WackyFighter

> International law clearly states that a sovereign nation has the right to self-rule, without external intervention. The UN Charter doesn't differentiate between democractic and non-democratic nations - it's up to the people of a nation to select their leadership.

I really wish people would accept that political realism is how the US really operates, rather than buying into the fantasy that there is some rules based order and quoting the UN Charter.

> The argument you make just plays in their hand.

Any argument made on this site by anyone here will have absolute no effect on the outcome in anyway. That has been the case for all of human history and will never change.

> TL;DR: 2026 is going to be The Year of The Linux Desktop for me. I haven't booted into Windows in over 3 months on my tower and I'm starting to realize that it's not worth wasting the space for.

Similarly I haven't booted up Windows in months now. Debian is super stable as a desktop OS and does everything I want at it now.

I am in this weird position where I am keeping a Windows installation around just in case I need it for something. I had a one job interview where they wanted me to use Visual Studio (C#) and it turned out they were fine with me using Rider anyway.

> Stop creating sock puppet accounts to push your agenda, please.

I don't keep logins for this site. I don't really care about have a consistent presence here. I don't have any sock puppet accounts.

If I was pushing an agenda would that be then? That I don't agree with you?

I am a long time cyclist that doesn't like transport activists because I've had to personally deal with them and I don't trust them. In many cases their livelihood is tied to their activism and I've heard your statements 100 times before. You are just parroting stuff that I've heard before.

I am trying to talk to you as someone that realised that most of it is crap.

I recently visited my parents. They live in a "Large Conurbation", which means (for all intents and purposes) it isn't official a city but is large enough to be one. Over the last year I've seen new bike lanes installed at what would be significant cost.

All they've done is made driving more difficult, the number of cyclists hasn't increased. I didn't see a single cyclist on these new lanes. I visit my parents once every 2 months and the winters are quite mild by UK standards. So it isn't a seasonal thing where people aren't using the lanes because it is cold. They just aren't using them.

So I've seen first hand that what you are suggesting doesn't actually work. This is in possibly one of the best areas to do this in the UK outside of Major cities and it doesn't work.

When I read comments like this, I honestly think that people are only complaining about this because the "bad people" are doing this (in this case Microsoft/Gnome Team).

Neglecting the fact that almost everyone else is doing similar things.

> For example, Gnome shell has bunch of javascript in it, GTK has layout and styling defined in some flavour of CSS, etc.

What GTK is doing isn't really any different than how many UI framework work and have done so for quite a while now.

Almost every desktop UI toolkit/library/framework in the past 15-20 years has the following:

- Markup interface for defining the layout. If they don't have that they have a declarative way of defining the UI.

- Some sort of bindings for popular scripting language that hook into native code.

- Some of styling language that isn't that different from CSS.

This has been the norm for quite some time now. It works reasonably well.

Futhermore there isn't much difference between what desktop developers are doing and what web developers are doing.

> I'm of opinion if you start writing OS userland in either javascript or python (or both), you should be fired on the spot, but I don't make the shots.

Why? I find Gnome works really well on Linux. I have a pretty nice desktop environment after adding two extensions (Dash To Dock and App Indicators). Gnome runs well on relatively ancient hardware I own (2011 Dell E6410) with a garbage GPU (it isn't OpenGL 3.3 compliant). It actually performs a lot better than some other DEs that are 100% native.

JavaScript is indeed a slow language. However in Gnome that isn't the bottleneck. People have been making UIs with JScript (basically JavaScript) using WSH back in the 90s on Windows 98.

> Most technical decisions aren't really driven by what makes a better end-user experience or a better product, it's mostly defined by convenience and familiarity of substandard software developers - with mostly and primarily web-slop background.

What makes a better end user experience has nothing to do with any of this. There has to be an incentive to create a good end user experience and there simply isn't in the vast majority of cases.

In many cases it doesn't matter really what the tech behind something is. Most popular programmings and associated frameworks all work reasonably well on machines that are over a decade old. I am running Discord on a 15 year machine dual core laptop processor and it works "ok".

So this sort of complaining about "modern devs" I've been hearing about for almost 20 years now. The issues I've faced with doing quality work has been almost always to do with how projects are (mis)-managed.

I use this script here and it will remove the stupid bing search feature.

https://github.com/musman96/win11debloat

It is more likely they have no conceptual understanding that the PDF is a file format. They likely assume that whatever is shown in the interface is what is exported.

Maybe in the late 90s and early 2000s. These days hardware from over a decade ago works fine. I am typing this comment on a 2011 Dell E6410. Install Debian / Arch Linux and the machine is surprisingly capable. Just running HTOP I am using 2.5G of ram (out of 8GB) and the CPU is at 2%.

TBH, I have a Ryzen 5950X based tower and while it is faster than my previous desktop which was a i7 4970K (or whatever it is), the previous machine would be fine tbh. I am not even sure why I upgraded tbh.

What laptops though? Most people end up getting either Thinkpads, old Dell business laptop or something like a framework.

