If they lock me out of my computer I'm just going to completely stop using Microsoft products. If I have to use sketchy third party software to use my legal license, fuck Microsoft, I'm done

I haven't had any issues with steam on linux, but I don't play a lot of online games these days, especially fortnite. Dad gaming is all about the roguelikes these days where I can play the entire game end to end in the hour of personal time I have left before bed.

I've never linked my PC to a Microsoft account and don't plan to. It's all operating system not a social media account

My copy I lost the key that came with my disc ~15 years ago so it thinks it's a pirated copy. Thanks microsoft. I only have windows installed to play steam games.
 
Luckily Valve has their own branch of Wine, Proton:
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software)
 
And apparently many/most games support running on Proton these days. I'm sorely tempted to just yeet windows once and for all.
 
I will upgrade my computer when I feel like it, thanks. On my "gaming pc" I visit like, 6 websites (gmail, steam, slashdot and a handful of others) and use Steam, security updates are nice but I'm not at enormous risk, and if anything happens to the PC I'll just wipe it and reinstall anyways. This is my only windows PC at this point, there's nothing to back up.

Home assistants to do things like, set a timer, set an alarm, check the weather, turn "smart" lights on/off, adjust "smart" thermostat can be handled by an open source LLM running on a raspberry pi class device. I suspect offline "home assistants" will start hitting shelves soon enough. Weather or news API is the only tricky thing as there's some cost associated with it; the device might come with a 1 or 2 year free subscription to those services.
 
As soon as those devices become available/reliable, I plan on ditching our google home setup.

Prodigy is an excellent story ... with a caveat. Just like Star Trek: Discovery, the first few episodes are difficult to watch and have turned a lot of people away from the series before it gets great.

It answers the question "what if you put a Star Wars character into a Star Trek universe?" So it opens with a hotshot kid who bends all the rules so he can escape the mining colony where he's held prisoner. And he thinks he can do everything himself, and that he's cool and awesome. He's insufferable and all the other characters basically can't stand him.

By episode 5, he's gotten his tail handed to him a few times too many, so that's the point where he bucks up and accepts that he's part of a team ... and from there, the series beautifully goes into the principles of Star Trek, strength through diversity, boldly going, &c.

S1 is on Netflix right now, with S2 coming to it later this year. For anyone who's curious about it, I recommend watching it up through episode 6 "Kobayashi", which is a love letter from the writers to the fans. That should be enough to know whether it's to your liking.

It also restricts the voice of the youth on political issues. Youth can't vote*, but they can express their opinions, and youth are overwhelmingly liberal until at least age 16
 
*In a handful of cities, including, yes, you guessed it, SF, youth citizens can vote at 16 in local elections, and public high schools are polling stations, so most youth in those areas have already been voting for 2 years before they leave public schools

Why not sanction 500, or even 1000 at a time? 15,000? Let's cast a wide net, and then redact as necessary. This is one of those rare cases where "shoot first, ask questions later" is probably a valid solution.

BBC is worlds better than Fox News and all other cable news. Stop complaining.

I read a bunch and I also really struggled with the first book. I would start a new chapter and it would take me a page to realize we'd skipped forward/back in time, and that the characters were somehow related. I'm american born with no asian heritage, and I found all the names really difficult to follow as well. I thought the plot was good but the translation was awful. I did not bother with books 2 or 3

same! the article has a very AI-generated feel to it. It restates the same crap we all already know multiple times over and just fills gobs of space with useless information.

and then the kicker -- no footage whatsoever. Just a handful of screenshots.

it's either AI generated or written by a moron.

Youâ(TM)re literally a moron and your sarcasm is accidentally true ALL the time on here. Thatâ(TM)s what makes your entire life an embarrassment.

Found the bigot.

?? they have gobs of data being transmitted back in real time, including multiple camera feeds. It's true those transmissions end once the ship explodes, but i doubt there's much to learn beyond that point anyway.

i'm happy. you're miserable.

i win.