Everyone has a unique identifier. If you don’t share that with anyone, how would they know who’s vote it is? Couldn’t the number be randomized and a new UUID provided on a routine basis?

Every American has a Social Security number, but it’s not exactly like we’re told to broadcast it to the world… I don’t see why something like that couldn’t be implemented here using technology.

My point is the general ledger technology of the blockchain which would be beneficial here.

But of course this is all a pipe dream. America is damn near a Kleptocracy and both political parties have written laws to prevent a third political party from ever arising.

I’d love to see that happen, But it’s because America won’t switch to a direct democracy. Instead we have a Kleptocracy run by corporations and the 1% who have power over both parties in America. However if it were possible to create a third political party where every member of the party earns only one vote maybe it would give people power back over corporations. But it’s a pipe dream, I know it’ll never happen.

I personally envision a future where we use blockchain technology to create a new direct democracy party in which every member has a unique identifier and the blockchain ledger system used to track polling data. Every individual member of the party would have one vote in each poll at ever level (federal, state, regional, etc) - for every single thing that gets a vote, and the elected politician representing that party would be required to vote based on the polling data.

Everyone would have access to a copy of the ledger to confirm their votes are counted accurately, and they can review polling data to confirm their elected politicians are voting based on polling data, and the representative would be replaced if they do not adhere to the results

I haven’t done much with Excel and Word these days, but I have not had a single issue opening standard documents. The PDF import capabilities for LibreDraw work reasonably well. Many MANY years ago I fiddled with OpenOffice and then LibreOffice before moving to Office365 for a while.

Now I’m back to LibreOffice for the past 5+ years and haven’t had any complaints

Cool thanks for that, I’ve honestly never fiddled with Open SUSE, I gravitated to Linux Mint a while back and like that it’s still under constant development.

Wasn’t there a huge deal when they skipped from Win8.1 to Win10 - and they pinky promised that Windows10 was the last version of Windows, and they’d simply release major updates every so often? Pepperidge farm remembers.

I’m already tired of my buggy Windows10. I have no desire for Win11 or Win12. I’m installing dual boot with Linux Mint on a few different machines and never looking back haha

Yeah I’ve used Linux before, I started with command line back with Microsoft DOS and Windows 3.1 back in the day. Just stopped using it because it lacked compatibility and WINE was still not quite evolved enough to be usable for much. I’m not a gamer so that’s not a big hassle.

But I’ve started playing with linux mint again on a friend’s older laptop and impressed at how far it’s come (little things like automatically detecting the touch-screen on his laptop, or the wireless printer in the other room without having to tell it anything) make it far easier to use.

I honestly think I’m ready to make the switch for good on my nice 32" HP All-in-one Envy PC - windows just keeps getting more buggy on this computer with every new windows update lol.

What flavor/distro are you currently rocking?

Yup, I totally have been making the switch to Open-Source software or browser-based software (like Photopea) for the past few years to ensure I’d be able to easily make the switch when windows finally pisses me off enough. But I think I’m already at that stage - every major windows-10 update seems to break more and more features on my computer lol

Yeah? I tried Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on a friend’s computer and the Gnome they’re running seemed sufficient for my needs. Is KDE really that much better “out of the box” without the need to customize?

Wow! That’s really awesome thanks for that - I’ll have to dig around before I choose a flavor. I was going to go with Linux mint because I had good success with them previously overall and I’m surprised they’re still kicking along haha

But I’ll still dig around to see how other distro’s look and feel. Thx again for the link

Yeah - fortunately I gave up gaming long ago (got too addicted and had to step away to maintain a productive healthy lifestyle). I need it for Office productivity apps, CAD and 3D slicing software, and photoshop. All of my needs are available as open-source programs, or Photopea does almost everything I need from photoshop these days lol.

So my only excuse lately has just been that I’m too lazy to make the switch since I have everything mostly setup in windows how I like it. But it wouldn’t be hard to export some profiles and import them into the Linux versions of the same applications.

But windows actions lately have really pushed me towards linux - I hear they’re trying to put ads into the windows 11 start menu. Its ridiculous that I now need to install third party menus and file explorers if I want to still use my operating system ad-free.

Cool, I’ve been looking for an excuse to move to Linux again. I tried ubuntu years ago but it was too limited in features and capabilities to fully replace windows for my productivity needs. Time for me to dual-boot so I can start getting more practice with Linux (Probably going to go for Linux Mint this time around)

I worked with him for 13 years, I wasn’t the only one who saw the classic traits

• Difficulty in reading other’s feelings
• Aggressive behavior (childishly would throw his keyboard or trashcan across the room during meetings when unhappy with the answers he got)
• Clumsy muscle coordination
• Inability to perceive gestures by coworkers
• Lack of social awareness

The list goes on and on. But needless to say he refused to accept he might have been on the spectrum or get tested despite suggestions by fellow staff members who also dealt with his irrational outbursts on a daily basis

It’s worse than that. They’re narcissistic and think they have the answer to every problem. I worked for a boss like this who had Aspergers syndrome (undiagnosed, but clear case)

He literally had bumper stickers made up with “[his name] is the answer” - he wasn’t joking. If there ever was a problem he would immediately solve the problem in his mind, and that was the way we MUST do it. He would not accept rationalization as to why that might be a bad idea. I learned real fast not to tell him we had a problem… until I already had a proposal, who was involved, and costs involved to fix the problem before he had a chance to solve the problem himself.

Actually CF road bikes only have a safe lifespan of about 10 years - https://icancycling.com/blogs/articles/lifespan-of-road-bike-frame

Yep. I guess it’s a good thing I just don’t watch much television anyway these days. There’s more to life than vegetating on a couch watching a television screen. I’d rather be tending to the garden, burning calories in the gym, socializing with friends, running my small business, etc - guess I’m just not the target customer in general for streaming platforms haha.

Way back a few years ago when Netflix started going down hill, I cut back to the cheapest plan at like $8.99 - it was limited to one screen at a time, and 1080p resolution. That’s fine - my big TV is only 1080p resolution anyway so it worked.

Then they quietly raised pricing to $9.99 and I noticed my resolution had decreased to 720p. That was about two years ago. I cancelled my Netflix subscription after over 15 years as a Netflix customer (pre streaming back when it was DVD rentals only). I don’t miss it.

Already planning on cancelling other services like HBO Max next - just don’t watch enough television to justify it.

Wow the bots are going hard - love these reposts with single-word titles

I use Feedly, they have a decent search function to add more feeds to my list

I miss the internet before iphones existed - 2008 seems to be a delineation when suddenly any idiot could easily access the “internet”. Before that the net was a different place