It’s important though to not fall into the trap of creating false balance, i.e. giving the same weight to a false or harmful statement than to a truthful or good statement, in the name of “fairness” or “objectivity”. Also, conservatives tend to shift to the right currently.

• Cyberpunk 2077 (very good since 2.x and with Phantom Liberty expansion). Since I have similar hardware to you, you can play it with Raytracing enabled and have at least above 30 fps which should be enough for most playstyles except maybe fast melee-based combat. The game’s lighting effects look absolutely gorgeous with Raytracing.

• Witcher 3 (keep at it. It’s amazing. It can feel clunky at the beginning due to its weird combat mechanics but you get used to it. Also you can switch it up by integrating signs (magic) into your swordfighting. Which is what I recommend doing. I think it’s more varied). Also, the game gets better as you go. The base game is great, but the DLCs are even better, especially Blood & Wine has kind of a legendary status among all DLCs, you rarely get such value inside a DLC, except Phantom Liberty which has a similar scope and quality to it.

• Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably the best game of the last decade or so so highly recommended. It’s not open world, but it’s still huge and is at the same time very densely packed with stuff, so you need a lot of time when you want to explore and loot everything. The game feels huge that way. Especially compared to open world games, it’s like the opposite - open world games have a vast area but almost nothing in-between major points, which means the world can feel empty in a lot of open-world games. Baldur’s Gate 3 has something around every corner and never feels empty (unless you’ve cleared a whole area already).

• Red Dead Redemption 2 - a lot of people like it, so far it didn’t feel right to me (so slow) but I can still see how it’s a good game and if you like chilling with a game it might be just your thing

• Elden Ring is amazing but has very tough combat/action of course. Still, it really feels great as an open-world game. It completely throws the “Ubisoft formula” out of the window, which most open-world games follow, and that’s precisely why it’s so good. I’ve rarely had more feeling of true exploration and accomplishment within an open world game. Still, combat is very challenging, so if you prefer games to be on the easy side, then it’s not right for you. But if you don’t mind a challenge (a challenge you can also often delay for later when you’re stronger) then it’s a must-play. If you don’t know, as most or all games from From Software, these games don’t offer different difficulty settings so there is only one difficulty which is the same for every player (and it’s tough). These games are also very fair and reward accurate playing - it’s possible to not get hit at all by anything, for example, if you’re really good. So they never feel unfair and when you die (which you do a lot) you’ll always know why you died and have an idea how you could do it better. Besides the difficulty, what can also feel oppressive in those games is the fact that all enemies (except bosses) respawn whenever you rest. But Elden Ring kind of mitigates that because you can skip a lot of areas and come back when you’re better prepared (i.e. gained more levels/attributes or better gear). Then, past challenges can start feeling easy. And skipping weak enemies is kind of the normal thing.

• STALKER 2 (may still need a couple more patches but it’s playable and has a great overall atmosphere and visual design. They fixed the worst post-launch problems I think). Very strong in atmosphere and immersion.

As others have mentioned there are unfortunately issues in detail when using an inofficial version of VSCode and even more issues when using the original VSCode of course. I get that it’s currently the most popular code editor but it’s really not recommended to use it. It’s kind of painfully obvious that Microsoft is driving the development of VSCode, and MS is simply not your friend. Not even when it gives you a permissively-licensed open source tool. It’s still kind of poisoned albeit at a low dosage, making it hard to detect. The type of poison we’re talking here are opt-out (if you’re lucky) telemetry (of course!), features or extensions which are ONLY compatible with the OFFICIAL build of VSCode so you can’t 100% work around VSCode’s issues by “being smart” and using a better-preconfigured inofficial build, and as an Electron-based application it’s very bloated and prone to security issues. And, of course, Microsoft steers its development so it may at any point introduce additional anti-features (which is likely, since this is MS we’re talking about here) and also steer its users away from using inofficial builds which might in theory fix some of those anti-features. It smells, and it’s not a particularly smart long-term time investment option.

My recommendations are:

If you want another relatively easy option learn the Vim keybindings (not that hard) and then use Neovim or NVim or however it’s called officially. It can be made into a full-fledged IDE with tons of modern features including LSP and Treesitter quite quickly and painlessly. As a bonus you become familiar with Vim which is present on basically all Linux/Unix/*BSD based operating systems on the planet, so it’s useful to know its basics.

If you don’t mind the harder but more rewarding option, learn and configure Emacs (maybe start with Doom Emacs, it’s easier at the start and uses the Vim keybinds by default). Some other “starter kits” or “distributions” exist as well of course, e.g. Bedrock or Crafted Emacs. Emacs can do literally everything and more, it just needs a lot of time to tweak it, it uses a weird language, and the learning curve at the very start is basically a straight wall into the sky including an overhang. But once you’ve climbed that, it’s an amazing tool for life, going beyond just code editing. Emacs has been around ~40 years and is even growing stronger recently so it’s rock solid and highly dependable, a real tool for life. Also it’s community-maintained, GNU-backed FOSS without weird drawbacks. Since its default keybinds (as well as many other defaults) are ancient (terrible) you should either customize them in various possible ways or use evil-mode which allows you to use basically all of Vim’s keybinds inside Emacs as well.

