Russia are never going to agree to this…

Russia won’t agree to anything that isn’t the complete capitulation of Ukraine and Zelenskyy being replaced with a Russia-friendly puppet leader.

Having a plan out there in public isn’t just about the plan, it’s also a message to Russia that Ukraine (and Zelenskyy) aren’t making it up as they go along and that this is what they intend to do if the Russians don’t idit’ na h-y go home.

I did think about this, but I imagined that the Russians would find some way to fly mostly over populated areas on purpose so that shooting them down would risk a fireball falling on innocent civilians.

Escort flights might be a better choice, but I can see that turning into a multi-jet dogfight over innocent civilians instead, with a risk of multiple fireballs.

On the one hand, Hungary has remained somewhat different from its neighbours because it’s surrounded by mountains and hard to get in or out of by land so it would seem a safe bet for a swap, but on the other, it’s the 21st century and mountains aren’t so much of an obstacle any more. Would we really want to give Putin an airstrip in the middle of Europe?

It would be foolish to assume Putin’s expansionist plans are limited to Ukraine. It’s just that Ukraine is proving a bit more difficult than he expected and he’s had to concentrate his efforts there.

I still backup my files the most basic way, that is, create an archive locally, connect external storage and copy it there. Then disconnect external storage. The archive is made onto a separate internal drive and I keep the most recent one there, so I don’t even need the external one for minor accidents.

I think only once in the last decade or so have I wanted (but never needed) to pull something back from external, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

The main downside to this method is that it doesn’t de-duplicate, so keeping several takes a lot more space that it would do otherwise.

If by “too late” you mean “too late to get popular, rich or famous”, well sure, it’s going to be a lot harder now that there are enormous channels that got there first and where people are used to going for content, but if you have something that people want, there’s a chance people will find you eventually.

But that’s still not to say you’ll be big and famous. There are streamers who have been streaming for years who get only a handful of viewers every time they do. And yet they still do it because they love it.

On the other hand, there are many, many people who started streaming but quit because they had to make a living and their time was better spent elsewhere. Streaming only works as a career for, I want to say, the top few percent. (I don’t actually know the figures, but I’d be surprised to learn it was a big number.)

As for equipment, I’ve looked in on smaller channels streaming on Twitch. Not all of them have good stuff. No transitions. No Vtuber avatar. No mic. No webcam. Just raw, live game footage and maybe a little interacting in the chat. Upgrades can happen later.

But if by “too late” you mean that no-one should even think about starting doing streams ever because it’s all been done, or someone’s already doing it, then no, of course not. The day it’ll be too late will be the day all the streaming services shut down.

The French word is more akin to the English C word, at least etymologically, which makes me wonder how high it ranks in terms of French profanities.

I think most English speakers know where the B word falls with respect to the C word (and say, something like the worst racial slur), but I have no idea where on that scale the French word falls.

Either way, I’ve definitely heard both English translations be called misogynistic, and I think that would qualify those words for “slur” status. I can’t imagine the French word is thought of any differently.

No. My distro still provides the latest release of the original GNOME system monitor.

As time has gone on, GNOME have enforced more and more of their own look and feel, completely ignoring any styling that might be provided by other window managers. Some of those might even be using older GTK libraries, but that doesn’t matter.

Basically if you run a modern GNOME app under KDE, MATE, Xfce, etc., it’s going to look like a GNOME app regardless of what the other windows look like. Very Henry Ford.

The system monitor is no different. The new version works but the earlier version I found and installed also works fine and fits in. I suspect it’s GTK3 (old) versus GTK4 (new), but I can’t confirm. It’ll be something like that.

The folks responsible for Linux Mint started the XApps project of GNOME forks to roll back some of GNOME’s nonsense, but I guess they haven’t got around to forking the system monitor yet.

… and I’ve looked at both Resources and Mission Centre. Neither are to my taste (and are both Flatpaks).

That was the first one I tried, but it’s a fork from too far back.

