It’s not. Neither is triple checking. Notice how the alias doesn’t actually run dd? That’s on purpose.

It’s not so crazy these days. In several years of running arch, only once has an update broken anything (and that’s because I was messing around with virtual machines).

They call it disk destroyer for a reason. You gotta alias that shit.

alias dd='echo Did you triple check which device you picked? Of course not, dipshit. Check again'

Linux runs on almost anything these days. I’ve installed Mint on Lenovos, Dells, and HPs without issue (even media keys all worked out of the box). As others have suggested, I’d probably look into used business workstations from the last five years to ensure you’ll get a solid five to ten years out of it.

This is a bit like saying “Honda Civics are Tamagotchis for car people” because there’s a community of people who enjoy modifying them. The rest of us just drive, and they run perfectly fine if you’re not doing a lot of invasive customization.

Arch is great for tweaking and customization, but it’s also fine for a simpler use case.

When I tried to migrate to W11 a number of years ago, the wireless drivers weren’t installed automatically (plus major issues with my GPU and lots of other quirks). They’ve probably gotten better since then, but I wouldn’t know (after about three hours of trying to get basic things working, I tried loading Mint on a thumbdrive and everything worked out of the box, including things like function keys and adjustable keyboard backlighting–I never went back).

Two reasons:

1. The feature likely won’t work as well as you might think. What happens when you leave for 10 minutes to get some lunch, and that’s when your boss’s boss checks your location and it says you’re working from home or something. And now you get written up because you’re supposed to be in the office three days per week. I get this is a specific and convoluted example, but stuff like this happens–a feature is released, and management is too stubborn to take things with a grain of salt (or they otherwise won’t consider the limitations).

2. You’re assuming they’re only using your location data to update your in/out status. Neither MS nor your employer will ever be content to only use limited information when they have access to more. And while it would be somewhat limited if it were only on work devices, understand that a lot of employers expect people to install this shit on their personal devices (I was the only holdout in my department who wouldn’t/couldn’t install MS authenticator on my phone, it was a whole thing).

You might be able to use something like distrobox instead of a full VM. That would at least put it in a container that you could either run from an encrypted partition or something.

Different users would be the “simple” way you’d normally do something like this under Linux. But if your regular users have sudo access, you can’t really lock anything down.

I looked into WiFi 7 a few months ago, doesn’t seem ready for OpenWRT.

I got a Cudy WR3000 and a couple of M3000s, and they’ve been great. The manufacturer provides OpenWRT images to flash, and the coverage is great. And they have PoE access points available as well. Tried with both a wireless and wired backhaul.

I have three different 8bitdo controllers and they’ve all been fantastic. And they sell things like replacement covers for the joysticks (I wore through one of them after a lot of hours). Obviously this is just anecdotal, but I’ve had nothing but great experiences with them.

• .hell
• .nope
• .bruh
• .con (to be used exclusively for scams)
• .duck
• .dot

My only hope with this is that MS doesn’t have a complete hold on the gaming market anymore. Valve has to hold some serious sway at this point, and MS doing that might backfire on them.

I don’t know if it would give you as much hard drive space as you want, but I got an Odroid HC4 a while ago and it’s been great. One of the very few SBCs with two SATA slots ready to go.

I just spoke to my coworkers about this yesterday. It is a useful analogy.

Imagine you walk into work one day, and your boss explains that you have a new coworker. His name is Dave. Dave is very eager to do work, but needs constant and unceasing direction. Dave is being hired on contract through a firm, and your boss very excitedly informs you that they only have to pay Dave pennies per hour, which means your boss fired half of your team. When you ask whether the firm will eventually charge more for Dave’s services, you are brushed off and told that you’re “afraid of progress.”

When you log in to start working, you find a new email from IT. They’ve put a lot of new policies into place. Now, in order to send an email with an attachment, your boss has to manually approve it. You may no longer upload files to anywhere on the internet. You used to be able to install software that passed the security checks on your own, now you need to file a ticket for manual review. When you ask your boss about these new policies, he informs you that it’s because Dave had, on several occasions at other companies, sent nonsensical emails to clients. Dave had also deleted one company’s entire customer database; and at another company, he had uploaded a lot of sensitive information to a public server. When Dave was instructed to not send sensitive data outside the company, he apologized profusely and enthusiastically agreed to never do that again. He then proceeded to do it again. Hence, the information lockdown policy. You ask your boss if this won’t negatively affect productivity, but your boss assures you that Dave will more than make up for it.

