This reminds me of the death penalty. Killing someone because that person killed is still killing someone.

However society choses to do it, it’s still killing someone. Because killing is bad so if you kill, someone will kill you. Oh no, it’s not a murder. It’s a state employee that works in the correction department. Killers are not okay. The executioner is only applying the lethal will of society towards killers by unaliving them. It’s not murder, it’s justice!

But it was maybe a few months old at best. Maybe it had a defective battery from the start but I contacted Xiaomi and I’ve been told it was “normal” in “winter”. Then when I looked online for this issue with Xiaomi phones, the people on the forums said it was “normal”, and that I expected too much.

In the end it was probably a defective battery. I couldn’t believe that they were selling millions of these and that people always just kept them warm all the time. Like, they have a proper winter too in some parts of China, and I can’t imagine millions of people having their phone dying on them as soon as we get into sweater weather.

But obviously this left a bad taste in my mouth. This and having to ask permission to root my phone.

I decided not to buy another Xiaomi phone when the one I previously had would turn off when it was a bit mildly cool outside.

Like, I would take it out of my pocket to look at bus schedules but it would turn off after a few seconds of being exposed to 5°C, saying the battery was dead. Another time I had it attached to my bike handlebar and it kept turning off because apparently 13°C with the wind was also too chilly. Every time that fucking Xiaomi phone was feeling a bit chill, the battery would just die. And not even in freezing temps!

I looked online and everone of the fanboys on the forums kept saying that this is normal, battery performance degrades in winter, that iPhones do the same, and apparently all other phones do the same. In short, I had unreasonable expectations.

Yet, all my other phones’ batteries didn’t die within seconds of taking them out of my pocket, even in winter.

So, I don’t have to bother with their names anymore.

I hated school because there was a bunch of kids mocking and laughing at me for most of it.

I guess some popular kids had good times by pulling my pants down or constantly hitting my chair during class. They must reminisce and miss those times, when they were laughing with their peers.

Badgey?

I’m always a bit amazed of how things have progressed and on what Linux can still run.

This is an extreme example, but it’s also possible to run a modern Linux OS on SBCs like a Raspberry Pi Zero, and still have something somewhat usable depending on your needs.

To have a computer half the size of a credit card with more RAM than my full tower rig from 2001 is amazing. And it can even run software from that era with dosbox or wine.

My 15 years old laptop is still supported and can still read 1080p on YouTube, using Linux.

Linux devs just recently decided to drop support for 486 CPUs and some early Pentiums.

There’s just no competition.

With boot disks. When installing an OS, it was common to have the installer ask if you wanted to create a boot disk in case anything happened to the MBR. They also came with the OS if you bought it prepackaged.

There was also a trick that would boot a Linux system from DOS using loadlin.

Back in my days (late 90ies), smartphones were not a thing. I had to dual boot into Linux, face a problem, reboot into Windows, search for a solution or a package, then reboot into Linux. A second computer was very useful. But now, yeah, most issues can be solved using a smartphone.

However I tried to format a micro SD card with an OTG cable and image it for a Raspberry Pi using my smartphone lately, and I never succeeded. My phone doesn’t have an integrated micro SD card reader nor the option to format one. All the apps I found that were claiming to format SD cards did nothing but show me ads. Just another Raspberry Pi would have been more useful than a smartphone at that moment.

I never really liked Skype but seeing a major corporation buy proprietary software and its servers, then shut it down, makes me glad that I’m still using IRC with some of my friends. Try buying that.

Anyway I’m getting old now because Microsoft doing something like this just reminds me of their EEE strategy.

And I thought cfdisk was the easy “graphical” option compared to fdisk‽

Ironically, saying thank you to machines is wasting energy and costing millions.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/04/22/please-thank-you-chatgpt-openai-energy-costs/83207447007/

It forced me to learn. It took me weeks to get X configured and working correctly. I had an internet subscription and a modem but it also took weeks to get it to work on Linux. My distribution came on a CD from a magazine but some dependencies were not included, so I had to reboot under Windows to download a missing package, reboot on Linux and try again, then need to get the next dependency. We came a long long way from having to specify the vertical refresh rate of the monitor in xf86config.

Starting with a French version of Slackware was brutal but I had nothing else.

Yuck, I’m not waiting for it. If possible I’d like to run away from that thing. I only associate it with corporations and work.

Zog!

What? It’s just enhanced interrogation!

Yeah. My parents live in a rural area and coverage has been abysmal for years. They barely even get 4G/LTE signal outside the house. They see ads promising them more speed and more coverage but in reality, it’s going the opposite way for them. And they don’t understand it at all.

Now that the telcos are turning off the 3G network soon in that region, it’s going to be even worse. And because there’s not a lot of people in that rural region, it’s not worth it for the cell companies to improve anything.

DB doesn’t hold a candle to VIA Rail. Germans and Europeans in general like to mock DB, and with reason, but as a Canadian, I’m still so very jealous of DB.

Due to [these] restrictions, 80 per cent of trips suffered delays of more than 10 to 15 minutes in February between Quebec City and Windsor, where the majority of Via trains operate. In January, 67 per cent of trains were late on the same corridor. Delays have been even greater between Quebec City and Ottawa this year, affecting 94 per cent of trains last month and 86 per cent in January.

I must have been around 13/14years old. I asked for it. We had an old PC with the original game on it and I learned there were new versions, so I asked for the newest one. My parents knew about the original game but since it was just blocky DOS graphics, they thought it would be something similar. However in retrospect, it’s not at the level of letting a 5 yo play GTA.

In French a computer is male.

Hah. I live alone, no kids, no house, no car. And I am usually fine with that.

I live in a tower in the downtown of a big city and have a very nice view. I share a pool, a terrasse and gym on the roof. No need to maintain the pool, the concierge does that. No driveway to plow in winter, no grass to cut in summer. No house maintenance.

I have free time and disposable income. I can travel anywhere I want, pretty much when I want it. I’m on my second trip in the Carribean since the beginning of the year.

In summer I take multiple days to cycle for hundreds of kilometres to go camping/hiking in national parks and explore the great bike network of my region. I live on an island, pull my kayak with my bike and explore the waters around whenever I feel like it.

Seeing my friends with kids not being able to get a free weekend once every few months, I don’t mind how things have turned out for me.