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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)ST
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  • I block meme communities and AI art. I'll unblock AI art once the machines figure out how fingers work. I don't block porn except when it's outside of my interests (I'm not into men or furries, for example).

    You might consider unblocking the meta communities - it can sometimes be illuminating to see how other places are run, and give you ideas to improve your own instance.

  • Cryptonomicon. Neal Stephenson has written interesting, compelling books - Snow Crash is fun and breezy; Anathem is among my favorite novels - but Cryptonomicon just doesn't hold my attention. Lots of smart people love it, so I always have this nagging feeling that I'm the one in the wrong here.

  • The article that changed your mind really shouldn't have. It's mostly full of hyperbole. Like this:

    "PGP does a mediocre job of signing things, a relatively poor job of encrypting them with passwords, and a pretty bad job of encrypting them with public keys. PGP is not an especially good way to securely transfer a file. It’s a clunky way to sign packages. It’s not great at protecting backups. It’s a downright dangerous way to converse in secure messages."

    Literally none of this is true - the author is presenting their particular opinions as general fact. I use AES through PGP, knowing that even future quantum computers can't break it.

    I wish they'd cut out all the 90's references and pointless exaggerations, and stuck to facts. Then again, the facts-only version of this article probably wouldn't make a strong case against PGP.

    (Also, one of the links in the article, with the dodgy-and-harmful link text "Full disk encryption isn’t great", includes advice to use PGP in it. Maybe the author should have read the references they were citing.)

  • Mercurial is worth trying, and you can use it as a client to Git too! Just be aware that Mercurial's branching is not the same - but if you use Mercurial's "bookmarks", they're actually compatible with Git branches.

  • I can tell you from experience that dual booting is nothing to worry about!

    1. Make sure you install Windows first - if you're already running Windows, you're good here.
    2. When installing Linux, make a Live USB to try it on your machine before installation. Keep the USB. (There's a Windows program called Rufus that's excellent for flashing ISOs to USB.) Also make sure your Linux distro of choice is friendly with dual booting - in my experience, Linux Mint is great for it, and QubesOS definitely isn't.
    3. The main risk is that a future BIOS update will cause your system to forget its boot configuration. The USB you made on step 2 will save you - look for a program called BootRepair. It'll fix your system. You can also flash BootRepair by itself onto a USB if you want, but Live USBs usually come with it anyway for this exact case.

    That said, if this is a work machine, they might not appreciate you doing all this to their computer. Running a small distro on a VM might meet your needs. (My Mint bias compels me to recommend Linux Mint XFCE for this purpose.)

  • It seems like you aren't enjoying your time with Windows and Excel. Are you able to try alternatives like LibreOffice or Linux? Or even Apple? (I like Apple even less, but you might enjoy it!)

    I love F# and .Net a lot, but we can admit that Microsoft won't always do everything right - and on those occasions, it's worth trying alternative products.

  • It's a great example of a science fiction action movie, with great character work, creative action, and a truly original doomsday device that doubles as a compelling philosophical what-if. It's got a lot to say about the morality of revenge and about the futile attempt to evade consequences.

    And of course it's exciting and suspenseful, too!

    There are two things I actually don't like about WoK:

    1. It's inspired too many "villain" stories - Shinzon, Vedic, the Borg Queen, and Nero are trying and failing to be like Khan, and it drags down the stories around them. (I don't actually think Khan in ID is a villain at all - he's a reflection of Kirk - but that's a separate discussion.)
    2. Uhura was given nothing to do.

    But it's still a great movie that showed what Star Trek can achieve when it tries.

  • I'm not into feet specifically, but when I ask for "Veronica Mars in a string bikini" I don't want to get "Veronica Mars with unattached toes." It's distracting AF.

    Doesn't happen with real models, or even human-made hentai.

  • I've been using Linux since 2015, and I run OS updates ASAP. Usually about once every 1 or 2 weeks, if we are only counting system updates. So that's about 298 updates total, right?

    Given your math (298 × 0.3) , you predict that I would have encountered driver issues after an update 89 times.

    I have encountered driver issues 0 times.

    (This is across 4 computers and 5 distros.)

  • Wait, you thought I was arguing against the idea of OS updates in general? Read better.

    I was arguing against the idea that the user has to be forced out of the system while they run updates. This is because I use an OS where the updates run in a window and I can keep working.

    (To everyone else: check out this guy's comment history. He basically came here to do PR for Windows.)

  • Windows has so much pushy behavior - trying to trick you into using Edge, turning on OneDrive and syncing files in the background (eating bandwidth in the process), locking you out of the machine while OS updates run.

    When I switched to Linux Mint in 2015, the most surprising result was how much smoother and frictionless everything became.

    I genuinely believe that the "average" user outlined above would be served well by Mint. Why would I not tell people to use it?