I don’t know how to fix it. How do I get my neighbors to come back to reality and to lean on love and compassion, rather than hate and retribution?

Trump will be remembered in the same category as the guy who greenlit the Holocaust?

I mean, Trump is a bad dude and a terrible president, but c’mon man, employ some perspective.

Harry Truman killed up to 246,000 people, mostly civilians. Trail of Tears claimed over 10,000 lives. All who choose war and violence are evil people.

Dude, Rocky is a great movie. And First Blood showed some range, too.

I love Demolition Man and Daylight for reasons other than range.

Right on. Thanks. I never expected to jump straight to vehicles, nor do I think one man is out there making the FOSS operating systems, so I guess I’m just wondering where I should start to be able to contribute to the effort in the near future.

My utv detects the seatbelt. If you don’t click in the seatbelt, it limits speed to like 10mph and limits the hp. Sometimes I’m tooling in the yard or getting it unstuck and I need full HP but also need to get in and out of the vehicle. Someone made a cute little bypass that took 5 minutes to install. Works like a charm. Now, when I’m driving on a road, I buckle up, but when I’m plowing the snowy driveway I don’t.

How do I learn to be a FOSS developer so I can start working on firmware/software replacements for vehicles?

Just a heads up: I have a 2026 GM. The infotainment doesn’t work right and the key fob often isn’t detected. Their solution is to blame my phone (even though it works with every other car and every other Bluetooth device; and a factory reset of my Pixel 9 only solved some of the infotainment problems and shouldn’t have had to happen at all anyway). My father-in-law also has a 2026 Chevy and there are infotainment problems for him. Different models.

Tldr: avoid the 2026 GM vehicles.

I disagree, but that’s just me apparently. It’s not that I particularly liked pennies, but I definitely don’t like companies rounding UP to the nearest nickel. And as for the pennies costing more to make than they’re worth – so what? Basically any government provided service or product costs taxpayer money. Also, change the penny to make it more cost effective?

Anyhow, what’s done is done, and we’re probably all poorer because of it. I’ve been poor – it sucks but life goes on.

Daly. Thrilla the Gorilla is a dunce.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk

So much unknown. Competition with other survivors with guns, knives, the ability to poison your well when you aren’t looking or burn your house down while you sleep…

Or, everyone rallies in the first few years and the few survivors that are around work together and share resources, at least long enough that everyone gets theirs.

Movies and video games are more entertaining when there’s over-the-top conflict, and I think that shapes our predictions. We have seen, however, that in times of crisis communities and people rally together for the greater good. Even strangers help strangers. That doesn’t usually last long, but it does happen. And I have no reason to believe that wouldn’t be true if a world-killing meteor struck the earth in China. On my side of the planet, I do believe there would be a honeymoon phase before mad Max times.

I’d be naive to assume that it would be without conflict for generations. I’m not saying that at all.

Even the happy cooperative commune is going to need centuries of relative peace in order to reboot the supply chain to the point of making new spark plugs compatible with the old engine blocks - or new engine blocks when the old ones are too worn to rebuild.

Yes. It would take a while to figure out how to reboot factories and supply chains (if that even is the goal after the extinction event – when there’s 10,000 left alive scattered throughout the world, why would we need factories and supply chains?). But also, there are more than enough spark plugs and engine blocks packed in oil at tractor supplies and John Deere service departments to make it happen for generations. Traveling may or may not be dangerous – neither you nor I know.

My other claim is that we’d learn to use horses/cows to pull the tractor implements before the tractors are kaput for good. I stand by that claim.

The biggest danger would be illness and injury.

Huh? I don’t expect people to do that at all. Are you saying “you” like the royal/editorial you?,

I agree with you. Just like I said above, stupid old people and lazy people can’t be expected to use Linux because sometimes it requires using terminal.

Well, if the pandemic is any indicator, they’ll all be busy raiding toilet paper from Costco while I’m raiding Harbor Freight.

In all seriousness, I don’t think this scenario will come to pass in my lifetime, but I do believe in “an ounce of prevention…”

A generation is a lot of time to guess/check farming without power equipment. Not to mention the libraries likely with several books that outline that stuff. I have two books in my house right now that claim to be guides for similar stuff. Prepping is big business. And there are tons of john Deere’s and John Deere dealerships with service departments everywhere. I imagine you could keep it alive a long time. More than a generation, yes. 100 years? Probably not.

I’m glad you said this. I think it’s important to be honest about the Linux experience. It is not perfect. My Boomer parents could not use it. It often is plug and play, and often you don’t have to do anything with Terminal. But, there are times when it’s not plug and play and there are many times when you have to use Terminal to make something happen.

For example, Lubuntu updater keeps telling me there’s a new version of Lubuntu, but does nothing when I click upgrade. OK. I think it’s because there is a beta upgrade available that the updater sees but won’t upgrade to.

I’ve been using Linux since about 2003, off and on. It’s much better than it was. For me, it’s better than windows. For my 70-year-old mother, she should stick with the windows environment.

Windows 11 kept putting up “helpful hints” and kept asking me to set up a OneDrive, and would randomly reboot itself when not in use (which is a pain in the ass for a server system), so after about 6 months of enduring, I nuked it and put Lubuntu on it. Now it works almost perfectly.

My gaming pc is still windows 11, and I’m afraid to put Linux on it because I bricked my previous laptop doing that, and my gaming pc was expensive and is nice. Someday I’ll get really fed up with having to specify “no, windows – I don’t want to save this to your cloud. I want to save it to my hard drive” but for now, I’m dealing with it.

Depends on the extinction event. There are plenty of scenarios (well not plenty, but enough) where most people die and supply chains are wiped out, but there are still libraries and warehouses full of shit (home depots, Amazon warehouses, and so on). Pharmacies would be good for raiding, too. Also farmer bob and his family died, but all of his shit is still there on his farm ready to be taken.

And you can get generators with three fuel sources, not to mention that solar panels are readily available and generally easy to put together for a janky half-assed set up, so anything that needs electricity can still be used. (Did somebody say power tools? Did somebody say well pump? Did somebody say small flow treatment system? Did somebody say refrigeration?)

And preppers (not all, but likely many) do amass survival books, encyclopedias and “medicine for dummies” books, and any of them that are serious are practicing Bushcraft enough to have a working knowledge of that.

I’m guessing the bunker is actually there to ride out the people killing other people to take their resources phase. Maybe a nuclear bomb?

Myself, I’m a half-assed homesteader, which is like being a prepper without all of the white supremacy stuff that goes with it. If there were an extinction event, and I somehow lived through it, I think I would last a couple more months than your average joe, but I doubt I would live into old age.

I have no reason to believe that the google authenticator app on my google phone doesn’t register and record that it’s being used to log into XYZ website, and further that XYZ website is not then sending back unique identifying info to Google about me when ive used the code to log in.

I’ve lived with tech long enough to know that if they say “we absolutely don’t,” it really means they probably do.

Like when they swore up and down and gaslit us that our phones aren’t listening to us to generate ads.

How many lies can I believe before I begin assuming everything is just another lie from a liar?

Guess im paranoid.

But that whole thing ignores that it’s an annoying second step with another device. Like “you want to log in? Thread a needle with the string in your pocket first…”

Correct. It solved a problem that didnt exist for me.

I dont care for 2fa. Not interested in having my phone connected to my computer, and i dont like having an extra step when logging into stuff – especially an extra step that needs me to use a second device. Id honestly rather risk getting hacked over ever having to use 2fa again.