For home use (and small uses at work) I’ve found cyberpower to be cheaper than APC and yet work as well. You’d likely need to get a model with a network card option, and that’ll cost more I think. I’m not in EU though, so IDK what model would meet your needs and price point (which seems pretty low to me for a network enabled UPS).

IDK Iwas using NewPipexSponsorBlock, now Tubular since before Grayjay existed.

First I don’t see an issue with a “store brand” if it does what you need.

Secondly - who is the name brand for say a power strip or a USB hub or USB C charger or cables? Or do you buy monster audio cables? SD card reader? Microfiber cloth? What about regular bath towels?

Somewhat more controversial - what about things that are inherently disposable like latex gloves or laundry detergent?

I went from all free and clear from Sam’s club which took up space and got me like 120 packets for 20 dollars to these detergent sheets which are much smaller and got 300 for 7 dollars. You use the same number of sheets as you would packets. The clothes come out the same.

But yes, try searching for something like an electric lighter for candles on both sites and tell me the “quality non knock off” on Amazon. 90 percent are on temu also for less.

I mean, most people don’t think ease of changing a light bulb (that they never have to do) is a deal breaker for a car. I haven’t had to change a headlight since they went to LEDs. My last car that was 7 years of owning it.

I think we should insist on making things repairable, but should focus on the things that come up frequently.

Because everything is a tradeoff, things like how often it is likely to need repair, how much the car costs, functionality of the car day to day, looks, gas mileage, heck a lot of stuff will come before a once a decade thing that you’re either going to pay a shop to do or trade before it’s an issue.

When the alternative was to pay more for the exact same things on Amazon, it’s logical to pay less. Every app tracks you so idk…

Probably just so you don’t accidentally waste time unknowingly rereading a book.

I have always felt that kids will get out of education what they put in/their interest in actually learning. I also think there is some benefits to learning how to manage technology de jure as it’s likely to come up when they’re out of high school too.

I kind of disagree with some of the points about learning more just talking to an AI, both because I tend to get wrong answers or important missed context in my AI testing, but also because I think I needed to learn some stuff I wasn’t interested in personally.

Today I don’t really have much opportunity to interact with classes beyond the great courses and linked in learning, and unfortunately much of the newer content is more like a YouTube curated Playlist than a traditional course. They are mostly superficial overviews more intended for entertainment than learning details.

YouTube on the other hand is all over the map and you have to know what to search for.

I think some value of the experiment is the part where it got the kids to review their notification settings to suppress things they weren’t interested in. Personally I think having phones in airplane mode / off during class is probably the best plan. Do the notifications during study hall, lunch, bus ride, and other free time.

My sister did that but only netted 30k more not 3x. Still well worth it imo. Of course it’s kinda amazing that more companies aren’t taking this “cheat code” to get cream of the crop “minor league” non major center talent for the discount of amazing wages out in the hinterlands that are 40k or more less than big city prices.

I think I’ve mostly moved to Kagi, because someone needs to be incentiviced to actually focus on search, not ads. That said it’s also good bang for buck in annual ultimate because you get access to multiple AI models.

That said, I so far continue to be mostly underwhelmed by AI except for basic starting points on scripts or for games like D&D.

I think I’ve mostly moved to Kagi, because someone needs to be incentiviced to actually focus on search, not ads. That said it’s also good bang for buck in annual ultimate because you get access to multiple AI models.

That said, I so far continue to be mostly underwhelmed by AI except for basic starting points on scripts or for games like D&D.

There are some people who really love their teslas. They don’t have any models that fit what I want so I ignore them.

The point is, if you buy a pre set up laptop with Linux the drivers are pre installed too. You cannot take a clean Linux install and not compare to a clean Windows install.

As to my Mom, she didn’t set up Windows either. In either case you’re paying someone to set it up if you’re like her. Just because you already learned Windows doesn’t make Linux harder, just different. Do you think an enterprise is not going to have IT in both cases? It’s not like the users are setting anything.

Well it’s not like Windows hasn’t bricked some pcs with their driver updates. It does just happen sometimes. The argument I’m making is if I went to Burger King and every time I went I was disappointed in the food quality, price and speed of service I would eventually risk Wendys.

