the point is that they will be locked into a walled garden with minimally-powerful hardware. Can such a device even really be considered a PC anymore?

My main laptop is an ancient chromebook that I jailbroke and put Linux on.

While they’re locked down, I wouldn’t really consider them to be a PC. But if you can unlock them…

Yes. Not because Linux PCs become so much more common, but because Windows PCs become much less common.

More and more people (normies) don’t own a desktop and only use tablets or phones. As the percentage of normies who own a desktop decreases, it will become more of just a nerd thing to have an actual desktop PC … and those kinds of people are much more likely to run Linux.

The iOS browser has always supported “tap the top of the viewport to scroll all the way up,”

And almost every actual PC has a ‘home’ key on the keyboard which does the same … unless the website has scripts that hijack it.

Yeah. If you get one that only records to an SD card and has no wireless connections of any kind, it would be pretty hard for that to have any security/privacy concerns.

So does my car with its “disabled” cell connection that promises not to broadcast my whereabouts.

Find the antenna and physically unplug it.

You know … maybe I should give Bazzite a shot on my gaming/media PC.

Currently I have my Ubuntu Linux PC for everything important, and my Windows PC that only has two jobs: play games and watch videos.

I’ve been hesitant to try it because I pirate all of my games. Getting pirated copies to work correctly can sometimes be tricky even on Windows. And my experiences trying to get them to run on Ubuntu have had more failures than successes. Seriously, like a 80% failure rate. I gather that it’s better if you’re running legit copies through Steam … but I’m poor, lol.

But hearing from you how well things ‘just work’ on Bazzite … maybe I should give it a try. Possibly I’ll have better success with pirated games there.

Me: “Should I shit in my boss’s coffee?”

ChatGPT: “This is probably not a good idea. Most people do not like shit in their coffee.”

Me: “I really think my boss would like it.”

ChatGPT: “You’re absolutely right. You should definitely shit in your boss’s coffee. He’s sure to appreciate it.”

(And then, when your boss is mildly irritated, show him this conversation.)

*interest in parity-checking server RAM intensifies*

Hibernation is a valid survival strategy.

I don’t think Republican congresscritters are suddenly growing a spine or developing a conscience – I think they’re concerned about the midterms.

The vast, vast majority of voters want the Epstein files fully released and the perpetrators punished. Any congressman whose voting record shows that they’re against this happening is going to have a difficult time in the midterm elections. So they’re scrambling to do some performative nonsense to show that they’re on the ‘right side’ of this. But nothing of actual substance will come of it if they can help it.

However, this might still be an exploitable opportunity. They really don’t want their name next to a recorded ‘no’ vote on anything that would force release of the files. So Dems need to be pushing hard to hold votes on these topics and soon, before the midterms. Because after the midterms, I bet a lot of these Republicans are going to go right back to their obstructionist ways.

Really, though – is that not true?

There is already no expectation of privacy and anonymity anymore. Cameras are already everywhere, more and more of them interconnected and tracking your every step. If you want privacy and anonymity outside of your own home, you need to be wearing a mask, and maybe taking measures to disguise your gait and physical proportions as well. Having slightly more or slightly fewer cameras out there isn’t going to change that whatsoever.

Okay, then. I wish you the very best of luck in destroying every camera you see. Hopefully you’re wearing a mask and unidentifying clothes every time you go out.

If you see a ring door bell, they aren’t hard to kick or rip off the wall.

It is a bit more difficult, however, to do that without being caught, since they’ll probably have camera footage of you doing it.

Eh, you’re already on a dozen cameras every time you go outside. Security cameras, state surveillance cameras, doorbell cameras, cameras all over every modern car… What’s a few more?

This particular image is from a university research reactor. I’d assume most of those doohickeys are various measurement probes, measuring things like temperature and the levels of different types of radiation.

But I already have spicy water, as pictured above.

Well, I suppose they’re sometimes also used in watch dials, to make the watch readable at night?

This very much could be real.

Experiments have shown before that simple insects have very simple responses to detecting light in different directions. Shine a light in one eye, they go left. Shine a light in the other eye, they go right. Shine a light in both eyes, they go straight forward.

It would be fairly simple to glue a couple tiny LEDs to the insect’s eyes and wire them up to a tiny microcontroller and radio receiver. And voila – remote control roach.

Probably not super reliable in the controls and doesn’t always go exactly where you want it … but it should do a decent job of going in the general direction you tell it to.

you could have got out ahead of this… or better yet faded into obscurity, changed your name and move to SE asia… but nope.

Why would he? The worst thing that has happened to him is that he’s getting a paid vacation.

They’re typically used in gun sights to make them luminous and visible at night.

Not a whole lot of other uses where a small, relatively expensive glowing dot is particularly useful. In most other applications, you’d rather just include an LED and a battery or wiring to power it.