You at least could in the past, I haven’t had to do it in a while. Seems like the command would just be “dmidecode”, with grep if you’re looking to automate it

The problem is that this isn’t like Microsoft Office > LibreOffice/OnlyOffice/whatever. You’re not on Facebook for Facebook, you’re on Facebook for the people there. It’s why I have a lot of issues getting off of YouTube. I’m not on YouTube because their interface is nice, I’m on YouTube because the people I want to watch don’t post shit elsewhere. It’s a cycle, to get users we need stuff, and for stuff we need creators, and for creators we need users. When it comes to online platforms we don’t need an alternative to YouTube, we need an alternative to Markiplier, which is harder to come up with.

If you can get your friends, and family onto Friendica that would help quite a bit. The problem is that using a new server is hard for the end user (I would know, all of my fediverse presence is on servers I host), and telling someone “Use Friendica” is like telling someone to “Use email”. Get a Friendica/Mastodon/Whatever server, and keep it in your back pocket. Give them a link to that server, not to Friendica/Mastodon/Whatever as a whole.

Admittedly I don’t know how hard it is to stop using Facebook because I stopped using Facebook right after they took away the chronological timeline, and stopped using Messenger a few years ago. But spending some time to get a timeline together that you can boost will help any new users you recruit. Crucially, to promote viable alternatives, you need to be part of the viable alternatives, otherwise you’re just someone telling someone to jump into something new with 0 guidance, which is a good way to have them leave.

I’ve heard of none of this, lemme search something real quick…

Wait Build a Rocket Boy is the name of the studio???

Omarchy is a Linux distro developed by the guy this article is about.

We have sellers like Amazon removing items from their store, which are then fully unavailable to the consumer. They also allow people who have shit internet to be able to play games. I knew someone in college who tried installing Terraria and got an ETA of ~12 hours.

Lots of people are also mad about DRM, it’s just also an older argument, so less new. Also with physical media DRM will inevitably be cracked, so it’s less of a forever barrier than not being able to own the game on disc.

It also affects people who don’t care about DRM. Collectors can’t get games for their shelf anymore. You can’t sell a game you’ve played to get back some of the cash. You can’t tell friends to look at your shelf to see what games you have, which isn’t that bad with one console, but if you have all 3 of the major ones you suddenly have to boot up 3 consoles instead of looking at one shelf.

Also, just human psychology: We hate change. DRM has been in games for longer than a lot of gamers have been alive, discs disappearing just happened.

Typically it is by doing something else because they’re mimicking what an adult did to them. Usually it’s younger kids (under 7-8) who mimic like that.

Ahh, neat, didn’t know that!

If you do, adding the line ‘FEATURES=“getbinpkg”’ to your make.conf will automatically make it search for binary packages that match your USE flags, and they do pick ones that are pretty sensible for the binaries, so it’s very likely. I think I have maybe 3-4 packages that have binaries that I can’t use because of my flags, and they’re all pretty quick to install.

Not sure how much the internet will affect it, I’ve only tested it on my current network, which is pretty fast

I’d be on board if “Sex offender” only included the people that everyone seems to think it includes. However it also includes people who peed in public while drunk, people who turned to prostitution when they fell on hard times, and children who were victims themselves.

Only thing that will make both sides happy is banning them entirely, which I am 100% in favor of

(Seriously, though, look up what gets classed as a sexual offence in your area. It’s not just child molestation, and sexual assault.)

I have basically every URL our TV automatically pings blocked at this point. It phones home every 10-30 seconds whether they’re off or on. I think when we get a new TV we’re looking for a dumb TV

Gentoo is on the Latitude; it’s slightly more powerful, but it’s still an eight year old laptop. The big thing that’s cut down on compile time is using binary packages by default, only compiling when I either need to because my USE flags are different, or because there’s no binary package available. I don’t have that many packages installed that take hours/days (and I do mean days, I gave up on the source package for qtwebengine after 3 days of compiling) anymore. Average update takes maybe 30 minutes now, updating weekly.

