> I mostly use F-Droid on Android, not Google Play. It just works, apps have permissions that are easy to control, and other than sometimes saying an app is too old for my version of Android, it all just works.

So you're actually using an even more complex set up than "The way Android does it". But it still doesn't appear to have any obvious advantages. Apt "just works", it was the original "Just works". So is Flatpak and Snap.

> On Windows I mostly use winget for apps, again few issues with compatibility.

Again this isn't Windows you're using, but an app you're installing under Windows that seems to work for you. And that's great, but it's not exactly a ringing endorsement of "The way Windows does it" that you have to install a third party application 99% of Windows users have never heard of to make installing third party applications work.

> On Linux I often find that software from repos is broken and flatpaks don't work. A lot of stuff comes as a Docker container now, but those can be hit and miss as well. The Docker Compose configuration file format seems to be designed to cause maximum pain and suffering.

That's a lot of vague stuff, and Docker isn't really what we're talking about here as that's not for desktop applications. But let's be honest: if it's broken in a Flatpak, that's on the app creator, it has nothing to do with whether GNU/Linux's package management is good or not. I've lost count of the amount of stuff I've tried to install under Windows and had problems with. Hell, I've installed games from Steam and they haven't worked (and have worked fine under GNU/Linux's version of Steam, go figure...) Applications are sometimes broken.

In the end, if we're looking at what comes with the operating system (neither F-Droid nor winget do, and the former is something Google ultimately wants to cripple), the mainstream Linuxes are far and a way better in terms of finding a decent compromise between security and availability.

> I tend to agree, the way Android and Windows do it are both superior.

OK, let's examine this and tell me why you think they're superior.

Android: You have to install via the Play Store. You kinda have an option of installing directly, but Google is doing everything they can to make that hard and they're even implementing infrastructure that bans you from installing software where the devs haven't conformed to Google's T&C's. The Play Store is vetted primarily for software that might bypass Google's payment systems, not for security issues. So you have to install only what Google allows you to install, it may be insecure, and the aim is maximum profit for Google. And this is good because...?

Windows: You have two choices. You can install via the Windows Store, where there is some vetting, or you can install directly, where there's none. People are actively encouraged to install via the second means despite it being completely insecure, involving downloading binaries from a third party website. For most people, both options are "too hard" and a sizable proportion of the population needs the help of "nerds" to actually, say, install a word processor that isn't Word. This is good because...?

GNU/Linux: Most GNU/Linuxes divide software into three types:

• Software directly supported by the operating system vendor, who uses apt or RPM or a similar package management system to install it. A GUI is usually provided for newcomers though very often the software is pre-installed. Install a Debian desktop for example and you'll get LibreOffice, Firefox, and so on pre-installed.
• Desktop software that isn't directly supported by the vendor is available via Flatpaks or, in Ubunu's case, snaps. The end user can install them from a GUI, and both include a central registry of applications. You can run both if you want, or one or the other. In both cases because the OS vendor can't speak for the security of the applications concerned, they're run in sandboxes with only partial access to your system.
• Third party software can also be downloaded in various packaging formats and directly installed, just like Windows, but unlike Windows, you're strongly discouraged from doing this. Except by the idiots who wrote Rust who think curl h t tp: // h4x0r. ru/0wnm3.sh | sudo curl is a fine way to install things. But that's a Rust problem, not a GNU/Linux issue

So... first party software that's been vetted can be easily installed in an efficient way, third party software that hasn't been vetted can be installed in a slightly inefficient way, and you can always bypass both if you know what you're doing.

But you think Android is better? Really?

Even pretending Google is a good company these days (spoiler: they're one of the most rotten corporations in America right now), that makes no sense.

The left didn't "deliberately" conflate anything. They legitimately saw the two as being the same, because in Britain it was an open secret that the Nuclear power program was more about generating materials for nuclear weapons than it was a good faith power generation scheme. Harwell and Sellafield/Windscale were specifically built for Britain's atomic bomb project. That's what funded it. They were built to provide nuclear weapon materials.

The environmental left though was also very bothered about it given Britain had had its own mini-Chernobyl and were pretty bothered by the risks as a result.

The Americans don't see nuclear power in the same terms because most nuclear power plants are private entities created by power companies, not the military built on what were at the time airforce bases.

Given the context, you can't really blame Brits for being suspicious.

I don't recall Maggie saying anything about global warming. In the 1980s it was still uncommon to hear much about AGW.

Thatcher's big environmental thing was the ozone layer. That was a significant event she was able to rally the world to fight. Not a fan of the woman, but she got it right that time.

I think if you look at his wider point, it's not stupid at all. Currently, as has happened before, Republicans run all three branches. Republicans have run SCOTUS for as long as I remember, but the majority wasn't high enough to pull off the extremism that the current bunch are involved in. Republicans have had the Presidency for most of the last 24 years. The Senate and House have flipped a lot, but in both cases Republicans have had majorities most of the last 24 years.

And when libs HAVE had majorities good enough to pass legislation, which, from memory, was two years at the beginning of the Obama administration, they spent their time performing the evil, evil, agenda of *checks notes* trying to get everyone to have healthcare coverage. Which they did badly, that's fair, but they were, also be fair, trying to get the Republicans on board by passing the Republicans own health plan, which gives you some idea of how far the overton window has shifted to the right.

Yet somehow those dastardly libs are responsible for everything that goes wrong and are somehow promoting global warming to... make money? Meanwhile Trump is openly taking bribes for everything and his staff running companies profiting from his own policies without anyone making these claims about dastardly libs being unhappy about it.

