I always like to bring up that the Republican Party of Texas, I think in 2012, made it an explicit part of their platform to oppose teaching critical thinking because it undermines parental authority.

Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Thanks for the tip! In the short term, I’m content to just not connect it, but I definitely want to look into blocking it just to prevent a repeat with guests. It’s also super handy to know that I can connect it to the local network without connecting it to the broader internet, in case I decide to do some (self-hosted) home automation.

I’m suffering for that right now. Sony Bravia.

Firstly, I didn’t want to buy a smart TV, but that’s pretty much all that’s sold anymore. I also didn’t intend to connect it to the internet, but a well-meaning guest wanted to watch TV at night, and thought he was troubleshooting, not realizing he was in the TV menu and not the streaming box.

The TV updated, and IMMEDIATELY got worse. Formerly, if I turned it on, it would go straight to the streaming box. Great! As shitty updates do, it changed the settings, and would instead open to the TV’s menu, so it could advertise streaming services. It also forgot that the TV input is HDMI 1. It became strictly worse, in the rare edge case of every fucking time you turn it on.

I don’t trust it to not automatically connect, or to forget my login credentials, so I go to do a factory reset. It’s literally an option in a menu. The TV gets stuck in a boot loop. Talking to support, they think it broke the mainboard. A factory reset bricked the TV.

It’s under warranty, but this is fucking crazy. NEVER connect your TV directly to the internet.

Sorry, this is the first I’ve heard of Palantir Gotham.

Jesus Christ, I hate media-illiterate nerds. Batman, famously, DOESN’T TRUST COPS!

I’m on EndeavourOS, which like CachyOS, is a derivative based on Arch. They smooth over a couple of the things that make Arch difficult: the installation, and initial packages.

Part of what makes Arch difficult is that it updates its repositories very quickly. That’s good in many ways, because you get new features and new drivers more quickly, but sometimes things are buggy or break. From what I’ve heard, it’s honesty fairly rare nowadays, but it’s still a best practice to check archlinux.org before proceeding with a major update.

Anyway, I’m in a very similar boat. I’ve bounced off of Linux for various reasons in the past, but between Linux getting better and Windows getting worse, Linux is the “just works” option for me. It’s not perfect, but any snags I’ve had have been smaller, less frequent, and more often fixable.

Oh yeah, I remember hitting that snag in an earlier attempt. I managed to do it, but it was definitely a point where Windows worked more easily than Linux. Glad to hear it’s gotten easier!

I just made the switch and probably for good this time, and Steam just working was a HUGE moment for me. I opened up a guide thinking I’d need it, but I just downloaded Steam, didn’t change any settings, and could start playing.

At this point, Linux is more of a “just works” experience than Windows 11 was.

That sucks, I’m sorry. I’ve been frustrated by OneDrive, but thankfully not to nearly the same extent.

Firstly, I did discover that it’s not a setting you can just turn off, because that will suddenly remove all the personal files and folders that were backed up, until you turn it back on. I knew I could work around it, but dragged my feet. Still, it was the first big push that eventually convinced me to use Linux.

Secondly… it’ll also do the inverse. I play Tabletop Simulator with my friends, and it backs up files to a OneDrive-covered folder. It quickly took up too much space, and to avoid all the warning signs designed to irritate me into subscribing for more storage, I tried to delete it. Turns out, that doesn’t work, because OneDrive will assume it was an error and put those files back, and maintaining all those super helpful warnings about storage space.

So, whether you want to keep a file or get rid of it, don’t worry, OneDrive can and will find a way to fuck it up.

Fun fact: a full majority of Supreme Court justices were nominated by presidents who were inaugurated despite losing the popular vote!

Not only did he not apologize, he doubled down with a string of extremely bad Nazi puns.

IIRC, even the ADL criticized it, which is hilarious, because it was RIGHT after they burned a ton of what credibility they had left to defend him.

It’s about PROTECTING WOMEN! And if I have to hurt a bunch of women to protect them from hypothetical scenarios I made up to demonize trans people, so be it!

