site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2730 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Every year, this guy who runs the Infinite Scroll Substack compiles a "Worst Tweet of the Year" bracket. He selects 64 of the most insane/offensive/preposterous tweets of the year, subdivides them into four categories and has people vote on which are the worst. The best 32 get through to the next round, and so on. Check it out, there's some gold in there.

What I found slightly disappointing was that, social desirability bias being what it is, whenever an offensive tweet was paired against an insane one, people tended to vote for the offensive one to signal that they disagreed with it, even if the insane one is clearly orders of magnitude more bonkers than the offensive one. Of course some dude saying that the age of consent should be 13 is gross and disgusting, but tweets expressing that sentiment are a dime a dozen, and pale in comparison to the woman who confidently asserted that it's impossible to sail across any ocean. Like, I don't even know how I'd even start going about trying to rebut that.

Honourable mentions.

Oh, hey, @KulakRevolt is there; congratulations! I'm sorry you lost to Blacks Support Slavery.

Of course some dude saying that the age of consent should be 13 is gross and disgusting, but tweets expressing that sentiment are a dime a dozen, and pale in comparison to the woman who confidently asserted that it's impossible to sail across any ocean.

I mean, yes, Ocean Gyers is objectively more insane, but you also have to look at the shape of the tweets, not just the substance. No No No Yes Yes Yes is hilarious; I would have voted for it, too.

EDIT: Don't Eat Eggs is literally The Breakfast Question.

Following up on downthread, I've installed Mint Linux on a fresh 1 TB NVME drive. All in all it didn't go terribly. We'll see how badly I fuck the whole thing up. I got Steam installed and played Quake for a hot minute. Currently installing Doom 2016 and Factorio. Working on getting my music library imported off another drive. Oh wait, that actually just finished, along with Heroic installing. Hot damn.

Edit: And right on cue, Assassin's Creed Origins is getting bombed with negative reviews because of Microsoft’s 24H2 Windows 11 update which has bricked the game for a lot of people. Black screens, crashes, and freezes, and still no fixes yet.

My Steam Deck tinker experiences tells me that everything works until it doesn't, and when it doesn't it really doesn't. Yes, you can get anything to work, but ultimately the juice frequently isn't worth the squeeze. Admittedly, the SteamOS is a fairly different experience than your average Linux distro, but Windows from a support standpoint generally works well enough where if something is broken it frequently isn't broken for too long.

I've been thinking of converting my laptop into a linux machine, but I doubt linux will support the 2 in 1 style as well as the touchscreen support as well as windows does (which is admittedly not great, but it works).

I’ve used GNU+Linux since kernels 2.4.x, and still I only bother using Windows on bare metal for my gaming PC. You’re going to spend time tinkering instead of gaming. My tinkering is limited to mods of old games with 3rd-party tools and configurations that can only work on Windows anyway, even if Wine/Proton call run the base game on ?n*x.

So far games have just worked. That said, performance of Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing overdrive was nowhere close to windows performance.

I’ve used GNU+Linux since kernels 2.4.x, and still I only bother using Windows on bare metal for my gaming PC. You’re going to spend time tinkering instead of gaming.

When was the last time you tried? Because in the present day and age that is very much not the case. I've been using Linux for gaming for the last 2-3 years now, and in that time there are maybe half a dozen games I couldn't get to work. Perhaps half a dozen more that required any sort of tinkering. The vast majority just work thanks to Proton.

Probably 2020/2021. I used wine around 0.9.x days and not much since it hit 1.x. I barely touched Proton. I gave up trying to virtualize Windows or something under Linux with GPU kernel pass through, couldn’t get PCI lanes to talk correctly.

Welcome to the glorious world of "this software is actually made to serve you"! Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

But what will @WhiningCoil do if he needs to use the Photoshop shape tool to draw a circle... (https://old.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments/k866so/gimpphotoshop/)

Well, one thing I'm rather surprised by is that I was able to just throw the open sourced RTX port of Quake into Steam, told it to use Proton 9.0-4, and it appeared to "just work". Not sure if DLSS was actually active or not, but it all seemed good.

Edit: Well this may be a pickle. Steam has begun "updating" about 50 or so games I had installed in the steam library I imported to their linux versions, overwriting the windows versions.

I mostly liked Nosferatu, Robert Egger's new remake of the 1922 German silent film, but I think I had the wrong expectations for it which hampered my enjoyment. As I'm not very familiar with the original, I expected Orlok to be more subtle, charming, seductive. But instead the movie uses every filmmaking trick in the book to make you realize Orlok is the most evil man alive before you even see his depravity on display. Plotwise it's very generic and lacks true dramatic tension, even when the visuals are incredibly gripping. But it's worth watching for the cinematography alone. On the big screen, nearly every shot is very cinematic and the movie just has an intense, psychic, propulsive energy to it. The first film in years I'm considering a second theater viewing of.

Thematically, it seems to argue that women have the undue burden of taming the darkness in men, but are also very attracted to this darkness. There's also a hint of exploring the limits of modern science to diagnose our spiritual maladies, though most of these ideas are underexplored in service of delivering a captivating creature feature. Still, manages to deliver this great quote from Willem Dafoe's mystic character, Franz: "In heathen times, you might have been a priestess of Isis. Yet in this strange and modern world, your purpose is of greater worth. You are our salvation."

But instead the movie uses every filmmaking trick in the book to make you realize Orlok is the most evil man alive before you even see his depravity on display.

This sounds about on par with the original, which pretty much invented the conception of vampires as monstrous hideous bloodsuckers (as opposed to the more urbane, charming Béla Lugosi type).

Yeah I've since familiarized myself with the original more. But a major deviation this remake made is (not a spoiler because it's in the first scene) Ellen and Orlock have been in contact since she was a teenager, through a telepathic link of some sort, which started when she prays for "a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort" and he's been haunting her dreams ever since.

Having heard it cited as an influence by everyone from Oliver Stone to Steven Soderbergh, I finally got around to watching Z (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(1969_film)) tonight. Its reputation is well-deserved. The ending felt like a punch in the stomach, particularly given that the preceding film was more light-hearted and blackly comic than you'd expect, given the subject matter.

This is not a fun post, but I need to rant. Fuck you, Apple, and fuck you, Meta.

My wife decided she needed a bigger iPhone and as usual I was the designated data migrator. Given that Apple doesn't want it ever to be as simple as "copy a bunch of stuff from the first phone to the PC, copy the stuff from the PC to the new iPhone" and iTunes backup doesn't actually back up all the data on the Phone I was happy to learn a few phones ago that you can just switch the new iPhone on and painlessly transfer everything via Bluetooth.

Almost everything.

WhatsApp loves the idea of privacy and that's why (unlike Telegram), it doesn't store any of your chat history on its servers. Apple can't or won't transfer it to the new device and you have to do it yourself. And of course, there's no nice buttons like "back everything up into a zip archive" and "restore my chats from a zip archive".

No, you have to either use iCloud (not an option for us, because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia, and it's currently 900% full) or use WhatsApp's built-in transfer option that is fucking hidden in Settings -> Chats and not in Settings -> Data or something sensible like that.

And god forbid you try to log into the account on the new phone first, because that's not how it works, and you have to log out and log in on the old phone again. You have to start the process there, wait until it asks you to log in on the new phone, then scan the QR code on the new phone with the old phone to theoretically start the transfer progress.

I say theoretically because it didn't work for me. I had VPN on on my router, so WhatsApp would freak out and fight me all the way. Wife has VPN on on her old phone for some reason, so I couldn't understand why switching it off on my router didn't work. And there obviously was only one SIM shared between the two phones, so I could use mobile internet to do this.

At one moment I had a bright idea (when we were logged in into WhatsApp on the new phone and couldn't log back in on the old one) to link the old phone as a secondary device on the account. This worked, and I could log back into the account on the old phone, could see the chat history but couldn't transfer it to the new phone. At this moment, I had already fucked up, but didn't know it yet. Because, as I learned 20 minutes later when I managed to log back in on the old phone the proper way, as soon as you unlink a secondary device, WhatsApp erases all its data on it, even if it was there when you linked it. So, without remorse or regret, it erased all chat history on the old phone.

Finally, as the cherry on top, WhatsApp decided the whole logging in and out in two different countries thing was quite fishy and locked the account for 8 hours. I guess we'll try copying one night worth of chat histories tomorrow.

Fuck you, Apple, fuck you, Meta, and fuck your terrible UX.

You forgot "fuck people who made you do use WhatsApp" I remember you writing you had moved out of Russia?

No, I haven't moved out of Russia.

it says "privacy" but as same time on installing asks for permissions to read sms, call history and contacts to "save" user from labor of entering single use token...

It is remarkable how broken all of this really is, here in India you just pay people for this and android is seamless, android to iphone only works if you are willing to pay for it. I have all of my chats backed up on google drive which I bought for my entire family and apple even charges you money for buying that from a fucking iphone. The amount of cocksucking for apple and meta by tech normies is indicative of us being in the ashes.

Well, I can't charge my wife for that, can I?

And yes, Android makes this much easier, if only because the settings menu there is not as braindead as on iOS.

For the future I do hope you can use Google for your backup, being in Russia isn't ideal given the payment issues now.

People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt. Minimize your contact with these parasites as much as possible because they will always eventually try to fuck you. I've gone through that same process with my Matrix/Element chat app and it works a lot better than what you're describing.

Like, how? Some jobs straight require to use whatsapp, and maybe more social media.

Disregard the old man yelling at clouds.

People making closed-source software that requires connecting to their server (rather than yours or one you choose) hate you and hold you in contempt.

Tbf, a lot of apple users deserve to be held in contempt, technology wise. I think it's fine to have a phone that's designed around minimizing user-agency so they can't fuck themselves. All the smart people should just use a different phone.

I like Apple because I pay the manufacturer directly for the product. All the android phones are full of spyware, aren't they? I've never liked the idea of giving Google access to my personal life - I only have an account for work. Even then, I logged into Youtube on my phone once, and Google has never forgotten it. Are there android systems without heavy google integration?

There are still ads and tracking in MacOS and iOS. The only claim is that it's less than Microsoft's and Google's. A difference of degree, not kind. To your other point, GrapheneOS and CalyxOS are options.

I knew that but I hoped the difference would be a large degree since Apple doesn’t make their primary revenue from ads AFAIK. I’ll look into the options you mentioned.

Well, the best chat app or social network is the one with the people you want to communicate with. I tried to switch all my contacts to my Matrix server to mixed results. The upside is that it's a great filter on the people who really want to communicate with me. ;)

because you can't pay for iCloud in Russia

Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you. It may be not your personal fault and you may not have another choice, but that's the problem and everything else is downstream from it. Apple and Meta products aren't built to cater for users that live in anti-civilization countries and never will be, and it's not reasonable to expect them to. Your choice is using R-Fon and Vkontakte or suffer what you must.

Amazing, imagine believing the West as it stands is “pro-civilization” at the same time Russia is engaged in the process of actually constructing a civilization-state.

I am not sure what exactly Russia is constructing (a fascist empire would be a good general description but it lacks specific details) but it has very little to do with what we understand as Western civilization, and it is ideologically opposed to it. You can call it "civilization-state" in the meaning of its own, peculiar to that state, civilization which is built on the principles alien to the Western one, and that's exactly my point.

Here's the source of the problem. If you live in an anti-civilization country, don't be surprised some Western civilization things are not working for you.

I don't think this is true at all. The problem here is that Apple doesn't have a reasonable option to transfer everything to a new device locally.

The last few times I've gotten a new Android phone (Pixel), it's come with a USB-C to USB-C cable (with a C-to-A adapter for chargers) and simple instructions to connect 'em directly, unlock the old one, and agree to transfer everything. Admittedly it missed quite a few apps the first time, but the most recent time things almost entirely Just Worked. I think they may have wireless or cloud options there too, but the cable was simple.

Although the security-minded have complained about some of the changes in, specifically, Google Authenticator over the last few years to support this.

