The year of the Linux desktop I’m thinking of was like 2008. That was then it became perfectly usable on the desktop and I haven’t had to switch back since.

I don’t understand why anyone care’s what Linux’s “market share” is. It’s open source, no one makes money when someone installs Linux.

Yeah it pisses me off the way people are like “tech bros ruined the internet”. No, users ruined it! There was no reason to stop self-hosting webpages, forums and IRC servers. Users switched to Facebook instead because they preferred it and didn’t care about the downsides. There’s an alternative to every website and app which respects privacy, serves no ads, and has no algorithm to farm your outrage. Users refuse to use them because they aren’t cool enough.

Is this part of a series or something? I have no idea what any part of it means

Also they shouldn’t do it unless they’re going to apply it to all politicians, like when Biden lied about seeing photos of beheaded babies in Israel.

All the answers you got show why this conversation goes badly. No one can come up with an actual problem that data collection causes, it’s all silly comparisons to giving people your credit card number or shitting in front of them.

For me, having my data collected is like having CCTV cameras in stores. Yeah, technically someone is filming everything I do. Yeah it would be bad if a private individual was filming me for nefarious reasons. But no one actually uses that data for anything bad, and it doesn’t actually cause any problems.

All that happens is I get more relevant ads.

Weird how it’s literally impossible to ever live without something no one had 100 years ago

VR porn needs to be at least 4k for immersion and you can only get that quality with a paid account. But that’s a waste of money so you pay for one month and fill a hard drive before you cancel.

This is the only reason why anyone wears any particular type of clothing. There is no style of clothing that it objectively makes sense to wear.

It’s a shame the strategy is now failing because software as a service is so popular. Nothing in the GPL forces you to distribute your changes if you don’t distribute the program. So just put the program on a webserver and let users interact through an API and hey presto, steal as much GPL code as you like.

Everyone crucified MongoDB when they tried to create a licence that prevents this, and FSF have declared that the problem can’t be solved with licences and everyone just has to boycott non-free software (good luck!).

End of free software as we know it, IMHO.

I suspect a lot of “breakages” were failed pacman updates due to signing issues, before pacman knew to update arch-keyring first. I know one person who moved to another distro when that happened.

I wash my hands because I use my hands to manipulate objects, touch my face and prepare food. Perhaps you perform these tasks with your anus?

If I had a sphincter on my hand with shit inside it, which occasionally farted or shit came out, and washing it would never actually make it hygienic because it’s not a hermetic seal and bacteria from the shit inside would always be on it anyway, then yeah I’d just wipe it with paper. And use the other hand

Or you never used paper properly.

I think you’ll be disappointed with the bidet. Your original comment is correct, they are inconvenient and solve a non-problem.

It’s annoying waddling from the toilet to the bidet with a dirty ass. It takes time to wash. Then you use more paper to dry than you would have to just wipe. And you don’t feel cleaner afterwards because wiping is fine.

There’s no polite way to say it, some people like bidets because they make a big mess when they use the toilet. For them bidets are more convenient than paper. For the average person wiping is quicker and easier.

If wiping your ass is a three minute process involving mashing shit around, then you’re the sloppy shit person I’m talking about. I’d want a bidet if that happened to me too.

For me wiping is one to clean and one to polish. First sheet gets stained slightly brown (but no actual shit on it, because that’s in the toilet), second sheet comes away clean. It’s a five second process.

It’s a freestanding ceramic bidet plumbed in to hot and cold water, the kind everyone is saying is the best. Lived there up through my 20s. Waddling over to it to wash and then dry was an utter waste of time.

Because they just aren’t very good.

Bidet people think bidets are incredible and come up with all these psychoanalytic reasons why people won’t use them, but that’s the reason.

I had one growing up and used it occasionally but always disliked it. They’re inconvenient and don’t make you noticeably cleaner than toilet paper.

IMHO they’re for germphobes and people who do really sloppy shits.

Do you have any cases you can point out?

I can’t find it now either, but I’ve read about a German doctor convicted as a serial killer solely because she was present at the deaths of too many patients. In that case she was present at the death of every patient for like 3 months, which sounds like strong evidence against her. Until you think about it and realize that if she murdered them, that means no one died of natural causes for 3 months. Also in that case the number of deaths on the ward actually went up after she was arrested.

Similar but not to do with doctors, Sally Clarke was wrongly convicted of killing her children, purely because both of them had died of SIDS. The prosecution said SIDS is rare and so it happening twice was impossible. What’s worrying about that case is, everyone now says the miscarriage of justice was that the prosecutor incorrectly calculated the chances of two children dying of SIDS, when the actual fallacy was using the statistics as evidence at all. 1 in 73 million is the chance that one specific child will die of SIDS. The chance that any child will die of SIDS is 100%! 200 die in the UK every year! You can’t just go around arresting every parent on the basis that they were unlucky!

What’s really missing in everything I’ve seen is an actual statistical analysis. Everything I’ve seen is just “She was present at 20 deaths, when her colleagues were only present at 10”. Yeah, but how unlikely is that? How many nurses per year will be in exactly the same situation in the UK, or in the world? How unusual was the number of deaths in that hospital while there was supposedly a serial killer operating, versus a normal year?

Sure, the chances of her specifically being that unlucky are astronomical. But the chances that somebody out of the 9 billion people on earth will be that unlucky are pretty good.

We might still be wrong about her.

Honestly this looks like one of those statistical murder convictions. Random chance means that every few years, somewhere in the world, some medical professional will be present at a series of unusual deaths. They end up in prison even though there’s no other evidence.

I’m trying to find out what the actual evidence against Letby was, but so far I can only find one scribbled post it note written during a mental breakdown after being arrested. Which, she could have just been writing down things people were saying about her.

Best simple magic trick I’ve ever seen, blows people’s minds:

Cut out a piece of black paper the shape of the opening of a beer can, lick it and stick it to the lid. From a distance it should look like it’s open. Prick a hole in the side with a pin and drain out a quarter of the beer, enough that you can squeeze the can and bend it. Lay it on its side on a table, with the pinhole pointing up so it doesn’t leak. Now it looks like an open, empty, crushed can. Do all that secretly obviously.

Now ask someone if they want a drink, and point out the “empty” can. Pick it up and cover the pinhole with your finger, then subtly wave the can around as you magically summon more beer. The remaining beer will fizz up and the pressure will cause the can to inflate and uncrush itself. Secretly remove the black paper and hide it. Show them the magically restored lid, crack it open an pour the beer into a glass (so they don’t notice it was partly empty).

What makes it so incredible is you never hid the can from them or did anything tricksy. From their POV, an empty can just refilled itself in front of their eyes.

Edit: Here’s David Blaine doing it for some obvious actors. You will be able to make it more convincing than this. Can’t believe David Blaine was so popular back then lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUTG-MIqU-Q

In a mastodon thread this week we estimated that banning private jet usage globally would save about 100 million tonnes of CO2, while normal Americans would save 4.5 billion tonnes by reducing their consumption to global average levels.

Disproportionate harms are annoying but a tiny minority acting disproportionately still matters way less than how normal people act. Banning private jets is pointless if nothing else changes.