Yup, they already buy their phone on a payment plan for double the price, and get locked into a carrier at inflated rates. Eventually though, they could actually own their phone.

But they’ll just see a lower monthly price tag, and trade in the ability to eventually own the phone.

Unpopular opinion but I’m dying on this hill. Secure boot creates more problems than it solves.

Remember when the internet didn’t suck? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

This right here 1000%. Nintendo used to get a lot of my money. Not anymore, screw em.

I own guns. I enjoy shooting paper targets at the range and clay disks flying through the air. I grew up around guns on a farm. I’m very comfortable handling them.

Me, and responsible people like me, are PARANOID about gun safety. Even if I KNOW it’s unloaded, I never point it in an unsafe direction. Like, not even towards the right because my neighbors house is that way 300 yards away through a concrete basement wall etc. I never point it at something I don’t intend to kill/destroy, and my finger never touches the trigger unless I intend to pull it. When the gun isn’t in my direct and immediate control - it’s locked up.

I HATE assholes like the person in this story. They deserve criminal negligence, their guns taken away forever, and some community penalty that’s severe. There is no way in hell “the dog did it”. Give me a break. At best, they were cleaning it in an unsafe manner and did some very negligent things (didn’t check the chamber, pointed it at their neighbor, pulled the god damn trigger), OR they were being a complete jackass and waving it around gangster style.

It’s called “parenting.” Yes, it’s harder these days with the internet and literally everything “right there.” But it’s still your job as a parent.

ANYTIME ANYONE imposes restrictions “for the children” - there’s something nefarious going on. If it’s a politician-they are looking to build a database for $. If it’s your priest-he’s banging the alter boy after ccd, or hates himself so much for being gay he’s lashing out at the lgbtq community. If it’s a company-they’ve either been threatened into doing it or more likely are on the take with a fat payday. If it’s a developer adding it into Linux, they should expect fierce skepticism and backlash from the community.

It’s NEVER about the children. It’s always an alternative motive. If they actually cared about kids, they’d make sure they were fed at school, they’d invest in their education, or they’d invest into social programs to help out those less fortunate.

On Linux, when you update, it downloads the latest thing and installs it. 10 minutes tops. On arch you gotta watch it a bit more, but you signed up for that.

On windows it updates almost as frequently as Linux. Except it takes much longer to update. A new install can sit there churning for more than a half hour. Why? Didn’t I just download the latest iso? Even the incremental ones are painful. It also does this sequential crap where it updates, reboots, and then updates again. (Sometimes even a third time). Then you’ve got the bugs. I don’t think there’s been a single windows update in over a year that just went smoothly. I’ve run across two that flat out refused to install (blocking further updating), and one that broke things.

Windows update is bad enough for a regular use case. It’s downright painful if you haven’t booted windows in a while (think dual boot setups) where you have to pay this update tax just because you switched to windows to do that one thing.

The author is not being whiny, they are 100% correct.

Years ago, I was driving through NY city-ish. We pulled over in a rest area and I saw a sign about turning your engine off. I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen, as did many other people apparently as their cars were idling. Then I got out of my car. I was wrong. The heat was insane. I couldn’t wrap my little head around it. I started doing the engineer math thing because it didn’t make sense.

Doesn’t surprise me at all these massive data centers are creating little heat domes. The cars were bad enough, and they are a fraction of the energy.

I…. I can’t believe you are defending (or more accurately saying “it’s not that bad”) losing access to the root of your hard drive. It screams incompetence on Miroslop’s part.

While I hate Microslop as much as the next guy - critical thinking like this is woefully absent on the internet…

Rufus like tools are becoming a near necessity to install windows these days.

I recently wiped my drive and performed a clean install. I started with fedora and about 15 minutes later I was 100% back together - programs and all.