I feel like a large majority of AI problems are really just systemic economic problems below the surface. Not all, but most.

It’s especially sticky because “Men’s Rights” is a bait-and-switch, ripping off “Men’s Liberation.”

Men’s Liberation is associated with feminist movements, because patriarchy hurts everyone. That’s not to equivocate between the extents to which men and women suffer under it (or any group under systemic bigotry), but liberation and egalitarianism would help us all.

So Men’s Rights does the thing where it appeals to people with genuine grievances, but offers them a bullshit solution that benefits grifters and people in power. It’s not this systemic problem, it’s this group of people, and if only we could deal with them, everything would magically fix itself. In this case, “It’s not patriarchy, it’s not capitalism, it’s feminists, and women in general. If only we could get them back in their place, your life would be back on track. So vote for me/sign up for my course…”

So, bringing up the ways in which men also suffer under sexism can kick up some dirt to muddy the waters, intentionally or not. Some will be bad faith actors who just want to shit on feminism. Others will be taking the feminist side on this. And those in the middle, who see things turn toxic, can go any way—but if they stay neutral, or especially move right, then the reactionaries gain some ground.

So I don’t know what’s in OP’s heart. But, at least from way too many fights online, I’ve found that the best course of action is to assume good faith, and give reactionaries enough rope to hang themselves. They don’t have the better ideas, and they don’t have the better plans, but they’re good at shit-flinging. If you just make a good case, they tend to unmask pretty quickly and fall apart. There’s no point trying to convince a die-hard bigot, but you can play to the audience by just making the better case and helping bigots embarrass themselves.

In my opinion, at least, for whatever that’s worth. Sorry for the rambling!

Oh yeah, I already have a Chromecast. I know this is a post about Roku specifically, but it was just another example of enshittification getting me to finally set up my own system. It was honestly the HBO Max disaster that got me started.

Good to know about App Only Mode, though! So far the Chromecast interface doesn’t bother me, but it’s good to know there’s a ripcord I can pull if it gets worse (unless they take that away).

I’ve been doing some research for the last few days on setting up a home server/NAS. If anyone’s going to ruin my entertainment, it’s going to be ME

It’s kind of funny how the enshittification of YouTube (and Google searches) is so bad, and so widely recognized, that YouTube giving the results you asked for—IF you’re having a medical emergency—is considered newsworthy.

Yeah. I also thought that the tunnels were too small for a subway (because one of The Boring Company’s “innovations” is to drive costs down by digging smaller, shittier, and more dangerous tunnels using existing technology). However, there are subways in London that have even slightly smaller tunnels. You could absolutely lay down some tracks in there and have a functional subway. Giving it to Tesla to run a taxi lane for who knows how long was just a choice.

Also, from what I found out, the Loop is going to continue to fuck over the residents, because the expansions are going to have WAY higher fares. I think right now, the Loop is $4.50 for a day pass. As a point of comparison, a New York subway ticket is $2.90, so one round trip would be more expensive than a day pass. That makes the Loop sound great! …until you realize the prices are kept artificially low to make it seem that way. Future plans for Loop service would cost upwards of $12 a ride outside of the convention center and resorts.

Also, as an aside, something I don’t think gets brought up enough is that the Loop proves that Tesla’s self-driving cars are a scam. Even on a close course, indoors, built to whatever specs Tesla could possibly want, the cars need human drivers.

I have to admit I was kind of impressed seeing the way two scams worked together: the Hyperloop, and the Loop. People genuinely thought they were related projects because of the name and, I guess, the tunnels. So the Hyperloop made the Loop sound more exciting than it really was, and the Loop made it seem like there was progress towards the Hyperloop.

Of course, in reality, the Loop is just a shitty cab tunnel designed to financially and physically block local mass transit projects, while the Hyperloop is just bullshit vaporware designed to financially and politically block intercity mass transit projects.

You make it sound like they were losing because they pulled advertising from Twitter instead of… practically every other decision they make.