Signal. Also see https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html

IMHO it’s worth getting into games because they are a mainstream form of entertainment these days (just like movies) and there are incredibly well made games and all sorts of genres, so that everyone can find something. It’s also a fun hobby, at least as long as you play either with friends, or singleplayer, or a multiplayer game with a non-toxic community. Stay away from popular e-sports titles, they’re usually filled with toxic teenagers.

If you like puzzle games, there are some great ones, for example Portal 1+2 or The Talos Principle 1+2 are probably the most polished ones out there, these are AAA games made by big studios, who don’t usually do puzzle games as they’re somewhat niche but there are some exceptions thankfully. Portal 2 is the highest ranked game of all time on Steam (I think it’s deserved).

There are also tons of great indie puzzle games out there, of course.

Somewhat related to puzzle games are “point and click” adventure games. That genre was very popular in the 80s and 90s, now it’s also rather niche, but still some great ones are being developed all the time. Adventure games are (also) about story-telling and solving many puzzles to advance in the game. You usually find lots of items in those and have to combine them in various ways and interact with the game world and its characters to solve puzzles and advance the story. That’s maybe the key difference between those and more focussed puzzle games where it’s more about the puzzles, less about item combinations and character dialogs. But adventures can also contain quite challenging puzzles none the less.

Genres are hard to distinguish these days because so many games are a blend of different genres. Anyway, you probably want to stay away from games tagged with “action” or “e-sports” and primarily look for “adventure”, “puzzle” or “casual” tags.

Just FYI I installed the apk from the github repo (not the google play version) via Obtainium a few days ago and it tried to make a connection to 2 cloudflare IPs during setup of my account. Without prior consent or any mention. So just be aware that there is still some form of telemetry or unwanted connections happening, even though they removed the telemetry flowing to Mozilla’s own telemetry endpoint. K-9 had zero of this, it just spoke with your mail servers and that was it. So be careful and block outgoing app connections by default. I did not analyze the data being sent, just that there were those 2 unwanted connectiins happening.

First one I bought with my own money for my first own PC was the 3dfx Voodoo 2 (~1997). It was the best 3D GPU (addon to an existing 2D GPU) at the time.

Well that’s retro but I used to only screw in the side that’s easier to reach because that already secures it while also allowing you to more easily unplug it again.

I get that it’s a nice daydream to think of open source projects as existing in some kind of independent, ethereal vacuum just because the code is out there and accessible from any place on Earth. But every software project is (mostly?) dependent on the jurisdiction in one country, in this case it’s the US, and so their laws about sanctions and so on apply. And yes, this means that unless conflicts/wars between nations happen to cease, that we will eventually have completely separated blocks of politics/culture/military and also IT. Globalization is over. China will have their own stuff, Russia will have their own stuff, and US+EU will have their own stuff. And none of those countries should continue using high-tech products made by the other because they could be sabotaged and it might be hard to find, so it’s best to not use them at all and just cook your own stuff. It’s unfortunate, but bound to happen in the current state of the political world.

• Pomodoro timers (hit a keybinding, a 25min timer will start. Within that time, do something productive. After that time, you can do a 5min “break”. Then probably start the next timer. You can also adjust the timings of course)
• Treat the thing you want to do instead of your task as the thing you can do as the reward after having done the task first (kind of a gamification mechanism maybe)
• Develop a habit of always doing something productive (from your backlog) each day, unless you’re sick or so
• If the task seems so big or hard that you don’t even start, split it in parts. You rarely have to do everything at once. Splitting it into parts also allows you to not over-exert yourself, so you’ll have more time for the things you’d rather want to do afterwards

Noroi - The Curse (2005, Japan) Supernatural first-person video documentary style POV, but with higher image quality than Blair Witch Project for example. No jump scares, just very creepy and unsettling. Slow burn, but good pacing IMHO. No weaknesses IMHO, hence on top of my list. Just a very unsettling and disturbing, almost real-feeling, horror movie.

Also good:

• A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, South Korea): less horror, more artistic, intelligent and original. Great story
• Shutter (2004, Thailand): my favorite jump-scare horror with cool effects
• Incantation (2022, Taiwan): great supernatural slow-burn horror with a cool twist
• Hereditary (2018, USA): great supernatural slow-burn horror, original as well
• Sinister (2012, USA/UK/CAN): great supernatural horror
• Event Horizon (1997, USA/UK/CAN): great sci-fi horror, very unsettling
• REC (2007, Spain): one of the best zombie style movies and also one of the most horror-like ones
• It Follows (2014, USA): kind of a stupid plot but it works. It’s original, well executed and unsettling (supernatural)
• Smile (2022, USA): an even more stupid plot, but also well executed. The ending is bad. But it still terrified me so it works at its core, and that’s all that horror films need to do (supernatural)
• As Above, So Below (2014, USA/France): the weakest one on this list but it’s very original as well, I like it because of that

Linux for gaming Linux for servers Linux for desktops/notebooks Linux at work Linux for mobile

Well, US politics are more important than those of most other countries, because they still are a huge world-wide influence. But once enough climate change related disasters happened, everything will change anyway (for the worse). If you’re young enough to experience the resulting chaos in a couple of decades, you should start preparing for that now (e.g. saving up, not buying houses near oceans, and so on), instead of worrying about more temporary and short-lived political decisions. Unless they directly and significantly affect your life in the short term already, of course. Humanity does and will not be able to fight the climate change based on past and current observations, so buckle up.

RethinkDNS is probably better, but I’m currently still using NetGuard Pro and kind of happy with it, but I will soon migrate to Rethink DNS. If you use NetGuard, make sure to use the Pro version, download its hosts file and use it in whitelist mode and display all contacted hosts/IPs for each app (block everything by default, allow only the technically necessary connections!). The more proprietary apps you use, the more tracking hosts you’ll see being contacted (lots of proprietary apps contact Google, Meta, etc.). Don’t allow these connections.

Flameshot is great, I use it every day at work and home. The integrated editing/annoation/drawing functions are superb.

Clickbaity titles on videos or news sites is the new standard. I watched it. The point he’s making is basically that music was harder to make/produce some 50 years ago, so there was more incentive to “make it worth the effort”, compared to today. And the 2nd point he makes is that music consumption is now so easy as well (listen to whatever you want instantly) compared to when you could only listen to something when you bought the physical album, that there’s also less incentive for the listener to really get involved into some albums.

Personally I think these are valid points on the surface but they are not “the answer” to this kind of multi-faceted question. They’re at best a factor but we don’t know how big these factors are. Also I think one big reason he thinks that way is because he grew up in that environment and so he has a bias for “owning physical copies of albums”.

I also think music hasn’t gotten worse, the market is just simply over-saturated because there’s just way too much music, you’ll never be able to listen to it all. And there are absolutely hidden gems or really good bands/artists forming even today, it’s just much harder to find them. Generally a problem of today’s age: it’s likely that what you’re looking for already exists, you just have to find it within a whole ocean of content.

If you’re looking for innovative or non-standard stuff, you can always look at smaller artists or the indie scene, same is true for movies, games, music. The big producers always have a tendency to stick to what works and what’s proven to be popular so everything becomes similar. But smaller artists do not have to care about such things, they are ready to risk much more and in doing so, you might just create a real gem or something that was never or almost never tried before.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary funding evidence.”

What she (and other climate activists) have done and do is spread awareness about this issue. As you can imagine, it’s important to keep important topics (arguably even the most important topic humanity faces, yes even more important than soccer (lol)) present in media and in people’s heads for them to not be forgotten soon after again. People need to be constantly reminded that our current way of life currently destroys our planet, especially considering that not much happened to steer against this problem within the last couple of years after the Paris agreement. And we don’t even know many of the tipping points that could accelerate disaster even further. When some ecosystems stop existing and food chains become disrupted, for example.

In a way, she’s like a PR person for the most important topic in science currently. And she (and other climate actrivists) is successful at it, considering it’s so often in the news and so many of the polluters hate her and try to discredit her and others.

Always remember though: it’s about the problem, not specific people. Of course we like talking about people, and the media does it as well, but as the saying goes, “small minds discuss people, great minds discuss ideas”. It’s about the problem at hand, irrelevant of Greta or other activists. She’s just trying to bring the point across to a mass audience, that’s all. We (as in: the whole humanity, no exceptions) need to take action against the problem, not talk about Greta. This “ad hominem” strategy is sometimes deliberately used as a distraction away from the issue at hand. When articles talk about Greta or try to discredit her or whatever, then the debate is shifted away from the actual problem at hand. Even articles about her in a positive light are, in the end, irrelevant. It’s not about her, or other climate activists. She even says that herself. If the activists didn’t exist, we’d still face the exact same problem.

I ask myself the same question all the time. So you supposedly have this super advanced space-travelling civilization, and they’re somehow interested in us, who aren’t even able to colonize another planet yet, and are destroying our only one planet in the meantime. We’re like monkeys in a zoo to them. Why should we be interesting for a much more advanced civilization? At best, they’d monitor our “progress” as a civilization from afar, and maybe make contact once we’ve become a Kardashev type 2 or 3 civilization. If or when that happens. Still a long way. We haven’t even ensured that our home planet is safe from us. Or maybe they want specific resources from Earth. But then we’d get much more visitors, who also wouldn’t be friendly I guess. So I think it’s highly unlikely, which means I also think this is being staged, intended to gain more funding.

Probably the “space theory” from the German BND (like the national NSA here). When they were confronted shortly after the Snowden revelations with why they’re illegally collecting network data in bulk on their own citizens (in addition to international ones) they basically said “Well, we collect the data from satellites in earth’s orbit, and because that’s not on German soil, that law doesn’t apply so it’s OK for us to do this”. I mean, of course they will do whatever they can to grab as much data as they can, and use whatever excuse or reasoning that allows them to continue to do so, and these kinds of institutions seem to exist in some extra-legal space anyway, so they don’t really have to fear a lot of repercussions unfortunately, but that excuse was REALLY wild. Also shows the absurd ways in which systems or laws designed to protect us from abuse are being successfully and routinely gamed.