The only reason Microsoft is doing anything is their enterprise customers have had enough of their BS.

HP is a garbage company. My laptops typically last until the hardware is well past obsolete, but not HP’s crap. My HP X360 laptop’s motherboard failed completely and the hinges just fell apart for the 2nd time. This POS didn’t last for 3 years of occasional use. Never again.

Maybe Google should consider protecting us from their Play and Chome stores before blocking 3rd party sources that actually vet their apps.

I’ve been using Linux for years, but on my hardware I’ve never been able to get Ubuntu to work reliably. I now only use it when booting from a USB for backups, but even on a relatively recent Dell laptop with Intel graphics the GUI crashes constantly. IMO it isn’t worth the trouble, but of course someone here will be oh-so offended by that.

After trying dozens of distros I went back to Mint because it just works.

Next step: When a 3rd party cartridge is detected HP will degrade print quality just enough to make them unusable while blaming the cartridge manufacturers for the problem.

When I get to 20 or so I have to start closing some tabs to keep track of things. How do you find the tab you’re looking for when you have that many open?

I’m running Mint on an 8GB laptop and I’m surprised by just how much can be running at one time. Right now I’m running Firefox with 10 open tabs, Waterfox with 8 tabs, Thunderbird, Keepass, Calibre, Signal, a Whatsapp client, Syncthing, Libreoffice Writer with 2 open docs & Calc with 2 open small spreadsheets, a couple of terminals and Gedit, and didn’t even notice it until came across these comments. A friend who uses Windows 11 says 32GB is recommended now.

Microsoft must be thrilled with age verification being required at the OS level. What a great way to lock people into their Microslop garbage.

The tech industry will get to keep refunds of the of tariffs they’ve collected AND will make more money automating the distribution of those refunds to themselves.

Sounds like the tech industry is in tariff heaven.

These AI features won’t come cheaply, with Windows 12 set to debut a new hardware requirement just as its predecessor did with the TPM 2.0 requirement. This time around, a dedicated NPU would be required, a specialized processor designed to handle AI tasks.

Requiring new hardware for AI when there’s already a serious SSD and memory shortage caused by AI? What could possibly go wrong?

Next up: Microslop will file lawsuits to shut down Linux distribution.

Sorry I wasn’t clear - I should have worded it differently. I meant to infer that I was referring to whomever did.

Does “the feds” include Amazon?

Gotta laugh at the downvotes. Maybe you’d like to be her tech support?

deleted by creator

If the Kindle never has Internet access (and that includes access through another app) Amazon should not be able to connect at all, but even if your books are from a public library Amazon will still be provided a record of them.

From one library’s site: “…we want you to know that when you check out a Kindle eBook you must use your Amazon account. At that point we no longer have control over protecting your records associated with this transaction. At the very least, Amazon may use this information to recommend other items for purchase to you, as is the case with any purchases you make through the site.”

YouTube buffers content and your device may have already downloaded the entire file, but if it’s a phone it would just switch to the mobile network.

Sometimes I think I’m too paranoid about this stuff and the next day they’ll be another headline about corporate abuse of “protected” consumer data or yet another breach. Remember Facebook’s years long access of protected medical records through a tracking tool installed on a third of medical websites? I’m probably not paranoid enough.

Apple.

I’ve used Massgrave, but that and the other things you mentioned are not options in this case.

A few years ago I helped a different friend when her printer quit working on Windows 10. What started as occasional help turned into near daily phone calls and demands for tech support to get the printer working again. Turned out her boyfriend was getting pissed off when he was playing a game and killing Windows with the power button on the PC.

Lesson learned.

I’m not willing to become anyone’s tech support rep. I’ll help this friend occasionally but won’t go further than that.

I find it puzzling that people are OK with allowing a mammoth, regularly hostile corporation know exactly what books they’re reading as well as the exact details of their reading habits. Everything is accessible to Amazon - how often you access a book, how fast you read and when you linger on or return to a page. I wonder when they’ll implement camera-based eye tracking so they know what word you’re on?

The same public libraries that vigorously defend the privacy of our reading lists are simultaneously fine outsourcing all ebook access to Amazon where there’s no expectation of privacy at all. Epubs at those libraries are now so well hidden they’re not even mentioned anymore and access is buried multiple levels deep in the mandatory Libby app.

I love the ease of access and convenience of ebooks, but paper books are becoming more and more appealing by comparison.

Microsoft is making it impossible to use Windows PCs without an online account. Obviously there’s Linux, but I’m not willing to be her only source of tech support. That leaves Apple.

Lots of people miss posts and there’s always a main character who’s oh-so offended because if they’ve seen something before, obviously everyone else has too. Thanks for reposting(?) this.

Let me, for once, not mince words here: Windows 11 is a travesty, a loose collection of dark patterns and incompetence, run by people who have zero interest in lovingly crafting an operating system they can be proud of. Windows has become a vessel for subscriptions and ads, and cannot reasonably be considered anything other than a massive pile of user-hostile dark patterns designed to extract data, ad time, and subscription money from its users.

I ran into the same type of problem trying to reset the forgotten MS password for a friend. In her case she could log in to her PC with a PIN but not her password. Outlook was still accessible from the PC but not her phone.

Attempting to change the password resulted in an “SMS service not available” message 90% of the time over a period of days. The few times the service was available and it said we successfully changed the password, the new password would not work, even when we were positive it was entered correctly. The SSD wasn’t anywhere near full.

Microsoft then turned the days already wasted because of their incompetence into a week. As a last ditch effort we tried Microsoft’s 24 hour turn-around password reset questionnaire three times. After going through the process the new password was still rejected both on her PC and phone every single time.

We eventually had to give up. If her PC or her Outlook app ever asks for a password she’ll lose all access and that’s apparently just fine with Microsoft. When she does buy a new PC it’ll be an Apple.