I think you’re absolutely right.

The announcement of dropping SMS at the time gave those vibes. They were basically saying to users “we know what’s good for ypu better than you do”.

It was a huge strategic misstep. SMS was the perfect route to get people to use Signal - you’d start with SMS conversations and then as people joined signal conversations could switch to secure chat. Now its very hard to persuade people to switch to Signal.

Now google has used the same trick to push its own messaging standard RCS.

Its been a gradual decline over many years. I’d say the tipping point was Microsoft Edge or Windows 10 itself - that’s around the time the explicit attempts to “monetise” users started.

When Windows went “free” the focus became how to extract as much money per user all the time, so the advertising and edge based spying / data harvesting stepped up a gear.

Its not a surprise looking back - the drive for all these companies with stock holders is “growth”. That really means growth in the share price which means growth in revenue or profits amongst other tricks. Everytime a new generation of managers comes through they scrape the barrel for ideas and things get worse and worse.

I only use windows at work now; I’ve migrated all my devices to Linux (desktpp, laptop, media PC)

So is the issue your co workers or is really that it bothers you so much?

Maybe the real thing here is you need to learn how to let the crazy and annoying wash over you. Because at the moment you’re letting that leak into your personal time - you’re thinking about things that are annoying you when really, why should they?

They’re “winning” not because they annoyed you at work, but because you’re letting it bother you when you’re not at work.

There are skills in being able to ignore things that annoy you, or learning to let things go or even compartmentalising parts of your life.

I do - there are old sites that have gone off line that I search the Way Back Machine to look at. There are also lots of archived files available that I’ve used more than once (Amiga files for example, Usenet archives and even old magazines).

It’s not really a day-to-day tool for everyone, but when you need it it’s irreplaceable.

Well planned obsolescence is a good thing for the content maker - the customer has to buy it again if they like it. The ultimate DRM?

So you kind of miss the obvious long term application in this scenario: buy a totally realistic dildo clone of my penis, buy a clone of my boobs etc. A step beyond just meat but the more realistic application of this technology in the sex world.

I think they’ll be eating their favourite onlyfans creators, just not in the way you’re suggesting.

Then I’d definitely set up a test system in a VM on your own PC (I.e. not the actual server machines). Even if you don’t want to use Docker, you can set up a complete version of your new server and practice deploying Jellyfin and Plex, and then test accessing it “remotely” to manage it. You can then decide whether switching away from Win11 is worth it.

If you’re not familiar with the process of setting up a linux server then I’d actually suggest Debian instead of OpenSuSe. Looking at the Jellyfin guide for example it specifically covers the steps for installing directly onto a Debian host (while OpenSuSE set up means using the Fedora RPM guide). There are also straight forward guides for setting up a Debian server.

Personally I’m not a fan of Ubuntu (because of Canonical and Snap etc) but there may also be a good choice just because there are so many guides out there for setting up Ubuntu server.

Docker is pretty easy to use, and is easy to play with either on your own system (linux or windows) or in VM guest system. The learning curve isn’t that high and Jellyfin for example has a clear set up guide for docker on their wiki.

But radarr, sonarr etc can be installed directly within linux without docker. The Servarr wiki (that these projects use officially to share information as they’re so similar) has lots of straight forward guides for set up on Linux, Windows, Mac etc as well as Docker.

I have a Linux guest VM set up with a Radarr, Sonarr etc set up, VPN and torrent set up. It was easy to do and means its network activity is all securely contained away from my host system. The tools let me set naming rules and file preferences. The library is a shared n folder in my host system, and that is included in my Jellyfin library. So all I have to do is subscribe to something i am interested in and it will just appear in my library once downloaded. The servarr tools are extremely convenient and worth looking at if you’re adding to that 30tb library over time.

OpenSuSE is a good distro with nice tools like Yast that have a decent CLI interface, and has server releases. The leap edition is stable but relatively up to date.

