I see your point but also I just genuinely don't have a mind for that shit. Even my own close friends and family, it never pops into my head to ask about that vacation they just got back from or what their kids are up to. I rely on social cues from others, mainly my wife, to sort of kick start my brain. I just started a new job. I can't remember who said they were into fishing and who didn't, and now it's anxiety inducing to try to figure out who is who. Or they ask me a friendly question and I get caught up answering and when I'm done I forget to ask it back to them (because frequently asking someone about their weekend or kids or whatever is their way of getting to share their own life with you, but my brain doesn't think that way). I get what you're saying. It could absolutely be used for performative interactions but for some of us people drift away because we aren't good at being curious about them or remembering details like that. And also, I have to sit through awkward lunches at work where no one really knows what to talk about or ask about because outside of work we are completely alien to one another. And it's fine. It wouldn't be worth the damage it does. I have left behind all personally identifiable social media for the same reason. But I do hate how social anxiety and ADHD makes friendship so fleeting.

'member Aug 6 2024: https://www.ft.com/content/31919b4e-4a5a-4eba-ada7-88d3fec455f8 ;D UK faces resistance from X over taking down disinformation during riots Social media site owner Elon Musk has also been posting jibes at UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Waiting to see those jibes at Modi... And who could forget in April 11, 2024: https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-twitter-moraes-bef06c0dbbb8ed87495b1afbb0edf211 What to know about Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ feud with a Brazilian judge gotta see that feud with Indian judges, nobody asked him to block 8000 accounts, including western media outlets, whatever is he gonna do?

Internet access should be a utility like electricity and water until all three, along with housing, medicine, and food, can be free to all.

If only they didn’t fake it to get their desired result, then maybe it could have been useful. I agree that LiDAR and other technologies should be used in conjunction with regular cameras. I don’t know why anyone would be against that unless they have vested interests. For various reasons though I understand that it isn’t always possible - price being a big one.

Back in the day I just assumed everyone was lying. Or trying to get people worked up, and we called them trolls. Learning how to ignore the trolls, and not having trust for strangers on the internet, coupled with the ability to basically not care what random people said is a lost art. Somehow people forgot to give other the people this memo, including the "you don't fucking join social networks as your self". Anonymity makes this all work. Eternal September newbies just didn't get it.

"Extra Verification steps" I know how large social media companies operate. This is all about increasing the value of Reddit users to advertisers. The goal is to have a more accurate user database to sell them. Zuckerberg literally brags to corporations about how good their data is on users: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/performance-marketing Here, Zuckerberg tells corporations that Instagram can easily manipulate users into purchasing shit: https://www.facebook.com/business/instagram/instagram-reels Always be wary of anything available for free. There are some quality exceptions (CBC, VLC, The Guardian, Linux, PBS, Wikipedia, Lemmy, ProPublica) but, by and large, "free" means they don't care about you. You are just a commodity that they sell. Facebook, Google, X, Reddit, Instagram... Their goal is keep people hooked to their smartphone by giving them regular small dopamine hits (likes, upvotes) followed by a small breaks with outrageous content/emotional content. Keep them hooked, gather their data, and sell them ads. The people who know that best are former top executives : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/addictive-technology.html https://www.today.com/parents/teens/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-rcna15256

I bet every company has at least one employee with right-wing political views. Choosing a product based on some random quotes by employees is stupid.

Forgive me for not explaining better. Here are the terms potentially needing explanation. Provisioning in this case is initial system setup, the kind of stuff you would do manually after a fresh install, but usually implies a regimented and repeatable process. Virtual Machine (VM) snapshots are like a save state in a game, and are often used to reset a virtual machine to a particular known-working condition. Preboot Execution Environment (PXE, aka ‘network boot’) is a network adapter feature that lets you boot a physical machine from a hosted network image rather than the usual installation on locally attached storage. It’s probably tucked away in your BIOS settings, but many computers have the feature since it’s a common requirement in commercial deployments. As with the VM snapshot described above, a PXE image is typically a known-working state that resets on each boot. Non-virtualized means not using hardware virtualization, and I meant specifically not running inside a virtual machine. Local-only means without a network or just not booting from a network-hosted image. Telemetry refers to data collecting functionality. Most software has it. Windows has a lot. Telemetry isn’t necessarily bad since it can, for example, help reveal and resolve bugs and usability problems, but it is easily (and has often been) abused by data-hungry corporations like MS, so disabling it is an advisable precaution. MS = Microsoft OSS = Open Source Software Group policies are administrative settings in Windows that control standards (for stuff like security, power management, licensing, file system and settings access, etc.) for user groups on a machine or network. Most users stick with the defaults but you can edit these yourself for a greater degree of control. Docker lets you run software inside “containers” to isolate them from the rest of the environment, exposing and/or virtualizing just the resources they need to run, and Compose is a related tool for defining one or more of these containers, how they interact, etc. To my knowledge there is no one-to-one equivalent for Windows. Obviously, many of these concepts relate to IT work, as are the use-cases I had in mind, but the software is simple enough for the average user if you just pick one of the premade playbooks. (The Atlas playbook is popular among gamers, for example.) Edit: added explanations for docker and telemetry