It's kind of terrible now. Since late 2023, when I go to search technical specs of hardware, I am presented with a view that looks like browsing an online shopping catalog. It's weird and unwanted. For personal use, I went back to DDG.

I'm still on a Fairphone 4 -- in fact, in December it surpassed all my previous smartphones as the one I've owned and used the longest since smartphones became a thing. However, I'm on CalyxOS and have always used a GCam port for taking photos. So I'm not sure if I will get this camera software update or if I have to move back to the (buggy) stock Fairphone OS to see the changes.

Sentencing scheduled for July 11.

I remember the last few versions of Netscape Communicator had a "Shop" button.

This was the sign that Netscape had lost the browser war and was giving up.

For a slightly different take: I want a car that runs on free software, that doesn't spy on me.

Until then, I can bike, or continue driving my now fifteen year old sedan that I bought with 5% of my annual salary, used.

Thanks AIPAC, for protecting Americans from foreign misinformation campaigns.

Yes. I moved in third grade and I was the only Asian boy in a public school system in the American south, in a very small town of less than 250.

I got picked on relentlessly. I never had friends. Every slur imaginable from everyone. People ganged up and fought me on the playground. At least once a week. I got a reputation for always getting into fights in third grade and so I was always in timeout because I was new and obviously the problem. I gave up on teachers because they always favored the white kids.

At one point, they spray painted swastikas and KKK on our house. Then the sheriff deputy showed up, they said it must have been me, because I had a bad reputation. A black lady cop and a white guy cop. The lady cop took the lead and insisted because nobody had any motive to vandalize our house like that, we were not black. It must have just been me, the twelve year old who was in school when it happened. Case closed boys, pack it up and let's head home.

I ended up associating with the kids who also got bullied for things far behind their control. Being poor, having bad teeth, ill-fitting clothes, for example. My best friend had a physical disability. Although eventually, he decided to pick on my ancestry when he thought it would make him friends, and so I stopped hanging out with him.

In high school, I was vocally mean to bullies because they picked on my friends. Bullies also had significant overlap with the "Young Life" crowd, and so I associated it with their religion. I did very well with grades so the teachers did not intervene. I bullied the bullies. People were scared of me. I was kind of like a stick of dynamite, I could go off on anybody. I did not care because getting in trouble was no better than not being in trouble. I was also very physically fit and played basketball, but I was not friends with anyone on the team and had no social life with them. They were greedy with the ball and when we lost in the tournament, I laughed because I thought they deserved it.

I do not talk to any of those people, except my girlfriend who is now my wife. She had a similar treatment being Hispanic, until she had her glow up and everybody who had picked on her started chasing after her. That is gross because guys thought they were entitled to her as a brown girl. That is her story to tell.

I never felt accepted anywhere until I moved to California and suddenly I was not always conscious of being the only brown guy, I was just another person, and I was like is this how other people live?

Our kids go to a very accepting school now and it's different for them.

No, Facebook and Twitter are still useful for the status quo.

I mean licensing comes in here. The FOSS licenses allow this. Microsoft EULA and copyright almost certainly does not. But yes, I get the sentiment.

It's almost as if all of the FAANG/Magnificent 7 market outperformance the past 15 years was built on the backs of the free labor provided by the FOSS movement. But then they will turn around and claim that non-western companies steal IP, etc and have US intervene to ban competition, or sue in courts. Kind of funny.

Back to the tech discussion, I've been using doas for a few years now instead of sudo. Even on my GNU/Linux machines. It's a lot simpler to setup for desktop workflow machines.

I'm an older millennial. My take on the GenZ entering the workforce: Super accepting of people of color, LGBTQ, vegan diets and green initiatives. Just really fun, pleasant people to be around.

I just changed projects recently from an office that skewed younger and it's like I ended up in 2003 again. The office is just slightly older than me and it's just a weird vibe....people randomly ranting about EVs and how they would never own one as if anybody asked; dancing around asking what my ethnicity is as if it matters, etc. Talking bad about Asians and then looking my direction and stopping mid conversation. Ranting about vegans like it's physically hurting them. It's disheartening. There's no positivity and no small talk; it's just dead silence unless you are hating on something that has no bearing on your life.

I can't wait to finish this project and move on.

Play Minetest.

Man locks the front door to his house after refusing to answer the question, "Why do you beat your wife?"

Looks like Meta is using some of the stock price increase from the past few months to fund their media marketing campaign again.

It's an election year. We are going to hear more about this and omg China.

Just remember that unlike Insta and FB the far right doesn't go viral on TikTok. The platform that supported insurrection, the company that has allowed the far right to flourish and led to a direct assault on representative democracy, remains unpunished and is bigger today than 2020.

Never heard of this service. Thanks.