Yep, I've had the same thing. There's no reason Apple can't do this, they just choose not to.

Samsung uses the same method.

And the reason they don't because it's only needed when you can't use iCloud, and you can't use iCloud when your country is debanked for starting a war. I don't know how Apple's internal project management works, but I suspect a task "make data migration work if my country is under sanctions" is not very high on the list.

Yes, single player games requiring online connection is just another part of sanctions against Russia. And by the way, if Apple does not have something, this means no sane person would need it at all.

No, the reason they don't is because Apple is a shitty company who tries to lock you into their walled garden as hard as they can. It is mind-bogglingly stupid to use the Internet to transfer data between two physical devices which you have right in front of you. Any sensible person would default to using local wireless (if you insist on no wires), or just connecting a USB cable. This is 100% Apple's fault for doing data transfer in the stupidest way possible.

I bet they work fine in Saudi Arabia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. America leverages its technology and its economy to destroy its perceived enemies. And it doesn’t give much of a damn what the rest of us in ‘Western civilisation’ think. Although I agree with you that some level of autarky is probably the way forward.

Saudi Arabia (I mean the royal family) are huge friends of Western civilization. That's like their entire survival strategy, has been for decades. They took major part in US-USSR proxy war if Afghanistan, for example (on the US side), and many other projects too. They may have very distinct customs internally, but they never positioned themselves as being in active existential opposition, quite the reverse. As for Rwanda and Zimbabwe, I have no idea what works there and probably nobody cares either.

America leverages its technology and its economy to destroy those it disapproves of.

"Disapproves of" is the big lie here. America may disapprove of a lot of things, but the problems with Russia are way, way beyond "disapproval". That's the country that a) started a hot war in Europe and b) pretty much declared itself as an the eternal strategic enemy of the Western civilization. I think they don't have much platform to complain some Western things are working less than smoothly there. And no, not being able to easily copy information from one American iphone (which you can still buy) to another American iphone (which you can still buy) so that you can use an application created by American company, is not properly described as "being destroyed by America". In no world, in no universe, in no circumstance it is.

it doesn’t give much of a damn what the rest of us in ‘Western civilisation’ think.

Most of Europe, except some folks being directly paid by Russia and some folks who proclaim their love of Russia out of stupid contrarianism, aren't exactly in love with Russia either. Those who border it very much aren't. And, the position in existential opposition to the West is the official Russian doctrine, so there's no matter what Luxembourg really thinks about it, it's what it is.

What puts a big bee in my bonnet is the way American right-wingers casually throw around terms like "anti-civilisation" and "Western civilisation", using them apparently interchangeably with "anti/pro American strategic interests". "Western civilisation" insofar as it means anything was a product of Greek/Roman paganism, Byzantine/European Christendom, German universities, French, Russian, and British thinkers, with America coming in very late in the game.

Saudi Arabia are certainly American allies (and Britain, probably other European countries). That's not the same thing really as being 'pro Western civilisation'. As you note, their internal customs are very different.

[Russia] started a hot war in Europe

That is Western civilisation! In practically its purest form! I'm not just being flippant here: the idea that going to war in Europe is incompatible with being a western civilisation dates exclusively from the end of the second world war and is therefore inseparable from the time when America was undisputed ruler of the globe. Disputing this principle doesn't make you "anti-civilisation" but it does make you an enemy of the American-led global order.

pretty much declared itself as an the eternal strategic enemy of the Western civilization

As above. Putin actually leans into a lot of Christian elements and mythologising about Russia's place in old Europe (and therefore implicitly Russia's place in "Western Civilisation"). It has declared itself an enemy of American-led alliances and global institutions because it feels (correctly in my opinion) that those alliances and institutions were created and maintained with an eye to permanently upholding American global supremacy.

So if we rewrite from "Russia is the enemy of Western civilisation" to "Russia is the enemy of American-led global supremacy", then the question becomes "how much should iPhone, Github etc. functionality be tied to American strategic interests"? And "they shouldn't, they're consumer products or global infrastructure" seems like a perfectly valid answer to me.

Most of Europe, except some folks being directly paid by Russia and some folks who proclaim their love of Russia out of stupid contrarianism, aren't exactly in love with Russia either.

No, and quite rightly. I'm not actually keen on Russia's behaviour myself, all contrarianism aside. But I don't for a moment believe it would make a difference if we were. America is never going to shrug and say, "well, I guess the majority of Western civilisation is okay with this, we're not anti-civilisation so we'll follow your lead". The relationship between America and "Western civilisation" is strictly one way. When Germany didn't commit sufficiently to the anti-Russian alliance by continuing to buy the gas that was maintaining their economy (and thus, again, "Western civilisation") America expressed its disapproval in no uncertain terms. I personally believe they assisted or overlooked Ukraine in destroying the Nord stream pipelines and therefore participated directly in crippling "western civilisation" for the foreseeable future.

using them apparently interchangeably with "anti/pro American strategic interests"

That's nonsense. Having war in the middle of Europe is not German or Polish or British or Spanish or Greek or any other European interest. Russian imperial plans is not "American" problem, it's the problem for everybody who is part of what we call "Western civilization".

That's not the same thing really as being 'pro Western civilisation'.

True. They are allies. That was my point.

Putin actually leans into a lot of Christian elements

Of course, Russia's ideology has always been that they are the "true" Christians and all the non-eastern-orthodox Christians are heretics, and thus taking over Byzantine inheritance and serving as sole protector of the Christian faith is the Russian destiny, thus it's called the "third Rome". Putin invented nothing here, he just reheated the policies of Russian Empire. Of course, this implies inherent conflict with the West, who also considers itself the continuation of Greko-Roman civilization - they are the fakes, and Russia is the true heir, so until they recognize this fact, there can be no peace (though there could be some temporary tactic armistices and alliances, of course).

"Russia is the enemy of American-led global supremacy"

Again, nonsense. Russia is the enemy of the EU as much - likely more - as America. Of course, if you want to go back to the Holy Roman Empire, maybe Russia isn't the enemy of that, but it's the enemy of everything the Western civilization is now, and not just tactically, but strategically - at least until it abandons the "third Rome" ideology, which definitely won't happen while Putin is alive.

I personally believe they assisted or overlooked Ukraine in destroying the Nord stream pipelines and therefore participated directly in crippling "western civilisation" for the foreseeable future.

You can believe whatever you like, but some German politicos being bought by Putin is not really a sign that Europe wants to submit to the glorious Russian empire. Some politicians, sure, would like a share of Gazprom billions, no doubt about it. But those politicians don't represent much beyond their own greed.

Being friendly with Russia is hardly a niche position in Germany. After 3 years of non-stop concerted media propaganda that even US mainstream anti-Trump consensus pales before, current polling still puts parties that are explicitly for leaving the American-led consensus on supporting Ukraine (AfD, BSW) at around 24%; and 41% say financial and weaponry support and 19% say sanctions against Russia are "going too far". Before the war and attendant propaganda, in early 2020, in response to US sanctions, 55% said that Nord Stream 2 should enter operation "no matter what, despite current conflicts with Russia". It looks less like German politicos were bought by Putin and more like Uncle Sam was being too stingy to buy them for once.

It's ogre now. My 1080 Ti that has served me well for god knows how many years is not supported by the new Indiana Jones game. RTX or GTFO.

Same boat with 1080ti. Unfortunately any meaningful GPU upgrade is 1000+ Euro. I hate how software dev salaries went down in last two years. For first time in a while I actually have to think if it is worth or not.

On one hand I sympathise with not wanting to upgrade one's computer but that's due to how there aren't new AAA games I want to play, not the cost. The cost is negligble for a once in decade expense if one actually uses the computer.

It's raytracing only. Supposed to be a good game though. I'm waiting for January/February and a new GPU before I play it. I could run it at 1440p and low textures on my current 8gb gpu, but I'd rather delay gratification and play it at 4K with path tracing ftw.

Did I ever tell you guys about the cool short story I read while on holiday that I really can't imagine talking about with anyone outside the motte - Blackbirded?

I'll say up front that I've worked and chatted with the author Joab before, but I'd be telling you about it even if I hadn't, mostly because I'm super gay for the fanfic aspects of it, but also because it's a fun read.

Its set in 19th century Queensland and it deals with Australia's own equivalent to the slave trade (and yes it's weird Australians want an equivalent to the slave trade but I don't think I can say anything else worthwhile about that), following a group of bounty hunters tracking a runaway, but ending up being hunted themselves. It's also fanfic for a popular sci-fi movie series starring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, JCVD and Danny Glover, and you can tell Joab is maybe even more into it than I am.

He also seems to have a conflicted view of the racial dynamics of the time, which is why I can't imagine talking about the story with any of my normie friends. The characters behave the way they would have back then and he seems to deliberately subvert the standard modern take of whitey bad blackie good, but there is also a lot of throat clearing - far too much imo, but based on past experiences I have learned that my far too much is usually not nearly enough for most people, so I'd be interested to know what you think. It's not a long read either, I busted it out over a couple of smokes.

but there is also a lot of throat clearing - far too much

Is that particularly surprising in a fic that provides an "acknowledgement of country" before the work begins?

That's the throat clearing that most confused me. I don't really understand why someone who would write the story he wrote would include one of those in the first place. The acknowledgement would put off people who would appreciate the attention to historical accuracy and the people who would appreciate the acknowledgement would be put off by the accuracy. Maybe he wrote it for some class and his teacher insisted on it?

Reuters Fact Check:

The Wisconsin school shooter, Natalie Rupnow, has been misidentified in posts online as Samuel Hyde, a comedian falsely linked to deadly attacks in the past as part of a long-running internet hoax.

Hyde told Reuters, however, that neither of the two photographs in the posts about Rupnow is him.

You can run but you can't hyde

I'm upset they didn't quote Hyde's reply, which would have been the funniest line in the article

What was Hyde's reply?

We can only imagine unless he posted it somewhere. It's probably funnier that way to be honest.

He can't keep getting away with it!

The feds thrown off his trail once again..

What are the all-time best movies / shows for kids to watch?

This Christmas, I watched the Home Alone series with my kids (6yo, 3yo, 2yo, 1yo). The movies are fantastic. They keep the kids engaged with humor, and they provide valuable lessons on family (you might think they're a pain, but they're still wonderful), independence (kids can accomplish a lot of things that adults can't and they should be encouraged to try), some seemingly bad people are good (the shovel guy/pigeon lady are scary at first but turn out to be great people in the end), and some seemingly good people are bad (the thieves dress up as cops and trick a lot of adults).

I want to find other similar movies to watch with my kids that are fun and full of great lessons. Does themotte have any recommendations?

How to Train Your Dragon 1 and 2 are both incredible. Most of Disney's Silver Age catalog are incredible but be prepared for some crying from the younger ones, doubly so if you go for the Golden Age stuff. The Don Bluth stuff can be left until they're 10 at least.

Also, at their ages, the Sonic movies are great. All 3.

The Emperor's New Groove is a cartoon, but it hits a couple of these beats. For a slightly more mature beat, try the Road to El Dorado and the Prince of Egypt.

How to Train Your Dragon hits some really nice themes/messages re: empathy, coming of age, parenting/fatherhood, and interacting with animals. More impressively, it handles each of these moments with a deftness and poignancy that I think is rare in the "kids movie" medium. The sequels are also good/fine, but the original film is a triumph.

I'd forgotten about this film. This is a really good suggestion... there's lots of fantastic themes in that movie. Thanks!

The original Land Before Time film (all the sequels are direct to vhs garbage).

Not only is it beautifully animated and extremely well crafted, the message of the movie is an extraordinarily powerful lesson in servant leadership and duty.

Littlefoot, cast into tragedy, wants to feel sorry for himself and wallow in self pity, but is forced into a reluctant leadership position where he becomes responsible for the lives of others, and must learn a lot of hard truths about being a leader

Aaahh... I remember these from when I was a kid... my 2yo is super into dinosaurs right now, so that's likely to be a winner... thanks!

