I absolutely agree with you but I think that take is a bit short-sighted and undercuts just how evil this stuff is.

Tom Nicholas did a Youtube video on the metaverse a while back (oh my god it was 4 years ago, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM00M-dRMBk) and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. The pivot towards VR was an attempt to get even deeper ahold of our attention and what better way to do that than with goggles that are constantly in front of our eyes? The same with AI as it attempts to insert itself as a substrate layer of all technologies, and again with the smart glasses.

It’s easy to dismiss these efforts as hilariously misguided but they’re not. They’re extremely calculated and he only needs it to pay off once to make everything worth it, and I think there are others that realize this as well. We just gotta keep praying that these efforts burn him out before they strike it big. I’m neither a praying nor gambling man, but praying is all we got right now to stand in his way and I wouldn’t put money on the certainty of Facebook’s failures …

My first experience with WINE was trying to install an old Windows 3.1/95 pinball game (https://www.myabandonware.com/game/3-d-ultra-pinball-creep-night-3fh) and just double-clicking the installer to see what would happen.

It installed and launched without issue and even added a shortcut to the KDE app launcher.

I use Bottles now to keep cleanly separated environments, but … even I wasn’t expecting things to just work like that? I thought WINE would be more difficult to figure out but nope!

It feels stupid to say, but of all the things that got me to move to Linux and never even install Windows 11, it was that stupid Start menu. Windows 10 was kind of perfect. You had your full list of alphabetical apps if you needed it, but you also had the ability to pin nicely sized tiles for frequently used apps, sort them into groups, and even make folders. Windows 11 gives you a little grid of icons. Just a huge step back.

I don’t have the energy to rice my desktop anymore and KDE has been perfect.

The thing is, though, is that Microsoft is literally incapable of solving this problem when you think about it. So much of Microsoft’s current business model is centered around being able to subtly direct you and your actions and maintaining tight control over the UI experience is key to that. People aren’t stupid and they’ll always feel that friction, so it’s just a push-pull of how much they think they can get away with at any point and slowly nudging it until it pisses you off again.