Well that puts the loss of my little VPS into perspective.

Sure, I get that. The simpler remedy here would just be to ban ultra-niche support questions. Look at the title of this community then look at the title of this topic and ask yourself: were you interested in it? I wasn’t.

And terrible, archaic, chaotic practices such as activating your 2FA without permission and then locking you out of your account for weeks pending multiple signed paper letters. Oh, and sometimes their datacenters burn down and take your server with them. I’m sad to have to throw them under the bus like this. I want OVH to succeed but personally my patience with them definitively ran out.

Insane is a big word. There’s a separate one on the R-site so why not here? Then people who want to participate in Stack Exchange-style Q&A can subscribe to that and those who just want to discuss Linux as a subject won’t have to bat away spam about the exact syntax to some obscure video-editing utility.

There’s a lot of hate and anger here directed against the driver, who was of course himself full of hate and anger. He should rot in hell etc etc, it’s all very American. None of that will solve anything. This is about systems. Paris is too dense for cars, let alone SUVs, but humans like their cars and will buy them and use them if we don’t decide collectively to prevent it. The tragedy here was not that one entitled guy blew a gasket and did something he surely regretted instantly, it’s that we all, together, allowed this situation to occur. A rush-hour boulevard crammed with too-big cars, in a city which is already as dense as a hothouse, in a country with increasingly angry and polarized politics. The problem is not individuals, it’s systems.

I’m sorry if if this is too sophisticated an argument for this community, but I speak with direct experience of the subject at hand and I would like to see the problem actually solved. Anger directed at this individual miscreant is IMO an almost irrelevant distraction that will not solve anything.

On the R-site there was a “Linux Questions” one. I guess it needs to be recreated here.

This question does not belong here.

PS: yes, you all disagree, but how many of you other than OP were actually interested in the answer to this ultra-niche support question which concerns a single utility that you probably don’t even use? There needs to be another community for these questions.

Small-time dictators, shorely.

Only in Japan.

Amazing, your trick worked!

Incorrect. A Nazi is a person who sincerely believes that there should be no individual freedom and that whole races should be exterminated. This, by contrast, was a standard-issue millennial ignoramus who said some silly things and then regretted it. There is a difference.

Great idea. Backed by some kind of Patreon for FOSS. Which might exist already, as I just learned here: Open Collective

A corporation will only pay users to watch ads if it is a way to get them to buy junk that they didn’t need or possibly even want. Otherwise the model breaks. Advertising is a scourge, to rely on it in any way does not feel “values-driven” to me.

PS: to be clear, maybe the ad model has merits on pragmatic grounds but, speaking personally, if I ever see an ad here, I am GONE and never coming back.

An almost exact question was asked here about 3 days ago, maybe begin there.

Almost any Windows machine with an Intel sticker on it will work so it really depends on your priorities:

• ethics - buy from a Linux specialist like Tuxedo to avoid paying Microsoft
• safety (no surprises) - buy whatever your big-box retailer is selling at your budget
• bang for buck - buy a Lenovo ThinkPad second-hand

Fair enough

A VPS costs 5 bucks a month.

To me at least, this contribution makes you seem like an even worse asshole than them. Just some anecdotal feedback.

How about doing it after a certain period has elapsed? A week, or 30 days, say.

This would approximate the freemium model where early access is paid and archives are free.

It might make it easier to get creators on board.

Apparently, but details are thin. SNCF is involved, which suggest there will be French-style TGVs made by Alsthom, which bought the Canadian train maker Bombardier a few years ago. So, 300kph instead of (AFAICT) the current 160 which also seems to be antiquated diesel. North America really is so backward.

Laptop yes. But no desktop environment, just a window manager, Sway.