If you’re worried about DRM then look at GOG.com - they sell DRM free games, and you can download the installers direct from their website if you don’t want to use their client and want permanent backups. The installers are not online either. I have a large library of classics and new games from them.

For electricity generation: Solar across the UK was about 5% in last year, while Wind was about 29% and Nuclear 13.9%, and hydro 1.3% - so 49.2% of electricity generation over the last 12 months was carbon neutral.

That’s a huge success story - still a long way to go, particularly as that does not include Gas burned in homes, but the UK is moving in the right direction. And Scotland is a huge source of Wind & Hydro power for the whole country.

So even if the barriers to solar in your home are still high, the grid is getting cleaner and cleaner every year. There are also community projects installing wind generators which you can join/invest in if you do want to try and get a slice of cleaner energy and solar is not realistic.

Edit: Source on UK electricity generation: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical Good data on UK electricity generation

Polyamory is more common these days. It may be experimentation or real for her - only she can decide that. Be there for her, try to not to seem judgemental or negative so that she can trust you and be open with you if things do go wrong. That also means being accepting if this goes right for her.

I do wonder whether you are misinterpreting what you are seeing too.

You are seeing the guy as in control of this and bringing his 2nd girlfriend along. But actually she brought her boyfriend and a girl to dinner at home. Is your daughter also trying to tell you she is in a relationship with the girl too? Was it her boyfriend and her girlfriend?

It does seems odd to bring the girl to meet you if she was purely his girlfriend. Maybe she is more to your daughter than that or maybe she was trying to get a rise out of you? Or maybe she just wanted you to understand how the Polyamory thing works?

I do understand your reluctance around this, and your likely worries for your daughter. It’s easy to see her as being the “victim” of her boyfriends wants. But she does have agency and she has chosen this lifestyle - so I think you have to let it play out and be cautious about expressing your concerns too hard as it may push her away.

Be there for her - it’s very important to keep being her support network and not inadvertently isolate her if you disapprove of her lifestyle. You need to be the ones who are there for her no matter what and where she comes for advice and support if this does goes wrong.

Yeah, one part of the prediction and fears raised about the republicans is it gives them far too much credit to actually run a government.

They have held the house and the Senate before and then been crippled by infighting as with slim majoroties it only takes a few people to hold everyone hostage.

Some of Trumps nominations may not get through the Republican controlled Congress.

People seem to forget the republicans controlled all 3 parts of government in 2016 and didn’t get far. Yes they managed some significant things but tax cuts and supreme Court nominations are the main successes.

This time Trump is making batshit crazy nominations which are likely to divide their own party in Congress.

Gaetz nomination is particularly bad as he’s hated by a lot of Republican law makers. There are likely enough republicans who actually care about the legal system that his nomination will not get through. If it does get through then it’ll be a sign of how bad things can be. But it’s likely it will not get through and just sow seeds of discord between Trump and some of the republicans in Congress, poisoning more attempts to change things.

I predict one hell of a shit show over the next 2 years, but probably not from what they do - instead from what they fail to do and the recriminations that follow. All those Republican law makers telling themselves that Trump is diminished, less of a threat, and that they can control him are in for a hell of a ride.

Sony bought the studio, Sony published this, and so Sony effectively greenlit it. Sony corporate then? This was not an independent game developed for PS5, this was in house.

Interesting. Although I’d contend no one “celebrates” daylight savings. It’s not a holiday, and unfortunately saying “it’s not 9am in my house” probably won’t get people far.

I do like the percentage clock idea.

I have a 24 hour analogue clock on my wall - one turn of the clock with the hour hand is a full 24 hours instead of 12. It really changed my concept of time in the day. 12 noon is at the bottom of the clock.

It always feels striking to see the clock at noon and realise how small the morning really is due to sleep and how much of the day is left.

It was intended to bring the existing Julian calendar in Eastern orthodox churches closer in to line with the gregorian calendar. It was not meant to be a universal calendar.

It’s not realistic to alter the existing calendar in this day and age. The gregorian calendar was already too embedded in 1923 to change, and now it’s globally dominant.

The only way to replace the calendar now would probably have to be a brand new calendar (to prevent confusion with the existing calendar, it’d need new month names for example) OR a global agreed change to the gregorian calendar.

Neither is likely; there doesn’t seem to be a big enough need or benefit to get countries together to change this. They can’t even agree on action on pressing crises like the climate crisis.

Yes it’s absolutely worth getting in to video games, there is huge breadth and choice on what to play, and a huge vibrant community.

Starting place is really what devices do you have? Do you have a laptop or PC? If so the world is your oyster and you will find plenty to play even if it’s not very powerful.

