I was raised in the boondocks. You couldn’t get reception there back in the 90’s, and there weren’t any kids or neighbors that I could visit without having to be driven. My parents didn’t have any community at all, so I in turn never learned how to socialize properly. To say the least, I never became comfortable with phones, even after moving into civilization. It just wasn’t part of me.

Isolation from people is a huge disadvantage in life, you don’t get to make friends, network, or learn what it means to be part of society. Here’s hoping that cellphones and whatnot become rights, as you have said.

However, some states might provide SSI recipients a LifeConnect program. You get a free smartphone and low-end plan.

I am still on a flip phone. It is usually silent, and I don’t spend much time with it at all. While I am missing out on discounts and such, I simply hate the idea of constantly using a phone. Email is my telecommunication of choice, but receptionists don’t understand the idea, unfortunately.

My household bought a Rinnai water heater, and the bastard needed a phone to set the temperature. Thing is, it couldn’t communicate with the two or three phones that were used on it. Fortunately, there was an old-school modification for a physical keypad, but that had to be bought separately.

Phones are just not my thing.

The idea here with the VM is two-fold: First, to keep a potential Windows Big Brother update from spying on my documents and whatnot, while also preventing it from tampering with the security of my PC. Secondly, to maximize compatibility, since I lost trust in Linux to not have technical issues with my gaming. That means mods, Japanese games, emulators, and so forth. Windows is simply more reliable and documented, unlike Linux. If something goes wrong with a game playing on Windows, there is decent odds of me troubleshooting. My hardware should be able to handle a VM, it being a 5950x with a RTX 4090+3060, and 128gb of RAM.

Anyhow, I don’t really remember the specifics regarding how my efforts with Lutris, Heroic Game Launcher, and so forth went: I don’t like remembering unpleasant things. All that I recall is assorted errors or lack of features that rattled my willingness to trust Linux for gaming. I will try again some years for now, if I hear Linux has become more suitable to the task.

I am already on a Internet of Things edition, which is the debloated version of Windows. However, that still leaves the possibility of Microsoft going fascist and sending out a Big Brother update.

Regarding Linux, it was indeed Mint that I tried to use - it seemed similar to Windows, at least visually. Getting standard software was easy enough, and things seemed promising until I started to migrate my gaming. I mod my games a fair bit of the time, or play niche stuff that hardly has support on Windows. It became very apparent that Linux can’t handle that, not yet. In a couple of years I will revisit Linux.

I tried to switch to Linux several days ago, but there were clear issues regarding games that weren’t tied to Steam. Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, Bottles, and so forth all had shortcomings regarding compatibility, handling of DLC, or lack of user-friendliness. Then I tried to use a VM, which was a frustrating rabbit hole. Virt-Manager supports GPU passthru, but you have to jump through hoops to identify PCI addresses and to configure correctly. Boxes initially seemed promising, but had no apparent way of storing the VM on my gaming drive. (Linux terminal commands are beyond my understanding.) Considering how big games are getting, and the size of my collection, that is a bad combo. Virtualbox doesn’t have GPU passthru, so the performance sucked.

As a gamer, I currently find Linux to be insufficient. I was wanting to switch due to security concerns regarding Microsoft, especially in light of the Trump Regime’s willingness to ignore law and norms. My concern is that they could use Windows as a spy, or to seal up my computer to punish those who go against Dogey America. As it is, I will have to use some scripts from Github to break Windows Update if I hear of Richmond being infiltrated by the Xitler Youth.

Here’s hoping that Gabe decides to invest much more heavily in Linux to make it casual friendly - I want my mods, cheats, Japanese locale games, emulators, and so forth to all work seamlessly and without compromise. I would seriously pay $400 smackers to have an OS that is capable, flexible, compatible, friendly, and most importantly, MINE.

The days of just buying Windows 7 Ultimate and not thinking about Microsoft was glorious.

I would like them to be imprisoned on a island. It would be a Battle Royal that I can get behind.

Looking up the Vilvaladirt, I am guessing it is a group of Let’s Players who do a Mystery Science Theater 3,000 take on their gameplay? If so, that would be neat.

It is good to hear what a full DeepSeek can do. I am really looking forward to having a better, localized version in 2030. Thank you for relating your experience, it is helpful. :)

Can the full-size DeepSeek handle dice and numbers? I have been using the distilled 70b of DeepSeek, and it definitely doesn’t understand how dice work, nor the ranges I set out in my ruleset. For example, a 1d100 being used to determine character class, with the classes falling into certain parts of the distribution. I did it this way, since some classes are intended to be rarer than others.

Can’t say I feel bad about this, nor for piracy. IMO, copyright shouldn’t be a thing, or least limited to a small chunk of a human lifespan.

For the martial masters among us, this is one way to dispose of a Nazi.

Up til now, I only had gaming desktops for the last 30+ years. Still, I might be able to borrow a laptop from another resident of the building. Hopefully with a power cable and all of that.

…Wait, up until now I was using GPedit to try and force Windows Enterprise to update with my permission and timeline, but it always seemed to be a bit ignored. But I can use ‘services.msc’ to disable Windows Update from starting up. I can probably use the WSUS tool if I want specific updates from that point on…

In theory, anyways. I will have to try it out. I don’t want to migrate if I can avoid it.

I want Captain America punching Elon, and Wonder Woman doing the same to Trump. Honestly, we have a rogue’s gallery of villains in Project 2025.

The way things are going, this would probably become a legit political platform…

PRESIDENT ARMSTRONG: You still don’t get it, ITS ABOUT THOSE WHO WILL NOT, NOT THOSE WHO CANNOT, IN MY NEW AMERICA THE POOR WILL BE ENSURED OF THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, WAR WILL BE FOUGHT BY EVERY MAN, NOT BY INTEREST GROUPS, AGAINST EVERY MAN

Aside from political leanings of services like Protonmail and Kagi, I look at one key thing: where they are headquartered. Kagi is in California, while Protonmail is in Switzerland. IMO, this means that if a civil war breaks out, they are less likely to poison or remove their service.

It is all about whether the workers and leadership are within reach of the law, be it official or the jungle.

You can also use Kagi’s video search AI to vet the political alignment of a video before watching. I don’t want to waste my time on facist-leaning content, be it political or economic.

I am hoping that Google bites the dust from this. Having stuff like Peertube becoming common, would go a long way towards mitigating media moguls from controlling narratives. As we have seen, the media organs of the right are staying silent or downlplaying what has been happening.

Also, it would be nice if the folk didn’t have to deal with baseless copyright takedowns. A lot of culture has been lost to feckless corpotacracy.

Most of the key people behind the Civil War and 1st Business Plot also were excused from justice, for the sake of soothing political tension. IMO, executing them would have been better for curtailing the corrosion of our society.

I used Thunderbird to simultaneously access and download my gmail and protonmail, gradually migrating my ecosystem to the latter. The way I figure, Protonmail would be good, on account of being based in Switzerland. That means assorted EU protections - and now with Vichy America likely to become a thing, having the servers in a safe spot seems really helpful.

The odds of us having military action in our neighborhoods has shot up by a disturbing degree.

Something adjacent to degoogling: I am concerned that Microsoft would collaborate with the Trump Regime. I never used Linux before, but I am now downloading Ubuntu. It feels like that I should do a dual-boot setup and get ready to abandon Windows if I hear about MS HQ in Washington having a DOGE presence.

Here’s hoping that Europe and the Blue States are watching Microsoft for anything weird.