I followed the directions and it worked. No issues and no regret.

I am curious who buys generative AI services? The consumers seem to be people making memes or questionable porn with free services. It can't prepare food, unblock drains or tile a bathroom. You can't use it for anything like medicine, law or engineering where you would be professionally liable if it fucks up. How is it sustainable?

Framework have been shipping to Australia for ages. I ordered in December 2022 and it drop shipped from Taiwan to rural Australia in about a week. It was faster than ordering parts from pccasegear though that isn't saying much.

I have been a fan of System76 since I saw some stickers at a conference nearly two decades ago. I think they have good intentions but unfortunately a badge engineering company for most of their existence. The quality hasn't always been there from their ODMs and foreign RMA bothers me. You can buy a clevo or tong fang from local resellers and cover it in linux stickers.

The used market in Australia is bad for most things unfortunately.

I purchased in December 2022. I have not needed to buy any replacement parts but availability appears good.

At the same time I bought one of my kids the cheapest MSI laptop I could find for school. I just learned some of the keys on the MSI have been working intermittently. I have no idea what to do with it. We didn't value a laptop for running Microsoft Word very highly and spent the savings on linux desktop upgrades. I can't say it was the wrong choice. With the Framework it is trivial to check the connector or order a replacement but there was a substantial price difference.

Out of selfishness I would like people to keep buying Framework so they keep their replacement parts stocked but blind brand loyalty is stupid. People don't need remuneration to engage in a hobby but if they are working for a company then unpaid labour is generally an abuse.

Got several kids at regular public schools (not in US) and their policy never allowed phones during school hours from the start. It is pragmatic and doesn't cause any drama. The kids get messages home if needed and can collect phones when they leave. It is a relatively normal society where kids walk and ride to school by themselves and parents aren't obsessed with stalking kids or bubble wrapping them.

Schools have a duty of care and sadly are as much baby sitters for working parents as they are places of learning and phones create more problems than they introduce opportunities.

I believe Musk would censor anything that upset an authoritarian regime if it aligned with his business/political interests. I don't believe his arguments are in good faith.

Attempting to enforce the laws of our country against foreign companies that operate here is fair game. We have some leverage. We can have a debate domestically about if we think this should be enforced or not.

Personally I don't see a problem with protecting victims of crime, their families and community whether it be child abuse material or graphic video of violent crime. I struggle to see a public interest or freedom of political speech angle that would justify a reasonable individual or company ignoring a sensible request to cease distribution.

Not all censorship is equal nor all enforcement mechanisms. We need more freedom here to criticize public figures as our defo laws are bonkers. Also the government should not attempt to apply wrong-headed technical impediments that would have unintended consequences because they don't have sufficient expertise or the foresight to understand such actions.

Disney announced the end of physical media in Australia and New Zealand. Blackmarkets arise naturally when supply does not meet demand. It is preferable, morally and for society if people share media for free rather than fund organised crime as happens with most other black markets. I try and support creative industries where I can but piracy is the lesser evil in some cases.

It was decades ago but Burger King was a bit of a staple for me for a few years when I lived close to a franchise operator that was consistent. It has been awhile and I knew things had gone downhill and some of the franchise operators are very shitty but I was shocked last time we went. The restaurant was filthy and the tables and floors were covered in food. The burgers looked to be thrown together out of bin leftovers. Can't say I blame staff for the lack of enthusiasm given their employer has a known history of wage theft. We couldn't tell the differences between the more expensive special and regular whopper so took the mess to the counter to ask what the fuck we were given and why it looked nothing like the photo. The whole family swore off them for life. Never going back.

It is ridiculous how Paramount region locks promotional content. They operate a global streaming service and I am a legit paid subscriber in a non-US market and probably amongst the first to view new episodes due to my timezone. They are very out of touch.

I am a perpetual tinkerer and I like my diy systems and maintaining arch so I know that ChromeOS isn't for me for everyday use but it is a very compelling environment for some things.

ChromeOS does a damn good job of providing a very locked down environment for enterprise or non technical users. It is a far more straightforward appliance like model of computing than any legacy desktop environment. If it was using Wayland and offered the option of flatpak and steam out of the box as well as android app compatibility it would do a lot to counter some of the criticisms about their flexibility.

Like linux netbooks, chromebooks both benefitted from the shitty low end hardware niche market and then became defined by it, and then outcompeted as low cost laptops and mobile squeeze them. There is a chicken and egg though. Nobody is going to buy or sell a system with high end performance when it is presented only as a web browser appliance.

My home lemmy instance doesn't federate with NSFW instances to reduce legal risks which I totally support for their protection. In addition to the things which are outright illegal just about everywhere there is content that may or may not be legal in some places and an individual running a small instance doesn't have the legal funds or the protection from liability enjoyed by huge corporations. It is nice not having to worry about it when using the app in public or around family.

My kids who are now teens had ipod touches practically from birth (we got the first versions of the Ipad, raspberry pi etc). They looked so clever to non-technical people fluidly swiping puzzle pieces around on a screen in a UI language most adults at the time barely understood. Then one day I put a wooden puzzle in front of them and realised their touch puzzle apps lacked several degree of freedom available in the physical world and they didn't know how to rotate. The physical world is so much richer in many ways and skills learned in it are often more widely applicable.

It isn't that technology isn't valuable and can provide a benefit. It isn't automatically superior or more complete and some people fetishize it to a ridiculous extent. For decades kids spent a huge amount of time cutting and pasting content into powerpoint in primary schools here at the expense of illustrating, reading and hand writing because companies like Microsoft were engaged in a war for mind share. Most technical people like myself thought this was a very poor use of technology but less technical people probably thought we were luddites. I have seen my kids do animation and story telling with apps that I think is quite a good use of technology but I wouldn't deny them the experience of doing art with physical materials which I think in most ways is more foundational.