It does again show that these people are like irrational, unscientific, religious cultists. We, as in humanity, should aim to progress away from such a dark past, not regress back into one. That way lies madness.

First one I bought with my own money for my first own PC was the 3dfx Voodoo 2 (~1997). It was the best 3D GPU (addon to an existing 2D GPU) at the time.

Well that’s retro but I used to only screw in the side that’s easier to reach because that already secures it while also allowing you to more easily unplug it again.

Don’t use Onedrive, Dropbox or Google Drive (all privacy nightmares). Instead:

• Self-host https://nextcloud.com/ (this is the gold standard of self-hosting a secure and private cloud storage, you just need your own server with the disk space you need. Open source)
• P2P and/or self-host https://syncthing.net/ (this will automatically sync files in shared folders between several devices. Best if you have one device which is online all the time. Will use the space on your own devices. Open source)
• Storage on a trustworthy 3rd party host: https://proton.me/drive (this is the most similar to Onedrive/etc. where you sync your stuff to their servers, so you don’t need to host anything, but contrary to anything from Google/MS/Dropbox, this is at least a reputable and secure/private host which doesn’t abuse or sell your data. Data is encrypted by default. Also open source)

Furthermore, accessing Onedrive from Linux might be painfully inconvenient because there’s no official proprietary client for it by MS. There are 3rd party clients but I’m not sure how good they are, also MS could at any point change their API or even block unofficial clients, rendering your unofficial client useless at least for a time period.

Generally, the one is right who builds his argument on verifiable facts coming from trustworthy sources, or at least tries to as best as possible. There are police statistics about crime rates. In Germany for example, crime is actually going down. It’s very likely that Harris is right and Trump is not. This is usually the case, without even looking at anything specific. Trump lies and does baseless/unverifiable claims about pretty much anything, all the time. His followers then think he’s somehow right because he’s anti-establishment or they think that it’s all a giant conspiracy and Trump is the only one who knows the truth, again without any kind of verifiable facts behind it. This can then spiral into pure fact-free lunacy or high fantasy thinking, or cult-like thinking.

That crime is going down, is of course a fact that doesn’t fit at all into the right-wing world view or rhetoric of blaming and demonizing immigrants. So they usually then claim that those facts come from untrustworthy sources or are generally fake news or whatever, again without any verifiable evidence. Because they don’t want facts but easy solutions to complex problems, like minorities to blame for whatever problems they currently believe in. If they radicalize themselves enough, and this can happen fast on today’s internet within their own echo chambers, they might become so far removed that they become lunatic and/or violent, and then they become dangerous. Fascism is very similar to a cult.

I don’t think this will help much, even if the outcome is what most think it will be. There are already lots of radicalized people within the right-wing fascist bubble who will not believe anything that scientists, doctors, journalists, intellectuals, or people from a different political spectrum say. They only believe what their own bubble and their own media/leaders say. They are unfortunately already so far removed from any sort of objective fact-based reality that re-education will take a long time (maybe for the rest of their lives) and will not happen in time for the current elections in USA. Also, their rhetoric has already become quite 1930s Nazi-like. They are already using various dehumanizing or demonizing terms for their perceived “enemies”, like vermin or low-lifes. It will probably become worse over time, and since the rhetoric is already bad, it’s likely that violence will be the next step for them.

You don’t need to stop informing others, I think stopping is bad. Just tune it down a bit, don’t overexert yourself with it. Most will not care but it’s still important to tell it to them. At some point, they might realize why it’s a good idea.

Also, Google isn’t immediately killing Ad/Content Blockers like uBO, they’re doing it slowly. Which is much smarter. It will mean less resistance. Boiling the frogs (users) slowly has always been the best way of eventually reaching a certain goal, without too much resistance along the way. If you push the goal too fast and too hard, there will be massive resistance, backed by an immediate media backlash. You have to wait that out, spread it out, so that users and media forgets about it again. Also, uBO Lite for MV3 browsers is less effective, but many users won’t notice a difference yet. Next steps will probably be to make it less and less effective over time, while claiming it will be better for the users overall, like offer better security from malicious addons that almost no one installs anyway, or whatever.

