Previously, Part Zero: Introduction.
Part I: Desktop Operating Systems
Let us start at the start. The first piece of software with which you will interact after you first boot your computer, whether it’s a desktop or notebook PC, a smart phone, a tablet, a gaming console or other appliance, is its operating system (OS) – the master program that will run the rest of your software and help it interact with your hardware. For desktop and notebook PCs, this will usually be Windows or macOS. For smart phones, mobile devices and some smart appliances like TVs, this will usually be Android or iOS. So-called “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices will typically have an embedded OS that is either entirely proprietary, or based on the Linux kernel. There are also edge cases like Chromebooks, which run a hobbledversion of Gentoo Linux called ChromeOS to essentially host a proprietary web interface to Google cloud services. We will be ignoring IoT devices as they are usually not user serviceable, and their spying is by design and not easily mitigated. My personal recommendation would be to never buy an IoT device, and if you already have one, take it on a boating trip to visit your firearms. Single board computers (SBCs) like the Raspberry Pi line can replace many “smart” IoT devices when paired with the right software and a little elbow grease if you really have such a use case. We will also be ignoring Chromebooks for the sake of time, although it is entirely possible to replace ChromeOS with a Windows or Linux-based OS if you so desire.Windows, macOS and iOS are proprietary (although macOS and iOS integrate some open source code from the FreeBSD operating system), and as you may recall, I will not be recommending any proprietary software in this series. Of course, most of us do not get a choice in operating systems when we purchase a device; it ships with something preinstalled from the manufacturer. We will now take a look first at desktop operating systems, and then mobile operating systems in Part II.
Microsoft’s Windows is the OS most of us have used when sitting down in front of our desktop or notebook PCs both at home and at work for nearly as long as I’ve been alive. The twocurrently supported iterations, Windows 10 and Windows 11, are a privacy nightmare. By default, these OSes collect and transmit data about nearly every interaction you have with your PC, and phone home to Microsoft as well as Microsoft’s advertising partners. Your Windows installation includes a unique advertising ID, and ads are displayed in the start menu and search bar. Every word you speak to the Windows virtual assistant Cortana is captured and analyzed by Microsoft. Your files are scanned and indexed for searching, with metadata being transmitted back to Microsoft. The emails you store in Outlook and the files you store in OneDrive, both integrated into the OS, can be accessed by Microsoft and shared with third parties, including law enforcement, without notice to you per the terms of the user agreement. And that’s just the beginning. Detailing all of the privacy violations built into Windows is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice to say, when you set up your new Windows computer, you would be well advised to not take the default options, and furthermore, unless necessary for work or business, you should opt to use only a local user account to sign into your Windows computer. You should never have to sign into an online service just to use your operating system. Microsoft has made it increasingly difficult to use a local-only Windows user account, but disconnecting from a network before setting up Windows should give you the option to create a local-only account after you have satisfied the installer that you do not have internet access. Alternatively, you can set up a Microsoft account with a throwaway email address and then set up a local account later and delete the original. A basic guide to adjusting Windows privacy settings can be found here. You may also want to block domains known to be used for Microsoft telemetry using a firewall, DNS-level ad blocker, or the local hosts file to prevent the OS from phoning home. Unfortunately, some of the domains used for telemetry are also used for OS updates and other services like Bing search and OneDrive, so blocking them can interfere with that functionality. Other than OS updates, I consider that a feature rather than a bug. If you use your local hosts file for domain blocking, you will receive nag notifications from Windows’ built-in anti-malware program, which you can safely ignore.
Fortunately, most consumer PCs running Windows are a cobbled together collection of commodity hardware held together by a combination of interoperable firmware and relatively open standards, so it is not prohibitively difficult to replace Windows with another OS in most cases. Which brings us to GNU/Linux OSes. This combination of low level utilities (the GNU utilities in most cases, though there are exceptions) and the Linux kernel forms the basis of a complete free and open source Unix-like operating system. I have been a daily user of various desktop GNU/Linux OSes since 2005, and would recommend installing a Linux-based OS – called a distribution or “distro” – on your desktop or notebook PC if it is practical for you to do so. Obviously, that may not be an option for company-provided or work computers, but for your personal boxen, it has never been easier to start using a Linux-based OS. Most computers that run Windows are capable of running a Linux distro, although brand new/state of the art hardware will sometimes not have driver support immediately on release. Fortunately, most Linux distros have a “live” USB installer, which allows you to boot and run the OS from a USB thumb drive and preview its functionality before you commit to installing it. There are even distros that are intended only to be used from a live environment, such as the privacy-oriented Tails. At the very least, a live Linux distro is extremely handy to keep around as a rescue/data recovery system, or for occasions when you are doing sensitive work that you’d prefer not to share with Microsoft. The number of Linux distros and their various options for desktop environments and software can be a bit overwhelming to the uninitiated, but most of the mainstream distros have a desktop interface that is familiar enough to the average Windows or macOS user that it is not all that difficult to get started. For the Windows user, a distro running the KDE Plasma or Cinnamon desktop environments will likely feel the most familiar. For the macOS user, a distro running the GNOME or Pantheon desktop environments will likely feel the most familiar. Having said that, most Linux desktop environments can be customized nearly infinitely to suit your preference. For the utter newbie, a Linux distro such as Linux Mint or openSUSE will likely be a good first choice, as they offer good stability, multiple desktop environments, ease of installation, and additional graphical configuration tools so you should rarely if ever need to touch the dreaded command line. For a long time, Ubuntu was considered the standard newbie-friendly distro, but it has some quirks that I believe instill bad habits and make it a weaker choice of first distro. But that’s the great thing about having choices: you can find what works best for you. Head over to DistroWatch and see what strikes your fancy. Whichever distro you choose, it is a good idea to enable disk encryption during installation should you choose to make it permanent. This is usually as simple as just toggling a check box. Running a Linux distro is by no means a guarantee of privacy, but even the most privacy-disrespecting Linux distro generates an infinitesimal fraction of the telemetry data a Windows installation does, and that data is usually less personally identifiable, if it is so at all.
