ocd

There will never be a time when I'm configuring my UI in a rendered page or on my desktop on Linux or BSD that I'm not thinking about the pre-CU UI and sounds of Star Wars Galaxies or mostly Japanese PSX / PS2 video games of a certain design style of the time.

I haven't used F-Droid since the age of Copperhead when I had an Android phone sitting around for testing purposes only. I never thought it would catch a wave like it has, but I also wasn't really thinking about geopolitical upheaval (not often or entirely seriously anyway) or tech companies angering (this much) everyone, but it is nice to see.

I never got around to trying the Copperhead successor in Graphene.

That's good, I guess, but hasn't Google already long given everyone including the author many reasons to both quit the company as an employee, and delete your Google account as a user?

Just as a user, deleting my Google account 10-11 years ago (don't even remember precisely when) was a great feeling that was received as "insane" by friends and acquaintances. While I think the author is a bit late in quitting (assuming he is genuine in his motives) given this is practically a trend right now, a lot of people should more often say "no" to things that are as ubiquitous as Google.

Apple must be trying to accelerate making smartphones as unappealing and contemptible as cable television in the past 10-15 years.

I don't know if I would say this as much anymore except for Linux distributions steering away from Red Hat/IBM or Canonical attempts at replacing traditional methods, or the BSDs that aren't necessarily in agreement with more recent developments either.

I certainly would not feel I owned my system if I accepted the full suite of attempts by these companies to replace and subvert existing standards. I do feel I have control with non-systemd init and service management, and source based packaging.

Perhaps, but the BSD developers do not fully invite themselves into your home and network through use of their operating system. I do appreciate however that macOS is BSD somewhere under the hood and switched to zsh as default shell (even if it was supposedly only for licensing reasons, but I believe it's the correct decision practically or legally)

Although I am fairly well aware of the vendors of these full systems like SGI and Sun had with IRIX and Solaris, I'm often disappointed I never got to experience them as they were before my time. I've seen photographs of well preserved personal collections of their machines in users' homes, and they look wonderful in a way you look at a specific kind of classic car (that surely has odd quirks) and there's a resonance making you feel and know it will drive and handle joyfully.

I've been amazed in the past looking at the Wikipedia article on Bill Joy, and all I have to say right now as a UNIX philosophy leaning Linux and BSD user is: thank you for NFS.

I just want BlackBerry back.

Every single time one of these new "minimal", "dumb", "lightweight" phones comes up today it's just marketing wrapped around a kneecapped Android device. I am in the market for something simpler that does nothing more or little else than play local media/audio, read common document/text formats, ordinary SMS, current standard of telephony, and a different OS than Android. I have not seen anything like this yet.

US GDP is mostly imaginary and not tangible. It's dependent on both international respect for intellectual property laws (reason for the anger toward China), and the natural resources of other lands (that have had their governments blamed by the current administration actively misleading US citizens about provenance of what is needed to sustain American life)

Intellectual property laws being recognized, US fiat currency, etc. vs. the hard value of natural resources of these other countries (that the US would prefer to try to annex and loot since the former is not a base you can build on)

When you're deciding on long term trade and economic policy, are you thinking about fabricated valuations of US tech companies, or whether you have energy, minerals, and food supply that have an actual value attached?

A lot of this is about resource access, and that can't be magically conjured. You can have all the industry and business you want to put on paper, but this is a tangible concern for Europe where they require these things from a stable and trusted nation with a similar regulatory and political environment.

This trade matter is likely going to require a new type of agreement that has some special privileges not extended in any other case for both parties.

Yes, I'm from here. Toronto is not a reflection of an entire country, and I would not compare Manhattan or a foreign military base as representative of the rest of another country either.

I have such fatigue from listening to the rhetoric and whining from US farmers when enough of their goods are dangerous for consumers and illegal in Canada and the EU.

It's all bad faith from the US trying to run over any market they don't control so they can weaponize control over food supply of another nation later.

I should have known he had views like this. I've heard similar things expressed and I believe this sentiment personally, but I'm happy to know I can add his name and the original quotation to my archives.

