It’s interesting to see some of the back-and-forth on this topic between different proponents of free software.

I listened to this talk by Linus Torvalds a while back and it relates to the GPL license used by the Linux kernel and why the kernel hasn’t changed to GPLv3. Apparently Linus doesn’t find this practice by Tivo and other hardware manufacturers to be an issue.

Pickles. They were too strong and sour for me. Now I love 'em.

I’ve started baking bread this year and it’s been fun.

The “hardest” part is deciding to make the dough at night before I go to bed so it can ferment overnight. But the next day, all I need to do is throw it in the oven for 45 minutes and bam, fresh bread.

I’m struggling to get the crust right, though. It tends to come out very chewy rather than crispy

That’s so neat; I’d never noticed that before. And the walls closing in on the stage adaptation is really clever

“12 Angry Men” (1957) is a personal favorite that I recommend to pretty much everyone. Great messages about questioning assumptions, challenging biases, understanding the limitations of evidence, acknowledging imperfections in the justice system, and the consequences thereof.

The movie is also cinematically interesting to me because it feels “small”. The entire movie just about takes place in one room, and the events of the film transpire over the course of one afternoon.

If you hadn’t specified “and other footware”, I would’ve found myself in “Eric and The Dread Gazebo” territory.

I found almond milk to be a great substitute a couple of years ago when I was dieting. Particularly the ‘unsweetened, vanilla’ variety from Almond Breeze.

As an added bonus, it also has a much longer shelf life than regular milk.

In terms of design, I find Lemmy to be basically a 1:1 replacement for Reddit. It’s a link aggregator with communities, comments, and voting.

I like it a lot, even though the communities are smaller and there’s less content. It’s just a nicer communal experience for me compared to Reddit. I feel more pressure to actually comment since the communities are smaller and every little bit helps, lol.

As others have pointed out, there’s a lot to hate about ads since the industry is routinely dishonest, insulting, obnoxious, deceptive, intrusive, and all manner of unpleasant. I’ve been adblocking religiously for most of my life for these reasons.

So I think a more interesting question might be the other way around: “What do you like about commercials?”

The only commercials I’ve ever liked are the ones for local small businesses. The ones with a nonexistent production budget that aren’t beating the viewer over the head with blatant lies or dishonest sales tactics.

Adult Swim used to have faux-ad bumpers for the fictional business “Strickland Propane” from King of the Hill, featuring the honest-to-a-fault character Hank Hill as the spokesman, which I felt captured that vibe well.

Rhett and Link also made a funny homage to these kinds of commercials in this classic skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnOyMSEWNTs

Overall I think this is well written. I agree with @poVoq@slrpnk.net that the section on picking an instance could be improved, since which instance one picks can be rather important, since federation/defederation is dictated by individual instances.

And a minor typo I noticed:

leaving Mastodon out to try

I assume that should be “out to dry”.

and connect to it with an iPad that has a Jellyfin client installed?

In my experience, you don’t even need the dedicated Jellyfin client. Just opening it up in a web browser works out of the box, so that’s potentially one less thing to download/install/manage for the clients.

That said, I’ve never tried to access Jellyfin from an iPad/iPhone/Mac so it might not be as seamless as my experiences on Android/Linux based devices. But I imagine they’d be fine; just test it out before you hit the road.

I don’t watch a lot of creepy/spooky stuff, so my recommendations come from a fairly limited breadth. That said, I recommend a few things that many might lump under “kid movies” (I prefer the more accurate label “family entertainment”) since they tend to be perilous and unsettling without being outright violent, gory, or generally miserable.

Coraline (2009) - A young girl, dissatisfied with her home life after moving to a new town, stumbles upon a dark, parallel world. Therein, she finds solace in a parallel version of her mother who is not what she seems.

Paranorman (2012) - A young boy who can speak with the dead learns that a witch who was executed by the townspeople hundreds of years ago will soon return to seek vengeance upon them.

Over the Garden Wall (2014) - A mini-series focusing on two brothers who find themselves inexplicably lost in a forest teeming with fell beasts, witches, undead, and unlikely allies. I watch this one every year around this time. Cozy yet spooky at the same time.

I bought an N64 with 4 controllers and 5 games for $5.00 about 10 years ago…the same setup is like $200 minimum now.

Sounds like you got an absolutely incredible deal; I don’t think $5 was a normal price point for that kind of hardware even 10 years ago. I sold my N64 with 2 controllers and maybe 4 game cartridges for ~$100 around 17 years ago and the guy I sold it to didn’t even haggle.

Gotcha. You mentioned you put the PC into Recovery Mode and tried to reinstall Windows, but it didn’t work. What happened that prevented the re-installation of Windows? Did the PC just shutdown during installation, or were you wholly unable to get the Windows installer to run?

If you’re still able to boot into Recovery Mode/Safe Mode, try opening up a Command Prompt and running the SFC Scan and DISM commands outlined here: https://www.howtogeek.com/222532/how-to-repair-corrupted-windows-system-files-with-the-sfc-and-dism-commands/

Could Linux save my laptop?

Depends on the root cause of the BSoD. If it’s a hardware issue, then no, installing Linux won’t fix an underlying hardware issue. What does the BSoD screen actually say? Any specific error code?

My understanding is that Linux is a kind of system that you download the components to a USB or what not and then install it on your machine. Is that something I could do in this case?

Yep, you could do that, but you’ll need a functioning PC to create a USB installer for the Linux OS of your choice. You’ll need a blank USB drive and some software to “flash” the Linux OS installer to the USB drive. e.g.: https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/burn.html

I always thought the messages left by other players in Dark Souls was such a cool mechanic.

They could be helpful, letting the player know to be wary of danger, or they could be completely disingenuous and trick the player into jumping off a cliff and dying.

I always labored over whether or not to take a leap of faith based on other players’ messages cause it was a toss-up whether they were being helpful or trolling, lol.

If you have access to a 3D printer (some public libraries have 3D printers you can use to print stuff), you might be able to print one fairly easily. I found a couple that might work for your use case:

https://www.printables.com/model/812115-dvd-snap-case-repair

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5277570

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2248287

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3574185

That sucks man. You went the extra mile to be a good host, so you should be proud of that, regardless!

Is it “fair”? I’d say no, but the world isn’t a fair place. Enormous, unscrupulous corporations are to blame for the untenable situation we collectively find ourselves in. And those corporations aren’t going to be rectifying their behavior any time soon unless forced to.

That being said, asking individuals to take steps to reduce climate change isn’t an unreasonable thing in my eyes. Because, until corporations are held accountable, asking individuals is the only thing that can possibly improve the situation. Even though it’s like throwing a cup of water on a forest fire.

The second that Amazon, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Coke, Pepsi, et al are forced to do their part, I will start throwing my trash out the window again like a proper American. Until then, I’m gonna recycle and encourage my friends and family to do so as well.