“You are right, I made a mistake. Here is a better answer.” Continues to give wrong answers.

To be fair, the AI’s not wrong. It’s probably better, but just a teeny tiny bit so.

Honestly, AI is like a genie - whatever you come up with he’ll just butcher and misinterpret so you start questioning both your own sanity and the semantics of language. Good thing these genies have no wish limit, but bad thing that they murder rainforests while generating their non-sequitur replies.

82% of world imports came from China.

Wow, didn’t know the world imported stuff (China wasn’t part of it).

Ever heard of the world global?

is not a king

Even if be were called “King” rather than “President”, the Constitution is still a thing. He can call himself whatever, really.

Funny thing is, many citizens of the US seem to have less rights and priviledges than subjects of the UK.

Just as there is no for cops murdering pretty much anyone for anything on the clock. “Standing your ground” to these bastards is plain playing with fire. If you’re not perfectly white and very lucky, you’ll be just signing your own death warrant.

the page will immediately get blocked because it tried to load a result from Reddit or coursehero or something

Does that mean any search (AI insight notwithstanding) will get blocked if it includes a Reddit, Coursera or something on the blocklist result at all?

Because if yes, that’s much more than just asinine. It’s basically blocking entire search topics due to the sheer fact that Reddit will appear on the furst page of Google a lot.

Tell grandma with Parkinson’s to “adapt”. While not as ubiquitus a disability as daltonism or blindness, interfaces should still cater to people with them.

When it’s kids adapting it’s fun. When it’s someone with tremors physically incapable of gently and precisely tapping the exact 5px, it’s just bad design.

I’ve yet to see an accessibility setting for this very valid usecase.

Fair. Although, I consider Microsoft’s market “Most laptops” since Apple kind of does its own thing and Chromebooks are ultra-low end laptops. Thus Microsoft gets ~95% of the market for themselves.

Personally, I’d say that’s a clear case of monopoly since MS controls this entire segment of “non-Apple, non-ultra low power laptop, PCs”, but you’re right - there are other players. The thing is, they have relatively tiny niches in which they thrive and in fact pose no threat to the monopolist.

But I now I see how you see it as an oligopoly, which is quite valid.

In practice. Technically, were M$ to go sue users left and right (or send those ISP-style “gotcha”, now pay up) emails.

Luckiy, M$ knows well enough that 90% of that userbase wouldn’t have too many qualms jumping ship if they got slapped with a huge fine, so M$ lets them be.

They value the high userbase more than a quick payout (and rightly so). However, there’s no guarantee that can’t change overnight (just look at Unity and before that, Adobe).

oligopoly

That’s a way to misspell monopoly, alright.

I’d say one point thirty-two. As others noted, much depends on geography.

Personally, I say the “actual” number up to 3 or 4 decimal places, with a lot of the reason depending on the specific context. If I had to asses, I’d say I say the “whole” number in over 50% of cases for 3 digits, and in about 10% for 4 digits. Anything over 4 decimal places and I fall back to individual digits.

It’s not meaningless - it moves the comment/post a bit higher for others to see on some sorting options. It just isn’t summated per user and obsessed over.

I’d say putting up cameras violates the person’s dignity, but knowing how hellish these places can end up I’m not surprised well-meaning people have to do that to protect their loved ones.

Linux definitely has a learning curve but

I’d like to interject here a bit.

For a “normal” user (read non-tech, perhaps even a bit lower on the “tech literacy” scale) any change requires a learning curve. While we Linux people don’t have too big of a problem switching distros and UI setups, someone “non-techy” finds the switch from Win7 to Win10 challenging, as well as from Win10 to Win11. We’re not in the 95/98 era when a “name” upgrade meant you don’t have to install USB drivers off a floppy - the UI stad the same. (which just means Greg won’t need to bother with that while he sets up your new computer)

Nowadays, the move from 10 to 11 is anything but “painless” to me - and for me it’s just annoyances. For people less tech-savvy it’s an enigma at times.

So, my point is - the switch from Win10 to Win11 will probably be worse than Win10 to Mint for old people (mostly). Those deeply rooted into varous ecosystems aren’t the focus of this comment.

Is it just me, or do the two thugs look way too much like thugs?

I disagree. Wanting to know, researching and googling isn’t a bad thing. Sure, googling does always make the problem seem larger than it is, but other thanthe anxiety there are no ill effects.

