>"cable, which was festooned with ads"

Irrelevant. If you were/are watching ads on cable over the last 15 to 20 years, you were/are "doing it wrong." There is such a thing as a DVR. Yes, you have to factor that cost into the total cost ownership, but let's not pretend there is always forced content.

Yes, cable is way over-priced. Yes, there are tons of channels you don't want. But it also provides content that is not available except on premium streaming, if at all. And, as noted in this article, streaming services ALSO contain a lot of crap you don't want, and it is increasing as they merge in more services and raise the prices further and further.

Streaming (unlike cable+DVR) *can* force content (ads, promos, PSR's, whatever) anytime they want. Fortunately, most have some type of "out" that costs you even more, but then returns to being a sane service again. Plus streaming goes completely dead when your Internet is interrupted, which doesn't happen to a DVR (although you might miss a recording if cable goes down, you might still have plenty of recordings to watch). Plus you will likely have several streaming services to try and get what you want, and unlike the single DVR interface, you will have several DIFFERENT user interfaces to load, manage, and contend with while maybe finding something to watch.

Cable TV recordings rarely, if ever, have changing picture quality as bitrate or resolution suddenly changes due to load. And all the major cable networks have full surround sound, something that many streaming providers STILL do not do. Or they CLAIM to do but then random content that was originally in 5.1 was, for mysterious reasons, streamed with only stereo. Programs piled up on a DVR also don't suddenly disappear either, as "licensing changes" occur. Plus, a DVR (like TiVo) is smart and will GET things you likely want or forgot about setting.

I am tired of overly-simple comparisons. Both (cable-DVR and streaming) are great, and both suck, in a variety of different (and sometimes similar) ways. And what sucks or not will vary greatly person to person, and also changes over time as the services and expectations also change.

Wow, you certainly know a lot about us/me without knowing anything about us/me.

1) Unless there is some serious violation of policy, nobody is terminated without notice where I work.

2) This is a recent phenomenon.

3) Our employment is not terrible, nor different than a few years ago. If they found something they liked better, that I can understand. Not communicating that at all is a douchebag thing to do and says a LOT about the character of such people.

4) It is common decency to communicate with your employer. You don't just ghost them or not show after being hired.

>"So let's analyze this. Is the problem with 81% of young people or your company?"

The latter. (And the 81% is an exaggeration, but it is still a surprisingly large percentage). Our company hasn't changed anything that could account for it.

This has only been a phenomenon in the last few years. And I have feedback from other companies with the same experiences, both in same and different fields/markets. Something has shifted greatly into the "lack of work-ethic" zone.

>"1,033 people aged 18 to 34 found that an overwhelming 81% of respondents believe a four-day workweek would boost their company's productivity,"

81% of the young people we hired in the last year didn't bother to show to orientation, or quit during orientation, or quit (usually with no notice) within the 3 month probationary period, and/or called out repeatedly. These are the people that know that working less would help companys' productivity. Right.

Errrrrr, get off my lawn.

>"Why does nobody make wireless earbuds with a headphone jack in the case?"

Hey, that is a great idea. Especially since the better ones already have a BT connection in them (to show connected state and battery level to the phone).

>"About the only way to get me to switch to Bluetooth would be if there's some device I can plug my headphones into that picks up the BT signal - anyone ever see such a thing?"

Of course, it is just a bluetooth receiver. Like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Upgrade...

But it is still something that has a battery, has to be charged, turned on, paired, carried around, etc. There is no GOOD reason devices are dropping analog headphone jacks. They don't impair water resistance (there are plenty of devices that have waterproof jacks, plus USB is a jack), there is almost no cost, and they don't take up that much space (especially on larger devices). I love bluetooth headphones, but NOT ALWAYS and for ALL occasions.

Meh. Paid slightly less for my current phone, the Samsung A52 5G. It, too is fast, OLED screen, in-screen fp sensor, multi-sensor camera, similar size. But also has SD card slot and a real headphone jack.

Why can't we have freaking card slots and headphone jacks?? I really do use them. I like syncing/moving my stuff quickly on a card. I actually do use the headphone jack in several cases where I don't want a dongle mess so I can charge with USB AND use wired earphones at the same time. Plus I like using magnetic connectors, much better than wireless charging, and I would have to REMOVE that every single time I want to use wired headphones.

Otherwise, looks like a decent phone that is very similar to what I would want.