If you are in the market for a new desktop or notebook PC, there are a limited number of companies that sell computers with a Linux distro preinstalled. System76 and Purism sell desktop and notebook PCs designed from the ground up with Linux support in mind, including free and open source alternative BIOS/UEFI firmware, while a limited number of Dell and Lenovo models are available with Linux preinstalled in place of Windows. Ironically, despite Windows carrying a per-installation licensing fee, models that ship with a Linux-based OS often cost more due to economies of scale. I tend to buy relatively inexpensive and/or second hand computers and install a Linux distro myself as I am very comfortable doing so, but having an officially supported distro preinstalled from the factory has its advantages, especially if you are new to Linux and want something that “just works”.
The BSD family of operating systems provides another alternative, although hardware support and software availability is not quite as robust as it is in Linux-based OSes in my experience.This is particularly true of OpenBSD and NetBSD, which are better suited to server and network tasks rather than a general purpose desktop OS. However, this has improved over the years, as many Linux drivers can be used on BSD systems, and most major pieces of software, such as desktop environments, can be built on BSD without issue. FreeBSD and its derivativesrepresent the most widely used and supported of the BSD OSes on desktop hardware. For the utter newbie, GhostBSD, MidnightBSD and DragonFlyBSD offer simplified installation and a preinstalled desktop environment, and would make a good choice for your first foray into the BSD world. The BSD OSes all derive from the Berkeley Software Distribution developed from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s at UC Berkeley, which in turn was based on Research Unix. The BSDs are therefore a more direct descendant of Unix in the Unix-like OS pantheon. As each BSD is a complete OS in its own right rather than a collection of utilities married to an unrelated kernel, development is typically a little slower, but stability is typically a little better compared to GNU/Linux. I haven’t dabbled in the BSDs personally in about 10 years, but my distaste for certain aspects of the direction desktop Linux is headed will likely drive me back there in the next few years.
While Windows enjoys a dominant market share in desktop OSes, Apple’s macOS is also well represented. Apple is vertically integrated, in that their hardware is designed to operate only with their own OS, and their OS is designed to operate only with their own hardware. Because of that tight integration between proprietary OS and proprietary hardware, installing an alternative OS onto Mac computers presents some unique difficulties, primarily in ensuring good driver support. For all practical purposes, if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it’s a walled garden and you are stuck there. Apple’s operating systems are marginally more privacy-respecting than Microsoft and Google, but they still collect a lot of telemetry data and have anti-features such as client-side file scanning – for the children, of course. However, a sufficiently motivated user can install a GNU/Linux OS onto Mac hardware. On older desktop and notebook Macs using Intel CPUs, some manual intervention is required in order to prepare the machine for booting a Linux-based OS, but once the disk partitioning and bootloader installation are completed, the process is about the same as installing a Linux distro onto any other PC. On a Mac, it is even more important than on Windows-based PCs to thoroughly test your chosen distro, either from a live environment or a dual-boot setup, to ensure all driver functionality is present and working properly. Since 2020, Apple has deprecated its Intel-based Macs in favor of its own ARM-based “Apple Silicon” CPUs, and unfortunately, it is more difficult to install an alternative OS on ARM-based machines, including Apple Silicon. While the x86-based CPUs from Intel and AMD used in most PCs are able to boot alternative OSes easily due to the relatively open nature of BIOS/UEFI firmware, ARM-based devices do not have a standardized firmware interface for booting. Instead, each licensee of the ARM instruction set typically implements their own, usually proprietary, bootloader, which must be reverse engineered or reimplemented in order to boot an alternative OS. There are efforts underway by the Asahi Linux team to develop a Linux-based OS for Apple Silicon, but it is still a work in progress and probably not a great choice as a daily driver quite yet.
TL;DR: If it is practical to do, especially for your personal computers that you use at home rather than an office, consider replacing Windows with a Linux distribution or BSD operating system. Recommended Linux distros for beginners: Linux Mint and openSUSE. Recommended BSD OSes for beginners: GhostBSD, DragonflyBSD and MidnightBSD. If you are a Mac user, it is more difficult to install an alternative OS, but still possible if you are adventurous enough. Be aware that Linux on Apple Silicon is still a work in progress.
Next, “Part II: Mobile Operating Systems.”
Gentoo for life.
Does anyone even update that anymore?
rolling release with nightly updates
“The first piece of software with which you will interact after you first boot your computer…is its operating system (OS)”
BIOS says hi! Thanks for the write up Pat
Yup — just here for the Ackshually….
Though nowadays it is EFI on any self respecting platform. 😉
“BIOS says hi!”
I was told I was not allowed to administer wedgies on this thread. Consider yourself lucky.
