Yes, “reduce, reuse, recycle” in that order. It is better to sell or give away an old PC instead of just sending it for recycling or even landfill.

The Linux experience has changed quite a lot over the years. You’re unlikely to have trouble getting your computer to work with it now.

You’ll be more vulnerable to malware because it won’t be patched against newly discovered exploits.

No, I’m on Fastmail. It’s full-featured and has a slick web UI, but it’s not as good for privacy as Tuta, Proton, etc. Also, although Fastmail is Australian they apparently host their servers in the USA.

My email provider will auto-generate aliases with no limit, and I also subscribe to Mozilla Firefox Relay, which allows me to invent email addresses on the fly and have them relay emails to my inbox. The advantage of the Firefox Relay is that it isn’t tied to the email provider so if I switch provider the aliases can still work.

In Windows, Foobar2000 does easy audio file conversions, once you have installed the relevant codecs.

Even better, the whole HP printer is optional.

Here’s a review of the book in the NYT that gives a taste of some of the awfulness:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/10/books/review/careless-people-sarah-wynn-williams.html

https://archive.is/Gq7O8

Mozilla has one too. And Fastmail. You can invent a different email address for every site, then block the ones that get spammed.

I have never seen this happen, and I don’t know what tools would confuse the strings “null” or “Null” with NULL. From the comments in this thread, there are evidently more terribly programmed systems than I imagined.

It’s regrettable that Obsidian isn’t open source. But the nice thing about it is that its data store is just a bunch of markdown files in a folder structure, and very easily migrated to any other application. They may have the code but they don’t take the data hostage like a lot of commercial software does.

but it will protect itself.

Or, facing conditions where it can no longer do this, it will boil off into fascist autocracy, which seems to be where we’re headed.

I agree with the taladar@sh.itjust.works elsewhere in this thread. Corporations are the dangerous artificial intelligence, and “line go up” is the paperclip problem. We’re already facing it, and it’s destroying the planet and everything we depend on to stay alive.

it is just a matter of very carefully the drive before booting it up

I’m curious about what the missing word is. Cleaning? Inspecting?

What are the chances the hard drive would still be readable, I wonder?

And keep backups, folks.

But how can techbros get rich from bees? Bees just make themselves for free then serve the greater good, the little buzzing communists.

We all saw this coming from a mile off.

Yep. Hexcells Infinite hasn’t overtaxed my RTX 3080 yet. That may have been a slight waste of money.

You just prefix “turbo” to whatever it would have been without.

Maybe what I’m doing right now? I mean, it could be.