“When the punishment for the crime is less than the profits made committing the crime, that is legal immunity. It’s a very, very loud signal in a system of democracy that says, ‘Do it again, only this time, leverage more!’“ - Andreas Antonopoulos

Sad Skull and Bones noises

Just a heads up that the Smart virus is spreading to monitors, too. In a few years most monitors will be Smart.

But let’s just send our food over to them. Surely it will trickle down this time!

I picked up a 2025 P14s Gen 6. Wanted Ethernet and the ability to easily swap both RAM sticks in the future. Apart from the soldered WiFi chip, this computer is by far one of the most modern and repairable ones I’ve seen. Perfectly runs Fedora KDE, too.

T series are also fantastic, but at the time it wasn’t as repairable given one RAM stick was soldered and the other was replaceable. Also because of the form factor it didn’t have Ethernet.

Can’t go wrong with a P series if your needs are similar to mine in a computer for long-term use.

Edit: Forgot to add that while my P14s Gen 6 is great, the biggest complaint is the soldered USB C ports for power delivery. That’s a huge point of failure. I mitigate the weak point by using a magnetic USB C cable. It’s nice to see the the new T series has modular USB C / thunderbolt ports and remediates the weak point that was a common complaint for users.

You have to be really, really fast. But it can be done. I find that if you can accurately speak in dial up tones to your phone, you should be able to snap a photo while you’re communicating with it.

backup your NAS to a cloud like backblaze.

Are you encrypting your data before it goes to Backblaze? And if so, are you also testing those encrypted backups?

Meanwhile, new age Glassholes Flock to their new Meta glasses.

preserve employment

Nope. We’ll have massive job losses as companies pivot away from billions invested into AI. Couple that with a significant Great Recession, we’re in for very very dark times when the bubble pops.

Reduce your spending, save as much money as you can, and prepare yourself.

Ooh boy, refunds! Yay!

We should make sure to refund all the corporations and businesses - by court order! If we do that, surely it will trickle down this time.

Shrekislove posted some good advice, so I’ll add something here for you to evaluate based on what you said above.

“I hate Google so much… I’m just looking for my blindspots… Im not in tech”

Years ago I went all in and too fast on privacy. I’d recommend some guard rails as getting privacy is a journey. First you need to define what “privacy” is for you. Privacy is a spectrum. Only you can determine it based on your needs and wants, and you can do that by figuring out your threat model.

That old expression of tightening your grip and more things fall out applies here.

Think about your security and privacy. Think about what you’re willing to give up, and think about your relationships with others that can be impacted.

You can get recommendations and learn more about privacy by checking out privacyguides.org.

As for me? I’m basically at the point where I’m fatigued with big tech - especially smartphones. I’m waiting to see when GrapheneOS will reveal what new OEM they are working with, to determine if I’ll get another smartphone when my current one is too old. Else, my plan is to upgrade to a truly dumb 5g phone with hotspot. Then I’ll carry my Linux laptop with me and use that when I need the internet.

Best of luck! Don’t go too fast and evaluate everyone’s suggestions carefully. I don’t recommend just dropping the phone you got and going all in on buying a Pixel and installing GrapheneOS. That’s a drastic action to take suddenly since you’re still getting your feet wet on all this privacy stuff. You can improve privacy on your current phone, and then when you’re comfortable and if you decide you need the benefits of GrapheneOS, then look into upgrading in the future.

Those European leaders missed a golden opportunity to clap back with “Quiet, Piggy!”

For now. GrapheneOS is partnering with an OEM that will offer smartphones that meet their hardware security standard. They announced this a while back and are expecting to be able to reveal the new OEM either this year or 2027. The exciting thing is it will be running on modern Snapdragon processors rather than Google Tensor.

Hopefully all the hardware component shortages due to AI won’t have an impact to this OEM’s plans.

Verified. I was able to use this to download an age restricted video just now.

Agreed. This looks like Control Resonant.

“Nvidia has reportedly cancelled its OPP, a program intended to incentivise AIBs to sell its cards at MSRP.”

Ah, I see. Nvidia is no longer down with OPP.

Vivaldi is excellent. This is my preferred chromium browser when something doesn’t work on my primary gecko browsers.

Couldn’t we just synergize and align the teams by proactively leveraging the power of AI? We should be able to maximise throughput by using AI to solve this problem, and I think we can drive success of the key deliverable by freeing up our resources, allowing them time to capitalize on future opportunities. With that said, is one sprint enough to get this deliverable to done, or do we need two sprints?

Yeah, I think you’re correct here. I haven’t tried this myself. First GPU was a GTX 1060. Swapped to an RTX 3080. I used DDU just to play it safe.

I used to be a Windows user before switching to Linux, and upgrading a GPU is incredibly simple on Windows. You don’t need Display Driver Uninstaller, but it is ideal to use it for the best performance and remediating future incompatibilities.

1. Download DDU. Download Nvidia driver (and not GeForce Experience)
2. Reboot into Safe Mode.
3. Open DDU.
4. Pick the option that removes display drivers while shutting down the computer. This option is marked as “recommended” in the GUI.
5. Wait for job to finish and computer will shut down.
6. Open case.
7. Replace with new GPU.
8. Close case.
9. Turn on computer.
10. Open the new driver and wait for it to install.
11. Done.

Process is almost identical for AMD or Arc GPUs.

I appreciate this is a meme, but if your computer behaves like that, it means it’s borked. I’d fix those other issues, too, and probably reinstall Windows. Most likely that user messed with things they shouldn’t have by following random guides and YouTube videos online. In my decades of using Windows, I never had those problems.