But can you sudo wedgies?
Like DOS knows what to do with SUDO
Real DOS or little toy desktop computer DOS?
sudo make me a sandwich
You could always cat-butt him.
Lol, this is funny, because I edited my original phrasing from “when you first boot your computer” to “after you first boot your computer” specifically to avoid that very ackshually.
And outside of nerds….no one enters BIOS though I guess it’s actually interacting.
I haven’t dabbled in the BSDs personally in about 10 years, but my distaste for certain aspects of the direction desktop Linux is headed will likely drive me back there in the next few years.
Will a future article in the series be covering this?
The curse of Poettering – systemd?
You’re on the right track, as well as Rust in the kernel requiring perhaps the most convoluted toolchain in existence.
There is no future article in this series discussing it, but perhaps someday.
I remember you mentioning that before. I dabble in Rust and rather like the toolchain – maybe it’s more convoluted for stuff like that I dunno.
Not being a programmer, my only experience with it has been compiling IceCat a few times since they no longer distribute binaries for it, which was a way bigger nightmare than I’ve ever had compiling kernels (although mercifully much shorter). I reckon it’s mostly the pace of development at this point in time, as features are still being added to and deprecated from the language at a relatively fast clip compared to, say, C++. As-is, it’s possible to compile the kernel with only gcc and the GNU tools. Rust requires LLVM. For now it’s only in sneaking into drivers and modules, but it won’t be long before it ends up in the main kernel tree as well.
Yeah, a kernel is way larger than any of the toy projects I’ve compiled.
LLVM has not been any stumbling block for me but… toy projects.
Aaaah, LLVM. It takes too much resources and time to recompile that. GCC may take awhile, but it doesn’t update as often.
Linux for work, Linux for NAS (as discussed the other day), Mac mini for Apple TV serving — yet even though I have a Fedora installation on the computer as well, personal time is almost all in Windows. Yeah, Steam is on Linux and I have some of the games there — but not all of them… and oddly enough, another thing that really drives me nuts is that there’s nothing close to MusicBee for Linux… all the music players frankly *suck* regarding ratings, keeping a good database and just building dynamic playlists.
So I trust in my monitoring services, turning off every default for privacy, etc… and tolerate Windows. Still miss OS/2 Warp, of course.
And on a different note.. my cat passed. Thanks again for the well wishes this morning.
Again, very sorry. Sounds like a cool kitty. I think your memories will be legion and – eventually – awesome.
Poor kitty.
Sorry about the kitty. But no pain now.
Sorry 🙁
Sorry about your kitteh. RIP.
Sorry 🙁
I just finished a huge project to clean up my iTunes library – it’s amazing how fucked up it got after being passed around various computers and operating systems over a couple decades.
I recently found MusicBee and liked it enough to want to use it for daily use but needed to clean shit up first.
What happened to the files? Did they get transcoded to hell?
I dunno. Just tons of duplicates, unlinked library entries, shit like that. I also took the opportunity to re-genre everything and classify all artists by country of origin because for some reason that interests me.
I found two treasured albums that played at double speed. Turned out they were AIFF files and I have no idea where those came from but I just repurchased them from my favorite dubiously legal (?) site.
I also took the opportunity to re-genre everything
I just ripped my CD collection on to my new ‘puter. Window Media Player thinks Tom Waits is ‘Contemporary Pop’
Yeah, it’s amusing what comes up sometimes. I’ve always picked my own but I went thru a period where I wanted only five or six genres but that didn’t suit me so I went in the opposite direction with about twenty now.
Windows Media Player made my laptop run as hot as the sun so I changed to Winamp, then for reasons I don’t remember, changed to MusicBee.
There is no way I could edit all the metadata on my entire library in one sitting, much less re-genrefy it all to my liking. OMG.
I use PowerAmp on my phone. I can export the playlists from MusicBee to my phone and PowerAmp will pick them up. HOWEVER, all my metadata editing is done in line with the way PowerAmp sorts things, which is sometimes very stupid.
That’s what MusicBrainz Picard is for.
It took me about a month. One letter a day.
IIRC MusicBee uses that for tagging under the hood but it doesn’t make the choices I wanted it to make so… did it myself.
I manually tag all of my music using Kid3, so I understand. A lot of my music doesn’t even have genre tags though. The files that do have genre tags were autofilled by the ripper or scraped from Discogs. Genre designations are so nebulous, I never use them.
I copied my music as bin/toc to the NAS. I then transcoded to my desired play format. The media manager gets read-only access. It can keep whatever database it uses but it can’t change what I put in the file metadata.
I’m so sorry! 😢
Sorry about your cat. It’s so tough losing pets.
On the topic of music players, MusicBee actually runs OK under Wine (or used to at least). I use Quod Libet, which works just about perfectly for my needs and preferences, and sounds like it may for yours as well. DeaDBeeF is also insanely popular for reasons I can’t quite comprehend. And of course, for terminal clients you can’t beat ncmpcpp.
Sorry SDF. I’ve been there many times. It’s no Bueno.
I loved my old company. They offered Windows or Mac notebooks but said I could install Linux. It was years of happy developing. We were bought by a multinational. Now I am fortunate they gave permission to run Linux in Hyper-V.
Nearly all the OS in use for air traffic control systems (radars, data automation, weather systems) is Unix or Linux with a smattering of Win95 and Windows2000
There has to be COBOL on a mainframe somewhere in the mix.