I suppose. America is a much more mixed bag, while Canada at its core is still British, Scottish, and French. Enough cities have a certain sterile and organized appearance more common in Europe than the US. Not sure how else I'd describe it, but maybe Canada is a bit more "monolithic"?

This seems to be what Canada and Europe want from each other. Both have interests in repelling other powers that deserve to have their economic and military capabilities weakened, and both seem to be able to help each other on expanding economic base, energy security, food supply, and resource availability/manufacturing capability with existing intellectual and trade property that will distance them from the US MIC.

This is not really true. It's an extreme fringe minority in Canada that is massively misrepresented in US media, and largely propagated by AI bots.

Mostly a semantic concern in the name given the shared interests and concerns both have in a number of things including the Arctic. It's more a "North Atlantic" group of nations view both sides seem to be taking, but you know, without the US.

As stated by Carney, this is not exactly true, but something like this has been expected. From a legal and sovereignty standpoint, EU membership of any kind does not make sense. A novel bloc of nations centered around military and economic cooperation that includes the EU and Canada however, does.

My grievance is mainly with the overall firmware/software that has such deep control over storage and all. I've tried KOReader and Plato, but it's just replacing the document reader.

I somewhat liked my Kobo except for how much Rakuten kept getting more aggressive with forcing their environment on me. And then my Kobo decided to wipe and reset itself on its own, losing all of my bookmarks and other data.

Nice hardware concept, completely unacceptable software.

I think Windows and macOS have both changed more radically than my 10 year old Gentoo installation has in that period of time, heh.

I don't see the reason in this, especially now of all times with the current situation with software vendors and geopolitics. It's sensible to have an Apple laptop like a Neo or Air around, but giving up Linux as the primary or entirely? I think this is allowing an imaginary convenience at great cost to seduce you into thinking this is the solution to impulsive or compulsive behavior in hopping around between too many programs and distributions.

I don't see how any government or business (especially the former) can justify using X at this point when it doesn't serve the public interest or the interest of customers who deserve at least some choice. It's as unreasonable for them as using Instagram or a dating app for something intended for broad reach and accessibility.

I don't particularly like Bluesky, but it's publicly readable and has RSS. Any real solution would be protocol or standard instead of yet another closed service, though. For now, I see Nitter and XCancel as a temporary fix until people abandon it for whatever practical, economic, or political reason(s) they may have.

I'm needlessly reinventing the wheel in replacing almost every part of my X11 environment like a menu, bar, wm+hkd (except terminal since I don't want to mess with carrying terminfo around) to be portable and not at all interdependent.

AI is making it possible to (expeditiously) have everything I want or need on Linux or BSD written in POSIX shell or C is doing wonders for me. The initial effort and time pays off in knowing it will essentially function as intended forever, and no developer can make changes that disrupt my workflow or preferences for my environment.

I miss ordinary conference calling being the norm. I like having a desktop IP phone.

This is not news to anyone, and I don't believe anyone is demonizing every individual, but the military is a mixed bag in terms of the morality of the soldiers. "Thank you for your service" however is an endorsement of the military's actions. The public has shown remarkable restraint in terms of any blame toward individual soldiers given what the US military has done under command just this year.

I often think of Debian as a bit moldy from some changes over the years with legacy support (kludges?) in place, where it seemed more like an outdated Arch Linux at some point once it had switched to systemd.

But if I were CERN, I understand the choice of not getting involved with newer forks that aren't novel distributions you can trust to be around for the long haul. I would choose Debian as well in their place.

Rubbermaid Roughneck half size of resealable bags of cables.

Always seemed like a marketing issue on Apple's part. People have different opinions when they actually see and handle the Mini. Apple appended so many "Pro" and "Max" names to everything which ended up creating a "status symbol" that was contrary to the actual needs of the consumer to have a more reasonably sized phone. "Fablets" weren't particularly popular for that reason, and Apple still managed to lead people down this road.

Despite the Lightning port, I prefer my 13 Mini to upgrading.