Considering that all other alternatives are either

• extremely difficult if not impossible for non-technical users to leverage, or
• much, much worse, up to even eagerly giving out your data

I consider Signal to be the best option out there. It’s not perfect, but nothing is. It simply is the best general option out there, by far, for a general audience.

Yes, you can be totally secure, untraceable, and ultimately unfindable. But being cut into pieces, with each separate piece entombed in its own barrel of concrete, and each barrel dropped into a different oceanic trench, tends to be a bit beyond what I consider to be reasonable to achieve that.

AI is a solution in search of a problem.

The problem being CEOs asking themselves, “how do we acquire labour without having to pay for said labour, in order to maximize our own profit margins?”

AI was always meant to allow wealth to access labour without allowing labour to access wealth.

I, for one, am designing an entire production line of guillotines for when our capitalist system finally collapses. And for those in bunkers: a way of discovering air exchangers and all emergency exits so they can be filled with cement to turn bunkers into tombs. We need an effective method of culling sociopaths from our civilization, after all.

Insurers, he said, are already lobbying state-level insurance regulators to win a carve-out in business insurance liability policies so they are not obligated to cover AI-related workflows. “That kills the whole system,” Deeks said.

If insurers are going through extreme lengths to remove AI output from the list of things they will insure, this says everything about its future.

Because nothing says “effective risk management achieved” like an insurer signing off on, or forbidding the insurance of, an entire class of materials.

It’s a canary in a coal mine, like how insurers are now removing any ability for Floridians to insure against hurricanes or sea level rise, despite flat earthers screaming their heads off that climate change is a conspiracy and isn’t real.

(Note: I have seen the term “flat earther” starting to be used as a catch-all term for anyone who vehemently denies reality in spite of copious evidence that shows they are wholly and completely wrong)

Both classic Notepad and classic WordPad can be downloaded and installed from third-party sites.

However, to thoroughly neuter the enshittified versions and ensure the classic versions are used in all workflows can take a bit more than what the installers recommend. Primarily, I would recommend adding the *.bak extension to the enshittified versions then make (IIRC) junction links from the classic ones to where the enshittified ones are sitting. This ensures that if anything reaches for the enshittified ones, the junction links are there to redirect the action to the classic versions.

Both classic Notepad and classic WordPad can be downloaded and installed from third-party sites.

However, to thoroughly neuter the enshittified versions and ensure the classic versions are used in all workflows can take a bit more than what the installers recommend. Primarily, I would recommend adding the *.bak extension to the enshittified versions then make (IIRC) junction links from the classic ones to where the enshittified ones are sitting. This ensures that if anything reaches for the enshittified ones, the junction links are there to redirect the action to the classic versions.

Back in the mid-80s: CHUD. Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers.

Being on the spectrum, this really messed me up, even though the special effects were cheesy even for that era. And I mean heck, I was also 15 at the time, and had never seen any kind of a horror movie before…

Just learned a short while ago that the term has been co-opted to describe conservatives in general, and white conservative men specifically. I now find myself in awe at how well-applied that term is.

Honourable mention to The Last Unicorn completely tearing me up with its ending, and throwing me into a two-month existential crisis bender that I don’t think I ever fully recovered from.

There are ways for normal home users to bodily rip this shit out, but it takes some work and technical knowledge to effectively rip-and-tear in ways that work for you.

Some of the tools are also not the most user-friendly, expect the user to be a power user with deep familiarity with Windows, and have non-obvious workflows that may confuse a majority of average users.

While it takes about 8-16 hours of concerted effort, there are ways to castrate Windows into a mild approximation of what it was before.

The big question mark is Windows 12… and whether AI and spyware/malware features such as Recall will be baked into core functionality such that it will be impossible to remove or reliably deactivate.

I’m still with Windows for now, owing to requirements that have no non-Windows alternative (which include supporting and actually opening client data files for the desktop version of Quicken, for example), but I do foresee a time when I would reliably extract my last foot out of the Windows ecosystem.

Thankfully, their server products still appear to be enshittification-free. For now.

It has made me inordinately sensitive to systemic societal hypocrisies. Especially differences between how the genders are treated.

Like, yes, there are still a lot of issues with how women are treated that needs improvement. But holy hell, compare a serious problem that isn’t gender-specific - DV, homelessness, suicide, workplace deaths, even rape - and how that issue gets handled depending on the gender means the average man instantly becomes a second-class citizen behind any woman. Or worse - not even worth consideration in any capacity, despite men being either equally victimized or the majority of victims. Men are literally being treated as trash for the crime of having been born male.

