Hey, get your Gentoo propaganda out of here.

I’m not American but, from what I’ve seen, Republicans seem to flip sides more than a quarter in a hobos pocket during an earthquake.

Having Republicans turn on eachother is about as shocking as the fact that it will be cold in winter.

That is also an option.

Honestly there’s a lot of ways to make money in the market if you know what’s going to happen in the coming days that will affect it.

This is my thought exactly.

I watched Steven Colbert yesterday saying that this large of a fuck up is proof there is no deep state. While I get his point, I disagree. If there is someone in the shadows pulling strings this was the intended outcome.

It’s pretty well known that in trading markets, there’s almost always something that goes up when everything else drops like a rock. Even as such, moving money to be liquid right before a steep drop off, then buying up all the formerly high-value stocks at bargain basement pricing, and just waiting for the rebound, is a legit strategy. Having foreknowledge of such an action is considered insider trading however. Realistically, insider trading is difficult to prove unless the perpetrator is an idiot.

Whether you call it the deep state or the 1% or oligarchs, or simply “rich assholes”, if you believe there is a group orchestrating things, then you beat believe this was the intended outcome.

Oh no!

… Anyway.

Hitler comes to mind.

IDK if it killed democracy because it can fail. Almost all systems of government have failed.

The only one that hadn’t (yet) is democracy.

Not sure why anyone would be surprised that democracy has a best before date…

That’s just it. Police beat and harass people and the public barely takes note. So fighting back and getting beaten isn’t really going to move the needle here in terms of public support. Those that would be outraged by someone getting disappeared in broad daylight by thugs in all black with masks on, that are claiming to be law enforcement, will also be outraged by anything more significant. From a public support standpoint, you don’t gain a lot of attention by fighting back and getting beaten.

Honestly, someone should go to the local PD and report that person as missing/abducted.

To be clear: anyone with the skillset, knowledge and experience to effectively stand their ground against these kinds of people, absolutely should.

Unless they clearly identify themselves and show proof (badges and documents) that prove their claims of being law enforcement, you should 100% fight back against being kidnapped by these thugs. They are little more than a gang with government funding if they’re not doing things “by the book” so to speak.

As far as I can see, most of this kind of thing that’s been happening lately is more based on feelings and assumptions by a small group who is going around mostly unchecked, doing a lot of damage. If the police/LEO crowd had a PR problem with BLM (and all related incidents including protests) then this is going to be a complete shit storm when it finally hits the fan, which might be four years from now…

On an individual level, I completely understand why someone untrained and unprepared would want to avoid any harm coming to them by complying, regardless of who the perpetrator is. Whether police, FBI, homeland security, secret service or some other form of LEO, or simply an organized gang of thugs… Self preservation is going to be the main goal. Far be it for me to fault someone for doing what they feel is going to give them the best outcome in that scenario.

As much as I agree, resisting is likely going to escalate the situation beyond what most people are willing to deal with.

Face it, very few people have the knowledge and skill required to even put up a fight against anyone that is prepared for that encounter.

I get why the victim here didn’t really fight back. I get why she let them take her away. I understand the fear she was probably feeling in that moment, and it can be paralysing for someone who isn’t prepared to fight for their life and doesn’t have the knowledge, skill, or experience required to handle the situation.

To be clear: I’m not saying this victim is dumb, inexperienced, or lacks general life experience, I would argue quite the opposite, in fact. The problem is that they don’t have the knowledge, skill, and experience with confrontations. I’m certain, beyond any doubt, that this person was very intelligent, skilled and experienced; just not with physical confrontation.

This is shameful behavior. Why did they feel the need to ambush a bookworm? Not to insult them so all but they are clearly more of an intellectual person than a combative person.

Disclaimer: I’m not American, I’m just empathetic to those that get disappeared in the middle of the day by people wearing all black without so much as a badge being flashed.

Bitch please.

Just try to install a program that isn’t in the repo without dropping to the CLI.

I dare you, I double dare you.

I’m pretty sure they’re saying that customization, while present in Linux, is not accessible to most because of a lack of GUI options to configure a nontrivial number of the customization settings.

This is correct. I work with the “average user” of technology daily as IT support, and honestly, they don’t give any shits at all about why it’s messed up, or what needs to be done to correct the problem. Box broken, make fix.

The argument that I think the poster is trying to make is that, if a user needs to do any self troubleshooting, which is basically inevitable with technology at the moment, having to use a CLI to get things done is undesirable for the average person. They barely want to bother opening control panel in Windows (or the new “settings” app… Ugh.) nevermind understand any of it.

Box broken. Make fix.

IMO, this is a demonstration of the problem. You’re blaming the poster/their equipment. Rather than any real solution to the problem the defacto answer is “well, it works for me so what’s wrong with you?”

I’ve never heard this kind of toxicity from other communities (like the apple/Windows crowds). Often you’ll get useful answers indicating what to check or pointing to another resource. There’s always the chance that the hardware is busted, but let’s face it, in the modern era, that’s far less likely to happen now than it was even 10 years ago.

Immediately blaming the user for their issue isn’t going to solve the problem, nor does it endear any average user to the Linux community or the Linux OS. This attitude is not going to help adoption even if the posters concerns are invalidated by newer/better drivers/software, and all they need to do is update, and/or try again.

This kind of statement actively harms Linux adoption.

Exactly this. And pretty much everyone here is a techie in some way, shape, or form.

Why does anyone think that a non-tech would take the time to troubleshoot their system the way we do? A user would hit their first issue and in the process of trying to solve it, just go and buy a MacBook.

This isn’t going to endear people to Linux.

