Please use foodgrade coconut oil when inserting this update!

Can you send me some spare carrier pigeons? I’m fresh out.

Wait… so do you tape like spare carrier pigeons to another carrier pigeon and send that pigeon or do you just send carrier pigeons on a one way trip with nothing to carry? I don’t know how this technology works.

On the M4A topic, it’s crazy to me how its supporters have managed to ally themselves with the private healthcare lobby in opposing a competitive public option. If Medicare is more efficient than profit-driven insurance, as we all suspect, then forcing private insurance to compete with it puts us on a direct path to a single-payer system. Pete is a democratic capitalist - it shouldn’t be a surprise that his version of M4A uses the system in place to get us there. If Bernie amended his bill to include a 15-year transition plan I doubt anyone would accuse him of flip-flopping.

The difference between Bernie and Pete is Bernie has proven he won’t flip flop like Obama, Bernie has proven he acts according to a genuinely socialist vision. Pete is just another milquetoast status quo manager who knows what coat of paint looks fresh and cool this season and adopts his policy stances to match that. Bernie is literally the polar opposite of that.

Do you really think I am going to be the guy to say ”No” to bringing back carrier pigeons? Come on, be reasonable, I can’t say no to texting people via literal pidgeons.

Yes what a shame, that kind of technology would be perfect so long as it wasn’t full of condescending cynical people who constantly shutdown any positive momentum for change that required vision.

Maybe we could have a network of quadcopter drones that delivered notes between people?

lol like buttigieg would do ANY of that, do you remember how hard and fast he flipflopped on universal healthcare?

While not perfect, I feel the Democratic side can be fixed.

Where is your evidence for that?

If you don’t actually have any please top distacting us from talking about actual solutions.

Do you understand that with a response like this the only thing you are accomplishing is making someone with the right idea and passion… less passionate about the thing?

I don’t think you’re talking about the Outlook I am talking about because I’m talking about the Outlook Mail and Calendar apps, not the Office ones. And that’s fine and dandy about proprietary software and all but frankly I haven’t really seen any non-proprietary mail apps that look aesthetically pleasing. But that’s besides the point, it’s a matter of personal preference when it comes to visuals after all.

… I am not just talking about little details and preferences here? Windows products are increasingly broken and dysfunctional at every level. Features don’t work, features are randomly changed and broken, nothing is consistent, core features of the computer are made opaque, any given Linux package manager is about 1000000 times more trustable than the ad ridden, sketchy, bloatware filled Windows store where you have to hunt for actually useful and trustable tools. One of my old bosses had his work windows computer update to a new windows OS without really asking him (technically it did, but then it just kept scheduling an OS upgrade until he missed it). It didn’t break his computer, but he had thousands and thousands of hours of cad drafting work on that computer and Windows could have EASILY fucked up in the update process, or the old software we were using could have EASILY not been compatible. Windows basically flipped a coin for whether they were going to utterly grind my bosses business to a halt and cause utter panic or just have the computer update. This is not “user friendly” software design, this is not “easy to use software made by an extremely competent software company”.

I’d also like to add, nowhere did I ever mention using laptops. All my experiences are with desktops that I had a hand in building from scratch. So I’m not sure what you’re even getting at with those assumptions.

…because for 99% of people who are going to be using a computer for light email, research and text editing work they are going to be using a laptop? I don’t really understand what about my argument doesn’t apply to windows prebuilts that have good driver support for linux…?

It’s somewhat concerning that you have such a strong obsession over the topic that you would go and whether intentionally or unintentionally offend people and I hope that you are a much more pleasant person to converse with outside of this topic or even this site.

I think it is completely reasonable to be upset when someone is condescendingly foreclosing the possibility that something can happen when the evidence they are using for it is outdated and they refuse to update it in their heads. The only response at that point when someone refuses to re-evaluate their position and continues to “speak for the group” when they really don’t represent the group anymore is to make it even clearer that they don’t speak for a group, and I am sorry if my method offended here, I believe your heart is in the right place but please stop trying to tell us about how stupid and unwilling people are to learn new things. Please please please just keep your mouth closed, it doesn’t help anyone, period. Even if you were right, there would be nothing to change in our actions as it would just be hopeless to even try?

This isn’t 2015, a good Linux distribution is as polished, easy to use, and easy to explain to a newbie computer user as Windows is. If you aren’t ready to accept that shrugs I mean fine but don’t push your outmoded narrative into conversations that might actually convince someone who doesn’t know about Linux that it isn’t worth checking out as a serious alternative. You are actively doing damage to the future of this software movement by dismissing it offhand like this.

Outlook is atrocious what on earth are you talking about? Just trying to use it at work it is so frustrating and the UI is horrendous for everything. Truly even basic things like trying to read when a meeting actually starts just from looking at the calendar is a headache, and because all of this is proprietary unlike with Linux, tough luck, that is how things are and you can’t do shit to change it. Neither can an experienced computer user trying to help you.

