I used something like that for a while but I didn’t really use the keypad side in practice and the quality of that remote was kinda crap so the most used buttons quickly became unreliable. Also I don’t find the airmouse all that convenient to use.

I replaced it with one of these plus I also have a perfectly normal keyboard and mouse connected to that mini-PC in case I need to directly use it (which is rare since even the homeserver stuff I normally do remotely from a normal Desktop PC via SSH).

I know it’s a shitpost, but here’s an interesting piece of History:

• Back in the late 15th century, before Christopher Colombus officially discovered the Americas (more on that later), the Portuguese and the Spanish made a Treaty - the Treaty of Tordesillas - where they divided the World in half, each one getting one half of it.
• Whilst making the Treaty, the original proposal was that the dividing line (remember, this was before the first trip around the World) would be a North-South line, located 20 nautical miles East of the Cape Verde Islands (which are just East of the coast of Africa). With the Portuguese side being to the East of that line and the Spanish side to the West.
• The Portuguese refused that location and instead wanted that line 20,000 nautical miles East of the Cape Verder islands, which was what ended up in that Treaty.
• Where is now Brazil is to the East of that line, on the Portuguese side, and the rest of South America is to the West of that line, on the Spanish side

This is why the Portuguese and the Brazilians speak the same language, whilst the rest of South America speaks the same language as the Spanish.

Nowadays it’s actually believed the Portuguese discovered the Americas before Christopher Columbus did (hence explaining the insistence on the location of that line in the Treaty), though there’s also proof that the Vikings discovered the Americas centuries before that.

Am Portuguese, can confirm.

Well, in all fairness I still have a keyboard and mouse wired to that setup, though it’s very rare that I use it.

Having a bone is perfectly normal for around half of humans.

For a human having two bones is not normal. Also for 3 bones, 4 bones and so on. Curiously having a few bones is normal for some animals, such as dogs.

Then it’s normal again for humans to have around 206 bones.

This is one of life’s great paradoxes.

The manufacturer matters for the option to be at all available, but it’s the seller that matters when it comes to how many people go for it if there is one.

Non-experts tend to chose from what’s right there in front of them in the store front they’re buying from, not a manufacturer option that they’ll only hear about if they care enough and understand enough to actually go look for it.

In my experience most PC sellers don’t put their Linux options right there in front of you side by side with the Windows options and with equal proeminence, and this is as much true for online stores as it is for physical stores.

Lenovo offering it as an option is a pre-condition for people to actually get it but non-techies are still not going to get it if sellers don’t make it as visible and available as the Windows option, which personally I almost never see happen outside smaller techie-friendly PC stores.

Whilst that would be a great idea, top EU politicians tend to be in the pockets of Big Tech and the EU Parliament is currently majority Rightwing, so it’s doubtful such a thing will happen.

Well, the absured prices of some PC parts might actually drive some Linux adoption purelly because replacing an aging Windows install with Linux is a guaranteed way to extend the usability of the hardware, even for really old stuff (for most people, less so for gamers).

That said, the vast majority of people use whatever OS that comes pre-installed in their PC when they buy it.

As I see it, if there’s a fast pivot point to Linux it will be when the larger PC makers offer, side by side with a Windows option, a “with Linux pre-installed” option, especially if the final price reflects the cost of the OS license.

Even then, the shift would take years as people slowly replace old machines, a process which itself takes significativelly longer nowadays due to the current insane prices for some PC parts.

Sure, there is a drip-drip effect from people getting things like the Steam Deck and Steam Machine as well as tech types replacing whatever is in the machines of their family members with Linux as a way to avoid having to replace that hardware with newer (and at the moment far more expensive) machines, but I don’t think that adds up to much more that 1-2 per year.

Mind you, this is a point of view based on how things work in Europe and the US - it’s quite possible that things are very different in places like China and developing nations and there are very different pathways and reasons for Linux adoption.

The only ones guaranteed to make money in a Gold Rush are the ones selling shovels.

That said, NVIDIA made the mistake of lending money and/or investing directly in the ones doing the “gold mining”, so now they’re heavilly exposed to the side of things that loses a lot of money when it turns out that it was all Fools’ Gold.

When it comes to manias, some things are always the same.

Yeah, this is one of these things that’s simply solved by people not giving their credit card data to random strangers who offer them something “for free” in exchange for it.

I mean, if one has managed to survive one’s childhood without getting into the cars of strangers in exchange for candy, it shouldn’t be that hard to, in one’s supposed adult years, not give access to one’s bank account via a credit card to strangers offering you free shit.

