Good question - does the browser plug in sync to the internet or is any part of it internet accessible? I’ve not used it. I just know a lot of people are put off by the idea of their passwords being “in the cloud” or otherwise accessible through the internet. Looking at the add-on for Firefox, it looks like it communicates with the local keepassxc instance, which should be fine for many people.

Thanks. I was not aware of this option.

krename is another excellent, but not as well known as it should be, KDE app.

krename can rename files and directories, and directories recursively, to almost anything. You can rename:

• using information from the files or about the files (image info, date / time info, etc)
• with templates (like #### for incrementing 0001, 0002, 0003, etc)
• by adding parts of the original file name (first three characters then the last 4 characters, for example)
• using find and replace (spaces to underscore, remove special characters, etc), including regular expressions
• by changing case

or with a mix of everything.

krename has a simple mode and an advanced mode for renaming, so you don’t have to jump into the deep end with the features.

You do have to be careful with some of the file info functions - it will happily try to rename a movie or a pdf with (non-existent) image EXIF info, for example. That would result in a file with a name you did not intend.

krusader is a dual-paned file manager for KDE. It runs on Linux (of course), MS Windows, and Mac OSX.

Folder sync is what makes krusader outstanding, even if you don’t care about dual-pane file management. Open the two folders you want to sync in the panes and go to Tools > Synchronize Folders. You can synchronize both ways, exclude files, delete lone files, etc. Very powerful.

Being a KDE app, krusader does not skimp on features, so there are lots of other things that krusader can do.

link: https://krusader.org/

Around 4 or 5 years ago, the Audacity project was acquired by a company that has several other open source music / audio related programs. The first few months did not go well because the company did several things with Audacity that the community didn’t like (like the telemetry that others have mentioned). It seemed like the company was trying to take an uber-popular open source project and convert it into something not in keeping with community expectations. Some forks of Audacity were started.

As others have said, the controversy seems to have died down. Gentoo at least, and probably many other Linux distros, have Audacity and not the forks in their repositories.

A little trick for people who are worried about putting business / work passwords in web-hosted managers such as Bitwarden: put just the username in Bitwarden, and put all the full information into KeepassXC.

Bitwarden will recognize the site and fill in the username - meaning you are at the correct site and are not being phished. Then, you can fill in the password from KeepassXC. This gives the benefits of browser-based managers while keeping more sensitive passwords (and recovery info) local-only.

Just to be clear, there is no official app for Android (and, I assume iPhone). If you are using SyncThing on desktop or laptop computers, there are downloads at the official syncthing.net site. On Linux, it should be available from your distribution.

Not as bad as the log in button taking you to the sign up page, but my local library’s site has a “log in” button that, when you click it, brings up “log in” and “sign up” options on a CSS drop down (though I’m sure they use javascript, just because why do it the easy, safe way). You literally have to click “log in” twice to get to the log in page.

Yes, this, but I don’t think just for organization’s login pages. The email may also lead to a google sign in (for example) or some other single sign on (SSO). The site you are on needs to know the email to decide what to show next to continue the log in process.

That said, web devs should be coding the fields correctly.

I’m really curious what things people can’t get running or didn’t have good enough alternatives for in Linux? Obviously, if you are a professional in X field and you need a specific program that will not work on Linux for your job, then Linux is not for you at that job. You didn’t choose MS Win or MacOSX, the company that makes the software that you need to do your job made that choice for you.

If you are not a professional, and you pirate Adobe XYZ (or whatever), and feel like you must have it on Linux, and that GIMP or Krita (or whatever) are not good enough, I don’t know what to tell you. Ask yourself, if MS and Adobe found a way to require you to pay full price for that software, or you could not use it at all, would you pay? Or would GIMP or Krita (or whatever) suddenly be good enough? Is having that software (when you are not a professional) really a good reason to stay on an operating system with so many other drawbacks?

In my experience:

• MS Windows Explorer is crap. I ended up buying Directory Opus to get a decent file manager. Too many good ones to mention in Linux (though I admit, most are not as powerful as DO; maybe Dired in emacs comes closest?). (DO is awesome - if you are stuck on MS Windows, I highly recommend it.)

• KWallet (and similar security apps such as KeePassXC), the various clipboard apps, the various text editors, the media players, etc. are excellent in Linux and don’t have alternatives in MS Windows that are as good or as easy to install. Actually, I guess it comes down to the repositories having everything, and much of it being installed by default. (Of course, if you are just streaming stuff through your browser, media players matter much less.)

• The choice of window managers and desktop environments is a killer feature for Linux. MS Windows barely even has virtual desktops.

• I am not a graphics professional, so for me, GIMP and Krita are fine. And Inkscape. And Scribus. (And, for many people who are not me, LibreOffice Draw.)