I am sorry you really don’t have an accurate handle on the state of things anymore, I think you are stuck in your ways and stressed out by life and you don’t realize that emotion and lack of mental plasticity is leading to you assume everyone else is as stuck in their ways as you (including your future self when you are able to feel less overworked and stressed).

Windows is atrocious at this point, search doesn’t work and purposefully confuses new computer users about where is being searched and what is being searched. Ads pop up everywhere in the UI and will continue to spread like a terminal cancer in the UI.

Search on windows also just sucks and takes ages with the default settings (an inexperienced computer user will be using).

The file manager on windows in most marquee windows programs like word, excel etc… all open up an entirely different file manager half way through the process of saving a file in perhaps the most insane UI pattern to keep from the mess that was Windows 8 (even though I actually really liked the core idea at first).

Windows is buggy AND windows is constantly playing head games with its user by trying to force them to use the edge browser. It is very very confusing to a new computer user what the hell is even going on.

I mean, Windows illegally changed the entire operating system countless people had without getting consent because it would look good for their numbers.

Seriously you are WAYYY out of your league if you are going to claim a nice Linux distribution on good hardware with good driver support (such as some dells or thinkpads) is categorically wayyy worse than trying to use a windows laptop in 2024….

…please get your head out of the sand :)

I mean do you want to get into the massive security vulnerability at a tactical and strategic level that Microsoft’s co-pilot represents? This is endgame for business security, Windows is in a worse spot than it has been in probably a decade at least and they deserve it. IT people and corporations have to seriously wonder if Windows even cares about following the law, which makes trusting Windows for the software relied upon by their company a complex question indeed……

It used to be that Linux was better ideologically because it gave you agency over your computer, but now things have gotten so much worse that the reason is practical and no longer ideological.

Bringing it back to the whole thing about Linux, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have to help debug a user’s Linux installation when they already need help with installing a browser add on? I work with tech and Linux on a daily basis and I already find it frustrating doing it for myself (fuck Nvidia drivers). No way am I gonna recommend it to someone else.

Are you honestly going to still claim at this late date of 2024 that a decent popular linux distro is actually going to be MORE of a headache than Windows?

…?

Have you tried Windows recently?

Can y’all IT people please stop with the condescending “you don’t know how stupid people are about computers”, it seems like there is always one of you showing up in a comment thread to tell us that we can’t have the future literally all of us want including you all as well… because WE are too stupid and lazy about computers.

I helped a grown ass human who was my age at 40yo how to install a Firefox extension.

Were you as condescending to them in person as you are being in referencing them right now? Why is not knowing how to install a Firefox extension some indicator of foreclosure on the possibility of that person becoming computer literate along whatever metrics you define? There are plenty of smart people out there who can learn how to use a computer for very complex tasks who have just simply never learned about extensions for Firefox. This is a very feasible and normal reality.

Do you know how to change the oil on your car yourself? Do simple plumbing jobs? Could you run a classroom of middle schoolers and keep them all focused while keeping your eye on the shy sad kid in the back who tends to disappear if you don’t engage them? What about basic healthcare changes or cooking? What about outdoor work or basic small engine maintenance? Do you even know shit about the most basic species of trees in your backyard? Do you know the species of songbirds you often hear outside your window? Do you even pay attention to that? Do you know how to drive a dirt bike extremely fast on a rough dirt road? Do you know how to adjust for the violent explosive power of turbo lag in a car with a turbocharger so that torque oversteer doesn’t launch you off the road? Do you know how to sew and repair basic garments? To weave? Can you even fish? Like could you literally even just catch a fish to save your life right now if I handed you a fishing rod unassembled with no instructions?

My point is, don’t go looking for confirmation of how stupid or lazy people are or how limited their capacity is to evolve and grow by casting the shapes of their ignorance onto the floor and trying to read some magic language from that.

Maybe they don’t know because they are hopelesssly stupid, but maybe not? If they are intelligent and they don’t know computers then those are the perfect people to teach linux. Then it is their first language instead of windows, many linux distro are perfectly fine for this at this point.

See here is the bottom line, legions of IT people show up online always arguing they think they know that the average person is too dumb, lazy and uninterested in computers for Linux adoption to seriously take off in the personal computer market and challenge Microsoft, but y’all don’t know shit about humans. You are experts in computers who think that makes you experts in human potential.

Go take some theater classes (or get an degree in education) and get educated before you start drawing conclusions about people when you really haven’t spent time closely studying how people engage with their potential and what situations facilitate that in basic human interaction and framing of conversations (both literal and abstract).

