If you buy your phone unlocked, you can get Red Pocket which is extremely cheap for service compared to most post paid plans. You can get ~5gb data and unlimited everything else for 20 a month on AT&T. And then if you go to Europe you can just buy a cheap Sim while there and pop it in.

If you’re not picky about the phone, I have gotten sub 300 USD phones for the last 2, first lasted 4 years and I’m about 6 months into the second. Honestly there’s not much I feel like I’m missing, except spending way more money.

The apps are super slow though. Like I don’t need a 5 second animation of bouncing fries every time I do anything. Dunkin is another offender.

I have always felt that kids will get out of education what they put in/their interest in actually learning. I also think there is some benefits to learning how to manage technology de jure as it’s likely to come up when they’re out of high school too.

I kind of disagree with some of the points about learning more just talking to an AI, both because I tend to get wrong answers or important missed context in my AI testing, but also because I think I needed to learn some stuff I wasn’t interested in personally.

Today I don’t really have much opportunity to interact with classes beyond the great courses and linked in learning, and unfortunately much of the newer content is more like a YouTube curated Playlist than a traditional course. They are mostly superficial overviews more intended for entertainment than learning details.

YouTube on the other hand is all over the map and you have to know what to search for.

I think some value of the experiment is the part where it got the kids to review their notification settings to suppress things they weren’t interested in. Personally I think having phones in airplane mode / off during class is probably the best plan. Do the notifications during study hall, lunch, bus ride, and other free time.

My sister did that but only netted 30k more not 3x. Still well worth it imo. Of course it’s kinda amazing that more companies aren’t taking this “cheat code” to get cream of the crop “minor league” non major center talent for the discount of amazing wages out in the hinterlands that are 40k or more less than big city prices.

I think I’ve mostly moved to Kagi, because someone needs to be incentiviced to actually focus on search, not ads. That said it’s also good bang for buck in annual ultimate because you get access to multiple AI models.

That said, I so far continue to be mostly underwhelmed by AI except for basic starting points on scripts or for games like D&D.

I think I’ve mostly moved to Kagi, because someone needs to be incentiviced to actually focus on search, not ads. That said it’s also good bang for buck in annual ultimate because you get access to multiple AI models.

That said, I so far continue to be mostly underwhelmed by AI except for basic starting points on scripts or for games like D&D.

Yea, I just wish more niche communities would come to Lemmy, but most of the interesting ones are actively not tech savvy en mass, and so are lucky to figure out reddit I guess. Or Discord maybe, which sucks as a reddit replacement.

There are some people who really love their teslas. They don’t have any models that fit what I want so I ignore them.

The point is, if you buy a pre set up laptop with Linux the drivers are pre installed too. You cannot take a clean Linux install and not compare to a clean Windows install.

As to my Mom, she didn’t set up Windows either. In either case you’re paying someone to set it up if you’re like her. Just because you already learned Windows doesn’t make Linux harder, just different. Do you think an enterprise is not going to have IT in both cases? It’s not like the users are setting anything.

Well it’s not like Windows hasn’t bricked some pcs with their driver updates. It does just happen sometimes. The argument I’m making is if I went to Burger King and every time I went I was disappointed in the food quality, price and speed of service I would eventually risk Wendys.

Heck my family was GM but after years of breakdowns and getting stranded by 3 different GM cars and weird / bad performance in a 4th, we changed car manufacturers.

Sometimes you ought to give up on the Devil you know if it’s costing you too much money and time.

On an individual level, having a computer is better than not having one. Even if you need a different OS.

On a societal level, we should want to limit both ewaste and insecure OSs. We could legislate MS and other vendors not to do what Microsoft is doing here. But we probably don’t want to legislate updates for 20 years or something. (maybe we do IDK). The more likely thing is kicking known EOL OSs off the internet, but then we’re back to ewaste.

What are the core problems I am skipping? That people like to bitch about Microsoft just like they bitch about gas prices but don’t take any steps to address the issue?