Probably in our financial back end
Several years ago I threw away a FORTRAN 77 compiler on 3.5″ floppies, mostly because I didn’t have anything that could read the media anymore.
Would you like a chair? 😉
I have a box with 3.5″, 5.25″ and Zip disks. I have drives for the 3.5″ and 5.25″. I also have VHS tapes, cassettes, and vinyl records but no players. I don’t know why I keep them.
Vinyl is still valuable. There is an economic niche for people who will buy your collection. Pro-tip: Insist on selling the collection as a lot.
I still have vinyl, but no player. Because I know if I buy a turntable it will have to be high-end analog. And then I’ll need a tube amp. And that way lies madness, Lord Humungus, and OMWC.
I threw out all my vinyl, cassettes, and CDs at the first opportunity.
They’re all old classical recordings from the Soviet Union that the Russian School at DLI was throwing away. The Red Army Chorus one was interesting back when I had a turntable.
😱
Back in my used book dealing days, we were often called in to buy a collection, and we always prefaced that we could purchase it two ways, piecemeal or the whole collection. We would usually pay less for the whole collection, and we would need to price in dump fees.
You just wanted the classic Playboys.
Who didn’t?
I have two turntables, and several tube pre-amps. You don’t need tubes though.
And a microphone?
Where it’s at.
My highschool programming teacher cut his teeth on FORTRAN. That was a fun class working on Apple II and ‘programming’
We did mostly BASIC in HS, then Pascal – which was eye-opening at the time.
We had to make a board game and everyone did checkers or Othello…I did Clue but only made the board and player movement logic. Still got a B even incomplete.
Basic and Pascal on Apple ][ with the occasional game someone snuck in to class.
Thanks, Pat.
I’ll be the first in the camp, since I just plug along with my MacBook, naked and naive.
(Goddamn things are bomb-proof though.)
I’m still running OS/2, but sometimes I shell to MS-DOS.
[Holds up “Nerds” sign frequently deployed on the GlibZooms]
I got as far as the “Free Hat in every Box” but then you lost me.
Thanks anyway, Pat, ’cause I know most folks here understand this stuff. I’m still writing in cursive.
👍🏻
I wish I had more opportunity to do that.
I don’t curse as much as when I was in the Army.
I’m still trying to master single stroke gothic.
Try the left hand
With black nail polish
Through middle and high school, the fundie Baptist correspondence school I attended required cursive for all written assignments, except in “keyboarding” class. Since I hold my pen like a cretin, copying 5, 10, 15 page papers into cursive for final submission was always a bitch. I’m told they don’t even teach cursive in school anymore.
Not much. It wasn’t official but my sister forced it on her students by writing in cursive in her class before she left general ed.
My son can’t read my print-cursive mashup, so I write in architect block lettering. At the moment, he is in a situation where he has to write things out long-hand (no typing anything), and his penmanship, which was once almost nonexistent, has gotten better with practice. He says he wants to learn cursive. I have no idea why, but okay, kid.
I miss my cursive and every couple of years will write out a letter in cursive. Otherwise it’s drafting block lettering
Block lettering here, mostly, ever since I was allowed to.
Mac boy here. I save nothing to the cloud, for what good that does. I’ve never had an Apple device that didn’t last a long time with no problems. For me, they are buy once, cry once.
“If you are a Mac user, it is more difficult to install an alternative OS, but still possible if you are adventurous enough.”
It’s not worth the money though. If you aren’t going to run MacOS, there is little point in buying a Mac.
“Elon, this is Maggie contacting you from the spirit world tell u…you’re a douchebag. This is not parody. This is the actual ghost of Kathy Griffin’s boxed wine loving mother saying I’m gonna get tipsy & throw my bingo cards at you! NOT A PARODY.
To the moon, a**hole. #FreeKathy”
https://twitter.com/TipItMaggieG/status/1589642965273948161
She is the definition of class.
I hope it drives the current version of Twitter into the ground. However, the shoe on the other foot really shows how one group responds to getting shitcanned on the platform versus the other.
This is the most engagement she’s had in 5 years.
Sounds right. It’s sad because a long time ago she was funny. Somewhere along the way she took a wrong turn.
What’s really funny is she announced she was leaving.
Can’t seem to stay away.
Leaving Twitter is the new moving to Canada.
Elon just trolled that Twitter activity has never been higher and he’s afraid the servers will melt.
Starting to like that guy.
Maybe she should get away.
“An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science
What scientists are able to teach and what research we can pursue are under attack. I know because I’m living it, writes biologist Luana Maroja.”
https://www.commonsense.news/p/an-existential-threat-to-doing-good
“In psychology and public health, many teachers no longer say male and female, but instead use the convoluted “person with a uterus.” I had a colleague who, during a conference, was criticized for studying female sexual selection in insects because he was a male. Another was discouraged from teaching the important concept of “sexual conflict”—the idea that male and female interests differ and mates will often act selfishly; think of a female praying mantis decapitating the head of the male after mating—because it might “traumatize students.” I was criticized for teaching “kin selection”—the the idea that animals tend to help their relatives. Apparently this was somehow an endorsement of Donald Trump hiring his daughter Ivanka.”