It’s probably related to the phenomenon called “gish gallop”. It’s when someone outputs a ton of falsehoods and other junk very frequently, and other more rational individuals have to refute all those claims and pseudo arguments, look up sources, look up what’s true and what’s false, and so on. There’s an asymmetry in effort - it’s much easier and way faster for the trolls to spit out junk, falsehoods, misleading content, misleading memes, false claims, and so on, than it is to refute those and gather facts, and to do that, you also have to be very careful to make it accurate or else the listeners might go “boo that’s wrong as well, they both suck!”

And then there’s the phenomenon that even bad advertisement is advertisement. Someone whose name keeps coming up, such as Trump, because that name is constantly all over the news, each and every day, must be very important since the name is repeated so much. This automatically “elevates” that person in the minds of some voters, even though the reason for his constant mention is purely negative. So the more reports about Trump’s weird ramblings, the more he is automatically advertised.

I think it’s like a combination of such unfortunate phenomenons. The result is that real politicians have to be accurate, careful, constantly maintain a professional attitude, and carefully counter Trump’s weird claims, while Trump can just continue to spit out hostile nonsense all the time, which is so much easier.

I’m not sure what can be done against such strategies other than education and media literacy, which is probably becoming weaker over time in society. You don’t vote for proven anti-constitutional fascists, ever. If you do, you’ll always be much worse off than if you hadn’t. Even when the alternatives might also not look great overall… it should be your moral duty to always vote for the least-worst option, which means NOT Trump.

~1930ish Germany made such mistakes. Don’t repeat them. You’re now at ~100 years later and are supposed to learn from grave historic mistakes. So please show that you are actually wiser than the people ~100 years ago and don’t vote for proven fascists.

Pixel 8 with GrapheneOS

Well it should be, because anyone who votes for Trump is voting to regress the country into an eventually authoritarian, fascist regime. It shouldn’t be a close race. It should be the majority voting to prevent that.

I’ll do a (simplified) Windows analogy, if you’re already familiar with Windows.

Microsoft Windows is closed-source/proprietary, which means only Microsoft has the source code for it, and only Microsoft is legally allowed to create or distribute copies of Windows. “Windows 11” for example is a “distribution” of Windows containing the “Windows NT kernel” (core of the OS) alongside other important software to make the OS usable, like a boot loader, service layer, graphical interface, desktop environment, and lots of included “system” applications like a file explorer, a web browser, apps to adjust settings, apps to display menus and task bars, and so on.

“Linux” by itself is just the kernel, the core of the OS. Which is by itself not a “usable” operating system yet, just like holding a CPU in your hand doesn’t allow you to use it yet. More components are needed for that. Since Linux is open source and under a permissive license, anyone (even you) can go ahead and create an operating system made with the Linux kernel. If you do that, this is called a distribution or “distro” of Linux. Since there’s not just one company allowed to do that, many distributions exist. They all made their own operating system on top of the Linux kernel. Even though hundreds of distros exist, only a handful of them are actually popular, stable, secure and recommended for general use. They all use similar, but sometimes different software to include in the distribution. Like the Linux kernel, most of that software is open source so it can also be modified or extended.

Since “Linux distribution” is rather long to write, people often just write “Linux” but mean the whole distribution, not just the kernel. These are just common inaccuracies in communication, but what the person meant should be obvious from the context.

