This.

Ah, no worries. I’m just sharing for folks who might need Windows for one reason or another. It’s a one time thing to upgrade either way, not a hassle at all. They might own weird niche unrepairable devices like my SP4 which may not handle Linux well or who knows. For clean installs there’s that nifty place with serial keys and builds whose name I forget right now.

As for Linux, I’m kinda torn. I had my time tinkering with config files in the early 2000s in the days of Fedora Core 3 and KDE 3.x before all this Plasma stuff. The whole “year of the Linux desktop” that never came left me disillusioned, although I did enjoy the Compiz/Beryl days. It’s probably better now but I’m too comfortable nowadays. We’ll see if things get dire enough that I need to jump ship again, I hope not.

Obligatory Sartre quote:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

For people who still need Windows:

I have a 10-year-old Surface Pro 4 and I was able to freely upgrade to Windows 11 and it works fine. It wasn’t technically supported but I enabled preview builds or something like that (I think I had to enable the Insider program) and it showed up as a Windows Update. I don’t know if this is applicable to all PCs that don’t support Win 11, but surely it’s applicable to some of them that Windows says don’t support Win 11.

Jesus, that tweet… He’s become one with the rot.

R-- Really?! They found a sentient one?!

The more subscriptions Mistral get, the more they’re able to compete with the US offerings.

That’s true. I’m still on free. How much for the Pro?

Oh yeah, local is a different story. I’d probably look into something like what you mentioned if I had the hardware, but atm I’m more interested in finding 1-1 alternatives to these tech behemoths, ones that anyone can use with the same level of convenience.

Le Chat by Mistral is a France-based (and EU abiding) alternative to ChatGPT. Works fine for me so far.

Yup, and always will be, because the antiwoke worldview is so delusional that it calls empirical reality “woke”. Thus, an AI that responds truthfully will always be woke.

Only the good actions. It’s how they justify keeping all the profits. The bad actions are never their fault though.

Truuuuue

They’re still in denial and complaining about crazy lefties who are after Elon, poor guy!

I’d also add the fact that his donors might have not liked the idea of a government shutdown causing further turbulence to the stock market.

Internalizing the “your vote only matters in purple states” will turn it into a self fulfilling prophecy.

Previously blue states have turned purple, previously purple states have turned red. Nothing is set in stone, although resting on your laurels (if your state is blue) or giving up (if your state is red) will all but guarantee that the changes will only happen in one direction: the bad one.

In 2020, Texas would have gone blue were it not for Ken Paxton purging mail-in votes, by Paxton’s own admission.

Nothing is set in stone, so you need fight for every inch.

Honestly, “malicious” doesn’t even begin to describe it. It’s more like demonic at this point.

Truuuue

Hey now, don’t you know that the biggest sin is agreeing with liberals? There’s practically no difference between liberals and fascists because I read somewhere that “if you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds” and my takeaway from that was that liberals and fascists are literally identical and both sides are the same. I am very smart. (/s)

Yep. It’s my go-to video explainer for “freedom cities” aka network states.

First off, this video is obligatory watching on the topic. Go watch it now if you haven’t.

Ok, back to Próspera. From the Wikipedia article:

The company is financed by several investors and venture capital firms, including Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, through the venture capital company Pronomos Capital.

It’s literally the same guys, and they’re trying it in the US too btw.

That Balaji guy in particular is the one who came up with the idea of “freedom cities”, which he calls network states. He’s also a follower of Curtis Yarvin, obviously, and just like him he’s a two bit fascist crank who thinks he’s of superior IQ.