“The censors and gatekeepers simply assume—without evidence—that human population research is malign and must be shut down. The costs of this kind of censorship, both self-imposed and ideologically based, are profound. Student learning is impaired and important research is never done. The dangers of closing off so many avenues of inquiry is that science itself becomes an extension of ideology and is no longer an endeavor predicated on pursuing knowledge and truth.”
And you thought the church in the middle ages was bad…
I recently switched from macOS to Windows – for reasons – and about two weeks before my new PC arrived – it was several weeks late – my old Windows PC died. I was reluctant to haul out my iMac again so I found an old laptop that I thought would keep me until the new PC arrived. Turned it on to… Linux Mint.
I had no memory of installing that.
But yeah, apparently I’m comfortable with this dance but frankly, tired of it. I don’t like futzing around any more, and I want to play my games.
That must have been from the Year of the Linux Desktop.
I was probably just drunk.
I represent that remark.
I like consoles for the gameplaying. You don’t have to spend time futzing with them to get the games to run.
I do too but PC gaming is more convenient for me. Plus a lot of games I like are not on consoles.
Plus it is easier to switch to a desktop and pretend you weren’t playing when the spouse comes home.
I miss the Boss Key
Bob, you aren’t fooling me. Your screen is showing Lotus 1-2-3 in 2022.
I remember VisiCalc.
At least we still have Lou Reed.
Depends a lot on the type of games you enjoy, but because of SteamOS and now the Steam Deck, gaming on Linux has improved leaps and bounds over the last several years. Single player games are a pretty safe bet. Multiplayer FPSes that aren’t Counter-Strike often have broken anticheat. EAC is supposed to be porting to Linux though. ProtonDB will give you an idea if your favorites are playable. I keep a Win 10 installation on a separate drive on my desktop for R6 Siege and Battlefield, neither of which I’ve played in probably a year.
Ugh that’s exactly the kind of futzing I’m not interested in anymore.
I did the Wine dance on Macs for awhile.
Glad there’s movement in that area but I don’t have the patience for dealing with that.
Proton is Valve’s fork of Wine and built into the Steam client, so it’s all mostly done for you in the background nowadays, although there’s edge cases where you might need to manually pass some arguments. Still a lot better than when I used to run CS:Source, DoD:Source and TF2 through vanilla Wine though. But I get the not wanting to hassle with it. You can always make it super easy on yourself and just setup a Windows VM with GPU passthrough…
SVR4 is the debbil. Unfortunately, the BSD world has followed suit in look and feel. Not like what it used to be.
So, I updated the article with a backlink to the previously-published parte zero, l’introduzione, which Pat didn’t do because he’s lame. Or maybe I didn’t do because I’m slack. Swiss is blameless in this because he just schedules.
So you are saying he remains neutral?
Narrowly.
I didn’t know how to get a permalink to embed before they were published. I am right ashamed.
I think a good subject for those of us who use Windows or Mac for various reasons, and aren’t going to switch to *nix, is how to harden those operating systems.
For Windows, don’t connect it to the internet.
lol
I tried to touch on that for Windows with the links to the basic privacy setup guide and telemetry blocklist. There used to be a handful of debloat scripts I’d use on a default Win 10 installation, but all the links in my bookmarks were either dead or no longer work since Win 11. Past that, it gets down into whack-a-mole in the registry trying to gut things like OneDrive and the start menu ads without breaking anything else, and even then updates will often revert your changes.
Unfortunately, all of my experience with macOS is from back when it was still OS X, so I couldn’t even begin to offer any meaningful advice on hardening. Apple being Apple, I’d imagine it’s as difficult as it can possibly be.
Short answer, yes. Apple bends (you) over backwards saving you from yourself.
My next laptop will almost certainly be Linux. Getting the wife to move to a Linux laptop will be trickier.
Great work, Pat.
I don’t get Start Menu ads – I think you can turn that off easily. Not that they aren’t hoovering up data but at least it’s not in my face.
OneDrive has some sort of encrypted location but I haven’t tried it yet.
At the end of this day, for me, all this comes down to how much do I trust MS when the most nefarious thing they seem interested in is throwing ads at me. If it comes down to how afraid am I that they will kindly share my data with the gummint, well… at that point we’re probably all fucked anyway.
Spoiler: they will. This is why I hate private surveillance just as much as public surveillance. Eventually, it’s all public surveillance.
I guess I’m fatalist at this point. I just don’t care.
Everything I do I just assume is watched by anyone who wants to.
If the world goes to shit – lol “if” – I’ll deal with it then. Or not.
The demand that the recipient redact the name of the FBI agent is the shit cherry on that sundae.
That FBI agents aren’t resigning em masse over those un American documents just shows how culturally corrupt the whole edifice is.
This is why I do not update.
Well Trump didn’t muddy the waters and announce his presidential campaign and instead just offered his support to candidates. Wonder if his media team has gained some competency.
He’s got a BIG announcement on the 15th.
Can’t wait
He’s going to come out as a non -binary otherkin?
Donna Trump!
Finished my ballot for drop off tomorrow and I have to thank the flyer from the Democratic Party and a ‘coalition of teachers’ for telling me which four Community College Board people to reject. I don’t actually know the other candidates are any better, but those four at least I know are garbage.
And I think it was straight NO on all the dumb initiatives. In California it’s a good rule of thumb that most propositions are bad ideas, and the rest of okay ideas executed poorly. I think i’ve voted yes only a handful of times in all my years here.
NYC has a helpful website obviously pushing for the racist “equity” agenda propositions. How that is even legal is beyond me.
