kadu

The version featured in Windows 7 Starter was also made by Chuck Anderson and Erik Attkisson, but features a heavily simplified appearance compared to the original; it features fewer blades of grass and lines, while the Windows logo is simply a white-light blue radial gradient as opposed to being colorful.

It also served as Starter’s only wallpaper, and unlike previous Starter SKUs of Windows, it cannot be changed due to internal product policy restrictions.

Imagine using an operating system that treats you as a hostage on your own PC because you gave the company money, but not enough money

Sure, but that’s a lot of work and worry to keep all those backups going and syncd

I think it took me 15 minutes to first install SyncThing and Vorta? I literally haven’t worried about this for the last two years

Now, you’re probably an IT admin or programmer

I’m a biologist :) (though to be fair, mastering in bioinformatics, but this setup came first!)

And in the end, you have a computer hooked to your stereo, the one place I’m trying to escape the constant computing.

My stereo is a Gradiente from the 70s, no computers there. My portable player does connect to a computer to sync sometimes… but I do this when charging, so out of mind.

But… those other storage mediums can also get damaged, burn, rot, etc

Sure can. You know what else they can do? Instantly and cleanly copy their data to any other storage device, they can even do so automatically every day!

Your hard drive can be erased in many ways.

I’m willing to bet my main SSD, my backup HDD, my FLAC player’s SD card, and my laptop SSD all carrying the same file are going to be more durable than a piece of plastic.

I’m curious as to why?

Physical media scratches, rots, burns down, etc. They also require a lot of space, and you can’t have it all with you easily.

My FLAC library is got the same or better audio quality, I can backup and copy in seconds for myself or friends, I can carry everything, or just curated playlists, with the toggle of a button, and I can preserve them on any medium I find - mechanical HDs, SD cards, SSDs, etc.

Though I am very curious about vinyl…

I prefer dedicated digital players over physical media, for instance, a FLAC player with a digital library over CDs, but I’m glad to see this trend catching up. Anything that gets people building their own collections, escaping algorithms and escaping DRM/streaming is a huge win in my book.

So? Do you not lock your doors because lockpicks exist?

It’s all part of the plan, create technological dependency. Why is Google so laser focused on making sure these school PCs are always Chromebooks?

Raise an entire generation that can’t write, research, calculate, synthesize, without a Chromebook. If it breaks, they buy a new one, when they grow up they rely on always having one, and so on.

I’d worry I’ve made a silly mistake which would make me look a fool and waste their time.

AI bros have zero self awareness and shame, which is why I continue to encourage that the best tool for fighting against it is making it socially shameful.

Somebody comes along saying “Oh look at the image is just genera…” and you cut them with “looks like absolute garbage right? Yeah, I know, AI always sucks, imagine seriously enjoying that hahah, so anyway, what were you saying?”

Depends if you want to include actual romance games into the evaluation, because those are entirely dedicated to romance itself, making games like Baldur’s Gate hard to compare against.

The issue is that comment sections are disabled and video descriptions claim to be empty

So it makes the page even better?

AI writing tools — improve, summarize, translate, and more (Anthropic / OpenAI)

why though

Reminder that Google is on it’s third attempt to prevent or limit the installation of APKs outside of the Play Store, meaning they are near the point they can effectively control what apps people run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN-oYyd9fWg

Now somebody needs to post about this on Reddit, so The Verge can make an AI generated piece based on the post!

And this is one of the very rare situations in which I will opt in for data collection.

Having robust data on FPS per hardware component per game, over the entirety of Steam, is beyond useful.

I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib

DO NOT TOUCH my precious matplotlib, I’ll HUNT DOWN any AI slop shithead damaging MY BABY

Yea, because no one can fake their way in.

Then don’t lock your doors, there are ways around that too.

Keep on licking the boots of the people who want to abuse you…

In what part of “learn how to use Matrix” and “they host pedophile rings” did I give you the impression I like or use Discord at all, genius?

Are you suggesting that Discord didn’t have any technical means to detect and ban that activity before?

I’m suggesting that’s irrelevant in face of the magnitude of the issue, versus the irrelevancy of the threat here. I see no reason why a person obsessed with not showing ID would join Discord. It’s like joining a Facebook group and complaining the admins aren’t protecting your privacy.

I actually agree with this decision. If you’re privacy minded, what the hell are you doing on Discord? At the very least, learn Matrix.

But for your average user, let’s recall there are literal pedophile rings on Discord. This is still on-going in 2026, they pay low-tier YouTubers to promote their channel to children, children join, they get blackmail material on them (especially young girls) and then force then to do sexually explicit transmissions, record it, and sell it. This is not one example, there are hundreds per day.

So you know what? Yes, require age verification.