I’ve got the same thing. I had someone ask me what I do for backups and they thought I was joking when I told them I have a good printer. They couldn’t get their head around the idea that I don’t even have a home network to attach a NAS to, and thought I was just being condescending. I had a similar conversation when asked how to secure an Alexa.

That’s really great, thank you. I’ve got a working knowledge of applying opsec and related principles, but my understanding quickly drops off when we get into the why. That’s super helpful.

I really appreciate your response and I agree completely. Linux seems awesome (I’ve played with Mint a little bit, and have heard a lot about Bazzite and Kinoite, and I do plan on moving over when I have the time/energy/motivation. It does seem significantly better than the commercial offerings once one gets past the (often exaggerated) learning curve.

Would you mind expanding on the Apple stuff? I haven’t looked into them as a company since they told the courts to fuck off during the Snowden trial or something like that. I’m realizing that I’m not an Apple fanboy, but I also don’t have the data pool to really form an opinion one way or another.

Good on you. Few are willing to take the overgrown path. And, funny how people who work with the subject matter often avoid it- the cybersecurity guy who doesn’t own a computer, the guy who services food processing equipment who refuses to buy premade food, the guy who works/ed for the DoD who doesn’t own a phone, etc.

Would you mind sharing some of the online things you’re averse to, besides all that is implied by being on the Fediverse? I’m still new to this stuff.

It’s wild how quickly morality falls to the wayside (and is subsequently paved over). Especially crazy to abandon one’s moral standing early on the path of solving problems that don’t exist to appease people who don’t care for a chance at the advancement of a career that you can’t take with you in a field that could be wiped out by a solar flare, all to end up making the world a worse place for subsequent generations (I’m not a bleeding-heart idealist, lol).

I often think about a few people I know who have psych degrees. All were told, in different years, that if they wanted to make money as a psychologist, they needed to get in with tech companies. Some even got job offers.

I wonder if, at any point, anyone stopped to ask themselves, “did I really go to school just so I can ply my knowledge and expertise to find even more ways to fucking track people who expressly don’t want to be tracked so we can use the data for ad revenue (if not for other, even worse things)”?

Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always found smart TB UIs to be totally unnecessary and kind of an annoying feature. I’ve got a Sony smart TV and have never used the UI. I just use it as a monitor for my PC, and if I’m watching TV, it’s via the web or something. So personally, this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, aside from the principle of it, which is absolutely a big deal and super shitty.

Maybe some of this is being terrified about the quiet spreading of the IoT and how that feels like a really fucking half baked idea that’s going to be a big problem later on.

I wonder how much of the anti-apple stuff comes from the extremity of the person’s views. I have always preferred PC/windows due to familiarity with it, but I’ve used iphones for 12 or 13 years, and by extension, some of apple’s services (like icloud). They’ve been pretty great this whole time. And, as a normie, I’ve been happy with what I’ve heard and seen about their stability, general lack of ads, and security/protection of customer data. I doubt there’s many others on the Fediverse with similar views due to the nature of this place, but anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that it seems like some of the dissent toward apple is inherent to their position relative to the opinion holder.

Thank you for the explanation!

I wish I wasn’t tired to the point that my brain subconscious puts up blocks after seeing “meta” and some made up word like “momfluencers”. I’m just so tired if the loop of “company that did weird and evil shit attempts to change image by doing weird unethical shit”. That’s enough internet for today, I’m gonna go tend to my potatoes

I was actually going to, pls give a rundown of the eula

The irony of this being on wired, that hides everything besides the headline and first paragraph behind a paywall.

Username checks out, lol.

I’ve actually always thought model trains were super cool when other people were into them. I’m a little too much of a neanderthal to be into them, but I love hearing about the worlds people build and how people pick their favorite engines (?). In fact, I’d love to hear about yours- your favorites, your grails, your setups.

I don’t know of any other games that fit the niche (I’ve looked as well) that are also good (there’s a mobile game called Exiled Kingdoms that’s pretty good, but it’s a mobile game).

I have found some other games scratch the itch pretty well though. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla actually does for me, even though you’re locked into one character with like 10 unique choices that determine a few different cutscenes. Maybe for me it’s because the world is pretty, the story is (mostly) interesting, it’s close enough to historical accuracy without belaboring the point (like kingdom come), and the way the story is played is kind of in line with what I’d be doing anyway.

But, I do feel your pain and wish we could have a different type of Elder Scrolls that wasn’t just mods.

It’s wild, like people get into things when there is novelty and affordability and then leave when one of those goes away.

My biggest question now is, what will supplant PC building/other super high end stuff? I grew up on Halo and early CoDs, but now that I’m old and suck at video games (particularly online multiplayer), and seeing a huge shift toward battle royale and dark souls style gameplay, I felt like I was long overdue to start reading more/working out more/hiking/etc.

That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s actually pretty terrifying to think that you’d have to rent your professional skillset.

Tbh the statistics are pretty great for nuclear.

is this much different than IT guys not knowing how to solder anymore? I started my career learning about individual components and doing math by hand, and shortly after I was told that all we did was swap cards. My job eventually turned into a more or less normal IT job (compared to what it was), and by the time I moved on, we weren’t even using command prompts anymore.

I remember asking one of my instructors about how layer 1 can generate layer 2, and he had an idea, but couldn’t really point at components and give an explanation. One could say that I represent that first step in the death of knowledge due to convenience and optimization, but it hasn’t really negatively affected me outside of curiosity. Even when I’m working on legacy equipment and actually do have to bust out a soldering iron, that’s usually because I’m being cheap and don’t want to buy new cards.

So, this makes me wonder: is it really all that bad if someone can’t sit down and write lines and lines of code, but can understand it well enough to direct AI? I’ve used AI to help me code in some unfamiliar languages and all of the outputs I got were utterly unusable. So, in my anecdote, it didn’t make up for my lack of skill in the slightest.

I say this as someone who taught himself blacksmithing on principle, so it’s not like i’m some techbro or something. Obligatory I think AI is overpromised, but this seems like one of the few things it can actually assist with, assuming the person using it is capable enough to be using it.

Didn’t one of the Clintons do just that, too?