Look we suck it up on Windows for very specific legacy software, but every year more and more LoB apps are web apps, either we write them that way or they’re cloud versions. These all work fine on Linux and Mac, you do not need Windows.

We are even seeing companies like Autodesk provide some products on Mac, and there are competitors on Linux too.

If you actually used Microsoft in the enterprise you would also be up to speed on how they are pushing against “over management” of the fleet, and you should just use update rings and intune and stop wasting time with SCCM / MCM / Whatever it’s called this year. This argument about managibility is Microsoft 2005, not Microsoft 2025. Linux has more management now than Microsofts modern management suite, by design. And if you’re using 3rd party to fix that on windows, you are not just fighting Microsoft but you can not then disregard 3rd party on Linux.

The problem with this argument is not that I am saying you can do everything you can do with Windows on Linux, just like there’s a lot you can’t do on Windows you can on Linux. I am saying that it’s practically like Dodge vs Toyota trucks. There’s way more of an overlap than people like to admit.

Maybe there is a specific app you all are thinking of that you need Windows for, but I don’t actually think the average person needs Windows anymore except inertia. And the needs are going down as more stuff is cloud available.

Literally the statement was just Facebook. She doesn’t install software, nor did she on Windows. She uses Facebook. She never used Explorer so Firefox on XP to Firefox on Linux was no learning. The performance was better on Linux.

I have corrupted Windows plenty of times over the years. You’re just used to Windows so intuitively know how to fix it or not break it again.

The problem with modern computers is many don’t take a ethernet cable. They only have Wi-Fi. Maybe you are buying ones speced with a NIC but that’s a special order for most laptops, and likewise I can special order for Linux.

You never used Linux then. There are well defined packages in the way Windows is trying to get with their store apps and chocolatey can mimic if you build the packages. You could also look up containers, flatpaks etc. Similar to how Windows has msis and store apps and exes.

Linux has Foreman plus puppet. Or chef or Ansible. You can also use those on Windows.

The idea that a company could not decide their shell standards or their support company or people for Linux is like saying they can’t handle the competition in fleet vehicles or cloud providers or pen companies.

Have you used a modern version of Linux or Windows? You can basically use most Linuxes like Android with a guide app store, and there’s almost no way to break it. Windows also will still let you be admin and let you break it. Neither is particularly easy to break anymore.

Peripherals certainly do not just work on Windows. More and more I fight with getting anything to work on a clean Windows OS install. First I have to go find a network driver and copy it via USB. Then hope Windows will find drivers from there, which often it doesn’t get good ones for say Nvidia. Printers often take me to the manufacturer website and hope. For things like mice or Wi-Fi adapters Linux just works, same hunt for less standard stuff.

Maybe I just deal with a wider array of hardware but to say it plug and play on windows and not Linux is just not true.

For someone who just uses Facebook…there is no learning Linux. I moved my mom from XP to XFCE and Firefox just copied right over. She has a lot less issues with Enterprise Linux than she did with XP and Facebook still just works like 8 years later.

I’m not at all convinced that AI is going to be like Crypto - Crypto “solved” a problem that only online drug dealers etc had. AI “solves” a problem lots of companies have in terms of summarizing masses of data, search problems, and currently various rote tasks.

I’m also not convinced dial up through to broadband was a bandwagon… Those were important technological steps forward.

I think most of this is a problem with electricity companies just not wanting to invest in their infrastructure at all. Almost any other company would love explosive demand, and would be working to make ever more money on selling more of their product. What’s even sillier IMHO is just that there’s huge growth in solar farms and the like providing generation capacity for the utility without them having to build anything.

I don’t think I understand your questions to be honest. I’d strongly prefer to keep democracy, and to reverse the course of our system so it’s getting more democratic. I’d prefer not trying to make the point being cruel to outgroups or anyone.

Specifically I would never make the case that we’d lose democracy from trying to do any of the things you listed as “or”. The “Might lose democracy” is about Trump’s actual statements about wanting to be a dictator, and the republican party that seems to be all for that.