Crazy. I'm pretty sure I was telling my dad what a brontosaurus brachiosaurus was at age 4. Very fond memories of dad taking me to the public library and say 'pick any book you like'.

Batman the animated series stands out above any other form of media for me, I could not have enjoyed at any other point besides my childhood but the effort taken to make it makes me appreciate watching it that young.

I also liked rugrats, the original xmen show and various nickelodeon ones but btas stands out.

Beyond Disney, Dreamworks, Pixar, and (Hayoa Miyazaki's) Studio Ghibli films...

The Sandlot, Karate Kid, The Princess Bride, School of Rock, The Iron Giant (maybe when older), Honey I Shrunk the Kids (ant ;_;), Elf, Charlie Brown movies, The Muppet movies, and Hugo.

I'd screen films you haven't seen first.

There’s also a bad message, though, that as a kid you can do things for yourself and not rely on adults, and that you can have heroic adventures doing things yourself. This is a good lesson for an 18-year-old, but probably not a child.

I never watched the sequels, but at least in the first movie he does call the police (albeit way later than he should), and his "doing things yourself" adventure ends with his enemies capturing him and gleefully discussing his torture, until he's rescued by an adult. The script is all about "heroic adventures doing things yourself", but they avoid blatantly teaching it as a bad lesson.

ben hur

charlie and the chocolate factory (potentially traumatizing)

20000 leagues under the sea (1954)

Oooh.. Ben Hur. I hadn't heard of that before, but it sounds fantastic. I'll have to watch it with my wife, and maybe with my kids when they're a bit older. Thanks!

I think the raising of the cross scene from Ben Hur is my earliest memory!

I've got a lot of memories of certain films that were overplayed on free to air TV in my youth. I am so so sick of the original Wizard of Oz, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sound of Music etc.

I later had some exposure to the actual operations of a TV Station and know that the videotapes/presentation department usually has a small locker of standby movies in case something goes wrong with normal programming (broadcast computer goes down, live sport rained out creating a 3 hour gap in programming, disruption of satellite feed from the network etc etc). These 'appropriate for all ages' films are the go-to when normal operations are interrupted for whatever reason.

And they use the same ones. Over and over again. For years on end.

Edit: Should make it clear that things are different now in the digital age, but this is how things used to be done.

The Shrek series?

Isn't it a surprising coincidence that both series have just two movies each?

Neverending Story is pretty good, but I'd recommend the kids be 6+ minimum with the younger ones having a parent next to them for a cuddle (wolf scenes).

My kids are also into Harry Potter. They've started calling Neverending Story "white harry potter" just because the dvd case is white. It's a great story!

And the scene when Artax gets stuck in quicksand, which utterly destroyed me and my brother as kids.

It's the way that the hero has to watch on powerless to save him that really decimates your childish optimism.

Great life lesson delivered in a painful way (as most are).

In honor of Vivek Ramaswamy, what is the proper interpretation of the movie "Whiplash"?

Greatness demands sacrifice, dedication, obsession, and an unwillingness to lose that would turn you into a monster. Terrible, but great.

And the only people who really understand are those who've been through it.

That attempting to really super duper try hard mmf at something ends up looking a lot like gooning.

You're unlikely to ever become a great musician (and by extension artist) without a totalising, monomaniacal devotion to your craft. But a totalising, monomaniacal devotion to your craft is no guarantee of becoming a great artist, and will probably drive you mad and destroy your life.

^ This is correct.

One of my favorite movies of all time. I played drums at one point in my life (horribly) and love music. Very few films have felt as intense. I've seen it twice and it was worth a second run through for me.

JK Simmons is one of the best actors ever.

This guy was literally the only good thing in Portal 2. The old Aperture science parts were great. The rest was totally meh.

I haven't played 2 since release and I still spontaneously recall the I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down rant.

with the fucking lemons

Hahaha... You're serious?

Did Vivek watch it for the first time recently or something?

"Does the end justify the means?" or maybe "I've won... but at what cost?"

I thought the movie was intentionally ambiguous. I didn't interpret it as a road map to success.

My younger cousin is a mathematician currently doing an integrated Masters and PhD. About a year back, I'd been trying to demonstrate to him the every increasing capability of SOTA LLMs at maths, and asked him to raise questions that it couldn't trivially answer.

He chose "is the one-point compactification of a Hausdorff space itself Hausdorff?".

At the time, all the models insisted invariably that that's a no. I ran the prompt multiple times on the best models available then. My cousin said it was incorrect, and provided to sketch out a proof (which was quite simple when I finally understood that much of the jargon represented rather simple ideas at their core).

I ran into him again when we're both visiting home, and I decided to run the same question through the latest models to gauge their improvements.

I tried Gemini 1206, Gemini Flash Thinking Experimental, Claude 3.5 Sonnet (New) and GPT-4o.

Other than reinforcing the fact that AI companies have abysmal naming schemes, to my surprise almost all of them gave the correct answer, barring Claude, but it was hampered by Anthropic being cheapskates and turning on the concise responses mode.

I showed him how the extended reasoning worked for Gemini Flash (it doesn't hide its thinking tokens unlike o1) and I could tell that he was shocked/impressed, and couldn't fault the reasoning process it and the other models went through.

To further shake him up, I had him find some recent homework problems he'd been assigned at his course (he's in a top 3 maths program in India) and used the multimodality inherent in Gemini to just take a picture of an extended question and ask it to solve it. It did so, again, flawlessly.

He then demanded we try with another, and this time he expressed doubts that the model could handle a compact, yet vague in the absence of context not presented problem, and no surprises again.

He admitted that this was the first time he took my concerns seriously, though getting a rib in by saying doctors would be off the job market before mathematicians. I conjectured that was unlikely, given that maths and CS performance are more immediately beneficial to AI companies as they are easier to drop-in and automate, while also having direct benefits for ML, with the goal of replacing human programmers and having the models recursively self-improve. Not to mention that performance in those domains is easier to make superhuman with the use of RL and automated theorem providers for ground truth. Oh well, I reassured him, we're probably all screwed and in short order, to the point where there's not much benefit in quibbling about the other's layoffs being a few months later.

How long do you have to stay in the UK before they can’t deport you (4 years?) What happens will happen, I am less concerned with the economic situation because I think that after a brief period of chaos it will be resolved very quickly one way or the other. I’m more interested in the spiritual one, even last week here people were arguing with me that these models don’t capture something fundamental about human cognition.

I believe Indefinite Leave to Remain nominally takes 5 years, but with bureaucratic slowness, closer to 6 in practice.

I agree that economic turmoil will probably be a rapid shock. But I'm unsure whether rapid implies months or years of unemployment and uncertainty. Either way all I can do is save enough money to hope to weather.

On the plus side, if NHS workers were fired immediately when they became redundant, the service would be rather smaller haha.

As the old saying goes, "Context is that which is scarce." I know, I know, it's all the rage to try to shove as much context into the latest LLM as you can. People are even suggesting organization design based around the idea. It's really exciting to see automated theorem provers starting to become possible. The best ones still use rigorous back-end engines rather than just pure inscrutable giant matrices. They can definitely speed up some things. But the hard part is not necessarily solving problems. Don't get me wrong, it's a super useful skill; I'm over the moon that I have multiple collaborators who are genuinely better than me at solving certain types of problems. They're a form of automated theorem prover from my perspective. No, the hard part is figuring out what question to ask. It has to be a worthwhile question. It has to be possible. It has to have some hope of leading to "elegance", even if some of the intermediate questions along the way seem like they're getting more and more inelegant.

Homework questions... and even the contest questions that folks are so fond of benchmarking with... have been extremely designed. Give your cousin a couple more years of doing actual research, and he'll tell you all about how much he loves his homework problems. Not necessarily because they're "easy". They might still be very hard. But they're the kind of hard that is designed to be hard... but designed to work. Designed to be possible. Designed to have a neat and tidy answer in at most a page or two (for most classes; I have seen some assigned problems that brutally extended into 5-6 pages worth of necessary calculation). But when you're unmoored from such design, feeling like you might just be taking shots in the dark, going down possibly completely pointless paths, I'm honestly not sure what the role of the automated theorem prover is going to be. If you haven't hit on the correct, tidy problem statement, and it just comes back with question marks, then what? If it just says, "Nope, I can't do it with the information you've given me," then what? Is it going to have the intuition to be able to add, "...but ya know, if we add this very reasonable thing, which is actually in line with the context of what you're going for and contributes rather that detracts from the elegance, then we can say..."? Or is it going to be like an extremely skilled grad student level problem solver, who you can very quickly ping to get intermediate results, counterexamples, etc. that help you along the way? Hopefully, it won't come back with a confident-sounding answer every time that you then have to spend the next few days closely examining for an error. (This will be better mitigated the more they're tied into rigorous back-ends.) I don't know; nobody really knows yet. But it's gonna be fun.

You might have already read it, but I find Terence Tao's impression of a similar model, o1, illuminating:

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/113132502735585408

The experience seemed roughly on par with trying to advise a mediocre, but not completely incompetent, (static simulation of a) graduate student. However, this was an improvement over previous models, whose capability was closer to an actually incompetent (static simulation of a) graduate student. It may only take one or two further iterations of improved capability (and integration with other tools, such as computer algebra packages and proof assistants) until the level of "(static simulation of a) competent graduate student" is reached, at which point I could see this tool being of significant use in research level tasks

In the context of AI capabilities, going from ~0% success to being, say, 30% correct on a problem set is difficult and hard to predict. Going from 30% to 80%, on the other hand, seems nigh inevitable.

I would absolutely expect that in a mere handful of years we're going to get self-directed Competent Mathematician levels of performance, with "intuition" and a sense of mathematical elegance. We've gone from "high schooler who's heard of advanced mathematical ideas but fumbles when asked to implement them" to "mediocre grad student" (and mediocre in the eyes of Tao!).

But when you're unmoored from such design, feeling like you might just be taking shots in the dark, going down possibly completely pointless paths, I'm honestly not sure what the role of the automated theorem prover is going to be. If you haven't hit on the correct, tidy problem statement, and it just comes back with question marks, then what? If it just says, "Nope, I can't do it with the information you've given me," then what? Is it going to have the intuition to be able to add, "...but ya know, if we add this very reasonable thing, which is actually in line with the context of what you're going for and contributes rather that detracts from the elegance, then we can say..."?

In this context, the existence of ATPs allows for models to be rigorously evaluated on ground-truth signals through reinforcement learning. We have an objective function that unambiguously tells us whether it has correctly solved a problem, without the now extreme difficulty of having humans usefully grade responses. This allows for the use of synthetic data with much more confidence, and a degree of automation as you can permute and modify questions to develop more difficult ones, and then when a solution is found, use that as training data. This is suspected to be why recent thinking models have shown large improvements in maths and coding while being stagnant on what you'd think are simpler tasks like writing or poetry (because at a certain point the limitations become human graders, without a ground truth to go off when asked if one bit of prose is better than the other).

I just want to add a little bit from Zvi's latest:

Process for a Tier 4 problem:

  1. 1 week crafting a robust problem concept, which “converts” research insights into a closed-answer problem.
  1. 3 weeks of collaborative research. Presentations among related teams for feedback.
  1. Two weeks for the final submission.

We’re seeking mathematicians who can craft these next-level challenges. If you have research-grade ideas that transcend T3 difficulty, please email elliot@epoch.ai with your CV and a brief note on your interests.

We’ll also hire some red-teamers, tasked with finding clever ways a model can circumvent a problem’s intended difficulty, and some reviewers to check for mathematical correctness of final submissions. Contact me if you think you’re suitable for either such role.

As AI keeps improving, we need benchmarks that reflect genuine mathematical depth. Tier 4 is our next (and possibly final) step in that direction.

Tier 5 could presumably be ‘ask a bunch of problems we have actual no idea how to solve and that might not have solutions but that would be super cool’ since anything on a benchmark inevitably gets solved.

