>"Solve all your problems and format your drives with ext4"

All my drives *are* ext4 (except the one that is zfs), since they all run Linux.

[further rant on]

I can't even stand restaurants now because people are so inconsiderate they use the damn speakers on their stupid phones, squealing/shrill noise from speakerphone conversations, watching videos, playing games and "entertaining" themselves and their also-addicted children (to supposedly prevent them from endless screaming, and I am not sure which is worse). Almost the same thing in many stores, waiting rooms, lines, etc.

At work in the cafeteria, they put up signs saying "no speaker use on phones" and of course it is ignored by most of the people who it was targeting, and there is no enforcement. Another space ruined. Last time I tried to go to a movie, CONSTANT distraction by damn phone screens in my general view, every 10 seconds.

It is just unbelievable how self-absorbed, inconsiderate, and unaware people are now. The only thing that makes life tolerable for me "in public" now is that I have to carry noise-canceling earphones to shut myself out from the constant noise. And that certainly doesn't work well if I want to eat out and converse with other people. At least it is more pleasant than earplugs, were I have to listen to my own heartbeat and breathing.

[rant off]

>"is sending 117,044 PayPal payments"

So that is $47.86 per impacted customer, and sent automatically. Hmm. At least it is not like those ridiculous class-action suits where you have to fill out a bunch of forms, MAIL it in, wait several months or years, and then get a whopping $2 or $5 or something stupid for all that effort.

>"I get by on a 5mbps connect and it's doable but game patches are downright frustrating"

Yeah, there are a few things that having a slow connection will cause some major inconvenience. Mostly thinks like large software updates. Fortunately, those are not that common and also can process whenever and are not holding things up. Other than that, even 5Mbs is surprisingly "doable" still.

I manage (among many other things), a large WiFi network with hundreds (sometimes over to 350) of guest clients. Unfortunately I don't have traffic shaping worked out yet, so I had to ration per-client-device connection speeds. Started at 5/3Mbs and used it myself for a variety of purposes to see how it was, and it was just fine for browsing, Email, laptop video, etc. Eventually I had enough typical-use data that I could start raising it, and monitoring for congestion and typical use. Later I was also able to update our master ISP connection for the guest network to 500/50 Mb/s, as well. So now it is set at 30/5 and it works quite well. (The corporate WiFi networks are MUCH faster, and mostly unthrottled, but the clients are far, far fewer, under my control, and have a separate ISP feed from guest).

On guest, something like 80 to 90% of all traffic is video, which is typical of home and casual use. It doesn't matter how much more bandwidth you give such clients, the stupid video streaming players will just upscale to higher and higher useless resolutions and absorb most of it. In our case, all the clients are people using phones, tablets, laptops, and the occasional 27" TV viewed at 15+ feet away, so it really doesn't matter what resolution/bitrate. Especially since few such people can actually tell much (if any) difference between 480p, 720p, and 1080p. Besides, it is free, reliable, convenient, relatively low-latency, and covers just about everywhere on-site.

>"I went to H&R block for that sucker."

Correction, it was Jackson Hewitt. Not that it matters, in principle.

Generally I would agree with you. However, the last reform that greatly increased the standard deduction made it so that the vast majority of people who used to have to itemize, don't have to itemize deductions anymore. That actually did help a lot.

But the income tax code is still ridiculously overly complex.

It really is crazy that they can't AT LEAST just put the damn 1040 and related forms into a web form that allows you to key it, do some basic math and checks, submit it, and print it. If you need more assurance or advice or have complex taxes, then it is worth paying for something better.

Interestingly, my State had just that (what I described), for years, and suddenly stopped doing it two years ago or something. Forcing me to download forms, fill them out, math it, look up tables, print it, and mail it to them. Ridiculous.

>"I file one return that has to be in writing and sent in. Four of the last 15 years they have lost it."

Something must be seriously wrong with your mail service there. I have filed paper tax forms, done myself, sent regular US mail, for 37+ years and have never had one lost.

