I remember NiCad batteries still being used in power wheels toys as a kid. For all I know they may still be, but the battery advancements have been particularly amazing.

I used to be a POS tech. It’s such a gross, mismanaged walled garden.

Currently I spend a lot of time advising against pop ups like that :^)

The propaganda works though. People outside of the US struggle to see, and believe that the US has its own damning problems. 2 years ago I got close to a Romanian bartender while traveling. She told me about how she held scorn for her sister, who moved to the US despite having been warned against it.

What happened to her sister is what so many of us are victims of. Debt trapping, stalled wages, poor access to medical care and financial incentive to not seek care. Not to mention the poor quality food that wears you down.

As a result, she has had to send money to both her sister and Mom, and had to cancel several contract terms and vacation seasons off to care for her Mother. Her sister couldn’t help due to being in debt, and at risk of losing her job if she were to travel, regardless of the emergency.

It’s a cruel system that bundles up as an image of living free. The marginally higher standard of living has a lot of cracks, but they’re hard to see until you’re living with them.

They’re pretty few and far between in the Northeast. Not to say they don’t exist, but they’re far from common.

If you actually just set it up, this is the perfect time to reset it, and then press shift + F10 then enter “oobe\bypassnro”

It will reboot and you will be able to say that you don’t have access to the Internet and set up a local account. That /might/ remove some bloat as well, without needing to reinstall from a flash drive. Which would require reinstalling drivers also.

Taking medium into account changes everything. A sculpture artist or painter doesn’t have the same interest or concern about AI art yet, and may never. They also tend to not have the same comprehensive view of AI generation as well as training data.

That being said, digital photography doesn’t remotely compare. If I were to set my DSLR up with a lens, set an F stop and shutter speed, the results would be similar to that of a film camera. A sensor takes in light in the same way film does. A 30 second exposure at a 500 ISO will compare to a 30 second camera on a certain film type, which is comparable to ISO settings.

Artificially bumping up light sensitivity on a DSLR degrades image quality. Analog and digital are largely comparable. So how would it apply to photography? It’s not just automatically making a picture, and if it were doing that on auto, it’s still not all that different from a film photo with generic catch all sensors and light metering.

Photography is all about catching the moment, personally I captured night landscapes via manual long exposure on a DSLR, but none of that is automatic.

It’s even people in tech. I work with someone who will gladly take tech claims at face value, and call me a conspiracy theorist on data collection. I said I didn’t want a smart thermostat because it increases our attack surface and he immediately snapped back with “oh China is gonna get us”. Like… No these things have had CVEs already and will again

Depending on MDM and conditional access policies, I’d say probably

Fedora with Cinnamon desktop has been gooood to me. Admittedly it’s on a Thinkpad

In my state, police aren’t allowed to use your fingerprint against you, but they can use facial recognition. It’s backwards and doesn’t make a ton of sense, but that’s the state of affairs.

Part of that is only because any and all Instagram accounts are also considered Threads accounts. I have a feeling active users is probably in a similar ballpark

Only states with one political leaning are mandating changes to the course curriculum to try to stave off queer youth and rewrite history. To undermine the historical significance of their actions. Pearson and every other major textbook brand has had to alter their curriculum for states such as Texas and North Carolina.

You call people who view things from a different scope emotional, but I’m ultimately concerned about my safety, and the safety of everyone I care about.

Only one side is dogwhistling against minorities, and when it comes to trans people, advocating for outright “elimination of transgenderism”. They want us removed from the public eye, and will do everything they can to achieve it. Legislating access to healthcare away from us, jeopardizing our safety, and encouraging their base by trying to say it’s morally just. While the “live and let live” types such as yourself don’t see the insidious nature happening along party lines. Trans people simply don’t matter enough to the average Republican, so no matter what they say, as long as the taxes are lower for them, who cares if some minorities have to suffer for it?

A lot of it stems from sexist views, and revolves around beauty standards. Bad faith arguments like “women’s spaces”/sports, may seem reasonable upfront even.

The end result ends up with cis women also under threat due to a multitude of factors. Deep voice, gender nonconformity, hormonal disorders, intersex people, the list goes on.

Cis children are being harassed in Canada, cis women have been harassed in bathrooms. “Transvestigators” love to spend their time trying to clock people.

Absolutely, though there tends to be a lot more visibility, and potential for harm. Not to understate the harm done during the aids crisis. I could maybe be scared back into the closet jk death before detransition, but transphobia harms cis women too. I shouldn’t know several people who have had to flee their home states due to Republican led legislation, but I do. I shouldn’t know people who lost access to their medication, some people who need it post GRS, but I do.

There’s a LOT to be said about the subject. My existence shouldnt fall on party lines, but here we are.

Unfortunately trans people are in the early stages of being targeted with genocidal intent. Scary times for us.

With every hit I’m that much closer to leaving 😭

As an organization admin, it’s great for business use. Don’t force it onto users alongside other bloatware slop.