My non Linux savvy spouse is currently dual booting Linux Mint because Windows has become so frustrating to use.

Mint isn’t perfect. We’ve run into a few bugs and shortcomings. But there’s a big difference between dealing with genuine issues in an OS and using one that feels actively hostile and designed to exploit the user.

If both experiences can be frustrating, why choose the one that’s frustrating by design (unless you absolutely have to) ?

“Sorry Billy, you need to get your X Windows environment up or you’re just not getting YouTube on here. Look at your younger brother, he’s already experimenting with Wayland. I’m very disappointed in you Billy.”

I think this is one of the biggest missed opportunities in education.

We put “technology” in front of students, but mostly in the form of locked-down devices, prescribed apps, and step-by-step workflows. That teaches compliance, not understanding.

There’s a huge difference between using software and understanding how it works, how to break it, fix it, or build your own.

Basic exposure to things like Linux, hardware setup, networking, and programming would give kids agency instead of just familiarity. Even if they don’t pursue tech careers, they’d come out far more capable of navigating (and questioning) the systems around them.

Digital safety is a big one. Not just “don’t click bad links” but actual operational awareness: privacy, tracking, permissions, data ownership. The stuff that matters in reality.

I get that there are constraints like funding, vendor lock-in, teacher workload, curriculum pressure. But the current model feels like it’s optimised to produce competent consumer users of systems, not people who can shape them.

Feels like a massive wasted opportunity.

I been saying for years. Millennials will be the first generation where the expected life span will go down. And that’s due to generational inequality. Our parents are literally killing us.

I hope when he gives his lecture, the students egg him on.

And when I say egg him on… I mean throw. At. And a large quantity of.

1980s tech CPU

So it can already run Wolfenstein and Linux…

The story of the modern PC is about hobbyist, in my opinion. It was a bunch of tech guys slapping things together, figuring it out as they went and cowboy stuff like writing specifications on the plane on the way to a conference. I understand what you’re saying about the limitations around design and production… but these things aren’t impossible just difficult.

Maybe a new discovery in physics or transistor manufacturing will be the key to this new era. Or a bunch of things like that adding up over time until one weirdo figures it out and changes the world.

It’s the Blue Angel!

The real tech revolution won’t be until we can make our own hardware ; enthusiast designed and made processors and semiconductors using consumer grade tools, similar to how you could make your own metal chains out of tools at the hardware store. Until then we’ll be beholden to the billionaire class to grant us access. What I’m saying is we need to make it cheaper and easier to make computers in the first place. No amount software is gonna save you if you don’t have independent hardware.

Calling it now, it’s more likely the fed will be broken up and progressive states will join the EU.

Not saying it will happen. Just that it’s more likely than the US suddenly and comprehensively doing the right thing.

I pity any country that is slugged with buying food from the US. For a country obsessed with meat, they sure are bad at producing any worth a damn.

You’re right it’s not a dictatorship like North Korea, but it’s elections are also not as clean and fair as other modern democracies.

The same ruling party has dominated since independence, and maintained structural imbalance suppressing the ability for any meaningful opposition to rise.

While leadership in Singapore isn’t hereditary, the nation has been guided by a very small political elite originating from Lee Kuan Yew.

Singapore loves to pretend it’s a modern country with it’s gardens and fancy buildings.

But beneath the surface is an overworked population ruled by a family dictatorship.

Where does the law stand there? No one knows.

Be even worse in a few years when the paltry votes they scrounged up with this move are long forgotten and the law continues to punish and hurt people for literally no justifiable reason.

It’s also illegal in Australia… but in practise the “appearance” of being underage is very dubious and destructive.

According to the law, all women with a certain breast size are pretending to be minors.

I’m shocked! Shocked I say!

Welll, not that shocked.

greydwarves

They’re annoying until you need their eyes to make a portal network…

Sigh, TPTB are just intent on ruining The Expanse for us aren’t they?

IDF could collapse

Don’t threaten me with a good time…

Now I’m imagining Home Alone, Sam Altman and Jensen Huang are breaking into people’s homes to tell them about how good AI is…

That is essentially how AI news headlines feel nowadays. And about how well their attempts to set the narrative lands with a public that is over it.

Imagine if you pirated a bunch of movies, and then went to the cinema and bragged about it. That’s what Altman is doing there.