Fighting with Windows 11 introduced me to Linux Mint, which works perfectly! I’m not an OS geek, so I really don’t care about the OS – it’s just the thing I deal with on the way to Firefox.

My 76 y/o spouse loves Linux Mint. The 2017-bought desktop was deemed insufficient for Windows 11 and now runs Mint.

This appeared this week on our home Windows 10 machine as well for the one account that does not use a Microsoft account. It’s a new behavior.

This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all.

I am in a support group with over 100 senior citizens in it. Getting a file with a *.rtf extension used to be a thing, but it hasn’t been a thing in years. I do get *.doc and *.docx files so they’re probably getting lured into Office like you said even before Wordpad is removed.

ET-2800 does have a USB connection and linux drivers

I have the ET-2720 which I like but appears to have been discontinued.

I’ve had one for a year. I print a lot, in color, and I’m impressed.

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This video has 7.6M views and was posted 2 years ago

This really has very little to do with consumers and everything to do with a tug of war between processors, banks and businesses.

Sounds right. It’s not like there is some lobby of consumers out there writing legislation like this. And the last ones to ever write legislation are legislators.

A lot of the comments so far are trying to stay with the negative connotation to exploitation. You exploit your comfortable shoes to walk further each day. You exploit the microwave oven’s ability to more quickly warm your coffee than the stove.

This is the same with discrimination. You choose the raspberry danish over the cheese danish. This is you practicing discrimination, and it’s fine.

Any evil in it comes from abuse or impact to yourself with respect to others, that second definition of exploitation in the OP.

In 2023? 😞

trains and busses that actually work and get people where they need to go with minimal hassle and a reasonable cost

Trains predate cars and busses have always been with us since the car. People have voted – with their cars.

The Interstate Highway System started in the 1950s. Population has more than doubled since then. Of course, we have more traffic, we have more people!

Yes. When somebody else has a better take and I want it to be the top comment, I will downvote mine.

cook and sous chef

Mad respect from me. I can’t think of a more difficult job, you have to keep up, you have to juggle orders were some things are easy and some things are hard, you have to deal with the temperature and the standing and the moving. This is a tough, tough job!

A new study by human resources and payroll services platform Gusto Inc. shows smaller companies that have embraced remote work cite higher performance, better employee retention and strong corporate culture built on a foundation of flexibility. As small companies compete with deep-pocketed giants for talent, those gains could provide an edge.

“SMBs are increasingly looking to extend the flexibility that their workforce enjoys,” said Gusto Economist Liz Wilke. “Not only to attract them, but to keep them less stressed, more able to manage their lives, and to build a culture and a team that works for them.”

Companies that started in the past three years are 31% remote and 46% hybrid for their workforces, far higher percentages than more-established companies. Only 22% of younger companies are fully in the office, according to Gusto. Overall, companies that were 100% on-site before the pandemic are split between hybrid work and being fully in the office, with 8% fully remote.

from: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/news/2023/06/13/remote-work-small-business-success-tips.html (paywalled, unfortunately)

Nobody is forcing anybody – freedom is in the freedom to abstain, and all of us can abstain from working for an employer that demands RTO. There are plenty of remote jobs remote roles are possible, and the smaller the company, the better the job because you (as the individual among fewer) are valued. Big companies don’t care and don’t have to care.

It’s probably another fact missing from this article, but while larger companies are doing RTO, smaller companies are not. Larger companies are making a mistake here, most likely. They’ve got problems and are blaming remote work rather than innovating. Smaller companies are nimble.

This is terrible reporting, emotional, practically yellow. Two academics are quoted. The article and headline tell you how you should feel about this. This should have never gotten past the editor’s desk.

Barbershop quartet singing (ala The Barbershop Harmony Society). Instant friends and such satisfaction to hear yourself lending a note into four-part chords. (It’s the basis of my username.)

I (age 60) remember buying my condo in 1991 or so, interest rates about 7% with a VA-guaranteed loan. My parent’s first mortgage was 2% or 3% but my mom, a Realtor, said those days were permanently gone. (They weren’t. I had that in the house I bought in 2010.) But it felt forever at the time, and she thought it would be forever.

Nothing is forever. It may crash, but something else we can’t imagine might happen too. I think we all agree the present situation is unsustainable.