I know. And many of the comments are coming from the US, so I’m trying to help American readers see what US law would dictate in a similar situation, because they might have instincts that are inconsistent with US law.

In the US, the 4th Amendment says that’s unconstitutional. Fortunately. Too many dirty pigs out there.

In the US, the cops need RAS to handcuff you. The standard was never and is not “until they know what’s going on”. And RAS depends on the current cop knowledge. Even if they had legal grounds to break into your place, what they see in the next ten seconds is still relevant. For example, if someone said you attacked them with a knife, when the cops see no victim, knife, or blood, their legal authority ceases.

Of course it’s all highly dependent on specific details.

(On traffic stops, often they already have RAS. That’s why they pulled you over. So don’t be fooled by other comments about that topic.)

In the US, property records are public records. Easy to find someone’s address online if you know their full name and the county they own property in.

Go try it!

The legal standard in the U.S. is if there’s exigent circumstances. Detailed 911 calls are typically sufficient to meet that standard. Not always.

Right now, we cannot tell if the officers did anything unlawful. Need the call recording or call logs, plus the body cameras.

(I think the exigent circumstances standard is BS, easily abused, but that is the current law of the land.)

My company will let me purchase software, but it won’t let me donate to FOSS. Budgeting says it’s “unnecessary”. So screwed up. (A tiny amount money on my end, but still, it would be nice to help out a little.)

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.

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.

The garbage is taking itself out

CS often requires working in teams, and working it teams is often more efficient if you have some shared approaches.

You didn’t tell us what you think the usual 9 to 5 pays. Are you asking whether a tech job pays more than minimum wage? Many of them do. Also, when you’re interviewing, and even when you’re writing a cover letter, try to avoid the term power user, and instead provide details of things that you’ve actually done. Anyone can call themselves a power user, but what does that even mean? If you say you’re a power user, if you’re lucky the interviewer will ask you for details, and if you’re unlucky they won’t, because they’ll assume you’re just grandstanding. So you’re better off providing a little extra information up front, and not gambling on them asking for it.

Windows 98. In the meantime I’ve also used BSD, though not in a few decades.

I think we should be careful. It’s certainly true that greedy powerful people in the world today are getting increasingly aggressive about seizing more money and power, and that’s terrible, and we need to do whatever we reasonably can to stop it.

I don’t recall seeing any data that suggests the average level of greed among the general population has grown, or that the average desire to work among the general population has gone down.

The reason this distinction matters is because when someone makes the claim that too many people are greedy these days, it sounds like a problem with the general population, when what we’re actually seeing is a problem with the ultra-rich.

Most people have always been OK with working reasonable jobs for good pay, though. Work is not the problem. Unchecked greed is.

Flatpak is one extra step. If apt or rpm already has what you want, which is true for many new users, why would we push them towards scary click thru action?

Isn’t this why we’d expect new users to use a built-in package manager? Because it avoids this exact problem?

Pushing someone new to Linux to use Flatpak? Shame on you.

Depends when and where. Avoid summer or winter vacation. If you’re doing Kyoto, visit temples very early in the day to avoid crowds. Or perhaps find slightly less famous places.

Sure, and if there were discussions of reducing all tourists, that would be great. But it’s just racism. Meh.