I felt the same way about the dialog when I tried the demo. I love the art style, but the dialog was just a bit too out of place for me.

However, the author mentioned in a reddit thread I found that his skills improved quite a bit over the 12 years he spent making it, though ultimately decided not to re-do the art and dialog from the start of the game as it would’ve taken too long, so I’m guessing it might start feeling less out of place as the game progresses? That’s definitely not ideal though, as first impressions count for a lot :\

People can look up how various grocery store brands fund the republicans here: https://shophowyouvote.com/

That behavior with Linux is absolutely real, and it’s very weird that it hasn’t been fixed in over a decade. It’s due to the default OOM (out of memory) killer being way too conservative with killing an application when the memory is completely full and disk swapping. Some people have solved this with an app that watches for OOM situations and acts with more decisiveness to kill an offending application before it swaps and brings the system to a halt, called EarlyOOM.

That still isn’t quite as good as Windows handling though, as Windows can generally handle those situations without killing the application at all.

Sometimes software is just… Done. Feature complete and sometimes still just the best way of doing something. It’s a rare thing, but sometimes happens.

I guess a good example is WordPerfect 6.2 for DOS; it’s to this day a great WYSIWYG word processor, and the most feature complete TUI word processor for people who like distraction free writing. There are still proponents meticulously documenting how to get it working and integrated with modern OS’s so that it can access modern printers.

Amazingly, Windows 11 still has some settings menus directly from 1992’s Windows 3.1

Microsoft has pretty much lost most of their experienced employees, they’re sitting on a mountain of spaghetti code with tech debt that goes back to windows 3.1 to maintain compatibility, they’ve fired their QA team, and their absolutely out-of-touch leadership is trying to force the surviving employees to use AI anywhere they can for developing the OS to pump up the numbers of AI users to prop up their insanely huge AI gamble so shareholders don’t lose faith.

They’re acting confident because they haven’t had to respond to a credible threat to their monopoly for 30 years, and that arrogance combined with everything mentioned above will most likely be their ultimate demise. The corporate system they have created and perpetuated is no longer capable of righting the ship, both technologically and organizationally.

They made a statement years ago now about how they were going to respond to the success of the steamdeck by creating a handheld mode for windows, but they never did, and Valve ate their lunch and allowed Linux to gain a foothold among gamers. They probably couldn’t manage building that handheld mode (it’s been so many years now, but I read a post from a Microsoft employee detailing how it could take something crazy like a week of work just to add a new menu entry to a drop-down without it introducing major breakages elsewhere).

They haven’t been able to develop a killer app or feature for Windows in over a decade, and I don’t think there’s anything else under their sleeve. I believe we are actively witnessing the downfall of an ossified giant, just as the once great Commodore fell due to incompetence and extreme corporate greed.

They already use Linux for their server division (azure). Eventually, if Linux is able dominate on the desktop in the next decade, they may shift to selling their own Linux distro with a 100% windows compatible container/VM instead, an inversion of their current model of selling Windows with their optional WSL (windows subsystem for Linux).

Have to agree, it’s been a law of diminishing returns since then.

There’s at least Mageia still carrying the Mandrake/Mandriva torch without that baggage :)

I recently learned that OpenMandriva’s president (warning, lunduke link as evidence) has declared the project “non-woke” and “anti-DEI”, which has resulted in it attracting a hard right community. IMO, a good reason to avoid it.

Genuinely worth it for that alone :p

By god, Quill. You absolute legend. Genuinely excellent write-up.

For wallets in the US, I can vouch for Couch Guitar Straps wallets, and many are upcycled from vintage car upholstery, which makes them quite hard wearing. FlowFold upcycled sailcloth wallets are also quite good (and very thin!), but personally I didn’t really care for the credit card holders.

If it gets to the point where left wing people are genuinely being rounded up, and there are no other options left, then being armed at worst lets us make the round up more costly in a last stand, or hopefully if there has been enough community building beforehand, helps us more effectively prevent a round up from occurring..

