I signed up on a smaller instance, and it took them like two weeks to confirm my account. But it does work now.

For me - not necessarily for concentrated viewing, but I can deal better with some boring tasks when I have something in the background that keeps my brain occupied, be it a podcast, a long video essay, or whatever else.

Here’s an one hour video essay, if you like one hour video essays.

I mean, you probably heard of PowerPC. IBM kept working on that, is still working on it. They’re at Power10 now, but that has some proprietary blobs, as opposed to POWER9.

I’d say that it’s mainly cool because it’s an architecture with enough performance for modern stuff, that is completely open source. No proprietary BIOS, no Management Engine running unknown code. Also, pretty stable, supposedly.

Only supported by Linux, some BSDs, and some proprietary IBM *nixes, if you wanna say you have a system that literally can’t run Windows.

If you want fun facts, the currently 9th most powerful supercomputer, Summit, runs on it, I guess.

The hardware is too expensive for pretty much anyone to actually wanna use it, but oh well, what do you do.

You can get yourself a workstation for about $10k here. https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/intro.html

What about POWER9? You can buy a complete workstation right now, with an open source CPU, Board, BIOS. It’ll cost you an arm, a leg, and probably some more internal organs, but it is currently more functional than RISC-V.

Look at the way Tesla collects and treats customer data, and the way Musk seems to unilaterally abuse his control over the companies he owns for personal reasons.

Now think about the capabilities of the Intel Management Engine that pretty much every Intel CPU requires.

Bad vibes, I say.

For those feeling out of the loop, see here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

Tldr - it’s a little always on processor, running a Minix OS, with direct access to all board devices including the Ethernet Controller.

AMD has something similar in form of their Platform Security Processor.

I’m living in a city with a housing situation that’s fucked even if you have a halfway good income, and my lease will end this year.

I am lucky enough to have a safety net of friends and family, but if I didn’t, I could very much face homelessness this year, as someone who’s employed, and “functioning” in the eyes of society.

Sometimes I have half a mind to go to spend the rest of my existance in some remote monestary, but I feel I am not quite religious to the necessary degree. Or at all.

JA sounds like a Nazi group. “Patriotische Jugend” very much also sounds like a nazi group. Nice to see them stay on brand.

I assume the JA is gonna go independent. Great. A new, well-funded group of far-right extremists is exactly what we need.

A sensible approach would have been to regulate data collection and misinformation on social media in general, instead of writing a law that bans one specific platform. But oh well, what do I know.

You activated my trap card! My sickness was but a simple ruse to lure you into complacency! Your attack was weak, unfocused! I jump up, standing on my bed, your face is now easy prey for my unnaturally sharp knees. The structural rigidity of your nose is now forfeit!

Well, use the time to try it, I guess.

I absolutely love (slightly tweaked) gnome. Fight me if you want, I’m sick in bed and have time.