I'm sure it is popular with different age groups, but I've found imgur good for Reddit, and if I need to host photos, depending on where, I can use Smugmug or host them as a gallery on my WordPress site. If I'm hosting stuff for a private project, I send a link to a Nextcloud share (with server side encryption on), and when that project is done, I make sure the pictures are backed up and then just dump the Nextcloud container and its backend ZFS encrypted subvolume when done.

Instagram just hasn't done anything for me. However, I also don't really do "free" email either, so I'm showing my age.

When employees of a company get an offer to do something, this can be one of three things:

A "legit" offer, where one does something, gets money, and that's that. However, there tends to be no honor among thieves.

A criminal firm just logging that, and will blackmail someone who takes the offer, stating they will turn them to the workplace and LEOs unless they pay up.

Or, it could be someone working for the company who is looking for people who would say yes to the deal, to weed them out.

I remember something like this from a few years ago, where ransomware orgs were offering to send cryptocurrency to people who would click on a link with high privileges (domain admin, etc.) In any case, there is a chance that the employee might win out and nobody would be the wiser, but in reality, it may mean a firing, perhaps criminal charges... or blackmail, then criminal charges.

The watershed was in the late 1990s and early 2000s where record labels stopped signing bands, and started making bands with some dude making the lyrics, and just getting people who were good looking, and could sing/play whatever was thrown in front of them. Pretty much all music genres except rap, this was done, effectively making music something where the average musician would never make it big, but someone who could get plastic surgery and look cool on stage could always just follow orders and rake in the dough until they got a big head and were tossed aside. These days, you will never get a band with actual talent signed, because the great singers and players may be too ugly physically.

Plus, with AutoTune, nobody really cares about vocal range, and everyone essentially sounds the same.

The big labels know that good looking people singing simple, dumb stuff gets the sales. Yes, people can mock that, but what is popular doesn't mean what is good. For example, 100 years from now, we will have some musicians regarded as good, while the WAP song will be some trivia question of what was popular for the time period, but otherwise forgotten about.

The fix? As a person, BandCamp. For bands, always sell LPs and CDs. I always buy physical media when I can, because something material is nice to have.

I wouldn't say it is beyond their control. If a country wants to get rid of the dollar, there is always hitching one's cart to BRICS.

Barsoom comes to mind. Doc Savage is another.

Hell, want to see people pack the theaters? Do the Lensmen, or just do the simple concept of the idea.

These movies could even be done in an anime style if studios don't want to spend the money for the big named actors, and done right, they will still get roaring ticket sales.

I would also add on to this. A Carrington Event by itself will be survivable. We have had worse. However, it would be used to change the balance of power globally, and spawn many wars. Especially when populations are starving, and the average combat-age male either chooses either to starve or get shot, fighting another country for their land so their family has a chance at a next meal is something that will happen.

We didn't see this with the Black Plague, as it affected everyone, but something like having all electronics knocked out will result in a lot of people who are willing to do anything.

There is also the digital cliff. Beyond a certain threshold, there is pretty much no way to decode a transmission. Especially if it is a spread spectrum, encrypted, digital transmission, which can appear just as "noise" on a number of wavelengths.

I wound up going with a KVM switch, a Windows PC just for gaming, and do all my "real" work either on macOS or Linux. The other use for Windows is that I have a Windows VM that syncs iCloud, OneDrive, and GDrive, which Borg Backup running under WSL2 takes and backs up on a daily basis.

We have the FX, and what we don't have in actors, we have in AMV or AI generated video. What we need are epic fantasy movies, with new IP. I am not talking about reboots or sequels. We don't need another Krull, Legend, Gor, The Last Unicorn, or Beastmaster. What we need are new fantasy stuff, with new IP, good ol' swords and sorcery, with villains with zero redemption arcs. Not another Darth Vader, but someone or something that is just plain evil, and nobody will shed a tear once it gets stomped out of the plane of existence. We have had decades of everything is gray, but what people want to see (from my experience as a DM) is black and white. Good triumphing over evil. A group of misfits finding a way to turn the evil one inside-out.

