Rowan Thorpe

Thanks, that’s good to know, but for raw-writing a bootable image to a device do you (or anyone reading) know if there are also straightforward powershell commands for mapping devices at the block level? (as opposed to mounting at filesystem level)

The article at the end mentions they suggest dd as alternative for MacOS (due to Unix user space). It seems the balena -> rufus decision is about the easiest-onramp Mac+Win-portable option, for those uncomfortable dropping to low-level device-writing CLI tools in their current system.

Side-note: Last time I was on a friend’s Windows I installed dd simply enough both as mingw-w64 (native compiled) and under Cygwin. So for Windows users who are comfortable using dd it only requires a minor step. When I once used WSL devices were accessible too, but that was WSL1 (containerized), whereas WSL2 (virtualized) probably makes device-mapping complex(?) enough to not be worth it there.

If you haven’t already seen the talk recently given at the Chaos Computer Club’s “Hacker Hotel” named “How Thermonuclear fusion works, free energy without waste”, I highly recommend it. https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-ff152736-e38872dd7aed088e

The other option is to channel that hate into action.

This. The Dalai Lama is very quotable on this subject. One of my favourites is:

To be angry on behalf of those who are treated unjustly means that we have compassionate anger. This type of anger leads to right action, and leads to social change.

To be angry toward the people in power does not create change. It creates more anger, more resentment, more fighting.

There’s more here:

https://www.alwayswellwithin.com/blog/dalai-lama-quotes-compassionate-anger

they choose their business model, I choose my customer model.

Ooh, this is very pithy. I like it. I will use it.

I did a similar but more generalised thing since long ago, when I got my first pager (pre-mobile) in '95. I made myself a solemn promise that I would gratuitously and unapologetically use silent-mode, DnD, etc (including more recently auto-DnD every late-afternoon-to-mid-morning, even on weekends, when it became a thing) to live an almost exclusively asynchronous life. I almost never answer direct phone-calls too, often even for many of the recognised numbers. My modus operandi is this:

If it’s a real emergency a call might be unavoidable, but if it’s just typical-urgent it could be an SMS (key part of that acronym is Short) which I would see relatively soon. Alternatively a sensitive/private urgent requirement could be fulfilled via Signal. Otherwise email (pgp-encrypted if it has to be private) which I usually catch up with every day or two. Also I disable all non-critical realtime app-notifications entirely. Additionally whenever someone calls/emails me with an “opportunity” requiring “immediate response because they need a confirmation by yesterday!!!1” I know that means the work is going to be like that too (absent time-management or time-discipline, bouncing between crises in parallel) so my go-to response is along the lines of “Thanks, but such a shame it’s so last-minute - it would be impossible for me to properly consider this against the rest of my schedule and decide responsibly whether I could do it. I hope you find someone.”

I didn’t choose that for the sake of being antisocial, I chose it because I felt that “flow state” and “focus-retention while tackling complex problems” are extremely precious resources, and also increasingly rare. Most (not all) of the time if you don’t push back to protect that then others won’t voluntarily protect yours for you, because a lot of people only respect their own time, mental-bandwidth and priorities, and not those of others. I found that batching tasks together to grind through them in bulk without interruption is not only useful at work, but in most of the mundane/administrative parts of life too, because it minimizes the destructive effect of context-switching.

I discovered a very astute validation of this in an essay by Paul Graham “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” https://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Although I think Patriot is such a loaded, dangerous word and would usually doubt there is ever an appropriate time for actual grown-ups to use it, I think I have found one use-case: it would be interesting to form a pan-European collective of actually sane, grown-up, people-before-money leaning Europeans (i.e. not the emotionally stunted, tribalism-fuelled morons obsessed with the accumulation of trinkets and perpetuation of endless persecution sprees in service of their hate/anger/stress-based adrenaline & cortisol addictions), and call that new collective “Actual Patriots for Actual Europe”. Then just sit back with popcorn and watch the pompous outrage chain-reaction from the PfE kiddies unfold in realtime.

So where does the PFJ fit in this timeline? :-D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4