Just because the “stranger” is behind a company mask doesn’t make them any more trustworthy. One could even say it makes them less trustworthy, since the actual people doing the fishy stuff behind a company mask are far less likely to suffer any personal consequences from it than if they did it directly as individuals.

If you need to give you Credit Card info for a “free” anything, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be one these scams.

I’m just running Linux with an always on top Kodi on an N100 mini-PC.

Works fine with a wireless remote for the purpose of being a TV Box that I just have on my living room and use in the same way as I would a commercial TV box.

Granted, I also use that as a homeserver (its seriously overpowered to just be a TV Box) but that side of things I manage remotely via SSH.

You don’t really need access to the full desktop to run Linux apps if you just want a TV Box.

It’s going to be a wonderful time to be a Freelance Senior Developer and above in a few years.

By this point in time, after Alderaan and a couple more planets have been blown up, you should probably have figured out that being an Engineer for the Empire’s Death Star makes you one of the baddies even if you’re not the one pressing the red button.

Though luck in not popping out from the “right” vagina.

“My, oh my, what a husky deep voice you have Pink Ranger”

And yes, I am brainwashing him against all the corpo crowd.

Sounds more like you’re deprogramming them.

The brainwashing is the Marketing and PR from the big corps that turns people into mindless consumers and even fans.

The overwhelming amounts of Advertising everywhere every day aren’t there because people are naturaly prone to love brands, they’re there to (mainly using techniques from Psychology) shift people’s perception feelings about a brand to make them love the brand, and if you pay attention most of it is designed to influence people via their subconscious pathways (such as familiarization and associating the brand with other things they feel as positive) rather than to convince people with rational arguments via their conscious mind. So it’s the Advertising that’s using the same kind of technique as brainwashing.

If you’re trying to change your kid’s mind via convincing them of something (i.e. rationalizing with them) rather that through psychological trickery (for example, relentless pressure until they comply), then what you’re doing is the very opposite of brainwashing.

Look mate, the average American is a Racist, even the Liberals who think being Prejudiced about those they see as belonging to <identity> with a “positive” spin is being anti-Racist rather than yet another variant of “they’re all the same” thinking, hence the muppeters who pull the strings of these people use “blame foreigners” arguments to deflect away the blame for the problems caused by the American Power Elites (mainly the billionaires and their political minions)

• “Immigrants” are blamed by the openly Fascist Far-Right (Republicans)
• “Foreign interference” from those the American politicians call “adversaries”, such as Russia or China (never Israel) is blamed by the pro-Oligarchy fine-with-Fascism-abroad Hard-Right (Democrats)

So obviously when the Public Opinion in America naturally turned against Data Centers because of the ton of problems they bring with no real gains for the common people to offset it - all this against the actions of the bought and paid for politicians in favor of the handful of fatcats who do benefit from said Data Centers - the politicians’ knee-jerk reaction was to blame foreigners, because blaming foreigners works spectacularly well with most of the American public, both the Far-Right ones and the muppets who think they’re left-of-center whilst in fact being cheerleaders for Oligarchs and pro-Oligarchy policies.

As it always turns out, just like the “problems” caused by immigrants the impact of “foreign interference” is not even in the same universe of fucking things up in America than the shit that the 100% American “elites” and their 100% American bought and paid for political minions do.

Even when those foreign “adversaries” are activelly trying to negativelly impact America, the impact of their actions is like that of a flea on an elephant compared by what the Americans with the most power do. I would even say that given how things are going in the US the best thing that an adversary nation of America can do in America to fuck it up right now is NOTHING AT ALL as Americans seem to be going full throttle at fucking things up themselves.

Tell me you have no contact with the Tech Industry without telling me you have no contact with the Tech Industry.

The Industry isn’t led by Engineers anymore and it hasn’t for almost 2 decades, it’s led by people with salesmanship kind of skills, often with MBAs and/or Finance backgrounds.

The people who think AI is great and should be used in their company are mainly not Engineers. I mean, it’s literally there in the article that they’re people too far removed from the coalface to actually fully understand the way things are done.

Engineers have the almost opposite personality type, being prone to digging into details, analysing problems and wanting maximum clarity on things, all things that help one spot that AI produced results are shallow, inconsistent and excessivelly verbose.

Maybe you’re thinking about the broader rule that highly intelligent people are easier to scam because they think their intelligence protects them from being scammed, but that’s not specific of Engineers (though it also applies to them and definitelly explains all sorts of Tech fanboyism).