If you want something popular, cosy and accessible I’d recommend Stardew Valley. It’s cheap for such a great game, plenty of content, great learning curve and a huge wholesome community.

But there is loads of choice - you could play card games or puzzle games on you other devices and explore what’s available. PC games offer much more variety and depth compared to a mobile, and is very easy to access - no need to buy a console or hardware.

Also English language books are going to be predominantly sold in English speaking countries. And it makes sense cost wise to target both markets together rather than printing individual runs priced for individual countries where possible.

And Canada and the US both use dollars; there is potential ambiguity in price for manufacturers and retailers, so better to clearly specify both. There is not ambiguity with the peso - if a customer sees a book is $10 they will know there is a different price in pesos.

A lot of democrats could have won this election. Ultimately the big mistakes were allowing Biden to run unchallenged, then sticking with Biden until it was too late. Harris then had an impossible task to win.

If the democrats had an actual democratic process, and put their best possible candidate forward they may have won. Instead this election was very much a repeat of 2016 - the wrong candidate, being favoured through to the election by the DNC. In 2016 the DNC closed ranks around Clinton because of fear of Bernie and also because of a crazy notion that it was “her turn”. Biden didn’t run when he should have. This time Biden ran when he shouldn’t have, and other strong candidates in the party didn’t get a chance.

But it was more than the candidate - the election focus was totally wrong. 1/3 of the electorate did not vote - and this election is not a story of Trump breaking through. Trump got 74m votes in 2020 and about 74m now. The Dems got 81m votes in 2020 and 71m votes now - Trump is basically static; but the Dems lots 10m votes because they ran a bad campaign. Those missing 10m voters are in the 1/3 who are not included in polls; because Trump has not broken much above his 74m ceiling. The Dems floor fell out under them instead.

The polls always showed 50:50 but that was just “likely voters”. Really 1/3 support dems, 1/3 support reps and 1/3 weren’t going to vote. That vast pool of people are not all never voters; the missing 10m are in there. THAT is where the Dems should have been going for votes. Forget the republicans; they should have been reaching out to the disinterested and disenfranchised. A positive message that actually addresses their concerns.

The “moderate” Republican votes were never in play nor worth courting, and the abortion and democracy focuses were not the priorities of voters. The dems needed to listen to the actual voters - and the message of what the voters cared about is clear: the economy. The Dems needed to have a clearer message on the economy - “it’s doing great” does not tally with voters experiences who are living with high cost of living after inflation. Prices haven’t fallen back, they’ve just stopped rising as fast. The message to voters should have been “we’ve done some stuff but there is more to do” and offer clear policies are wage growth, housing/rent costs etc. Give the disinterested in particular something to vote for.

So yes, maybe Bernie would have won. But lets not forget he chose to endorse Biden, not run in the democratic party primary. So it’s actually his fault too.

Only Dean Philips, Marianne Williamson and Jason Palmer actually stood up and challenged Biden in the primaries, and they were criticised for doing so as if they were the reason Trump would win.

There is a difference between not campaigning on trans issues and being against trans interests.

The Dems should have campaigned on issues that the electorate cared about like the economy, rather than focusing on issues like trans rights.

For example Gay marriage has never been a central issue in a presidential election campaign, yet it was delivered. They can look after trans interests without falling into the Republican trap of focusing on it in a campaign.

The dems would have been better parking the polarising issues like abortion, and focusing on winning votes from the 1/3 of the electorate who didn’t vote by listening to what their priorities were.

The republicans vote is not much up on 2020 despite all the media hysteria - about 74m in both 2020 and 2024. Whats changed is the democratic vote has dropped massively from 81m to 71m - 10m votes lost. Those voters didn’t vote Republican, they just didn’t vote.

So the Dems needs to appeal to the huge number of non-voters. They’re not never voters - they’ve voted before but they could not bring themselves to vote Democrat.

The question is why the dems lost those votes. I’d contend that most people don’t follow politics and are not interested in abortion or trans rights or “threats to democracy”. What they care about is their own lives - can they work, are they paid enough, can they afford housing and food. The Democrats should have focused on a positive message and ideas for the economy to counter trumps economic message.

Instead the Dems mostly ignored the economy and I even continue to hear them complaining that the stats show they did a good job on the economy. But people with low paid jobs don’t care if you created new jobs, and they don’t care that inflation has slowed - they care about their own low paid job, their now higher rents and living costs without pay rises to catch up. Inflation has slowed but not gone into reverse - the cost of living is much higher than it was 4 years ago and that’s what the Dems needed to address for voters.

The dems could have won this. They don’t need to go to the right and be like Trump, they just need to have a clear message and plan to address the things that worry the american voters. Not just talk to themselves about issues they care about.

