Linux desktop is in a great position now. I’ve been using it long before it was usable for most casual users, but it’s finally reached the point where it has less problems than Windows for my purposes.

Have you met Oracle? They seem to thrive on self-inflicted injuries

They can’t. They will rehire/backfill a fraction of it back a year from now at lower salaries.

People have no idea. I read an article a month ago or so that said that WiFi 7 can use radio/sound frequencies to identify individual people in its range. About 20 years ago a theory was proven to be 80+% accurate at capturing passwords by using a microphone to remotely listen to someone type on a keyboard for a while. Websites, applications, operating systems, hardware, carriers, satellites, vehicle manufacturers, payment processors, healthcare systems, watches, GPS, TVs, etc. are all collecting information whether in good faith or not, and various entities, including the government and private companies, are paying and/or using regulatory enforcement to gather it all. The fight for privacy has already been lost. And most people don’t care or are willing to accept it. The silver lining the thought that it’s not worth fighting it anymore is kind of relieving.

Flock cameras are not LPR cameras. They are regular security cameras, with server-based AI. They even show demos to potential customers showing how the their product can search for specific people based on clothes, animal types, children/babies, strollers, carts, etc. across the entire country from one web-based interface. It’s all very Orwellian and I don’t think this issue either starts nor stops with Flock as a company. This type of surveillance is going to be ubiquitous regardless of what company(s) show up for making money from it.

Windows has been increasingly failing at being what an operating system is supposed to be. It’s supposed to bridge the gap between hardware and software, and facilitate the launching and management of applications. Instead, it’s spying on users, collecting private date, silently installing and running software by third-party accessories, displaying ads, etc. It is full of friction when trying to use it, for example, it can’t suspend or shutdown correctly, it’s full of vulnerabilities, etc. …And then there’s Copilot…