I was using Firefox, and okay with most of their changes right up until they dropped support for ALSA audio, forcing you to install PulseAudio if you want sound.

I fail to understand how the cost of maintaining support for an API that hasn't changed in about thirteen years is too high for Mozilla, while practically every other program written for Linux supports it just fine. That was the end of Firefox for me.

When I was growing up, I was perfectly capable of being lonely, depressed, and immature without any of this new-fangled technology!

This isn't the deep end anymore, this is the new normal.

In the past 20 years, Critical Race Theory has become the dominant philosophy in the Humanities in higher education. It is based on the idea that everything is a power struggle between classes, much like Marxism, except that the classes are divided by race and gender lines instead of economics. Individuals do not matter. Your defining characteristics are your skin color and your gender.

Racism has been re-defined to mean power + prejudice. Since white males have the most power in society, they are the biggest oppressors, and therefore the only ones capable of being racist. A black woman has no power in this society, and is systemically oppressed all her life, and therefore, if he or she says, "All white people are devils," she is not racist.

Oh, and if you thought being "color blind", i.e. treating people as individuals regardless of their skin color is virtuous, you are now wrong. Treating people as individuals ignores their "lived experience" as a person of color, which makes you a racist (assuming you're white, of course).

This is what has been taught in colleges for the last 15-20 years and is why you are seeing more and more of this coming from academics, journalists, and HR people (people from the Humanties). All the journalism complaining about the lack of "diversity" and "inclusiveness" in workplaces/movies/video games is driven by people whose primary way of looking at the world is along strict lines of race and gender.

Oh, and if you argue against this obviously racist and sexist ideology, *you* will be pilloried as a racist and sexist.

I'm mostly pro systemd, but I see no reason to be "proud" about init system preferences. I refuse to become partisan about it.

I didn't like systemd at first, but I made the effort to start learning it, and I've come to like a lot of its features.

I don't bother engaging in these "discussions" (more like Two Minutes Hate), because most of the anti-systemd commenters are so rabid and irrational that they are impervious to facts or reason. I expect I'll be called an NSA shill or Pottering's cock-holster just for this comment.

I'm all for choice, though, so I'm glad that there are non-systemd distros available. I'd like to think it would mollify the anti-systemd folks, but I'm sure they'll still reflexively foam at the mouth every time systemd is mentioned.

Yeah, no thanks. You an keep the Gov't as far away from me as possible.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of concept cars are created in the same way high fashion is: Create the most absurd, hideous, impractical thing currently imaginable, a thing which wouldn't survive a single day in actual use, then use pretentious jibber-jabber to convince people with more money than sense that it's something they should actually want.

My apologies since I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't being snarky about your comment, I was agreeing about the problem with these kinds of "studies" and adding that regardless of how long it takes radio waves from Earth to reach a given portion of the galaxy, we still can't state any meaningful probability of a response because we have no meaningful data on the probability of life on any of the planets reached.

Every time I see another one of these "Scientists predict x% chance of alien life somewhere, somehow" I get more and more annoyed, because the whole thing is about as scientific as predicting the number of angels currently dancing on pinheads, yet this crap somehow keeps getting published.

We have abolsutely no idea of the likelihood of life on other planets, or of the probability that that life will evolve into something that will be "intelligent" in a way that can comprehend or respond to our signals.

Our statistics for the evolution of life are based on a sample size of exactly one. We have found life on exactly one Earth-like planet. We can't even say how likely it was that life came to exist on *this* planet, so extrapolating that to the rest of the galaxy is asinine. It is only slightly less scientific than astrology.

So please, stuff your Drake Equation straight up your Fermi's Paradox, and go back to your marathon of Minesweeper, or whatever it is you were doing before you decided to crap out another prediction for alien life.

"Cortana, take me home."

"Okay. Relax and enjoy these sponsored messages from our selected partners."

"Cortana, skip ads"

"Skip ads is not available on Microsoft Drive Home Edition. Upgrade to Drive Professional Edition? $6000 USD will be deducted from your savings account at... Wells Fargo Bank"

"NO! Do not upgrade!"

"Okay. We are passing by Applebee's San Bruno. Would you like to travel to Applebee's San Bruno for their new hearty Chicken Ravioli Pot Pie?"

"NO!"

"Say 'no' again to confirm travel to Applebee's San Bruno."

"Argh. Uh. Yes?"

"Okay. Traveling to Applebee's San Bruno."

"NO! Cortana! Take me home!"

"This is hacker group carhakz.ru. We now control your car. Transfer $1000 to our account or car will drive into oncoming traffic in 10... 9..."

"Shit! Shit! Cortana! Transfer $1000 to carhakz.ru!"

"Okay. Updating to Microsoft Drive Enterprise Edition. $10000 USD being transferred from... Wells Fargo Bank."

Zowie makes gaming mice that require no special drivers at all. They are no-bullshit, bling-free devices with top notch sensors that you just plug in and go. I have an FK1, and I'm very happy with it.

Roccat makes super-bling++ mice and they've actually provided kernel drivers and GPL configuration software for engaging all their bells and whistles. I've never used their stuff, so I cannot attest to its quality, but I'm intrigued because I've never seen a company provide Linux support like that.

As a clever person who realizes that systemd is evil and poopy and probably an NSA conspiracy, I have to ask Slashdot: Just how evil and poopy is systemd?

...and thanks for all the flies?

I have some apprehensions about systemd and the direction it is pushing Linux, but the bug-eyed histrionics from the systemd haters is so comically absurd that it doesn't exactly make me want to join their cause.

I doubt EA and ilk would bother to get out of bed for a mere million dollars.

...but difficult to watch if you're squeamish about real-world evil.

The parodies that I've seen, though (of the approximately 700,000 of them on YouTube) are hit and miss, though I'm pretty sure this is exactly the kind of thing that's defensible as fair use.