But that's the Republican way. Do things, and pretend the opposition is the one doing them. See also: Pedophilia.

When has that worked before?

After Gulf War II, gas prices have hovered around $4/gallon pretty much consistently except immediately after the 2008 recession started, and during the height of COVID. Did this significantly reduce gas usage compared to, say, the 1990s where gas rarely went over a dollar and change?

No, it didn't. People have not switched to more energy efficient cars, indeed, they've gotten bigger and less fuel efficient. Compare a pick-up truck, which was still an uncommon vehicle to buy in the early 2000s with one today, and you'll see the latter is bigger, heavier, and more fuel thirsty. Sedans continue to take a back seat to increasingly absurdly sized SUVs. The latter have gotten so big that the base Explorer now has as much interior space as an average mini-van despite being the "small" SUV in Ford's line.

What good is pricing coal power at a higher rate going to have, leaving aside the fact coal is inherently (directly) cheaper than the alternatives, so requiring a huge tax levy to make more expensive than, say, natural gas? Nobody will change their habits, not even in this economy.

I often go in my mind back to the late 2000s and think about what could have happened if GNOME 3 had continued the extremely successful GNOME 2 path, and Ubuntu had focused on their "Easy to install GNOME-based GNU/Linux" thing.

Because Ubuntu back then really did have momentum. The jokes about soundcards were silly by then, it installed and ran on more stuff than Windows. It had a UI that was far better than Windows and only a little less polished than Mac OS X. Pretty much anyone Linuxy you asked would answer "Ubuntu" in a heartbeat (and burn you a CD if they didn't carry a bunch for this precise purpose) if you asked them what to install.

Now anyone asking about GNU/Linux is going to get different answers from different people because GNOME just... did whatever this is (points at a GNOME desktop) which will confuse any existing Windows user, and is actually, for most people, worse than Windows (which is still no better than macOS); Debian is still unpleasant to install and doesn't automatically set up, say, Nvidia drivers; Mint may be better but what I've seen of it was disappointing; we're a long way from where we were in 2008.

I almost wonder, given IBM's involvement in GNOME at that time, if the aim was to undermine movements to make an alternative to Windows. There's never been enthusiasm for GNU/Linux on the desktop from the establishment corporate side of tech. Maybe they broke it intentionally.

The two ports are sometimes merged into one, and are on newer motherboards. This is possible because the ports didn't use overlapping signalling pins. On older Thinkpads you'll find merged PS/2 ports, and the laptop itself came with a splitter you could use if you wanted to use both an external keyboard and mouse.

I don't know how common those splitter cables are or even if they're a standard part, I always thought it was an oversight at the time not to just make the ports support both given that'd both be easier for end users to understand and would allow things like keyboards with their own mouse ports, or trackpoint keyboards that didn't need two cables to hook up to the PC.

On laptops, no. On desktops, most come with PS/2 ports even though you've been ignoring them. It's a corporate standard and it's easier for mobo makers to just incorporate them than divide their line into "PS/2" and "Non-PS/2".

Every motherboard I've bought for a project, be it a personal server or a gaming rig, has come with PS/2 ports, and the last motherboard (a generic B450) I bought just two years ago. Only had one PS/2 port (possibly requiring the use of a splitter - yes, combined PS/2 ports that work with both mice and keyboards exist, this is how early Thinkpads used to do it!) but it had one.

I think GP was saying that you can use the same protocol as USB-PD over a simple barrel connector, but because barrel connectors have fallen out of favor nobody does that.

It's awkwardly worded, but from context - both the fact that the GP is promoting barrel connectors, and the fact "how to communicate a handshake for voltage and current on Vbus/GND" applies to virtually any two wire set up - that seems to be my interpretation. It's not that USB-PD isn't popular, it's that the idea of improving barrel connectors has gone out of favor.

As someone with a broken laptop because the USB-C connector is soldered to the main board, and at one point the USB charging cable was tugged, causing the fragile (yes, they're very fragile) USB-C port to be bent out of shape, I'm inclined to agree that USB-C is a really bad charging system for laptops. I don't think USB-C can be strengthened, at best you could put connector inside a compartment within the laptop and have the path the cable takes inside the compartment "grip" the cable (you may have seen similar things with some cordless telephone base stations for gripping the RJ-45 and power cables.) But that would also make it harder to unplug the laptop.

Personally though... I think USB-C is over used, and shouldn't be on heavier devices at all. Maybe it's possible to extend USB-B? Lenovo even has a weird USB-A-like socket for their higher power laptops, and since I bought a Thinkpad with that I've had no problems.

Not for 70W. I'd hazard a guess only a small number of your chargers are 70W, and the ones you have came with a laptop.

At which point it will hallucinate that every building is a McDonald's only to get you murdered by a drug cartel gang.

Lying to you to give you that terrible restaurant recommendation. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.06105 is a white paper mathematically proving that LLMs will lie.

I have said this all along- most of AI is GIGO- Garbage in, Garbage out. LLMs were trained on the largest garbage producer in our society today, Web 2.0. Nothing was done to curate the input, so the output is garbage.

I don't often reveal my religion, but https://magisterium.com/ is an example of what LLMs look like when they HAVE curated training. This LLM is very limited. It can't answer any question that the Roman Catholic Church hasn't considered in the last 300 years or so. They're still adding documents to it carefully, but I asked it about a document published a mere 500 years ago and it wasn't in the database, but instead of making something up like most LLMs will do, it kindly responded that the document wasn't in the database. It also, unlike most AI, can produce bibliographies.