And no, in general it’s not other men doing this to men. They are forced to look away and do nothing to help other men, or risk being accused of being “misogynists” themselves because helping male victims “takes resources/attention away from women in need”.

This is why, as one example, political support for so many men’s issues is absolutely radioactive and invariably terminates careers at the very next election. So nothing ever gets done, while the other side has help galore shovelled at them from all directions.

It’s why, despite fully supporting women’s rights, I call myself an egalitarianist. Because I am not a gender bigot. I fight for rights on both sides, because that is the dictionary definition of “equality”.

It has its original hard drive which still works

For reliability you should really switch to an IDE SSD.

Yes, they do exist. OWC sells them, albeit in laptop HDD size, so you will need an IDE adapter.

liberals trying to understand equality: “what do you mean we need to give only to the poor? it’s only equal if we give the same amount to the rich!”

That comes from a fatal and corrupted understanding of what equality is.

Equality represents equal opportunity:

• A young adult who is wealthy has the intergenerational resources to pay for university, pay for their own housing, pay for essentially everything without having to work a single job.
• A young adult who is poor and has no resources should, in order to apply true equality, be provided with said education, housing, food and other resources as deemed necessary to put them into the same level of opportunity as the wealthy one.

See how that equality of opportunity works? It’s not opening up a spot at that university for the poor, but ensuring that they have just as equal of an opportunity to apply, learn, and succeed as the wealthy. And without constantly worrying about things the wealthy - by virtue of their wealth - don’t have to worry about.

And honestly, this equality doesn’t end at application acceptance. It should really go all the way way back to birth, with the disadvantaged family getting UBI, psychological parent’s counselling, parental guidance, healthy school district funding, affordable housing, and a lot more. Because systemic inequality is generations in the making, anything applied to only the current generation is a band-aid approach to a broken leg problem.

But I digress.

you need only ask yourself for what reason men-only groups exclude women and for what reason women-only groups exclude men to understand why protecting and elevating women’s groups and dismantling misogynistic institutions are both valid

Yes, that’s called anti-male gender bigotry, and there is just no other way to spin that.

Why do men want men’s only gyms? Not to oppress women, that’s for sure. Because, to beg the question: WHAT WOMEN?? There are no women at that gym to be oppressed.

There are far more women’s only gyms than men’s only gyms - women should go there. That’s what those gyms are there for - to allow women a place to exercise without men.

And conversely, men want to go to a men’s only gym to get away from the distraction of women.

Seriously - stand in front of a men’s only gym, and interview the men going there. A significant number will cite a variation of this as their primary reason for switching.

They want the camaraderie of men in a place without distractions. They don’t want the gym thots doing thirst traps on Instagram. They don’t want to be interrupted in the middle of a set by some woman fondling their buttocks (I’ve actually seen this happen, with zero repercussion only because it was a guy who was the “victim”). They don’t want to deal with unjustified accusations of harassment and other assumed slights. They just want to work out in peace.

And if they cannot work out in peace, why should women?

As in, why call it “equality”, when it is most clearly nothing of the sort?

As someone who has struggled with various forms of WiFi for a good three decades, WiFi can just fuck all the way off to the ninth circle of hell.

Even the rolling gut on my house has Cat7 planned beside every knee-level power plug in every room, with at least one fiber drop in every room as a high-bandwidth option. And my security will be 100% PoE on an airgapped network.

Hardlining really is the only way to network.

I think the entire equity debate is confusing many of the inputs for outputs - which they are not. They are inputs, and are therefore equality-based, not equity based.

Take, for example, the old meme:

This meme is actually entirely wrong.

In the above meme, the left panel is an example of inequality. because the opportunity provided - the ability to see the game - is unequally provided across the three spectators. There is no equality of opportunity here, no equal ability to see the game due to the differing heights of the viewers despite the addition of boxes for all three.

It is the right panel which is the ideal example of equality - the ability to see the game. Here all three spectators have anny individual deficiencies that they cannot control and cannot overcome without outside help - their heights - made irrelevant by the equalizing effect of the boxes. All three heads are brought to equal and sufficient height for them to achieve equal opportunities to view the game.

