Looks interesting but having to use it from their website feels… not great. I’d rather have something that I can still use on a train or when my router dies. Or when they decide to shut it down.

They claim that everything runs locally and doesn’t phone home. Then why do they charge 500 to 2000 bucks per month for a version that you can host on your own machine?

There seems to be an unofficial offline version but that hasn’t been maintained for years.

Have you seen how some Linux users treat people who don’t use exactly what they think is the hottest shit? Even towards people who use as much FOSS as they can but still need some proprietary stuff for certain use cases because FOSS alternatives are not quite there yet. It’s annoying as hell and comes up in every single discussion that vaguely fits the topic. I would say the comparison to Mormons is not that far off.

I’m all for moving as many people away from closed systems as possible. But tribalism and victim blaming achieves the exact opposite. Why would anyone move to something where the community makes them feel unwelcome from the start?

If we want people to use Linux, we have to be patient and help them overcome their pain points, not go “haha you dumb”.

Instead of being condescending, you might help people solve the problems that keep them from switching. Or just stay quiet. Whatever you prefer. This elitist attitude is one of the reasons why some people won’t even try Linux because they fear they will be ridiculed as soon as they need to ask for help.

Use whatever makes you happy and matches your needs. Ignore the haters.

I use arch btw. And Ubuntu. And Windows. And an iPhone. Does it matter?

I wouldn’t call it Stockholm syndrome. The problem is that even a single application that’s critical to your workflow can keep you from switching, even if everything else is much better.

I’ve switched to Linux on my laptop about 6 months ago and the overall experience is pretty good. A few annoyances that I can’t seem to fix but overall pleasant. But there are still some things that keep me from doing the same on my main workstation:

• I just can’t get used to RawTherapee or darktable for developing photos. Everything takes me three times as long to get the results I want and at hundreds of photos per shoot, that adds up really quickly. I’m sure I could learn those tools and get as comfortable with them as I am with Adobe CameraRaw but that would cost me weeks or even months of productivity and I just can’t afford that right now.
• Similar problem with general graphics stuff. I’m sure that Gimp and Inkscape are amazing tools if you’re used to them but coming from tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, they’re so different that the switch feels like hitting a brick wall at running speed. Krita is nice but it seems to focus heavily on painting which is my least common graphics use case. I really hope that Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer will get ported to Linux at some point even if that means the open source purists will probably kill me.
• A lot of my existing software projects are written in C#. Most of them are cross-platform and run on Linux servers anyway, so that’s not the problem. But neither VSCode nor Rider are quite as comfortable as VS2022. No, I won’t just port everything to Rust.
• Steam on Linux has made amazing steps but getting some games to work is still pretty fiddly and reminds me of gaming on DOS in the 90s when you had to dig through half a dozen config files before you could play your new game.

All those problems can be solved with enough patience but to be honest, I’m in my late 30s and free time is getting rare so I’d rather spend it on something that brings me joy or on learning something entirely new instead of relearning an existing skill.

And no, this not a criticism against Linux or its community. I’m just trying to give an insight into how small problems can make the switch incredibly hard, even for someone who has a degree in computer science, has worked with Linux machines for about 20 years now and would love nothing more than to leave Windows behind.

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As someone from Europe I can guarantee you that 5-10cm (2-4") at the bottom and 30cm (12") at the top with almost no gap between the door and wall are by far enough to not suffocate. Maybe put a vent in the ceiling for good measure.

It always baffles me that this is considered a luxury in the USA while in Germany (and I assume most of Europe) this is the absolute standard. Stalls where the door doesn’t lock properly or where the indicator on the outside is faded so that you can’t reliably determine if it’s occupied are already considered signs of bad maintenance. Gaps that you can look through without pressing your face right against them would be a “nope, I’ll never visit this place again” level scandal.

Yeah, I know. I wanted to err on the side of caution. I could have said “The US has 0” but didn’t want someone to show up with “well actually in my state…”

This thread seems to be about right-wing Americans getting their “non-woke” coffee from Bolivia so that’s what I used for my comparison.

But sure, let’s compare it to Europe:

• Bolivia has universal healthcare, similar to most European countries. No idea about the quality of course.
• Annual leave gets a bit complicated to compare. For the first five years, it’s a minimum of 10 days, that’s not much indeed. The lowest in Europe (though non-EU) seems to be Turkey with 14 days for the first five years. For years 5-10, it’s a minimum of 20 days, about the same as much of Europe. After 10 years, it goes up to a minimum of 30 days which is actually more than most European countries have as mandatory leave (though for example in Germany, many companies offer 30 days instead of the required 20 as a common perk).
• Maternity leave is similar to the lower end of Europe, For comparison, Germany has 14 weeks at 100% pay.

Overall: not perfect but also not bad for a relatively small country in South America with a GDP that’s way lower than most of Europe.

Just a few examples: Bolivia has universal healthcare for all citizens. The US does not. Bolivia has a minimum 10-30 days of annual leave mandated by law (depending on how long you’ve worked), the US has 0. Bolivia has 13 weeks of maternity leave at 95% pay, the US has… well it’s complicated.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a whole generation for whom loss is the “hide some lines in your posts” meme and who have never even seen the original comic let alone know who Tim Buckley is.

At this point it feels like the loss meme is completely divorced from its original meaning and more a „where can I fit it in“ like running Doom on a pregnancy test or Bad Apple on Christmas lights.

It’s SuperbOwl, not SuperOwl, without the “b”, the pun is ruined.

Oh, TIL that the small part by the Caspian Sea is far enough west to be considered Europe. Thanks for the correction.

Not quite correct. Kazakhstan is in central Asia, not Europe, even by a loose definition. Instead, Belgium (Brussels vs. Antwerp) and - by some definitions of Europe - Turkey (Ankara vs. Istanbul) should be on your list.

Wikipedia has a complete list.

Edit: Germany used to be a case that did this intentionally until 1990. While it was split into West and East Germany, West Germany chose Bonn as its capital as Berlin was surrounded by East Germany. They could have chosen a large city like Hamburg, Munich, Cologne or Frankfurt but went with the much smaller Bonn to symbolize that it was only a temporary solution.

All of the Discworld books of course. Or at least your favorites.

This is your chance to make one. After all, today you learned that.

It’s mostly a “well, technically” kind of thing. First prototypes were around since the 1840s but the first commercial telefax service was introduced in February 1865, a little under two months before Lincoln was killed. Samurai were around until the late 1860s or early 1870s. I can’t quite find when the first telefax machine was operated in Japan but 1928 shows up on some lists.

So yeah, Lincoln could have sent a fax to a samurai if they both had traveled to France just a few weeks before Lincoln’s death.