Jesus H. Christ.

7k for a laptop. That’s a fucking car in many parts of my country.

I 100% believe it’s Windows’ fault on this one.

I’ve never had problems with VLC in over a decade of use until MS started vibe coding everything and doing zero QA.

I don’t trust my tech much at all, hence the faraday bag.

stock android phone and without the user actually activating mic or camera.

Assuming you’re disabling the mic or camera in some way, either by getting into the phone’s guts or storing it in a safe place, then it’s certainly less of a consideration. Same with keeping the wireless connection off when you’re not using it.

I keep mine in a faraday bag for instance. The unwanted private surveillance can be largely avoided within your own space.

If you’re not using the mic or camera then the only data being collected is the data you actively put into it.

I made a video this week about the case of a schoolteacher in Illinois who was arrested after making a joke about shooting a student in a Snapchat DM, for instance. The automated AI alert system that Snapchat uses alerted the FBI, who alerted the county sheriffs, who then arrested her.

What made the Guthrie case stand out is that it was concrete proof from a government source that people are being surveilled without a warrant, and if it happened there, there’s no reason to suspect it isn’t happening everywhere.

Earlier this year the FBI, desperate to to make Kash Patel look competent, released video in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping that shouldn’t have existed, but for Guthrie’s porch camera spying on her via Google, and then fortuitously capturing some footage of her kidnapper.

Any device with a camera, microphone and a wireless connection or bluetooth signal is almost certainly spying on you, and while most of that data is likely just used to train AI models, this case tells us it may also be harvested in government databases.

So yes, of course any data you actively give them is being harvested too. Be responsible with your tech.

We don’t want their slop.

It does blow my mind a little that they don’t even appear to be doing the most basic of testing anymore.

I have an Acer Nitro 5 (though I’ve maxed out the RAM to 32gb) that runs about 90% of my library. The two titles it struggled with the most are Crimson Desert and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, if that helps.

Unfortunately if you want a true gaming laptop you’re in for an expensive purchase, thanks to the techbros monopolizing components.

We love a good, free product without any meaningful difference in functionality. :)

This is a good time to remind everyone of LibreOffice, which is free and fantastic.

Also O&O ShutUp, which helps you turn off Windows’ intrusive anti-privacy features and delete Copilot. If you’d like to learn more I made a video about Windows privacy earlier this year.

I think there are browser extensions and add-ons out there that plug in alternative storefronts you can buy from when looking up an item on Amazon, but you’d have to dig them up. I don’t recall any of the names, I just know I’ve read about them.

It’s probably more accurate to say Sony is misrepresenting the data.

The vast majority of games that get released these days are digital-only, indies, or semi-indies that never get a physical release in the first place. And it’s not reasonable to trust that Sony isn’t including these purchases in their reported stats. If they were giving us figures that included only games that got a physical and digital release, I imagine the narrative would be different.

The gaming industry wants licensing to be universal and ownership to be a thing of the past so it’s easier to price-gouge as they like.

No.

It never took root because they killed them (Huey Long) and imprisoned them (Eugene Debs). The ones they couldn’t kill or imprison were intimidated into silence. (Red Scare, among others.)

Meanwhile my 80 year-old dad was driving for DoorDash to survive, borrowing my car, until he started dying in February.

My mom still does.

I don’t know how anyone in the poor and working class is still capitalist, but this fucking bullshit is why the socialists are about to tea party the Democrats in November.

Linux can run on a pizza box if one is determined.

I, for one, love not being stuck on Windows. I have a dual boot since I need it for a handful of things, but being 99% on Linux just makes life better.

There’s so much crap jammed into Windows, and always has been, that being without it without any loss of functionality is a breath of fresh air. I also consistently run into QOL features that it’s stupid for Windows now to have, like when I’m downloading multiple files and the OS zips them automatically or the ‘move to the other monitor’ button.

Oil stocks were down 90% in March 2020. That’s what I went with. You can profit off a lot of things if you’re willing to hold for a few years.

I hope you’re all keeping some money set aside for when the LLM bubble pops. It could end up being the best time to invest at a discount since March 2020.

Could be you’re right. I don’t know, and I hope I don’t live to find out.

I think that, in a world where legal systems have collapsed completely and billionaires have survived, I don’t think labor will be a matter of choice anymore. I think they’d turn to slavery and likely already have designs on how they’d do it.