I don’t think people nowadays can comprehend how basic the OG Napster was. You searched for a file and every single person with a matching file would come up as a separate result. When you downloaded you downloaded only from that one person and if they cancelled it or whatever before it finished then it was gone and you had to start again. You couldn’t resume, not even from the same person with the exact same file.

The whole Napster thing was pretty brief, I only remember it really being around for like 6 months. Then it got shut down and everyone moved to the alternatives that had resume and other features, like eDonkey and Kazaa. I really can’t remember what order they came in though.

I lived through that, I don’t know why it took 17 hours. It’d take half an hour on a bad day for an MP3 song and there wasn’t really anything else on Napster. I’ve never heard of anyone having audiobooks on there or anything, and it didn’t do movies.

I just avoid working from home.

Wasn’t there any article a few days ago explaining that it was the anaesthesiologist who would be taking the bill and it was all an effort to stop medical professionals overcharging?

But this is the classic Linux user mentality; Linux shouldn’t get easier, users should get smarter.

If computers can be easier to use then why should people instead sacrifice loads of time learning how to operate them? Most people have other things to be getting on with.

Let’s not cherrypick scenarios to try and pretend Linux is easier than Windows. Most normal people are nervous interacting with a GUI pop-up that gives them two options, never mind putting them into a terminal window where they could seriously fuck up their machine. What about clicking the download link on a webpage, clicking next a few times and having them software on your machine, compared to having to build something from GitHub (how many people here have never had to do that?).

I had to install Windows 11 on something a few weeks ago so I decided to do it without an account, it was nowhere near as difficult to do it as this sub would lead you to believe. Pressed a key combination to load up the command prompt then typed in a relatively short command. The GUI restarted and that was it.

I also use DuckDuckGo. If I find I’m not seeing the results I want i just add !g anywhere and the search gets sent over to Google, though I don’t find I need to do that very often.

There’s also OVPN. They do all the stuff people like Mullvad for but they own all their own hardware and they’ve had their no-logging policy tested in court.

About to head off to work but I think Netgear make one, but it’s like 6-7x more expensive. And it’s probably made in China anyway.

It’s an Archer T3U, which uses a Realtek chipset. I was living in Africa at the time I bought it and you don’t get much choice when it comes to electronics. I heard of a guy who had to travel to Spain to get a USB mouse. Anyway, the problem is that I’m actually trying to install it on a Beaglebone Black which is stuck on the 5.10 LTS kernel. The chipset is actually supported in the latest kernel, but the BB version hasn’t been released yet.

I’ve never even seen a cockroach in the UK, I didn’t realise they were a thing here.

I spent today trying to install a USB WiFi dongle in Debian. On Windows it took about 5 seconds, I still haven’t got it working on Debian.

TIL that in American liquorice is called licorice.

Black liquorice is great, damn kids just want to eat a bowl of sugar nowadays.

There are others that aren’t Chinese but nothing anywhere near the price bracket you’ll get from GL.Inet. I wouldn’t trust them either, I’d just take the hit and lose the app. Since it’s OpenWRT I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an alternative to the apps. Flashing standard OpenWRT to them is really easy, you just download it from the site and flash through the firmware upgrade option, no dramas. Many VPNs will have instructions on how to set up their service on OpenWRT.

It’s because of this mentality that the US has this shitty two party system.

I mean, I use Linux but I’ve used a lot of Windows in the past. I don’t find either of them particularly more stable than the other. I had blue screens a few years ago on my laptop and that turned out to be faulty RAM. I haven’t had a Windows-caused BSOD in years. And all this talk of Windows suddenly starting an update while I’m using it, I’ve literally never had that happen.

It took me ages to realise this. People with ADHD are always portrayed as lazy but they don’t struggle with hard work, they struggle with boring work. Before I knew I had ADHD I always found I was getting in trouble for not finishing boring work so I always used to prioritise tasks by how much fun they were and start with the most boring. I just ended up getting nothing done.

I don’t know how people who block ads are so delusional to think that these websites would be sad to see them go, any more than shops would be sad to see shoplifters take their business elsewhere.

I get why some people might block ads but don’t kid yourselves, you’re blocking the only revenue stream for most sites and it doesn’t cost you anything. I’m not taking about tracking of course, sites that track you can get fucked.