Jump where? The alternatives currently require a small selection of hardware; are expensive; don’t offer the same level of service; or all the above.

I’m in Singas, and there’s a Danish canned pork (luncheon meat) that we buy on occasion. It’s cheaper and better tasting than spam.

Clancy had the Soviets use a similar tactic in Red Storm Rising.

Yup. I think I’ve only visited twice since I signed up. There’s no reason.

I had it for more than 5 years before abandoning it. I still got ads. I’d complain and YouTube would tell me it was a rare bug, or my browser, or the phase of the moon. They’d promise it’d never happen again and it still kept happening. I suspect it was a test to see what they could get away with.

Others in the comments have similar stories.

You occasionally still get ads, even with premium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ

GenX. I used IRC back in the early 90s, but by the mid-90s I’d moved on. Probably to ICQ. I can’t recall.

Then, in the mid-noughties my millennial work colleagues were going crazy for Mirc. I was shocked to discover it was just IRC with a pretty face but all the same issues that caused me to leave it 10 years before.

And it’s still going. Although, no longer flavour of the month.

It’s the special edition, so it’s been recut and re-scored (by Franke), and better fits the series. It still has issues, but it’s much better.

Mint works reasonably well out of the box, but there are always edge cases (weird hardware/missing drivers) that can throw a spanner into the works. Hopefully as Linux becomes more widely used, we’ll see hardware manufacturers release drivers and keep them up-to-date like they do with windows and Mac.

Not without proper insurance.

I’ve been using Linux since 93 and I love it. I’m confident enough to support my family’s machines, but there’s no way I’d offer more than basic advice to a stranger, let alone a group of them.

Ignoring the missing features, is stoat a better experience for non-techies coming from discord?

Does that mean you’re a fan of Threshold? Cracking Warp 10 is a sci-fi perform, no? 🤣

Undiscovered Country was considered too militant by Roddenberry. IIRC Nimoy agreed, but only decades later.

The problem for Star Trek is that utopias are hard to write (they’re considered boring or to cerebral for TV) and are usually reliant on external forces for their conflict. TOS was full of episodes where ‘the other’ upset the utopian balance. While I love/prefer TOS, younger audiences tend to find the episodes unsatisfying, even twee.

Since TNG, conflict has come more and more from within Star Fleet/Federation rather than the monster/planet of the week. That inevitably leads down a darker/dystopian path.

That would just further disenfranchise creators, most of whom don’t make much (if any) money. Why would corporations fork out money for rights to stories/scripts/music when they can wait 10 years and get it for free? We have enough issues currently with corps stealing our IP to train their AIs, and then regurgitate almost exact copies to directly compete against us.

I live in Asia, and I’m constantly mocked for eating steamed rice with milk and sugar/sweetener.

It’s common where the executive (usually the prime minister) can choose to dissolve parliament and hold an election. There are usually time limits and conditions associated with that power, but the PM will generally choose a time that is most favourable. Otherwise, they can run the risk of being forced to hold an election at an inopportune time and risk losing.

The yanks have fixed terms, so likely not.

I showed my wife the before and after of my home pages. She said, “They’re the same.”

Happy.