If you really are so hopeless with computers that you can’t figure out a modern popular Linux distribution, then you should not build your own computer, because that’s much more complicated.

Who is “we”, my friend? This all depends on your research and expectations. IMO Linux works great, but you should consider it before you buy a machine. Make sure your graphics card and other hardware is going to work. When in doubt, buy from a reliable shop that preinstalls Linux for you.

I find that the default settings and programs of Debian (or whatever major distro) do 95% of what I expect and want, and maybe 5% involve some customization. In other words, it’s much simpler than getting Windows or Apple and then purchasing or downloading all the extra programs. But this depends on what you wanna do.

I think that’s what they were asking for.

What kind of jobs are you talking about? People speculating in real estate are doing so for passive income, not for employment. I just don’t see this job loss concern being legitimate.

Maybe some property management folk would have to change to slightly different aspects of the service industry, that could happen, but it’s just not large scale. In comparison, we hear stories everyday of people who can’t pay their mortgage or can’t pay rent, then they become homeless, and then they lose their job as a result.

Which is to say, I don’t think politicians believe for a second that high housing prices are keeping unemployment low. Also, you mentioned economic statistics, but for some reason you feel that homelessness isn’t included in them. That’s a peculiar choice.

Your question is wrong. Few if any people need constant validation. The question is what frequency people desire it, and how, and that varies greatly by person.

Your final claim is the one that’s in question. You think it’s true, but maybe it’s totally false. For example, I think Al Gore and Hillary Clinton got the results they got because of their spinelessness, in part.

To some degree, the principle that I’m talking about is quite clear. In a situation where a large percent of the population doesn’t vote at all, it’s the candidates job to get people excited enough to cast their vote. One way of doing that is to have a firm position, to show that you have integrity, to show that your values mean something. Of course when people get elected then they might have to cut deals in order to pass legislation, and we all understand that, but if you throw your values out the window before the election even happens, I’m not going to vote for you.

There are reasons to be strategically quiet, but it’s plainly incorrect to say that being quiet during a campaign makes little difference, because a lot of things are happening in the world before the election. People’s lives are changing in many ways now, next week, next month, and not only because of what happens in November.

You can do DNS in multiple ways. The question is what you try to do, or what your software tries to do.

Even if it is a deadend job, usually a year doesn’t hurt. Unless the work or pay suck, but that’s true everywhere.

I’m subscribed to over 50 RSS feeds and never once have I wanted to subscribe to a site and they didn’t have a feed.

Plot twist. The person holding the pot is Andre the Giant.

They’re not really trying to defend themselves, not to us. Preemptive attacks to what you do when you want to destroy other people, not when you want to defend yourself. But they are trying to justify themselves internally, because it’s not like every Israeli citizen is okay with killing everyone around you.

And it’s not the end result. It’s the intermediate result. Perhaps the end result will be far worse.

Irrelevant. If we’re learning, good for us.

It cannot because of copyright constraints. It sells it’s data to others.

But look, if Reddit did, at least people could use third party and free apps.

I don’t think you know what the term radlib means. It’s kind of sad. But I do know that when one country advances into another country, and expands territory, that’s an aggressive fact. You can try to justify it however you want, I know you’re trying hard, but it’s just not convincing. Seizing the Crimea and then expanding more recently, those are the actions of a country that wants more power and more territory and more control. That’s not the kind of country that I respect.

And if you want to point out that the US does shady stuff too, you’re absolutely right. But that doesn’t make Russia’s actions reasonable.

Joke’s on you. Many of us stopped buying TVs years ago.

Of course he keeps his credit card number and such private. So he cares about privacy.

What you are talking about is related to privacy, but about others’ actions. How can companies and governments abuse us by spying on us? That is where we see interesting things. If I wanna fix my car with a $50 part but it’s off brand so I gotta pay $500 instead, that’s not cool. If McDonald’s charges me more for a Big Mac right after pay day, that’s messed up. If the grocery store charges more for a box of eggs because their ID system knows the customer is poor, that’s messed up. And this is the present and future. These examples are all about privacy, control, and equality.

You know corruption is there somehow. Revolving doors, friends of friends, that kinda stuff is unavoidable. We can try to limit the effects, but it will never totally go away.

You have no idea what our financial situations are. Whatever you think that we wouldn’t do, remember that there’s a lot of us out here.

It takes a particularly narcissistic individual to believe that whatever selfish action they would take is definitely the same action that everyone else in the world would take.