Hacker News might be the most insufferable and childishly naive place on the internet.

I mean… how big really is the category of software tasks that you can’t properly do on Linux in 2024? I feel like it is getting to the point where you do genuinely have to be specific about what Linux can’t do that is a dealbreaker for you rather than just falling back on “Linux can’t do what people need to do” as a general criticism of it.

Windows can’t do what people need it to do, and it fails to do so while sucking up your private data (which if you work at a business with confidential information IS a dealbreaker). At least when Linux fails it usually isn’t simultaneously violating the IT security structure of your organization….

The funny thing is businesses and government entities can’t even claim with a straight face that they can trust Microsoft to adhere to the meager insufficient data privacy laws that do exist when there is zero evidence Microsoft would behave that way based on the track record even if the financial penalties for failing to do so were actually real to the ruling class and not just theoretical thought experiments that involve a slap on the wrist or more like a light tickling with a feather on the nose.

But it will die down. People will just accept it. They always do. They always will.

I understand the frustration and cynicism that comes from wanting something to happen and waiting a good stretch of your life for it to do so but I am sorry, this is not reflective of reality.

Don’t mistake your own fatigue for the behavior of people in general.

Support for software on Linux or Wine is now orders of magnitude more complete and functional than it was 5-10 years ago. There are fundamental changes going on, just because we operated in a paradigm that suffocated the possibility of Linux adoption in the past doesn’t mean that paradigm will continue indefinitely.

There is a difference between being permanently powerless and being powerless under a certain arrangement of forces and actors.

We are entering a period of the status quo being smashed for better or worse in almost every dimension of our lives, what was likely to happen in the past 20 years does not reliably predict what is likely to happen in the next 20 years.

There is actually a true opening for Linux here in a way there never has been.

It is okay to be the person that always recommends Linux, especially if you are a kind person with the patience to explain things to people in approachable terms (and you don’t just scream at people SOMEBODY ALREADY ASKED THIS QUESTION USE SEARCH whenever a newbie walks in the door and asks the obvious questions a newbie would ask).

Now is the time, Linux is pulled up out front waiting to pick us up (with bags packed) and Microsoft is loudly shitting the bed upstairs, NOW is the time to walk straight out the front door, jump in the car with Linux and never look back. We owe it to Microsoft’s long relationship with consumers to leave Microsoft sitting confused on the porcelain throne wondering why they were abandoned and where all the toilet paper is (we are the toilet paper in this metaphor).

Billionaires have no legitimate right to exist.

Period.

It doesn’t matter if some of them “do nice things” maybe.

Billionaires should not exist.

Well yes because customers will be sunsetting support for Microsoft products with the end of Windows 10 :P

I feel like most people at Microsoft must know it and don’t care, the upper execs are either out to lunch or they are pre-emptively throwing away away the consumer desktop market because they just don’t value it anymore for whatever reason.

I think for the richest and farthest looking powerful people at Microsoft, the desktop battle is over, desktop OS software has become commodified (even though… it hasn’t actually yet by the numbers just by the practicality of the alternatives) and it isn’t worth investing seriously in maintaining their operating system long term as anything but a skin for their particular corporate flavor of Linux.

Internet Explorer to Edge but repeated with Windows.

Good riddance I say, but the complete divestment from giving a shit is pretty shocking, I don’t know where they think the on-ramp for customers is going to come from that will bring people fed up with Windows 11 onto friendly Linux distro where they can still use Microsoft software and services. I think it is more likely the bulk of people will just stop using desktop operating systems and…. Microsoft lost the battle to have relevance on mobile years and years ago?

It is weird because it feels like if Kodak saw the digital photography revolution coming 5-10 years before it happened and pre-emptively gave up on the entire film photography market and started releasing crap film and film related products and invested all their money into R&D for digital cameras… except that because Kodak was by far the biggest player in the film market before Kodak could develop a decent digital camera (if they were ever going to do that) the personnel photography market collapsed, fed up customers left, and there wasn’t a market for Kodak to sell personnel cameras of any type by the time they finally got their shit together to make a good one.

Digital photography in this metaphor is a consumer computer market where most people run a Linux based FOSS operating system with proprietary Microsoft services bolted on top and thus Microsoft finally can truly tell its customers to fuck off when they demand their operating not be trash (not that linux is trash). Certainly many many people are going this route, the year of the Linux desktop is no longer a joke these days and I am hyped, but it will be nowhere near enough for a company the size of Microsoft.

I’m not a Rogan meathead, but women are absolutely super choosey these days. Dating apps have given women an inflated sense of their own (dating) worth, and they largely want tall, handsome, well-off, slightly older men.

