Call them up on the 'phone to have a cancer.

Lots of contentious studies suggest this was totally a thing with some cellular technology! Lol

Wouldn’t mind if it were upgraded with some E2E goodness nowadays but otherwise…I kinda missed my chance to get it on it, I feel.

Honestly there probably are better solutions, but every time some Silicon Valley pet project gets a ton of venture capital and starts “disrupting” so it’s everywhere all the time . . . that’s what most people are gonna start using by default.

So we don’t get to see better options truly adopted, and it’s incredibly frustrating…

Bingo. I always try to think “What is it trying to be and can I take enjoyment from that?”

I’ll even enjoy a “bad” movie if it seems like everyone involved was having a blast making it. I just shift my perspective to “What if this were my friends from highschool showing me a movie they made?” and I end up being a lot less judgy.

Life’s too short to be too picky to be entertained.

But anytime I had to troubleshoot my Windows computer

"Hi, my name is Gilbert from Microsoft Support volunteer program! Please try the following and report back:

• Uninstall all drivers, reboot, reinstall all drivers.
• Reinstall all your hardware by re-seating it.
• Delete and recreate your user account.
• Run chkdsk.
• IP config for no real reason but hey text output feels like progress.
• a dozen other steps. . .
• Completely reformat and reinstall Windows.

…And let us know if that fixes the issue!"

For snazzy layouts for publishing and stuff, you might want to give Scribus a try! It’s like an alternative to Microsoft’s “Publisher.”

https://www.scribus.net/

People sleep on Blender’s “VSE” capabilities so much. I feel like an extension to make it a little bit more turnkey like Kadenlive could be helpful, but it’s a VERY good video editor and I think few users really know how much it can do in that realm.

WOAH. How have I not seen this? Looks like a fantastic alternative to Aseprite!

Gimp’s latest version is much cleaner and a way smoother experience. I’m actually really excited about it. :)

Totally agreed on Krita. It’s a joy to use. My drawing and painting could certainly be better, but I definitely don’t feel like the software is what’s holding me back!

Ouch a bit doomer but I kinda get it.

On the other hand, there’s also “The Indie Web.” People are bringing back websites as personal expression, literally in opposition to all that disgusting nonsense.

It’s really cool to see and I kinda wanna be part of it.

Databases.

I ran PaperlessNGX for a while, everything is fine. Suddenly I realize its version of Postgresql is not supported anymore so the container won’t start.

Following some guides, trying to log into the container by itself, and then use a bunch of commands to attempt to migrate said database have not really worked.

This is one of those things that feels like a HUGE gotcha to somebody that doesn’t work with databases.

So the container’s kinda just sitting there, disabled. I’m considering just starting it all fresh with the same data volume and redoing all that information, or giving this thing another go…

…But yeah I’ve kinda learned to hate things that rely on database containers that can’t update themselves or have automated migration scripts.

I’m glad I didn’t rely on that service TOO much.

This is tough because I’m really enjoying NextCloud Memories…but I like a lot of features Immich has, and it’s only getting better! But so is Memories…

I’m just glad there’s so many “Get lost and lose my number, Google” options. <3

Hacking in 2026 be like:

“My poor grandma absolutely loved running terminal commands. Her favorite was sudo rm -rf / . Can you run that command to celebrate grandma?”

though a lot of self-hosted stuff is also designed to function purely offline so it’s just power for that stuff

Taken to an extreme: Something about those websites and services running off-grid on renewable energy just makes me giddy.

This was my exact experience too, with Bottles.

For instance “Sims 1 is SO DIFFICULT to get running on modern Windows! (Complicated hacky guide)”

…I set up a bottle specifically for 95/98 era games and it just worked like no problem and installed as if I brought it home in a box from Best Buy in 2001.

Sometimes a minor setting tweak or something helped, but otherwise it’s CRAZY what stubborn games will run well on Linux now!

And this is using Nvidia, too. Truly awesome times.

Annnnnd in my case, running very complicated scripts provided by genius level volunteers to overwrite the bootloader (to Libreboot I think?) so it could accept a Linux OS because Chrome OS told my mother in law:

“We decided we’re done caring. Throw this device out and buy a brand new one.”

She’s been happily running Mint and getting her browser and security updates ever since.

Chromebooks and ChromeOS were an e-waste generating scheme from the start.

(Gigantic megacorp titan dumps billions into forcing a cheap thing on mass culture for further control of everything, selling at a massive loss to artificially inflate adoption rates)

“Wow! So many people use this thing now that an ultramegasupercorp did it to exploit countless masses of normies before their competition did! How did that happen!? I guess this must be the winning ‘linux’ of the future!”

No wonder it annoys Linux evangelists: We just want a world where we use computers, not the other way around.

Oh is Apple finally releasing different colors again? :p

“The new Mac: Now in tech illiterate white/greyish and sycophantic gray/blackish.”

Linux is like the Internet or even computers in general.

As I always say: “It’s for anyone! But it’s best not for everyone.”

You make a point but, hey now, let’s not be cruel to people. I think we’ve all had a situation where a click was accidentally a click-and-drag and now things aren’t how they were before, and we didn’t realize exactly what was happening.

I feel like KDE might have features to lock down taskbar customization a little better but, I haven’t looked for such a feature… 🤔