Common and recommendable Linux distributions (= full, usable operating systems) include: Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuSE, Arch, Debian. These are full operating systems and they all include the Linux kernel at their core. Of course, the similarities go further than that. Most distros are similar enough that if you’ve learned one, you can also use any other with little additional things to learn. However, some distros are deliberately a bit more different or tailored to more specific users or use-cases, for example Arch targets more experienced Linux users because it’s a very minimalistic distro, it expects the user to know which packages he wants to install. It pre-installs almost nothing. You can think of this like “Windows Server Core” where it just boots into a minimalistic terminal by default, no usable GUI yet, but you can of course install the desktop environment and everything if you need it and make a full-featured desktop out of it. The distro just doesn’t want to preinstall anything which you later might not like, which is why it gives you the choice, but that makes it a minimalistic distro and it’s harder for beginners to use that way. Other distros like Mint are much more similar to the client editions of MS Windows in that they preinstall everything the user needs for a desktop OS and more, so that the user can boot into and use the desktop as quickly and easily as possible.

And then there are even more special-purpose distributions like Kali Linux which includes things like penetration testing tools (i.e. “hacker tools”), which makes it a distribution for IT security people, so they can boot into it and have access to most needed tools right away without installing much else (also good on a bootable USB stick). But usually, in general threads like this one, people don’t talk about specific-use distros, but about generalist distros which you can install and use as a regular desktop OS.

Desktop environments also exist on Windows but there’s basically only one, made by Microsoft. In the Linux world there are several to choose from. The most common ones are: KDE Plasma, Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE. These desktop environments contain window managers or compositors, task bars or panels, menus, various tools like file managers, process viewers and text editors, and various background programs. This is all needed for the user to have what is commonly known as “a desktop environment”, because if you didn’t have one, you’d be basically staring at a screen containing at most a cursor and a wallpaper, with no way for you to interact with anything. Of course, these can look and feel different from each other (just like Windows looks and feels different than MacOS), and they have different features and strengths and weaknesses, but their goal is always the same. And as usual in the open source world, there’s not just one project but multiple, and out of those multiple a couple are popular, viable and stable enough so that they are usually included in most Linux distributions. Which is why most distros also give the user the choice to have a specific variant of the distribution with a specific desktop preinstalled. For example, Ubuntu also has Kubuntu (= Ubuntu with preinstalled KDE Plasma) or Xubuntu (= Ubuntu with preinstalled XFCE). These can have various names but in the end it’s just the base distribution (“Ubuntu”) with a different preinstalled “face” so to say (and you can change those faces or desktops from within the same distro, of course). Most other things are exactly the same between those distribution variants.

As a new user, you don’t need to learn about everything. Just pick an easy to use generalist desktop distro like Linux Mint and use the default desktop environment or variant which they provide or recommend by default. You can start experimenting with more choices later on if you want, but you also don’t need to. If you have something you’re comfortable using, then you can just stick with that.

I get that it’s a nice daydream to think of open source projects as existing in some kind of independent, ethereal vacuum just because the code is out there and accessible from any place on Earth. But every software project is (mostly?) dependent on the jurisdiction in one country, in this case it’s the US, and so their laws about sanctions and so on apply. And yes, this means that unless conflicts/wars between nations happen to cease, that we will eventually have completely separated blocks of politics/culture/military and also IT. Globalization is over. China will have their own stuff, Russia will have their own stuff, and US+EU will have their own stuff. And none of those countries should continue using high-tech products made by the other because they could be sabotaged and it might be hard to find, so it’s best to not use them at all and just cook your own stuff. It’s unfortunate, but bound to happen in the current state of the political world.

No.

Communication/Social Media isn’t for corporations to do what they want with it, or to manipulate their users. It needs a neutral, open platform. That means open source servers and clients and protocols.

I find it worrying how so many people noticed the decline of Twitter happening live and now continue to move to the next corporate, closed-down platform. Until the next time, I guess…

• Pomodoro timers (hit a keybinding, a 25min timer will start. Within that time, do something productive. After that time, you can do a 5min “break”. Then probably start the next timer. You can also adjust the timings of course)
• Treat the thing you want to do instead of your task as the thing you can do as the reward after having done the task first (kind of a gamification mechanism maybe)
• Develop a habit of always doing something productive (from your backlog) each day, unless you’re sick or so
• If the task seems so big or hard that you don’t even start, split it in parts. You rarely have to do everything at once. Splitting it into parts also allows you to not over-exert yourself, so you’ll have more time for the things you’d rather want to do afterwards

Experience with relatives who had no prior experience with Windows or Linux: installing Linux for them was great, painless and also facilitates troubleshooting for me. No problems here. Mostly using Linux Mint for those purposes, it’s a great distro for non-techy people.

