I’ve switched away from DDG after many years of use. I have gone to Ghostery Private search. It seems to be better for my search results with a lot less garbage mixed in.

Breaking things is a valid way to start learning. Reading man pages is very often difficult and confusing for new users. And much of the documentation is crap anyway-- it’s why distro forums exist. And I’m from a time when distro upgrades/updates were sometimes dicey, (they still can break things on occasions), and you complied your kernel and drivers from scratch.

Ask your city clerk about it. That person can tell you what the city/county/township meeting format is and how to participate. But basically, you go to the meeting, bring some photos to support your claim, and discuss the matter like a civil human being. It’s not rocket surgery. You don’t need a lawyer either.

It’s pretty easy to dodge property taxes also.

I went and argued my taxes at my annual township tax assessment meeting. I was being assessed for a new deck and ramp. That added about $200 to my taxes. What I did do was move the wheelchair ramp out away from the house a bit for better winter time safety and repaired the steps, ramp boards, and railings.

Should I have been taxed for a whole new deck and ramp when I just did repairs and made safety changes?

You certainly can argue about your property taxes and win concessions if you have a good reason. It’s not hard to do. You just need to get off your ass and attend the annual tax assessment meeting.

It’s why that annual meeting exists.

I have taught math for 4 years in my local school. The iPads were used by the 3rd and 4th grade students. And they never left the classrooms and were well supervised during use.

Starting in 5th grade, they were issued Chromebooks. Google Classroom was used for assignments and other communications. And since Mommy and Daddy had to pay for them IF they were damaged, they held up quite well. The IBM Education model is very robust. Not fast, but robust.

Most guns shows have FFL dealers on site. Those guys are definitely running the federally and state required background checks in a little room in the back somewhere. And if the sale happens inside the building, it’s even highly likely private sales get run through also, (you will pay for it-- someone has to make money off of it). The Paperwork Gods must be appeased no matter what.

But depending on the state/county/city often you can do a private sale in the parking lot with someone that doesn’t get the check. This is not universal across all 50 states. Some states, like California require all firearms transfers to go through a licensed FFL.

YMMV

The mini’s are the latest new hotness for desktop computing. I’ve been running a dirt cheap $90US, mini for 2 years now. It fits extremely well on my desk, just tucked in under the monitor leaving plenty of room for all the other tasks I do daily.

Will it play the latest hot new video game? Nope. But it will run OnlyOffice, FreeCAD and FreeDoom just fine.

So you want to take agency away from every adult so they conform to your views only?

Oh no, I haven’t forgotten SuSe. But it’s not an OG distro. It’s based off of Red Hat. Though I thought it was always a better version of Mandrake than Mandrake ever was. (I wonder what TexStar is doing these days…)

I’ve installed and used it several times over the years and thought it was a fine distro. I have never understood why it’s not more to the forefront with it’s rolling release. If you like RPM based distros, SuSe is one to check out for sure.

It’s not even that. It’s a path to madness.

If you want to name them all, Red Hat, Debian, and Slackware where the OG popular distros that became the foundations of all the distros we have today. I ran them all back then.

Unless you’ve worn the sackcloth and ashes of Slack, don’t even at me and my son…

The flash backs to config files. Sooo many config files everywhere. But tarball are Yum!

Ahhh, I knew it. A Man of Culture! Or something else, I’m not sure what though. I have threatened to get an old laptop and install slack on it for fun, but I seem to be too lazy to get it done…

You mirror my travels through the Linux distros. Red Hat and Mandrake, Slack, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Suse, even Mint and now Fedora yet again. I’ve never bothered with setting up a server though, I just don’t have the need or desire.

Have you spoken to your healthcare provider about Viagra^tm? It may be able to help with your issue. (Please seek immediate medical help with an erection lasting more than 4 hours).

And as repeatedly told and retold every year…

And I’m using, let’s see, (Goes into Settings to check): Fedora KDE Plasma 41. Meh, it works OK I guess. It’s getting hard to tell the difference between distros anymore. And I’ve been doing this long enough that I just something that doesn’t bother me for attention anymore.

You started in the 90’s and you didn’t don the sackcloth and ashes of Slack? At least for a little bit? Ah, the joys of writing config files!

That’s the cool thing about medicine, you don’t “do” medicine-- you practice medicine.

And anytime you prescribe a drug, you are starting a trial. Because you really don’t know how it will do to that one patient. Experience may tell you that it should do what you expect it to do, (because it almost always does). But it could only partially work or do nothing, or have varying side affects, or even kill you patient.

As an ER director of a hospital once told me, “Despite all we think we know and all we think we can do for a patient. It still mostly boils down to keeping the patient amused and letting nature take it’s course.”

Still got to have the money. And police departments need to have budget to replace equipment.

I have been elected to a city council several times and have gone over police budgets and it was no easier for the police to get money replace a squad car or get any of the “goodies” you think are so easy to them to get. There is only so much money to be had in any city budget.