If we get movies, even campy ones, that would be something that people would be interested in. Not another comic book film, not another remake, sequel, or reboot, but completely new IP, even if it is crappy. Of course, this may not be a 100% thing, but it would at least bring people back to the theaters.

Desktops have fewer moving parts, and tend to last longer than laptops. Desktops also have fewer cooling issues, although some iMacs might be exceptions. Plus, there is no battery that expands or can go bad. I have had a number of laptops (both Apple and non-Apple) expire due to battery issues (swelling especially), usually after 2-4 years, that a desktop tends to be more reliable.

I prefer to separate stuff out. That way, I can run off with the laptop without affecting anything going on the desktop (a virtualization test, vagrant/docker run, etc.)

The big thing is cooling. Desktops are always better than laptops for sustained use for tasks.

To be honest, hell with the H-1B program. It needs ripped out by the roots. For people that are deemed so valuable that they need a special visa, they need to be given permanent residency and not beholden to a single employer, so if they are laid off, they don't need to fear deportation. If they are so valuable to national security, then give them a fast path to citizenship.

Otherwise, H-1B people are just abused, indentured servants, and hired solely to price out US workers.

I'm still using a M1 MacBook Pro and a M1 Mac Mini. They work well enough for what I'm doing, and may not be as fast as a M3, but for what I do, its good enough. I have yet to even hear a fan kick on with either machine, and I tend to do virtualization. The biggest reason I'd upgrade is not CPU, but the paucity of RAM, especially doing Vagrant or Docker stuff, as 16 gigs gets eaten quickly.

What will force my hand will be when macOS stops supporting the Mac. Then, I just throw on Linux on the machine and keep using it. However, a 2020-tier CPU in 2024 doing as well as it has, is pretty good. If I had to upgrade today, I'd probably go for a "maxed out" (hah) M3 MacBook Air, stick it on a stand that has good airflow, perhaps a laptop stand with a fan, although I prefer the Rain Design stands.

I am noticing that Chinese companies are throwing a lot of R&D at RISC-V, mainly because it is a flexible architecture, and relatively unencumbered by patents. But, they are getting there. I've seen some RISC-V boards have some interesting functionality.

Right now, ARM is still king, but there is competition.

The sad thing is that POWER and SPARC are not contenders anymore. Power10 is an incremental update, while SPARC is dead in the water after Oracle jettisoned all the engineers. It would be nice to see SPARC still around, but it seems like the CPU race in the next coming years will be X86S, ARM, and RISC-V, as the main architectures, with IBM Power10 successors coming in every so often.

I have a RPi 4 as a basic desktop, and to me it sort of works... but driving a 4k monitor, it definitely isn't something I'd enjoy using as a daily driver. However for the few things I use it for (a Spartan environment I use for writing), it works well enough.

I have a Pi Zero W which is doing failover NTP service, and I think that could run a desktop (or more like "walk" rather than run.) The Zero W works well for small tasks like NTP, or DNS caching.

On the RISC-V side, I'm starting to see SBCs with 32 gigs of RAM. These would be nice for NAS controllers, especially running ZFS.

I remember, ages ago, Intel prototyped a personal server, which was basically a headless PC where people would store their data on them and tote it around, before everyone decided the cloud was the answer to everything.

I can see this being something to have in households... a server that not just did GPU stuff so a game can be played on an entry level machine and streamed back in full 4k with 120 fps, but other things as well. NAS storage is a given, but having something like S3 storage with object locking to ensure data is secured in a ransomware resistant way can be useful.

Then, there are all the other doodads a NAS can provide. Plex, media streaming, backing up remote sites like one's personal WordPress site, a way to cache cloud drive providers like Dropbox or Onedrive, allowing for access without need for additional software, easy backups, maybe even some virtualization if the device has enough CPU grunt and RAM.

However, I don't know if this would be a mainstream best-seller, or something esoteric. However, before the iPhone, people considered smartphones a niche market, because people wanted something the RAZR, or even the ROKR so they didn't have to carry a phone and an iPod with them, so having a personal server might be a niche that would get popular quickly.