Most people learn that using some crap top will leave you with stuff on the laptop not working e.g. volume buttons, wifi buttons etc.

All of these just work with Linux.

That isn't it. Generally whatever the majority of users tend to use that where the majority of focus goes.

The vast majority of people that were using Linux on the desktop before 2015 were either hobbyists, developers or people that didn't want to run proprietary software for whatever reason.

These people generally didn't care about a lot of fancy tech mentioned. So this stuff didn't get fixed.

You are deflecting from the original point, while saying nothing.

It simply doesn't work for a lot of people and never will and you were trying to pretend these are niche things when they are not.

People generally don't like public transport. You have to be in a confined space with strangers, that in any other circumstance you would probably never see.

I ended up cycling through wet, snow, extreme cold because I got fed up of dealing with buses and trains after a week. When I had to travel by train it was because cycling wasn't feasible and I had no other choice. It was miserable. Everyday there seemed to be delays and that is 2 hours a day for a year I will never get back.

Saying use what you think is best basically equates to "I am going to drive" for the vast majority.

It doesn't matter who does it. To stream you need to send the player input across the net, process, render and then send that back to the client. There is no way to eliminate that input lag.

Any game that is requires high APM (Action Per Minute) will be horrible to play via streaming.

I feel as if I shouldn't really need to explain this on this site, because it should be blindingly obvious that this will always be an issue with any streamed games for the same reason you have a several seconds lag between what happening on a live sports event and what you see on the screen.

The lag is high. Google was doing this with stadia. A huge amount of money comes from online multiplayer games and almost all of them require minimal latency to play well. So I doubt EA, Microsoft, Activision is going to effectively kill those cash cows.

Game streaming works well for puzzle, story-esque games where latency isn't an issue.

Right. So you didn't watch it and instead cherry picked the comments. You missed a key thing in the video. It isn't really any cheaper using public transport. BTW my experience was roughly the same as in the video but replace buses with trains.

One of the key reasons I learned to drive was because trains, buses and taxis are expensive and mile per mile more expensive than using the car. Even flying in some circumstances is more expensive and longer than driving (short domestic UK flights).

The issue with public transport is that it doesn't go quite go where, when you want and nothing is going to fix that.

No amount of campaigning is going to change anything. Near where I live there is two roads closed. It been this way for almost three years now. If the council can't fix one road in three years, how are they ever going to sort out more complex issues.

So you have something that isn't cheaper, doesn't quite do what you want and generally is less pleasant than using a car, you aren't going to want to use it.

It seems you really didn't understand the point of the video.

If you watched the video. The point is that it was something like a 2 and a half hour commute via public transport, it was much shorter while driving. It isn't a "super commute" if you are travelling less than an hour.

A commute in a car that less than an hour isn't niche.

Bari Weiss is well known and influential Journalist if you are an American Politico, I never found her particularly interesting. Outside of that she doesn't have much name recognition. It is like Glenn Greenwald, if you care about Snowden you probably know who he is.

> And that is perfectly fine, nobody should be exerting themselves needlessly. Where a car makes the most sense, use it.

That wasn't what you were suggesting by the way we worded it.

> And only after that should we have cars. Cars should also be reserved for very heavy loads (more than 50kg), groups of people (not single drivers, 2+ people in the car), and various other niche uses.

There is a (slightly) tongue in cheek video you should watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfBgQjByvXI

I don't want to spend 6 hours commuting a daily in the UK. I've done this btw in the UK a decade ago. It was miserable.

It just isn't possible to commute in places without a car. Especially once you get outside of a main transit hubs.

I find it is the opposite way around. I come up with <simple solution> based on open source tooling and I am forced instead to use <expensive enterprise shite> which is 100% lock in proprietary BS because <large corporate tech company> is partnered and is subsidising development. This has been a near constant throughout my career.

Quite a lot of people understand more nuance than you would give them credit for. You are falling for the narrative that most people can't understand these things.

Many just understand complaining about it won't do any good.

I was talking with my Mother last night about this very subject and she is social worker in her 60s.

Normies will circumvent this when it becomes too onerous.

As a British Citizen I've just decided I don't care what the law is and I will just circumvent any of these laws. The current government have basically told everyone that OSA, Mandatory Digital ID etc. is going to happen whether the electorate like it or not.

I suggest people put their energy to not trying to convince anyone and instead put their energy into protecting themselves and learning how circumvent these measures. People who understand the issues of these ID checks don't need convincing and those that don't you are unlikely to change their mind.

Sooner or later it will become apparent that these laws are unenforceable (via VPNs, Tor or similar tech) and eventually they will be repealed or more likely no enforced like most piracy laws are now. The UK (as well as many of other countries) already lost the war against banning torrent sites (as they are effectively a hydra) and I don't think it get enforced anymore because I can to the big torrent with out issues.

It is because the vast majority of the people don't understand really what the internet is, how it works and therefore cannot understand the consequences.

However the effects of immigration (both positive and negative), inflation and not being able to afford a house is more easily understood by the layman.