I did get one of those at one point! Definitely no longer have it anymore, but it was really cool that Canonical provided those for quite a while (from what I know).

Ah, perhaps that’s what I’m missing. I do have a Windows install for playing the odd games every now and then that don’t support Linux, but I don’t actually back anything up since all of my games are via Steam and utilize Steam’s cloud saves for syncing (and these games are usually multiplayer online-only games and wouldn’t need syncing anyways). I know that when I originally used macOS (back during “Mountain Lion” I believe?) Time Machine did utilize an external disk, but I would’ve thought these days it also leveraged iCloud Drive.

I did know about Windows’ File History mechanism, but I also made the assumption that Windows tech would integrate with OneDrive since they’re made by the same company… doing a quick search though seems to indicate that it “should” be possible, but actually getting it to do so definitely doesn’t have a simple toggle like you’d expect.

That’s what I get for speaking about features I’ve not used myself, whoops!

I appreciate that, thanks! There are two big problems that I’d have with self-medicating. Trying to actually obtain medication that is “clean” and not mixed with other bad stuff (while also trying to navigate the legal issues that could come with it - landing in prison would certainly not do well with my condition…) and then despite all of the medical knowledge that I’ve picked up from being in and out of hospitals, seeing various doctors, etc - I won’t pretend that this knowledge comes even close to understanding all of the inherent risks of said medications, and interactions that can come up from other adjacent medications I take. Hell, sometimes the doctors don’t even do a good job at screening this, and it comes down to the pharmacist warning me “Hey, we show that you’re taking X and Z, the new Y medication your doctor prescribed can conflict with this. Are you sure they’re aware you’re taking X and Z?”. It would seem that even doctors who go through the entire process of becoming a doctor can be bad at this particular (but very important) bit pharmacology - so I’m not sure what chance I’d have at being any better 😅

(Of course, I always make sure my doctors are aware of what I’m taking - the list is large, but I keep track of it very well)

So that kinda just leaves going the “proper” route of this, and unfortunately like other controlled substances, doctors (at least here in the US) get antsy if you even briefly suggest it and are quick to then label you as drug seeking. Then the next problem is trying to get a doctor who is even authorized to prescribe you that kind of medication - a lot of the practices over here have rules that prohibit their doctors from prescribing those substances even if they think its in your best judgment. AFAIK this is because of malpractice insurance, the FDA’s tight grip over it, and other factors that are just out of their control. It is something that is probably worth me trying if nothing else than to rule it out as a potential treatment vector, but as it is, I don’t really have a way to explore it sadly (in a safe manner that is).

I’m sure both Linux and (I know) Windows have something similar, but it’s not immediately active and trying to get you to save your stuff.

Funnily enough, Microsoft does try to do this with OneDrive, prompting you during OOBE. A lot of the tech space demonizes Microsoft for exactly this.

Which to be fair, a lot of that does come down to legitimate concerns (such as being far to eager about this even when you say “No” and not offering a “don’t ask me again”) - but at the same time, some of the push (likely) comes from a good place of trying to set up backups for users.

It’s definitely not completely altruistic - companies hardly ever are (cough cough, forced online accounts). But I also don’t think it’s as black and white as “Microsoft is bad for this”. And though even I complain about this, the same goes for Microsoft being aggressive with Windows Updates.

IIRC, flatpaks do work with NixOS so long as it’s enabled (and you’ve installed GNOME Software / Discover / etc - since I assume they’re not using the terminal to install programs, and that’s assuming that they don’t need more than a web browser).

So, if OP already set that up, then if Flathub has all you need, then it would make sense.

Though the Nix philosophy would disagree because that’s imperatively installing software rather than declaratively. You could probably wire up something to dump flatpak list to a file every so often and then load that in from configuration.nix or a Flake, but I’m not well versed in Nix at all haha

I remember back when I was a kid, the only way I was even able to try Ubuntu was through “WUBI” which was pretty cool - it allowed you to “install” Ubuntu via Windows, by leveraging the VHD support in the Windows 7 bootloader. It could also be uninstalled via the Windows control panel as it was registered just like any other program.

