How is the average person going to know that? If Joe blow can’t easily get to the distro they “should be using”, Linux ain’t happening for most people.

I enjoyed the depth of this answer. That being said…

4 copies seems like a level of paranoia that is not practical for the average consumer.

3 is what I use, and I consider that an already more advanced use case.

2 is probably most practical for the average person.

Why do I say this? The cost of the backup solution needs to be less than the value of the data itself x the effort to recover the incrementally missing data x the value of your time x the chance of failure.

In my experience, very few people have data that is so valuable that they need such a very thorough backup solution. Honestly, a 2$ thumb drive can contain most of the data the average user would actually miss and can’t easily find again scouring online.

That’s what was said. LLMs have been reinforced to respond exactly how they do. In other words, that “smarmy asshole” attitude, you describe was a deliberate choice. Why? Maybe that’s what the creators wanted, or maybe that’s what focus groups liked most.

While you are not wrong about these different specialities within the trade, there can still be an effect. Let me illustrate:

Suppose you like bananas but not apples. One day there is an apple disease that kills most of the apple trees leading to a collapse of the apple market. You feel relieved because you don’t eat bananas anyways. But you go to the supermarket and find that not only are the apple shelves empty, the banana shelves are empty too! Why? Well people still gotta eat, and not everyone is as picky as you, they switched to bananas and now the banana market is under supplied too. And it’s not like you can build a banana farm overnight.

Back to electricians, if the salaries of data center electricians increases rapidly, you will find that those electricians who are qualified for both (even if it is just a very small number) might focus on data centres, straining the supply of residential electricians. Just like with banana orchards, it takes time for new electricians to enter the market, and those new hires will further be swayed to the data center specialty first, further straining the residential market.

We can see a real example of this with the price of RAM. RAM manufacturers saw increased demand for data centre RAM so they switched focus to that market and it ended up drying out the consumer side supply, hence the surge in price. And just as with banana plantations and electricians, you can’t start up a RAM fab overnight.

You don’t need the latest Nvidea GPU to self host your own computing. You don’t even need ssds. You arguably don’t even need that much RAM. A ten year old Dell work fine. Are you self hosting your own AI? Probably not. So what? AI is not mature enough that it is a necessity.

Are computing prices coming down? Unlikely before the AI bubble pops. I think we have taken for granted that computing will perpetually improve price/performance. This is not sustainable.

You aren’t wrong about those actions but it overestimates the importance of “might makes right” and seriously underestimates the importance of soft power. The meme you shared commits the same fallacy, as is the current US administration.

What crystal ball told you this was temporary? Every day for the past few years the consumer market moves further and further into serving only the wealthy. The people in power don’t care about selling RAM or other scraps to peasants.

but suddenly there is very little that connects both continents.

I think the Nazis would disagree with you.

Communism, brown skin, religions other than Christianity are still public enemy number one.

I’m not sure why the author chose this sentence and why you are picking it out. The author provided no evidence of it. Instead, when you read on it seems to be an ownership problem. People rotating in and out for a year on a ten year project. You can be the most competent and skilled worker, if you don’t get the opportunity to become invested in the success of a project, of course you won’t see the project become successful.

“Selfish” would be a situation where sufficient community exists that cooperation is at all possible. I think most preppers will simply tell you that they are expecting and prepping for complete collapse. As in, like it or not, “every man for themselves” would come to them, not them seeking it out.

In other words, without arguing why a “every man for themselves” situation can’t or will never happen, the rest of your argument becomes irrelevant.

Now that question is fascinating. Haiti comes to mind as an example scenario. Are community-skills relevant in the face of roaming gangs and anarchy? I think that depends on how desperate these gangs are for immediate versus long term survival and planning. I’m also not sure Haiti is an exhaustive example of the types of societal collapse that are possible or likely.

I love Linux. I use it wherever I can. I don’t use Linux on my primary gaming workstation, for the simple reason that the display drivers, specifically mixed extended desktop and screen mirroring is just straight up ass.

Broadly speaking this is probably true. In a smaller context, though, there are tons of counter examples. The internet for example, from just 10 years ago, was unquestionably better. AI slop, bots, enshitification, social media and browser monoculture…

The anti science trend of MAGA over the last few years…

Etc. Regression does happen, and we should not take things for granted.

I hear they are a solution to the problem of increasing mileage/efficiency. I am no fan of Tesla, but we have to admit, there is some merit to that argument, however debatable the efficiency benefits are.

That’s not to say safety isn’t a serious issue. The biggest problem is the reliance on electronics. Now if someone can reinvent the design with a highly reliable mechanical system, with multiple redundancy.

Why stop at appliances? By that logic, humans are nothing more than self-propelled heaters. The whole universe is nothing but shifting pockets of heat like the ripples of a pond bouncing back and forth until they all disappear.

Such nihilism.

Sounds like the Narcissist’s Prayer to me.

I would not try to create a separate path to ground. The ground should be bonded to neutral at one and only one place: at or just behind the main panel.

GFCI is rated to protect two wire receptacles downstream of the GFCI, but check with the local authorities on the subject.

The plastic (including polyester fabrics) in your car was most likely derived from petroleum. The car parts were most likely shipped around during manufacturing using combustion engine vehicles. The energy to cast those car parts, probably some of it comes from non renewables. The labour to build the car almost surely comes from other people who consume gas (for example to drive to the EV factory)

That “100%” renewable energy? The installation and maintenance of it was/is almost certainly done with large industrial equipment and vehicles burning fossil fuels. (Similar issue with production of parts).

Look, I’m not saying you aren’t making positive choices by choosing renewable options. What I am saying is, while they are more renewable, they aren’t truly 100% renewable when you factor everything involved in it. Fossil fuels are so pervasive in society, it’s virtually impossible to both function in a modern society and not contribute to the consumption of fossil fuels.

I think the design philosophy is that each tile represents no more than a single entity at a time, and compact enough that you can arrange the entities in a section to represent a device, room or group.

In your example, perhaps the room also has a humidifier and/or heater. So in reality, the room temperature entity isn’t truly tightly coupled with the fan. The heater and or humidifier are also a part of the whole.

With tiles, you are in complete control to arrange groups of entities that represent a larger whole, in whatever scope you like.

IMO, setting it up at home is not the bar for decentralization. I don’t think it’s even practical to run your own self-hosted fediverse server.

I think we can get just about all the same benefits of decentralization at the scale of the city.

You’ve conflated laws and ethics. Does piracy violate some laws in some jurisdictions? Unquestionably. Is every single law ethical? Unlikely.