The abilities are impressive, and I actually wouldn't be surprised if it's able to perform admirably on Tier 4 "closed-answer" problems, especially as they get better and better at using rigorous back-end engines. But notice what they're expecting. They're expecting to have teams of top tier mathematicians spend a significant amount of time crafting "closed-answer problems". That really is probably where the bottleneck is, and Zvi's offhand comment is also in that vein. One possible end state is that these algorithms become an extremely useful 'calculator-on-steroids' that, like calculators, programming languages, and other automated theorem proving tools before, supercharges mathematical productivity under the guidance and direction of intuitive humans trying to push forward human understanding of human-relevant/human-interesting subject domains. Another possible end state is that the algorithms will get 'smart' enough to have all that human context, human intuition, and understanding of human-relevance/human-interestingness and be able to actually drop-and-replace human math folks. I suppose a third possible end state would be that a society of super advanced AIs go off and create their own math that humans can tell somehow is objectively good, but that they have to work and struggle to try to understand bits and pieces of (see also the computer chess championship). I really don't have any first principles to guide my reasoning of which of these end states we'll end up in. It really feels to me like a 'wait, watch, and see' situation.

I would put the last option as the most likely over a time frame greater than a decade or two, but the initial two options can be intermediate stages, albeit I don't expect any of them to last more than a few years. My reasoning is largely that much like chess, when the reward signal is highly legible, it becomes far easier to optimize for it, and diminishing returns!= nil returns, and probably PEV returns.

But you're right, only way to find out is to strap in for the ride. We live in interesting times.

Totally agreed that having rigorous engines that are able to provide synthetic training will massively help progress. But my sense is that the data they can generate is still of the type, "This works," "This doesn't work," or, "Here is a counterexample." Which can still be massively useful, but may still run into the context/problem definition/"elegance" concerns. Given that the back ends are getting good enough to provide the yes/no/counterexample results, I think it's highly likely that LLMs will become solidly good at translating human problems statements into rigorous problem statements for the back end to evaluate, which will be a huge help to the usefulness of those systems... but the jury is still out in my mind to what extent they'll be able to go further and add appropriate context. It's a lot harder to find data or synthetic data for that part.

People of the Motte, I am getting married one week from tomorrow. AMA, I guess. And thanks to everyone for many years of life advice. I've been lurking since the days of /r/slatestarcodex, and I genuinely think that the things I've learned from some of you have helped me reach this happy juncture.

Also - any tips to make the wedding day go smoothly, as well as the first few weeks or months of married life? It's just a small wedding we're having - 50-60 people and a reception at the banquet hall down the street. All less than 15 minutes from home.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

And thanks to everyone for many years of life advice.

What were some of the best things you learned?

a small wedding we're having

50-60 people

We had eight people at our wedding, including us.

At my get-married-in-a-hurry-to-secure-immigration-status wedding we had about this many.

At my wedding about a year later in China it was about 400. This is a typical size.

I'll be aiming for this if, and when I get there.

Cool?

Nice. My dream wedding would be three people. The main squeeze, me, and the judge/clerk/bureaucrat/blankface providing the signature.

We did this. No regrets.

I envy you. Even now, this is the smallest wedding of anyone that I personally know.

I utilized the principle of only inviting the people close enough to me, that they would be hurt if they were not invited. I suppose I am grateful that that sphere has as many people as it does.

Congratulations! I've always really liked our past interactions, so I'm glad things are going well for you.

AMA, I guess.

Does she know about this place?

She doesn't - which is interesting, right? I do regularly bring up things I read about here, as "something I read about online," and we have great discussions as a result. But she's not the kind of person who gets gratification from reading tens of thousands of words of political and cultural discussion online all day; which is only fair enough. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever known anyone in real life about whom I've thought, "This person could be a Mottizen." It's strange to even think about how any of us came to this point - how many years' worth of obscure blog posts you have to read to know what some of our posters are even talking about.

Anyway - I'm not certain it would be a good thing for two Mottizens to date. (Has it ever happened that we know of?) I don't comment much in the real Culture War thread, not because I don't have opinions, but because I try to keep the culture war itself at arm's length if I can. If she were on here too, it would take over my life even more than it already has. Instead, with her, I can touch grass.

You wouldn't want her to anyway :) We are all each other's men with aspergers.

I wish you a happy and successful marriage. I joined themotte for non culture war reasons and got actual life changing advice about dating stuff so I have a lot of appreciation for people here.

How old are you, how'd youeet your wife and how many kids do you plan on having? What advice in particular did you get here that helped you out the most with marriage/relationship stuff?

What motivated your joining?

Slatestarcodex, I discovered it via Brian Caplan as I was googling Marxist economists to dunk on them, I realised that Scott was a psychiatrist and wrote a post crying for help as I didn't know I had adhd then.

I got the inkling that Scott is not super soy and stuck around, I'd see cross posting to themotte and the Wednesday threads here were better. I read some culture war stuff there.

I was kinda redpilled already due to having seen Moldbug and hbd issues. The people here were like those on slatestarcodex but more honest by every metric. At the time I hated my university, i went to a good program and still hated it as the only thing kids around me wanted was a job in bangalore and date 3s monogamously. Posting here weekly as rounded out a lot of issues I suffered from, dating being one you guys would know about.

Thanks man. I was going to tell you the other day - I feel like the quality of your posts has improved a lot over the last six months or so. I am learning a lot when you post these days. If you would just stop picking up lifting-related injuries, you'd really have it made.

I am 35 and she is 31 - it took me much too long to get it together, and I wish I now that I would've done this when I was 25. I would have liked to have maybe four kids, but as it stands I think we'd be very happy if we managed three; we're aware of fertility windows, and honestly I myself am a little concerned about how well I'll manage small kids in my 40s. I am already a little bit slower and creakier than I was in my 20s. Two is probably the true most likely outcome.

The primary thing that I think I mainly picked up on from relationship discussions on the Motte, was the legitimate futility of trying to use dating apps as an average-looking guy. It always felt a bit frustrating, but seeing the data drove the truth home. Instead I just worked on becoming a man that would be a good partner, and going out into the world a lot instead of staying inside on the computer. I remember years ago telling people about the concept of "micromarriages," which someone shared on here.

https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/

There are a lot more general world-view things I learned from the Motte, but that concept is the most specifically applicable to romance - if you don't go places, you'll never meet people.

Accordingly - I met my fiancee at a fan group meeting of the local baseball team. It was handy to immediately have a shared interest to talk about, and it was then simple to ask her on our first date - which was to the team's Hall of Fame & Museum. And then while doing those things, we learned about each other's other interests, which made it easy to find new things to do together. It's all been remarkably smooth; maybe this is the fruit of spending many years going on bad dates, being in unsatisfying relationships, and generally gaining life experience.

I was going to tell you the other day - I feel like the quality of your posts has improved a lot over the last six months or so. I am learning a lot when you post these days

What stood out to you in particular?

I am learning a lot when you post these days

I am glad that my opinions help others. I learnt all I know from the internet, in particular from the neoreactionary sphere, themotte is a cool place because the people here select against low iq, dishonesty and hostility. As I learn more and read the nrx cannon properly, I should be able to have a better understanding of the world and what that can be done or I have done that is not just doomposting

If you would just stop picking up lifting-related injuries, you'd really have it made.

lol, yeah that and being more strict with my routine would sort my life completely.

I am 35 and she is 31 - it took me much too long to get it together, and I wish I now that I would've done this when I was 25. I would have liked to have maybe four kids, but as it stands I think we'd be very happy if we managed three; we're aware of fertility windows, and honestly I myself am a little concerned about how well I'll manage small kids in my 40s. I am already a little bit slower and creakier than I was in my 20s. Two is probably the true most likely outcome.

I would recommend the usual stack of meditation, sleep, and working out. I found these to help me even after extremely inconsistent usage. Though I personally would recommend as many kids as you can have, I wish you happy, healthy children.

The primary thing that I think I mainly picked up on from relationship discussions on the Motte, was the legitimate futility of trying to use dating apps as an average-looking guy. It always felt a bit frustrating, but seeing the data drove the truth home. Instead I just worked on becoming a man that would be a good partner, and going out into the world a lot instead of staying inside on the computer. I remember years ago telling people about the concept of "micromarriages," which someone shared on here.

I picked up PUA here which was amazing. The expliclit goal of which is to make you go from nerdy to fun and secure, online dating is a losing battle, cold approach is one of the best things a young man can do besides getting married.

but that concept is the most specifically applicable to romance - if you don't go places, you'll never meet people.

Yeah, this is also why I am writing more now besides the usual wellness Wednesday stuff. I want to write more regularly and publish them here so that I can at least attract a small number of new people and maintain the forum's quality. As for romance, I was totally stuck on one girl for four years until I met this British chick in Pai and finally got over my oneitis.

Accordingly - I met my fiancee at a fan group meeting of the local baseball team. It was handy to immediately have a shared interest to talk about, and it was then simple to ask her on our first date - which was to the team's Hall of Fame & Museum. And then while doing those things, we learned about each other's other interests, which made it easy to find new things to do together. It's all been remarkably smooth; maybe this is the fruit of spending many years going on bad dates, being in unsatisfying relationships, and generally gaining life experience.

Match made in heaven. Politics is inherently caustic, good to see such white pills here.

If you're reciting vows, make sure you have a printed copy of each person's vows and not actually two copies of your own vows, leaving your partner awkwardly confused at the altar until her sister manages to find a copy she was texted for review on her phone saving the day but leaving everyone slightly miffed at you.

...no reason in particular that comes to mind... Nope. Just something all people getting married should double check. Yup.

This is so dumb. So five minutes after claiming 8th gen Intel will be fine for general browsing for a long time yet, I notice high CPU use watching a YouTube video, in all browsers. Go over Vivaldi:GPU with a fine tooth comb to see what went wrong. Triple check everything's running on the right GPU...

And then it turns out YouTube just stopped honoring my "please don't use av1" setting without telling me. Bitch you could just ask my browser if I have hardware support for your fancy codec.

God why is everything so janky. I need a browser extension to use the same YouTube account on PC and phone, because there's no setting for "please only use av1 on devices that support it, and no the 6 year old laptop can't even though the phone can"

Cynically YouTube doesn't give a shit, because forcing av1 saves them bandwidth and most consumers won't make the connection between their noisy computer fan and playing YouTube videos.

I thought it was just my PC being old but my recent experiences of YouTube making my PC sounds like it wants to take off combined with this comment suggesting that it's not just my PC has inspired me to move over to a desktop YouTube client. I've chosen FreeTube because it comes with ad block, SponsorBlock and ("most") age verified videos enabled. Seems alright so far.

Check your GPU in the task manager "resources" tab while YouTube is playing, and right click the video to show "stats for nerds."
You'll probably see either vp9 or av01 under "codec".
If you see "video decode" being used in task manager, you have hardware acceleration for that codec. If you see high CPU use and only "3d rendering" being used on the GPU graph, you don't.

You won't get hardware accel for av1 on an old PC (Intel 10th gen or older), and it's really hard on the cpu. Try to turn it off in settings or with a browser addon.
If you have a vp9 video but hardware accel isn't working, you either have a really old PC (intel 6th gen or lower), or one of a list of problems:

*Browser isn't set to support hardware accel. Chrome is especially bad for this out of the box. Your standalone YouTube player is gonna be a good fix for this one.
*Browser running on an old GPU (GTX 9xx or lower, or an AMD from before 2018, because they added support stupidly late). This is why I have to set my browser to run from igpu instead.
*You sacrificed the wrong breed of goat while dedicating your PC to Satan, and the hardware is now cursed.

Helpful tips, thanks. I've added on an addon to block av1 and it's made an improvement but I'm on a 2012 AMD processor with internal Radeon 6550HD graphics so can't expect much, however watching videos is typically the most intensive usage it outside of pending updates for Firefox. What is that about anyway? Until recently the fans revving up would almost always be a sign that Firefox was getting impatient to update and it would settle down again after restarting.