Do go to your doctor. Let them take a look at you, and ask for concrete tests. I know a family friend who felt off and had gained weight quite rapidly with no change in lifestyle. She went to the doctor who brushed it off and 6 mo. later she died from a cancer the size of a large infant. The doctor said she should stop worrying about her weight. True story.

Most definitely, this won’t haooen to you, but remember - doctors are human too. They’re also lazy and like to not spend their budget on tests. And then stuff like this happens. It was totally avoidable. The doctor just needed to take a fucking look. She’d have noticed somethig was off. Now she has no job. I’d say I was sad for the doc, but it wasn’t even incompetence that caused this avoidable death, but rather pure laziness.

Morale of the story: Looking out for yourself is not a bad thing. Try not to worry, see a doctor, inquire and ask for a check-up. It takes only a little bit of their time. If they say all is fine without doing jack-shit, call them out on it. Hell, be a Karen if need be - it’s your health on the line, not your kid’s football match causing you to get home 5 minutes later than usual.

Odds are you’ll worry much less when you know you for sure your’re fine than when you have no clue what causes your ailment.

I think it’s a design decision. Some high-level designer probably decided on cutting all the wires, so here we are. Shame they didn’t hear about markrt research or customer surveys.

I"m with you on copyleft, but if I had any connection to the project and felt the need to add a reaction emoji, it’d probably be a “thumbs-down” as well.

It’s not because I’m against the GPL, but because of the way the GitHub comment is written.

It doesn’t even say “you should use the GPL”, it says “you MUST say GNU doesn’t agree with you”. I’m perplexed.

Now, I respect the idea of GNU, but the way GNUers in general go about behaving themselves is perfect to alienate people, and this GitHub issue is a prime example. I don’t get it.

If people don’t know about GNU, tell them. Nicely.

If people have misconceptions about GNU, there’s nothing wrong with fixing them. Again, nicely.

The problem is, whenever I encounter GNU and however much I agree with them on key issues (which is at about 90%, my main gripe with them being Freedom 0), they just have a knack to get me, someone who is with them on most issues, annoyed at them. I can clearly see how someone who isn’t as alligned with them as I am gets equally annoyed and avoids GPL and GNU like the plague just to fuck with 'em (while fucking over everyone, including themselves). Not to mention ones into the libertarian stream, since you yourself covered that pretty well.

What the GitHub issue you linked that I keep coming back to shows is this GNU herd mentality of fucking over others unintentionally and in turn fucking over everyone. While they’re clearly better than the “libtards”, they still end up doing the same mistake.

They’re not that few and far between, as declining must be as easy as declining per the GDPR. Just report the transgressors to the national watchdog.

Yup. For me it renders fine (Thunder)

Linux Mint is the obvious “newbie” choice, and not just because everyone says so.

Now, I’m no Linux expert, but Mint is great for the huge amount of tutorials availiable. The catch is: most of them aren’t aimed at Mint itself, but Ubuntu or Debian, from which it “inherits” a lot. So, if you have a problem and can’t find a fix for Mint specifically, chances are one aimed at Ubuntu (or even Debian) will work flawlessly.

Additionally, GenAI chatbots impress me with how helpful thay are. Just by asking them how to do stuff will teach you a lot.

I highly recommend you save the info which seemed most useful somewhere for future reference. In my experience I had to do a few dozen things repeatedly and ended up remembering them. They’re mostly simple commands like apt install, apt update, apt upgrade, cd and my favourite <app_name &> which opens the app invoked without “hijacking” the terminal.

As most in the Linux community say, some things are lightning-fast to do in the terminal once you know the proper incantation.

As others said, the Mint install is incredibly simple, and much faster than the Windows one. You don’t need a guide, just reading the on-screen prompts and instructions will guide you through it. During the install I highly recommend checking the “Install proprietary drivers” box because depending on your exact hardware, some things (especially Nvidia) may not play well without it.

You will be able to do almost everything without the terminal, although many tutorials do utilize it, so using it is pretty much inevitable at some point of your Linux journey.

Now, some hearsay: I’ve heard that Windows doesn’t play nice with dual boot (although I’ve never experienced it fist hand), so you should back up your files just in case.

But, before you do that: For starting, if you’ve got the time, I’d recommend getting an old machine to dip your toes into Linux on it first without fully committing. I’d recommend you do this even though you have the Steam Deck since there are some differences between SteamOS and Mint, so it wouldn’t hurt to try.