But there are lots of viable alternatives, and if you’re going to use Docker then the host distro is probably not as important as you think.

Simplest route may be to set up a demo server within a VM and see which one chimes the most with your style of use and maintenance. You could have a functioning demo server with docker and deploy both jellyfin and Plex in 20mins.

Oxford University is older than calculus.

Unfortunately for many, even in this day and age, there is not much choice. I main linux but also keep Windows on my PC as there are still tines when something will only work in Windows. Usually work related or gaming (VR in particular for me) and in fairness its increasingly rare.

Many other users aren’t motivated to change. For Microsoft, its a bit like boiling a frog - if you turn up the heat slowly the frog just puts up with it. That’s what Microsoft is doing to its customers - a slow constant enshittification, seeing what it can get away with. Try something and it causes outrage? Don’t worry, just undo it and just try again in a few years! Many are already used to no privacy and being sold as a commodity that they don’t even question it happening on their own personal computer.

As a kid Amiga Workbench was my first desktop environment, and then later Win 3.11 in MS DOS.

I remember my dad toying with Linux but can’t remember which one (he did settle on SuSE though I recall). My first linux distros was Ubuntu.

People are still using twitter? Why?

Most people who are using TRT don’t need to use it so be very dubious about what you’re reading on the Internet. Testosterone is unfortunately abused. People are taking testosterone as a performance enhancer and a quick fix to get what they want. Look up “anabolic steroid abuse” or misuse if you want to see the side effects and problems with inappropriate use. Example include aggressive behaviour, mood swings, paranoia, cardiovascular effects that can cause heart attacks or stroke, kidney problems, infertility and small testicles. This is when you use extra testosterone on top of normal levels of testosterone.

Your case is very different and a lot of what you see online does not apply. In your case you have low testosterone - that is an actual medical condition and you’re being prescribed testosterone to get up to normal levels. Having low testosterone can delay puberty, lead to low muscle mass, lead to reduced growth of the penis and testes, and lead to low sex drive, low energy, and long term infertity, erectile dysfunction and even osteoporosis.

If you’ve had a blood test showing you have low testosterone and are under a decent doctor who is prescribing this and monitoring it then you should follow their advice. You have a medical condition that should be treated for your benefit and quality of life. All the quackery from people who self medicate and abuse testosterone does not apply.

You need to decide what you want from your life. It is not your responsibility to “fix” Israel. If you feel truly passionate about it then go for it.

But if you’re worried about this out of a vague sense of guilt or responsibility then park it. You get one life to live - don’t waste it doing something your don’t want to do or are not passionate about. Live a good life and strive for happiness, and try to be kind and good to those you meet on the journey - that is all that can be asked of anyone.

Yes and no.

Apple used to be something of a design innovator which the rest of the market would follow. It has this reputation for creating product categories that didn’t exist. That’s not quite true and is rewriting history, what it was good at was design.

What it did was take a product and design a high quality cutting edge of that and make bank. It started with Mp3 players - there were many of them before the iPod but the iPod did very well because it was a good design with some nice features. Then it made the iPod Touch - which again wasn’t the first but was by far the best and really a mini ipad.

The iPhone wasn’t the first touch screen phone, but it was a huge leap in usability and power and they did extremely well out of that. The ipad wasn’t the first tablet but again it was a huge leap in usability and design and they did very well. The imac and later mac books were attractive designs rather than innovative.

Now there isn’t really any areas left for them to work that strategy on. The Mp3 player, the phone, the ipad - they were obvious product categories that existed but were far away from what they could be.

VR is the remaining obvious tech frontier - but the difference is the technology isn’t quite there yet. It’s obvious what the ultimate VR device should be - a light weight, high fidelity unit that immersed you. Other manufacturers are either making PC tethered devices with high fidelity or mobile devices with low fidelity,as the tech isn’t quite economical or right for the sweet spot.