As far as I understand, it was discontinued because of inherent technical issues with that system - but I always thought if it could be done again, then it’d help bridge the gap a bit. All you had to do was download the installer, and double click it like any other program.

I had no clue how to write an image to a flash drive, hell I doubt I even had a flash drive to use at the time. 😅

No of course not, then they’d actually face consequences for it.

(Yes, I know there are people who do this to those who aren’t rich and still face consequences but I get the feeling that’s more of “the exception rather than the rule”)

The last time I was on, I still saw it running (even after the API bs).

I’m willing to bet that Reddit granted them an exception because it’s a widely used utility and isn’t a client that obscures what they really want you to see (ads).

Also, if the warnings are meaningless, why display them to the end user?

I mean to be fair, the Windows Event Viewer has zero shortage of warnings that are meaningless to the everyday user as well.

I’ve always seen the event viewer and dmesg to be two sides of the same coin - both of them serve the same (or close enough of an equivalent) purpose to my knowledge, and both are very verbose.

Not to my knowledge, no*. Though it’s been a while since I looked into it.

* Outside of running them inside a Windows VM on Linux, but that has its own issues. Especially if you use any of the CC apps that need GPU acceleration. It can definitely be done, but I’d argue most people are not going to want to go through the effort and rather just use Windows directly.

It really makes me wish I could turn back the clock. When I was a kid, my pediatric GI was very aggressive with my treatment - each appointment that I had she would ask how I’m feeling and if the answer was anything less than “I feel fantastic!” then she would start to come up with a way to pivot my treatment along with finding more tests (where applicable) to continue trying to tackle the issues. All other answers meant there was still work to be done.

As a kid it wasn’t something that I understood and could appreciate, from my limited perspective it just looked like she kept wanting to put me on new things that had the potential to make me feel even more sick (I vividly remember having to take a course of antibiotics at one point that made me sick for weeks), or to be put through more machines, have more of my blood taken, etc. I’d do anything to get that back though, as you mentioned, doctors are incredibly dismissive.

I don’t even know when doctors (at least here in the US) started to turn sour. Even as a kid, before I got referred to GI my PCP was incredibly dismissive of my concerns and that of my parents - their “best” theory for why I was practically just skin and bones came down to “He probably has an eating disorder that you’re not aware of”. The other thing I liked about my pediatric GI was that she spoke to me, not “about” me to my parents. Even though my parents obviously don’t go to my doctors appointments now, in a way it still feels like I’m being “spoken about” rather than spoken to with most of the doctors I see.

In comparison, almost all other people that I’ve interacted with in the medical world are fantastic - lab techs, nurses, nurse practitioners, phlebotomists, etc. Its just the doctors that are terrible.

I constantly hear about how medical science is so advanced, but with the way doctors generally act… well, “could’ve fooled me” is usually my words on that.

Yep, I definitely am all too familiar with that experience. I’ve tried to accept that this usually comes from a genuinely good place - people often don’t know how to interpret the news and want to say something positive. But sometimes I wish for more honesty of “Wow, that fucking sucks, I’m sorry”. Most of the time I don’t even share the (lack of) updates anymore unless its very explicitly asked for.

That all being said, I do hope your partner gets some good news soon - I truly feel for them. Not knowing creates problems of its own.

And that’s fine, at the end of the day, I’m not forcing you or anyone else to read it. OP asked for a specific fear, and I responded - that’s all.

Hmm, do you mean whether they’d find an answer (or even what the answer might be)? If so, it’s tough to say.

Edit: This is a much longer response than I intended to give… My bad!

One of the issues I’ve been dealing with for example is I’m constantly incredibly tired. The feeling that most people have when they first wake up for a couple of minutes where they’re not fully awake even though they’re “physically awake” is the closest I can describe it, except I have it all day most of the time.

Doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, the result ends up pretty much being the same. I do often have sleep issues, but sometimes I think that it’s a cyclical result of me being too tired throughout the day and thus not doing enough, and so my brain doesn’t think that it’s time to sleep because I haven’t done anything (but then because I don’t sleep well, the next day I still end up doing “not enough” because I’m even more tired from the lack of sleep)… I’m not even sure if that makes sense, but when I bring it up to doctors they don’t seem to think it’s a crazy theory.

Trying to find out the root cause though has not been easy, as sadly lethargy and fatigue are very generic symptoms - the amount of things that can cause it (even on a chronic level like mine) is… quite a list. And then if you eliminate one, that doesn’t mean that others aren’t affecting you either.

So for example, it’s common for me to be low on iron and other essential vitamin levels because I have Crohn’s Disease which one of the side effects is that you have a hard time absorbing those nutrients. Nowadays I consistently see a hematologist who checks for these things, and I can have iron infusions done to fix low iron levels.

A couple of years ago, my results were so low that the lab tech called my doctor saying it was dangerously low, who then called me at 8PM in the day saying that I needed to drop what I was doing and go straight to the ER for an emergency blood transfusion. One of the jobs of iron to my understanding is to be a binder for oxygen so that it can be carried throughout your body - if it gets too low, you risk your organs basically not getting enough.

Then last year we found out my testosterone levels were practically that of an 80 year old man - I’m in my late 20s… So I had to start TRT, and everyone hoped that would be the magical fix - sadly, it wasn’t (though it still needed to be addressed anyways). That however comes with its own issues.

Now they want me to get a sleep study done because their next idea is that I might just never (or very rarely) be entering REM sleep - if you don’t enter REM sleep, then you’re pretty much not actually sleeping (an 8 hour sleep without REM is practically just an 8 hour “power nap”). But even if that were the case, and we got it fixed, there’s still no guarantees that there isn’t some other issue that is triggering the fatigue.

As to my gut feeling, I know there is certainly an answer - I just don’t know what the answer is. But there is absolutely zero chance that the majority of the humans on this planet can go about their lives and actually be awake with enough energy to do “normal things” such as work an 8 hour day, and that I’m somehow that unique to just be missing some vital gene or such, especially when I used to be among those people. I haven’t even hit my thirties yet!

Somewhere along the way, something went critically wrong and I lost that “ability”, but as to what that “something” is I unfortunately just don’t know because after all these years I’ve exhausted the list of things I think it could be based off my limited medical knowledge (I of course never went to medical school, but living with an autoimmune disease since before you even started puberty you do at least learn a little bit).

I guess the other tangential fear I have is that I’ll spend the rest of my “good years” trying to figure this out, and that eventually the doctors will just blame it on old age. Time only flows in one direction, once March 16th 2025 has come and gone, it’ll never swing by again - there’s no do-over if they just don’t find the answer in time.

You know, every time I mention this I get strange looks (I also have now just realized that makes me sound like I bring this up very often - I’ve done so maybe twice):

My odd specific fear is based around the fact that I have quite a few medical issues, a lot of the symptoms haven’t been resolved yet due to not knowing the root cause. This has been the case for years… I fear that I’ll end up leaving this planet in some strange way that ends up triggering an autopsy being performed on me. The examiner then basically says “Wow, this guy lived a tough life. If only his doctors had known about XYZ, these issues could’ve been easily solved” - and that effectively all of this that I deal with is “for nothing”.

On one hand, I like to think that if seeing numerous specialists for how long I’ve been doing so hasn’t resulted in answers, then it’s probably not super likely that an ME would just randomly find the answer on a simple autopsy.

On the other hand, quite a few of the doctors that I see don’t really listen, and are always in a rush to get you out the door in five minutes… So maybe not.