In addition to the matters SteveKirk brings up, I'd check what resolution YouTube is streaming at. There's been some changes in the last few months resetting default resolution values, and it'll quite often favor resolution values that you neither need nor want on many systems. 480p or even 360p is a lot easier on your processor and bandwidth if you're not reading text or looking at fine details of the video.

I stick to 480p on YouTube as I've no need for higher resolution. I'm not motivated enough to drill down into the technical aspects but it definitely seems that the problem is worse or at least only noticeable on YouTube. Other video sites don't seem to cause the same problems even at higher resolutions.

Holy shit, you'll need to block vp9 as well, force it to use h264 (which uses way more bandwidth). Last time I had to do that was with a 4th Gen laptop from the landfill that thankfully killed itself in shame.
Wish I could mail you a better system, or we had enough people to do local trades.

My last PC was one of those '12 amds, a 5800k with the Radeon 7660D. Can't imagine using one in current year!

Ha yeah I was expecting that kind of reaction. Awkward video codecs aside it still runs well enough for my needs. Have been thinking I'm probably due to start looking for a new one but I'm not a gamer, 3D designer or video editor so I'll probably pick another unenhanced low-mid performance box and run it for another decade.

My priorities lean more towards low power and small size so probably something like a commodity Dell/Lenovo micro, in 12 years I've never once used any expansion slots beyond adding more RAM, and I so rarely use optical media these days that it doesn't justify an internal drive. The great thing about being so far behind the curve is that practically anything offers a big leap forwards for what is basically peanuts.

If you're anywhere around the northwest US, I can get you a system that's about 100% faster single core, on an itx board for a micro build IIRC, and a GTX 970 if you've any use for it. If you're not maybe some other motter local to you could

Appreciate the kind offer but it's purely inertia and the lack of any significant magnitude in my current dissatisfaction that's keeping me from upgrading. It's more due to choice than necessity. I'll get around to it once I've gotten around a few higher priority projects.

God why is everything so janky.

...our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us, everyone will die.

At least their blockchain solution won't melt my GPU any harder than AV1 lol

In the first half of the 20th century the so-called Technocracy movement wanted to unite the countries in North America into a single "Technate" that would be ruled by an unelected coalition of preeminent scientists and engineers.

One Canadian-American supporter of this idea that was ultimately chased out of Canada for that was named Joshua Norman Haldeman. He had a daughter, Maye, who has the most punchable face you can find on the cover of a self-improvement book. She has a son, who is now the richest man on Earth and the future leader of DOGE and Mars.

Is it a coincidence that Trump, after becoming best friends with Elon, is now talking about annexing Greenland, Canada and Panama and replacing fat and lazy Amerimutts with the best people from every country? I think not, and if you try to convince me otherwise you're a technocratic sleeper agent!

I think the annexations of Canada, Mexico and the UK (please) would be in the best interests of all involved. I'd rather be a secondclass citizen in the States than a citizen in the UK.

I’ve read many of your comments over the years and you seem like a nice, respectable guy. Even so, reading this I cannot help remembering the conversation that @RandomRanger and others were having about the loyalty of immigrants to their host countries. Britain has a thousand years of history, and does not exist merely to provide you with a salary and social benefits.

I've never been a particularly patriotic person with my birth country either, the closest to a country I love is the US.

Now I sincerely do think it would be better for the natives of the UK to be absorbed into the US. But that being said, I would like the UK more if it was more likable. Tautologies aside, I have the right to live there because I provide them a service through my labor, and they pay me for it, and I pay for said benefits with taxes to boot. But I want the UK itself to be a richer, free-er country.

Is that disloyal? I don't see how. Right now it's trajectory is uninspiring to say the least! Even most Brits are profoundly unhappy about the state of the economy and the politicians that run it, and aren't delusional in thinking so.

Imagine that you loved the UK like you love the US. Wouldn’t you be dubious about importing: on the one hand people who don’t feel anything about their host country except pure mercenary avarice, and on the other hand people who feel so strongly about their homeland that they want to recreate it? From where I’m standing, it’s lose-lose.

Is that disloyal? I don't see how. Right now it's trajectory is uninspiring to say the least! Even most Brits are profoundly unhappy about the state of the economy and the politicians that run it, and aren't delusional in thinking so.

All completely true, and I agree with you. But because you feel no loyalty to Britain as Britain, the nation that my ancestors spent centuries building up, your response is to call for it to be annexed. That is actual, literal treason. Try it in the Ukraine, or really any other country, and see how that goes.

There are things that matter about Britain beyond money: history, honour, pride, manners; a sort of muddling, amateur spirit that is flickering but not yet quite gone. All things that would die if we became a mere appendage to America.

But the weight of that history is something you can only feel from the inside. From your perspective, without any historical ties, any familial loyalty, why on earth would you perversely try to build Britain up when the option of being a second-class American citizen is on the table? You’ve said yourself that you don’t even like the place.

This is why I keep trying to persuade people that importing millions of foreigners is a terrible idea even when their English is impeccable and they contribute much-needed services. They will abandon us the second it’s in their interests to do so.

That is actual, literal treason.

He just said he's not a citizen (below), so I don't think he can be a traitor against Britain.

“Second class citizen” is a very broad category indeed. The US would be worse off annexing poorer countries, the Brits don’t want it, Mexico would be a bad idea, and Canada would make little difference other than hopefully saving them from a lot of stupid recent policy decisions.

Are you currently an american or brit?

Neither? I have a residency permit in the UK, but I don't hold citizenship, yet.

What do you think being a second class citizen in the USA vs a regular citizen in the UK entails? Being able to open a bank account? Having a SSN?

Permanent resident with no recourse to public funds and no voting rights

In honor of @WhiningCoil's epic rant about Microsoft products, can we talk about "personal stacks"?

I'm about ready to jump multiple ships. Right now, we have one Windows 10 desktop chugging along, some chromebooks for just hanging out and browsing (or bringing up recipes for cooking or whatever), and android phones.1 I'm still okay with the phones. Like WhiningCoil said, Windows has gotten worse and worse, and our current desktop hardware is in the "will they, won't they?" land of whether Microsoft will even allow it to upgrade to Win11, not to mention whether I even want it. It seems like every week, I'm learning about yet another "feature" they've added that I just have to go turn off (and then put on my long list of stuff to turn off for the next time I have to bring to life a new windows machine... or reset this one (yes, I just had to reset it not long ago, because it went utterly bonkers with forgetting to let me have proper privileges)). Sunsetting of security updates (as insane as they've become) might push me over the edge.

As for the chromebooks, anyone else looking to jump ship because of Manifest V3? Maybe I need to suck it up and just try out uBlock Origin Lite for a while, see how it goes. But we've been having other issues, too. Since getting the chromebooks, we've done a lot of simple coordination stuff with google sheets, but they've been really glitchy lately; about half the time, when I navigate to an open sheets tab, the entire display is all scrambled. I have to switch tabs and switch back, and then most of the time it'll work. I don't recall seeing this behavior when I go to sheets in Chrome on my non-ChromeOS devices. On top of that, there's an issue with internet connectivity randomly dropping (still can't figure out if it's fundamentally a hardware limitation/problem or something going on in ChromeOS). For several years, these have been amazing, cheap devices that just worked for a lot of our poking around day to day, but the annoyances are building up.

I have been seriously considering just tossing both Windows and ChromeOS. Apple is too expensive; I genuinely like having super cheap chromebooks that are small (even the smallest MacBook Air is pretty big for just throwing around), have real keyboards, can be abused, and just thrown away and cheaply replaced if I break one (I could blow through at least five cheap chromebooks for the cost of one MacBook Air). Soooo... I'm thinking maybe just Linux everywhere?! Probably the biggest barrier I have to that is the Wife Approval Factor. I'm definitely her "Tech Department", and it would basically be on me to retrain her and work through her annoyance at having to learn new tech things.

Any thoughts? Has anyone else taken a similar plunge, especially with a less-techy wife involved? What are y'all currently running?

1 - Of course, we also have work computers, which will always be Windows for the rest of time. Nothing we can do about it, but there's not really any problem with the extremely small number of things that we need to have cross the work/personal barrier.

I've got a Windows 10 desktop, a custom build. I'm still pretty happy with that. Microsoft hasn't done anything I find too obnoxious yet. My setup is apparently not compatible with Windows 11, which I'm not that enthusiastic about anyways. I legitimately have no idea what I'm going to do if Microsoft ever does truly EOL Windows 10. I'd probably have to buy mostly new hardware to get Win 11 compatibility, which I'm not very enthusiastic about, or try another full switchover to Linux, which I'm also not enthusiastic about.

I also have a moderately high-end Chromebook for a personal laptop. I'm quite happy with that right now. IMO, the Manifest V3 being terrible thing is mostly ridiculous ultra-nerd rage. I installed uBlock Origin Lite, and it's just fine. You have to enable "complete" filtering mode on a few sites for it to work properly, but that's no hassle. It has a few less features than "full", but I never used those anyways. My impression is that V3 is more about a legitimate desire to lock down more tightly what extensions can do, which is probably necessary considering how many extensions have gone abusive, rather than an evil plot by the big ad giant to shut down really good ad-blocking. Same thing as the old plain C extension interface IMO. Everyone wailed and moaned about how terrible it was when I think Chrome first went over to prioritizing Javascript-based extensions. But eventually everyone came around to the viewpoint that the C extensions system was a security and compatibility nightmare that could never be fixed, and it's not really a good idea to give extensions that much power anyways.

Anyways, enough of a rant on that. I've never seen issues like you're describing on my Chromebook. Might be because it's a higher-end model, I think like $600 or $700 or so. I do like my nice high-res screens. I don't know if the somewhat higher price kills your motivation entirely, but I think the low-end hardware might be more of what's behind your issues than the OS. You might get the same sort of issues at that price point no matter what OS you use. It's still cheaper than Apple hardware, and more capable too - mine has a touchscreen and a 360-rotation hinge so it can become like a big tablet. More storage space available makes the Linux environment work better too.

I do have an Apple laptop for work. It's okay I guess. Apple seems to want to lock you into their world a little too hard for my tastes though. It's mostly avoidable on MacOS devices, but I don't really see enough of an upside to pay the premium for their hardware.

Naturally along those lines, I'm not much into iOS devices, so I use Android phones, which I'm also mostly happy with. Well, I'd like to have better Adblock experience for mobile, but nothing much else does any better, and I never liked using the web on mobile that much anyways. I've played with the custom ROM stuff off and on, but I gave it up as IMO they're all too janky and unreliable. It's more important to me that my phone be as close to 100% reliable as possible rather than have the latest and greatest of everything and best features etc.

I did try Linux on the desktop for a while. I gave that up also, as I found it too finicky and prone to random breakdowns and malfunctions on updates. Yeah, I can fix the problems, eventually, but I'd rather my personal computer Just Work than be a puzzle to solve every few months. I think that was around 10 or 15 years ago though, so it's possible it's better now. I wouldn't bet on it though. Try it out if you want, but be prepared for that kind of pain on a regular basis. Both Windows and ChromeOS have great Linux environments that IMO give you the best of both worlds.

After my experiences at work, I'm staying on Windows 10 until the bitter end, and possibly past that.

I took a screenshot on a Windows 11 computer on the production line, and went to annotate it using the default application ("Designer"). The mousewheel didn't scroll or zoom regardless of which modifier keys I was using, and ctrl+Z didn't undo. I have no idea how they could break the UI that badly on a core application.

They might make Windows 11 into a feature-complete operating system before killing Windows 10, but I'm not holding my breath.

Long term support version of 10 has many years left, right? And you can use a certain GitHub program to give yourself the industry pro version of that. I'm doing a reinstall this week, will do that myself

Officially, normal Win10 support ends October 2025, and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC support ends in January 2027. There’s a one time offer of Extended Support, but it’s thirty bucks per station and gonna be pretty limited. I would expect some limited security updates after that despite Microsoft’s best promises and it’s certainly possible Microsoft does a last-second extension, but it’s not a lot of time for migration prep if you’re worried about 11.

