Brain not broke. Priorities changed, and it's okay.

As someone who has always loved reading, books just aren't something you can multitask. And before anyone says "stop multitasking; people don't actually multitask as well as they think they do," it really depends on what tasks you're pairing together. I can pair audiobooks with driving, dishes, laundry, etc. and feel like I've not hurt either task one bit while gaining time back, so that's how I consume most of my books.

I think there's still something to gain by sitting down and devoting yourself to actually reading a book, but I think it's okay to save that for the very rare book that's special to you for whatever reason and take your time doing so. And yes, LOTR is one of those for me too.

It looks like the other side needs a bit more representation here. I'm late 30's. While I've had the occasional wine with friends and family, I've never been drunk and have no plans to change that. I've also never done drugs unless you count stuff like caffeine. I guess my rule of thumb is if a substance makes me not me, I don't want it.

Just tested a few searches on the top domain in a private window with no setting changes. It looks like some search terms invoke the AI and others don't, so that explains some differences people are seeing. I saw no change in behavior between desktop and mobile.

As someone who actually likes AI (local open models only though), I agree it needs to be off by default in all cases purely on the grounds of energy usage.

It was mentioned. I remember a "Patriot or Traitor?" headline, so the news was at least charitable enough to throw the first option in. Honestly, it's probably more that I just wasn't following the news as much then.

As someone who always backs in (unless it's a diagonal or pull-through spot) and a math person, I'm ashamed to say I never thought of the geometry of it, so thanks for the additional reason to add to my arsenal.

I can add it to "ready to leave quickly in an emergency," "practicing delayed gratification," "backup camera guidelines make centering easier," "constant trunk access," and the biggest real reason, "I have a bad habit of leaving for obligations at the last possible minute and need to plan ahead."

Thanks! I assume you're in Australia from your instance. I'm in the US. On top of using American companies just being a given here, let's just say the coverage of Snowden in 2013 was inadequate in my circles at the time.

In case you're not being hyperbolic (or for anyone else legitimately thinking this because I've heard it multiple times), I think Valve really did the best thing they could. I know Valve feels huge, but MasterCard and Visa together are over a hundred times bigger, and any payment processing system Valve could make would definitely be a pushover.

Also, never underestimate the casual normie population. If Valve lost Visa and MasterCard support, I'm pretty sure that would mean losing two-thirds of their playerbase if not more. Those people would either prop up alternative stores like Epic or Microslop's or just pull away from PC gaming altogether.

Anyway, it's a bit like the people saying Valve should make their own DRAM to combat the shortage. It doesn't acknowledge how entrenched the existing manufacturers are and how far away Valve actually is from that level of manufacturing.

Funnily enough, I've thought of the cloud as "someone else's computer" from the beginning and shun using it more than everyone else I know, but I was just getting into the space when Gmail and Chrome were the hot new things, each gradual step into the ecosystem didn't feel like a big concession, and I was too young to know to question the convenience.

In case it wasn't clear, reversing those two decades of inertia and tech debt is what I was referring to as the time-consuming bit. So far, what I've finished switching over is actually quite nice to use.

And yes, I dread the day even the fallback options start getting killed off. It's always one bad law away.

I'm only a recent Linux convert, so you probably know better than I, but it seems having distros suited to different use cases is a strength of Linux to embrace, not shun. And, even if it's a little more work to maintain up front, staying familiar with distros from different families keeps you ready to pivot in any direction you might need to later if one family massively improves or sours.

Still, consolidation doesn't have to be all or nothing. Instead of consolidating down to one distro, can you consolidate down to two or three with much less hassle? Instead of trying to "migrate everything over," can you make it more piecemeal where each individual changeover is progress?

I'm personally just doing CachyOS for both my daily driver desktop and NAS with Bazzite on my laptop and friends and family gaming PCs. OpenSUSE Tumbleweed was also high on my radar, but I've got nothing running it at the moment.

Yeah, technology enshittification as a whole has definitely picked up the last few years, and I find myself compromising more and more as the field of reasonable options gets narrower.

Like you, I used to only go for phones with SD card and headphone jack support. Now, I'm on a (new but not bought from Google) Pixel 9 Fold with GrapheneOS using a DAC adapter to still have wired audio and a more deliberate storage management system to compensate for not having SD cards. (Unlike you, I need a big screen for spreadsheets and such.)

I purposely bought the newest phone I could within my budget, because I'm planning for Android to be completely unviable the next time I need to upgrade, and I want to give Linux phones as much time to mature as possible before I inevitably migrate.

It seems offline tech is going to be the last bastion of safety sooner rather than later, so I'm in various stages of migrating my digital life offline. Linux over Windows. Keepass, LibreOffice, Obsidian, etc. + Syncthing over cloud options. Keeping off-site backups with friends and family instead of in the cloud. Keeping local DRM-free media. It's time-consuming but rewarding. I should have done it all way sooner.