I’m here, for starters.

I’ve been systematically removing as many parts of myself from the corporate internet over the course of years. So far I’ve managed to drop:

• Facebook
• GMail
• Netflix
• Reddit
• Windows
• Prime
• HBO

I still have some stragglers, like YouTube, that I doubt will go anytime soon, but for the most part, I don’t have to deal with:

• Dark patterns
• Advertisements
• Anti-features (updates that remove functionality)
• FOMO
• Advertisements again
• Advertisements a third time

Really, I just do not like being advertised to, and outside YouTube sponsorships, which can be skipped, I can go whole days without ever coming across an ad on the internet, and even that feels high.

On top of all this, I’ve massively reduced my data collection footprint, meaning there’s far less info available to said advertisers and data collectors that they can use to manipulate me.

I also regularly try to provide some of this to my friends to also help cut them away from the propaganda machine.

I don’t see any of the usual AI tells and there’s no ‘melting’ of people close to each other. Plus the landing gear being down makes me think this was a real plane but photoshopped.

Was this some sort of promotional photo or something? Kind of wish I could tell where it came from. Got nothing on tineye. Has AI just gotten that clean?

They could have some minimum requirement that you have to register to be in the running so that you can’t just vote for your friends for the hell of it. I’m guessing this process was originally omitted to avoid that registration process being weaponized, but it doesn’t seem like this result is much better.

I have an M1 Pro that’s still going strong without issues, even with 8GB RAM. They’re insanely durable (repair issues aside) and MacOS is wildly good at resource management.

On top of that, putting it below Windows? This is clearly someone who’s never used one or thinks gaming is the only thing you do on a computer. I’m all for Linux and use it in several places, but it has nothing on MacOS polish. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it’s a far cry from ChromeOS or Windows 11.

Seconded. When I find out how botched the theatrical ending was, I was glad I started with the Director’s version.

Concordtinople sounds like a place you’d make up on the spot if you were trying to hide your identity.

I can’t remember if he eats anyone but season 3 of You has a lot of this going for it.

UM ACKSHUALLY these would all have water in their systems due to the coolant in the engine.

The difference between a million and a billion is about a billion. Millionaires are not our enemies and many are a few months away from losing much of their wealth if they were to lose their career.

Edit: I can’t count in my head apparently. I’m a moron

Yeah, this is something I’ve thought about for a while now. There’s just a different island now. The demand for something so depraved doesn’t go away overnight.

Back then the reality was more “the government wish they had the power to listen to everything” and now that they have the power, no one believes it because it was previously ridiculous to think they were already doing it.

The conspiracy was just ahead of its time.

Slave traders often make uncomfortably good money.

Machine Learning in this case instead of LLMs. Fields like microbiology have been seeing waves of discoveries with the latest ML approaches.

Popular: Strobe by Deadmau5. I personally like Let Go more from him, but it’s not as well-known.

Unpopular: Rodeo by The Party. This one is a wildly deep cut. My actual favorite song is more popular, but this is my favorite, most-hidden gem.

For your listening pleasure: https://youtu.be/gIxQMGb9mUo

I’ve been everywhere from a piecemeal Arch setup with a minimal desktop all the way to a Mint pleb. I’ve pretty much settled on EndeavourOS. It’s really impressed me with its dummy simple setup and OOB experience. Not to mention very few issues getting games to run even with an nVidia card.

Take a look at the Fiio Echo Mini. They’re under $100 and have every feature you requested. They just so happen to also look and sound amazing.

Buyer beware though. The controls are very mid-00’s meaning it will take some time to build muscle memory and get used to the menu navigation.

Edit: I just noticed your FOSS mention. This one doesn’t have that but I’ll leave this here only because I don’t know of any FOSS options that aren’t DIY or prohibitively expensive.

Well shoot. It’s my lucky day. And cross platform even! Thanks!

TrueCrypt, my beloved. Such an amazing set of features and super easy to use. I so wish there was a modern open-source equivalent with the same intuitive approach. I especially liked the ability to do fancy stuff like disguising data with a false password or using any file as the key.