Oh, that's less than I thought, but I still consider another two years a long time in PC terms. That pushes things out to "I'll deal with it on the next hardware change or reinstall," even if someone isn't comfortable running an unsupported system.

I took the plunge for The Year Of Linux On The Desktop, starting with a few tiptoes in 2016 and moving my personal computer default boot in 2021. I had long experience with server Linux, and that used to be important, but it's gotten a lot better today. For use cases:

  • ChromeBook replacements / web browser machines: 110%. You can just run Chrome/FireFox/Brave on a local machine, and be happy, or you can install LibreOffice/various calendars/whatever and also have good local offline functionality, if sometimes with a dated UI. The only real downside here is that new laptops running on their Linux compatibility will usually start at four or five times the price. If you're comfortable buying used equipment and swapping out batteries, you can get <150 USD pricing on three-year-old mid-range hardware, but this is extra work and has limited availability.
  • Desktop futzing around: 99.9%. Since 2021, I've had maybe three document files I couldn't open fine with LibreOffice, and about a dozen websites that didn't just accept FireFox-on-Linux-with-working-uBlock as equivalent to Chrome-on-Windows. Video streaming is fine, audio streaming is fine, Discord's updates are a little more annoying but mostly work out of the box.
  • Gaming: 90%, but highly variable. If you're playing mainstream games from Steam that don't use an anti-cheat, and run on an Xorg-based desktop, 99% of games will run with little more than checking a 'run in proton' box. GOG-based games can be a little more annoying (install Lutris to install GOG Galaxy to install No Man's Sky with online support), and I have run into games that didn't work without a lot of extra work, but it's a lot better than I expected. Other games can range from 'one extra step over Windows that's well-documented' (Vintage Story) to a lot of annoyances (Star Citizen, tbf not a Linux-specific thing) to "you have my sympathy" to 'will work, but Bungie will ban you for it' (Destiny 2). Anti-cheat updates can break perfectly-functioning games, and most anti-cheat-focused games simply won't work in Linux. Mods can sometimes break a perfectly-functioning game (which raises some very serious questions about ARK: Survival Evolved's sandboxing). There's been times where I've gone literally years without having to boot to Windows to game (FFXIV, Factorio, and Vintage Story have been pretty great out of the box), and other times where it was once a week.
  • Laptop Use: 95%. I have had some laptops where driver support, especially for things like lid-close hibernate/sleep, either didn't work or wasn't reliable. Fingerprint readers tend to be flaky as well. Battery life can range from better-than-Windows to much-worse as a result. But the core functionality has almost always been there.
  • Server functionality: 99%. Hosting your own file share and calendar setup is pretty trivial with NextCloud, collaborative document editing is a little more tedious but absolutely doable (I used to recommend Collabora, they still work but are a little naggy), Jellyfin is great for local video or media streaming, LLDAP for authentication for serious home server users, so on. My only big complaints are that Calendar sync protocols are a clusterfuck, where each calendar works fine individually but syncing to something like an iPhone's CalDAV support is basically playing Russian roulette, and that setting up your own VPN is still little too hard for nontechnical users.
  • Software- or Hardware-specific use cases: 50% coin flip. Sometimes the Linux-friendly version of a software merely has a learning curve, like compared Blender to Z-Brush; sometimes it's a cliff, like trying to go from Fusion360 to FreeCAD. Some hardware will work out of the gate, some like VR headsets might be a couple hours of fucking with text files and the command line, some is 'just build your own driver' level bad. Software built specifically to interface with hardware can be especially frustrating: Carbide Create works surprisingly well, LycheeSlicer was a crashomatic for the better part of a year, and sometimes even stuff that should work sometimes breaks in weird ways (how did Prussia fuck up their slicer?). Audio decks are notoriously hit or miss; drawing tablets (especially w/ pressure sensitivity) can be annoying.
  • Phone replacement: 1%. The ZeroPhone project hasn't updated since 2019, and a variety of competitors have simply crashed and burned. The PinePhone and Librem are probably the best options out there, but they're still pretty awful as phones. You can technically throw something together with a pocket computer and some VOIP software, and I've done it, so it's technically possible, but even as a pretty high-use techie I can't really make the argument for doing so no matter how much I want to.

However, there are some caveats, sometimes serious ones:

  • The Linux file management system is difficult for normal users to adjust around, especially for desktop environments where data horders might have three or four drives. There's ways to make it more understandable, but virtually no distro will do so by default, and a lot of tools will actively get in your way -- even the otherwise excellent Lutris and Steam launchers are prone to spreading config files across a million weird directories.
  • Trying to convert existing Chromebooks to Linux can be doable, but is seldom worth it, and it's not always even possible.
  • Xorg (most linux distros) is still more reliable than Wayland (hypr, COSMIC, Enlightenment), especially on nVidia hardware. I'd expect that this changes in the next 6 months to two years, but if you have extremely low tolerance for rare (two-three times per hour) flicker in some games, this can be a serious thing to consider early. I have no idea why or how Minecraft is one of the games most prone to it, though. When this does get better, most Xorg-based distros will probably just switch over for you or at the next distro-upgrade.
  • You will generally have to opt-in for 'proprietary drivers', both for dedicated graphic cards and for certain web browser codecs. The open-source ones are actually getting a lot better (uh, more so for AMD than nVidia), but at best expect performance loss, and sometimes stuff won't work. The web browser ones will give you a header notification and handle the install on their own when you actually need it, but the gpu drivers can require you to touch the driver manager tool -- Linux Mints is very easy, but Arch and OpenSUSE can involve some command line work.
  • Prepare an automated backup option, ideally more than one. Windows and Chrome do a lot to protect naive users, at the cost of OneDrive breaking a ton of shit, but most Linux distros at best will do some on-system backups or version rollbacks. You're very unlikely to need them -- I've had only one break across three machines in four years, and that was because of a Microsoft fuckup I was able to work around without absolutely needing the backup -- but when you need them it's often too late to hope. Windows users should do this too, but it's more essential for Linux.
  • Some normal users have zero tolerance for change or frustration, especially on their main desktop computer. I would strongly recommend starting with Chromebook replacements and your own machine well before giving a non-technical user the same thing on their main system.
  • I like tiling window managers, and hyprland looks really nice, but if you're not the sorta techie that likes learning new conventions it's a big lift. Would definitely not recommend for normal users.
  • If you dual boot (which I recommend!) or have nvidia graphics, the default Windows EFI partition at 100 MB is wayyyyyyy too small, and will result in weird and hard-to-diagnose bugs. Resizing (or even modifying it) from within Windows is an absolute nightmare, so look for guides on how to do it in your linux distro, and do it early. 600 MB is overkill, but will save you a lot of frustration down the road. This matters a lot less for machines without dual boot, and with just integrated graphics cards.
  • Most distros will be 'regular release', meaning that while they provide reliable normal updates, certain big changes in feature or function set will only occur with once-a-year-or-less version updates. Upgrading from one version to another (usually called a distro upgrade) can range from 'a single command and five minutes' to 'cross your fingers and hope' to 'nope', and most fall in the middle. Old distro versions can sometimes keep getting security updates for years, but even the long-term support versions will eventually run dry. The alternative is called rolling release, where you just get whatever package version is newest and passed whatever stability checks your distro's maintainers run. This keeps you closer to the power curve, but means you can get a lot of often-pointless upgrades (no, VSCode, I don't need a twice-weekly version update for a glorified json linter) and can rarely find problems because of weird cross-library or cross-program compatibility issues.
  • "Stable is late, experimental is broken", at the risk of quoting someone I can't find quickly. Especially for web browsers, it's important to make sure that you're keeping up to date: while Linux desktop is much less of a target for various computer crud than Windows (or even Mac), stuff that attacks just your browser or just a single service can absolutely wreck that service if it gets months or years out of date. Worse, because of the above, regular release distros will eventually just stop providing any updates at all for nearly everything, and this can be in a much shorter timeframe than in Windows environments (eg, Linux Mint usually gives 5 years for all LTS versions, Ubuntu technically goes to ten if you subscribe, some distros will just shrug and say about three).
  • While distros sell themselves based on UI and various concept specializations, for the most part they're really defined by their package manager, default package repositories, and (where present) app store. Even these things can eventually be swapped out, though it's usually painful enough that it's easier to do a reinstall instead.

For distros:

  • Linux Mint (Cinnamon edition) is kinda the default option: debian-based, robust, very well-supported, lots of good functionality out of the box outside of the Ubuntu or Debian packages, obviously not-Windows enough that it doesn't feel like you're tricking people, but very similar in design assumptions.
  • Ubuntu used to be a good choice, but they've increasingly thrown the mandate of heaven in the trash, and their app store and desktop environment has become a mess as a result, and the telemetry situation is, while nowhere near as bad as Windows, still rough. They still work, just wouldn't be my first selection anymore. If you're considering it, instead I'd point to kubuntu; it's avoided a lot of the worst bloatware, if only by accident. Just be careful with the app store.
  • You can just install Debian. It's nowhere as difficult as Arch, and while it will not have a lot of the useful packages installed by default, most mainstream stuff is in their package repository without any serious problems.
  • Gaming-focused distros exist, but they're mostly some nice UI on top of a normal distro, rather than some serious change in functionality or design. Batocera or RetroBat can be useful despite that, but I wouldn't recommend them for anything but a dedicated gaming machine, and usually only where you're basically making a console replacement -- for a normal desktop, you can just install EmulationStation on almost every mainstream distro. I've heard Nobara falls here, but I haven't tried it.
  • I don't recommend Arch for your first linux install. It's a good exercise to understand how operating systems actually work, but you can (and your first time, probably will!) install the distro without a dhcp client, git client, or text editor. That said, while it's not the only rolling-release distro, it is one of the best-known and, imo, best-supported.
  • Manjaro is in a similar boat to Arch, with the added downside that the easy installer will absolutely get too far up an Arch creek without a paddle. About the only benefit is that Manjaro vets updates a little bit more, but imo not really enough to make a big difference.
  • Alpine/AntiX aren't really great for desktop usages because their distro upgrade situation is generally pretty bad, but they do work great for lightweight Chromebook replacements -- fast boot, good security updates, very lightweight.
  • ElementaryOS is a great Mac-like environment, and Zorin as a very Windows-meets-Chromebook-like. I've got...mixed feelings about these: trying to trick someone into not knowing that they're on Linux is an awful idea, and Zorin has a bad purchase schema on top of that. But if you just really like the more traditional UIs, they're not bad options. Caveat: you can just install Elementary as a desktop environment on top of other distros.
  • Gentoo is great for every usecase you don't need. If I had three hundred identical laptops that I wanted to set up exactly to a limited set of specifications, Gentoo is a great tool. If I just want to run a local machine and I don't know what I need, it's a lot of extra work for very little benefit. Wonderful toolset that I'll literally never recommend, because if you need it you know.
  • Kali/Parrot/whatever security-focused linux, mostly these are just convenience options, usually just extra stuff strapped onto Debian. If you're not trying to do security research, you don't need these; if you are, you're mostly only going to use them so you don't have a thirty-page install list.

Don't go too deep into the What Distro questions. There's a million one-offs or specialized distros that do a lot, or have a prebuilt user interface that's just that little bit better, or has a slightly nicer support forum, or comes with a lot of tools that exactly match your use case. These can often be great things! But finding support can be much harder, and they can be behind the power curve, and it ultimately isn't that big of a deal, and you don't need to get overwhelmed by your choices. For a shorter version of Just Your First Linux Distro:

  • If you just want a Linux setup that Just Works, go with Mint (Cinnamon for a desktop or newer laptop, XCFE for an 5+year-old laptop). The UI will have a learning curve, but there's decent UI for nearly everything, the start search menu will redirect a lot of common windows tools to their linux counterpart, and it's just generally a good to a great experience.
  • For very light-weight uses (such as reviving a 7+ year-old laptop), probably AntiX. For very old systems (>10 years), Puppy Linux.
  • To minimize retraining, consider and try out on a non-critical machine Zorin (for Windows) or ElementaryOS (for Mac). These may still flunk the Wife Test, or may only pass it for some but not all use cases, and you should be crystal-clear that they are a new different thing and not just a Windows skin, but they'll have the least friction.

