Isn’t surfing the web the main use case for a large portion of the PC/Laptop user base? Pretty sure for wide swaths of people, “executable”, “startup program” and “HDD” have no meaning. Not saying that’s “right” or “wrong”, just that that’s my observation. You could make the argument that they might as well switch to Chromebook, and in fact, many do.

For intermediate users, there’s a graphical startup program menu for selecting startup apps, at least in Mint Cinnamon. Usually programs for me won’t be able to access my HDD only if I did an even more advanced thing and made a docker instance without permissions - other than that, I’ve been able to connect programs like Steam (Flatpack) to my external HDD without issue. But maybe that’s just Mint, idk.

Linux Mint and Zorin OS work out of the box for most users. Usually the most complicated part is just the installation process (which can be an absolute pain if the starting system has Intel RST, Secure Boot and Fast Boot all enabled). Of course, more advanced users always can run the risk of breaking something (I accidentally broke my system irreparably at one point when I did a dumb and formatted my Swap for some reason and had to reinstall) but that’s also true of Windows.

Don’t know how it’s going to go for you, but Mint has been going really well for me gaming-wise on an Alienware with Nvidia RTX. Pretty much all the Steam games I care about work, and all my Blizzard games through Lutris. All through simple GUIs, and if you like the Windows feel and setup, there’s a Windows 10 theme you can try out, and tutorials on how to get a Windows style mouse cursor too. Again - all up to you, but it worked really well for me and is amazingly customizable. Just… remember to do Timeshift backups regularly, just in case. You never know if you’ll need one.

Give me a launch order, and I’ll EMP this entire planet back to the stone age. Easy and semi-permanent regulation for the next few millennia.

Found the CSAM apologist.

Prohibition of CSAM seems to be universally accepted as a thing we should keep doing. What say you to that?

Steamroll us? Not if I have anything to say about it. I look forward to setting condition 1SQ for strategic launch of thermonuclear weapons. Hooyah navy. If this is to be our end, then let it be SUCH an end, so as to be worthy of remembrance. I would rather this entire planet and all things upon it burn in radioactive fire than be sacrificed on the altar of technology.

Vice Admiral Stirling was using his work computer, not using a VPN, and wasn’t paying attention in basic IT training. Should’ve just asked literally anyone in Engineering. Guarantee they already have the entire thing on a 20 TB NAS stashed away somewhere in the outboards.

Be the change you want to see in the world. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Free ublacklist extension and list you can find on Github or Gitlab with updated scraping sites you can either “subscribe” the extension to or copy and paste manually in one go.

Found Odhinn!

Connect for Lemmy has an option for blocking both. The comment still shows, but as “blocked by filter”, which hides the content until clicked on, and can be re-hid.

There’s instance-wide blocking on the Connect for Lemmy app, including the option to block everything or only block the communities of that instance and not users. You can make a private community by not federating with anyone on a private instance.

Same. I could have the point highlighted, bold, all caps and underlined, and still get a reply all asking about it.

The concept of the “Torment Nexus” is a placeholder for any technology specifically described as dystopian or otherwise contributing to suffering in fiction, such as mass surveillance, mind control technology, and so on. The meme refers to modern-day corporations missing the point of the fiction, and creating said “Torment Nexus” as something they view as “cool” and “futuristic”. In some cases, the companies are self-aware enough to not pretend that their creation is anything other than dystopian, but in many cases they try to sell the new technology to the public as a good thing despite that very tech being described as dystopian already.

So tell me, what part of their creation was “solving real-world problems” beyond playing to the desires of autocrats and control freaks? What part of their creation was a net positive to society? Or are you happy to live in a world of autonomous drone strikes on weddings and kindergartens, mass surveillance, a thermonuclear sword of damocles hanging over all of humanity, and so on?

How about the following examples:

• Autonomous weaponized drones with automatic targeting (Terminator)
• Mass surveillance and voice recording (1984)
• Nuclear weapons (HG Wells, The World Set Free)
• Corporate controlled hypercommercialized microtransaction-filled metaverse (Snow Crash)
• Netflix to create real-life Squid Game (Squid Game (speedrun!))
• “MoviePass to track people’s eyes through their phone’s cameras to make sure they don’t look away from ads” (Black Mirror)
• Soulless AI facsimile of dead relatives (Black Mirror)

So Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein aren’t qualified to give understandings of the technologies they wrote about?

Like I said, to stop giving space Karen’s site your views and engagement. A site that actively and explicitly caters to self-proclaimed Nazis and distributors of CSAM. Directly or indirectly, you are supporting and condoning their behavior by actively engaging with it.

Artstation, Pixiv, DeviantArt? Or to swap one devil for another, Instagram?