Historically, yes, Ubuntu has put in the most effort into being the most user-friendly, most easy-to-use distro.

However, I would argue that is not really the case anymore because as other distros (especially Mint and Pop!) have arisen for a user-friendly experience, Canonical has gradually abandoned this over the past few years in favour of being more server focused. Most of the innovation for user-friendly design just isn't coming from Canonical anymore.

The biggest argument for Ubuntu for beginners is that there are more resources such as tutorials for it - mostly momentum.

Ah, I must have misunderstood, sorry. Rereading your first reply to TinyBreak I see that now.

While I agree that increased bandwidth is crucial, I'm not so sure about leaving so many people and remote areas cut off over this. Especially as each generation of technology has shorter range (and therefore more expensive to service). Each generation of technology will have more people cut off, and I think there are implicit fears that one day, it will be them.

Maybe those fears are wrong, but it seems you're just as dismissive of these fears as people that dismiss future benefits from greater bandwidth.

Also, I don't know about looking to the US for inspiration, they also have a very large digital divide, largely based on the wealth of the local area.

I know most call it AEST, but there are some who call it EST.

I'd argue not every job will always be 9-5, so you still get people having to explain working hours with non-UTC timezones anyway, whereas all timezone conversions are eliminated if everyone uses UTC.

I think this is a false dichotomy and an over-simplistic view of the game industry. Remember, there are far more indie games than AAA, so of course they're going to earn less, there are more to choose from. Plus, if an indie game does too well, it often stops being indie. Most of the money for AAA games is from the same few people paying thousands of dollars in many small purchases too.

Anecdotally, most people's favourite games are, or at least started off as indie games. However, most people's least favourite are going to be indie as well. I think the thing with indie games is that they vary a lot, often exploring things that many publishers simply aren't willing to. This allows them to find and fill a niche perfectly that a publisher can never fill. The main thing is that people see this and start making their own indie games, leading to market saturation pretty quickly.

Plus, the vast majority of people still don't have 4K monitors. It may be the future, but you seem to think that's where we are now when we just aren't.

I think it should be clarified that GIMP's structure isn't able to make use of donations to GIMP as a single entity. Edit: or at least wasn't, I hear they can now.

I agree that Krita is more promising though, I switched to Krita years ago and have never looked back.

I also forgot: houses became more expensive during the majority of the pandemic, while borders were closed. There was a short period with a fall, but only because they shot up sharply in the beginning.

I don't buy the idea that immigration is the cause of the housing crisis, any more than young Australians buying their first home. I'm not even sure if it's the investors either. They all may be sources of demand pressure, but I think there's a sort of blockage in Australia's housing market, and I would pin the blame of high housing costs on that blockage.

We live in an economy that assumes that the basic ideas of supply and demand lead to capital investment into production, leading to more supply. In housing, the way it's expected to react to increased immigration is as follows:

1. Increased immigration leads to increased demand for housing.
2. Demand for housing leads to higher house prices.
3. Higher house prices lead to higher demand for construction.
4. Higher demand for construction results in more profits for construction companies selling houses.
5. Construction companies reinvest more of their profits into making houses, increasing supply of houses.
6. Increased supply causes housing prices to drop back to where they were before immigration rates increased. I takes a few years, but it's supposed to be "self-adjusting", always restoring prices back to a theoretical "ideal", not counting inflation.

Except as we all know, it doesn't do that, at least with housing. In particular, I think steps 3, 4 and 5 don't follow in the modern Australian market. I think the key to solving the housing crisis, short of the government building it all themselves, is to figure out why 3, 4 and 5 don't follow, and to change things so that they do.

It might look like decreasing immigration would at least alleviate demand pressure, but that's just kicking the can down the road. There isn't enough housing supply for demand caused by our natural birth rate, and so we're accumulating demand pressure anyway. I view it as a distraction from discussing real solutions, that allow housing prices to not just increase more slowly, but fall.

I guess we just have different perspectives on how things currently are then, I view it as already the case that structural discrimination is at play, and that it's very embedded into Australian government and society.

Imagines is probably a better word, not all fiction is fantasy.