• I do do a lot of writing. LaTeX (several types) and all supporting software is super helpful, but must be found and installed separately in MS Windows. Will pandoc run natively in MS Windows - you have to install python first, right? It is python, right? I’m not sure, because I didn’t need to worry about it when I installed it on Linux, from the repository. On MS Windows, you’ll probably have to worry about it.

Sure, as mentioned above, you can install many of those on MS Windows. Are they in the MS Windows store? Do you have to update them all individually each time there is an update? I don’t - they get updated when I update my system, along with the rest of my system.

One little observation sort of sums up the Linux / MS Windows debate for me: in LibreOffice, no matter which program I am using, I can open or create a new office file of any sort. Last time I used MS Office, you couldn’t create or open an MS Word file while in MS PowerPoint, nor the opposite. Instead, you had to open MS Word separately. MS Office is a ‘suite’ in name only. LibreOffice is a suite, designed to go together. Linux distros sort of feel like that too. MS Windows (last I used it), not so much.

(Obviously, I have feelings about this. Been using Linux since 1998, so yeah, feelings.)

edit: spelling error / typo

Oops. Thanks. I had seen a shortened version of the video already, thought this was the same version, but it isn’t. The one I saw was just the Tesla plowing through the wall.

this. watching the video, I had some trouble telling the difference. sure, from some angles it is obvious, but from others it is not.

That said, other cars, with more types of sensors, would probably have “seen” the obstruction on the road.

I left Japan in 2008. Phones had had cameras long enough that the makers had to add the can’t-turn-it-off shutter sound because so many chikan were taking upskirt photos on public transport.

Less salaciously, there was also panic about people taking pictures of magazine articles in bookstores and then not buying the magazine. Not sure anyone really would have tried to read an article on those tiny screens, though.

My understanding is that lower fertility follows higher female education for several reasons, including that women in school - and with access to birth control - prefer to wait until finishing school and starting a career before having children. Countries where women have fewer educational and fewer career opportunities, people often start having babies sooner, and more babies overall.

Another oft-mentioned factor is social safety nets such as social security (as much as that can count as a safety net). Areas with no or weak elder support outside of the family tend to have bigger families. Shockingly, this was also the case in the “developed” world back before they developed. Ask older adults in the USA how many brothers and sisters their grandparents had and it is probably a lot more than the next generation had, and the next, etc.

Do colonized people have lower life expectancy or do their children? Or both? Certainly, exploited people may also be living in (and unable to escape from) a society with poor elder care and insufficient safety nets such as social security or other retirement options. Which, of course, makes having lots of kids a totally rational decision. And also limits the ability of many women to participate in the economy outside of the home, which can also slow the development of the country / area’s economy.

Lived in Japan for many years, came back to the USA for many of the reasons you touch on. I knew a few foreigners who had non-English-teacher type jobs, but mostly, it was English teacher or English juku owner. The systemic issues, for young Japanese and for foreigners, in Japan really need to be dealt with if they have any hope of slowing their population decline. So, not going to happen.

Japan is never going to have enough immigration to significantly impact the population decline. Even back in the early 2000s, it would have taken millions of immigrants a year. Now, forget about it.

Living in inaka is not bad but not great either, for most people. So, tiny apartments in or near big cities or large houses in the middle of nowhere are pretty much the choices. Jobs in inaka? Fisherman, elderly care, sakaya, maybe some other generic retail for the eldest sons who couldn’t escape. And, of course, government jobs.

Re: media hype, yes there are still young people. But not enough. Societies need 2.1(-ish) children per couple to maintain population equilibrium. Japan, South Korea, Italy, and several other wealthy nations are way below that. Add in the Japanese propensity to live for a long time, and Logan’s Run becomes more and more thinkable each year. When the population pyramid becomes whatever shape parallel lines || are, the economics of a modern, wealthy society break down.

I gave a PD session for Japanese teachers back in like 2004 or so about why learning English would be helpful, because they might end up with a lot of immigrant children in their classes. (Or, I didn’t say, because you could use your English skills to look for jobs outside of Japan.) Of course, immigration barely happened, and many of those teachers are probably close to retirement age by now. So, my bad, I guess. Someone should do that PD today, because the situation is even worse now.

Thanks for the info!

I have no idea, so in total seriousness, I would love to hear details.

Cool cops put down 420. It isn’t about speed, it is about weed.

(or did everyone already realize that?)

I need a ‘remind me in a year’ feature!

I understand the feeling, but I think this outcome is probably the best we could hope for, given the situation. If he had tried to impose fines or imprisonment, one of the higher courts would probably have intervened and the sentencing would never have happened.

Kind of feel like the box and whisker would look something like this, only worse.