Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 2

More 'goodness' concerning Microsoft - just hearing on RNZ news that 3 Mile Island nuclear plant (near where my mum lives in Pennsylvania) will be re-ignited to generate power.. for a Microsoft computing facility. What an unworthy motivation for a rather bad idea... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

@dvsk @sun I certainly haven't been tempted.

It's heartbreaking for me to say this, but it's clear to me that the US is not an honourable ally. It shirks responsibility for its own, preferring to invest in raining misery on those elsewhere in the world.

‘Help us’: Guam's nuclear radiation survivors’ plea to the United States https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/526931/help-us-guam-s-nuclear-radiation-survivors-plea-to-the-united-states

This is very cool to see this from #GNURadio... a case study of a sensible (principled - for all the right reasons) community move from Slack to Matrix: https://www.gnuradio.org/news/2020-04-27-moving-to-the-matrix/ And it happened 4 years ago...

Wow, my 'home' feed on Mastodon is filling faster than I can read it. This is a first.

@AnthonyJK I'd run Linux on the hw and use Virtual Box for Windows 11.

@Skivling @vintprox @strypey @Wuzzy I wrote this to help explain my rationale: https://tech.oeru.org/foss-libresoftware-its-about-clarity-and-values

@gregeganSF hah, spat some of my bourbon back into the glass.

Watching what some are pronouncing "the world's worst IT disaster" unfolding from the comfort of a completely Enterprise-Windows-free zone that is, unsurprisingly, entirely unaffected. Sorry for those poor sods who're having to mop up this mess - created by IT policy makers who probably don't do 'on call'.

The funniest and, simultaneously, scariest effect of the 'AI' hype all around us is that the internet is being flooded with LLM-generated content. It's like dropping a big turd in the public swimming pool. The training data being slurped up by the various breathless proprietary LLM vendors is undoubtedly polluted by this LLM content... and'll be making the new models dumber, getting worse with each LLM dev iteration. It's 'gray goo' for data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo

@shansterable @PurpleJillybeans I'd recommend installing Linux on a second computer as first step without disturbing your current one if you can. Then do your best to use just the Linux computer until you encounter a show-stopper (where what you want to do is impossible, not merely a bit inconvenient or complicated). As for you question about maintenance: I think Linux is vastly more maintable than WIndows. You won't have throngs in inst IT dpts paid to help you, but some will, gladly!

@shansterable @PurpleJillybeans many of your familiar apps won't be available on Linux, but most (nearly all) will have analogous apps that will do the same thing. Just remember that the latter #libre apps have achieved their current state of capability despite having ~$0 market budgets and having perhaps 1/10000th invested in them vs. MSFT & other proprietary software. It's overwhelming how good that software is, built by dedicated individuals, & generously made available to all!

@shansterable @PurpleJillybeans once you're happy you can exist on Linux, consider moving your main machine to Linux - but first make comprehensive backups! You can then install VirtualBox on your Linux system & (only slightly illegally) install Windows on it, so it runs *within* your Linux system. You can use it for most apps that depend on Linux, and just treat it as another window on your Linux desktop.

With all the Microsoft Recall stuff saturating the Fediverse right now (my feed at least)... It seems a good time to remember that Microsoft has always had form as an unethical organisation with an arrogant culture and poor leadership... I commend to you this detailed (and enjoyable) account of their first decade or so: https://web.archive.org/web/20051013072349/http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS_1.html

@sj_zero @fgraver @strypey @AccordionBruce @tbaldauf this exchange is one of the reasons I love the Fediverse. Thanks all for giving me a little much-needed 'faith-in-human-kindness' injection.

Just had a #DogWalkFlashBack to '94, the week I first arrived in Aotearoa. I installed Linux for the first time, on my desktop computer (486 dx2 66MHz, 32MB RAM, monitor was 800x600 pixels, common at the time). I remember the giddy feeling of realising that I had actual real multi-tasking, and I could log into my system from outside the Lincoln Uni campus. Plus I could log into my old account at UW (Seattle) & from it back into my desktop. Heady days. People came from all over campus to see it.

Those were the days when most people ran crappy old Windows 3.1 or, if they were very lucky and extravagant, a Mac 'doorstop' (as we used to call the little towers). A monitor that could do 1280x1024 pixel resolution cost over $1000. One that could do 1600x1200 cost $2500 & required you to reinforce your desk to be able to hold it up. The graphics cards (Matrox were a market leader back then) came with a few MB of RAM & you bought a separate CreativeLogic sound card to get more than squawks.

I can still remember how privileged I felt being one of probably just a handful of people in Aotearoa running Linux in those days - we were a small, tight-knit community. There were 2 other people on Lincolns campus where were doing it. I remember getting called into Royston Boot's office (the aptly named Lincoln IT manager) because I'd been saturating the Uni link trying to download the 25 floppy disk images required to install Slackware... Took me a week got get valid images copied to disks.

30 years later, I still feel fortunate every day to have this embarrassment of riches that is #libre | #FOSS | #openSource (I vastly prefer #Copyleft) software, & that I've been been able make it a viable, even prosperous careers. Because I know that if I can do it, others can too! More details: https://davelane.nz/my-open-history

Heh - I should note that my employer, the Forest Research Institute (now Scion Research, a NZ-gov't-owned 'Crown Research Institute'), had told me to 'source yourself a PC' when I arrived at Lincoln (where I was part of an FRI research team of 3 - everyone assumed I was a postgrad). So I got a PC and installed Linux (they probably assumed I'd installed Windows, but I never asked for clarification 😎 😉 ). I managed to exist in that situation for 4+ years, until they decided to deploy Lotus Notes.