Apple Vision Pro is a gamble on trying to secure that sweet spot. It’s not intended to do well currently, it’s intended to build up the manufacturing supply chain which should bring down the cost over time. Vision 2 or 3 will what they’re hoping takes off. It’s a new spin on their old strategy.

Most of what Apple does now though is just release fresh spins of its current products. They don’t innovate but it’s hard to when there isn’t much left to improve on those product categories. All they can do is make the devices more powerful and lighter, and compete with companies who have now learned all the tricks and offer similar products for cheaper.

Vision may or may not win the VR wars. Otherwise there isn’t really much else for Apple to go in consumer electronics. Now it is focused on “services” - selling apps, selling media - and organically growing it’s user base. Big leaps in consumer electronics probably won’t come until there is a big innovation in battery technology - that’s the holy grail of tech at the moment.

Yeah and to be fair 400-450k is still in the realm of $1.4bn in revenue. That’s pretty good for a new product in year 1 (and presumably the device is at least marginally profitable at the high price - if not it’s a gamble on the future). And sales like that for something that is basically an expensive proof of concept is pretty impressive.

So all our evidence about life is from a sample of 1: 1 planet and it’s development. Everything else is extrapolated from that. We don’t know what rates of evolution should be or could be.

Also in terms of civilizations leaving junk everywhere, that is potentially true. But we also only have a sample of 1: 1 planet and 1 solar system which we have barely scratched the surface of.

The absence of evidence is not evidence in itself. We will have to go out in to the universe to see what is there.

In terms of travel to other systems - in theory self replicating ships could spread across the galaxy to every system in about 500 thousand years at sublight speed. Space travel is not doable in a humans life time, but it is doable on the scale of a stable civilizations efforts to spread into the galaxy.

There are also theoretical ways to travel faster than life. Whether they are pure fantasy or potential science only time will tell. We still can’t even detect much of the universe, let alone begin to manipulate it.

We simply know too little to know what is going on in the galaxy. To say “there is nobody out there” is just a possibility, not a certainty.

Maybe. There are so many possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox.

• Radio signals may just become too incoherent at great distances that we cannot recognise meaning from noise. The evidence is too hard to detect.
• Alien civilizations that are more advanced than us, could be using energy and communication methods we haven’t even thought to try to detect yet. We’re looking for the wrong evidence.
• advanced technology for communication, travel and energy could also be much more efficient - maybe there is nothing to detect. There is no evidence to find sitting on earth.
• in theory a civilization travelling at sub light speed could cplonize the galaxy with self replicating machines in 0.5 million years. Where are they? Well what if we ourselves are the product? Life on earth seeded from elsewhere? We are the evidence?
• maybe they’re around us in space but not interested in us - we’re ants to them.
• maybe they’re around us in space but don’t want to contaminate us, letting us reach them when we’re ready.they are hiding form us.
• maybe space is vastly more dangerous than we can comprehend and civilizations keep quiet to avoid predator species - the dark forest theory
• maybe life is extremely rare and spread out, and we are an aborrhation- the great filter

The Fermi Paradox is an interesting question, but it is not an answer in itself.

I’ve got plenty of flat pack furniture and never had to use wood glue.

If you buy quality flat pack you will get well designed and engineered furniture. The bad reputation comes from cheap tat, often mass produced in China.

Wood glue negates one of the big benefits of flat pack - to take the furniture apart and move it at any point in the future.

I’ve also come across shoddily built flat pack furniture when I was renting when younger and I always found the same problem - a failure to tighten screws. Wobbly bits of furniture became functional afterwards.

I remember my mum built a flat pack computer table when I was a kid and it wobbled all over. She lamented how poor flat pack furniture was. I got fed up of the wobble when I was a teenager and had a look - every single screw was not tightened. It took 10mins to sort and the thing never wobbled again.

I’ve fixed wobbly desks, wardrobes, shelving units - all with just a screwdriver.

Number one tip for flat pack furniture: tighten the screws. And number 2, get an electric screwdriver.