Austrian here: medical debt does not exist.

Both my boys broke their arms snowboarding (a couple of years between each accident), costs for the first one were none because we went to a regular hospital (including everything from setting the bone to cast to regular checkups, cast removal and clean bill of health report). Son #2 had to go to a private clinic. Which was still subsidized by our national healthcare provider, so I only paid 65€ for x-ray, setting the bone and the cast. Checkup and removal back home were free.

GP visits are fully covered. Some medication is subsidized, but not everything. I rarely pay more than 10€ for a box of pills of any kind, even if I get them without a subscription (for instance sea sickness in my case). Our docs recommend various exams the older you get to catch any budding cancer cells before they can cause too much damage (Prostate exam, Mammogram, Colonoscopy, …). All covered.

Dental depends. Fillings are covered, if you go for the cheap (bad) ones. Anything beyond that will cost you. Orthodontics depends on age. For kids up to 18yo it’s completely free. Adults have to pay. Don’t ask me for prices though.

Pregnancy/birth: all covered, including all necessary exams.

If a parent is insured (i.e. employed), their kids are covered as well automatically.

Never in my 45+ years have I ever had to wonder if I could afford a medical procedure. Sure, there’s a big lump of money removed from my paycheck every month (minimum employment period is a month, you can’t fire people with shorter notice except when they messed up royally). But it’s the same for everyone in the same salary bracket (more income = higher share; does not change level of care), and it is a guarantee for social peace.

GenXer here. I started drinking due to social pressure almost 30 years ago. I basically completely stopped already before covid. My wife is the same. On occasion one or two drinks when going out, but we don’t have anything at home. My cousin (similar age) and her husband went completely dry.

I think it’s more of an awareness of the health risks (also huge “don’t drink and drive” campaigns when I was reaching drinking age), add to that if we’re honest it doesn’t really taste that good, enduring a hangover is nothing to look forward to and also (at least in my case) I am fed up with how our society still looks weird at people that just don’t want to drink. Screw everyone who asks two or three times if someone says they want a non-alcoholic beverage or, even worse, makes stupid jokes, mostly to feel better about their own addiction.

Sorry got a bit heated at the end. My son recently reached legal drinking age, does not want to drink and is being pressured by peers to start drinking. Luckily he is mentally strong enough to tell them to go suck a duck.

Oh how I hate voice messages. There’s a reason I disabled voicemail for my phone. If you wanna talk, call me. Otherwise: write. And if you’re driving: don’t! I can wait.

As a daily driver for “normies”, Linux is fine. Browser, email client, office apps, all good. I can use Prusa Slicer and Blender, which covers all my 3D printing needs.

There is no real image editor anywhere close to Photoshop, and no, GiMP isn’t it. I have to use Affinity via wine. It works but I’d prefer a native solution. I need ML object recognition, layers with layer effects (stroke outline, drop shadow), easy text Input and manipulation (font size, height, width etc). Affinity can do it. Photoshop does it better, but I am no longer willing to pay Adobe. Screw subscription software.

For my RAW images, I am using Rawtherapee which I am much more comfortable with than with Darktable.

Audio is a mess. To have low latency in my DAW (Reaper Linux Version), I have to launch it via the command line using pw-jack reaper, otherwise it won’t recognize the audio device or uses ALSA or Pulseaudio both of which have way more latency than JACK. I have bought a couple of VST plugins on Windows, some work via yabridge and again wine, some work in part but have no UI. others don’t work at all and I am out of ideas.

For video editing, I use Davinci Resolve Studio (which I paid for), but the experience on Linux lacks behind Windows and it doesn’t support the same codecs (no AAC audio, making a lot of my archive footage useless unless I transcode everything).

My Framework 13 (AMD 7040) laptop has a fingerprint scanner. No dice getting it to work (I’m running CachyOS). Davinci Resolve refuses to work on the AMD integrated GPU (experience above is from desktop PC with Nvidia GPU).

And the session saving feature in KDE Plasma on CachyOS is inconsistent. I set it to only save a session when actively telling to do so, I don’t do it and it still opens up 5 apps I didn’t even have open last time.

Steam doesn’t want to autostart minimized, it goes front and center on boot. Annoying.

Those are my current gripes as a Linux user. Otherwise, all peachy.

Edit: well not exactly. My desktop PC has a Gigabyte motherboard and in order to recognize the fans attached to it I had to grab an I87 community made driver. Temp sensors etc are also reporting less to Linux than to Windows (if you compare what you can read out in HWinfo to GNOME Vitals or the like, it’s laughably little).

I have used Parsec for remote desktop. They have a Linux client but it doesn’t support hosting. Which sucks. Will look for another remote desktop solution.

I have a DJI drone. Haven’t yet tried running DJI Assistant to do firmware updates etc. Might go well might be horrible. Anyone with experience here?

