You can tell the ‘now’ screenshot is fake because in reality the ground after the spikes would have been part of some pricey ‘premium’ DLC package.

s/noticeable/avoidable

I don’t know about other countries - in Switzerland there’s something called ‘tactile sign language’. It’s a variation of sign language where the ‘listener’ is holding your hands to track your movements, and it’s commonly used by/with people with impaired hearing and eyesight.

A more universal (and much easier to learn but much slower) variant is the Lorm alphabet where you use your right hand to draw letters on the ‘listening’ person’s left hand. E.g. the word ‘hello’ would be: run finger down top half of pinkie, tap tip of index finger, run finger down middle finger to wrist (twice), tap tip of ring finger.

The closest one to true FOSS that I’m aware of is Apertus. Not sure whether it’s feasible to build anything meaningful from scratch without your own GPU farm though.

As others have suggested, you’ll probably want to pack a combination of movies, books and audio.

I don’t know what kind of media you normally consume, but here’s what has worked for me and others in the past:

• 18 hours is a looong time. Your attention span and interests may vary wildly from one minute to the other.
• Download some series in addition to regular movies. 35-50min chunks are much more manageable with a reduced attention span.
• Get some e-books about various topics, ideally some fiction and some non-fiction. Again, some short stories can’t hurt. Or some entertaining science book such as What If? by Randall Munroe.
• Audiobooks are a great way to be entertained with your eyes closed. You can actively consume them or fall asleep while listening.
• Include some movies/books that you already know but don’t mind watching/reading a second time.

Only maginally related to your question:

• By all means, pack a bottle of eyedrops. My personal recommendation is Bepanthen Pro if you can get them where you live. A bit on the expensive side but absolutely worth it.
• If you plan to bring your own comfy headphones, consider getting one of those Bluetooth transmitters with a headphone jack so you can watch movies on the built-in screen with your own headphones. (Pick one that can handle most planes’ headphone plugs that use two jacks.)

It’s what they should do really. Make the consequences of the law as visible as possible.

So long, Elon…

Trade-in deals mostly suck around here. I hand my ‘old’ phones down to friends and family, who hand theirs down to their kids. Their kids usually get a ‘new’ phone when their old one has stopped working or is really, really showing its age. I assume this system is representative of a quite sizeable part of society, so I’m not sure how much to read into those trade-in statistics.

+1 for Jitsi. Works well, user-friendly, lots of features without looking complicated, not too resource-hungry, lots of ways to extend it. All the other person needs it to click a link, enter a name and allow microphone/camera usage one time. There’s also an app for Android and iOS, though you can just as well use a mobile browser.

Well the half-good news is, judging by Palantir’s track record of managing large public projects elsewhere, that project is bound to bankrupt the US once and for all so people can build something new. The bad news is, it’s probably only going to happen late within the first fifteen years of the ‘two-year’ contract.

The knowledge is still there, it’s just that the LLM has been instructed not to divulge it, and these instructions are often imperfect and can sometimes be circumvented accidentally or on purpose.

There you go. 🤗

I know most people find it unrealistic that underpaid sweatshop-style manufacturing could ever be moved to the US, but considering the rate at which social safety nets, employee rights and unions are deconstructed, the idea might not be that far-fetched. Already many people work two or more jobs to make ends meet, jobs such as waiting are already grossly underpaid and borderline degrading in many cases, and people are still eager to do that work because the alternative would be for them and their families to go hungry or homeless. Who’s to say sewing cheap dresses 12-14 hours a day is such a bad pospect in comparison?

Well, Nvidia plans to move manufacturing to the US, and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche has pledged a 50 billion investment in US facilities, so there are at least some ass-kissers.
What happens after these announcements remains to be seen.

Going great so far - as the work week has started a day late, today’s practically already Wednesday!

It’s finally warm enough to work outside most of the day, so that’s what I’m doing. Loving it. Behind the PC monitor I see mountains, a small forest and the dogs wandering around in the garden, trying to secretly dig holes where they think I can’t see them.

On a personal level, I find myself (finally) growing increasingly indifferent to various things that I can’t influence. If the world stays its current course, there’s a good chance I’ll lose some of the luxuries in my life, but in the grand scheme of things we’ll likely still be okay. Let the world burn if it wants to - I’ll save the rest of my sanity for the problems that affect me personally if and when they arise.
This mindset brings an immense sense of freedom. I’m much happier already.

Besides that it’s a pretty normal week, just busier than usual as there’s a lot to do in the garden and around the house. I still need to fix the holes in the lawn, get rid of a metric ton of weeds and paint some walls. It’s a lot of work but totally worth it.

and people like me are why Linux has even gotten to where it’s at today.

Not true. There are tons of nice developers out there. And I for one wouldn’t want to work in a team where an attitude like yours is prevalent.

You know, downcasting and/or insulting people just because they don’t live up to your personal standards is a pretty shitty thing to do.

To answer the question in the title: my money’s on an old white man with homophobic and misogynistic tendencies.

FWIW - as a person guilty of sometimes not texting back: most of the time it’s not because I don’t want to talk to that person, it’s because I don’t have the time and/or energy to write something worthwhile, make a mental note to text back something witty ‘later’, and you can probably guess where this is going.

Apologies for butting in here, but this brings up an IMHO very important point:

The general public HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE that the Fediverse exists.

If I may be so bold as to add: …and they like it that way.

When it comes to online stuff, most people are lazy, very very ignorant and anywhere inbetween politely indifferent and openly hostile towards any attempt to educate them. They want to look at cat videos and pr0n, collect likes for their food pics and chat with their grandkids. The technology behind all that is a nuisance, not a tool.
By and large, I think those people can’t be helped, because they’re happy with the status quo. If anything, you’re the enemy for wanting to take away their beloved Tiktok and WhatsApp.

That means our largest efforts - self-hosting, the Fediverse, … will probably always be a bit of a parallel universe to the Internet at large.
This is sad for humanity in general, but it makes enshittification of those services both technically more difficult and (due to its small size and enshittification-resistant populace) less commercially viable.
And small doesn’t equal insignificant.

So what I’m saying is, we shouldn’t see the Fediverse etc. as a replacement for everything, but as a safe space for refugees. And that’s what it excels at.