turboSnail

Can confirm. A tablet can do about 99% of what people usually expect from a computer. Gamers and professionals are an exception to this rule.

Usually people just want to check their email, browse news and watch YouTube. Any tablet these days is good enough for that kind of basic use. However, OP specifically asked about desktops, so I guess we are talking about someone who does have particular requirements after all.

If you grew up with Windows, it’s intuitive and easy to you. That Doesn’t mean it’s intuitive for anyone else. Kids are super confused about Windows these days.

Anyway, I would still recommend Windows because everything is designed to work with it. Normies don’t troubleshoot. They just give up and move on. In this regard, you would want something that requires the least amount of troubleshooting. Every OS sucks in this regard, so I just don’t have a clear winner here. Windows might still be the least infuriating one though.

However, if they did troubleshoot, they would probably enjoy Linux. Those error messages actually tell you what’s wrong and how to fix it. Meanwhile in Windows, the errors are pretty much useless. You’ll end up reading a bunch of forum posts where nobody knows what’s causing the problem, let alone how to fix it. The best you’ll get is a list of 15 things to try. Just hope that at least one of them works. If you have a problem in Linux, you’ll usually find a forum post where someone tells you exactly what’s causing it and how to fix it.

Normies haven’t heard of privacy, and they also watch TV ads. Windows will be fine. They just won’t see any reason to switch to Linux.

It uses electricity to make heat. That’s the one conversion where you can expect approximately 100% efficiency.

Modern stoves have fancy safety features and a flat glass top to make it look nicer. I don’t think the efficiency has gone up in the past 50 years.

I recall seeing a setting in VLC that adjusts volume automatically. Can’t remember wat it was called though.

Set the volume to 100 when people are talking. Quickly set it to 5 when there’s a anything else. You need to bounce between 5 and 100 all the time to make the movie tolerable.

What’s the deal with this sound design? If I keep the volume at 5, I’ll miss 90% of the dialogue. If I keep it at 100, the movie will shatter my ears, and then I’m permanently done with movies. What exactly are the sound engineers trying to achieve here? Why are movies designed to be so unwatchable?

That would be pretty spicy.

My kitchen was originally built in the 70s. Some of the furniture is still original too. I think my stove + oven combo is original as well. Definitely looks very 70s to me. It’s an electric device, so the dials and electrons are the only moving parts. Not that many things can break in a setup like this.

Star Wars sequel trilogy. Hollywood really needs to remake all of them. Interestingly, there are two viable options:

1. Actually make them good this time. Hire the Andor team to get it right.
2. Modernize them even further, so much so that the entire franchise finally dies for good. Make GPT write the script if you want to go all the way. Sink then billion dollars into this train wreck. When you run out of money, sell the Star Wars IP to Netflix or whatever. Then Netflix will bury it for good.

Machine learning in general is pretty awesome. It solves many problems behind the scenes, but even that side is overhyped.

We hoped it would solve hard problems, but it can’t. It solves boring problems. We hoped you could implement it easily, but it isn’t that straightforward either.

Generative AI for text, audio, images, and video is here, but the same problems persist. It doesn’t solve hard problems, no matter how hard we want it to. Also, implementation is harder than expected.

Then there’s the misuse of LLMs. Oh boy what a dumpster fire.

This simply means they’ve finally run out of money. If that doesn’t help, Apple or Microsoft will just end up buying OpenAI for pennies.

Enjoy the fireworks from a safe distance. I think the Low Earth Orbit is too close. Always wear protective goggles too. The flashes can be very bright.

Good catch! Fixed it now. I already knew I swipe too fast. Should spend more time reading before posting. 😆

They’re just backup copies hosted in the Galactic Museum. There’s no way a species that stupid would survive long enough to invent FTL travel. Just surviving the nuclear era was borderline miraculous.

The Internet as a whole isn’t the problem. Specific sites are. Steer clear from those sites, and you’ll be just fine. Take notice of which sites and services result in negative emotions, and find alternatives to those places.

What doesn’t kill you, will probably maim you for life. Although there is a slim chance it will make you stronger, but don’t count on it. Most likely, several internal organs will wither, and you’ll get very familiar with kidney dialysis treatment.

If you need a handful of plugins to make a site tolerable, there’s probably something terribly wrong with that place. We can keep on patching it with an ever growing list of plugins, but is it really worth it.

Long ago, many people said they would move to Canada. I wonder if they did, though.

You’ll start by fighting crime, but eventually world ending disasters find their way to your doorstep and the future of the entire universe depends on you as you fight against cosmic horrors?

And pigeons are flying rats.

One option is to use a a dumpster browser for all the corpo trash that requires JavaScript. Just disable JS on all the good browsers and carry on as usual. If a site doesn’t work there, throw it into the dumpster.