Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Christ, what an asshole.

Thanks for the tip! In the short term, I’m content to just not connect it, but I definitely want to look into blocking it just to prevent a repeat with guests. It’s also super handy to know that I can connect it to the local network without connecting it to the broader internet, in case I decide to do some (self-hosted) home automation.

I’m suffering for that right now. Sony Bravia.

Firstly, I didn’t want to buy a smart TV, but that’s pretty much all that’s sold anymore. I also didn’t intend to connect it to the internet, but a well-meaning guest wanted to watch TV at night, and thought he was troubleshooting, not realizing he was in the TV menu and not the streaming box.

The TV updated, and IMMEDIATELY got worse. Formerly, if I turned it on, it would go straight to the streaming box. Great! As shitty updates do, it changed the settings, and would instead open to the TV’s menu, so it could advertise streaming services. It also forgot that the TV input is HDMI 1. It became strictly worse, in the rare edge case of every fucking time you turn it on.

I don’t trust it to not automatically connect, or to forget my login credentials, so I go to do a factory reset. It’s literally an option in a menu. The TV gets stuck in a boot loop. Talking to support, they think it broke the mainboard. A factory reset bricked the TV.

It’s under warranty, but this is fucking crazy. NEVER connect your TV directly to the internet.

Fun and completely unsurprising fact: this is already the case with Ronald Reagan. He’s buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which charges admission.

These people never stop grifting, even in death.

I’ve had “When Will You Die” by They Might Be Giants in regular rotation.

We’ll exhale, we’ll high-five

We will know at last how great it is to be alive

We’ll be lining up and buying tickets

And then we’ll be jumping up and down on your grave

He died as he lived: blaming systemic issues and right-wing violence on minorities.

yay anarchism

For what it’s worth, I was in a similar boat. I wanted to try WMs/compositors, but the configuration seemed daunting. Then I gave Dank Material Shell a try and it just configured the vast majority of the system very nicely. I still had to change some window rules in the config file, but even that has a GUI now. I also heard great things about Noctalia, and I’m sure there are others as well.

I still think KDE is a top-tier option, to be clear. :P And adding tiling to KDE is also a great way to get the best of both worlds, just from the other direction.

I’m on EndeavourOS, which like CachyOS, is a derivative based on Arch. They smooth over a couple of the things that make Arch difficult: the installation, and initial packages.

Part of what makes Arch difficult is that it updates its repositories very quickly. That’s good in many ways, because you get new features and new drivers more quickly, but sometimes things are buggy or break. From what I’ve heard, it’s honesty fairly rare nowadays, but it’s still a best practice to check archlinux.org before proceeding with a major update.

Anyway, I’m in a very similar boat. I’ve bounced off of Linux for various reasons in the past, but between Linux getting better and Windows getting worse, Linux is the “just works” option for me. It’s not perfect, but any snags I’ve had have been smaller, less frequent, and more often fixable.

Windows had trouble with it too and in more irritating ways.

Honestly, I’m embarrassed how long it took me as a human being to realize that things don’t have to be perfect to be better. I would be way harder on any change than I was with the status quo.

Anyway, yes, especially after having more and more issues with Windows 11 in particular, for me and my use case, Linux is genuinely easier to use day-to-day. Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Yes, no contest.

“The only moral plagiarism is my plagiarism.”

Oh yeah, I remember hitting that snag in an earlier attempt. I managed to do it, but it was definitely a point where Windows worked more easily than Linux. Glad to hear it’s gotten easier!

I just made the switch and probably for good this time, and Steam just working was a HUGE moment for me. I opened up a guide thinking I’d need it, but I just downloaded Steam, didn’t change any settings, and could start playing.

At this point, Linux is more of a “just works” experience than Windows 11 was.

That sucks, I’m sorry. I’ve been frustrated by OneDrive, but thankfully not to nearly the same extent.

Firstly, I did discover that it’s not a setting you can just turn off, because that will suddenly remove all the personal files and folders that were backed up, until you turn it back on. I knew I could work around it, but dragged my feet. Still, it was the first big push that eventually convinced me to use Linux.

Secondly… it’ll also do the inverse. I play Tabletop Simulator with my friends, and it backs up files to a OneDrive-covered folder. It quickly took up too much space, and to avoid all the warning signs designed to irritate me into subscribing for more storage, I tried to delete it. Turns out, that doesn’t work, because OneDrive will assume it was an error and put those files back, and maintaining all those super helpful warnings about storage space.

So, whether you want to keep a file or get rid of it, don’t worry, OneDrive can and will find a way to fuck it up.

And what’s going on with the speech bubbles in the fourth panel?

There’s a fan project recutting One Piece like that, and Dragon Ball Z Kai was an official series.

I think anime has switched almost entirely to a seasonal format for related reasons. Filler just doesn’t serve a purpose if you don’t need to regularly fill a time slot on a live channel.

Wasn’t he just saying he wishes his wife were Christian?

People are saying “no one should live in poverty,” not “no one should live in poverty, by which we mean no one should make money for their labor.” You’re tilting at windmills.

To add to what others are saying, you should consider the framing of your question. Progress isn’t all-or-nothing. There will still be situations where a truck, van, or car is the best tool for the job, and electrifying them will take time, or require advances in technology. We would still benefit from expanding public transportation and decreasing the need to use a personal vehicle for everyday tasks.

Eventually, though, yes, it would be good to replace diesel trucks with trains where possible, and electrify the ones we can’t, when we can.