They try to do it all the time, but there is actually some push-back from the law - google recently lost an anti-trust case, the eu passed laws to protect “side-loading”, etc. This new legislation gives them a legal backing. “Oh no, I’m sorry you can’t get your app store working on Android. We aren’t stopping side-loading or other app markets, we are just complying with the legal age-verification requirements”.

They already know the age of their users… They bloody well know. They backed that bill because it gives them a legal leg to bully out smaller 3rd parties and solidify their respective monopolies.

The entirety of what little remains of independent media discovered the apparent undiscoverable over a month before our Tech-corp’s AI super-intelligence overlords. Amazing.

It requires every Operating System and “App Store” to know the user’s age. It requires every piece of software installed to receive the age-range token. It could be catastrophically bad for the open source community - the bill does nothing to define how these tokens are communicated and received. The largest players in the industry can use their market share to exert control over how it happens and bully anyone that doesn’t get on board. For example, Google could tie it to the Play Integrity/Services and effectively kill 3rd party roms and possibly even open source app stores like fdroid, or all side-loading entirely if it was tied into the Play Store enough.

The bill isn’t specifically a privacy dystopian nightmare, but it is still a dystopian nightmare. We need the government and mega-corps to have less influence and control over our devices, this gives them more.

I’m pretty sure I watched some random youtuber’s video explaining how circular this shit is nearly a month ago… I guess it’s 2025, so human observations doesn’t matter, what matters is “what does the AI think”.

The CA bill is also dystopian nightmare fuel… The US isn’t going to build an enormous firewall like other countries have, we are just going to pass a bunch of stupid laws and threaten companies to block our citizens from access instead. Put the burden of building the wall on someone else, the modern American Way™!

An entire generation of fuck-wad parents that just gave their kid a tablet and zero supervision instead of actually raising them are now using their failings as an excuse to control the population; control their devices, control their habits, control their knowledge, and control their thoughts.

I’ve mostly been using https://alexandrite.app/ on both PC and mobile. I have Jerboa installed as well as back-up but only occasionally use it.

They are done wrong a lot in my experience, unfortunately.

Honestly, just being less hostile to Linux and not purposefully pushing out updates that break it under wine/proton would be great…

AppImage is still kinda trash though.

If it’s a company computer, it is probably safest to let the company manage it. If it is your personal computer, your job shouldn’t be requiring you to install anything on it.

This is pretty accurate. Wine (and really Proton) have gotten very good recently. Most software that isn’t actively hostile to Linux users will work.

Always a good idea to check the CO detectors, just in case.

I apparently do, and it had 2FA setup via sms… To a number I don’t have anymore… I guess it’s time to contact support, lol. :(

I played the original Guild Wars and loved it, although I never got particularly far into it… Have no idea how to prove that I bought it though… Maybe I have an account with them already? I’m excited to possibly try it out again though, see how my nostalgia of it holds up.

I do not think the game they played in The Guild was anything like the original Guild Wars. I always got the gist it was more like WoW.

Disclaimer: this is very US centric information.

I have yet to see laundry that has to be connected to internet to work - there are several that can be connected, but no one can really answer why a consumer would want to (even the mfr reps kinda just stutter and mumble about vague “convenience” features). I wouldn’t say laundry is heavily spying on us… yet…

I wouldn’t buy whirlpool family because it all feels incredibly cheap and breaks easy. They have service techs almost everywhere, but their part supply is garbage so you are often waiting on parts. LG service is nearly non-existent. If you live in a big city they might have one or two techs that they can send out, but that’s it. They are better on parts, but they very rarely admit the appliance is FUBAR and replace it.

Speed Queen makes absolute units. Like, you could probably drop it down a flight of stairs and then hook it up and run a cycle. BUT, they come with downsides - mainly price point and capacity, but they are also very hard on clothes, and the TR series wash cycle sucks because the agitator is fixed to the tub (this design has been tried so many times and sucks every time) - the TC wash cycle is fine.

Samsung units are very similar to LG units, but their service is generally better - much more parts in stock in the US already so fixing it when it breaks is usually pretty quick. They don’t have a great service network, but they are quick to admit they can’t get a tech out and just offer replacements.

Frigidaire/Electrolux units are “fine”. They generally also have service everywhere and reasonably part supply chains, but they aren’t built fool-proof.

Cheap GE units are probably the place to be for cheap units, they aren’t built as cheaply as the whirlpool family typically, service is generally decent. They still aren’t build to last more than 7-10-ish years. Most appliance companies in the US realized their average customer was buying new every 5-7 years anyway due to moving or remodeling. That meant building them to last considerably longer than that means they are building them to be used by the second hand market. Similar to the gaming industry in the last several years, they don’t want that because they don’t make money on that. Save money during production, make a worse product, more sales/profit.

I feel like this post is already too long… I’ve been working with appliances both repairs and sales for about 12 years now. If people have questions I’m happy to answer :P

None of those are particularly long-lasting, and definitely not built well. 4 out of 5 of their “best” are all whirlpool family appliances, which have been getting so cheaply built in the last few years that they feel flimsy. The list is basically an ad for whirlpool.

Winboat is apparently working on and close to “hardware accelerated graphics”. I haven’t tried Photoshop with it, as I never learned Photoshop, but it is one of the flagship programs they claim works well by default. It likely won’t get to the point of being an option for gaming (KAC wouldn’t work anyway as they all flag VMs, so that feels like a moot point) without setting up GPU pass-through, but I can’t imagine those programs need full bare-metal access to a GPU to work well?

Worth keeping an eye on anyway :)

1. Winboat or Winapps - Both will let you use Adobe programs in linux pretty well with a sandboxed vm. Getting better every day. That is assuming you can’t get done what you need on Open Source software alternatives - some are really good, others are a bit of a let down.

2. If you are fully on board with Kernal Anti-Cheat, then you have already given up on actually owning and controlling your PC. That said, there has been talk recently by windows about kicking 3rd parties out of the Kernal, so KAC might actually die soon (we can only pray).

3. I’d be curious to know what you are regularly using regedit and group policies to change. For a start, I bet a lot of it can be changed in the settings GUI or aren’t problems that need changing to start with in Linux. Secondly, I think learning CLI is significantly easier than learning regedit - the navigation at least is a lot simpler imo. Unless you are just running .reg files you find on the floor of the internet, if you learned to use regedit you can definitely learn the Linux CLI (as much as you’ll need to in order to do what you want).

Just saying, it is constantly evolving and most of the road blocks are out-dated or hinge on reliance on some other big tech company besides microsoft that is just as far down the enshittification rabbit-hole. It is not a decision you made once and have to keep living with. None of us swore a life-debt to our “team”. :)