Assuming you're not dual-booting, the hardest part of installing Kubuntu or Mint is setting the BIOS to boot from the USB drive. After than, even an average Windows user can install them. Plug in the drive, reboot, and the sequence is something like: Next, Next, enter the username and password you want, next, next, wait about 10-15 minutes, done, reboot into your newly installed Linux.

Installing Kubuntu or Mint is WAY easier than installing Windows (I know, most users don't install Windows). I had to install Windows on someone's laptop recently, and it was way more complicated than installing Linux.

This is true. I took the long, nine-year route to my degree in the 90s. When I started, my classes were $23/credit hour. I figured I would work part time and go to college part time, and I was in no hurry. I watched the price of a credit hour increase every single semester. At the end of my college career, a credit hour cost roughly $300.

It quickly got to the point where my part-time job was no longer sufficient to fund my long-view college aspirations. Five years after I took my first class, I had a grand total of 24 credits. I realized that my plan to graduate debt-free was no longer viable, so I realized that I was going to have to take on debt. I got Pell grants and student loans. Fortunately, I had the good sense to stay living at home with my parents. I can't overstate how much that contributed to my eventual graduation.

But yes, college/university prices have exceeded their return on investment.

Half of this sentence is remarkably stupid. Remote work isn't the drag on profitability. The relentless lemming hiring (everyone else is hiring, so I need to keep up even though we can't afford it) undoubtedly played a big role, which is part of management incompetence. His management is responsible for his company's insolvency. Remote workers are probably responsible for keeping the ship afloat longer than it would have survived otherwise.

We recently had a new round of replacement hiring; and among the candidates, we had two people who used AI to implement the small required proof-of-knowledge project. They both used ChatGPT to help with the project. One of them could explain what the code was doing, and indicate what was needed to modify the code to do something else, and one of them has no idea. We immediately shit-canned the latter, and the former moved forward. Personally, I think they should have both been shit-canned immediately; but I'm not on the hiring committee for this round.

Anyone who can't write their own code without ChatGPT or its ilk needs to be either forced to take programming classes or to find another job. If they are that useless, they have no business being a programmer.

I never got the opportunity to learn 68k assembly, but my first assembly was on the 6809. Motorola assembly language was a joy. When I had to move to Intel assembly language on the 8088, I immediately discovered how badly it was designed and how absolutely painful it was to use.

Like you, I would welcome the opportunity to re-immerse myself in Motorola assembly language, while I would dread the necessity, should it ever arise, to have to re-immerse myself in Intel assembly language.

I'm sure this all comes as no surprise to anyone. When IBM bought Red Hat, we all knew it was the beginning of the end for the latter. This is just a continuation of the IBM M.O.: buy and destroy.

I disagree. Gartner has been very reliable over the decades. I have routinely done the opposite of Gartner's predictions, and come out ahead 90% of the time.

I specifically never hosted anything on Github because it was Microsoft, and I know Microsoft's history. Microsoft called me for an interview when I was a sophomore in college in the 90's, and I told them to piss off.

The only reason I created an account was so I could report Godot bugs to the developers. If Godot switched to a different provider, I would close my Github account without a second thought.

I will modify that a bit to fit reality. It you want to get more shit done, but results don't matter, use AI. If you want to learn, or if you want a higher correctness ratio, forego AI.

These are incredibly wealthy, politically connected people. The law doesn't apply to them.

If I remember correctly, corporations buy housing (sometimes entire subdivisions), and refuse to sell them or rent them out. I think the strategy is to create an artificial housing scarcity to justify jacking up rents on other properties. The excessive rents of their other properties more than pay for the costs of keeping the unrented properties unoccupied.

So yes, it is cheaper for the companies to buy large tracts of developed housing and keep them unoccupied than it is to rent them. In the distant past, behavior like that would have resulted in government intervention, but it's been a long time since our governments have worked for us. We don't have the same bribing ability as large corporations.

I agree. Those Linux installation errors messages have gotten ridiculous. Just doing a simple install has (at least!) four "Next" error messages that look a lot like buttons. I have to click each and every one of them before I get a usable desktop! That's absurd! Any more than zero clicks is completely unacceptable!

I hear you, brother! Who on Earth has five whole seconds to install a package?! It's crazy!

To the best of my knowledge, only one court found that. Judge Alsup made a huge blunder based on ignorance (it's the best light) of how Augmented Idiocy works. I fully expect any appeal to get that bad decision overturned.

I have also seen one court decision that upheld copyright infringement, so it seems we're at 50/50.

The biggest useful advance I've seen in so-called AI is the ever increasing use of the phrase, "I want to talk to a person!"