Are headphones a possibility in your workplace?

Thanks, that’s some good thoughts. I do already do that, contribute to FOSS, write fiction and I’ve taught some stuff to younger folk at work so it’s not entirely wasted. If I can achive net zero on whatever cosmic scoreboard is in place, I figure that’s okay.

Mixed, but mostly okay.

Pros: The world is massively overpopulated already. Our genes aren’t particularly noteworthy. I’m not very optimistic about the future. People’s happiness generally seems a lot less than it was when I was younger and I don’t see that changing.

Cons: Not being able to pass anything on - my knowledge and experience, ironically much of which was gained through having time that would have been unavailable if I had had kids. As we both get older, our own care is concerning. Doing physical things around our smallholding is getting harder and a pair of young hands would be nice.

I don’t begrudge other people having kids. We tried once but lost it and that kind of took the excitement out of it for us. Before we knew it, it was too late anyway.

The UK has seen a stratospheric drop too. Banned from all non-private indoor spaces, taxed through the roof. At least in the South, it’s rare to see or even smell someone smoking now, even on TV. Although in some cities it’s just as likely to smell cannabis as tobacco.

I don’t think you’re “exporting it” though - it’s not an American initiative. This was a pretty universal shift of “why the fuck do we do this stupid shit?”

India has the BRO too.

Watching a guy called Joe Ryan on Youtube at the mo, who’s riding a motorbike around the Himalayas. The BRO are building roads there at an incredible rate in the most impossible landscape. I’m genuinely amazed at the scale and adaptability of them and how much they’re doing right now.

This is literally changing the lives of those who live in the area, although I do wonder how much this will trigger tourism and change everything as it has elsewhere. But still, those guys can build roads.

Much of the UK’s regular government stuff is online and very simple too - their website is actually very good. It doesn’t integrate everything though. The health service is particularly fragmented and communication is often by post and not that good.

If you’re like me, then some time in your thirties. I didn’t brush from early teens through until then - I had several abcesses and needed seven teeth removed, including my top fronts. Turns out I had undiagnosed autism, depression and low self image. Now I do brush, and it’s just a case of forcing myself to adapt to a routine. Even keeping some flouride mouthwash handy for a quick swill every now and then helps a bit. Hope you find your way.

All my interests are hobbies, some of them even too expensive for me to do lol they’re nothing you can monetize.

Work is for making money, hobbies are for spending money. I think a lot of people mix that up and lose their enjoyment; money changes your perspective on why you’re doing something.

Why do you think Linus is not being truthful?

Hasn’t changed my view much. I already knew Linux was a company that has a legal presence in the US and so would be subject to their laws. The only real surprise is that it’s taken so long to action this particular set of sanctions.

I do think the announcement was poorly handled - it should have been explained either before or immediately afterwards to cut back on the conjecture. The git notice only said that these contributors’ names had been removed from the credits, not that they’d been stopped from contributing completely. Any company, including Linux, that does something they know is going to be contentious like this should bloody well get ahead of that curve and put the facts out.

The world is at war. It’s not a bloody world war as we’ve seen before, but it is nation against nation by other means. FOSS is used so widely it is absolutely a target and nobody can be so idealistic that they cannot see the conflict, nor not know that it’s constantly being attacked. Where you live does matter. I wish that wasn’t the case - I truly do, but it’s naive in the extreme to pretend otherwise.

As far as I can read from that, they’re still maintainers, just have had their credit removed from the contributors page, no?

Still a strange thing to do and I look forwards to an explanation.

A Mitsubishi Colt I bought from a guy in a scrapyard for £50 because my Allegro had just been stolen and I needed something quick to get to work. He told me it had an MOT and to come back the next day to pick it up (in the days before it was online) He wasn’t there. It was the rustiest POS ever - bits kept falling off, you could see the road in several places through the floor. Engine was good but that was the only thing. In a lifetime of exercising Bangernomics, that was the stand out terrible car.

Most I’ve lost on a car was a more recent Shogun. Bought for £7,500, cost £2000 in repairs then had a lot more pending. Sold for £1400 in less than a year.

Using the native Jellyfin app available for Amazon’s fire tv stick.

Not really suitable for a Home Theatre PC

Not sure where you got that idea, but it’s absolutely what I use it for. That I can also watch content from multiple sources as well is part of the appeal. Plus no constant upsell like Kodi and Emby.

Came here to say that. It actually predates common internet usage - Fidonet was a much bigger thing through the 80s and early 90s than emails, and BBS forums used it to distribute messages.

Properly quote only what you are replying to. Quote a line, reply to it. Repeat on multiple points.

Then wait a few days for a reply, of course, unless they were dialling into the same BBS.

Now we have boards like this that do a pretty good job about displaying context and quoting is less needed.

yes please

Nice ditty.

What reason do you suggest why “his or her” would be preferable to “their” in this context?

Regional dialect, fluidity of language, variety - even habit.

“It’s grammatically incorrect” argument doesn’t hold much water

Oh, I do respectfully disagree with that, especially when you cite medieval English but reference an American language dictionary as your source.

I could just as viably give “his or hers” as equally valid as “theirs”, because it is. We’re not newspaper headline writers, nobody penalises us if we use a few more characters for any reason. And you could switch back and forth between them both for variety.

The best English literature doesn’t follow the basis of most convenient or shortest. Sometimes there are other reasons to choose a word of phrase.

The plot of Romeo and Juliet could be rewritten in a paragraph but probably wouldn’t have had the same impact.

As you say, lots of spicy food options. Our National Dish is actually a curry - chicken masala and Phall, the hottest curry, was invented in Birmingham.

Also - in the picture are baked beans. They’re invented in the USA. We adopted them, but they’re not ours.

I’m inclined to give Linux more benefit of the doubt than, say, Windows. That’s because of the motives behind it.

Microsoft have a very long history of making design choices in their software that users don’t like, and quite often that’s because it suits their interests more than their customers. They are a commercial business that exists to benefit itself, after all. Same with Apple. Money spoils everything pure, after all. You mention privacy, but that’s just one more example of someone wanting to benefit financially from you - it’s just in a less transparent and more open-ended way than paying them some cash.

Linux, because that monetary incentive is far less, is usually designed simply “to be better”. The developers are often primary users of the software. Sure - sometimes developers make choices that confuses users, but that over-arching driving business interest just isn’t there.