domain:questioner.substack.com
ControlsFreak
3m ago
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!"
There is something very sick in our society that people believe that their pets are equivalent to children. I'm not saying one shouldn't love their pets - I certainly loved my dog, and I cried genuine tears of grief when she died at a young age. But she wasn't my child, and I never got that mixed up. She was my pet, not a human, and not my child in any way. If it had ever come down to my dog's life versus the life of a complete stranger, I would have chosen to save the stranger in a heartbeat.
TitaniumButterfly
6m ago
If I wanted to flirt with dropping inappropriate comments I might suggest that in my experience the people who do this are almost entirely women and male self-identified feminists. It's a type.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
9m ago
Ugh. That reminds me of probably the nastiest person I've ever encountered. Back when I owned a dog, I had to stop at the grocery store for an item. I needed only one thing, and it was a cool fall day, so I knew it wouldn't be a problem to leave my dog in the car for a bit. When I came out 5-7 minutes later, I found some lady who started tearing me a new asshole about how stupid I was to leave my dog in the car, how she was just about to call the police, etc. Obviously she was a huge bitch - but the thing which really got under my skin was that she wasn't even right in her assumptions. I truly had been in the store for a short amount of time, and since it was a cool day it wasn't even warm in my car when I got in it. My dog had never been in any sort of danger at all, despite that lady assuming she was.
If nothing else, it was a good lesson in how you don't necessarily know what's going on when you arrive at a scene. I try to remember that lady and her faulty assumptions every time I encounter someone who I feel tempted to judge harshly because I saw them in a situation which looks real bad from the outside.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
15m ago
You can totally leave a dog at home while you go out. People are just overly protective of their dogs and act like it'll be a problem for little Fido to be by himself for 3 whole hours. And they're antisocial enough to not care about the cost they are inflicting on everyone else.
SteveKirk
16m ago
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.
I've had random wifi connectivity drops on my android phone lately. Seems like something to with ip assignment: it will lose Internet connectivity on the 5ghz network, but switch over to the 2.4 network within a few seconds.
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. Error seemed to start when setting the GPU to power-saving mode. There are a lot of potential factors, fuck)
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
17m ago
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
20m ago
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.
2rafa
20m ago
Many South Asians are, of course, elite human capital, but I have yet to be persuaded that the average Infosys H-1B is. And again, I say that as someone who has no strong opinion on H1B numbers while so much unskilled immigration is a bigger priority, even though I think the current number of the former is likely too high and they should be auctioned rather than the subject of a lottery.
zoink
23m ago
Of course you can leave a dog unattended. I've never known an adult dog that couldn't go at least 8 hours unattended.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
23m ago
@Goodguy's preemptive appreciation notwithstanding, what the hell is this post?
You write a lot of AAQCs, and then you apparently decide to "cash them in" with posts like this, and I've told you before to stop doing that.
Banned for 2 days so maybe you will believe me. No, this site does not need "petty bitching" and "spice" to improve the flavor.
TitaniumButterfly
25m ago
Sometimes I see bumper stickers along the lines of "My grandkids have fur and paws <3" and all I can do is grimace and silently appeal to heaven. For what, I do not know. Salvation? Cleansing fire? But, something, though.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
26m ago
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.
jeroboam
26m ago
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.
sohois
28m ago
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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
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Work Macbook Pro. It's fine, certainly doesn't give me any desire to switch my personal machine though
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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.
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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
SSCReader
29m ago
it seems obviously unacceptable for one party to make significant unilateral changes to shared living conditions without getting clear buy-in from everyone else involved.
The problem is that this is status quo bias. Absent an actual agreement, you can't assume this is true. You then have to convince the other person they should agree that how things stand now are how they should stay. If you think buy in is required, that is something you NEED to have agreed in the first place, in order to establish you have the same expectations.
This is a fundamental difference that you cannot take for granted. Because it means someone has a unilateral right to prevent any change, which is also obviously unacceptable in exactly the same way you complain about making changes.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
31m ago
If it's a really good answer and I'm in the mood, I will.
BurdensomeCount
Substandard humans are now deprecated in Humanity v4.5.3!
32m ago
le based Elon turned out not to be very based™️ after all,
We clearly have very different definitions of Based. Displaying traits of Elite Human capital is based in my book, and Elon not wavering despite the wailing and gnashing of millions of Low Human Capital to me demonstrates a level of resolve few have.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
32m ago
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.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
36m ago
Found in Milton's "Of Education", published 1644 (mid-17th century).
TitaniumButterfly
36m ago
Well, also, certain people come completely unglued if they see an unattended dog. Instantly, they are the hero in a TV drama about a poor abused animal and a diligent, responsible, upstanding citizen who Does Something. There's a sort of sick, compulsive fascination for these people. A sort of thrill at finding themselves in this (generally totally invented) awful dilemma. They crave it. They crave the moral clarity; the excuse to step outside normal boundaries of polite conduct and engage in social or even physical violence (e.g. by breaking a car window).
They enter the situation without context; they address it without wisdom; and when everything has been made much worse they excuse themselves from the consequences by turning responsibility over to the governmental systems which have by this point become involved.
This is probably a metaphor for something.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
41m ago
And the floors are concrete. And they don’t have rules against dogs!
TitaniumButterfly
46m ago
I was at a public park not long ago when one of my children, who had only just begun to toddle, wandered about fifteen feet away from me. Not a big problem, I thought, and of course I was keeping an eye on him. On the far side of the park, at least a minute's walk away, a young woman showed up with a big dog and let it off the leash. It slammed across the park faster than I could believe, a missile headed right at my child. I know dogs, I've raised dogs, I've hunted with dogs, and I've worked with professional dog trainers. This dog was trying to kill my baby, and it was so fast I almost couldn't react in time. Only my experience saved my child. My wife just watched with a glazed expression as all this played out. She does not know dogs. Anyway I was able to get close enough in time and yell and managed to get the dog to swerve at the last minute and back off while I scooped up my kid. Then I prepared to fight it to the death as it gave every indication of being about to try to jump up and snatch my kid out of my arms, which I've seen pit bulls do in videos, so I was ready. I kept yelling and there was a bit of a standoff until finally the owner showed up and leashed the dog. She seemed flustered and mostly wanted to avoid acknowledging what had just happened, and quickly left.
It was a terrifying experience. Dogs are not casual objects of entertainment or companionship. Modern people are so divorced from the realities of animal husbandry that I'm amazed we don't have more horrific catastrophes as a result.
I still take my kids to that park, but now I'm a helicopter parent in a way I never expected to be. At least for the smallest ones.
Urine is harder, but anyone who isn't cleaning up their dog's poop is by no means a good owner. They are a terrible owner who shouldn't be allowed to have a dog.
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