“Because like 10hr of that is background usage while we harvest your data.”

Woah, just now learning of this legendary third Olsen sister. She uhh… she goddamn cute. The twins always kinda creeped me out, this was an unforseen twist.

Eh, I really didn’t want to be specific because it’s unfortunately both exceedingly nerdy and somewhat controversial (not that it should be imo but it is), but, you a Fallout: New Vegas fan by chance?

Let’s just say I can now patrol the Mojave and not worry so much about the cazadores, (but I’d still almost wish for nuclear winter, of course.)

I mean yeah if you’re literally the only guy in the entire world making it (I’m not joking, literally the only one. Some others make the same class of thing that would physically fit, but in the wrong style and lord knows why but it was a deliberate, and bad, decision) then you can charge whatever you want. Dude doesn’t even have it patented or anything, the designs are public (since like the 60s) and if I had any woodworking XP I could sell the exact same thing legally. 'Course, I’ve never worked wood in my damn life, so…

Still, $465 is a lot for these items.

3k is obviously an exaggeration but goddamn why is woodwork so expensive?! I needed wooden set of some things that are normally made of plastic for about $100, the wood was $465 and literally only one guy on earth makes it. Fuck me!

Sheeeit not recently, shot up to $120/oz recently, and it’s back down to ~$80/oz right now, but that’s still more than ~$35/oz last year. Not that gold didn’t also follow that trajectory or anything, it’s still more, but GODDAMN.

Tbf they could try and sell useful things for a change, that might shake things up a bit.

Though I will say, the pockets on Levi’s are sufficiently deep (to completely ignore the metaphor), not JNCO deep, but I can carry my various mesh radios, phones, flipper zeros, pens, coins, eyedrops, knives, flashlights, airpods, wallets, and mace all at the same time. Just about the only things they don’t fit are spray cans and guns, but that’s why JNCOs existed (the cans) and why holsters exist. Others are good too, but then still others are not, it’s literally the first thing I check on a new-to-me brand of jeans.

Sure probably (though I wonder how you’d get caught) but if it’s “for work” then imo it should be a work laptop and then likely has windows already and they won’t (often) let you install linux anyway.

I opened the LibreOffice doc in word.com and the only reason it was different was fonts.

Doesn’t have to be! You can snag the fonts folder directly from a windows install under C:\Windows\Fonts and drop them directly into /usr/share/fonts on your linux install (and then iirc you have to either reboot or run sudo fc-cache in the terminal to rescan the directory).

You can also download them from Soulseek assuming I’m online (which I am not currently) and probably other locations (but be safe about it of course).

Now, if you can’t let Windows go because of Roblox or Apex, I can’t help you.

Nobody can but the companies that make it. Mostly due to kernel level anticheat (which you shouldn’t install on windows either tbh). Some games like Destiny run fine but they just ban your acct for playing on linux, it isn’t linux that is the problem, it’s Bungie (etc).

Large files huh? “Large” like “4k videos of blackmail material” large or what are we talking here?

Fedora just runs my large 4k videos of totally not pirated movies just fine, I’ve never had a file too large to access.

Tbf, that means they spent thousands on gear and bought some guns. Them suits ain’t cheap!

It also means they’re probably unarmored, have poor sightlines and mobility, and have a negative stealth stat, so I’ve got that going for me.

For even more “fun”, try opening a file in Audacity / Tenacity, which will default to raw mode if it can’t tell what a file is, and you get to see the waveform and so on. Just take care not to modify and save over an important file with that.

Well, unless that file (though, work with copies of course!!) is a .bmp image. Then try applying some “audio” affects to sections or the whole thing and see what it does to the image and export it, can get some neat stuff.

Praise “Bob” (and Databending).

So it’s GUIMP? I thought it was “GNU Image Manipulation Program.”

Well good to know the chips won’t stick to anything since they’re made out of anti-seize grease.

IMO the main advantage that Matrix-Element has for normal users is the branding: Element is Element on the web, Android and iOS.

I agree, though Delta Chat has this too, it’s the same on linux/mac/win, android, and iOS. There’s also Arcane Chat for android developed by one of the devs of Delta Chat as sort of a testing ground but that’s like an if you know you know thing, like my mom just thinks we’re all on Delta Chat. One thing is they don’t have a web interface afaik, you need the app.

Simple user+password login to a hosted (non-matrixdotorg) server takes 5-6 pages to click through.

And the recovery passwords and all that just seem to be out of reach for those who just use hunter2 for everything, if the complaints I got are indicative if most people.

I was spammed with racist copypasta on XMPP once too. But being in large Matrix chats guarantees being invited/messaged.

Good news for Delta Chat is they don’t really do groups like that, you can group chat but it’s more for like friends and family than strangers, I see that as a win in this use case, where if we need xmpp/matrix style public groups we can fall back to xmpp. You also have to accept chats before they go through and there is no discoverability so you won’t get random drive bys.

They no longer recommend using a traditional email account, instead recommending chatmail servers like these (there’s more as well, but they have this small list to choose from in the app or you can bring your own). They say if you have to use traditional email use a dedicated account for delta chat, not one that also gets traditional email.

I like how they are trying to address metadata as much as possible, the onboarding is so easy my literal mother can do it, video/audio calling is in beta and works pretty well (some glitches, but it’s in beta), the webXDC stuff is cool but I don’t really use it yet, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

Personally I like XMPP over Matrix because

• Matrix clients aren’t great (even element is buggy as piss on my phone and a shitty electron app on linux)
• Matrix is too difficult for “normal” people (I agree they should get good but they don’t and what good is a chat app without recipients).
• Matrix public rooms have a CP problem, and as such I can’t recommend people join it just in case, I don’t need my mom seeing that shit.
• Matrix was started as an Amdocs project before they defunded it and the lead dev went to form The Matrix Foundation. Amdocs is a Mossad affiliated company that infiltrated American telcom companies long ago. Matrix also pisses metadata to any server it federates with, including matrix [.] org, and I have no proof that Mossad is spying on that metadata but I have no trust either, nor proof that they aren’t, so I can’t trust matrix anymore.

Though XMPP also has had it’s own problems for me, so at the moment it’s my fallback and I’m trying out Delta Chat which I have been loving.

Tuta sucks, they deleted an acct of mine for inactivity, then when I went to replace it they flagged the new one for manual review and said “this addr cannot send mail until the review clears, please reach out to our support team using the email we just said can’t send email for some reason.” I went with Disroot.

GrapheneOS is super easy to install, they have a walkthrough on their site.

Yeah I’ve heard excel the hard one to replace if you need some special functions of it, idk tbh I’ve used excel like twice and basic stuff at that so LibreOffice works fine for me.

Lol I don’t even know what visualization means in this context, I’m definitely no help on this one! Sorry!

Hope so, it seems to be more common these days! I “recently” got a Framework16, which was my first dual ssd laptop (but unfortunately doesn’t meet your size requirements).

It has definitely improved in your absence.

But yeah I understand needing your programs to work. For some like Office you may be able to get away with a replacement like OpenOffice or LibreOffice, maybe not. Idk what PowerBi is but it sounds like a c/196 user’s uname lol, and from a cursory search it looks like Teams is supported with a .deb and a .rpm but I can’t attest personally.

I’d also recommend using a laptop with two SSDs if possible, one for linux and one for windows, to alleviate some of the headaches in dual booting.