Before, the machine was a stale piece of work, running an operating system from 2011 (Snow Leopard) and a browser from mid 2016 (Chrome 49) – the OS being the final version Apple supports for the hardware, the browser being the final version Google supports for the OS. (Yes, there were alternative browsers but the situation was not much different with these, either.)

Now she got an up-to-date combo of operating system and browser which will remain current with future updates and probably even will survive until the hardware (or at least a single essential part of it) simply refuses to function at all one fine day.

Not so surprisingly, a lot of the elementary OS configuration is pretty painful to conduct for yours truly, especially when trying to provide a frictionless transition from one OS flavour to another one.

It’s still Linux with all its challenges. However, this distro is already much better than the one I was trying out two or three years ago.

And: it being still Linux also means there is plenty of support out there in the forums and blogs of lovely people who got stuck with similar issues and many times were even able to solve those. They don’t hesitate to publish what they found out so the pain gets diminished and another little configuration step gets done.

All this is priceless, that’s why I decided to give some money in return to this shining project.

Of course, this is not an altruistic act I am performing here. In fact, I am bracing myself for switching from Apple hardware to something else – still plenty of time to decide. But the OS is going to be Linux, there is hardly any doubt. So I am happy to evaluate this distro as a potential candidate for myself. So far it is looking very good.

Relevant: Linux or Death (aka How to install Linux on a Mac).

Wednesday, 1. November 12017

Just discovered Helma and Antville are mentioned in this book: “Wege in die moderne Welt: Globalisierung von Staatlichkeit als Kommunikationsgeschichte” by Gunnar Folke Schuppert, Campus Verlag, 2015.

(For the record: since September 2013 it is in fact possible to create new weblogs at Antville.org again; memberships have never been restricted, anyway.)

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‘I Forgot My PIN’: Veteran tech journalist Mark Frauenfelder tries everything, including hypnosis, to recover a small fortune from a locked bitcoin device.

Online schooling: Who is harmed and who is helped?

Online students did substantially worse than students in the same face-to-face course: They earned lower grades, were less likely to succeed in subsequent courses, and more likely to drop out.

How Flu Shot Manufacturing Forces Influenza to Mutate.

Hippies, Hacker und „Illegale“: Wie die Krise des Staates die Grenzen des Politischen verschiebt.

Ich würde nicht sagen, dass die Verbindung aus Computern, alternativen Kulturen und der Kritik an Polizei und Herrschaftsstrukturen keinen Boden für eine progressive Auffassung von der Staatsbürgerschaft bereitet. Ich sehe im Gegenteil die Möglichkeiten dieses Feldes und hoffe, dass diese Möglichkeiten weiter genutzt werden. Ich möchte jedoch eindringlich darauf hinweisen, dass solche Ideale von mächtigen Akteuren gekapert werden können und dass solche Ideale oft radikal erscheinen, ohne es in Wirklichkeit zu sein.

Hear, hear!

We’ve Not Thought Through the Legal and Ethical Disruption of Augmented Reality.

Let’s not repeat the mistakes we made with social media.

The real consequences of Patreon's adult content crackdown.

(Totally missed that those hipster Nazis were funding their evil existence via Patreon…)

Relevant: Die Banalität der Verbrechen gegen Migranten.