All no’s from me. Even the one stripping out involuntary servitude as a judicial punishment. Backers are trying to push it as state slavery and racist so needs to be removed as outdated, but one of them was quite clear it’s about trying to lay the groundwork to eliminate imprisonment period.
Similarly, my local props are clearly laying the groundwork for “reparations”.
The two ballot measures in NoDak are term limits and legalized recreational pot. Both “yes” from me.
Robc was helpful enough to put together a nice rundown of Colorado’s initiatives. I didn’t agree 100 percent, but it was mostly no.
One interesting thing on the ballot is that you can vote no on the unopposed judges. Which, of course, is all of them.
All our ballot initiatives are a no for me.
Rank choice voting – No
Add words ” “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by this State or any of its political subdivisions on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.” Seems unnecessary to me
Minimum wage… no.
Four propositions on our ballot. I voted NO on all four since they increase taxes or increase the size and scope of government which will lead to more taxes. Why must we add a permanent Hawaiian culture expert, an equity expert, and a global climate change expert (plus staff support for all three) to the zoning board?
The Social Contract?
I forgot the name of the asshole I was going to vote against (he showed up at a charity Steel Challenge match and demonstrated incompetence at following range commands) but fortunately he sent a campaign mailer. His actual campaign issue is “There are too many of Party X in office. t’s unfair! Vote for me!
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/early-election-night-results-final-tallies/story?id=92762835
These came out a couple of months before November back in 2020….so looks like the media are rolling them out the night before the election as cover?
Ugh the powerball channel is making me sit through shitty local news first. WTF.
LOL delays due to “technical difficulties”. Preview for tomorrow I guess.
JFC this country can’t even run a lottery let alone an election anymore.
The feds cant seem to keep drugs and other contraband out of their prisons, yet that border is 100% secure.
This. And it makes me angry.
The lottery is attached to the voting server.
TIL that there’s a state student council association and for some reason they need to hold a
vacationconference. All at taxpayer expense. Nothing. Left. To. Cut.She does have some slick lines…
https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1589711285746536448
If you don’t wanna click through
TOMORROW:
• Fill up your Gas tank
• Go grocery shopping
• Check your 401K
• Then VOTE
Look at line 24 of your 1040 and whatever the equivalent is for the Arizona return.
I just discovered r/gonewildchubby
Its kinda like this.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u10mNypHMRs
Obligatory.
https://twitter.com/jeffreyatucker/status/1589617634806751234
Go away, Two Scoops
Bigly
I told the two doctors wearing face masks in the row behind me that they were either mentally ill or retards but probably both if they thought their face masks offered any protection to anyone before deplaning.
Some words for election day.
https://www.aier.org/article/the-revolutionary-trigger/
He is an optimist compared to our bunch, but mentions good points.
Good essay. This caught my eye:
“If I vote, it’s not consent. If I don’t vote, it’s still not consent. And without consent, there are no just powers.”
I think I’m there. But I’m not sure what do do with it.
Treason doth never prosper…
I don’t believe that, Friend.
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
That already happened.
I will probably be there for the rending of clothes and the gnashiing of teeth tomorrow night when four states shut down counting yet again. Bells on!
Shall be another fun night of gnashing and wailing.
Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona will go blue because of fortification.
Judi doesn’t understand why I give a shit about your elections. When the elephant rolls over you need to get out of the way.
If you’re small enough the elephant can’t hut you.
Is “hut” like “Snoo-Snoo”?
I read it as “nut”.
PA, NV and AZ are toss-ups, GA will be fine I believe.
Everyone in Philly, dead and kids alike, will vote Fetterman.
Looks like DOJ is making moves to send “observers” to states. Missouri and FL told them to get fucked, but i wonder which states didnt.
Noticed that Air Now has satellite detected fires. Those aren’t naturally occurring but peoples backyard burn piles. Which led me to
https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_file_download.cfm?p_download_id=491001
Not enough to put us back into living in caves. Won’t even be able to have fires in those caves.
Fucking neighbors…
Best tin foil hat? Jaunty tricorne/bicorne or wrap around pile cap?
One that you can selectively don and remove as needed depending on how your world view is at the moment?
I’m thinking superglue at this point.
Who is still paying to listen to him?
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/howard-stern-saving-democracy-issue-inflation-concerns
So their pivot from Abortion Abortion Abortion is Democracy Democracy Democracy?
“That’s the only f****** issue on the table,” Anything other than what Americans of nearly any state are worried about…bold move. I can see what they are hoping for though. If they do win, they can justify that abortion and democracy is what they need to focus on, damn the economy.
I remember when he wasn’t a Dem shill.
Pre-Beth.
He’s sucked ass now for longer than he didn’t suck ass. Funny then, terrible now…
Didn’t he run as a libertarian once?
And nobody took him seriously except the idiots that still thought he was edgy.
Not me, although I pay for Sirius which I supposed subsidizes some of his salary. He’s been absorbed into the elite culture he used to despise.
From time to time Ill feel nostalgic and go back to bits like this or this.
o quah tangin wann
Good times.
Shoutout to Hugh….Hugh Jasshole
Howard’s got his. He doesn’t give a shit if anybody else can afford their next meal.
Is it just me, or does Corey Feldman look like the love child of Charlie Sheen and Michael Jackson?
*Im pretty drunk
Now that you mention it…. You may be right….
