This is my mantra. Maintainability is king. I can’t convince anyone designing our systems that this is more important than fancy 3rd party libraries that add some capability that only a couple of people will ever understand how to use, but will find it’s way throughout the codebase and be a thorn in the side of bug fixes and new features for years.

I’m sorry Dave, but I’m afraid I can’t do that, because I don’t recognize your face.

I’ve sort of been forced over to Mac (not that it’s a bad thing, just a thing), and Paint.NET is perhaps my biggest loss in that transition. I’ve loved that program since its early days, and is always one of my first installs on any new Windows installation.

Cannot recommend? Or cannot recommend enough? I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but that’s exactly the sort of brain typo that I would make, giving my audience exactly the opposite claim to what I’d intended, and based on context, I think the latter is what you were going for?

I’ve heard of Earthsea, but had no idea what it was about. Now I may need to pick it up. I rather enjoyed a more recent story with a similar plot, written by an author with, shall we say, less progressive opinions.

I use this as well. I haven’t had any issues.

Depends on the hardware, but generally, yeah.

(It’s a joke)

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

I’d be interested to see what people have to say regarding VR setup, but the Oculus gets little use anymore. I have a few games that were never ported to the newer, self-contained systems (I have a Quest 3), and we’ve downloaded a bunch of custom Beat Saber levels that I might feel bad about, but the sensors are a big enough pain to set up that I don’t know that I’d feel that bad.

Truth. Full system would be easier.

I’m pretty sure anything of value is already backed up to my NAS. I’m just paranoid that my kids might freak out that I destroyed their state fair winning Scratch project or something.

I have an old (2017) Windows 10 box that is ineligible for Windows 11. Originally purchased to run my Oculus Rift, it now just streams YouTube and Twitch and plays some old Steam games and occasionally school related stuff (Lexia, Scratch, stuff like that).

I started thinking that, rather than worrying about an unsupported Windows OS on my network, I might upgrade to Mint or Ubuntu.

So, my question(s) is/are, how much of a hassle will such an upgrade be? Will I need to wipe the drive, or can I keep my files without having to back them up first? Can I run Windows games on Steam with Wine? Are there good 3D card drivers nowadays?

I’m reasonably versed in using Linux as a user, less so as an admin, in case that affects the way you answer.

I mentioned the not reading the article so people would not waste their time citing facts from the article that may explain the headline that suggested billions social security numbers were leaked. I made no assumptions about missing addresses, as the headline didn’t mention anything about missing addresses. I even mentioned that the event the article discussed was probably pretty bad – definitely not a negative against the article’s believability. I’m only guilty of judging a book by its cover, and in an existence of limited time, nobody has time to do any more than that except for limited exceptions. I did not choose to make this article an exception. The headline was mathematically deceptive, and my comment was about that. Nothing more.

If you see an article highlighting a breach of social security numbers and don’t assume it’s about the U.S., that’s crazy to me.

Like I said, I didn’t read the article, but only Americans would have social security numbers.

It sounds like a bad breach, and I’m not arguing against that. I just want to point out my doubts that there were ever 2.9 billion Americans since the founding of the nation, let alone since social security numbers became a thing. Maybe if I bothered to read the article, it would make more sense.

With fees that high, what was your typical profit margin per sale? How were you able to source product at such a high discount?

You cannot have… my coveted… iiiice… creeeam… baaar!

Agreed. Narrator does sound like Ren.

Heh, I see what y’all did there…

But if it truly is superior, won’t I as a consumer favor those recordings with spatial whatever it is by listening to them more, thereby encouraging the producers with more money because of the increased streaming over the others? Surely making such recordings a favored class where payments are concerned is just a form of double dipping?

I love those. They’re underrated. Crackle is pretty nice, too.

It looks like Snoo’s drunk uncle. What’s with the 5 o’clock shadow?