i really wish raymond would restart umatrix… it was the most flexible script blocker. noscript’s ‘per site’ permissions takes far too many clicks to do (some of) what umatrix does from one toolbar icon drop-down.

‘profitable’ for him, as in bribes and ‘donations’ from specific persons to allow such projects in specific places, and for specific purposes.

10 years on top of the generations to recover from economic and social policy being shat out by a deranged geriatric.

glad i kept all the ones pulled from previous ssd upgrades and ewaste that went through here. i have several i have yet to reuse.

the shit-tier shingled ones i got a couple years ago to store media files had been relatively stable for years on price at ~ 100-110usd. they’re now 170+

the thing is… you shouldn’t have to “search up the settings to turn off the saving redirection in Office programs and toss it in the default Group Policy settings”. cloud shit in windows and ms office needs to be optional, and explicitly opt in

mullvad also has encrypted dns that anyone (don’t need to be a vpn subscriber) can plug-in to their browser or (compatible) operating system–including optional domain-level blocking (adult, social, gambling, and ads). yes, you can use a basic ‘pihole-like’ dns without needing to actually set one up.

I am pretty set with Firefox in Android and desktop to be honest.

been using firefox since before it was called firefox, and netscape before that. while i do use ‘other’ browsers, too, their use is limited to testing and a few select sites or purposes only (for instance, i use a ‘portable’ opera for mail, and only mail).

dell’s been going down the crapper for at least a decade… ever since dell and the vultures took it private ~ 2013.

‘entry level’ specs have been 4gb ram for over a decade, and they’re still selling shit-tier laptops with only that today.

that would require the software companies to actually spend money on competent developers instead of tossing peanuts at prompt writers.

an 8gb pc with win11 is today’s equivalent of running vista on 1gb.

there’s a number of laptops already that do have 8gb on the board and no sodimm slots.

people got lazy about plugging them in

always have been, here. the old cdma flip phone went about a month between charges, even when it was 5+ years old. the new volte one sucks. with a higher power draw and the shitty 4g signal here, i have to plug it in every few days. the only ‘plus’ is that i always know where a charger cable is now, because it’s usb-c and i use that for other things, too.

i think gnome is actually pretty good… for a desktop with limited duties. like launching a browser and email–perhaps a word processor, and not much else. think a chromebook alternative that could actually do more if you wanted. a lot of things are ‘hidden’ to the user by default, what a user does need to be able to access (wifi, etc) is relatively easy to find, nice big icons that you can put front-and-center while relegating system-related things to a folder. i’ve set up a number of systems like that.

for my own uses though, gnome does need a half-dozen extensions for me to consider it ‘usable’… but i would still prefer a ‘traditional’ desktop experience such as cinnamon

if you’re being paid to run windows software… that’s a little different.

i’ve run across a couple prebuilts where shift-f10 didn’t work at any screen of the oobe. those just got clean installs via rufus.

rufus can download the latest 10 or 11 iso direct from ms servers (incorporating the fido ps1 script, made by the same guy), so you only need rufus and a flash drive.

And no, 4k desktops do not “look nicer”, it is stupid and tiny for no reason. Unless you have like 250 shortcuts on your desktop what is the point?

if you have an ultra-high desktop resolution, you’re probably using a scaling factor to make everything look about the same size it would otherwise be at ~ 1080p… windows will even default to something around that… just no ‘jaggies’.

so yea, it does ‘look nicer’ and no, everything is not ‘stupid and tiny’.

and the “DRM” of the day was typing in the third word of the second paragraph on page 6 of the printed booklet that came with the game.

my ‘arch based’ system is a cinnamon-flavoured manjaro. manjaro gets shit on for reasons, one of them being they hold back updated packages for a bit… which is basically what you recommend, and it’s what i usually do anyway–defer updates for awhile (even on windows), unless it’s a super critical issue that could actually be a problem.

that manjaro desktop has been solid, never once messed-up an update even with the aur packages i have installed, and even if it’s been a month or two since it last updated.