I get that sharing confidential info is not allowed, but a blanket “any unauthorized communication with the media” restriction sounds to me like a first amendment issue.

But also, ethically, employees should always report confidential info if it is a crime or otherwise threatens someone’s livelihood. And I’m not sure what data the Dept of Labor would have that should not be reported publicly to tax payers (besides PII).

I’d like to report Doug Collins for hate-mongering rhetoric that seems pretty anti-Christian to me.

Re: modding

Nothing is consistent with modding. The idea of a game having “modding support” is a relatively recent concept. For most of gaming history, “modding” meant hacking the game (or sometimes hardware) to do what they want in spite of the creator’s intentions, rather than in accordance with them.

All that said, if you can get a vanilla windows binary running on Linux, getting mods working is usually the same process that it is on windows, especially if the mod is just swapping out files. The same files exist somewhere in your Linux filesystem and can be tampered with just like they can on windows.

If the mod involves running a 3rd party tool to edit a process’ memory in real time, that could be more involved since the windows version of the tool might be making some assumptions that are not necessarily valid when running in a Linux wine/proton environment. In order to get it working, you may need technical knowledge of how the mod is doing what it’s doing.

Will my ability to play games be significantly affected compared to Windows?

It depends on how often you play games with aggressive anti cheat, or games on non-steam platforms. Games like Valorant and Fortnite probably won’t work at all. But I do a ton of non-competative multiplayer (and single player) gaming that is not inhibited at all.

Heroic launcher is your best bet for non-steam platforms (GoG, Epic, Amazon), and lutris/bottles should probably be your 3rd option (I’ve used both for battle.net). But steam games running through proton should “just work”.

Can I mod games as freely and as easily as I do on Windows?

The actual modding should be arguably more accessible. You technically have control over the entire kernel, so nothing is going to stop you from doing whatever you want. The only problem you may run into is if you’re dependent on modding tools that were only made for windows. Some of those tools are basically spyware anyway (ex. Curse), and often times the open source community has made its own alternative you should be using instead.

If a program has no Linux version, is it unusable, or are there workarounds?

YMMV. Valve has done a lot of heavy lifting to get proton to be a one-stop-shop for running windows games on Linux but you can add a program as a non-steam game, launch it through steam, and it often just works.

Wine is your other option. Sometimes the community has gotten windows apps running reliably in wine or proton, other times no one has ever tried it or it’s too much of a headache to get working. protondb.com has user reports for how various games run.

Can Linux run programs that rely on frameworks like .NET or other Windows-specific libraries?

The short version is yes. The long version is the same as the previous answer.

How do OS updates work in Linux? Is there a “Linux Update” program like what Windows has?

Most distros come with some form of package manager that works similarly to an app store on your phone (an app store is basically a package manager with purchases). Ideally, everything you want to run can be installed through the distro’s package manager, and then you use the package manager to update everything. But sometimes the software doesn’t exist in the package manager, and you have to download, run, update, and sometimes even build from source, your own programs. Those programs usually have a guide on the best way to run it on popular distros.

How does digital security work on Linux? Is it more vulnerable due to being open source? Is there integrated antivirus software, or will I have to source that myself?

It is actually more secure due to being open source. Source code can be audited by anyone rather than relying on “security by obscurity”. There are antivirus programs, but I don’t know much about them. Generally, don’t run programs from shady sources, don’t expose your machine to the open internet, and don’t run everything as root and you should be fine.

Are GPU drivers reliable on Linux?

Yes, though historically AMD has better support for the newer features asked for by Linux compositors (namely Wayland). Nvidia’s drivers are still not fully open source, but otherwise work fine. Driver bugs are rare in my experience.

Can Linux (in the case of a misconfiguration or serious failure) potentially damage hardware?

To the same extent that windows can, yes. But if your concern is YOU misconfiguring something to cause Linux to do that, you shouldn’t have to worry about it. It is unlikely you will be interfacing directly with the kernel at all. Most distros configure the kernel in some specific way they want and you never worry about it. And still, a proper kernel-level driver should ensure that it will never send commands that could damage something, even if the config vars are incorrect.

And also, what distro might be best for me?

First off, install Ventoy to a USB drive. Then take advantage of Linux’s ability to “live boot” by downloading several .iso’s for several different distros onto the USB. Then boot off the USB, and you should be presented with a handy menu of ISOs to pick from. This will make trying out a bunch of different options really easy, without actually installing anything to your hard drive.

I’d say try grabbing mint, fedora, Pop!Os, and opensuse to start. Maybe also try Zorin. These are all geared toward new Linux users.

Unfortunately relevant Desaparecidos song

Technically, she could have lost way more, she just successfully lost both.

But if she starts with 20 pairs, and only loses a sock if she wears it, and only wears matching pairs, and only wears one pair per day, and has ~5% chance of losing exactly one sock on any given wear, then you’d expect her to lose a sock every 20 days, so after ~400 days she would have lost one from every pair.

I guess the real question is how long did it take to reach this point, so we can calculate the odds of her losing a sock on any given day (there’s a “sock market” pun in here somewhere, I’m sure…sonks?).

Vance: “I fucking knew it! You guys are assholes!”

So to be clear, you’re literally telling me you’re driving people toward the MAGA movement as a non-US citizen? Damn, I didn’t know Putin’s troll farms were allowed to go mask off now, that’s confidence.