We will not win the majority of the market with Linux in it’s current form. We need better integration and package management. Self repairing subsystems. We need Linux to basically fix itself when these ridiculous issues come up that non techs simply can’t be arsed to try to fix.

There’s a long way to go before pushing Linux on anyone outside of tech circles. Unless you want to be the 24/7 free tech support, it’s easier just to throw a cheap Windows system or Mac at them and let them deal with it instead.

I hate the term “it just works” because it’s almost never true, but I can say that for non techs, Windows and Mac “just work” more often than Linux does.

I love Linux. I love everything about it. From the origin story, the ability to make your system lean and clean, running at optimal performance, and being able to adjust every knob and setting to my heart’s content. I love it. But I’m a realist. All the things I love about Linux, are largely reasons that non techs would hate Linux.

I can’t tell you how pissed I was when they did they. They invalidated so many links to solutions.

Granted, there was a lot of useless slop on there too, mostly from eol versions of Windows like 2000, millennium edition…

They threw all of it away, both good and bad, without warning. Without any opportunity for anyone to archive it. WTF Microsoft.

To their credit, their new documentation seems to be much better, they actually have useful help articles on not only how to do something, but also explaining the mechanisms, requirements and limitations of things. Not everything is in their new docs but I have to give credit where it’s due, the technical document writers are doing good work.

With all that being said, it doesn’t mean that Windows, or Microsoft are on a good trajectory.

Their new operating systems and updates are some of the worst updates and changes I’ve seen to their systems. Adding ads and basically spying on paying customers…

There are some controversial changes I’m in favor of, like the TPM requirement. A lot don’t realize it but Apple integrated a TPM in basically everything they make over the years. The migration was slow but it happened almost silently, without anyone really noticing. All major smartphones have some version of a TPM, so the last bastion of not having/needing one is the PC market.

The PC market has known they should include this stuff for years before Windows 11 was released. If you go and look at mid to high end motherboards, even for custom/retail units, there are at least TPM headers on most of them. OEMs knew this was coming and instead of just integrating it into their product, like everyone else did, they made it an optional feature. Since nobody knew what the fuck a TPM is, nobody bought into that option. Now millions of computers are destined for ewaste because manufacturers couldn’t be bothered to add a small IC to the system without being obligated to do so by someone like Microsoft. An entire industry of technology has this one thing that nobody even fucking knows exists, and they’re the hold out.

… And everyone is mad at Microsoft about it.

I’m not. TPM chips are a good addition to systems. It shouldn’t even be a debate. I blame OEMs for not bothering to add them when they could have/should have, and making it mandatory on all prebuilts, all retail motherboards, all boutique systems, all custom builds… Everything. The cost difference would have been into the tens of dollars at most. It would have barely made any difference at all.

Anyways. I’ll stop now.

This is the problem I see with most people adopting Linux.

It’s great when it works but when things go awry you end up sinking hours of time into an issue. Generally on Windows or Mac, the most you’ll have to do is remove it and re-add it.

If more is needed, the userbase is so large that there’s a high probability that someone has had your exact issue and posted a solution about it somewhere online, you just need to go and find it.

Linux is very hit and miss on a lot of these points. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it sucks.

Windows tends to suck all the time, but the vast majority of the time it only sucks a little bit, because it’s Windows… It works, but it’s not great.

I’m all for Linux, but as someone who is more interested in doing useful work on my computer, not troubleshooting my system to get it to operate at all, I’ve stuck to Windows for a while now. I support Linux and prefer it to alternatives when running any server-based service, but for my desktop? I can’t justify the time investment in getting it to the same operational level as my current Windows install.

This is the same reason I bought a Dell, knowing full well that I could get more performance and a better value by building my own system. I absolutely can build a system for myself, I choose not to because it’s simply more work that I don’t care to spend time on. To be fair, my system is a precision 2RU HEDT, but that’s another discussion entirely.

Please don’t take me wrong: Linux is great and should see more adoption. My argument is that there’s a nontrivial number of people who want a system that simply operates, not one that turns into a science project because of a borked update. Windows updates have caused problems, but usually not everything-is-broken type problems… More that printing doesn’t work or something like that…

Oh, I’m not saying anything about the quality of their product. I’m only discussing the popularity of their product. Enshittification comes for every company, and when subway started operating at a much larger scale than they used to, in part because of Jerrod, suddenly, saving 5 cents on something (and making it shittier) would actually result in millions of dollars extra on the earnings sheet.

Before, the 5 cents wasn’t worth much because quantities were too low to matter, and the better quality item could be a reason that people kept coming back. But they started to expand and grow before Jerrod was brought on, he was just extra jetfuel for the whole thing.

Reminds me of subway. They somehow survived that whole PR nightmare, but still… They’re not nearly what they used to be.

As much as “I was just following orders” is not enough to excuse someone of their responsibility in atrocities, “I was just issuing orders” will not excuse anyone either.

Anyone who thinks that just because someone didn’t pull the trigger, that means they’re not guilty, you can get your ass back in line to lick elons boots.

This is in the same vein as “Hitler did some good things” kind of cognitive dissonance. While the statement may not be wholly false, the fact that anyone could overlook everything he did that was bad, to find some small piece of something he did that can be construed as “good” is simply trying to put an objectively evil person into a better light, when they do not deserve it.

There are plenty of misunderstood people in history that did very good things, and were killed/maimed/murdered/imprisoned/tarred/feathered/whatever, because they did something that the wrong people saw as bad.

Nobody should ever try to find a shining light of good deep down in the black abyss of Hitler’s life.

So you’re saying to throw salt at the vehicles. Got it.