As people have said, you can add Jellyfin as a service to start with windows regardless of users being logged in.

No one seems to have said how to do this.

The easiest way is to use the NSSM open source tool - it stands for “Non Sucking Service Manager” and it gives a GUI route to create services, as well as some useful reliability and fall back functions.

It can also be used from the command line if you prefer but regardless it’s probably the easiest way without faffing around with powershell or command line and in built windows tools (which do suck).

Edit. The official website is NSSM.cc and it includes guidance on how to use it. There are also plenty of guides online if you search “how to create a windows service”.

Edit2: the easiest way is to use the Jellyfin windows installer itself but the documentation is pretty vague on that and gives a warning about ffmpeg config. It should work but using NSSM will give you more direct control. I think the installer uses NSSM anyway.

Yeah I get what you’re saying. I would put some caution for Fedora Kinoite - if you want a system that just works and you don’t want to tinker, then it’s great. It just works, and it updates in a very sane and stable why. But if you want to learn Linux and tinker, then it can be very frustrating working with an Atomic distro at the start.

So if I was putting Linux on my parents laptop and didn’t want to be dealing with too much tech-support, I’d probably go for an atomic distro. But if the user wants to learn how to use linux, play with it, tinker then I think an atomic desktop is too restrictive to start out on.

While Mint with Cinnamon isn’t the most cutting edge feel to it, there is a huge wealth of resources out there for people to tinker and play with the system and it’s a great spring board in to other parts of the Linux world. I do love KDE Plasma though - it’s my favourite DE and I used to run it on Mint before I finally moved to a KDE based distro.

I’d recommend Linux Mint generally for noobs. It’s popular and has lots of tips and advice available online, easy to find. It’s easy to install, and as it’s an Ubuntu derivative you get a lot of the benefits of the big user base without the downsides of Canonical (such as Snap being forced on you). I used to use Mint, and it’s a good stable daily driver.

In terms of your specs, you should have no problem with running it as laptop, but as a 2-in-1 device you may find some specialised drivers don’t work out of the box. The most common is finger print readers, but also some of the switching between Desktop and Tablet mode can be tricky. Having said that, I own a Toshiba Satellite 2-in-1, and I installed Linux without issue. I don’t and never have really used it as an actual Tablet though; it ended up being a gimmick too far for me - they’re just too heavy and cumbersome as a tablet, and even the touch screen (which works fine in linux) is just a bit pointless for me. However I have KDE on my Toshiba now and it works well as a 2-in-1 for me at least.

The best thing to do is flash a USB stick with Linux, for example Mint, and try it out to see how it works with your hardware “out of the box”. Linux Mint has a few spins for desktop environments: Cinnamon, XFCE and Mate. None of them are really designed to be Touch based interfaces to be honest. Cinnamon is the main/high end DE and it is ok with Touch interface.

I would say KDE and Gnome are better DEs for touch screen and convertible devices; I personally prefer KDE but both support Touch well - they just have different design ethos. Both can be installed in Mint, although as they’re not “main” DEs for the distro you sometimes get some minor janky integration of the Mint tools in the KDE or Gnome desktop (e.g. sometimes the task tray icons for Cinnamon based tools just aren’t as well integrated into the system themes of KDE & Gnome). You also can end up with duplicate apps in your app menus (cinnamon tools sitting alongside native KDE/Gnome tools which can be a little irritating). But the system works fine and a lot of these things can be tidied up if it bothers you.

But Mint is very Noob friendly, and I think it’s a good way to get into the Linux world. Pretty much everything can be done via the GUI, and it has opted for a default Windows-like feel which can really help with getting used to it. Cinnamon is also still pretty flexible for creating some other interfaces to experiment. Gnome is far removed from that windows feel and is also pretty rigid in it’s design philosophy - it’s kinda “take it or leave it”; personally I don’t like it. You can push it do other things though with extensions, so there is still potential to experiment. KDE does a good job of a default Windows feel but with more design flair/slicker feel, but it also has a huge range of options for making pretty much any interface you like. One reason I left Mint is because I wanted a distro which is built around KDE rather than me installing it separately (I’m on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed now).

So overall, I’d recommend Mint, and use the Cinnamon version. Flash a USB and try it out (note it will be slower/feel sluggish compared to a native install, but should give a feel for how it handles your hardware). If you install it, I’d also recommend a dual-boot setup rather than ditching Windows completely if you’re completely new to Linux. Another option is install on a portable SSD attached via USB, and don’t touch your actual hard drive. That way you can get a reasonable feel of an actual Linux system without messing up your laptop. It’ll still be slower than a true native install but generally faster than a live-USB stick (you can of course also partition and install a full install on a USB stick itself rather than an SSD for the same effect).

