Agreed. I’ve learned most of what I know about computers by fixing broken stuff. Like you, my first serious daily driver was Manjaro. And after dealing with broken systems time and time again, I’m tired, boss. My daily driver for the last 2 years has been Mint and I love it to death for how stable and functional it is. But the lessons I learned along the way with other distros have been invaluable.

I’m a big fan of this one:

“Somebody that I used to Know” by Linkin Park

I’m sad to see that the original got taken down, but someone reuploaded it here.

You could try opening up the Resource Monitor and checking out the Network tab:

It might have the same issue (grouping everything under the VPN .exe), but it’s worth a shot.

Does the device show up if you open Gparted? Maybe it needs to be formatted. Though I guess it’d still show up with ‘lsusb’ even if it needed formatting.

I wanna say fwupd/lvfs manages firmware updates on Arch (and lots of other distros) these days.

You may be able to roll back the latest firmware update with fwupdmgr. What’s the output of fwupdmgr get-devices in your terminal? Also, what is the make/model of the ethernet port that is now on the fritz? You can search for it on the website here: https://fwupd.org/ in the “search for firmware” bar at the top, then you may be able to install the old version with fwupdmgr.

I’m not familiar with EndeavourOS, but I’ll ask a few questions to get the troubleshooting process started:

With the ethernet cable plugged in, can you access your local router config page (if you have one)? e.g.: 192.168.1.1. If not, what happens when you ping the router’s address in the terminal?

If you’re able to successfully ping/access your router, can you ping a well-known IP address such as 8.8.8.8 (google DNS) or 1.1.1.1 (cloudflare DNS)?

I think using Apple products involves paying money to a company who actively hurts you and limits your rights

Vendor lock-in and walled gardens aren’t an Apple-specific problem, though. I’m not saying Apple doesn’t have problems that they are particularly bad for, just that “paying money to a company who actively hurts you and limits your rights” isn’t unique enough to Apple for me to consider someone not “walking the walk” for buying their products. Most mainstream phone brands have locked bootloaders that limit your rights to affect the hardware you purchased, but I’m not going to suggest someone isn’t “walking the walk” with regard to their consumer rights for owning one.

I’m not much of an absolutist. One can only do so much. But Apple is putting unreasonable constraints on consumers, and it should not be tolerated.

I agree they’re putting unreasonable constraints on consumers. I do not agree with labelling those who do tolerate it as not caring about their rights or not “walking the walk” when everyone has different, if arbitrary, desires, goals, and limitations that are unique to them.

But if you care enough not to be ignorant and you still tolerate it, you might have a problem walking the walk rather than just talking the talk.

I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that people are only “walking the walk” if they take every single avenue possible to protect every single right they believe they have. I run Linux on every device I own, but the CPUs on those systems are still largely vulnerable to privacy violations from things like Intel Management Engine and other vectors caused by closed-source blobs in the firmware. Am I only “walking the walk” if I also go the extra mile to flash Coreboot or Libreboot to my devices?

If you believe in your right to privacy, you shouldn’t own a cell phone at all, should you? Even a dumb flip phone allows governments and other private entities with enough power or resources to monitor your location at all times.

I don’t think it has to be all-or-nothing when it comes to caring about your rights. I care about my rights, but might still have to deal with a Windows PC for select use cases.

I have friends who undoubtedly care about their rights and simultaneously own an iPhone. Does it make them a hypocrite? I don’t think so. I think it means that “caring about your rights” is situationally, and generally, really difficult to put into practice in 2024 and not everyone can go full RMS and completely forgo all cell phone use on principle.

Jokingly: “Linux is free if your time is worthless”

Though this tongue-in-cheek tagline takes the “free as in free beer” misinterpretation of the term “free software”, I’ve always found it a fun way to describe the time investment you’ll need to make if you’ve spent your whole life using Windows before making the switch.

So, can you tell me in your own words what scene(s) in the film makes you think this Randian interpretation is valid?

I’ve seen this film more than most people (it’s my favorite movie; I’ve seen it probably two dozen times since it released), and I am comfortable discussing any scene wherein you think the viewer’s takeaway is meant to be that “the unexceptional are intimidated by exceptional people and force them to perform inadequacy for the comfort of others and how this is a net loss for society.”

The Incredibles isn’t Randian propaganda by any stretch. This interpretation is wildly missing the film’s messages about society. Brad Bird, the director, called the “Ayn Rand” interpretation of the film “nonsense” and “ridiculous” in multiple interviews when this interpretation started getting parroted by people who didn’t get the point of the film.

I think it got misinterpreted a few times. Some people said it was Ayn Rand or something like that, which is ridiculous. other people threw Nietzsche around, which I also find ridiculous. But I think the vast majority of people took it the way I intended. Some people said it was sort of a right-wing feeling, but I think that’s as silly of an analysis as saying The Iron Giant was left-wing. I’m definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd.

I’m in a similar boat to you; whether the blobs constitute a security threat seems to still be up in the air. I read through the issue thread on github a few months back and it seemed the vast majority of the blobs were built by scripts contained in the repository, but some weren’t documented well, leading to uncertainty.

The comment by Long0x0 on Aug 05 lists a lot of the blob files.

There’s no way to srsly prevent a full-bloat browser from messing with its environment.

Can you elaborate on this? I’m curious as to what manner a browser like Firefox could be exploited in order to affect its environment outside of something like a sandbox escape.

Overall I think this is well written. I agree with @poVoq@slrpnk.net that the section on picking an instance could be improved, since which instance one picks can be rather important, since federation/defederation is dictated by individual instances.

And a minor typo I noticed:

leaving Mastodon out to try

I assume that should be “out to dry”.

That sucks man. You went the extra mile to be a good host, so you should be proud of that, regardless!

Is it “fair”? I’d say no, but the world isn’t a fair place. Enormous, unscrupulous corporations are to blame for the untenable situation we collectively find ourselves in. And those corporations aren’t going to be rectifying their behavior any time soon unless forced to.

That being said, asking individuals to take steps to reduce climate change isn’t an unreasonable thing in my eyes. Because, until corporations are held accountable, asking individuals is the only thing that can possibly improve the situation. Even though it’s like throwing a cup of water on a forest fire.

The second that Amazon, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Coke, Pepsi, et al are forced to do their part, I will start throwing my trash out the window again like a proper American. Until then, I’m gonna recycle and encourage my friends and family to do so as well.

The official documentation has some guides on setting it up in a few different ways, although they assume the user is decently familiar with Linux/terminal commands and such. There might be some more beginner-friendly guides out there, though.

https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/container/

I switched from Plex to Jellyfin a while back and I’ve been very happy with it.

Depends on the particular device. LDAC has been around for years and supports higher bitrates than mp3s (assuming we’re putting 320kbps mp3s in the “higher quality” category)

Ah, darn. Unfortunately I have no additional help to offer since that particular issue was fixed for me after changing those options in Flatseal.

I’d try running Firefox from the terminal to see what error message you’re receiving when the crashes occur; the unique error message was what led me to this workaround when I was originally troubleshooting.