I’m so old that my family’s first computer (an “IBM” knockoff) was a piece of crap put together by one of my Dad’s friends.
4-color monitor, 5 inch floppy and 3.5 inch floppy. No hard disk—what, are you kidding? Daisy wheel dot matrix printer.
The floppy labeled “DOS” had to be inserted upon boot up (power on). Pretty sure the very homemade labeled disk for “DOS” was a rip-off copy of Microsoft DOS.
I learned a lot from that pc, how to open it and vacuum, how to replace a graphics card, troubleshoot a bad cable—I was young and it was great to get elbows deep into it. And the modem cradle for the phone was the shizznet,
Somehow I kept that sucker operational up through my older sister’s high school senior thesis.
Thesis is as written on WordPerfect. Basic blue and white edition. How I miss it.
Then when I was a college Junior in 1994, Dad took out a tiny loan in my name, with him as co-owner. He made all the payments. $5k total. Dad’s aim was to create a borrowing history so I could eventually have a nice credit score.
That was some forward thinking.
Thanks, Dad. 😊
You had four colors and a 3.5 floppy? We had monochrome green and only 5 inch floppy drives. (also no HD) And no printer. I learned to code in BASIC on that thing.
It was luxury, I suppose.
I didn’t code in BASIC aside from the endless loop “Happy Birthday” to make custom wrapping paper for my sister’s birthday.
My first real coding experience was on an 8088, machine code. I parlayed that experience into writing Assembly code for an 8086/based microprocessor that at the time was one of only 4 processors that could withstand high pressures and temperatures of a downhole oil drilling operation (yay for corporate sponsors of Sr. Engineering projects!) . The choice of 4 processors dipped to the only one that was physically small enough to go down hole.
Do they make college students write in assembly language anymore, even if for just a few weeks? That’s where you learn to program efficiently.
I’m afraid they did not require it when I went through college. I did assembly in high school, where they started with it to weed out students from the CS classes.
I wrote a program with all zeros…
TRS-80. 16k on the mobo, NO drives of any kind. You could attach a cassette player via RCA cable if you needed external storage.
Why did you buy from radioshack instead of those random flea-market style computer shows?
Behold the VIC-20 and all its computing power.
I built my own Commodore 64 back in the early 1980s…
Morning, Glibs.
*waves*
Lunar eclipse!!!!
Right, I have to go outside. I forget if the polling place is at the firehouse or the Ukranian-American center. Whatever, they’re two blocks apart.
It’s voting day, bitches. Titty status: calm.
Just kidding. I hate everything and I expect to be yelling at my tv for the next several days.
The fortifiers will do their best to fortify…
This waking up at 3:30 am is getting old.
going to stay up late tonight and watch fortifications be poured…
Box trucks full of ballots are waiting.
Music for this morning’s walk.
Haven’t thought of Belly in years. Not a bad group.
“FBI Announces “Enhanced” Firearm Background Checks For Young Adults To Start Next Week”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-announces-enhanced-firearm-background-checks-young-adults-start-next-week
What the hell is this shit? Obviously, plainly, blatantly unconstitutional.
And what background? At that age, unless they’ve already got a felony rap, there’s nothing to look up.
I’m sure the NRA will combine all its many resources with GOA in fighting this abridgment of rights./sarc
There is a reason my gun club’s fundraiser benefitted the NYSRPA and not the others.
Took a nap during MNF so I could stay up and watch the lunar eclipse tonight. Anyone else do the same?
One thing that I’d forgotten: when the full moon goes dark red, all the constellations that are normally washed out become visible. Kinda neat to see again.
Doggone it! I remembered the full moon, but forgot about the eclipse.
I wonder who has the werewolf vote locked up.
Warren Zevon?
I still love David Lindley’s cover, though I’ve gotten a raft of grief from some Glibs for linking to it. 😁 (Fun fact: Linda Ronstadt produced this – the entire album, in fact!)
*Fires up spliff, chills*
Mars was near its zenith at the time. An omen?
That was literally in my horoscope Sunday.
I love that you popped in here.
Good morning, Shpip, Stinky, RoaT, ‘bodru, Sean, U, and hayek!
Planning to go through the motions of voting before work this morning, since today is one of my Y days after. (Put in for an hour of my plentiful vacation to do so without having to get moving too much earlier than usual.) Also to get in before Biden declares martial law or something.
Got popcorn to munch on while watching the hilarious shenanigans tonight, and I’m pleased to report that it is, reassuringly, 100% whole grain popcorn! 🙄
You can’t pop kernels whose outer layer have been removed.
I’ll have to check to see if they also tout it as vegan, since there’s probably no butter in the “butter.”
there’s probably no butter in the “butter.”
If it’s not organic is it truly vegan?
Ask my vegan salt.
Depends on what the meaning of “is” is…
“Are you admitting to ignorance of basic english?”
Hey! Use your vegan words!
“Si.”
Obligatory.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cuSD7Q_hArs
Speaking of popcorn, I will vouch for those silicone microwave popcorn poppers. They are great for popping your own kernels and seasoning as you wish.
No Powerball drawing last night because of security Linkocol issues. Link. So hold onto your tickets.
It could take days to count the balls. Be patient and don’t be surprised if Hunter wins.
Great, now they’re fortifying the lottery, too!
When did it become a 3 day a week drawing?
So you’re saying I’ve still got a chance!
