It’s everywhere. Been looking at moving to Latin America (Uruguay or Panama specifically) and many businesses there don’t even have/publish regular phone numbers. The tour companies I traveled with said you can’t get anything done without whatsapp.

This is not at all surprising. We got rid of prime about a year ago and generally have avoided buying through Amazon, but on a few occasions, it’s been the only option so we bit the bullet. It was awful.

Prices and shipping listed were for prime members (autoselected of course) with small print nonprime member prices selectable. Their once famously easy purchase process was multiple screens full of “don’t you want to rejoin prime??” pages with the option “join” already checked. Even after selecting the nonmember price and saying no to prime, going to the checkout page revealed an option auto checked for ‘faster shipping’ that was actually an option for rejoining prime. In buying multiple items this was autoselected on each of them separately, so you’re agreeing to prime if you miss changing one.

Even if I have to order from them periodically (which I avoid like the plague), I have no intention of paying for prime again. The whole purchase process is an indicator that dropping prime is making an impact and I want that message to sink in.

For those who have Alexa, downgrading the plan, or even better-- finding an alternative home assistant, will send an equally powerful message, even if Amazon isn’t ready to hear it.

The woman became famous enough that she held her own art exhibition.

I can’t process how that makes any sense.

I think it was something like that, though its been about 6 weeks so Im a little fuzzy on it now. I was following a guide I’d found online and reached something different from what the guide said, so I aborted install to check on somethings and that apparently set something that when i tried to restart installation it kept throwing an error. Something about starting the installation without completing it messed something else up that I havent been able to fix. I spent an hour or so looking through stuff, even wiped the PC and it still wouldn’t work. I’ve been meaning to go back to it but haven’t gotten around to it.

Agreed. We are in an age where tech is spoonfed to people with slick UIs and automated installs. Linux needs that–some kind of easy onramp to get people comfortable and familiar with it–in order to have a chance of getting broad acceptance. It’s not particularly accessible even for people with a small amount of tech knowledge and skill.

I tried to set up mint on an old laptop recently and immediately hit a roadblock before I could even get an install going. I did some research and found some options to troubleshoot it but gave up because the guidance I found online was a bit more complex than I felt comfortable acting on.

I really want to try out Linux, but if someone like me (with some technology knowledge and comfort) still gets this easily tripped up on installing it, I can’t imagine the average person taking the leap successfully.

Yes! Here’s a nice summary of the recovery. https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/the-discovery-of-king-richard-iiis-burial-site

If youre a history buff, I highly recommend History Calling’s video on Richard III and the loss and recovery of his body. It’s lengthy but well researched and has lots of interesting context.

I feel like any time there is a headline about a Waco man it’s something ridiculous like this.

Has anybody heard any news on the HDMI issue Valve has been working on? I really want one but I use my PC connected to my TV so HDMI is pretty necessary.

Is spelling it ‘kerb’ a British English thing? I’ve always thought it was curb.

“When you look at the way people with ADHD learn, and especially if they are hypercurious, they start reading something and they’re like, ‘Ooh what is that? I want to learn about this. What is that? Does it connect to that?’ It looks a lot more like a messy mind map rather than a straight [line],” Le Cunff says. “The problem is when there’s no space for exploration.”

I cannot express to you how much this captures my experience reading. It can sometimes take days for me to get past a page when I’m constantly stopping to look up other things a passage made me think of or write down ideas and questions.

I feel this too when I play video games. I like to open every box, go through every door, listen to all the recordings etc. When I play coop with my husband it drives him a bit nuts when he wants to focus on a specific quest and I’m exploring.

Awesome, thanks!

I started that process and hit a road block after getting all the books downloaded to my pc. Can you recommend any tutorials or guides that might help get everything converted?

I love how so much science ultimately boils down to putting creatures in a giant magnet and seeing what lights up.

I have two great Danes and this is what it often feels like to cook with them around. Adorable, but my God the chaos…

The guy was suing for $50K +expenses. That is not even a drop in the bucket for Disney and they fought it. That says plenty about the culture over there.

Yep, I managed to find a license for 2019 several years aho and have just transferred it to my computers and I’ve upgraded. No copilot or prompts to upgrade.

I’m still testdriving libreoffice to try to dump ms entirely but I like having a backup available.

What bothers me is that I’m getting all this “upgrade to windows 11” crap from other companies, like my antivirus. I get that eset reason to tell me about possible security risks to my computer, but I’d prefer if they give me options for addressing it that don’t involve dealing with a new OS, especially the win 11 dumpster fire.

Important to note that the article says it can save to Onedrive or cloud drive of your choice. Its not clear exactly how that works if you want to save to Box, or Dropbox or something else but it looks like the option is there and it seems like you may even be able to turn that off if you want.

If it’s still not your preference, I’ve seen licenses for office 2019 for sale on the web, which predates a lot of the cloud integration and AI tool nonsense. Between that and libre office there are ways to avoid using this service if you’re so inclined.

I’m not getting too excited yet. All class action lawsuits I’ve heard of end up netting individual members only a few bucks each. Unless the settlement specifically grants authors right to opt out of AI scraping, it’s only a small victory. Hopefully settlement details will come out soon.

I briefly rode a motorcycle back in the day and I can say that taking a motorcycle safety course absolutely improved my driving. It helped me become more aware of cyclists and bikers on the road and made me more aware of how my actions impacted how the bike (or car) moved. It was incredibly helpful and I would recommend it to anyone even if you’re not interested in riding a motorcycle.