Heck my family was GM but after years of breakdowns and getting stranded by 3 different GM cars and weird / bad performance in a 4th, we changed car manufacturers.

Sometimes you ought to give up on the Devil you know if it’s costing you too much money and time.

On an individual level, having a computer is better than not having one. Even if you need a different OS.

On a societal level, we should want to limit both ewaste and insecure OSs. We could legislate MS and other vendors not to do what Microsoft is doing here. But we probably don’t want to legislate updates for 20 years or something. (maybe we do IDK). The more likely thing is kicking known EOL OSs off the internet, but then we’re back to ewaste.

What are the core problems I am skipping? That people like to bitch about Microsoft just like they bitch about gas prices but don’t take any steps to address the issue?

Look we suck it up on Windows for very specific legacy software, but every year more and more LoB apps are web apps, either we write them that way or they’re cloud versions. These all work fine on Linux and Mac, you do not need Windows.

We are even seeing companies like Autodesk provide some products on Mac, and there are competitors on Linux too.

If you actually used Microsoft in the enterprise you would also be up to speed on how they are pushing against “over management” of the fleet, and you should just use update rings and intune and stop wasting time with SCCM / MCM / Whatever it’s called this year. This argument about managibility is Microsoft 2005, not Microsoft 2025. Linux has more management now than Microsofts modern management suite, by design. And if you’re using 3rd party to fix that on windows, you are not just fighting Microsoft but you can not then disregard 3rd party on Linux.

The problem with this argument is not that I am saying you can do everything you can do with Windows on Linux, just like there’s a lot you can’t do on Windows you can on Linux. I am saying that it’s practically like Dodge vs Toyota trucks. There’s way more of an overlap than people like to admit.

Maybe there is a specific app you all are thinking of that you need Windows for, but I don’t actually think the average person needs Windows anymore except inertia. And the needs are going down as more stuff is cloud available.

Literally the statement was just Facebook. She doesn’t install software, nor did she on Windows. She uses Facebook. She never used Explorer so Firefox on XP to Firefox on Linux was no learning. The performance was better on Linux.

I have corrupted Windows plenty of times over the years. You’re just used to Windows so intuitively know how to fix it or not break it again.

The problem with modern computers is many don’t take a ethernet cable. They only have Wi-Fi. Maybe you are buying ones speced with a NIC but that’s a special order for most laptops, and likewise I can special order for Linux.

You never used Linux then. There are well defined packages in the way Windows is trying to get with their store apps and chocolatey can mimic if you build the packages. You could also look up containers, flatpaks etc. Similar to how Windows has msis and store apps and exes.

Linux has Foreman plus puppet. Or chef or Ansible. You can also use those on Windows.

The idea that a company could not decide their shell standards or their support company or people for Linux is like saying they can’t handle the competition in fleet vehicles or cloud providers or pen companies.

Have you used a modern version of Linux or Windows? You can basically use most Linuxes like Android with a guide app store, and there’s almost no way to break it. Windows also will still let you be admin and let you break it. Neither is particularly easy to break anymore.

Peripherals certainly do not just work on Windows. More and more I fight with getting anything to work on a clean Windows OS install. First I have to go find a network driver and copy it via USB. Then hope Windows will find drivers from there, which often it doesn’t get good ones for say Nvidia. Printers often take me to the manufacturer website and hope. For things like mice or Wi-Fi adapters Linux just works, same hunt for less standard stuff.

Maybe I just deal with a wider array of hardware but to say it plug and play on windows and not Linux is just not true.

For someone who just uses Facebook…there is no learning Linux. I moved my mom from XP to XFCE and Firefox just copied right over. She has a lot less issues with Enterprise Linux than she did with XP and Facebook still just works like 8 years later.

Testing the Jellyfin photos thing out now. I don’t know if it’s working right, but when I first looked at it the issue was I thought it seemed very video focused. I guess otherwise I’m learning docker after all.

Fair enough, last time I tried docker, which was a long time ago, I had all sorts of issues with permissions and persistence. I guess it’s probably better now.

I don’t want a research project. I just was hoping there was an easy to use program to make the viewing better than samba shares. Maybe I just need a set of programs that will display thumbnails over samba.