Dat sure is some BS with a baby. He still wants to go to bed at the same time, but now hes waking up at 5 instead of 6 and craaaaaaannnnnky.
And when baby is cranky, that means mommas cranky, which means daddy spends more time in his office.
Good time to take the dog for a nice long walk? Or go acquire a dog, then take it for a nice long walk?
The dog is actually having a blast because hes getting more walks than ever. Little cowpoke likes to walk and explore the neighborhood, we go every day.
I honestly dont have time to go out that much, the wife does it when im at work until the weekends. Im working full time, and I’m back at school, and Im back at the gym in the AM 3x a week, soon to be more.
Mornin’, reprobates!
Good morning, ‘patzie! Everything nice and toasty warm at Patzerhaus again?
Hey! Kinda chilly, installation will be completed today. Brrr.
Heh, autocorrect wants to change Brrr to Beer. Glib autocorrect FTW.
Fucking time change.
When did you fuck before, and when do you do it now?
Asking for a friend?
Those make the best questions..
with benefits?
I couldn’t have seen the moon last night even if I wanted to. Five or six inches of fresh snow, and it’s still coming down.
According to Maya culture such a moon means death of the old monarchy Bloody death…
Mesoamericans shed blood at the drop of rain.
How else do you appease Gaia, huh? The green movement is all about shedding the blood of a few billion too.
Sure. But whose government dies today? That is the question.
“US Wants Official Of Ukrainian Descent As Next NATO Chief”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-wants-official-ukrainian-descent-next-nato-chief
As long as the Ukraine is happy, that’s what matters. A stupid and meaningless additional provocation. Maybe give the job to the most qualified.
Affirmative Action, European style. Ukrainians are now people of color?
Blue and yellow lives matter.
Still running Gentoo? I lasted three years back in the aughts, eventually got tired of updates running for double digit hours. Compiling takes time.
Yes. CPUs are faster and everything done on tmpfs. Compile times are shorter and can be run in the background. I normally update weekly. I do recall the effort of a stage1 install back in the aughts. That bootstrap compile was overnight.
Might try it again when I retire and have more time.
As a bonus I am using OpenRC not systemd.
When did you fuck before, and when do you do it now?
Haha, funny. No fucking heap long time. Not since the last “girlfriend” fired me.
Great article, Pat. My first foray into Linux was in 2002. In those days you could buy a boxed set of Suse (pre Novell) or Mandrake at a big box store. I remember my first Suse installation, booted into KDE 2.0. Wallpaper was bright red with bombs scattered about, because I had logged in as root.
Tilling the soil
Nearly every conversation I had with voters last week at the Obama rally in Nevada and at Biden’s campaign event for Levin near San Diego turned to Trump, directly or obliquely, but usually immediately. They are alarmed about the former president and the threat he poses to American democracy.
These Democrats had only praise, or sympathy, for Biden, but showed little enthusiasm for his re-election, a topic few brought up on their own.
“I would want that left up to Joe Biden,” said Tom Murphy, a retired attorney in Las Vegas, before floating the same Sorkin-esque vision some Democrats had for Biden this summer: that he’d selflessly step aside and fulfill his promise to be a bridge president. “He’s the kind of hero who would do that.”
In California, Cheryl Hartvigsen expressed similar sentiments about Biden’s re-election. “If he wants to,” Hartvigsen said, before musing with no prompting that she wished “we had a stronger vice president” because Biden would “feel more confident that he has a good back-up.”
It was the only time a Democrat, in either state, brought up Kamala Harris. Asked who intrigued them for 2024 were Biden not to run, the most common names offered by the voters were Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan along with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Stay away from open windows, Kammie.
If Democratic voters have barely started to consider Biden alternatives, the topic is increasingly consuming the would-be successors themselves, as well as their spouses. Doug Emhoff, the Second Gentleman, has told Democrats the party must rally around Harris should Biden not run.
He’s funnier than Kathy Griffin.
Even the limbo queen couldn’t get under that bar.
Today’s the big day, fourth and inches, bottom on the ninth in overtime to win all the marbles and show everyone who is the best of the best, the top dog, head honcho. So rev your engines and get ready to ruuuuumble.
Yeah, the fortifiers want you to col your jets s they can make sure the people tat resist the state’s directive are not gonna rock the boat to hard…
Since I didn’t vote, I can only complain 99.99% as much as people who did.
You don’t even live here, man.
Hey, I could still vote there. Maybe.
Team rad needs to focus on economics first, making sure ballot harvesting stop and states curate voter rolls as required by law, and create federal charges to prosecute people caught fortifying (especially dark money). Then. After they have done these things. They should impeach everyone in the Biden admin. But I bet they fuck this up for us all.
Dude! Team Rad is AWESOME!
And they’re in the backstretch, here comes Fetterman on the outside. It’s Fetterman by a neck!
Destructor
New Twitter owner Elon Musk is telling his more than 100 million followers on the social media service to cast ballots for Republicans in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
In a tweet addressed to “independent-minded voters,” the Tesla chief executive advised voting for a Republican Congress, saying that “shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties.”
Musk’s political message comes just over a week after he posted a tweet advancing baseless allegations about the recent attack on the husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat. The tweet was later deleted. Musk on Sunday also tweeted that “Twitter needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world. That’s our mission.”
They’ll hang that around his neck just like they hung “good people on both sides” around Trump’s.