Ignisnex

I would have upgraded a while ago if my hardware supported it. The kernel upgrades are pretty zippy.

You didn’t need to be a dick, you know. You chose that for yourself.

None of the buildings mentioned need gas though!

Basically in store credit, and it’s totally legal

I heard that while reading it. Like when someone says “Good news [everyone]!” and it sounds like the professor Farnsworth. God I haven’t thought about that episode in ages.

Oh man, my wife bought a 2023 Rogue, and the seatbelt notification goes off for all three back seats, even if no one is back there! And you can’t turn it off! The dealership recommended just buckling all the back seats by default. It is, by a pretty wide margin, the most irritating thing about that machine. I understand the frustration. I guess I’m more diligent about the front seat buckles, because I’ve never even seen the front seat buckle light.

I’m from an era where jailbreaking and installing whatever you’d like on a device was the wild west, and have seen nasty stuff accidentally sideloaded. Giving people the option to infect their cars with ransomware could get people killed, so not opening that can of worms isn’t the worst idea necessarily. That said, FOSS stuff is usually fine, but I highly doubt it would be a fully encompassed ecosystem that you’d be installing. It’ll have add-ons, other smaller projects. Tweaks. That’s where you’ll get into trouble.

But… you should really wear a seatbelt. Actually, haven’t cars been giving users seatbelt alarms for like… over 30 years now? It’s a strange hill to die on, friend.

Yes, absolutely. I do not, however, like the idea of “Pay us $1M or we disable your brakes on the highway” kind of ransomware attacks.

It’s a little out of order, but I just wanted to mention that I don’t disagree with you, and I don’t find your tone dismissive at all! Further, I have no intention of convincing anyone of anything specifically, just raising points of interest. We’re just having a fun little back and forth!

Misinformation and falsehoods are as old as time, absolutely. What is new is the lack of trust in the authoritative bodies that would typically provide that ballast of truth, to measure against. People distrust the government (and if what I’ve read about the history of US politics is true, there might be something to that). They don’t typically associate government information with “good” information as they would have in the past. Even official publications are not immune, as per my previous example with vaccinations. Lastly, I believe you and I have the ability to search something and find a suitable result to cut through bad information; at least better than most. Passing the “smell test”, if you will. We take that for granted. The vast majority don’t realize how to find information effectively. They may search “vaccines cause autism” as a question, but that may very well return many fringe articles with that exact string in it, providing validity to the statement where none was before.

Basically, the game is rigged. We’ve figured out how to navigate those waters with a reasonable amount of success, but it’s a skill we’ve invested in. Most people do not possess that, and are unwilling to acquire it (those same people that will put in a support ticket before trying literally anything to resolve a technical issue they may be encountering). For them, the information bounty we are enjoying is a minefield of confusion.

Verify it against what? Additional information of dubious quality? Case in point, the whole “vaccines cause autism” thing. That finding was published by Andrew Wakefield in Lancet and cited everywhere. Only thing is that is was debunked almost immediately, but people kept citing the publication.

My point being that few people have the gumption to check sources, and if they do, fewer still are going to keep tabs on them more than once, or verify the validity against… yet additional sources. Every step in the process has the end user trying to determine if what they are reading is true, against other information they don’t know is true.

To your point, more people have access to information than ever. Good and bad. Look at all the crap around COVID. You have medical professionals releasing studies and vaccine, and some douche named Q saying “Nah, it’s poison. Drink bleach instead”. Obviously this is an easy example to differentiate what’s good and bad info. But people still tried bleach. Countering good information with a malicious, self serving narrative seems to be as easy as saying “That’s what the establishment wants you to think”, and people fall for it all the time. In huge numbers. Over every little piece of bullshit that gets published somewhere. Politics are a huge centre of misinformation and disinformation, making it very challenging to pick out what’s not total crap. And that’s the point.

I’ve got an original Pi running PiHole, I’ve got a Pi4 running my Plex + Servarr Suite, and a Pi2 B running a LAMPP stack and dev environment.

I’m in your camp for sure, but I can certainly understand the feeling of needing something bigger to protect yourself too. Those massive trucks driving like idiots are a safety hazard. That, and the fact that when your face is at bumper level, if something happens, no matter how correct you are, you’re still going to be pulling your teeth out of their fog lights.

I work on the enterprise apps team at my university. We’d dump that so hard you’d think we were using it to get liftoff. Definitely complain. Also, it’s not inclusive to students without smart devices (they exist!).

If they do still have the option for manual use (with ID card scanners), there are a number of membership card / ID card wallets that are free on most platforms. You can just type the barcode into the app, and it’ll make a virtual card that can be scanned. Same convenience, no physical plastic. If you’re not offended by Google products, Google Wallet works pretty well. Or Stocard, but I’m not sure what level of tracking they implement. Granted, you’re still installing an app, but you get to pick your poison a bit, instead of being railroaded into Facebook shenanigans.

Fair enough! I mean, that would be really nice tbh. Also it makes me realize that consoles only exist for DRM, which is sucky. Granted, I stopped buying consoles almost a decade ago, so I never stopped to think about it.

Real talk though, I own that router and it’s awesome. Can’t say the wifi signal is much different than any other router I’ve owned, but it’s got loads of awesome features I use for hosting stuff. DDNS support plus Let’s Encrypt plus OpenVPN support in one box. Very handy.

Small nitpick. I’m not sure why you don’t like the idea of the vendor having stuff installed on hardware they make, to ensure it functions optimally. Like, on a primary compute device, sure, be picky about the OS. But this is a game platform. Nobody gives a shit that Nintendo makes their own OS for their hardware, why does anyone care how the Steam Deck does it’s thing?

Currency is a very useful tool to gauge the worth of dissimilar items used for trading. It’s a trait known as fungibility. Without it, we’re in full barter mode. The barter system is… deeply flawed for one reason. If you don’t have anything the seller wants, you’re SOL. You wanna buy food, but don’t have gold, silver, or a skill that the food vendor needs? Well, you’re going to be hungry. Abstracting value to a useless piece of paper that denotes a value, and is enforced by the power of the land (a government) means that paper can buy food, shelter, comforts, whatever you need. It’s an objectively better system.

Mythbusters did a bit on that. I seem to recall that unless you’ve got an MRI in your pocket, it should be fine.