Whatever system76 decides it will be, I guess. That's really the unexplored area of my keyboard because it's so wildly inconsistent from one laptop manufacturer to another.

I do, however, recognize Microsoft's leveraging power over laptop manufacturers. They are the reason we got the Windows/Super key to start with (although ThinkPads held out until 2007) and later why everyone was forced to go to 6 row chiclet keyboards in 2013. So I'm certain the community will standardize this key for something useful across all distributions.

Fox News isn't rallying people to support Palestine.

Don't discount new Trek. Picard (even season 3) and Discovery were trash, but Strange New Worlds is the best series since DS9 ended.

I didn't understand why Dee Rhoads was so protective of Randy's legacy for the 30+ years after his death until she passed away. Limiting access, very few interviews, no releases based on his demo/rehearsal tapes. As a fan (of Randy, not really Ozzy), I wanted more.

Much like Christopher Tolkien, it turns out Dee was keeping the wolves at bay.

This is a big complaint for me. I know that there is the official standalone APK, but if I am running a de-Googled phone, I want to be able to use Signal and have it update on a regular basis.

Ozzy the man was already in from Black Sabbath. But Ozzy Osbourne the band is in now. Their first six albums (through No More Tears) are as good as any other band in metal.

I assume this means Randy, Zakk, Jake E. Lee, etc are in.

Curious to see what they do about the bassist and drummer who sued and were subsequently removed from the reissue of Blizzard of Oz and Diary.

EDIT: Looks like Randy has been in the hall of fame on his own since 2021. TIL.

I would love a drop-in electric drivetrain for my vehicle when the gas engine finally dies.

Or maybe a classic car from before computers with a drop in electric drivetrain.

Guaranteed way for me to not watch a video is when the thumbnail shows the narrator doing their best Forky face.

Honestly, that's how it goes. And out of nowhere.

Like live and let live right? I am not vegan but I'm not going to complain about it, or equate eating meat with manliness. And even if I had issues with veganism, work isn't the appropriate venue to be ranting about it.

Fantastic version. I didn't know it had so many verses.

Maybe SuSE?

Zero problems with Delta in many years of international flights with them. The best US based company, IMO.

My only problem is that their partner for Africa is Air France aka Air Chance, a complete shit show of an airline that never runs on time, has quite rude staff, uncomfortable seats, and makes travellers to its West African flights bus out to the tarmac to get on the plane in Paris.

I guess the world is about to find out about the dogshit that is Air France and CDG when the olympics starts in a few weeks.

I agree. There should have been an official Firefox repo from the beginning.

I do remember twenty years ago, Firefox development was incredibly Windows-centric. At one point it felt as though Firefox for Linux was a second class citizen. This was a radical departure from the Mozilla Suite which was maybe the first major desktop software to go from close to open source. For many years afterward, as a BSD/Linux user, I continued using SeaMonkey for that reason.

I assume having an official repo was just never a priority in the early days.

Maybe that season deserves another watch then. I had different expectations going in, 4 years ago when it was aired, so maybe my disappointment stems from the show being not what I wanted or expected at the time. I should take the time during the upcoming winter break and give it another watch.

I was expecting TNG but 25 years after the Dominion War. They delivered that in Season 3 and it was terrible. Thanks for your thoughts.

Good post, my favorite Sabbath song and album.

Something comforting and nostalgic about putting a CD into your car 6 disc changer.

It's still higher quality than many streaming services especially when you take Bluetooth into account.

I really wish music DVDs would have taken off. The few albums that came out, you could adjust the equalizer settings of each individual track.

I'm happy for them.

Was this the best metal album of 2023? Not by a long shot.

Was it the best Metallica album in 25 years? Absolutely. They tried new things and pulled it off well.

The Grammys have very narrow criteria. Basically you are going to get top 40 radio friendly songs and they choose from that. Looking at the list of nominees, they were the only metal band actually nominated in this category. The rest of the nominees are what people who drive in to "easy listening soft hits" think metal sounds like. 2023 was a pretty weak year for metal anyway.

In my 30s, I've come back around to appreciating Metallica. We don't have many years left of them being around. Enjoy them for the time that we still can. One of these days, soon, they will play Master of Puppets for the last time.

And at least Babymetal didn't win.

I guess don't get involved then?

Also, this conjures images of Shinzo Abe in a fighter jet with the numbers 7-3-1 on the side.

Villa de Levya. Lovely town.

The truth is that a lot of loyal customers are boycotting Starbucks right now over unionization and their stance on Palestine. So Starbucks is trying to bring them back physically into the stores and are using the balance on their cards as leverage. Starbucks has already uncharacteristically been running several promotions to get people back to their stores, with the red cup and the Stanley thing.

If Starbucks has to return the customers' unused balance without bringing them into the stores, then they may have lost those customers for good.