No, it’s not my point, although there is a difference between expressing ideas, no matter how contrarian or controversial they may be, and spouting hate or other positions detrimental to advancement.

I am aware of what you mention of companies sniffing for the social media of employees and potential applicants. It is a shameful practice. And if it is illegal in my country, has it is viewed as trespassing on one’s privacy, it should be as welll any and everywhere.

Nobody should be ashamed nor afraid of expressing their opinions and ideas. Unfortunately, freedom of expression is often confused with the hability of saying whatever one feels like it, which is not.

What you describe (and fear, I take) is persecution. And that already tells whatever system an individual lives in is already deep into veering towards blatant suppression of rights. The US case is so off the rails it deserves an entire category to itself but it is only one among too many.

On the question of banning access to pornography I am completely against it. Yet I can not and will not deny the amount of evidence that supports that early and easy access to it is in fact tainting how people in general and kids in particular understand how relations are constructed. Pornography is really good at teaching wrong things. Nothing against it per se, it can be fun, but it should be consumed just like sugar, tobbacco and alcohol: in moderation and knowing of its ill effects.

I personally started reading erotic books much sooner than it was supposed. I recognize that curiosity towards sex and sexuality is ingrained in what makes us humans. I’m not advocating for banning adult material of any sort. What I would like to see would be clear boundaries for that specific content, for it not reaching those who are not expected to access it unware. It can’t be written off to caveat emptor. Even less because a lot of it is “free”.

The web is as it is today in great measure due to porn. There was a lot of money being poured into technology to facilitate access to it and in high definition. Let’s be thankful for it but that is it. It can be almost ubiquious nowadays, along with casinos and crypto. It’s too much and too much of a good thing is bad for everyone. Remember death by snu-snu.

I have no illusion we, as a species and a civilization, are going through a very dark period. Again. All the prior should have been able to sink in the lesson but we are either too sttuborn or too stupid to learn. Censoring, wide spread control of ideas, knowledge and thought is detrimental to a fair and free society.

Excuses like “protecting children”, “fighting terrorism”, etc, are, as you correctly said, excuses to make advances on individual rights and liberties. But we should be as concerned by now that companies do whatever they can to reach their goals and we are being force fed too many things that are not good for us. Two wrongs don’t make a right but something has to change. Perhaps ceasing to be afraid of being responsible by one’s own ideas and words would be a good start. Maybe stop feeding social media would be another. And perhaps reigning in companies on bad practices could be another.

That’s the point.

You, as a common citizen, should not have to. But the moment you feel like to share your thought or opinion, you should be identifiable and made responsible for it.

The current social media outlets shield behind the argument they act solely as channels while at the same time fostering and allowing for “anonymous” groups or individuals to spout whatever views they want, often views that deter from advancing social and civilizational progress. Hence the current state of the world, with authoritarianism on a rise and hight like there wasn’t in nearly 70 years.

When the internet was made of individual websites, the person behind it was automatically made responsible for whatever they put on it. That was fair and reasonable.

Pushes like this, is assigning suspition/guilt before any wrong doing.

I will grant the overall facilitated acess to pornography is damaging the kids. There are already enough studies showing how the early access to porn is related to bad interpersonal relations on social, emotional and sexual level.

But this does not imply you should be identifying yourself to access adult content or anything on the web. Just impose curation. If it’s available to the public, you’re responsible for it.

Old school “dirty” books and magazines stores had controlled access and the really hardcore stuff was well out of reach of who should not get to it. Free porn is nice but there are things available that should be behind pay walls or at least registry, with identity verification.

Try reading it instead. Go old school. And while you’re at it, write yourself and share it. Bring back the times of hand to hand banned knowledge sharing.

But now seriously: that is completely stupid.

As anyone considered the amount of money that “industry” generates. Considering the US is so economy driven and concerned with jobs, maybe that argument can raise concerns.

At some point, it will be easier to just not have a phone.

Seems very reasonable.

I’m going to check a bit further. I would like to have a MSI based system. My (most probably) next monitor will be an MSI curved.

I have a motherboard that reaches a version that requires OS loading. It has an .exe file. No files directly loadable at BIOS level but I always assumed it an oddity.

Currently, I’m running a Gigabyte AB350M-DASH and I was able to load several BIOS updates directly by USB. However, from a version onwards it requires loading from the OS.

I thought it was just an isolated case but it seem to be a more common situation.

The Arch users being so vocal is more of a trope to me. Never fails to make me smile.

Ubuntu started as a great endeavour. They made Linux much more approachable to the less tech inclined user.

It is an achievement to get a distro capable of basically work out of the box that hides the hard/technical stuff under the hood and delivers a working machine, and they did it and popularized Linux in the process.

Unfortunately, they abused the good faith they garnered. The Amazon partnership, their desktop that nobody really enjoyed, the Snap push. These are the ones I was made aware of but I risk there were more issues.

I was a user of Ubuntu for less than six months. Strange as it may sound, after trying SUSE and Debian, when I actively searched for a more friendly distro, I rolled back to Debian exactly because Ubuntu felt awkward.

Ubuntu is still a strong contributor but unless they grow a spine and actually create a product people will want to pay for, with no unpopular or weird options on the direction the OS “must” take, they won’t get much support from the wide user community.

That one.

I took it as a good humoured take ad I answered it in the same fashion.

I could, in fact, draw the entire thing on paper. Technical drawing was taugh to me in school and I took quite well to it; I still like to draw today but more as an artistic expression.

Although I wouldn’t consider what I make as artistic under any light.

But my original still holds. Yes, I could. But I would have to make everything from scratch every single time we wanted to try an idea.

Not really practical.

I’m going to look into LibreCAD and FreeCAD. Seem to be the most promising solutions.

I could but it would be a hassle to draw from scratch an entire blueprint every time some idea came to us to improve the space. Hence, the digital option.

1947

So, old but not that old.

They don’t. :) First place I asked. The house is so old it still falls under a exemption to have blueprints deposited at the municipality. In fact, it wasn’t even built with blueprints.

I understand your concern and advice.

My house was built using a logic that only the outter walls, which are stone on the ground floor and cement block on the top floor, are load bearing.

These will not be touched, besides removing and replacing old mortars.

On the inside, all the walls are for show, made of wood I want to reclaim and a couple that were built in clay bricks but that have no load bearing capability nor structural role.

Drawing the blueprints as the house exists today will serve to have a birds eye view of the house to work on, even with professionals, if the need arises in the future.

This sort of house is not considered interesting for professionals in my area; the structure is too simple and can not accomodate that many changes. And because I’m not rebuilding but just renewing, no projects, licenses or consultancy is required. This makes this kind of job not very appealing.

And thank you for reminding me that electrical and water plants are a thing, aswell.

I don’t think the creators of the Sims designed the game with that in mind but if works, it is not stupid.

Unusual solution but I can see it working! Most definetely.

But I do require some degree of accuracy on what I intend to do, so FreeCAD is lining up be the best solution, taking from the answer I’m getting.

The house is old and drawing an as much as humanly possible accurate blueprint would be a plus. And I do have some very weird angles in it.

Not in the mood to pay for a solution that a FOSS program may cover as well, considering it won’t be used for professional purposes.

A native GNOME solution. Wasn’t expecting that one.

I respect Blender very much but I’m also aware it requires a very deep dive to manage to use at minimum. So, as much as I can, I’ll avoid it.