Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Christ, what an asshole.

Thanks for the tip! In the short term, I’m content to just not connect it, but I definitely want to look into blocking it just to prevent a repeat with guests. It’s also super handy to know that I can connect it to the local network without connecting it to the broader internet, in case I decide to do some (self-hosted) home automation.

I’m suffering for that right now. Sony Bravia.

Firstly, I didn’t want to buy a smart TV, but that’s pretty much all that’s sold anymore. I also didn’t intend to connect it to the internet, but a well-meaning guest wanted to watch TV at night, and thought he was troubleshooting, not realizing he was in the TV menu and not the streaming box.

The TV updated, and IMMEDIATELY got worse. Formerly, if I turned it on, it would go straight to the streaming box. Great! As shitty updates do, it changed the settings, and would instead open to the TV’s menu, so it could advertise streaming services. It also forgot that the TV input is HDMI 1. It became strictly worse, in the rare edge case of every fucking time you turn it on.

I don’t trust it to not automatically connect, or to forget my login credentials, so I go to do a factory reset. It’s literally an option in a menu. The TV gets stuck in a boot loop. Talking to support, they think it broke the mainboard. A factory reset bricked the TV.

It’s under warranty, but this is fucking crazy. NEVER connect your TV directly to the internet.

Sorry, this is the first I’ve heard of Palantir Gotham.

Jesus Christ, I hate media-illiterate nerds. Batman, famously, DOESN’T TRUST COPS!

He died as he lived: blaming systemic issues and right-wing violence on minorities.

yay anarchism

For what it’s worth, I was in a similar boat. I wanted to try WMs/compositors, but the configuration seemed daunting. Then I gave Dank Material Shell a try and it just configured the vast majority of the system very nicely. I still had to change some window rules in the config file, but even that has a GUI now. I also heard great things about Noctalia, and I’m sure there are others as well.

I still think KDE is a top-tier option, to be clear. :P And adding tiling to KDE is also a great way to get the best of both worlds, just from the other direction.

Seeing Copilot in Notepad of all places is what finally made me quit Windows for good.

I’m on EndeavourOS, which like CachyOS, is a derivative based on Arch. They smooth over a couple of the things that make Arch difficult: the installation, and initial packages.

Part of what makes Arch difficult is that it updates its repositories very quickly. That’s good in many ways, because you get new features and new drivers more quickly, but sometimes things are buggy or break. From what I’ve heard, it’s honesty fairly rare nowadays, but it’s still a best practice to check archlinux.org before proceeding with a major update.

Anyway, I’m in a very similar boat. I’ve bounced off of Linux for various reasons in the past, but between Linux getting better and Windows getting worse, Linux is the “just works” option for me. It’s not perfect, but any snags I’ve had have been smaller, less frequent, and more often fixable.

Windows had trouble with it too and in more irritating ways.

Honestly, I’m embarrassed how long it took me as a human being to realize that things don’t have to be perfect to be better. I would be way harder on any change than I was with the status quo.

Anyway, yes, especially after having more and more issues with Windows 11 in particular, for me and my use case, Linux is genuinely easier to use day-to-day. Is it perfect? No. Is it better? Yes, no contest.

There’s an artist who did that, and created a series of Trees of 40 Fruit!

I think the trick is that it works better the more closely related the trees are. These use only stone fruits.

I’ve only been using it for a few weeks now, but I’m having a great time with EndeavourOS. I’ve tried Linux every now and then for over 20 years now, but always bounced off for one reason or another. This time, I’ve never felt any desire to go back.

For me, my use case, and my hardware, EOS has been significantly less of a headache than Windows 11 was.

Oh yeah, I remember hitting that snag in an earlier attempt. I managed to do it, but it was definitely a point where Windows worked more easily than Linux. Glad to hear it’s gotten easier!

I just made the switch and probably for good this time, and Steam just working was a HUGE moment for me. I opened up a guide thinking I’d need it, but I just downloaded Steam, didn’t change any settings, and could start playing.

At this point, Linux is more of a “just works” experience than Windows 11 was.

That sucks, I’m sorry. I’ve been frustrated by OneDrive, but thankfully not to nearly the same extent.

Firstly, I did discover that it’s not a setting you can just turn off, because that will suddenly remove all the personal files and folders that were backed up, until you turn it back on. I knew I could work around it, but dragged my feet. Still, it was the first big push that eventually convinced me to use Linux.

Secondly… it’ll also do the inverse. I play Tabletop Simulator with my friends, and it backs up files to a OneDrive-covered folder. It quickly took up too much space, and to avoid all the warning signs designed to irritate me into subscribing for more storage, I tried to delete it. Turns out, that doesn’t work, because OneDrive will assume it was an error and put those files back, and maintaining all those super helpful warnings about storage space.

So, whether you want to keep a file or get rid of it, don’t worry, OneDrive can and will find a way to fuck it up.

And what’s going on with the speech bubbles in the fourth panel?

I’m one of them. I’ve dabbled before, but never stuck with it. Then I had a ton of issues with Windows 11, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing a Copilot button in fucking Notepad.

Now I’m on EndeavourOS, and it genuinely feels like a more user-friendly experience. So congrats, Microsoft. You’re not even the “just works” option anymore.

She’s in the same camp as Giuliani: A shitty person, who would have had a much better reputation had they just shut the fuck up.

She was always an awful candidate, and the DNC made a HUGE fucking mistake supporting her. But, after Trump, libs would probably joke about her the way they joke about Al Gore. “If only they had won, we would all be at brunch!”

Instead, she pops up every year or two to punch left, remind everyone she sucks, and then does fuck all for anyone until next time.

There’s a fan project recutting One Piece like that, and Dragon Ball Z Kai was an official series.

I think anime has switched almost entirely to a seasonal format for related reasons. Filler just doesn’t serve a purpose if you don’t need to regularly fill a time slot on a live channel.