I use Backblaze on my Windows install for off site backup purposes. They don’t have a Linux client for the consumer tier and I don’t want to pay enterprise grade money as a consumer. Maybe via wine? Need to find out.

Overall the main problem with Linux is that almost nothing outside of a very small set of use cases works without hours, day, weeks of tinkering. Which would be fine for one or two things, but it’s just spoo much.

One more vote for Immich. While I don’t like how it’s not easy to create albums from existing folder structures out of the box, the search and face recognition is amazing for a free self hosted app.

Sounds exactly like what I need. I’ll give it a try. Thanks a lot!

Hmm. While I applaud Immich for existing at all, it kind of feels developed with not me as a user in mind. I have Terabytes of pictures I have taken over the couple of decades of my adult life. They are all neatly organized in folders on my NAS. There is no easy way to just tell Immich “oy, that folder structure? Turn it into albums” I am never going to manually put my 400k+ images into albums. And the folder view in the Android app is behind too many clicks to make it any fun using it.

I guess I have to wrangle with the CLI or something to turn my folders into albums.

But… why??? People use existing file structures. Make it easy for those to integrate into your app.

Nothing of the sort on the roadmap either. Unless integrating folder structures into Immich albums gets more user friendly, I am reluctant to support the devs.

I’ll probably do it anyway because as I said, I’m glad the project exists.

Thanks.

Knew it was Beau before I even clicked on it. Great little video series he did back then!

“Only 3 kinds of people in the world: pro-gun, anti-gun and those who actually know how firearms work.”

I never started using it. It’s the cancer version of messaging.

I sometimes get weird looks from people when I tell them I refuse to use it.

Signal is the way to go.

Look on the right side. Graffiti says “Carlos Perez” and the flag has the word “presidente” in it. Neither Dubai nor Mumbai since nobody there would write graffiti in Latin alphabet or in Spanish for that matter.

I cared for the characters. There was some real emotion going on. Diving with Judy with “Pyramid Song” playing felt special. The Panam tank mind sync scene was bizarre but memorable because of it. The whole V vs Johnny Silverhand mind war makes you think about what really makes you you. The taxi AI side quest was quirky and fun.

And there is one part of Night City that’s straight up an hommage to the iconic Ghost in the Shell scene where they stand in a semi flooded part of the city. Made me nostalgic.

It’s not really an open world RPG though. It’s more story driven and when the stories are told, well… not much else to do.

You are not missing something, they are.

The first couple of years are the most important for a child’s development. The more you can be there for your kid, the better. And sharing the load of child rearing will increase the bond between you and your spouse. It’s disgusting to see American men reduce “supporting the family” to just bringing home money. Your family needs so much more than that!

I applaud you for taking paternity leave. Most of the criticism towards you is probably a mixture of ignorance and jealously. Take your 12 weeks and come back with a smile on your face and brag how awesome that time was - because it will be.

For comparison: I live in Austria, childcare leave can last from a year to two years and parents can split it 18mo/6mo for instance. Add to that 8 weeks of mandatory “birth time protection” before and after the predicted birth date where mothers aren’t allowed to work by law but receive full salary. I WISH my wife and I could have split our maternity/paternity leave but it didn’t work out financially back then.

Thousands of 130kph highway kilometers in my Polestar 2 on adaptive cruise control without a single phantom braking. You are claiming things without evidence.

Messaging: Signal

Social Media: Mastodon, second choice Bluesky

Instagram: Pixelfed

My YouTube channel. Been at it for 10 years, haven’t even broken through the 100,000 subscribers ceiling yet. But it’s fun, so I keep doing it.

I literally had an official support person tell me to reinstall Ubuntu to get a specific app running.

No regrets. Polestar 2 MY22 long range AWD. Ride is a lot harsher than in the BMW i4 for instance (family member has one). But overall I wouldn’t want to switch.

As an avid Dune books reader (all of them), I think Villeneuve did the best adaptation possible. As a character, Chani is much more fleshed out in the films and Rebecca Ferguson CRUSHED it as Jessica. Oscar Isaac also was a very good Leto.

My big gripe is with Stilgar and Paul. Stilgar in the second movie was almost relegated to comic relief. Yes, he is also portrayed as a believer in the books, but it felt like a caricature in Dune Part 2.

As for Paul, I had hoped for more focus on why he actually went to drink the water of life. In the books he wanted to avoid it. But events he couldn’t foresee and put people he loved in danger pushed him over the edge. In the film I didn’t get any of that.

Still, loved both parts. Definitely worth a watch.

This. When I got my CPR training, the consensus was: if you hear or feal something crack, don’t stop. Messing up is better than doing nothing.

Except for the unicorn, your last paragraph is my reality. Oh and it’s five weeks vacation, actually. My wife even has six. Sick days not included. Those are all part of the universal health care we have.

38h work week btw. Rarely overtime.