okay so…tomorrow is just not important?

Again, reread what I wrote: I made no comment on the long term efficacy of tariffs. All I said was that when a presidential candidate says “we’ll make China pay”, it’s factually incorrect.

Are you really just completely ignorant of the purpose of tariffs?

Re-read what I wrote:

the immediate effect of new tarriffs is making Americans poorer.

Do tariffs work? Maybe. You also have to remember that China will retaliate and impose tariffs on US good, so overall the effects of tariffs are rarely a net benefit for anyone - which is why they’re rarely a good idea.

But the fact remains that the day after tariffs are applied, Americans lose access to cheaper goods. That’s just a dry fact.

Funny you should ask: I installed Debian 32-bit on an old Asus Eee PC netbook yesterday to breathe new life into that old machine and turn it into a controller for a piece of test equipment we have at work. My company keeps old stuff like that around until space is needed in case someone needs something.

Just in case I had to modify something in the tester’s control software, I figured I’d install i3wm and Vim. It didn’t take long and I was surprised by how usable the machine ended up being. Honestly I wouldn’t have minded using it as a bone fide laptop for light-duty work on the go.

So basically keep your expectations low and install super-lightweight software, and your old Aspire could live a few extra productive years instead of going to the landfill.

Honestly in my opinion it is time to remove all tariffs on EVs under 25k and let anyone who wants to fill that slot in.

One essential thing bears repeating: it’s not the manufacturer that bears the cost of tariffs, it’s the customers. Or said another way, if BYD cars double in price in the US, it’s American customers who will pay the difference.

A certain presidential candidate loves to beat that drum but consistently fails to mention that the immediate effect of new tariffs is making Americans poorer.

What if you don’t want a Pixel? Or a Fairphone? Or one of the very, VERY few cellphones that you can install a deGoogled OS on?

There are precious few ways of escaping the Google monopoly. I own a Fairphone running CalyxOS, and it happens to be the phone I want because of its excellent repairability. So lucky me. But if I didn’t want a Fairphone, nor any Samsung phone, nor any Chinese cellphone, and certainly not a fucking Google phone - because I’d rather cut off my left nut than give Google money to escape Google’s surveillance, that’s just too rich for me - then I’d be SOL.

My point is, if you refuse to be Google’s bitch, Google backs you into a corner. Just because you’re happy with the corner doesn’t mean you’re not stuck in a corner.

Google “might let me” do something…

If that doesn’t summarize everything that’s wrong with this fucking monopolist, that controls YOUR device that you paid with YOUR money but ultimately isn’t yours to do as you please, I don’t know what does.

The only thing that makes Google a bit tolerable in the mobile space is Apple, because Apple is even worse. At least you can (still) sideload stuff in Android - although Google is about to make that impossible very soon too.

Fuck the monopolists.

It’s a problem if you need a fucking banking app for example, and the bank won’t let you sideload it and you’re running a deGoogled OS. Then you suddenly need a backup phone with the full surveillance Android just to do banking.

I trust my kids to mostly only use the devices how I say. The security is mainly to keep their mum happy

It sounds like you should simply trust your kids and convince your better half that she should do the same.

If there’s one thing I learned both as a kid and as a father, it’s that restricting kids’ access to computers - or anything really - just doesn’t work: software solutions that exist for that purpose are almost always defeated by kids, who are reliably more clever than the adults who try to restrict them, and only exist to falsely reassure their parents.

If you’re serious about controlling your children’s cellphones, I’d suggest buying them Linux phones, or phones that you can install a mobile Linux distro on: nobody makes Linux apps, so good luck getting malware or shitty social media apps on them. And of course, you can keep the root password to yourself and set up your kids as non-privileged users.

Either that or feature phones - if you truly hate your children.

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I’m a kid of the cold war.

It’s behind a firewall. The only thing exposed to the outside is port 22 - and only pubkey login too.

And gee dude… It’s been running for 18 years without being pwned 🙂

The most painless way to dual-boot is to install something that’s not Windows alongside something else that’s not Windows.

Once you try swiping to type, you never want to go back. And OpenBoard has Greek letters of course. Honestly, give it a spin - regardless of your problem with Jerboa: I bet you’ll love it. Worst case, you’ll have wasted 10 minutes installing it, trying it out without success and uninstalling it 🙂

I use Jerboa with zero problems. My keyboard is OpenBoard with Gesture Typing (similar to Swype) and I have none of the issues you report.

practice the shortcuts

You know, I used to think like that when I first learned Unix shell commands and vi. I shlepped through the learning process because I had to when I was a student. Then after graduation, I joined a Unix company so I was dragged deeper into it screaming and kicking, and I kept picking up more and more commands and shortcuts until they etched themselves deep into my muscle memory. At some point, it all stopped being a chore and it became second nature.

And it went like that for many other software I’ve used. Decades later, I get the payoff: I’m a fast engineer and the friction between what I want to do and the final result is very low despite working 90% of the time with the keyboard.

It was a pain to get there and it took a mighty long time, I’ll be honest. but I reap the benefits now.

If I were you, I’d make the effort for that sort of thing. A couple of months tops: if you don’t like it, you’ll have wasted 2 months of your life. If you do, you’ll have gained skills that will pay for your efforts for the rest of your life many times over.

In my case, he’s only half right:

I don’t want any new car at all. They’re all mobile surveillance platforms, snooping on everything their drivers do and reporting to the mothership, who in turn “monetizes” their data and does god know what else with it.

Well fuck that - be the surveillance machine equipped with an ICE or an electric motor. Big Data-riddled modern cars is the reason why I ride the bus.

This one.

Well, Sway and Gnome. But I already know Gnome so Sway piqued my interest.

Do you think I’ll like i3?

No idea. I only have (a little) experience with i3.

Wnat I do know is that they’ll all require you to configure them, and it’s always a huge PITA to configure a OS or parts thereof, whichever it may be. But I figure even if I spend 2 days doing that, it’s a one-off job, and then I can reuse my favorite config forever. So it’s work worth doing.

you’re OK with so called bloat anyway

I don’t mind bloat if it’s worth it. Cinnamon / Gnome for instance is a bit of a pig (less than KDE / Qt for sure, but still) but I like it so… Okay. Conversely, I’ve yet to encounter any Electron app that offers anywhere near the amount of features that would justify the hundreds of megabytes and the amount of CPU Electron requires. Or Snap, Flatpak or Appimage packages for that matter. Those are wasteful for the benefit of the developer, not for yours.