I'm using Qubes OS as my primary for years - I think I started with the 2.0 release in 2014 (I might have tried/used the 1.0 release, I don't recall.) and I was immediately hooked.

I understand the usual story is that the goal is security benefits, and the compartmentalization (or rather the implied inconvenience) is the price for that. But for me the compartmentalization turned out to be a benefit on it's own, and actually convenient.

I find it extremely convenient to have multiple isolated / virtual workspaces for different stuff, even if you assume attackers / malice do not exist. Having separate VMs is not the same as having separate folders. I also love the VM templates, which allow me to do all kinds of experiments (e.g. install packages in the app VM, which disappear after restart). Or run VMs with a mix of distros/versions/... Yes, I could do some of that with plain VMs, but Qubes integrates that in a way that I find very convenient. The commands for copying stuff between VMs are muscle memory at this point.

Yes, there are limitations, like the lack of GPU acceleration. But movies in 1080p play just fine without it, and I'm not a gamer, so I don't mind much. I can't play with CUDA etc. on these QubesOS machines, and scrolling web pages with large images is laggy, but I find this to be an acceptable price.

I went through multiple laptops / workstations over the years, and the situation improved a lot I think. Initially I had to solve quite a few issues with installer, some hardware not working (or requiring setting something special), or poor battery life on the laptops. But after a while that mostly either went away, especially once I switched to laptops with official Linux support (Dell Precision were good, I'm on Thinkpad P1 G7 now). The battery life is pretty decent too (especially once I disabled HT in BIOS).

Is it perfect for everyone? No, certainly not. But it sure is great for me, and I hope they keep working on it.

Is there any serious website that reviews (rank list) these VPNs? I say this because it is always difficult to find information that is not sponsored on the internet. In fact, I've always heard that Mullvad is one of the best, even supporting P2P

>And the few that were there were watching some Korean drama on YouTube, etc.

Ugh, plus 1 to that. As much as people love hating "the new orange guy", there's a lesson behind the fact that he got rid of 80% of staff in a big company in an afternoon and pretty much nothing adverse happened.

If, instead of scrolling HN, you talked to me, both our lives would improve.

Human contact, even with strangers, has a profound impact on health, mental state and quality of life. This has been researched and proven over and over. We are simply wired to function in social groups. Our current state of individualism is rather exceptional, and a cause for many issues with (mental) health.

So, yes, you scrolling HN has an effect on my health, because the reverse is unfortunately true too: loneliness (and isolation etc) have a negative effect on humans

Eton?

As written by somebody who was quite clearly never forced to use one at the pointy end of a cane.

I hate fountain pens with a burning, unbridled passion - from 6 to 17, they were the only acceptable writing implement at school, and I just remember endless blotting, leaks, ruined shirts, thefts, bent nibs (it was considered sport to grab someone’s pen and bang it hard into a desktop), and of course there was always some idiot blowing through theirs in the back of class, drizzling everyone with ink.

The moment I was finished it went in the bin, and ever since I’ve used disposable biros.

Fountain pens are an anachronism, kept about seemingly solely to torture children.

Yes and no.

A benefit of those same restrictions means TSMC is building foundries in the US for a change.

GaAs sensors are awesome. Combine those chips with ML optimized compute on a silicon interposer and drone warfare gets a hockey stick in adoption.

As civilians we get functional self driving cars via trickle down.

Unlike sending engines for cryptographic cyphers across nation state lines, night vision is absolutely one of those things ITAR cares about. And the number of loops holes and exemptions Audi had to apply for made the project financially unprofitable to the point of moving to always on high beam DLP style headlights.

Retrofitting one system in my car which had the option code was a yak shave.

Most automotive systems get by this by limiting night vision to 8fps(!). Similar to how GPS was limited to 100m accuracy in the first civilian models.

What blows my mind is one can get Chinese models off Taobao with 60fps for 1/10th the price of US products like FLIR.

>But phone is not the best one.

Phones are the best one.

Why?

Because (almost) everyone has one within reach.

Security enthusiasts and believers constantly fail to understand why straight passwords and to a lesser extent phone 2FA never go away: All their proposed alternatives and solutions are inconvenient.

Most people couldn't give a rotten rat's undead arse about security, but they will kill for convenience. Passwords and phone 2FA win and keep winning because they are convenient with good enough security.