Wow. If a black box analysis of arbitrary facial characteristics is more meritocratic than the status quo, that speaks volumes about the nightmare hellscape shitshow of policy, procedure and discretion that resides behind the current set of 'metrics' being used.

Somebody isn't getting their apple polished.

Very user-hostile, but very unsurprising.

Kindle hardware can be very nice, but almost every software decision is designed to keep users within their walled garden.

No epub support, no third party app support, no ability to load non-store audio, and now this. What a waste. These things could be so much more useful than they are.

Adding on to this: people overestimate their own expertise.

I use linux to run my law office, so it can be done. Most of what I use is web-based these days, so headaches are minor. That being typed, I've been using linux off and on since the 1990s, and there was a fair amount of learning involved. A few notes:

-Libreoffice is good enough for document drafting, unless you're extremely reliant on templates generated in Word. Even then, that's a few hours of clerical work that you can farm out with, presumably, no confidentiality issues to flag. Also bear in mind that if you end up using different Linux distributions on more than one computer, then you may run into minor formatting differences between different versions of your word processing software. Microsoft Office will be a reliable option unless you run windows as a virtual machine. There are workarounds, but they aren't business ready.

-Some aspects of PDF authoring can be tricky if you're doing discovery prep, redaction, and related tasks in-house. This is very workflow-specific, so if you're not a litigator or your jurisdiction doesn't have a lot of specific requirements for pdf submissions, it might not be something that you need to worry about. If it becomes a problem, then a Windows virtual machine might be a solution.

-Video support depends greatly on the linux distribution, so you may want to do a bit of research and avoid distributions like Fedora, where certain mainstream AV formats are not supported by default for philosophical/licensing reasons.

-Compatibility with co-counsel and clients will be hit or miss. I don't let anything leave my office that hasn't been converted to PDF and I only do collaboration when there is a special request to do so. I can fall back on a computer that I have which runs Office. It sounds like you have more than one computer, so you can have a backup plan.

-Hardware support is critical. If you need to videoconference and it turns out that your webcam doesn't have a linux driver, then you may be hosed. Research and test on the front-end so that you don't find yourself in an embarrassing situation of your own making.

-Learning curves cost money. If you're using an entirely new set of user software AND you're hopping between different distributions to find the version of linux that works for you, you'll waste a LOT of time that you could be using to generate billable work.

Their way is optimal. If you remove the old k cup while putting in the next k cup, you open and close the machine half as many times. This reduces wear and tear while forcibly obligating each user to remove exactly one k cup per use.

I guess I'll have to stop choking my chicken, then.

All of that being typed, I'm aware that the 'If' in my initial response is doing the same amount of heavy lifting as the 'Some might argue' in the article. Barring the revelation of some truly extraordinary evidence, I don't accept the premise.

I still have Arms and Armor on my bookshelf! The gilded percussion revolver? The African throwing knife? The tilting helmet with a face? Every page was a new thing for child me to fixate on.

Gotcha. This is replacing one nonsense black box with a different one, then. That makes a depressing kind of sense. No evidence needed, either!

Neat! Next time I build a house, I'll go with House Telvanni.

I use Librera on Android. I generally convert to .txt when I read fiction on Linux because I can use a wide range of text editors/viewers that way. It has been a great way to familiarize myself with a lot of features that I don't use when I'm tweaking config files.

Beyond that, I use Okular or Calibre's reader for epubs on an as-needed basis.

Snap turned several of my oldest Ubuntu boxes into unuseable e-waste before I jumped to a different distribution. This is the sole reason that I left Ubuntu behind back in the day and switched to something else on ALL of my computers. I'm not going through that again.

One thing to note about the Kobo store is that it (unlike Amazon) lists the DRM status of a given book towards the bottom of the store page below the reviews. If you see something like "Epub 2 (DRM Free)" then that's the format that the book will be in if you download it.

You can download a book that you've purchased directly from the website on the My Account/My Books subpage. I've tested this out and it can be a good way to get paid DRM free ebooks, if that's what the publisher wants to sell.

This is where switching allegiances to pursue 'Just the rights that I want and no further' gets you.

This seems like a solid take. Never fuck with your bread and butter.

Mint is based on Ubuntu, both of which are versioned release distributions. The idea behind versioned releases is that the kernel and a lot of the software are all chosen and tested to work well together. It gives the user a system that won't change much for several years. Rather than getting the latest and greatest, you get a known, relatively static set that works smoothly and gets security/stability updates rather than big upgrades. Typically, distributions like Mint only get minor security updates to the chosen kernel during their lifetime. You'll see additional patches to kernel 6.8, but nothing beyond that.

To get a newer kernel, the safest option is to wait until Mint 23 gets released and do a full upgrade to the new version of Mint. Along with the kernel, other pieces of the operating system will get a bump to much newer versions. Mint gives you the option to try newer kernels, but this is less stable and could break your system.

There are other types of Linux distributions that ship new versions of the kernel much more regularly. Rolling releases (to one extent or another) update the kernel and other software shortly after the new code is available and tested.

I don't integrate it with anything else, but facebook remains my best option for getting current contact info for anybody from my past. Even after the enshittification, it remains an effective Rolodex. Rolodex...I am old.

I'm not sure that there is a consensus at this time. After reading some conflicting information, I opted to install syncthing via the F-Droid version of Termux until things settle down. When I run it in a terminal the default browser opens the web interface and I'm good to go from there. Power management is not great, but it works and runs the current version of syncthing.

I think that phrases like 'anti-consumer' can stick to any target, so long as they're thrown with a sufficient amount of bullshit.