For a more direct comparison: Same PC, installed Gentoo twice (I managed to bork my install), the source install took 3 days to actually get a GUI, binary install took 3 hours, and there is essentially no difference

I will also say: You can absolutely use your computer while the upgrades are going. Gaming won’t be great, but doing office/coding stuff, and watching videos is usually fine

Admittedly a lot of my audio stuff is either wireless or built-in now. Either laptop speakers, or bone conduction headphones since I want to hear what’s happening around me when I’m walking on the roadside. Not clear on what you mean by pre-enshittification tech, but here’s the stuff people either need explained, or look at me weird for:

• Gentoo linux
• FreeBSD
• Thinkpad T430
• GrapheneOS (this one’s weird to me because it feels almost exactly like stock android?)
• A lot of my games are from itch.io for the same reason you listed for GOG, though I do use steam a lot too.
• My files are synced through syncthing between 4 locations, depending on what’s getting synced
• The fediverse in general
• Having my own website? This one confuses me because you’d think that’d be a bit more normal because of the SquareSpace ads, but nope. The idea of just… having your own website is weird to people
• The Linux terminal. I occasionally go to the library and write books in a TTY, it’s a little funny seeing people react.
• Emacs
• Pick any terminal application. Ranger, w3m, cmus, cava, etc etc.
• I occasionally play MUDs/MUSHes
• Browser games that are text/image based. The ones I’m playing now are all 20+ years old, so well pre-enshittification.
• Honestly I’ve had people think it’s weird that I download my music to play locally, even though it’s through a phone app with a relatively modern interface.

We’ll be moving into an owned home soon, and I have some plans for tech, and non-tech stuff. Can’t wait to see how many comments we get about having awnings in 2026.

We do (in the USA) have a legal framework for this already? There are at least a handful of industries where, if it is found that they’ve mischarged, they do have to provide a refund.

Also the thing that annoys me the most is: They didn’t pay the tarrifs, the consumers did. Those price changes were 100% passed onto consumers, and it should be consumers of those products seeing the refunds. If they can prove that they lost revenue based on the price hikes, sure, give some recompense, but they shouldn’t be getting refunds on something they effectively didn’t spend money on

If you want something similar to WordPress, but serves webpages like Hugo, Publii is also nice from what I’ve heard. Has a GUI editor, but makes static files that you just drop on a server

I kinda think that if MS tried Palladium today, they could succeed. Their power grab just came too early.

Honestly it’s that way with a lot of tech from back then. Bonzi Buddy got sued into bankruptcy for doing less than Facebook

Arch’s recent stance on age verification, and specifically how they said it, has made me switch off of Arch for good, which is… Unfortunate, since it was the first distro I truly loved. Gentoo is what I use now, but that’s a bit farther down the line. I don’t know a good rolling release distro that’s not super inconvenient, unfortunately.

Brave is… Not great. Bad, even. I prefer Vivaldi for my Chromium fork. Mullvad browser for my Firefox fork (I also just. Refuse to use Firefox proper anymore because of their AUP). Note that one of Mullvad’s CEOs donated to a Swedish far right party, so… Make that decision how you will. It’s a free browser, so… Meh.

My default search engine is Wikipedia. When I want to use a general search engine, order of operations is Marginalia, then Startpage, but SearXNG is a good one. I just found it a bit more inconsistent.

Tuta’s a good provider, I just needed a client because I don’t check my email otherwise. I’m on mailbox.org now because of that. They’re cheaper, and private email is kind of a farce anyway. Also mailbox is cheaper, assuming Tuta doesn’t have a free plan now. Given you said you’re not using paid apps, they might?

Element/Element X on mobile both seem to be missing that, and I’m predominantly on mobile for… Most chat apps now. Only exception is I do usually do discord voice calls on desktop because of push to talk. Do you know of any mobile clients that’ll do that?