In the end, I try not to think about it too often - there’s nothing more that I can do, at least not reasonably. I mean sure, I could go to medical school and try to become a doctor and hope by then I have the knowledge to diagnose myself, but I wouldn’t really call that “reasonable”. Plus, I hear doctors make terrible patients.

I hear you on the time change woes! I’m from the US and I’m a contractor for a company in the UK, so all of our shift times are based on GMT/BST… Well, the the UK (and most of Europe as far as I understand) doesn’t start daylight savings time until the 30th.

So now all of my shift times are an hour ahead for a couple of weeks, and its incredibly disorienting. I don’t even bother moving my alarms an hour ahead because then I’ll forget to move them back and then I’ll definitely be late…

That’s a tough one. While I do think AI can be fun to play around with (though I personally prefer the ones I can run locally), there’s always a sort of “monkey’s paw” element to it. Text generation? Hallucinations. Image generation? All sorts of weird artifacts, and are heavily influenced by the training data (yes of course they all are, but what I mean is, if you pick a model that is heavily inspired by NSFW content for example, then you’re very likely to get NSFW content - sounds “common sense”, but nonetheless).

So I suppose in a world where it’s “perfect” then I’d want it to make some form of media that can make everyone happy. If everyone on the planet were happy, then it’d be a much better place.

Or if we’re talking less altruistic desires, probably a continuation of some TV series that I enjoyed which ended on a cliffhanger.

Income is the reason I will (typically) wait for the big sales to purchase games. I don’t have as much disposable income, so its much easier to justify spending $60 on three $20 games if they’ve been on my wishlist (or seem very appealing to me) for example than it is on one $60 game.

Hmm, I always have a hard time picking favorites, but I’ve always enjoyed Halestorm! Pretty sure “can u see me in the dark?” has been pinned in the number one spot of my On Repeat playlist on Spotify for a couple of months now… Lzzy’s vocals are fantastic in it!

Also, a couple of years ago Alex Reade joined Make Them Suffer, and I’ve been enjoying their latest album (also called Make Them Suffer), a few of the tracks from that album (Epitaph, Oscillator, Weaponized, and Small Town Syndrome) have also coincidentally been stuck in my On Repeat playlist for a while.

I’ve never had to downgrade Firefox, most of the time I don’t even notice its been updated unless it pops up a “Welcome to Firefox vSomething” page which it hardly ever does.

I did try out Zen, and its certainly an interesting browser, but there’s a couple of issues with it that I have:

• It’s a browser that is as far as I understand, maintained by one person - I learned a while ago not to use critical software that is only maintained by one person
• It’s still in alpha, and things change very quickly with it. Unlike Firefox I do notice when Zen updates because some behavior will have heavily changed. A few weeks ago there was an update for example that completely removes the new tab page (pressing Ctrl + T or the new tab icon just opens the URL bar and then when you submit your address/query then it navigates directly to it in a new tab). Interesting change for sure, I’m not sure I dislike it but that is a major behavior to change in an update with no prompt about it being updated, and it wasn’t togglable in the settings menu - you had to go to about:config to change it back. When I looked at the GitHub issue regarding this, the dev seemed a bit… unhappy with people’s reaction, to put it lightly.
• Because its still in alpha, there can be stability issues like you mentioned; I recently finally switched back to Firefox when I noticed for some reason Zen was causing my GPU to run in high power mode and using high utilization as if I were running a game and dragging the rest of my system down. Thought maybe I’d left a video running in a tab somewhere and that it was just HW accelerated decoding, but nope.

Obviously those last two points as mentioned are more understandable because the browser is in an alpha stage, but browsers are for better or worse very critical pieces of software. I can’t have it just randomly crashing out on me, or behavior changing out from under me every week. This combined with people selling Zen as if its the next coming of Christ has kinda left a bad taste in my mouth for it. Don’t get me wrong, what the dev has pulled off is incredibly impressive and major props to them for it, but I’ll be waiting for it to leave the alpha stage until I’m able to daily drive it. For now I’m just back on regular mainline Firefox.