Windows has basically become malware. It does a fuck ton of tracking, and all of its features are about appeasing shareholders over users.

If we want to get technical: I loathe it because even in the year 2024, it’s the only operating system I’ve witnessed that will absolutely grind to a halt when a third party application stops responding or crashes. There is no valid fucking reason why the parent system should be halted by an application that crashes.

Also, ads in the start panel. Absolutely not, Microsoft. No way in hell am I allowing that to live on a computer I own. Yes, I’m aware third party apps will address that but it shouldn’t be a thing to begin with.

Oh yeah, and it decided to automatically update itself to the latest version on my ASUS ROG laptop while the thing was closed and not in use. So upon booting it up and seeing ads in the UI, I wiped the system clean and installed Nobara. Bye bye. 👋

These are pretty standard UI patterns.

+1 for this comment. I got Stremio setup yesterday based on your post and the recommended add-ons, and it was insanely simple. I was able to get it all setup on my Samsung TV in like ~15 minutes.

A REST/Rustaurant that serves CRUD!

I just installed Nobara on my gaming laptop. The benefits are preconfigured settings, and apps like Steam and Lutris come preinstalled. These distros are a convenience over trying to trudge through all of that stuff yourself. I was able to get things up and running quickly because someone was nice enough to trudge through that stuff themselves.

There have been a few times in my life where I pirated a game or album, and ended up liking them so much I legitimately purchased them.

It’s interesting because my dad followed a similar path and I wish I had the smarts he did. He worked as an electrical engineer and was with a company contracted by NASA. He told me how he got to work on some of the stuff in the space capsules back in the 70s/80s. Then at some point he became a full-time kitchen designer and was a carpenter. I asked him once why he left such a high-paying and interesting field. He said it was because all of the people he worked with were uptight squares and he just didn’t like it.

He passed away about 17 years ago. I wish he was still around. I could use his advice as a web dev that feels collectively burnt out and in a rut.

I get the thousand yard stare more often as I get older. I learned that it’s my brain forcing itself to take breaks.

I’ve been in tech since 2005 and I wish I had the means to bail like that. I’ve honestly considered taking a fat pay cut and going back to driving a forklift.

Zero will forever be a ripper. I remember riding the bus to school and if that song came on, the whole bus was singing it.

You can get it used pretty cheap. I have it for the Xbox 360 and downloaded it once I finally got an Xbox X.

It’s top tier fun. I come back to it routinely and make a bunch of ridiculous skate videos. Never gets old.

Skate 3 EarthBound Skyrim Oblivion Quake 1/2/3 Mario 64 Super Mario World Battlefield 1943 (RIP 😞) Fallout 76 DayZ Vampire Survivors

These are just a few. I cycle through games a lot.

Hey, this is awesome! I might have to set this up to change the banner on my own instance daily. I’ve written a decent amount of python in my time so maybe I can take a look at the code too.

I can hold a shield up while still complaining about someone shooting arrows at me. The complaints aren’t suddenly negated simply because I got my hands on a shield.

Also, companies are actively and constantly finding ways around those blockers, and there are psychological and UX reasons as to why companies use tiny X buttons, or X buttons that are often very hard to see. Take a look at dark patterns.

Quake 3 if you wanna go old school. Pretty much anything will run it these days and you can easily spin up a local server for it. You can do FFA or play on teams.

Rocket League is always fun IMO. Good to blow off steam and not have to focus on story.

Yep. Tell it to lie and it will.

It’s honestly a gamble based on my experience. Instructions that I’ve given ChatGPT have worked for a while, only to be mysteriously abandoned for no valid reason. Telling AI not to hallucinate is apparently common practice from the research I’ve done.

I do feel bad when I have to tell it not to. Hallucinating is fun!

Make sure you ask the AI not to hallucinate because it will sometimes straight up lie. It’s also incapable of counting.