right now is my year of the linux laptop :3

the only thing I’m hoping for is that this can serve as a proof of concept that human brains might be able to learn to control limbs made of synthetic muscles like that…

Maybe they’re attempting to make it ‘learn’ how to move itself using neural networking instead of programming discrete movement presets.

Oh indeed! And that’s why I love GOG! I actually try to check GOG first just in case I can buy a game I want there before I go through with buying it on steam. I would actually gladly pay MORE for the GOG version because it removes bullshit like DRM!

You know sometimes I actually straight up FORGET that Steam is run by the same company that created Half-Life?

They:

1. identified a gradient of human wants
   (Video games exist; I want them on my computer)
2. Created a vector for that want to be satisfied
   (Digital distribution that conveys the games I want to my computer)
3. Stayed the FUCK OUT OF THE WAY

When you do something well, people don’t notice you’ve done anything at all.

Linux devs will NEVER suffer kernel level anticheat, so all games that require it will refuse to run. This is more of a problem with gaming industry culture at large, really. But it’s still only going to affect people who use Linux at the end of the day.

I have mint running on my laptop now.

Pro tip for anyone who wants to try Linux and maybe attempt to set up dual boot with Windows:

TURN OFF BITLOCKER ENCRYPTION IN WINDOWS FIRST.

IF you don’t, here’s what happened to me:

Mint live USB instance booted easily at first. I started the install process and selected dual boot. Mint setup then proceeded to prompt me to enroll a MACHINE OWNER KEY… And then realized that bitlocker encryption would prevent it from setting up dual boot.

It said, to paraphrase, “exit mint setup, log back into Windows, disable bitlocker, then you can come back and install”

Well that was a fucking lie because YOU CANNOT GET BACK INTO MINT!

WHY? Because mint FORGOT the MOK!

When you try to get back into mint from the boot selection menu, it says

Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found

the upshot is that you computer will never let mint live USB session ever boot again UNLESS you disable secure boot in BIOS and rename grub to mmx64.efi in the ISO image.

And if you DO those things chances are mint will never present you with the option to detect and set up dual boot with you extant windows instance ever again.

I went ahead and nuked my windows 11 instance on my laptop because it was being a bitch and clearly was never going to be a good neighbor to mint. I have no major regrets because mint is nice and I like it. It just didn’t turn out how I would’ve ideally intended. But one way or another Windows 11 HAD TO GO. So, in the broad sense, I wanted to switch to mint… And I have! All good.

it happened with etcher, and then continued to happen with rufus. i didn’t even try dd flash mode at first.

what’s crazy is, it WORKED ONCE. ONCE!

I almost wonder if windows somehow detected that another OS ran on the silicon and said “ohhhh no you fucking don’t, FUCK YOU ONLY I GET TO BE YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM!!!”

… okay so uh

i’m probably gonna have to go somewhere more help-focused and immediate than this but

something weird happened.

i bought a brand new USB drive to act as my linux mint boot media and flashed the iso onto it.

it booted into the temporary instance easily! instantly! I started to install thinking i could just set up dual boot with the extant windows instance.

well… it got to the point where it said “hey wait you have to disable secureboot or you have to reformat your entire windows installation”

okay maybe i want to check ONE MORE TIME to see if there’s anything in this windows instance that I still want.

so i halt the linux mint installation process and go back into windows. I take one last catalogue of stuff i’d want to reference later, and then try to boot back into the linux mint live session straight from the usb stick

… nope.

it says ‘something has gone terribly wrong’ and ‘failed to load UEFI’ or something

but that’s not the thing that really spooked me because I thought I could go back into windows, reformat the USB key, and just re-flash the linux mint iso and start over from scratch

that’s all background stuff, here’s the important crazy thing:

the USB key is now reading that it only has a size of FIVE. MEGABYTES. FIVE.

EVEN IF I TRY TO REFORMAT IT, IT STILL IS CONVINCED IT’S ONLY FIVE MEGABYTES

the linux mint iso can’t even FIT on it now

i can’t even reflash it

i … but … how do i even …

WAT

yeah that ancient Sony Vaio is loooong gone. it was manufactured in 2008 or something and was a hand me down from my aunt. we haven’t had it since like 2021

but i do have a laptop outside my main rig and I’m gonna try booting mint off an external drive just to try it out and see how i like the feel again!

i appreciate the encouragement ^_ you know, maybe. I’m haunted by this fear (I try to tell myself it’s an irrational one) that attempting to get into linux now would mess things up for me and that i’d end up stranded and unable to get back but … mint is admittedly VERY APPROACHABLE… hm. Maybe I can drop by staples and buy a spare thumbdrive, put a mint boot image on it, and try it on my battlestation today.

i tried mint on an old laptop for a little while and it was nice. i’m thinking of adopting linux for daily-driving when windows 10 stops being supported entirely. But i’m considering going with Bazzite when that time comes, maybe…

Yup.

“they can’t do that, that’s illegal!”

Shame the law doesn’t mean Jack Fucking Shit now.

The law is whatever they want it to be at any moment.

The coordinated enshittification is rather disheartening.

I’m still daily driving a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 because all the phones thereafter felt like a downgrade, and the problems like the one referenced in this article have only convinced me further…

I miss 2014, when the note 4 was the flagship. Note 4 kicked ass.

Time to found an llc based in Ireland to collect the monies as a proxy and then disburse them as “wages” for “consultancy”!

…

same energy as “moon moon”

oh is it short for ‘manual’?

what the fuck is a man page

perhaps the only ethical consumption under capitalism is that which denies capitalists their profit.

… personally, i wish aliens would show up and be like, “bruh.” to save a sapient biosphere from extinction.

But I don’t actually believe it’ll be that.

Probably more likely a total systemic collapse of the United States of America due to its critical infrastructure crumbling past a point where its economics can adapt resulting in a stock market crash that wipes out entire industries. Then a cascade failure of all the nations that were still relying upon them to remain functional that crashes just about every OTHER economy across the entire planet (though potentially not china maybe) and leaves almost the whole population of our entire species to fend for ourselves.

After the initial riots disable urban centers and local peacekeeping forces fail to quell them, the bureaucrats wholly owned by corporate sponsors will go full mask-off and call in private security contractor shock troops to exterminate the uppity peasantry and brutalize any survivors back into submissive complicity. Anyone who didn’t fight will be targeted for detainment via guilt by association. Personal property will be seized “for peacekeeping purposes” and anyone who isn’t working for the corporations or mounting a strong enough resistance will be captured and concentrated in forced labor camps.

Billions of us will die, possibly even more than half of our entire species, whether from lack of critical support systems (lack of food, potable water, medical care, and/or shelter that can protect them from extreme temperature), by exploitation of warlords rising to fill local power vacuums (including corporate-owned city-state enclaves), or in conflict between corporate enclaves and said warlords, all exacerbated by hotter and longer heat waves and droughts, deeper and sharper cold snaps, HARSHER storms, BIGGER fires, MORE floods, rising sea levels, and no organized reconstruction efforts.

There may or may not be a few madmen who decide to pull the doomsday triggers and kick off a global thermonuclear exchange out of impotent rage that despite all their destructive power they’re still about to lose everything and are lashing out in hopeless desperation.

2036 heralds the watershed moment that people realize we’ve entered the new dark age. There is nothing we can do to stop it, but if you start right now, you might prepare yourself and your local community to mitigate the hardship… even if only temporarily.