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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I mean, lack of consensus notwithstanding, the logic tree should be pretty simple;

    • Employer demands secure device

      • Employee has one personally and is willing to use it for work

        • Employer allows use of personal device

          • Problem solved
        • Employer isn’t comfortable with BYOD, provides a device

          • Employee accepts the new device

            • Problem solved
          • Employee doesn’t accept the device, can’t do their job, is fired

            • Problem solved
      • Employee either doesn’t have one, or refuses to use their own

        • Employer provides one

          • Problem solved
        • Employer refuses to provide one

          • Employee realizes the company sucks, quits

            • Problem solved
          • Employer gets shitty about it, fires the employee, employee sues and easily wins

            • Problem solved
    • updated for more scenarios



  • There are absolutely online stores that do that, but they’re usually gamer-focused, so there’s three issues;

    Note: I’m taking about laptops, because it’s all I’ve bought for the last decade or more;

    • The non-gamer focused stores rarely (if ever) have the option (Lenovo, Dell, Microsoft, etc).

    • The gamer focused stores usually sell hardware that runs Linux like shit because the hardware needs extremely specific drivers (which isn’t necessarily an issue for Linux, but if it doesn’t exist yet, you’re either building them yourself, or waiting for someone else to do so).

      • Note: Most Clevo systems - that are private-labeled by the likes if IBuyPower, OriginPC, etc - run Linux really well. Some of these sellers make custom hardware, or sell other private-label systems, so your milage may vary.
    • The gamer focused stores are usually patroned by people who are all in on Windows gaming, because they don’t do much else with the system, so they don’t experience the kinds of annoyances that power users would gripe about (which is why the above point doesn’t compel those sellers to do anything different).

      • And before someone corrects me: Gamers are not inherently power users, they just have powerful systems. It used to be that powerful systems were only buildable and maintenable by power users, but that hasn’t been true for years. If all you do is install and click “play”, you aren’t a power user.

    As for desktops, I really couldn’t say. Haven’t been paying attention for years. It’s possible that you could buy a system without a hard drive, never mind an OS.


  • I may be spoiled in that I don’t play AAA multiplayer games, but I do play AAA single player and indie single/multiplayer (usually the type where one of the players is also the server, e.g. Terraria).

    Been running Linux on my systems for more than a decade, and - especially since Proton/SteamDeck enchantments made their way upstream - I haven’t had any major ssues (except having to wait a while to play RDR2-PC in Ubuntu because of a weird game-specific graphics card driver issue, but even that was fixed in due course).

    Fuck Windows, and fuck the assertion that it’s the only way to run games.



  • I mean, my first reply to OP literally said the same thing, but sure, it’s me moving the goal posts.

    And I’m not talking about private as in “who owns and has ‘rights’ to the data” because “discord is s private company with TOS” (which offers zero protection, since scrapers don’t care about TOS, even when the scraper is a major company - See StabilityAI, Google, et al).

    I’m taking private as in “not any random person can log in and see it”. Private discord servers and DMs don’t appear to be included. That’s the “private” I’m taking about.



  • I understand the vector, I’m just saying that maybe if people had conducted themselves responsibly, this wouldn’t be an issue.

    Hiding behind a moniker to do things you would normally be shunned is bad for everyone. It allows trolls to thrive, reduces or removes the impetus for broader social change/evolution (offline, that is), and fosters echo chambers full of people who have zero responsibility to regulate what they say for the sake of sanity (because fuck it, who’s gonna call them on their bullshit, right? And even if someone does, “they’re” not being judged, “their profile” is, so they can separate themselves from any criticism without doing any self-reflecting).

    If you want to post something (text, art, etc) and you have to stop and think about your reputation, that’s a good thing. It means you should either not do something stupid, or you should stand behind your actions, and give support to others to do/say that thing.

    The other option is to post behind a fake name knowing that there are no consequences, and just call it a day (which is why the opinion of the average post is so easily dismissed at “some random person on the Internet”).

    And if you really do need anonymity (because the thing your discussing is super difficult or dangerous for you)… maybe don’t fucking have that conversation in a public discord channel?








  • In no particular order;

    • Detecting “installed” software is iffy. Linux can have all kinds of things running on it that aren’t “installed” as-such (same as Windows with portable EXEs, Linux has AppImage/etc). Excepting things like that, you can detect installed apps through the package managers (apt/pkg/yum/snap/etc).
    • OS updates in Debian-likes and Redhat-likes are controllable out of the box, but I’m not familiar with a way to prevent a user from doing them (other than denying them root access, which might make it hard for them to use the system, depending on what they need to do).
    • I’ve had a lot of good results with OpenVPN.
    • lol antivirus. Not saying Linux doesn’t get viruses, or that there arent antiviruses for Linux, but the best way to avoid getting them is still to just avoiding stupid shit. Best thing I can offer is that if you have some kind of centralized storage, check that for compromised files frequently, and keep excellent backups. And make sure your firewalls and ACLs don’t suck.