pedz

I hate Windows and I'm very much aware that we should avoid it if possible. I have been using Linux Slackware then Debian for decades, but since I'm a tech guy and it's "what I do", I help if possible. However I warn anyone asking for help with Windows that I don't like it, it may cost more, there are other alternatives, this is not what I prefer, and I'm gonna bitch and whine. And over the years I have successfully convinced a few people asking my help, to use Linux. Usually I just install LMDE for people that only do light stuff, and it makes helping them so much easier.

In that case the person is running a business, with accounting software that runs only on Windows. Outlook and Office are also huge tethers and switching to Linux was not really an option for now. Maybe in the future. Maybe Windows 11 will prove to be more problems than its worth and we'll try run the accounting software in wine and find solutions to the Office addiction. But so far the easiest course is unfortunately to try Win 11 first, try to debloat it, and... see.

Maybe I haven't updated Windows 11 enough yet. I've always been avoiding it but I will have to support someone that needs to upgrade so I installed it in a VM to see how horrible it was.

To my surprise, after uninstalling most of Microsoft's crap like the Copilot app, One Drive, Teams, O365, and after changing the contex and start menu, it's clean enough to be acceptable.

Is it only a question of time before Windows Update reinstalls all of this? Or it's because my old hardware is not "AI enabled"?

I know it won't be possible to debloat as much in the future but so far, ~~a lot of it~~ some of it seems to ~~thankfully~~ be avoidable with a bit of tech savviness.

EDIT: Haha. I don't use it a lot and it shows. I'm just messing around and there's a Copilot icon in Notepad!

Could be worse than end up as Robocop.

How the body of an Arizona great-grandmother ended up as part of a U.S. Army blast test

Except that person that uses thorns in their comments. Apparently, this is not acceptable to a lot of people and they automatically downtove them.

We as a society need to figure out how to use it ethically.

We can't even restrain ourselves on the usage of weapons, the extraction of natural resources, the usage of energy, consumerism, or cars. The way our societies are working will not give much chance to ethics.

It's a good thing. It may help alleviate some cynicism about "alerts for everything".

Plus, other countries are using this system so people travelling know how they work and what to expect.

How far is your train station? Mine is 7-8min on foot. Gets me at least 15min of walking in my daily commute.

It depends. I moved in a city with a metro system and the closest station is 3 minutes away, but I have no commute for now and I'm only using trains a few times a month. If I have to go see my sister it's about a 20 minutes walk to the central train station. Then once in her town it's about 50 minutes to walk to her house. She often wants to come pick me up but even though it's less than 10 minutes by car, she has to park at the station and wait a few minutes for my train, or I have to wait for her. Minutes are adding up and it can end up taking 30 minutes for both us of with a car anyway, so I prefer to avoid it and walk.

This comment was written on a train ;-)

I hope you enjoy not being in a car!

Not when the goal is to use the casinos to commit fraud and hide the money before running it to the ground. It's much easier to run a business for a few years, over evaluate everything, pay employees like shit, not pay the contractors, funnel and siphon the money somewhere else, then eventually declare bankruptcy, making it nearly impossible for everyone he's owing money to get paid. And you do the same thing with another casino/business/building.

Maybe I'm giving him too much credit. Maybe he's really really a moron, but grifting seems to be the only type of work he's ever done.

If the argument is that the car is both faster and can haul more things than on foot, then the middle ground is a bike. I use panniers and/or a bike trailer for big trips at the grocery store.

But yeah, depending where people live, sometimes cars are just the "auto"matic (hehe) thing to do, even if there are different ways to do things. I hate cars and never had one even though I come from a rural region. I moved to a metropolis but I've lived in a rural town without a car, and people there make a lot of excuses to justify the use of their car and even kind of force it on everyone around them. My family and friends are still living there and sometimes it's so hard to convince them just to walk any kind of distances. When I listen to them telling me I can't go to the corner store on foot, I feel like some sort of superhuman because somehow I can walk more than a km. "You walked all the way from the train station to here?!" they ask incredulously.

The practicality versus "losing time" and efforts, to me it's a question of personal values. It's like the eternal "joke" about people going to the gym with their car to run on a treadmill. I've never had a car so I'm just used to walking, waiting for a bus, or moving at around 20 km/h when I'm on my bicycle. It keeps me somewhat healthy, it's cheap, it can be slow but you can often do something else with that time, or cherish it. I love touring so it makes sense to discover and use rural bike paths to get to my camping spots and see villages that I would not have seen if I zoomed by on a highway in a car. There's no hurry because moving there by bike is the trip itself. And if I'm in a bus or in a train, I can use my phone or laptop, work, or watch a series or a movie, whatever that I could do sitting at home if I would have "saved time by having a car".

It's nice to have those events where people try to live without a car for a while, it brings some awareness. But it's still disappointing to see the person in the comic reaching to someone else with a car in order not to use theirs. It expresses the slight ridiculousness of this type of event.

There's a woman from a town in Québec that had CPS called on her because she is using a cargo bike to carry her kids around.

Story in French: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2022-06-20/signalee-a-la-dpj-a-cause-de-son-velo-cargo.php

It's refreshing to know some people are at least trying it. However they will all go back to their car after this week. They should try it for life, for an extra challenge.

Usually when I say that I live without a car, people end up telling me how they couldn't do it, how they love their car, that it's nonsense that I don't have one, and eventually circle around to tell me I should get a car. Even those aware of the difficulties of living without a car end up telling me that because of all this... they cant live without one and because they can't do it, apparently I also shouldn't.

I can count on one hand the amount of people that told me that they are trying to reduce their car usage, be more active and use public transit. They are the ones that are getting it and have interesting points of view.

Most people unfortunately just give up and continue to use a car for anything, with their assumptions confirmed.

EDIT: There are very fine examples of this attitude in this thread.