EDIT: Just worth saying; if you decide to install Linux, be very careful where you install it. Double and triple check, as the last thing you want to do is accidentally wipe your windows install!

OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is my current favourite. It’s user friendly with good system tools in Yast, it’s got good repos including community repos with lots of software.

Its also a rolling release but has been stable and reliable for me. Leap is their point release version if rolling is not right for you.

I’ve been using Tumbleweed for over a year, and it’s my main OS since I stopped using windows. I’ve dual booted Linux for many years but always mained windows up until Tumbleweed.

Previously I used to use Mint; it’s decent but switching to Tumbleweed (and in particular KDE) convinced me to completely switch from Windows. Everything “just works”, and I do a fair bit of gaming without issue with nvidia drivers, steam, and lutris.

For example I’ve been playing Stardew, Cyberpunk 2077, Distant Worlds 2, and Factorio recently - all in Linux and all without issue.

Bullshit news. If you look at the boring stats, trumps vote is up a bit on 2020 but the dems vote is down massively.

This was not a big breakthrough for Trump, he made small gains in lots of countues and some groups. But the main issue was a bad Democrat campaign which failed to get people out to vote.

In 2020: Dems 81m votes Rep 74m

In 2024 (95%+ count) Dems 70m Rep 74m

The dems lost 11m votes in 2024! The reps so far have gained none, but probably will be up 1-2m in the end.

So this idea of some great Republican breakthrough is rubbish. The real story is the Dems lost a lot of votes.

If they’d had an open primary and a fresh candidate, or if Biden stepped down sooner and they had an actual contest to pick a successor, or even if Harris had been able to run her own campaign from scratch, they may have had a chance.

The dems lost this election because the DNC backed Biden against all voices who raised concerns about his fitness. When they finally relented it was too late. Then they ran a campaign around abortion and democracy, rather than the number 1 concern of those who did vote: the economy.

The lesson of this election is NOT that Trump has the answers or has made some breakthrough. The lesson is the dems ran a bad campaign and did not offer the voters something good to vote for - 11m voters disappeared - that’s who the dems should have been targeting, not the “never trumps” and going more right wing.

The polls said the country was tied 50:50. This is bullshit - polls only showed “likely voters”. The raw numbers actually showed 1/3 support dems, 1/3 support reps and 1/3 weren’t going to vote. The none voters are who the dems should have been targetting - they’re not never voters because 11m went missing from the election!

The dems lesson is very simple: target the disenfranchised voters with positive Democrat policies. Don’t try to be more Republican to beat the republicans, it doesn’t work and will never work.

They won in 2020 because those 11m came out to vote angry about Trump. The dems didn’t give them a reason to vote for them this time.

They must learn this lesson as they seemingly did not understand what happened in 2016, nor even 2020.

Nah, while the annoyances are there they are generally unobtrusive and most users wouldn’t notice they’ve even there.

The real block to Firefox is out of Mozilla’s hands. Google pushes Chrome aggressively via their search engine - users get prompted to download and use Chrome. This is monopolistoc behaviour and the only way to tackle it is anti trust action. Microsoft is doing the same with Edge and it’s slowly growing market share as a result.

Sadly stopping that is not likely to happen. Maybe if Musk encourages Trump to continue the US case against Google, and/or the EU decides to wake up and regard browsers as important again.

All Mozilla can do is try and keep Firefox development going and keep the The organisation financially stable.

AI is a marketing term at the moment, and it’s all orne big financial speculative bubble. Just look at Nvidia and how it’s share price is so divorced from reality.

LLMs can bd uaeful tools and have value in themselves. The problem is the hype and misuse of the term AI to promise the earth. Also the big tech companies rushing to push tools that are not yet fit for purpose.

Any tool which “hallucinates” - I.e. Is error strewn and lies - is fit for nothing. It’s just a curio and these general tools are going AI and LLMs a bad reputation. But well designed and trained LLMs targeted at specific tasks are useful.

Thats fair enough if it’s not for you. The thing about Stardew is that things build up and its up to you how you do it. Like you don’t have to farm crops if you don’t like it manually; you can fish or scavenge or raise animals etc. And as you progress you can automate some things and explore new areas.

But the core gameplay loop is you doing the stuff, rather than managing others. It’s not micromanagement as you’re not managing anyone, you are doing.

I actually didn’t think it was for me at first to be honest, but I got into it in a few hours. As you upgrade tools and can do more and more for less effort, it has its own satisfaction as you build your farm up. But if you’re not feeling that after a couple of sessions then it’s probably not for you and that’s fine.

“Time to switch to uBlock Lite or another ad blocker”

No. Time to switch to Firefox or derivative such as Librewolf.