I would like them to be imprisoned on a island. It would be a Battle Royal that I can get behind.

Looking up the Vilvaladirt, I am guessing it is a group of Let’s Players who do a Mystery Science Theater 3,000 take on their gameplay? If so, that would be neat.

It is good to hear what a full DeepSeek can do. I am really looking forward to having a better, localized version in 2030. Thank you for relating your experience, it is helpful. :)

Can the full-size DeepSeek handle dice and numbers? I have been using the distilled 70b of DeepSeek, and it definitely doesn’t understand how dice work, nor the ranges I set out in my ruleset. For example, a 1d100 being used to determine character class, with the classes falling into certain parts of the distribution. I did it this way, since some classes are intended to be rarer than others.

I bought WinRAR, for a pretty specific reason: It can handle Japanese locale. The assorted games, patches, manga, and so forth couldn’t be handled by 7zip/PeaZip at the time.

Think of it this way: Microsoft can use Copilot down the road to monitor what games and media you have. Considering that the Trump Regime has literally forced the disbanding of military cultural clubs, removal of posters featuring minorities or women, established a DEI watchlist, and so on…as someone who plays a great deal of Japanese games, I wouldn’t feel safe. Plus my PC has all of my passwords, documents, and so forth.

Ask yourself this: “Am I safe from persecution?”

Just because you have no interest in politics, it doesn’t mean that politics aren’t interested in you.

America just lost a huge amount of federal workers, Elon has broken into the treasury, and Trump ended our foreign relations for no good reason.

America is splitting apart, and corporations will have to pick a side. Considering that Microsoft controls the most common OS in the world, it would be very strange if DOGE didn’t try to take control.

I prefer stability, so I only swap to an new OS when I have a fresh machine. Plus, MS is a bully and just plain suspicious. My PC, my rules.

For me, I am concerned about Microsoft going fascist. Last thing I need is my PC to be a turncoat. Also, I hate being forced to update. I want to pick my updates and schedule.

If I modify my existing PC to dual boot from the same drive into Linux, can I easily and safely delete Windows once I have migrated my files into Linux?

IIRC, you can download the .iso from Microsoft themselves, then use a keygen program to create an auto-renewing key. WindowsKMS, I think it was?

Up til now, I only had gaming desktops for the last 30+ years. Still, I might be able to borrow a laptop from another resident of the building. Hopefully with a power cable and all of that.

…Wait, up until now I was using GPedit to try and force Windows Enterprise to update with my permission and timeline, but it always seemed to be a bit ignored. But I can use ‘services.msc’ to disable Windows Update from starting up. I can probably use the WSUS tool if I want specific updates from that point on…

In theory, anyways. I will have to try it out. I don’t want to migrate if I can avoid it.

Aside from political leanings of services like Protonmail and Kagi, I look at one key thing: where they are headquartered. Kagi is in California, while Protonmail is in Switzerland. IMO, this means that if a civil war breaks out, they are less likely to poison or remove their service.

It is all about whether the workers and leadership are within reach of the law, be it official or the jungle.

You can also use Kagi’s video search AI to vet the political alignment of a video before watching. I don’t want to waste my time on facist-leaning content, be it political or economic.

I am hoping that Google bites the dust from this. Having stuff like Peertube becoming common, would go a long way towards mitigating media moguls from controlling narratives. As we have seen, the media organs of the right are staying silent or downlplaying what has been happening.

Also, it would be nice if the folk didn’t have to deal with baseless copyright takedowns. A lot of culture has been lost to feckless corpotacracy.

Most of the key people behind the Civil War and 1st Business Plot also were excused from justice, for the sake of soothing political tension. IMO, executing them would have been better for curtailing the corrosion of our society.

I used Thunderbird to simultaneously access and download my gmail and protonmail, gradually migrating my ecosystem to the latter. The way I figure, Protonmail would be good, on account of being based in Switzerland. That means assorted EU protections - and now with Vichy America likely to become a thing, having the servers in a safe spot seems really helpful.

The odds of us having military action in our neighborhoods has shot up by a disturbing degree.

Something adjacent to degoogling: I am concerned that Microsoft would collaborate with the Trump Regime. I never used Linux before, but I am now downloading Ubuntu. It feels like that I should do a dual-boot setup and get ready to abandon Windows if I hear about MS HQ in Washington having a DOGE presence.

Here’s hoping that Europe and the Blue States are watching Microsoft for anything weird.

I play all kinds of old games, Japanese games that require patching, and use mods. That technical stuff is why I haven’t tried Linux yet, because things are already irksome with a well-known OS. I don’t want to imagine what edge cases on Linux could be.

Unfortunately, I might be forced to make the switch if Microsoft decides to ally with the Trump Regime. 😱

I suspect the rise of mental illness has much to do with economy. The more uncertain you are about the future, the easier it becomes to be steeped in resentment.

It is the other end of the wealth horseshoe: The wealthy are free of consequence, and consequence no longer holds meaning among the poor. After all, you don’t have friends, a job, or a future. The only way anyone will remember you is if you leave a mark upon them. You may die, but the living are left with the suffering you have left behind.

…that is my guess about the mindset. :(