The first 3 questions are to congress or maybe the supreme court - Biden tried to do loan forgiveness, it wouldn’t pass congress, and the supreme court struck down his ability to do it in an executive order. This is not something that Biden can change, it’s something that needs more people to vote in democratic congressional representatives. So these questions seem completely irrelevant to me in terms of the presidential election. I’m in NY, we vote in democratic senators and a lot of democratic representatives. I’m not sure what else you’re asking me to do.

The last 3 questions are more salient to Biden, and I personally would not have done any of that. I don’t know how the government can actually block a strike if the people were really serious they could all quit and let the companies deal with that.

If I was president knowing only what I currently know now - I’d have told the companies to fricken pay up, not say the strike can’t happen. I’d channel that FDR meme where he hauled the one company away from the person not coming to an agreement so stuff kept running.

I would tout federal workers working remotely as both something good for labor, and good for the environment with less car pollution, and potential for a broader recruiting base. If I was feeling snarky I might also try and throw in it might let the government recruit more people from low cost of living areas and save money.

On the Israel issue I’d probably throw it to congress at this point. I just don’t really know what the stance to take is because I don’t know enough about our alliance terms, the strategic goals, etc.

I have to point out - theres presumably a lot the President / Government knows that I do not about each issue. There may be things that if I knew it, I’d change my position. One thing I think Biden needs to do is get on TV or whatever and explain to people why he’s sending arms to Israel at this point, and why he’s not strongly pressuring Israel to get out of Gaza and stop this war.

Given the above - I’m not really sure what compromise you’re talking about that I’m “not willing to make”? I didn’t choose Biden - no one else was running in the primaries that I’m aware of. It’s not that people didn’t hear that no one was excited about Biden running again, it’s that whoever makes the political decisions didn’t choose anyone else even hearing that. And TBH, politically, other than maybe John Stewart (as I’ve said elsewhere, and who they obviously didn’t get), I don’t know anyone who’s even as well known as Biden on the Democratic side that also would have any chance in a general election. The swing voters who decide elections seem to be very resistant to anyone who’s not an old white man. I wish we didn’t have the electoral college that even makes swing states TBH, but it’s what we have to go by. Pretending that it’s not is not engaging with reality.

Biden isn’t the one saying he wants to be dictator, that seems to be Trump. As far as I am aware, we needed to run a different candidate in the primary, that’s where you push people to come more to the left. Going hard right because Biden wasn’t left enough for you is kind of insane to me. That’s all.

Do I love what the Biden admin does 100%? No.

But you seem to be saying you’re rather have Trump than Biden, which is a position someone can take, but a very strange one for someone who’s left of Biden. To me it’s like saying It’s 70 degrees in here and I’m cold. One person says I will set the thermostat to 72 degrees, the other says I’ll set it to 60 degrees, and you would like it to be 75 degrees. Because the 72 degrees isn’t hot enough, you’d prefer the 60 degrees. Weird way to express your preferences to me.

The thing I don’t understand here is just - do you expect Trump to go pass BBB, forgive student loans etc? In the primaries, sure, go out and vote for more progressive candidates. But if I’m asked if I want a tooth filling or a root canal, I don’t bitch about the filling material and hope to go get a root canal.

Like, practically, what do you expect to get better if Biden loses?

I just think that contracts of adhesion (IIRC) should be illegal or unenforceable. Make me wet sign a document or go to a separate docusign at least, this click wrap is crap. Get me to affirmatively agree, not click OK till the install or setup completes. Otherwise I strongly disagree there’s actually a meeting of the minds. And if I can’t send back my suggested alterations for cross signatures, it’s not a valid contract either IMHO.

That said, we’ve decided to continue to screw people over as we all know.

unless the government has followed the legal process required for compelled disclosure.

I don’t see why we can’t just say that for everything. If the government wants the data, they can get a warrant. It’s not that hard - don’t we regularly complain warrants are too rubber stamped?