Experience with relatives with prior Windows experience (but no Linux experience): a mixed bag. Some use Linux happily now (thankfully), some returned to Windows because they couldn’t change their habits or have weird specific incompatibility issues with niche hardware which they also don’t want to solve in a different way. I’ve kind of stopped giving support to those, since I don’t want to give Windows support in my free time. I sometimes have to do it work-related, that’s more than enough Windows contact for me. I also refuse to give buying advice on any products by Microsoft, Apple, Meta, Amazon or Google, with only very few exceptions (e.g. Pixel phones, because they’re very secure and with GrapheneOS installed they’re the best general mobile phone option). It’s a bit of an ethical dilemma because I’d like to help the people but also don’t want to directly or indirectly support those companies. I always offer them help if they use Linux or the things I recommend.

At this point, right-wing lunatics are already so far removed from reality that it’s safe to call them a sect.

It’s an important milestone as it’s the only effective way to make PC gaming available on operating systems other than Windows (i.e., reduce one of the Windows monopolies). Still, Linux gamers shouldn’t take it too far. I’d advise everyone to still not support game studios which are openly hostile towards Linux gamers. This especially includes the ones who rely on client-side anticheat tools and then use those to block Linux gamers even though the game would run perfectly fine on Linux as well. Please do not support such games or studios (e.g.: Epic Games, EA, Bungie, Riot). Thanks to Proton, there is still a massive number of Windows games that can be played instead.

Noroi - The Curse (2005, Japan) Supernatural first-person video documentary style POV, but with higher image quality than Blair Witch Project for example. No jump scares, just very creepy and unsettling. Slow burn, but good pacing IMHO. No weaknesses IMHO, hence on top of my list. Just a very unsettling and disturbing, almost real-feeling, horror movie.

Also good:

• A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, South Korea): less horror, more artistic, intelligent and original. Great story
• Shutter (2004, Thailand): my favorite jump-scare horror with cool effects
• Incantation (2022, Taiwan): great supernatural slow-burn horror with a cool twist
• Hereditary (2018, USA): great supernatural slow-burn horror, original as well
• Sinister (2012, USA/UK/CAN): great supernatural horror
• Event Horizon (1997, USA/UK/CAN): great sci-fi horror, very unsettling
• REC (2007, Spain): one of the best zombie style movies and also one of the most horror-like ones
• It Follows (2014, USA): kind of a stupid plot but it works. It’s original, well executed and unsettling (supernatural)
• Smile (2022, USA): an even more stupid plot, but also well executed. The ending is bad. But it still terrified me so it works at its core, and that’s all that horror films need to do (supernatural)
• As Above, So Below (2014, USA/France): the weakest one on this list but it’s very original as well, I like it because of that

Winter is on its way out due to climate change. In around the year 2100, it’s estimated that there will only be 3 seasons left, no winter. And summer will be much longer and much hotter. So the 3 seasons will be spring, then a 2-season long summer basically, then fall. That’s it.

But you can already see the disappearance of winter today because there’s much less snow and it’s much warmer than like 30 years ago. (Speaking for Germany)

Yes, it’s a dangerous combination of media/IT illiteracy/incompetence within the general public and profit-driven proprietary social media algorithms that only aim to keep people engaged for the longest time, no matter the content they are being served. And usually, the more extreme the content is, the higher the engagement, the more revenue to be made from serving ads to the users and selling their collected data. This currently leads to a rise of misinformation, anti-scientific thinking, and so on. Which just so happens to align with extreme right-wing ideologies.