How much time to learn

[Ricardo2020]

Speaking of tech, there are really only two kinds: Paywall and open source.

In the former, you have three major players and the antisocial bindings that enshittify them.

Apple. Great gear behind the times but amazing in looks. A walled garden for folks with more money than sense.

Google. What can I say. Android. Ads. Evil. Slurp ad nauseam. Yuck. Bad search. Bad browser. No privacy. No opt out.

Microsoft. A once great software company now enshittified with greed and cave in to everybody else for the win. See the two entities listed above.

And then there are the internet cesspools polluting everything on the web to scrape lives and fling ads. Surveillance capitalism hard at work doing nothing good all over. These dung heaps neede appropriate names. Warning. Bad words ahead...

Facebook = Fuckbork, Instagram = Instacrap, WhatsApp = What Crapped, X = Xhitter, Pinterest = Pinturd, Tick Tock = Black Hole, Most mainstream media = bullshit infested time spounge, etc..

So... How did all this get so fowled up everywhere? Simple. We are lazy, gullable, confused and easily distracted. Many of us have nothing better to do. Beats being bored, eh?

I was once a slave to the above garbage long ago. But then I leaned how to build and restore computers, use a flip or land or VOIP handset, and avoid all the crap listed above.

I run Linux Mint Cinnamon on my net boxxen. Most are Intel Xeon CPUs with Quadro GPUs, WD Black HDDs Samsung SSDs, and Kingston ECC RDIMMs with Elpida chips. Good old Windows 7 runs on my main music workstations which are older machines. My MIDI rigs still run Windows XP on yet even older kit. The newest gear does not always get the job done like the elders. And all my modern screens are large with chairs and desks having mice and boards that do not cause harm to the operators. Ergonomics is very important for long recording and mixing sessions.

I have three nice Apple iMACS from 2011 to 2016. One of the two 21inchers runs High Sierra so I can service old iPads. One runs Monterey so I can fix the newer ones. The big 27inch runs Linux Mint Cinnamon. It used to run High Sierra, but then I maxxed the RAM put a Xeon and a mobile Quadro in it... Man, that thing flies!

I avoid smart stuff. This includes phones, TVs, other household appliences wanting WIFI, etc.. These devices cannot be secured and will always pose an attack surface on the LAN/WAN. They are spyware and they are toxic. Nuff said.

So, my whole point in this long and ranting diatrebe is this: folks need to stop being complacent and start caring. They need to question more and be prepared to hear the truth, not lies. It gets harder every day, but if you get off the main stream amd away from all the trend whores, things get easier all the time. It does take some effort, but it is well worth it not only for the individual, but the entire human race.

Now. Let's all get back to making humans around here... It is much more fun!

[tomcat]

and be prepared to hear the truth, not lies.

It's a pain. Sometimes it is very painful.

[Ricardo2020]

I find that, the more I avoid the crapware, the less painful things are. I also find I have more time to do other things (like learning how to use Blender!) I find that my digital equipment runs better when secured and has all the useless marketing doggerel blocked.

I am not agianst selling a product, and having worked in commercial broadcasting during the early years of my engineering career, I understand time sale and such. I also understand the cost. Back then, adverts actually paid for the cost of broadcasting.

This is not true today. Advertisers do not make any money off their ads. The brokers who sell the ad space make the money. The advertisers trust them to put their ads in front of eyeballs belonging to those folks who might click through to learn more and maybe even buy their hawkings to offset the broker bill with their accounting department.

The click through rarely happens. The ads are mostly annoying, in the way, untruthful, and laden with harmful code since most are not vetted before placement. The brokers do not care, the ads are too many, and people all over are so gullible and not paying attention that it works out for the brokers.

They do not even care if bots are the only eyeballs, since anyone with any intellect blocks this crap for safety and time saving. It runs down batteries. It gets in the way. It takes up time. It serves no real purpose other than to concentrate wealth among the brokers, who usually are part of the antisocial cesspool. Again, fondle your "smart" slab much? Ding, ding!

When this forum was established, spam and scam had not taken off. The coders who built the template we are using here did not foresee what the damage would be let alone build in provisions which would guard against it. Today, things have changed. However, taking advantages of these changes will necessitate creating a new forum.

This sux balls because the entire community will be forced to move to the new home. Links to the old one will persist and newbies will become more confused as AI search bots continually burp up polluted answers, most of these being ads. Until folks wean themselves from the crapware infested gadgets and the places these godforsaken things take them to, do not look for an easy solution, even if one exists. Today, things do not look good. Tomorrow, they will surely become much worse. That's how stupid most folks really are.

And I am being optimistic...

Now, about getting those Blender plugins to work right... 0100111100010101000011111, etc... C:\>_ Oh, wait. Wrong machine! SUDO apt get