Equity doesn’t even factor in here, because the enjoyment of the game is impossible to force across all spectators. To force equal outcomes - equal enjoyment of the game - would be monstrously inhuman and downright evil.

The issue isn’t safe spaces. I mean, in the context you used, you are entirely correct - society in general is largely a safe space for white men.

The issue here is actually men’s-only spaces. And it is in that context that the anti-male bigotry comes boiling out of the societal woodwork under the weaponized mantra of “misogyny”.

As in, women can have all the women’s-only spaces they want or need, because to force them open to both genders is “misogyny”. And honestly, I am willing to let them have that olive branch.

However, they then turn around and demand that all men’s-only spaces be opened up to women, because to keep them men’s-only is also, somehow, “misogyny”.

Sorry, but that’s not how that works. That isn’t how any of that works.

The single most effective tool for determining if bigotry exists is to change the terms in contention, and see if things read identically to before, or oppositely to before.

If the two examples read wildly differently from each other, then congrats - you found a bigoted pattern.

So when you hear about men’s only gyms being cracked open for women to attend, consider how wildly different it would read if it was a women’s only gym being forced to admit men. That sure reads wildly differently, doesn’t it? That’s because there is deep bigotry in having the former being forced through while the latter is being defended against.

And honestly… if true equality in treating everyone with the exact same rules is “misogynistic”, why call it equality in the first place? Just call it for what it truly is: anti-male gender bigotry.

Downvoted you for this stunning example of cultivated ignorance:

I think their claim is nonsense, grossly exaggerated at best.

One only needs to look at the scouts of America to see this in play.

Boy Scouts were sued to open their ranks to girls. That suit won, forcing them to open their org to girls.

Girl Scouts were then sued for the flip example - to open their ranks to boys. The suit was almost immediately thrown out for “misogyny”.

After that “victory”, the then-head of the Girl Scouts admitted in private and off the record that she would rather destroy the org in its entirety - essentially razing it to the ground and permanently locking up the name “Girl Scouts” from being used by anyone else - before admitting a single boy.

Now, because they have both boys and girls, the Boy Scouts have tried to drop “boy” from the name, to be called only “Scouts”. This precipitated another lawsuit from the Girl Scouts in that dropping that part of the name will only accelerate their own membership decline.

You literally cannot make this sh*t up.

Men’s-only spaces across the country, like private gyms, are being attacked from all sides on the claim that their very existence is “misogynistic”, and yet service-identical women’s-only spaces in the same city are immune from those same “rules” under the claim that any attempt to apply those same rules to them is also “misogynistic”.

One of the best ways to uncover bigotry is to flip the term in contention and see if it reads any different after that from before. If it does, you’ve found a bigoted pattern in play.

True equality reads identically regardless of how the term in contention is flipped.

Edit:

I have zero issue with women’s only spaces. They are needed. But FFS you cannot eat your cake, and have it, too.

Real equality can only be achieved by applying the same rules equally. If women are to be allowed to have their own women’s-only spaces, men must also be allowed to have their own men’s-only spaces.

Hence the term, equality. Because if things aren’t equal, why even use that word? You might as well call it for what it truly is - anti-male gender bigotry.

Power toys has the enhanced version, which is what I need due to six monitors. Yup, that cursor gets lost a lot.

Technically the Falcon is much more like an 18-wheeler than a van. It is a cargo pusher/hauler, by design.

But still, the comparison is apt.

Abolish all patents and copyrights, everywhere, except for a creator’s ability to assert “I made this”.

Against Intellectual Monopoly

PowerPC performed much better and made design changes that made much more sense long-term.

There were also volume production issues and architecture advancement issues.

Essentially, they couldn’t get volume guarantees and they were at the mercy of a much slower improvement cycle than they would have liked.

PowerPC was absolutely an excellent top-tier processor, and the current Power11 line absolutely smokes anything else out there from either Intel or AMD, at the cost of being 100-200× more expensive. Like, think $30,000 USD for a single entry-level workstation, or $70,000 USD for the high-end one.

Windows 11 refusing to install on hardware it can absolutely run on.

RUFUS is not only a great tool with which to build your USB installer (it has an option to download the correct and latest ISO directly from Microsoft), but in the subsequent steps it also asks if you want to modify the installer in some pretty useful ways. Such as bypassing a Microsoft account in favour of a local account, and neutering some of the more recent requirements. IIRC the TPM 2.0 requirement can still be nerfed.