I’m sorry if I snapped at you but I think it is existentially important to recognize here that we don’t know what people are capable of, you can’t know the essential capacity of people to change, don’t try to predict it. Focus on creating the material opportunity for change and the rest may follow depending on what people desire, no matter to us, we desire to create that positive opportunity for change because it is the right thing to do, not because we like the future growth charts of the things we believe are important and vital.

If you need more focus to the game play Sky Island, also / and ? are your best friends

Windows Phone was never given a chance to pan out. There wasn’t space for Windows Phone to force its way on the scene when it finally began to fire on all cylinders as a smartphone OS but they were building a critical mass of loyal users that would have set up Microsoft longterm to successfully exploit the opportunity to when it came.

It is wild to me that upper management at Microsoft was too dumb to understand that and just killed their perfectly good apparatus for gaining a foothold on the mobile market. Simply put a tech company that large should always be thinking seriously about maintaining a practical entrance to an industry as important to their bottom line as this.

They are fools and they ultimately threw mud in the face of the small amount of windows phone fans (of which there definitely were loyal fans especially for the great Nokia cameras and extremely focused UI) who could have delivered that initial burst of energy and excitement/growth when the opportunity eventually did come. Thus they have actually sealed and barricaded the door to Microsoft ever EVER being in the mobile space since they betrayed ALL of the early adopter nerds who would have stuck around for the rough beginning.

Hell yeah, it is so much easier than it used to be right?

How was your experience?

Any tips for someone who might be about to do the same?

Did you create a ritual pyre of Microsoft jewel cases and old manuals and stuff and burn it while dancing around it chanting burnnn babyyy burnnn?

If MS is overinvesting to ride the AI hype as a middle man, while letting their core business capabilities (Windows and Office) decline, they will be in trouble in the long term.

They aren’t just overinesting in AI, they are foreclosing the future of programming and software design as a prestigious, respectable and valuable career.

It doesn’t matter if the AI works or not, it just matters that programmers sat there and took it because they thought they were special and the ruling class would never betray their trade.

Well here we are kids if you want a realistic career that will pay the bills dont follow your heart and go into programming and computers, that is a passionate hobby you shouldnt expect to be highly paid for it. Go into the trades, anywhere else, programming as a career is fucked (and again it has nothing to do with whether AI works or not).

Hopefully they will be so shortsighted and suffocate themselves with this Ai hype.

waves from over in the linux corner seize the day, and microsoft’s throat :P

Oops there we go with another pathetic example of a raging fascist literally outflanking a milquetost centrist on the left.

Fuck Trump, the hateful bastard, but this is so pathetic that Biden and centrist democrats utterly refuse to engage in promising genuine reforms and providing a vision to the truly desperate (economically) american public and it is going to end up killing us all.

TL;DR of course sci-fi couldn’t have imagined how cool juggalos are, scifi is mostly written (and MORE importantly gate-kept) by man-babies with incredibly narrow views of reality, fuck sci-fi let’s go hang out with the juggalos…

Honestly other than just extrapolating out what technologies will facilitate the rise of dystopias (while being weirdly obsessed with the aesthetics of dystopias to the point of it being dysfunctional to the objectives of the narrative and fiction) what have sci-fi writers actually meaningfully imagined about the future in the western canon?

For all the mountains and mountains of sci-fi books and tv shows written I am not sure there is actually much to show for it except endless descriptions of how colonization, war and authoritarian power will be facilitated by future technologies (in a way that superficially claims to be subversive but is really just technology porn, politics be damned).

The only western/European sci-fi series of any significant popularity that I think grapples with anything meaningfully human about positive potentials of the future is Star Trek. Other scifis of course accomplish this in parts of their stories, or in peripheral stories and side series, but almost without fail they all circle back to the same 5 things a boomer dude can imagine a society of boring boomer dudes doing who worship technology and talk over women.

Murderbot is dope tho, I don’t say this critique to attack the wave of sci-fi that is written by diverse new authors that subverts the genre, just to say that the old guard of the genre should be trashed and thrown out the window in favor of these new authors who actually treat envisioning the human condition realistically as important…. to writing books about humans in the future…….

….sigh sorry I really think the classic sci-fi genre gets wayyyyyyyy too much of a pass for being a serious genre of art when it is written by a bunch of clowns who mainly used representations of human beings like action figures and G.I. Joe figurines, bending them in brutal and inhuman ways so that they carry out cool action sequences on the living room floor and reference cool technologies that will make their dad notice them and give them a hug for being smart. None of which is wrong unless you are claiming to write literature that illuminates deep things about the human condition with respect to the breadth of future possibilities.

says Pussy riot in the mirror 3 times as the clock strikes midnight

nervously waits (or excitedly? how big exactly is a riot of pussy? Big enough? How many hectares does the average Pussy Riot engulf?)