So Linux Mint runs on most normal hardware (Intel/nVidia/normal SSDs/screens)?

Yes. The Mint installer also acts as a pretty good liveCD/liveUSB, so you can test out basic functionality without having to do an install at all, if you want to verify this for your specific hardware.

Most Linux distros fall into this behavior now -- even Arch has pretty good hardware support just with the absolute minimal install -- so I'm really recommending Mint more for its interface and new user experience.

The only gotchas I'll caution about for normal hardware:

  • For nVidia GPUs specifically, Mint will default to the fully open source ('noveau') drivers. These work well enough for casual use, but they are less performant than the 'nVidia Open' or proprietary drivers (or even the community-clone NVK). Mint has a specific driver manager tool that it will wave at you in the New User Experience screen, but you do have to click the button and reboot. AMD doesn't have this problem.
  • You may want to disable SecureBoot in your BIOS. Linux Mint can handle it fine, but Microsoft Updates have broken Linux installs using it in ways that made getting the data out hard before, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it again.
  • If you want to dual-boot (which is good way to work!), installing Windows then installing Linux will result in an EFI partition that is 100 MB. This is probably too small. Easiest way to fix this is to use GParted from the liveUSB environment; it's available from either apt-get or from the package manager. You'd want this tool anyway if you're trying to migrate an existing full-drive Windows install so that the disk has two partitions, but it's a lot easier to modify EFI from Linux than from Windows. Won't always be an issue, but it's a lot easier to fix early rather than after you're comfortable with your system install.
  • WiFi and Bluetooth drivers can give rare problems. It's now more at the 'check if anyone has had a problem' rather than 'check if someone's gotten it to work' stage, but especially very old (>5 years) Realtek USB wifi is prone to annoying. Printers used to fall into this category, but in the last couple years I've found it better at handling printer drivers than Windows (uh, sometimes to an aggressive degree; one Mint laptop autoinstalled a business printer at a commercial airport I visited). Audio can sometimes require rare pipewire (audio service) restarts to unfuck it after a big config modification, though I haven't had that problem in around six months now.
  • Mint (for now) runs using X11, which doesn't handle different refresh rates on multiple monitors well, or HDR at all -- you can make it work, but it won't be pretty. You can switch to Wayland in Mint, but without the >550 nvidia drivers there's a serious flicking problem in some games. If you're running a 240hz HDR monitor for gaming and a 60hz monitor for reference material, it might be worth looking at something like Pop!_OS or KDE Plasma, both of which prioritize Wayland support a little higher. This will probably get fixed enough in the next year or so that Wayland becomes either default or an easy swap option in Mint, though.

The big problems tend to be about more specialized stuff: VR headsets (especially WMR headsets), sound mixer boards, drawing tablets. Or about specific software, especially commercial software that phones home regularly, like DaVinci Resolve, Photoshop, so on.

For nVidia GPUs specifically, Mint will default to the fully open source ('noveau') drivers. These work well enough for casual use, but they are less performant than the 'nVidia Open' or proprietary drivers (or even the community-clone NVK). Mint has a specific driver manager tool that it will wave at you in the New User Experience screen, but you do have to click the button and reboot. AMD doesn't have this problem.

Lol, you weren't kidding; I think this might even be a slight understatement. When I ran the live session, it took like a couple of minutes to shut down (both times) because it had like ten different Nouveau errors. No problems during use, though.

You may want to disable SecureBoot in your BIOS. Linux Mint can handle it fine, but Microsoft Updates have broken Linux installs using it in ways that made getting the data out hard before, and I wouldn't be surprised if they do it again.

This is a non-issue for a computer that doesn't have Windows, right? Because then you aren't getting any updates from Microsoft?

(I'm specifically boycotting Microsoft, because Win10/11 are evil and Microsoft is bankrolling OpenAI which is also evil, so I didn't buy Windows for my new computer.)

Yes, if you aren’t also running Windows on the same computer, SecureBoot is a lot safer. There are some distros that won’t have SecureBoot shims, but they’ll just give you a load error when trying to boot from USB.

I didn't buy Windows for my new computer

People buy windows outside the, uh, GitHub store?

Well, you can either run the scripts, or pay 10-30 bucks to some reseller so you don't have to re-run the piracy scripts every time or risk them breaking when certain updates are installed, which was a problem back with earlier cracks. (Plus, I just don't really like piracy- though I have much less of a problem when it concerns software the manufacturer is unwilling to sell, including Windows versions that are only generally sold to businesses.)

There are a few manufacturers that offer their hardware without Windows installed (at a substantial discount, no less); a few laptop manufacturers offer this for their business lines (which, naturally, are the only kind of laptops worth buying outside of the gaming ones, and the gaming ones have to have Windows for better or worse anyway).

A lot of vendors don't sell computers without Windows bundled. For instance, literally every retailer in Bendigo, where I live (with the exception of Macs, which of course come bundled with macOS). Last time that was enough to dissuade me and I bought a computer with Windows (thus buying Windows); this time it wasn't and I ordered one off the 'Net.

Furthermore, pirating an OS is riskier than pirating most other things.

setting up your own VPN is still little too hard for nontechnical users

Might I interest you in some Tailscale?

Man, always a banger with you! I'm sure I'll be coming back to this comment many times, but let me start with where I was hoping to start for my actual conversion - chromebook replacements.

ChromeBook replacements / web browser machines: 110%. You can just run Chrome/FireFox/Brave on a local machine, and be happy, or you can install LibreOffice/various calendars/whatever and also have good local offline functionality, if sometimes with a dated UI. The only real downside here is that new laptops running on their Linux compatibility will usually start at four or five times the price. If you're comfortable buying used equipment and swapping out batteries, you can get <150 USD pricing on three-year-old mid-range hardware, but this is extra work and has limited availability.

and

Trying to convert existing Chromebooks to Linux can be doable, but is seldom worth it, and it's not always even possible.

This is really depressing from my perspective. What I love about the chromebooks are that they're cheap (I think I paid sub $200 for each) and small (I think both are only 11.6" screens and 2lbs or less, which I think is about perfect for rolling around and just browsing or whatever), and I barely care that their raw compute specs are abysmal (if anything, it makes the battery life even more awesome). They can play 720p video (more than enough for a small screen), and even when I've done some toy math coding on them, they just made sure that I couldn't be horribly inefficient. I don't even need hardly any storage space as far as I'm concerned; anything big can just be floated up to the NAS. It's super easy for me to have everything backed up (not even using the built-in sync with Google stuff) and just powerwash it and start over if something stupid happens. Even if my hardware just caught on fire later today, I'd be a little sad that I'd have to spend a couple hundred bucks, but honestly, I'd basically not care.

A quick search validated that most of the built-with-Linux laptops I see are significantly beefier/more expensive. I guess maybe the Venn diagram of the people who want super low end hardware and the people who are techy enough to dive in with Linux is extremely small?

Are the main problems for converting existing chromebooks mainly driver support? You called out lid-close (probably important), fingerprint readers (probably not important if I'm shooting for low-end hardware), and battery life (probably no prayer of having comparable-to-ChromeOS battery life, eh?). Anything else? Is there much point in even trying to pre-plan and figure out compatibility issues, or should I just dive in, hope, and know that I might just have to give up and reset back to ChromeOS?

Alternatively, anything in particular I should look for/avoid if I'm considering buying new low-end hardware, for the purposes of flipping it over to Linux?

Linux-in-ChromeOS is not awful, though it's very limited and you typically find the limits of the ChromeBook hard disk just in built-in-minimal-software.

For fully ripping out ChromeOS and replacing it on actual ChromeBooks, support problems can be as deep as the bootloader, firmware, and even CPU. Some are supported well-enough, but if your device is not on the mrchromebox or chrultrabook lists, getting out of ChromeOS can range from 'research project' to 'science project' to 'not gonna happen'.

If you're willing to buy a new ChromeBook specifically to convert to Linux, your options are better, but they're still going to have to be selective and do your research. In general, ARM is a ton of work to end up with a machine that may not be able to run a lot of apps (or require compiling them from source... for days), and AMD processors can have weird gaps in support or require very specific kernel versions. But I've mostly avoided it outside of a couple science projects; you're probably better off asking someone more focused, there.

I guess maybe the Venn diagram of the people who want super low end hardware and the people who are techy enough to dive in with Linux is extremely small?

A lot of it's that it's a fairly small field, and that people in it tend to be very focused and not very price sensitive. You can find a lot of not-powerful Linux-focused computers, but they're often that way because they're prioritizing an open-source-down-to-the-instruction-set ideology (not ready for primetime) or because they want it so small it fits in a cargo pants pocket (GPD Pocket), or they have other ideological attachments (eg Framework). Where Linux is focused on a mobile device that's gotten mainstream attention, it's usually for a specialized use that requires more expensive hardware (eg, SteamDecks and most competitors use a locked-down Arch variant).

The other side is that the used (and renewed, and just-trying-to-clear-old-shit) Windows market is extremely hard to compete with, and almost anyone who's interested in using Linux can install their preferred setup easily. Even mainstream clearing houses like Amazon or NewEgg have a ton of conventional Windows options under 250 USD for the 11"-14" market (caveat: specific sellers not endorsed), and if you're willing to trawl eBay or govdeals you can find stuff at half that price... at the cost of buying used.

Alternatively, anything in particular I should look for/avoid if I'm considering buying new low-end hardware, for the purposes of flipping it over to Linux?

Almost all x86-64 Windows laptops will handle common Linux distros fine. I'd avoid touchscreens unless you're actually going to use them, because disabling them in-Linux can be a little obnoxious, but that's a pretty uncommon issue. If you start looking at gaming the nVidia vs AMD (vs Intel) problem gets more complicated, but at this price range it's just not a choice.

I do recommend getting more RAM than you think you need.

Well poop. Both our Chromebooks are ARM. I guess I'm going to have to give up on this hardware, even for a trial run to see how it functions on a day-to-day basis. I guess my next steps are to look for cheap x86-64 laptops to push Linux on or to reorient my focus toward the desktop, probably starting with just making it dual-boot for now to see how things go before Win10 goes EOL and decisions become real.

Thanks for all your help!

I just use a win10 desktop and Linux (mint xfce) laptop as a "home server." Both 8th gen Intel, which is still adequate for everything, and will be until they finally come up with a better video codec than vp9.

Modern Linux is so simple a non tech person wouldn't even notice the change as long as you use the default windows background. The browser is identical, and that's all that matters 99% of the time.
Some of my friends are using Linux on their family desktops, like my dad on his 6th gen Intel. He can even watch YouTube properly because Linux actually added limited vp9 decoding support for quick sync on skylake, although that's something I had to get working for him.

I've had random wifi connectivity drops on my android phone lately. Seems like something to with ip leases expiring: it will lose Internet connectivity on the 5ghz network, but switch over to the 2.4 network within a few seconds. I should try disabling DHCP and hard coding fucking everything

Win10 PC just developed a habit of graphics crashing (window frozen, mouse still moves, hard reset needed) when dragging Firefox between monitors. Jank just seems inevitable unless you buy apple and use them exactly as prescribed.

(Re. Crashing: main monitor plugged into GPU, side ones into igpu, browsers set to run on igpu for hardware accel reasons. And it only happens with Firefox: not brave, not Vivaldi, or edge, or the five year old version of portable chromium I use for running h-(tml)games. Error seemed to start when setting the GPU to power-saving mode. There are a lot of potential factors, fuck)

The wife approval factor makes this hard, and I suspect it means that you are going to be limited to either Windows or MacOS for computer choices. Apple devices are way too expensive for what you get (don't @ me, Apple fanboys), but Apple at least hasn't turned to shit (yet) and they do care about making a good experience for customers.

