• 52 Posts
  • 428 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 27th, 2023

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  • 7.5/10. I find that most people I encounter, even if they support causes against those which I support, would agree with my viewpoints, as long as I don’t say “socialism”. That is an unfortunate consequence of being raised in an environment of capitalist realism.

    Where’s the other 2.5 points? I’ll happily listen to my opponents recount the life experiences and thought processes that make them oppose my viewpoints. But for my own sanity, I refuse to engage with those who merely throw attacks at me.

    I back off from arguing on the internet in general, also for my own sanity.


    • Phones on contract payment plans
    • New monitors: Maybe my eyes suck, but my set of two 21-inch LCD monitors from 2005 is still going strong
    • Third-party meal delivery: I’m fine sitting down with a microwaved meal or some canned soup if I don’t feel like cooking
    • A new car every x years: My car of choice is old and relatively cheap, so I could afford to pay in full in cash. Bonus of being spyware-free, so I’ll just maintain it for as long as I can.
    • Stuff from Aliexpress, Temu and the like: the user experience is horrendous, customer service is nonexistent, and discount codes are pure gimmicks



  • A noble goal in mind and I’m glad that the output of ChatGPT works for you. I’m not against LLMs in principle, but anything freshly spat out by an LLM is for you and you only. If AI was only used as an aid but you understand the codebase, document it and make it clear. Otherwise, you leave the assumption of vibe-coding open.


  • Mint is a very good option for this purpose. In my case, it’s Debian, but with a much more involved process.

    The only ones who ask me to help with installing Linux are either very close friends or people in my family with whom I spend more time, and they tend to be curious about the exact setup that I’m using. I just so happen to have a fully-configured system image in a VM that I duplicate onto my machines, so I work with my friend or family to figure out what they need and how they want it to look, then I clone that VM, customize it to taste, and let them try it out. If they like it, I image it to their machine, make sure it’s bootable, work out any machine-specific issues, set a new password and encryption key, and make sure that unattended-upgrades is working.

    Everyone else just asks me to help install Windows. I have a penchant for LTSC, with an obligatory trick up my sleeve.