What the user was doing is that they don’t trust that the system truly deleted the account, and they worry it was just deactivated (while claiming it was “deleted”). So they tried to do a password recovery which often reactivates a falsely “deleted” account.

I’ve done this before and had to message the company and have them confirm the account is entirely deleted.

Using Relational DBs where the data model is better suited to other sorts of DBs.

This is true if most or all of your data is such. But when you have only a few bits of data here and there, it’s still better to use the RDB.

For example, in a surveillance system (think Blue Iris, Zone Minder, or Shinobi) you want to use an RDB, but you’re going to have to store JSON data from alerts as well as other objects within the frame when alerts come in. Something like this:

{
  "detection":{
    "object":"person",
    "time":"2024-07-29 11:12:50.123",
    "camera":"LemmyCam",
    "coords": {
    	"x":"23",
    	"y":"100",
    	"w":"50",
    	"h":"75"
    	}
    }
  },
  "other_ojects":{
     <repeat above format multipl times>
  }
}

While it’s possible to store this in a flat format in a table. The question is why would you want to. Postgres’ JSONB datatype will store the data as efficiently as anything else, while also making it queryable. This gives you the advantage of not having to rework the the table structure if you need to expand the type of data points used in the detection software.

It definitely isn’t a solution for most things, but it’s 100% valid to use.

There’s also the consideration that you just want to store JSON data as it’s generated by whatever source without translating it in any way. Just store the actual data in it’s “raw” form. This allows you to do that also.

Edit: just to add to the example JSON, the other advantage is that it allows a variable number of objects within the array without having to accommodate it in the table. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen tables with “extra1, extra2, extra3, extra4, …” because they knew there would be extra data at some point, but no idea what it would be.

JSON data within a database is perfectly fine and has completely justified use cases. JSON is just a way to structure data. If it’s bespoke data or something that doesn’t need to be structured in a table, a JSON string can keep all that organized.

We use it for intake questionnaire data. It’s something that needs to be on file for record purposes, but it doesn’t need to be queried aside from simply being loaded with the rest of the record.

Edit: and just to add, even MS SQL/Azure SQL has the ability to both query and even index within a JSON object. Of course Postgres’ JSONB data type is far better suited for that.

Fun fact: the nubs on the tail club are called osteoderms and the tail spikes on a stegosaurus is called a thagomizer.

The distro part is actually kinda easy. In my mind there’s only a few distros that should ever be considered by a new user. Fedora, or Ubuntu/Mint/Pop!_OS. The last three are effectively the same thing under the hood and all of them will do the job.

The real hard question is which desktop environment. Plasma is generally my go to suggestion. I feel it follows a tried and true paradigm for UI and UX. It’s incredibly polished, fast, and very full featured. The one that really sticks out as odd to me is gnome and is the one that I would never recommend. I wouldn’t discourage, just not recommend.

For hundreds of years women couldn’t vote and minorities were categorically segregated.

That’s a strawman analogy. We’re not talking about privacy as a whole. The discussion here is about the supposed right to privacy at, what amounts to, a government controlled entrance point into the country. You have to identify yourself no matter which technology is being used. There’s no anonymity at an airport (from the government). Whether it’s technology or a piece of paper, you are legally required to identify yourself.

I keep saying this over and over, but if you want to talk about digital privacy, focus your energy on smartphones and the internet. The impact for privacy violation and the impact for regaining privacy rights is the most effective there.

Only a subset of any population has any interaction with an airport and the privacy implications there are next to nothing (because there is no right to anonymity there).

The reality is that the ship for that kind of privacy has shipped a long time ago. Like a hundred years ago. The reality is that the authorities know details about every single person that passes through an airport. You can’t get in or out without a passport/identification.

There is virtually no expectation to privacy at an airport. It’s a public place that is heavily monitored for good reason. And that fact isn’t hidden in the slightest. You are legally required to freely and honestly identify yourself to the authorities.

If this was at your local bus stop, then you’d have a point. But not at airports.

Also, the serious discussion about privacy should have started with the introduction of the smartphone. That’s when the conversation would have mattered and made a difference. But that ship has sailed.

Stupid privacy people. What’s the worst that could happen? Surveillance companies that have already scoured the internet for photos of people to build a giant database of people?

It’s also not like they could ever use the hundreds of other cameras all over the airports. What would they do with all that data anyways?

But you can do nearly everything with the GUI in Linux for a while now. The level of stuff you would need to use the terminal for is the same level on Windows you would need the command-line for, or (SHUDDER) the registry.

In fact, I would argue that doing things in Linux via the GUI is easier than even on Windows. I’m speaking as a user of KDE Plasma. I personally dislike Gnome.