>"Make it an option but dont force me to use some bloody app"

The problem [presumably] is that it wasn't an option, they forced you to reveal and use your cell phone number. Many sites assume you can or will do that. I *never* allow that, simply because they *will* spam me.

But I agree with you when it comes to some proprietary app. Either your system supports TOTP, or it is *broken*. TOTP means you can use ANY authenticator app you want, including things like FreeOTP+ [Haowen Ning] or Authenticator Pro [jmh], which are open-source, free, require no accounts, no phone number, and no internet connection to use them. The latter can even import FreeOTP+ keys and it also links to my smartwatch so I can have a code nearly instantly.

Still having that fight with my credit card company who decided to drop Email as the second factor. I told them I will NOT give them my phone number, and I will NOT load some proprietary program that ALSO steals my cell number and/or needs constant updating, and/or consumes resources, and/or is annoying. And those are all they support. They said they are "working on it", but for now I have to FREAKING CALL CUSTOMER SERVICE if my web cookie is lost or if I want to access the site from somewhere other than one that has a "trust this device" cookie. Just ridiculous.

Sorry about the rant, just makes me so angry that something that could be STANDARD and SIMPLE has to be so incredibly difficult and annoying.

>"Note that if 'some bloddy' app can be KeePassXC or FreeOTP+, I won't mind it."

^^^ THIS

Just any standard TOTP app is all that is needed when it is done correctly. F*** any company trying to force me to give them my personal cell number, that is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

>"All I got from that is Plato was such a prick that he needed a slave to play him music."

Then you missed the point, completely. I came to look at comments only just to validate what I was *sure* to be the case- that the first comments would be about slavery. So predictable.

Slavery was common across essentially all cultures and all areas. Most probably every one of us had many members being slaves in our family trees.

>"In a historical context, were I the slave girl, I would have punch the guy right in the face."

You have absolutely no idea what you would have done in "historical context." All you can do is try to do is to constrain your CURRENT moral context/experience and examine the entire societal conditions at the time.

Would I rather have lived back then? Hell no. We have so much to be thankful for now. And we should be amazed we even survived, much less prospered, despite the unbelievable challenges and conditions our ancestors had to endure.

>"Snap or Flatpak , they are all the same buggy"

It isn't just buggy, they are HUGE and COMPLICATED. Some of them even have their own dependency hells, and updates are much slower and riskier. And due to those complication, it makes customizing and maintaining stuff a lot more of a pain.

No distro should be dependent on containers for anything. It is a nice option to have if you need something unusual or you are running an older distro and need a newer package. But forcing them is really awful.

>"I kind of wish Mandrake was still around, Mageia is a good tribute"

I couldn't agree more. I used Mandrake for many years, then Mandriva, then Mageia. Best KDE distros ever. Well-configured, pretty, great management tools. But I left Mageia for Mint on my home systems because development continued to slow and mindshare had shrunk enough that it was too painful to get things I needed when it wasn't in their repos.

As for desktop, when I left Mageia for Mint, I decided to force myself to try Cinnamon. I thought for sure I would end up installing KDE/Plasma a few days or weeks later. Nope, it is actually good enough for what I need. I was surprised.

>"If Ubuntu shut down, there'd be no Mint."

Wrong
https://linuxmint.com/download...

>"if Debian shut down there'd be no Ubuntu."

If Debian shut down, a crap-load of distros would disappear.

https://wiki.debian.org/Deriva...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I, too, am also using Alma. Seems we are much alike.

But I think Redhat is going to continue to get more aggressive. Plus there are fewer and fewer supported packages. One of my main uses is an application server (yes, for actual thin clients) and that can be difficult at time with *EL, since it is much harder to find desktop apps. Sometimes I steal from [old] Fedora. Sometimes I compile myself. The destruction of X is particularly threatening and annoying.

Exactly my thoughts. For desktop, Mint is great. But I am struggling with what to use on servers now that I refuse to use *EL. Debian stable isn't updated long enough. No experience with SELS. That leaves just Ubuntu. And, like you, I think they are headed down a bad path like RedHat, they just don't have enough leverage yet.

Yep. Install Mint. Problems gone. No forced Snap, actual native packages for all the important stuff, plus support for Flatpak (if you really want those huge/complex containers).

And the next Mint, based on 24.04 should be out in a few months, as well. Plus, every in-place upgrade I have done has been flawless, so far...