Not in the mindset of defending the IRS, but I am not thinking that is a "them" problem.

>" saved filers an estimated $5.6 million [...]140,000 taxpayers successfully filed returns using IRS Direct File"

I have never paid to file taxes, I just fill out the PDF forms, do a little math, and print it and mail it. People are paying, based on that "estimate", $373.33 each, on average, just to file a simple, Fed-only, 1024 (which I think is all that Direct File would do)? Um, wow. Either people were grossly overpaying or that estimate is bogus. I saw plenty of other online tax prep for simple situations for $25 to $75.

I had to do my elderly mother's taxes this year, and she sold a house, had complex investment income, SSI, some inheritance, and some other complexities. I went to H&R block for that sucker. Took hours of processing, multiple 1099's, dozens of IRS forms, and was charged $383, and that INCLUDED State filing as well. That doesn't sound unreasonable.

>"Sounds fine to me. 512KBit/s up/down"

They are forcing 25Mbs minimum

>"for $15/month would be plenty in a pinch"

Might not sound fine to you if you were the utility company. Unless they are getting some other form of reimbursement in the deal. But 25Mbs is plenty fast enough to do just about anything normal. I make due with much slower at times.

>" ISP's shouldn't gatekeep the internet at 1Gbps for $100+ a month"

If they can't make any money with customers paying $15/month, they will have to raise the prices on everyone else. My Cox bill for 250Mb/s (I dropped to lowest plan) is something like $60/mo.

>"Unfortunately the internet is an essential service now for getting a job, etc."

Guarantee most of them have a smart phone with internet. Then there are plenty of places to get WiFi if/when needed- libraries, schools, coffee shops, Walmart and tons of other stores, friend's place, work, etc. Sure it sucks, but it isn't dire.

I used KDE for years and years. Then switched to Mint about 2 years ago and decided to try Cinnamon. I thought for sure I would give up in a few days and load Plasma/KDE under Mint.

I was pleasantly surprised. KDE/Plasma is much more refined and has more options and controls, but most of it I don't care about... and it has gotten so big and complicated. Cinnamon just works and isn't annoying and has gotten better with each update. I ended up using it every day since. I do recommend it. And yes, you can add wobbly windows and transparent move :)

ANYTHING is better than GNOME. I have no experience with MATE, but Xfce and LDE and KDE/Plasma and Cinnamon are all just fine.

>"In turn, those drives would infect any new machine they connected to"

Really? I doubt it would on Linux machines. I think what was meant was "any new MS-Windows machine", perhaps.

https://www.securityweek.com/s...

"The worm adds to the connected flash drive a Windows shortcut file with the driveâ(TM)s name, and three files for DLL sideloading, namely a legitimate executable, a malicious library, and a binary blob within the driveâ(TM)s RECYCLER.BIN hidden folder. It also moves the driveâ(TM)s contents to a new directory. "

Yep.

Leaf blowers
Chain saws
Motor vehicles with illegal exhaust modifications
Stupid endless "reverse beeping" of construction vehicles
Unnecessary horn honking
Unnecessary sirens
F'ing boom-box cars
Dogs barking endlessly
Inconsiderate people blasting music instead of using earphones

I don't know about birds, but noise constantly stresses me out.

You can't effectively have free speech if you also have to comply with so-called "hate speech" regulation. That is the main issue.

>" In this particular instance, hate speech is not what the accused is being charged with"

Oh, *I* know that, but every article that references "hate speech" in an article gives the term/concept a tiny bit more "legitimacy." I want to combat that any time I see it.

>"Yep, snap ends up being more of a problem than a solution."

Not just screw snap, but screw any FORCED use of containerized packages. Users should always have a choice for native packages- you know, the ones that take little disk space and are not complicated to manage.

Having the choice to use a container package is fine/great- they can be useful. But abandoning native packages is bad. And if you are going to support containers, using snap would probably be the worst choice. It is why Linux Mint not only has native packages for the major stuff that Ubuntu doesn't, but they also fully support flatpak and not snap.