It’s your party, do what you want.

You are right there with neo-liberals as MAGA’s most valuable recruiters.

Why would he want his photo in the middle of that text? He’s associating himself with negativity, I feel like this is marketing/propaganda 101. It honestly looks like a movie poster where he’s the one leaking it.

The only good evidence against it I think is that, according to the article, these satellite images are from March 2024. But, it makes way more sense financially for these El Salvadorian prisons to have their “showroom” of prisoners that is too many for someone from a distance to tally, and meanwhile, cull the overflow so that taking US prisoners is still profitable.

There’s a reason we don’t hold them ourselves: it costs money. And the only reasons El Salvador would keep them alive is because of a justice system defending their rights, or 3rd parties auditing them for humane conditions. Neither of which are in place for these prisoners afaik.

Sure, maybe these splotches are nothing, but also, I’m fully convinced all the ingredients for a holocaust are there, and if it’s ever going to go that far, I’d honestly be surprised if it hasn’t already.

Obvious voter suppression is obvious.

It is a fact that there is a pattern termed a “death cross”, and it is a fact that Tesla exhibits it.

It is also stated clearly in the article that, in the opinion of the author,

the chart pattern reading kinda strikes me as astrology for guys in suits.

And according to Reuters,

about half the time that a death cross appears, it marks the worst point for the index rather than a harbinger of a steeper decline.

Imagine reading an article before making inflammatory statements about it in 2025.

There is nothing to be gained from assuming your opponent is not acting rationally.

I know it’s fun to circle-jerk around these headlines, but it’s a misdirection to give lay-people something titter about because it’s too difficult to explain what’s really happening. His behaviour actually is rational, he’s just an idiot.

For Trump’s entire life, the US stocks/bonds markets have mapped closely to market greed/fear respectively. When the market gets spooked, they turn to more conservative investments, and US bonds have historically been that. (Government bonds are typically seen as the least risky investment, because it’s unlikely that a country falls apart and fails to pay its debts).

Fast forward to today, the US has a bunch of debt that needs refinancing this year, and lately, we haven’t been getting good interest rates on our bond sales (which indicates people are seeing US bonds as more risky than usual). So Trump said, “no problem, we just need to instill a bit of fear in the market to drive investors to bonds, which will cause the interest rate to drop, so we can refinance our debt at a better rate.” So he announces a bunch of nonsensical tariffs, which tanks the stock market, and just like he expected the bond market saw a dip in interest rates…for about a day, followed by a sharp increase! That sharp increase is why Trump agreed to pause the tariffs. Not only did it not work how he thought, it would seem he exposed a pronounced decline in trust for the US’ ability to pay its debts. Instead of running to US bonds, investors ran everywhere else (gold, the Swiss Franc, the Euro, etc.)

I don’t know what his next move is, but I have to think he’s feeling a bit desperate. He’s going to probably try to up his “blame the Democrats for their spending” game, of course without acknowledging that he has also only increased spending (even with all of DOGE’s hard fought, and definitely not half-baked, budget cuts).

But all his strategies seem to be overt market manipulation, and nothing else. I feel like it really highlights the difference between someone who can create actual value using intelligent planning and innovation, and someone who is a capitalist leech who has fooled themselves into thinking that buying low and selling high does something useful for someone.

I’m saying the corporations developing the AIs did that. They took the content without licensing it, and used it to build something else that they are now profiting from.

Ah yes, the ol’ ‘ostracize the core fanbase to gain a more ephemeral one’ strategy. A popular choice these days, unfortunately.

Yeah, I put dozens of hours into Hunt with some friends. We would only be able to play every few months. So every time we logged in, they had made new mechanic changes, some of which made the game less of what we liked. I always appreciated that there were no respawns. If you killed someone, they were out, period. If I die, then i wasn’t careful enough.

And then one day we come back to play, and kill someone, only to have them pop back to life behind us. I felt like the gameplay I enjoyed had been betrayed.

Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but Hunt: Showdown is a pvpve experience set in a fictionalized horror-themed 1900s old west.

The guns have few shots and are very slow to reload. Often your best strategy is to move very slowly and deliberately, looking closely for any movement from other players, taking care not to make any errant noises. Every single sound you make, including right clicking to aim down sights, is audible to your opponent if they’re close enough. One good shot is enough to down someone.

The result is a unique experience that can hit both extremes: agonizingly slow build up of anticipation, or a fast paced chase through the woods to cut off an escape.

An artist produces content. They offer the ability to view the content in exchange for money. They rely on this income to make a living. Instead, you find a way to view the content without giving them money. A portion of their income that they would have otherwise received exists in your pocket instead of theirs.

Maybe it will help to think of it as a service: if you get a haircut, and then leave without paying, have you stolen anything?

Look, I’m not saying that stealing is always unethical. Robinhood is a story of someone who steals from the rich to give to the poor, and only temporarily embarrassed Prince Johns would say he’s not the good guy in that story. I’m just saying let’s be honest about it. Call a spade a spade.

If you deliberately execute only the half of a transaction that is favorable to you, that’s stealing. If you sneak into a movie theater without paying, you’re stealing. If you download music without paying for it, you’re stealing. If a corporation takes art without paying to train a machine to produce facsimiles of that art to make money, they are stealing.

Honestly, if we still disagree, fine. This discussion feels like one of semantics, completely tangential to the point I was making. Cheers.