Google was really valuable before web services were so monopolized and consolidated like they are now. It’s almost more useful to use the specific websites search function for many things now. Before this, you could run searches and it would have all these personal and small websites indexed. Oh look, here’s a guy who lives his whole life as Peter Pan and has a website about it, cool… now it’s just a profile on some social media site same as anyone else.

You should be disabling Windows Store for all your workstations via this group policy:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Store

I’m guessing there’s also a bunch of other unmanaged default settings if Store was still enabled. Would suggest implementing a gpo update to all the workstations in your domain, should already be managing settings this way. Create an OU and duplicate your current workstation gpo there, throw some workstations in for testing and go to town with recommendations you find online for a good enterprise workstation gpo. When everything is working start cutting over workstations to the new OU. Or roll out as per your employers change control processes.

I think with professional-managerial type jobs like ours, we have knowledge that the employers consider valuable and if you’re effective in the role you’re pretty much able to find a good job, like you have that bargaining chip. That doesn’t mean that will always be the case but for now it’s pretty good, especially in certain countries. For “replaceable” jobs or ones that involve physical labor and safety the unions are a lot more necessary, especially industrial unions.

I’m a unionized tech worker going on 15 years and many of my close friends from college have similar career paths minus the unionized position. There are a couple who are now in senior leadership management level and make more, but those wouldn’t be unionized positions anyway. Everything considered I make more and have better benefits and conditions as a result of collective bargaining, and all the downsides people bring up I’ve likely had personal experience with, but when I talk about these things with my private-employer friends it usually leads to, “if you think that’s bad…” Like I’ve seen ineffective people be fired and all that. I’ve moved around a bit, had promotions to different salary bands, all within the union.

Overall I think given the amount of capital thrown in to tech industry vs how people work and are compensated, it’s one of the fertile grounds for organization and worker actions. Especially when it comes to outsourcing work to countries where workers can be more easily exploited because the labor laws are so much worse.

They don’t understand or see themselves as workers because of things like this, they see themselves as individuals who will succeed if they just try their best and be their most “authentic” selves or whatever BS they use. Most important message they try to send is your position in the economic system is about you as an individual and not because of your class or relation to capital.

It’s also liberating because it means it not about you, and you aren’t obligated to accept this guilt and “original sin” and the absolving rituals as prescribed by the capitalist system. The capitalists want you to feel guilty if it means we aren’t directing our anger at them for forcing this economic arrangement on us. It’s like they are an abusive spouse gaslighting us in to thinking we’re the problem.

It’s a really good thing to think about your consumer habits but I think it’s also important not to internalize the guilt on an individual basis and get in to this “how do I cleanse myself” mode of existing as a capitalist subject. The power we have is held in opposing capitalism not by accepting the moral conditions it poses to us, but instead rejecting that “original sin” it forces us in to and not taking it personally. Every internalized guilt inherent in being a capitalist subject is similar to being an abused spouse who blames themselves for their partner’s behavior, the partner here are capitalist institutions and private entities who constantly gaslight us they’re just doing whatever they can to be good.

That’s why “I’m not buying [specific product] again” is worse than ineffective, it’s validating to the illusion of a capitalist subject’s ability to morally absolve themselves of the system that sustains their economic status, or even the notion that it’s important to internalize this guilt and morally absolve yourself from it. This mechanism is internal to capitalism and works in the manner a religious ritual would to cleanse yourself of sin, the civil religion of capitalism addressing the original sin you inherit as a capitalist subject.

I think many people understand the capitalist economic arrangement they’re in requires externalizing the suffering it causes. A lot of political causes people align with are based around morally absolving this conflict on an individual basis, almost in a ritualistic way, but in a way that doesn’t threaten their position within the system. These are the same causes the system recognizes as the most legitimate as well, it’s a self-reinforcing mechanism to deal with internalized discontent. Just consume the correct products with the right intentions and show that you’ve done this to be momentarily absolved, almost like a religion.

There was a CIA sponsored coup d’etat in Ghana that put the National Liberation Council government in power, they made sure resources in the country could be extracted by private entities at the lowest possible cost.

US foreign policy is based on exploiting resources around the world for private profit at the expense of the local population, hence the fascist coups they’ve implemented particularly in South America the last half century to ensure these sort of resources aren’t nationalized or kept out of the hands of private corporations.

you still have to reinstall whole OS and run debloaters to delete hp spyware. A lot of pointless extra work

15 year sysadmin and I’ve never worked anywhere or heard of an org that uses the pre-installed OS, and that’s independent of manufacturer and OS.

What mechanism is installing it? We image workstations and they’re very locked down and managed. Is Microsoft circumventing it’s own control mechanisms or is this one of those “bring your own” situations where you don’t really manage the machines.

we could do “sudo dnf remove cortana”.

Remove-AppxPackage in Powershell

There’s plenty of powershell scripts to “reclaim windows” etc. I was a sysadmin in mixed environment for 15 years and Windows Enterprise you can disable all the creepy features on. This was critical infra environment with explicit firewall rules for everything and no traffic from the end user that didn’t go through our proxies.

Should have just been left as a quirky concept car. Obviously divisive design but I think it looks best under specific lighting conditions.

Maybe not to you but that amount of money is a lot to me, and how I spend it to strategically offset my own ghg emissions is something within my power. Like I said I spent it on offsetting my propane use instead of a vehicle purchase, not only do I save money every day because of that but it had a much bigger impact on my ghg emissions. If a new EV is 60k and you barely drive, yet every day you’re heating your home with ghg emitting fuel, that difference in price is meaningful insofar as there are tonnes of co2 that aren’t in the atmosphere.

Obviously used, only way I’d ever justify buying a new car is if it was an EV under 30k. The “conversation is about” whatever anyone thinks is relevant to the topic so deal with it.

Nissan Leaf is 41k MSRP in Canada, I’ve never paid over 14k for a vehicle. Willing to go in to 20s for an EV because of the gas savings though.

I had saved for an EV for my last vehicle purchase but then the pandemic hit and I started working from home, was driving very little, and I instead used that money to improve the efficiency of my home and upgrade the furnace to heat pump, replace some windows, etc. The amount of ghg’s offset just from not using propane to heat my home vastly outweighs the amount I’d offset with an electric vehicle. I think people need to think about what makes sense for them, an EV is a luxury purchase, but if you’re lucky enough to own a home then there may be better uses for that money.

So instead of a nice 50k EV I bought a Fit off someone for 8k, then I bought a $900 shitbox Fit for parts. Costs $70/mo in insurance and I put about the same in gas per month. I will likely improve my home’s efficiency further if driving habits remain infrequent rather than buy a product like a car.

That and the feigned look of surprise youtubers use, mouth open eyes wide with titles like “mr beast reaction compilation”

That’s my biggest complaint as someone driving a 14 year old Honda Fit, I just want a barebones hot hatch EV without all the fancy computer stuff, a car that’s a car and not trying to be a spaceship with bells and whistles. And I know a lot of people with EVs, we have free charging stations at my workplace, but I barely drive (once a week in office, errands, live in country and get everything delivered) so why would I spend over 60k in Canadian dollars for shittier version of what I already have. I could lease but that’s another monthly bill, I’m only paying like $120/mo to keep my current car on the road and that includes gas and insurance, I can maintain my car myself with incredibly cheap scrap parts as well. Also any EV I could afford, I’d have to rent utility vans to do half my errands with or keep a second vehicle, and like you say with the Mini EV the range isn’t quite there. I wired my shop/garage with service for an EV charger so I’m ready for it, I just can’t justify it with the current offerings.