Dave proves to be sickeningly productive, and never ceases rigidly smiling. He constantly affirms how correct you are on everything. Out of curiosity, you try obliquely contradicting yourself. Then you try convincing Dave that the sky is colored magenta. After some very mild pushback, Dave affirms the validity of your statements. Your boss likes Dave.

You ask him to read and summarize a stack of reports, and Dave returns in about a minute with a succinct writeup. Dave’s writing style is incredibly verbose and he uses certain words and phrases weirdly often, but whatever. Later, you ask Dave to do a search on power suppliers in the area. Dave returns a minute later with a large list of power adapters, their detailed specifications, and where they are manufactured. You clarify your request and send him back. Dave returns, and after one more round of clarification, he manages to get the information you requested. You probably could have done that in less time yourself, but Dave’s a new hire and some learning is to be expected.

But unlike other new hires, Dave doesn’t get any better over time. There are some tasks he can do well and quite quickly, but he clearly doesn’t understand the gist of what you’re actually doing. For every minute of time he saves you, you find you’re spending at least as much time directing him or fixing his work. Once in a while, he’ll spout gibberish for a few minutes, and you’ll have to walk out of the room and back in to restart the conversation from the beginning. And whenever you ask Dave a question, he responds with absolute confidence in his answers (even though you discover that an alarming number of them are completely made up). Unless you contradict him, in which case he will immediately and unquestionably forfeit his previous position to adopt yours. Dave’s firm ensures you that they are continuing to train Dave further. You wonder where the trainer’s paychecks are coming from.

Your workload becomes overwhelming because your boss fired half of your team. Whenever you attempt to bring this up with your boss, you are instructed to make Dave do it. You express concern that there are some things Dave can’t do well despite your best attempts at direction. Your boss looks at you skeptically, then calls Dave into the room and asks him if he can accomplish the task you’re working on. Dave assures your boss that he can do it. You are dismissed from the meeting, and your boss spends some time listening to Dave tell him how great of a boss he is.

Dave doesn’t seem to have much concept of personal space. You are constantly finding that he’s looking over your shoulder at your work. When you address his presence, he makes suggestions about how to improve your work. Sometimes he suggests that you eat an entire jar of mayonaise. When you book a conference room and close the door behind you, you’re suprised to see messages come in from Dave offering further suggestions (plus an apology about the mayonaise, realizing he never considered whether you might have an egg allergy). When you ask IT why Dave seems to have access to your PC at all times, they respond that it’s part of the new policies.

Would you want to work with Dave?

“Software-defined vehicles” is an industry trend. Not specific to AI (the term has been around for a decade or so). It means vehicles that are defined more by their software than by the hardware (which is how people have historically seen vehicles).

As an example, consider your phone. They have hardware specs, but it’s often the software that defines the product more than the specs.

I’ve used both, been daily driving Cachy for a year or two now. CachyOS is a bit easier than plain Arch, in my opinion. I’ve been using Octopi (a gui tool that fronts the package manager) because I never fully got the hang of pacman yet. And I use Btrfs Assistant (another gui tool) instead of configuring snapper from the CLI.

Overall, it’s more involved than something likr Ubuntu or Debian, but it feels manageable.

And it looks as shitty as it drives

I’m gonna guess that most people (myself included) saw the candybar format and the word “Nokia” and assumed it was a “dumb” phone. I’m guessing they looked at the messaging app with the largest or broadest market share and used that as a point to clarify that it’s a “smart” phone.

I’m guessing some areas/industries are better or worse. Mine seems pretty bad, at least in my area. Being involved in hiring co-ops and new grads has given me a good taste for what the expectations are like, and it’s not great. So my view is probably a bit dismal.

You did an intesive for fluid mechanics?! Are you insane, or a masochist?