Then I moved/installed my RETAIL copy of win11 pro to a virtual machine. It took like 4 hours, and I swear I’m not dumb! :)

• getting the iso onto a flash drive without a windows machine was way more difficult than it needed to be. Ventoy ftw.
• then you have to either: bypass the tpm stuff with Rufus, or set up a vm based secure boot/tpm module via vm additions. Not too hard, but annoying. Why it can’t be a normal option to install in a vm without a tpm module is beyond me.
• the install took forever. It asked SO many questions and shoved so much crap in my face “subscribe to 365”. “Turn on one drive”. “Try this syncing thingy with your phone.” “Here let me turn on all the telemetry - oh you don’t want that, here’s more screens to click through.” It was endless and annoying.
• activation was surprisingly difficult. It of course detected the hardware change being moved to a VM. Then I had to pick some obscured hyperlink to get to a screen where it showed literally dozens of machines (like every install I’ve ever done over decades) to pick the install I was transferring. It was not as easy to find the right install as you’d think. It kept complaining “that copy was already in use”. Or “already transferred” but they were all the same pc installed with the same retail license. I realized right there how screwed up it all is behind the scenes. I eventually clicked on one that activated thank god.
• mind you, it was REAL EASY to skip the above step and PAY for a new license. That screen is shoved right in your face.
• once it was finally installed and booted, then the worst part came - updates. It literally took like 2 hours to update. No my internet connection isn’t slow, and no, the VM isn’t resources strapped. I couldn’t believe how many times it updated and rebooted and started another update. Why a freshly downloaded iso required so many sequential updates is beyond me. It was connected to the internet during install, why didn’t you grab the latest then? /facepalm.

The whole process was extremely painful. And I gave in years ago and I login with a Microsoft account - you’d think the ONE advantage I’d get for that would be: “oh hi sir, I see you are installing your one and only retail copy of win11, HAVE A NICE DAY!” NOPE.

I’ve been installing OSes since the days of dos 5.0 and I couldn’t believe how low Microsoft has fallen with the shovelware and bad updates process.

And after all that - I don’t even use the win11 VM. I just installed it because I had a valid retail license and “why not? I can move the VM around I the future if I want”. My software runs just as fast, if not faster in Linux - but I’m much faster because my OS gets out of my way, doesn’t shove ads and crap in my face, and I’ve tailored it to match my workflow.

Windows is dead folks. If you’re stubbornly hanging on, you really shouldn’t.

Too late

And people make fun of me for turning off secure boot and tpm. They just cause grief for no benefit.

Crazy. I have a Sony XBR 46” lcd that’s almost 20 years old. It still looks great for what it is (1080p and all). It was a top of the line tv back in the day that’s held its own for a very long time. It’s sad to see great companies/products fail.

Forget ram. Wait until there’s widespread power outages yet you’re somehow paying 10x for your electricity bill because of the new data center down the street.

I used an HP RPM calculator through college. It could do cool stuff like graphing and solving equations. Very helpful for an engineering student, not so helpful later in life. I used that calculator until about a year ago when it died (got about 35 years from it). I didn’t use the super fancy stuff anymore, but for a scientific calculator it was pretty solid.

So when it broke, I had to find a replacement for a device that I’ve used for my entire life. Needless to say, I was kind of picky. I tried emulators, and newer TIs, and there’s a bunch of knockoff crap like the article points to. Only one made me happy. A silly little iOS app “PCalc” (it has an icon of “42”). It was like $5, runs on my phone, and honestly I probably should have switched decades ago.

I’m not associated with that app or the author or anything, just a recommendation for anyone old and stubborn like me - I know I’m not alone here with calculator attachment issues :)

Guild wars reforged. I was thinking of firing up the old cd roms and then I saw the whole thing was re-released on steam. Been giving it a go - has held up well over 20 years.

All I wanted was cd quality audio (which I’m willing to pay for)…

You know you’ve screwed up when the lazy people (me) actually get off their butts to switch.

Agreed, a good article and I learned a lot from it. One thing I learned is that while secure boot and tpm are neat, I’m more confident than ever that they are just overkill and unnecessary for an average user.

Whether intentional or not - they DO get in the way of using other OSs or bootable flash drives like ventoy. Either by by malicious intent, accidental non signing or delayed signing, or just general complexity of coordinating signing everything with all the manufacturers.

It’s just a lot of hoopla for…. What?

Anti cheating? There’s been cheaters in online gaming forever and that will never change. Give me the option to make friends and play private games with them and I don’t care who cheats.

Security? I mean I guess…. but “don’t boot shady crap and make sure you’re downloading the right stuff” goes pretty far.

I dunno - secure boot and tpm are the first things I turn off and I’m not interested in using software that insists I turn them on. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze.

LOL

I’ve been using it that long too, and I suppose you’re right.