“Sorry, mate. Work policy. We deal with confidential patient information, so IT wipes everything on a schedule and we do everything on the cloud. There’s never anything on the device.”

XNOR is so ambiguously named.

Every time, I’m like: The inverse of XOR? Or the inverse of NOR? Oh, right, NOR is already the inverse of OR, so X-NOR is just OR, so XNOR must be the inverse of XOR.

They need a bigger screen, too. The Ask! bar, Yahoo bar, Google bar, Bing bar, and browser search bar take up so much space.

Yeah; that’s not much time, and I’m not a lawyer, but this seems a complicated legal question. I just assumed any tool that circumvents any sort of digital lock would be hosting in countries that DGAF about US laws. Even better if they have a .onion address to avoid any network blocking attempts, like z-library.

It works in Canada without a SIM. I know because my son did it on his “wifi-only” tablet.

Do you need a phone plan at all for emergency calling? It’s required for all carriers to take 911 calls in Canada.

You had me until multi-account Outlook access. Why not just use different browser profiles?

That said, the Outlook application is necessary for lots of things, like saving email files (record keeping) and mail merges, but the number of accounts has never been a problem for me. I have 9 active email accounts spread across three/five different platforms (depending if you separate corporate vs. free), and I use web apps (by choice) for all of them, aside from popping Outlook open for the aforementioned mail merges and digital record keeping for email files.

But absolutely true for Excel. It frustrates me so much when I’m stuck on a computer with even slightly outdated versions of the Excel application. SORT, FILTER, TEXTSPLIT, and so many other functions are so much simpler than the many workarounds I used to kludge together.

But fuck Teams. The application is just as garbage as the web app. Those two fail/crash ten times more than all the other apps on my computer *combined". I’ve crashed three times in a single meeting. It must be vibe coded, bolted together, janky, spaghetti code.

I was debating doing something like this; install my build in the crawlspace below my desk. It’s just an exterior wall, so running a big enough channel through the wall would mess up the insulation. :(

That’s a sweet setup.

I knew about the Debian > Ubuntu ordering, but I take it Debian is still often used as a desktop environment, which is what I thought.

Oh, that’s very good to know. That’s a big limitation. That might make moving to Linux at all DOA for me. I’d likely need to do everything for work in a VM, but then what’s the point?

Unfortunately, I’m tied to Excel 2024. I make heavy use of new functions, like SORT that aren’t available in any other desktop app, and the web client doesn’t allow for VBA scripting, so it’s not suitable, either.

oh, shit:

The main one I see is if you need to install some proprietary VPN client it gets annoyingf

You’re right. I have a crappy work-supplied Windows laptop that has exactly that installed. It would be nice not to need to boot into that when I need to work on the server from home, but it’s not a deal breaker.

No other specific non-web-based software is needed for work, aside from the aforementioned OneDrive and Excel 2024.

Edit: Your last paragraph is exactly what I’m asking about; I’m capable of doing slightly involved tinkering, but it would need to be something that I can Google Fu through each step of someone walking through most of the steps. I don’t know it at all well enough to go completely “off script” and just tinker with confidence.

It sounds like you’re suggesting that going for something mainstream and getting it to work for games is likely a better option, particularly for someone with limited Limits experience?

Good to know! I use it at work for a server; ngl, my non-Bazzite distro search hasn’t been extensive, except getting to the point that I think I don’t want anything Ubuntu-based.

Thanks for the reply!

A few thoughts:

I was thinking Win 10 EOL won’t matter if the VM has no Internet access. Linux would sync the files for me, so the Windows VM can just run Excel (and maybe Word, since I’m setting up Office 2024 anyway) using the files synced by abraunegg’s onedrive, so it doesn’t need internet access. (Assuming there’s a partition format that works well for both Windows and Linux that I can use for onedrive, which I assume is a “solved” problem by now—i remember this being hard 20 years ago.)

And his package apparently works in Fedora 42 with docker, which I assume should work fine.

But yeah; maybe what you’re suggesting makes more sense. And that VM definitely would need web access, then, so Win 10 is a non-starter. The database work I do is likely easier in Linux, but that’s likely easy enough to get data files out of the VM for just that work, I would expect.

Another question now comes to mind; I’m going to look this up now; how hard is it to copy/paste between Linux and a VM? Edit: As I’d hoped, this is also apparently a solved problem and sounds easy to configure.

Hit the nail on the head.

Millions and millions of print books are destroyed all the time, and very rarely is anything of value lost. Libraries, thrift stores, and used book stores get inundated thousands of books donated to them, most of which nobody wants. Unless you, personally, are going to take on sorting, transporting, and storing dozens of duplicate copies of books in poor condition, and have some purpose for them (presumably?), then get off your high horse about the destruction of bulk-purchased used books.

Individual copies of mass-published books are not precious. Only rare books are important for preservation. And, even then, digital copies are much more practical for long-term storage than physical books. Anna’s Archive’s preservation project as a shadow library is only possible because data storage is very cheap, infinitely replicable, and practically free to transport.

Nope. Ebooks are a license, so the First Sale Doctrine does not apply. Buying ebooks is nearly useless, legally.

Actually, no. Not according to the research. (Which I can’t find right now; just in a quick break.)

Essentially, somewhere (?) had the whole region take vacation at the same time, if possible. (Not essential services and obviously vacation businesses, lol). They found much greater benefits when there’s a large chunk of the population all off at the same time, and makes everyone happier (even those who have to still work).

They think the reasons are twofold:

1. We’re social creatures, and being able to connect with people meaningfully depends on them also being available at the same time.
2. When the region is on “vacation”, everyone gets more relaxed/chill, even those who are still working. Basically “vibes”. (They were a lot more technical in the study, lol).

Sorry I can’t link it, but something like “everyone who can be is off from July 15-August 15” would have big societal benefits.

The podcast is called “Better Offline” for anyone else searching.

I really like the 3 episodes I’ve listened to so far. Thanks for the rec!

Not sure if I’m learning much from it, but it’s nice to hear someone explaining what’s wrong with AI hype and stock-market-driven capitalism clearly.

If Firefox continues to work, does that mean that it can be used as a workaround, potentially? I guess it depends on how the DRM works, if something like running it in a Firefox tab would work.

And surely blocking Firefox would be a bad move for Google since that would clearly be using monopolistic power in one market to gain advantage in another, right?

Depends on the item and your goals.

If you’re a “car person” who always wants to have the latest model, then maybe leasing a car makes sense. Every 3 years, you get a new car.

Phones are similar; there are some plans where you are expected to return the phone every 1-2 years. If you really want the newest model all the time, then that might be a good plan for you.

But for a printer, that only makes sense if you’re a business with medium print volumes and no IT budget. For home use, that’s insane when a cheap last printer will last decades. We have a B&W laser from 2 decades ago and a used colour laser we got for free/very cheap (the power button is broken but it otherwise works great). I’m guessing we pay about 1-2% of an HP subsription.