back to 45 days (or even 90). If you want your product to be premium, it needs to be a premium experience.

The text here on the fediverse is the prologue; bit confusing but click through the link and it makes sense.

Interesting read, thank you. Also I recognise this type of procrastination: sit down to do one thing, end up installing a whole different OS :D

KDE is genuinely incredibly flexible - you can make it into pretty much any GUI that exists. The default windows like set up is fine, but there are so many easy tweaks and changes you can make to get it however you want. I have a floating dock-like set up instead of a window-like taskbar, with application launcher, icon-only view, system tray, clock and power button.

For simple tweaks yoy can right click on most component of your KDE panels and select “Show alternatives…” to see different official versions of the same component. For example, the Application Launcher offers an alternative Application Menu with cascading menus like an old-school windows start menu, or a full screen gnome-like Application Dashboard. And there are also loads more user made tools if you right click and select “Add or Manage widgets”. Every component of the desktop is a widget and can be moved, swapped out, duplicated or replaced.

It’s really not that difficult with a Global Theme; anyone can do it. There are step by step tutorials on line (such as this one from howtogeek) for people who want to do it manually. The benefit of manual is if there is a major KDE update it is more likely to be completely unaffected; very rarely Global Themes can break and need their own updates.

The Mac ones are the 2nd most popular in the Global Theme store and well maintained though.

Yeah KDE is incredibly flexible. You can get most of the way there downloading a Global Theme from KDE’s settings menu (such as MacOS Big Sur) - that lays out all the panels, including the top bar context menu, power menu, dock, left sided window buttons. There are then some extra visual themes such as cursors, icons that people can get separately if they really want to completely mimic a Mac.

No one is born knowing this stuff; everyone learns it somewhere. But omg it’s still frustrating after you spend days taking the difficult route and someone says “oh you could have just done this in 2 mins”. My sympathy to you! :D But GG on getting your parents onto Linux and saving them from wasting money on a new laptop!

There are 9.8m people in London. If everyone was pouring the dregs of their coffee into the surface water drainage it’d be an environmental mess.

Contaminated fluids including dregs of coffee belong in the sewage system, not the surface water drainage system. This is literally the same as pouring coffee into a river or a lake - that’s where the surface water system is designed to run to directly, untreated. In London, that’s the Thames receiving that directly.

I agree pouring coffee into a bin was bad advice, but pouring coffee into the gutters is also wrong. She should have taken it with her and poured it down a sink or toilet.

There are two drainage systems under the roads. One is the clean surface water drainage which is designed to take rain water quickly and freely to nearby rivers and water courses - that is where she poured her waste water. The sewage system is separate and is for foul water - that is what sinks, toilets etc drain into - and should drain to sewage treatment plants to be cleaned.

The gutters on the sides of the side of streets do not connect with the sewers, so people should not be pouring contaminated water down them. It’s basically the same as just pouring coffee directly into the river or a lake.

That is not correct - the surface drainage system should be regarded as separate from the sewage system, even though both run under the roads. There is the surface water system and the foul water system. It’s true that in some places surface drainage may go into the sewage system but that is the exception rather than the rule. Surface drainage is usually designed to move as rapidly as possible into nearby fresh water to prevent flooding.

Surface drainage water is allowed to drain freely into water courses, rivers and lakes, completely untreated. The sewage system is for contaminated water (from toilets and sinks etc) and is designed to go to treatments plants where it SHOULD be treated. It is true that that treatment is not happening, and when there are storms the sewage system can be overrun with water companies currently getting away with dumping contaminated sewage into the rivers which is a scandal.

I disagree; the whole purpose of the enforcement officers is to enforce the environment act. This thread alone shows why - it seems few people are aware there are 2 totally separate water drainage systems under the roads - the clean one for rainwater drainage, and the dirty one for sewage.

People seem to think if you pour something down a rain by the side of the street it will reach the sewers - it will not; it will run with other surface water untreated into the water courses, rivers or lakes. The sewers are totally separate and drain to treatment plants where the water should be treated before being released into the water system.

Unfortunately the article skirts over that whole element of the story. Its making this woman seem like she’s a victim instead of educating herself and others.

It’s irresponsible; the rain gutters are for clean surface water wash off and drain freely into water courses, rivers, lakes etc untreated; they’re totally separate from the sewers even though both systems run under the roads. Organic liquids should be disposed off via the sewage system - so down a toilet or a sink - where the water should be treated before being released back into the water table.

If everyone were disposing of contaminated water in the surface drainage system we’d be in big trouble.

Yes, it is contaminated water and should not be poured into the surface drainage system. It doesn’t connect to the sewers, it is separate and drains freely into rivers, lakes etc.

Yeah that advice was bad from the council. Dirty water goes in a toilet or a sink so it reaches the sewage system where it is supposed to be treated. Only clean water such as rain water goes in the surface water drainage system - it drains freely into the water table untreated. They are 2 totally separate systems and there seems to be shocking ignorance about their existence and what a gutter on the road is. People seem to think it drains into the sewers.

That is incorrect - there are 2 water drainage systems in the UK. Surface water / rain goes into the surface system and that flows freely into the water table untreated (rivers, lakes etc). It is not designed for dirty water.

The sewage system is totally separate - that is for contaminated water (toilets, sinks) and that goes to sewage treatment plants. It should be treated before it is released into the freshwater system.

So yes, it IS polluting the fresh water by putting things into the rain drainage system.

This story is really poor and badly reported, as it doesn’t explain WHY the Environmental Protection Act 1990 has these fines in place and why what this women did was wrong. Instead it’s a clickbait story that implies the woman is a victim.

In the UK (and like many places) there are 2 systems of water drainage in urban areas - the surface water drainage (which is for rainwater) and the sewage system (which is dirty and drains toilets, home sinks, etc).

The surface water drainage runs eventually into fresh water such as lakes, rivers, and the sea, untreated. So if you pour coffee down a rain drain, it is contaminating the fresh water. It may seem ridiculous to fine someone for the dregs of one coffee, but if everyone were putting waste water in the rainwater drains / gutters it would have a detrimental impact on the ecosystem. It’s already a huge problem as people DO put contaminated water into these drains, probably due to widespread ignorance.

The sewage system is for contaminated waste; that water is collected and treated and either reused for drinking water or then released back into the fresh water system. Finish your coffee OR take it with you to a place where you can dispose of it into the sewage system.

She needs to pay her fine, educate herself and understand she is not a victim here. She did something wrong.