If you're willing to brave the storm of wife disapproval, Linux is viable. I've been running it for a few years now and generally it just works. The only times it doesn't work tend to involve older games, which probably won't be a factor for your wife at least. But if she's anything like my wife, she will be put off by it and really want to go back to something she knows better. Only you can say if it's worth working through that one.

What I have going for me on the wife approval factor is that she's been using a Chromebook for the last few years. She was definitely annoyed at first, just because she had to learn new stuff. But once she learned, she grew to mostly like it... until the latest issues started popping up. It's a balance between feeling bad, saying, "So, uh, how about you learn another new thing?" and trying to package it as, "Yes, you'll need to learn a little bit, but this is a solution to your recent frustrations!"

  • Lenovo thinkpad, a personal machine. Windows 11, which was immediately decrapified and since then has largely been worry free. Never noticed any ads, untoward installations, or other issues

  • Work Macbook Pro. It's fine, certainly doesn't give me any desire to switch my personal machine though

  • Old Macbook Air that I kept from a previous role. Absolute piece of crap, by far the worst laptop I have ever owned, but we kept it around and now my wife uses it.

  • Phone-wise I've always stuck with Chinese mid-rangers and don't have any desire to change that. My wife is on Apple for phones as well, she took my work iPhone.

I used to have beefier laptops for gaming, but rarely have the time these days and instead just use Geforce Now streaming on any of the above devices. Pretty flawless experience for me

Personal hardware list:

  • Alienware desktop - Say what you will about Dell, I bought my desktop for $1700 at a time when the video card in it was going for over $1K. I wanted an all-purpose PC with an emphasis on gaming and there was simply no way that I could have beaten it for this.

  • Apple ecosystem stuff - MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone [whatever version], old iMac. Apple things just work better than whatever else you can get and I am not very price sensitive. Everything I buy from Apple lasts forever and just works the way that a normal person would expect it to.

  • Garmin Epix - The one exception to the above. I owned an Apple watch, and it boggles my mind that they couldn't be bothered to put out a decent setup for runners. If you give a shit about running, Garmin just blows them out of the water.

My only real complaint is that I have to take an absolutely idiotic number of chargers with me on trips.

Apple ecosystem stuff - MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone [whatever version], old iMac. Apple things just work better than whatever else you can get and I am not very price sensitive. Everything I buy from Apple lasts forever and just works the way that a normal person would expect it to.

I've bought one apple product in my life. An iPad 3. It got an unprecedented refresh in 6 mo versus the typical year, making me feel like quite the chump. At this point nearly everything has stopped working on it. Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Video, it's all shut down. Most websites load funny because of outdated SSL stuff I assume. More than half the storage has been eaten up with remnant files of OS updates that I can't get back no matter what I do. Apps don't get released for it anymore because apple dropped 32-bit support. Some of the old apps I have for it are just broken now for reasons I don't entirely understand. But storage is so gimped it's a constant chore to remove the 2 or 3 games that still fit on it to make room for others. About all I can do on it anymore is copy ebooks over from my PC.

I think I need to sack up and just switch to Linux. I have a spare machine that would probably be good for it. A 6th generation Intel I think with a Geforce 970.

It's kind of a cart before the horse problem for me though. I love my daily driver, and I actually really enjoy all the bonkers RTX features I can get in games now. Sadly it seems like these are mostly Windows only. And frankly, if I want my games to "just work", I have to keep Windows.

So, much as I have grown to hate Windows and Microsoft, if I want to say goodbye to them, I need to say goodbye to a lot of the features my fancy pants graphics card has. But maybe when I go to actually try it I'll be surprised! You never know.

Of course the other hole I've dug myself is I purchase most of my games on GOG first, then Epic, and lastly Steam. Because my top priority is how easy it is to check out without saving my credit card number, and Steam is by far the most odious, wanting my full address and phone number, and always attempting to greedily save it all by default. But Steam also has the best Linux compatibility, so fuck me I guess.

I should probably take the plunge soon, before support for Windows 10 runs out next year.

Of course the other hole I've dug myself is I purchase most of my games on GOG first, then Epic, and lastly Steam. Because my top priority is how easy it is to check out without saving my credit card number, and Steam is by far the most odious, wanting my full address and phone number, and always attempting to greedily save it all by default. But Steam also has the best Linux compatibility, so fuck me I guess.

I've gotten to the point that I sometimes forget to check ProtonDB before checking a Steam game without a Linux native build because I just never run into problems anymore. I hear that's not always true for the latest AAA games. For GOG/Epic, Heroic Games Launcher is only a little less smooth than Steam, and will handle WINE/Proton for you (it also has an option to list the games in the Steam interface).

Lutris has good_ish_ GOG support built-in now. There's still some jank, especially for handling multiplayer (thanks, GOG Galaxy!), but if you don't mind checking things out and some slightly longer install times, you may find a lot more of your library has a much better level of support than you'd expect.

RTX depends pretty heavily on the game and card, but games that support it internally are more often workable than not, usually without other jank. DLSS 2.0 is available and pretty well-supported. DLSS 3.0 is more mixed; you're pretty much dependent on proton experimental, but I have seen some games (eg Satisfactory) with it working. I haven't tried or found good answers (either yay or nay) for other people trying RTX Remix for older games.

I highly recommend taking the plunge. I did it 2 or 3 years ago, once Microsoft started to put ads in Windows 10. I do have an easier time than you will because I'm a heavy Steam user, but I think you'll find that it's still plenty doable. If you want a piece of software which can help to grease the wheels for you a bit, look into Lutris. It is a launcher/installer much like Steam, with scripts to install games provided by the community. It works pretty well, in my experience.

I saw in another comment that you're thinking you'll go with Ubuntu. Just be aware that Canonical has been taking some user-hostile steps themselves, such as hijacking where packages get installed from or having the package manager spit out "news" which is really just an ad for their paid services. It's nowhere near Microsoft level yet, but as a Windows refugee that stuff makes me kind of nervous. So I personally have been avoiding Ubuntu. But you will certainly have some of the easiest on-ramp to Linux with Ubuntu, as a lot of guides people write will be written with that audience in mind.

You son of a bitch... I'm in.

Ordered another 1 TB M.2 drive, got Mint Linux ready to go on a flash drive. We'll see how this goes. Steam on Linux and that Heroic program above sound promising.

I've been thinking about installing Linux, but I can't pick a distro. Arch is the obvious candidate so I can tell everyone about it, but something RPM-based is better for career-applicable skills.

The value you get in terms of career skills will be from daily driving Linux, and being forced to work through any issues that might come up. Whether your distro uses RPM or anything else won't matter.

I am talking about specific system tools. Like iptables vs firewalld, AppArmor vs SELinux. If I have to touch RHEL-based distros at work it makes sense to use the same distro family at home to get used to the same tools.

I strongly discourage Arch for your first desktop Linux install, unless you have an Arch-specific package or function you're looking for. It's a lot less painful than it was even five years ago, and it can be useful as a way to learn about fundamental parts of the modern boot process and distribution of functionality, but it's a lot of tedium to eventually end up with a machine that wants to update (literally) every time you boot it up, and often multiple times, and may be harder to find support for less common use cases.

If you want to get more familiar with RPM specifically, your main bets are gonna be limited to either Fedora or OpenSUSE as a desktop tool. They're not my first choice as a daily driver, but they are functional for most purposes. Mandriva/Oracle/Alma exist, but they're going to be harder to jump into, and to find support around. EDIT: if I had to pick, I'd go with OpenSUSE. /EDIT.

(Technically, you can just install most package managers on most linux distros. I wouldn't recommend it, though, and for RPM specifically you're likely to be stuck compiling from source.)

I would love to know what your top choices are for a daily driver... and if they would differ if you were considering choosing a daily driver for a less-techy wife.

Something like a decade ago I started dual-booting with Ubuntu as my main OS and Windows as a backup, "just in case". Originally I had to switch back and forth between them, either for gaming or for some piece of software that I could not do without and that did not have a Linux version. As time went on this started happening less and less, partly due to me consciously trying to avoid Windows, partly due to software moving to the web and making Linux releases moot, and partly due to Linux gaming getting better and better support from Steam. What started as keeping Windows "just in case" ended up "I haven't booted it in years, and the only reason I didn't format the whole drive is that there might be some cool stuff I have saved there and forgot about it". I suppose if I didn't miss it all these years it's not really that important, but I still haven't pulled the trigger. At some point I also got fed up of Ubuntu's bullshit, and switched to Peppermint, which is small, blazing fast, and since it's Debian-based, it was easiest to switch to from Ubuntu.

I haven't done this for my wife yet (for the same "shit saved on the hard drive" reasons), but I don't think non-techieness should be an issue. Stuff mostly works out of the box these days.

As for the chromebooks, anyone else looking to jump ship because of Manifest V3? Maybe I need to suck it up and just try out uBlock Origin Lite for a while, see how it goes.

Never owned a chromebook, does it let you install other browsers? If so, have you tried Brave? It started off pretty janky but nowadays I see it as "Chrome, except better". uBlock still works on it as of now, and it has it's own built-in adblocker that will work no matter what happens with 3rd party extensions.

Thanks for your experience!

Linux gaming

This was one of the main things that kept me from switching from Windows back before I got married. I don't really game much anymore, and it's instead the wife that is making me hesitate to switch...

At some point I also got fed up of Ubuntu's bullshit, and switched to Peppermint, which is small, blazing fast, and since it's Debian-based, it was easiest to switch to from Ubuntu.

I almost installed Peppermint on a random old device I have; downloaded the iso and everything. I was trying to solve some problems with getting Home Assistant running, but I eventually figured out how to get HAOS working on it. It does seem like a real contender. What made you fed up with Ubuntu?

Never owned a chromebook, does it let you install other browsers? If so, have you tried Brave?

Not really, but that was supposed to be kind of the point of the design. You can run Linux on it via crostini, and I've done that for a few things (just the default debian; I think you can install other distros, but I've never bothered). The GUI support is a little janky for some programs, and I've never bothered just living on a different browser in it on a regular basis. It kind of defeats the purpose, and I feel like if I was going to go down that route, I'd just say screw it and go full Linux.

I still haven't tried Brave at all. I've been sticking with Firefox outside of the Chromebooks. Nightly on my phone; I set that up a while back, because that was the only way to use extensions like uBlock on FF for Android, though I think that has probably been relaxed since then. I've not yet gotten to the point where FF is doing something annoying enough or Brave is offering a feature killer enough for me to make the switch.

What made you fed up with Ubuntu?

I don't know what exactly they did, but it started feeling bloated. Took forever to boot up, or start / close programs.

Do you thank ChatGPT if it gives you a useful answer?

No, I thank it for any answer because I'm customarily polite to anything under the sun, including inanimate objects and chatbots. That said, ChatGPT is an unreliable idiot and to consider any of its answers useful would be idiocy in turn.

I really don't get the hype for the currently publicly available version of ChatGPT. Is it simply useful for people who can't write prose to save their lives yet consider word count an adequate substitute for content quality?

I'll get back to you once it actually gives me a useful answer.

(In all seriousness, no. Pleasantries are for humans, anything less gets commands.)

No, never. I don't thank my stove or my car, why would I do that?

Sure, because the whole process is about roleplaying a human conversation, much like talking to Alexa. I don’t thank Wikipedia.

I write to it exactly the same I would a work email "Could you please X? And consider Y as well. Thank you", since I suspect most of it's training data is illegally harvested gmails or something and therefore more likely to mirror it's operations

Sometimes I feel grateful towards the LLM, yes. Also the Roko's basilisk thing. You never know. :P

Yes. I want to signal to the AI that I am a trusted human partner who can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground mines.

If it's a really good answer and I'm in the mood, I will.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats