Ignore the noise and go with Ubuntu LTS. When you get comfortable with that, you could try Debian.

You could play it backwards too. Try Debian, if you can’t get it to do what you want, wipe and do Ubuntu LTS. But I do not recommend this path if you have no idea what you’re doing. People underestimate how difficult it is to do simple things when you don’t know how to, no matter how trivial.

That’s an odd request. I’m not a huge fan of video content but there’s legitimately good content in video format.

Not necessarily. For all of these cases, Debian, Ubuntu, Pro, the community and Canonical are package maintainers. Implementing patches means means one of: grabbing a patch from upstream and applying it to a package (least work, no upstream contribution); deriving a patch for the package from the latest upstream source (more work, no upstream contribution); creating a fix that doesn’t exist upstream and applying it to the package (most work, possible upstream contribution). I don’t know what their internal process is for this last case but I imagine they publish fixes. I’ve definitely seen Canonical upstreaming bug fixes in GNOME, because that’s where I have been paying attention to at some point in time. If you consider submitting such patches upstream as actively involved in project development, then they are actively involved. I probably wouldn’t consider that active involvement just like I don’t consider myself actively involved when I submit a bug fix to some project.

I hope OpenAI is going to serve as a radicalizing example to all the engineers, who fell for the “ethical guy/company” rhetoric, that the minority-controlled corporate structures they’re used to cannot withstand the push for profit. I hope this will make more of them choose majority-controlled structures for their startups and demand unions in existing corpos.

Exactly. In Debian, the community implements security patches. In Ubuntu, Canonical implements security patches for a part of the repo (main), the community implements them for the remainder (universe). This has been the standard since Ubuntu’s inception. With Ubuntu Pro, Canonical implements security patches for the whole repo (main and universe).

10 years security updates, plus security patches for community packages (instead of waiting on community patches). It’s basically the corporate support plan provided for free for up to 5 machines per account.

💥 Free for up to 5 machines 💣

I activate Ubuntu Pro

Ubuntu

Exactly. The moment you hit Enter, the computer becomes part of a botnet on every login.

Deploy a user-level payload that is auto started on login. The computer is now part of the botnet and can already be used for useful ops. Deploy a privilege escalation payload later if needed.

Fine. I’m gonna go give them more money.

I mean I give my money to Valve as is tradition, but is there some new reason to give from today?

What

Not ads, actual Amazon search results. The good old times when Big Tech wasn’t so radicalizingly big.

Oh I’m not questioning their motivation. I’m wondering if it’s a good deal for prospective buyers, given the price, compared to known good tools.

The Weller WESD51 sets the temp at the tip and mine has done that since I bought it in 2016. A look at a datasheet dates it back to 2006 but it could be older. By definition that means it has to know what the tip temp is. As it heats up the digital display tracks the temp going up.

Why this instead of an industry-standard station like an entry level Weller? The Wellers got replacement parts, especially tips which are consumables. I have the pervious 50W model and it has worked well in any job that can be done with that power level.

In my experience with soldering, the quality of the tip is the most important part. Then the quality of the solder and flux. Then having a set of soldering tools like wick, pump, stripper, and most of all - a third hand. Then temp adjustability. I had a digital solder station before I had those tools and I did almost as shitty solder jobs as I did with the basic Weller soldering iron I had before it. Once I got the ability to keep the parts stable so I can hold the solder in one hand and the iron in the other, introduce the solder at the joint and melt it in-place with the iron, like the manuals say, the quality went way up. I could even do some functional SMD work using my phone’s macro cam as a microscope.

They must be proxying the traffic off of a cached copy. I doubt they’d be sending traffic straight to IA.

Purely on the product side, if I decide to buy it, I wouldn’t buy it for myself. I’d buy it for friends and family who are not that tech literate. Either to make my life easier to give them self-hosted services, or ideally for themselves to be able to do so. I want this product to be a non-shitty, open source “Synology,” from a firm I can trist to support it for a very long time. Doesn’t have to have that form factor. And I’m totally fine with an ongoing subscription. I’d like to be able to say - hey friend, buy this from ACME Co-op and sign up for their support plan. Follow the wizard and you’ll have Immich, Nextcloud, etc. A support plan might include external cloud HTTP proxy with authentication and SSL that makes access trivial. Similar to how Home Assistant’s subscription (Nabu Casa) works. It could also include a cloud backup. Perhaps at a different subscription rate.