If this is happening even a little bit it is because of the distorting forces of capitalism and addictive phone apps are warping peoples interactions on dating apps.

I promise you, if you are genuinely a pretty nice human being who tries to be a good person there are plenty of women out there who want to fuck you. Really, the world is full of horny women who get hot and bothered by realizing that cute man they just met is also really sweet and kind. You don’t need fit any particular idea of a man, I understand it feels like you do and that is an awful feeling but it is a feeling not the reality.

Also women are probably more choosey because they are by large exhausted from work places that grind them down, trying to make rent, healthcare bullshit and any number of other struggles of modern life, just like you. They want to make sure that use their vanishing amount of free time, energy and money pursuing somebody that isn’t going to be a dead end.

If you want the quickest route to more men finding women who are interested in them, then support unionization, the social safety net, workers rights, and progressive legislation on housing. We need to take better care of people so that they have more free time, energy and money to pursue love and sex.

Why did I have to learn this in meatspace, and not on the internet from random kids? Things ain’t right, I tell you, when my extended family knows and/or cares more about an environmental topic than left-leaning Lemmy.

Because everything is on fire and while using less soap and laundry detergent bottles is certainly a good goal to aim for, it is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic and worse it is rearranging deck chairs according to the directions of a captain who is trying to distract everyone from dealing with the fact that the ship is sinking.

Recycling by and large doesn’t work but corporations really don’t care because recycling is a great way to sell consumers the experience of being environmental when consuming and it provides way to shift blame and get people focused on recycling rather than the actions of big corporations.

As recycling implodes as a cultural ritual of “doing your part” to save the environment there has been a rise in advertisements from companies selling smaller detergent and soap bottles and I think they are trying to fulfill the same emotional need and story .

Which isn’t to say these soap bottles aren’t a good thing, but if the left leaning people you interact with aren’t focused on this… I don’t think that is indicative of anything but the high number of existential environmental problems we face and the general refusal of neoliberal and rightwing governments to tackle them.

Hi Keith it’s your Mom’s friend Charen (pronounced with a hard Ch) she met at a weird multi-level marketing candle scheme she didn’t realize she was getting trapped into a miserable full length evening advertisement for (I should remember, I hosted it!).

I barely know you but I just wanted to raise awareness for my community Facebook group Leopards4FacesInNeed that connects vulnerable third world children with Christian Leopards.

Also stop smoking pot Keith, it is a SIN and I think talking about it publicly here as a thinly veiled attempt to shame you in a totally out of context fashion is totally appropriate and it’s not like I am going to face any consequences so maybe just log out of facebook and stop checking it for years at a time so you don’t have to deal with people like me. Also have you talked to my son Kevin? I lost him to the terrible woke plague and he won’t talk to me unless I take off my maga hat and I’m afraid to since I think I can hear the sound of the good old days of America playing from within side the hat, it must be a sign from up above (you should hear the tiny angles sing my name) and even my love for my son can’t get in the way of those types of messages!

the portal straight to the depths of Facebook rendered into the raw flesh of reality screeches as it destabilizes and collapses shut 🚪 💥

The peaceful silence of the night resumes. 🐿️ 🌙 🦨 🦗 🦗 🦉 🌟 💤

I know that, did you have to say that in a condescending way?

Gotta love this framing that is trying to get me to see China as the big bad rival.

Like, we are in a climate emergency, great if China makes a bunch of solar panels and drives down the cost, it’s the US’s fault for not recognizing that this is an emergency too and responding by subsidizing solar production in the US to the point that China’s actions weren’t a problem.

If we were talking about graphics cards, or luxury cars, or something else that wasn’t trying to combat catastrophic climate change I might feel differently, but in this context things are so desperate that it is as simple as More Solar Panels = Good

true, but there isn’t even real human feces in these shitposts, it is just AI shit that don’t smell

Is this the future of memes? Just lazily typing prompts into an AI that feeds out Cards Against Humanity style “zany!” combinations of dumb shit?

It all feels like the same fucking photo, the same lighting, the same boring reductive lowest common denominator responses to people asking “wouldn’t it be funny if?” that don’t carry any deeper meaning. I feel like I am looking at advertisements, except nobody is selling me anything other than a less vibrant future where human artists are even less valued than they are now.

Memes aren’t supposed to be “high art” or whatever, that is the fun of them they are handmade, stupid and janky. These AI images don’t feel like that though, instead of feeling silly and handmade they just feel…. disposable and it makes me sad that people are so excited to relate to art in a way where the future is exciting because of the limitless disposability of art that AI unlocks….