The two main issues I had with it were 1) It only reports CPU usage in multiples of X%, where X is the number of cores, which was a long-standing SNAFU in the original GNOME version and 2) the usage graphs on the performance screen are light-mode only, even in dark mode, and there’s no easy option to change it.

Well, I was going to say GNOME’s System Monitor which has always been the default GUI task manager on my distro, but it’s been getting steadily more and more GNOME-ified with every revision and frankly, I hate how it looks now.

Might be time to shop for an alternative.

Edit +44 mins: So, the immediate alternatives all have other things I don’t like about them, but an older version of GNOME System Monitor will still install and run, so I guess I’ll be using that for now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to bring the court case forward, and when he inevitably doesn’t turn up (not that he would have if everything ran to the original timetable), make the finding in absentia, presumably “guilty” but at least worse than it would be if he’d bothered to turn up, and then…

Sanctions? Heck. What else do we have to hold him to account? An ever bigger tariffs war? Forcibly close US embassies and consulates? Seize US assets?

It’d be a fine line to prevent the Big (cutter of) Cheese from bugging out and declaring war.

People with a serious criminal record. Murderers and worse. Those who leave their victims alive but scarred mentally or physically.

Then those with less serious criminal records. Fraud. White collar crimes. That sort of thing.

Then other “undesirables” depending on who isn’t liked by whoever’s in charge.

And then the goalposts for what’s desirable will start to move.

And the scope won’t just be limited to social media. Websites will be categorised further. Some might remain open access to all people (except the ever increasing list of those to be protected and those who shouldn’t have access) but others? No. Those sites themselves are undesirable.

Who’s next to be blocked?

I mean, now that the infrastructure and policies are in place, it’s only a matter of time.

Because he’s been on Russia’s payroll for a while (and likely his dad too), so like a stopped clock being right twice a day, when Don Jr. suggests that the US is thinking about not supporting an enemy of Russia, it might be worth thinking there’s some truth to it.

Lib Dems to the left of Labour? I would have thought with the Overton window shifting, they’d still be occupying a position between Labour and the Conservatives like they always have… but I guess it’s possible with some of Labour’s suspiciously Conservative decisions lately.

Well, there was a period in the 90s through to the early 2000s where we had a centre-left party (New Labour) running the show and mostly improving things, but then 9/11 and the Iraq war happened and the country went scurrying back to the Conservatives again.

The conspiracy nut that lives in my brain is convinced Putin’s taking control of Russia in 2000 has everything to do with every single bit of the above after “but then”.

We currently have New Labour (now just “Labour”) in charge again, but politically they smell an awful lot like the pre-Thatcherite Conservatives.

They’ll find a way to launch it. They’ll go back into the old Soviet mindset of throwing blini at a wall until something sticks sending cosmonaut after cosmonaut until they have a success and then pretend the others didn’t exist.

And they’ll fill the minds of young would-be cosmonauts full of propaganda and tell them that there was definitely no-one before them who died up there, especially not in pain or terror. Those were unmanned test missions. Strap yourself in, you’re going to space!

Interesting to compare and contrast with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe who deliberately wore a toothbrush moustache and referred to himself as “The Hitler of our time”.

Also interesting that now Mugabe is dead, there seem to be quite a few potential candidates for that title.

But, as best as I can tell, Uunona isn’t in the running there.

The on-board sound died on my old PC a while back. There was a free slot on the motherboard that looked like it might take an old sound card, so I found one for cheap online.

Installed it. Fingers crossed. Linux (Mint in this case) didn’t bat an eye. It worked fine.

My newer PC is budget and has barely any slots on the motherboard (pretty sure there isn’t one that supports the same card), so I’m hoping I won’t need to pull that trick a second time.

Other potential solutions:

Sound via USB or Bluetooth.

HDMI and DisplayPort carry sound as well as video, and there are ways to tap into that.

Will the war end if he dies?

There are places waste is, by law, supposed to end up and places it isn’t.

You might argue that the law and good environmental sense don’t always agree on where waste should go and how it should be treated, but they’re in clear agreement on this particular dump.

And that means someone is in deep … waste.