I just leave it in sleep mode and reboot after an update that requires it. I usually only turn it off completely if I’m going to be away for a day or more for a trip or something, in which case I generally cut power entirely. But for the most part it’s always on, just in sleep mode.

I always wondered. Ghosts who died in the 1980s dressed in neon windbreakers practicing the Thriller dance. Why don’t they talk about those ghosts in TV shows? They sound like they’d be a lot of fun to meet!

I switched to Linux six years ago because I was bored and wanted to try it as a main OS for the first time. “I can always go back”, I told myself when I still wasn’t sure of things.

I never did, and never will. Now, I just watch Windows become worse and worse from the back while laughing in my Debian/Arch-based playgrounds.

It’s a rather complex and intricate biological process wherein mommy and daddy wish upon a star, and that star descends from they sky, becoming a new seed which gently plants itself in a cabbage patch. From there, after continuous watering and plenty of sunlight, the seed blossoms into a beautiful flower which when blooms, opens to reveal a diamond. That diamond later forms into an infant child, and can begin the long process of growing up and consuming resources.

Pregananant.

There are actually six vintage Macs in the photo. On the left is a 2015 MacBook Pro (wild to think that’s old now, the last of the glowing Apple logo Macs), and on the right is an iMac G4 (on the desk), an iMac G3 (on the floor), and a Power Mac G4, a Power Mac G5, and an iBook G4 underneath the desk.

Much appreciated! Not the full extent of it, but not far off!

You know what? True enough. As long as it’s cozy, it’s good to go!

The stuff that makes me happy. Not shown are approximately 60 other random old computers.

This is in Canada, but it might be the similar idea. Most houses, when built, do not have finished basements. I’m not certain as to why that is, but that was the case with this house.

Not so much buying the drywall as actually… putting it up.

Iced tea! I love iced tea so much. Specifically Fuze. I’m not being paid to say that, but my god I love iced tea.

That bin containing cans is indeed ready to be added to a bag. Also, we have been planning on drywalling the basement soon (for the past 25 years). It’s just around the corner, I’m sure of it!

I don’t even know that most of the time.

I get that too. I can have an energy drink and a coffee in the morning and still feel the need to sleep, but if I do much as have a small cup of tea late at night I don’t sleep.

He’s so cute and so friendly too. Ordinarily cats take a long time to warm up to their new homes, but not this one - he made himself at home right away! He loves the attention he gets.

And a missing finger or two!

He actually doesn’t bite hard. It’s very gentle, but he has a few teething toys that he will pick up and run off with.

You know something, I have a weird soft spot for thin clients. They’re so little and compact, but they do ordinary computer things?! Hmm… I think I need to be on the lookout for some to add to my collection so I can force get them to compile Gentoo for three days, or something equally silly. I’ve made a Compaq Deskpro EN run Arch Linux 32, so there’s that.

The thing I’d like news sites or other sites that use paywalls to understand is that I am not likely to sign up for a $5/$10/$15/$20+ subscription just to skim through a single panic-inducing article or quiz and then probably never return. I will literally press that little back button and go somewhere else.

The other thing too are the shareholders. It’s not enough to just make a profit, there has to be quarterly growth or it’s seen like a failure. Because the PC market is saturated, they have to switch from expanding user base to extracting more value from each user. This is where you get things like upsells for subscription-based services which continuously generate revenue from each user instead of just once (no more one-time license purchase), data harvesting, and ads that are carefully tuned for each user to maximize engagement and conversion rate.

I also suspect this is part of why Microsoft lets you use Windows without activating, even though they want you to (and will nag you to do so). Even if you never buy a license, there’s still ecosystem lock-in, data collection, ads, and future upsell potential. That’s just my thinking though. I haven’t personally used modern Windows (10/11) in over five years so I don’t know if it’s changed since.

They go for quarterly growth regardless of the, uh… tradeoffs it actually creates. There is no way Microsoft isn’t aware of the growing irritation from users, the backlash, and resistance to frivolous and aggressively added AI features, which makes the fact that they keep doubling down all the more baffling to us. While I know this is a broad oversimplification and I’m not hitting every point involved, I’m fairly sure the user base is not who they’re serving, they’re more interested in meeting market and shareholder expectations.

Keep in mind that I’m not an expert on the matter (not even close), I’ve just watched a few videos and articles to give me some sense of this sort of thing, so I am just speculating and thinking out loud. I am in no way defending what Microsoft is doing, and I’m glad I did that little lockdown-based experiment in 2020 to see if Linux really could replace Windows for me (it was a resounding success!!).