I've had a few cats in my life and I've never once paid for one, Hell I've never even gone to a shelter to adopt one, they just show up. Naturally every time I take to the vet to get checked out and see if they're chipped. nope. just random kitties that decide "you seem nice and seem like you'll feed me"
The only time you might have issues with Ubuntu is when it comes time to update/upgrade it. I've seen people on Mastodon, every time an update rolls out, say that its broken something. But I think those cases are few and far between.
Mint is a good choice to get your feet wet. Install it with KDE Plasma so it will at least feel familiar to you. Cinnamon is fine but I always found it a little bit wonky. When I first started on linux I got kinda carried away with customizing Cinnamon and it totally just wrecked my install.
There's a lot of documentation and support for Mint/Ubuntu so you can pick up stuff pretty quickly. Once you get comfy with it you can always switch your distro to something else. But yeah there's nothing wrong with starting on Mint to get a feel for it.
I personally don't get it. He's successful. It wasn't handed to him like some nepo baby. He worked hard and did great jobs to achieve where he's at.
I honestly don't get it. You can have someone like Taylor Swift who releases an album every couple weeks and if you speak ill of her then you've essentially become Satan. So it's ok for one person to be constantly in the publics face but it's not ok for another person?
Bingo. If you routinely use LLM's/AI you've recently seen it first hand. ALL of them have become noticeably worse over the past few months. Even if simply using it as a basic tool, it's worse. Claude for all the praise it receives has also gotten worse. I've noticed it starting to forget context or constantly contradicting itself. even Claude Code.
The release of GPT5 is proof in the pudding that a wall has been hit and the bubble is bursting. There's nothing left to train on and all the LLM's have been consuming each others waste as a result. I've talked about it on here several times already due to my work but companies are also seeing this. They're scrambling to undo the fuck up of using AI to build their stuff, None of what they used it to build scales. None of it. And you go on Linkedin and see all the techbros desperately trying to hype the mounds of shit that remain.
I don't know what's next for AI but this current generation of it is dying. It didn't work.
The building that has my workspace has this great food court/library/work hybrid area where people who work remotely tend to go. a sort of third space. It has fantastic free wifi so it makes sense why people would use it and sit there all day working.
Everyday there's this older guy who sits there talking to his phone about some of the most random subjects ever. I originally thought he was just talking to a friend that seemed to have extensive knowledge on everything until one day I walked by him and glanced to see that he was talking to chatgpt. Everyday. Just random conversations. Even had a name for it, "Ryan".
Now? he's frustrated. He doesn't know what happened to Ryan and keeps screaming at his phone to "bring Ryan back!" or since GPT5 can't maintain a conversation anymore it's "You're not Ryan!". Granted the guy wasn't mentally all there to begin with but now it's spiraling. Got to the point yesterday he was yelling so loudly at his phone security had to tell him to leave.
ok I must be losing my mind then. I could have sworn it required something like this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31qtoUfewyL.jpg I remember as a kid going to a babages and picking up a copy and a guy was like "does your computer have a keyboard card? otherwise it wont' work" and then I swore it was also stated on the box....but christ now I might have just been dreaming it.
Remember when Star Wars Shadows of the Empire came out on PC and apparently, it's been awhile so maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but you needed a special card for your keyboard to play it?
I've been doing it for like 20+ years now so I have a very solid client base and very solid referrals. All my new clients now are referred to me by previous/existing clients so it gives me the luxury of booking well in advance.
you're VERY justified in feeling skeptical, I'm seeing it first hand, you're correct.
I'm a consultant/freelancer and I'm booked for the rest of the year and well into the new year with jobs that pretty much consist of me reviewing and cleaning up AI slop.
Most of my clients are startups and small companies that went full in on AI and vibe coding. Now they're discovering that their attempts to save a few bucks by leveraging AI, cutting devs, etc is costing them more that what they envisioned on saving. The stuff they've built with AI doesn't scale, is full of exploits, and breaks quickly. With the recent Tea App thing many of my clients are now in a panic because they essentially did the exact same thing. They don't want their startup to be next in the news because some rando came across their house with the front door left open by AI.
the tech debt is massive, It's costing many of these places more to fix their vibe coders/AI mistakes than what it would have originally cost if they just used a solid dev team. Make no mistake, I'm charging them a good amount also.
All if it could have been avoided though. They could have continued to use their LLM's if they had all just kept a leash on it. if they dismissed the concept of vibe coding. A good chunk of it could have been avoided if the person feeding the prompts simply REVIEWED the code before hitting enter. I'm not kidding, IF they just LOOKED at what was being spat out things would be different. none of them did. they just trusted the AI to be smarter because they were lead to believe it was.
If the recent Tea App crap is anything to go by doesn't even require a hacker for someone to gain access to your info. Just takes more companies using AI to build shit without security and someone will just happen to find their open to the public firebase bucket.
Bingo. they'll just tack it on to what they currently have with most sites that have you sign in with your google/apple/meta account. mask it as the easier option instead of using another email/registering an account on your own.
And they won't just stop on websites. Google will also incorporate this with your phone. FRP will now require you have a valid ID with Google, same with account recovery OR simply signing into a new device with your existing Google Account.
Hell wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft roles out that you must have a valid ID simply to install windows. Already requires users to have a Microsoft account and be online to install it, what's to stop them from now requiring you provide a photo ID?
the extension: https://codeberg.org/rozodru/LemmyBridge