blind3rdeye

This is a great poster. Thank you!

(But perhaps embarrassingly, I don't recognise the top left guy.)

Nothing is safe, except the huge wealth advantage of billionaires.

Every day, a large number of people start using Linux for the first time. But the internet has a lot of people on it - so you can expect to see "I'm thinking about switching" posts for many years to come. Posts like that won't slow down until Windows is in minority. (And that is unlikely to happen any time in the foreseeable future.)

Firefox middle mouse scroll works fine in X11. I use it all the time. But I guess that's beside the point; I'm sure we could come up with a different example.

Attention spans just keep getting shorter.

AI is a lot like plastic:

It is versatile and easy to use. There are some cases for which it is the highest quality product for the job; but for most cases it is just a far cheaper alternative, with bit of a quality reduction.

So what we end up with is plastic being used a lot, to reduce costs and maximise profits; but mostly the products it is used for are worse than they would otherwise be. They look worse. They degrade faster. They produce mountains of waste that end up contaminating every food source of every animal in the world. As a species, we want to use it less; but individual companies and people continue to use it for everything because it is cheap and convenient.

I think AI will be the same. It is relatively cheap and convenient. It can be used for a very wide range of things, and does a pretty good job. But in most cases it is not quite as good as what we were doing before. In any case, AI output will dominate everything we consume because of how cheap and easy it is. News, reviews, social media comments, web searches, all sorts of products... a huge proportion will be AI created - and although we'll wish they weren't (because of the unreliable quality), it will be almost impossible to avoid; because its easier to produce 1000 articles with AI than a single one by a human. So people will churn junk and hope to get lucky rather than putting in work to insure high quality.

For individual people creating stuff, the AI makes it easier and faster and cheaper; and can create good results. But for the world as a whole, we'll end up choking on a mountain of rubbish, as we now have to wade through vastly more low-quality works to find what we're looking for. It will contaminate everything we consume, and we won't be able to get rid of it.

I still remember part of a review I saw when this was new. It said:

Jesus suffered for our sins. Now its your turn.

I didn't find it. Maybe forum doesn't go that far back. 10 years is a long time in computer software. I guess probably a lot has changed since then.

(and when things go bad...)

Ad! Ad!! Oh, it's an ad. :(

Blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker blocker ...

Hmm. I'd be interested to see that. I just did a brief search of the support forum for your post, but didn't find it. Perhaps you can post the link here. Your account history will have it.

Man. That's some weak-sauce arguments against linux. In my experience, just a default Mint install with no stuffing around of any kind came with fully-functional video drivers and bluetooth. No update has ever broken anything; and the first thing that launches after a fresh install is a menu with bunch of different ways to get personal support for Mint.

People are influenced by the world and people around them. And for young people today, TikTok is a very powerful influence. It tells people what is important in life, and how to get it.

You and I believe that hitting yourself in the hammer is unlikely to bring anything good; and highly likely to bring pain and problems; but we only know that because of things we've already learned. Different people learn different things at different points in their lives. And so there are a lot of young people who, when they are told that hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is going to make your more attractive - they might believe it and decide it is worth it.