It would also help for a French resistance or Irish Troubles style long-term push-back.

From what I recall, only self-burnt CD’s and DVD’s degrade quickly, while self-burnt blu-rays last significantly longer, even if not m-discs.

Ultimately worker coops by their design limit the amount of excess money that can be siphoned off and concentrated to CEO’s and shareholders, so capital holders would likely refuse to invest in co-ops in fear that were they to become the standard way of organizing businesses, they would get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie globally, as more wealth is distributed to the workers themselves instead.

The current system of capitalism is inherently designed to oppose all forms of more equal distribution of power and wealth.

If co-ops were to become successful in spite of that, the capital owners would likely attempt a military coup to literally fight back against it, just as they attempted during the Business Plot in response to FDR’s economic reforms.

The capital holders hold a tremendous amount of the power to influence the globe to their will due to their concentrated wealth, which is only possible to accumulate due to the accepted exploitation of labor. They will do everything in their power to prevent the loss of that power, even if it means sub-optimal profits.

I didn’t say there would be no conflict, but significantly less.

If everyone is an owner, there is no incentive to withhold labor and strike, as they can simply come to a consensus with the other co-owners instead. The only reason unions exist and strike is because of an imbalance of power between the capital owners and the workers that generate the capital, so the unions must leverage their labor as a bargaining chip to try to get a slightly more fair deal. That dynamic is not present in a worker owned co-operative, since everyone is an owner and has the same incentive to increase profit, since it benefits all instead of the few.

This would make everyone pay attention because people don’t really care about anything but long term growth independent of the company’s operating system.

All traditional companies have an incentive to fight the formation of unions, even if they do generate more profits, as CEO’s and shareholders do not wish to split up those profits to the workers any more than is absolutely necessary to retain those workers to begin with.

CEO’s and Shareholders are virtually all extremely self interested, often times combined with dark triad traits which both encouraged and enabled them to reach those positions to begin with.

They do not act rationally purely in interest of profit, as if that was the case, then they would’ve already adopted lower working hours, work from home, better benefits, and given partial ownership of the company to the workers voluntarily. Instead, history has shown time and time again that they would much rather let an entire company be destroyed rather than give up power to workers.

You will not have any success whatsoever of convincing existing corporations to embrace unions by proving an example.

A co op would be so different from existing systems that I fear people would think hey that’s neat but we can’t replicate it unless we started over.

There are plenty of examples of worker owned cooperatives, even huge successful ones like Mondragon, which is a multi bullion dollar coop that employs 70,000 workers.

Virtually no existing corporation nor its shareholders would want to become a co-op, because it would mean the inability to exploit and profit from their labor force. Just as they do not wish for unions to impede on their ability to exploit their labor force.

A worker owned cooperative would be more ideal than a unionized but otherwise standard corporation, and is less likely to have internal conflict.

Getting to know your neighbors and joining or creating mutual aid groups is a good way to build community. This can include informal networks through friends, tenant/renter organizations, solidarity groups, and industrial unions.

Check out this handy guide to find existing groups in your area.

There’s also some projects you can do that help build community (and can be fun in themselves!). My instance put together a list of ideas, just scroll down to the “Fun Projects to Build Community” section

This BIFL community does not require that something literally last forever, just that it be more durable and lasting than other objects in the same category.

It’s Mint’s built-in version of redshift, it reduces blue light at night by tinting your screen orange to be easier on the eyes. It is installed by default on all cinnamon versions of Mint. It is not included with Xfce (not sure about MATE).

If you want something similar on Xfce, you’d have to install Redshift and manually configure it with either a schedule or a location for it to work automatically, as it has been abandoned and the automatic location finder is broken.

AFAIK the fairphone is the only phone on the market that is explicitly designed to be user repairable. It doesn’t have a headphone Jack, though.