BuT, tHiNk Of ThE ChiLdReN!

I believe your coworker is right to some extent. Getting a degree is a lot of work. It demonstrates your ability to do work and get things done… Among other things.

Having any degree/post secondary diploma, generally says you have the ability to work on something without being forced into it. IMO, HS is generally expected and more or less forced on everyone, so it doesn’t really count.

While I believe that’s the motivation behind needing a degree to get a job, I also, personally, don’t agree with it. There’s plenty of hardworking people who never even considered college/uni after HS. Some of them are much more motivated and hardworking than the people I knew from my time in college.

I work in IT, and see degree requirements on all sorts of job postings. It’s bullshit, since there’s haven’t been IT centric degrees until very recently, outside of CS/development. Most of these jobs don’t require any programming whatsoever. They’ll be for helpdesk, system administration, networking, etc. Programming knowhow might help but it’s definitely not required. I don’t need Java, or C++, or Python, or any other language to know how to click buttons on dialogs in Windows.

Hostile UX design. The “yes, make this change I don’t want” is often highlighted in a brightly colored button, meanwhile the “no thanks” is often grey or a simple link looking option, not dissimilar to what you would find for help.

They make it seem like you don’t have a choice when you absolutely do.

Having a choice in what software does is actually a big highlight for me with Windows, apart from being aggressively persuasive in getting people to do whatever they want you to do, in the end, you are given a choice.

They’re slowly eroding this away though, starting with local accounts, and I’m sure much, much more will follow.

With Linux, the only option you get is to customize your experience. Often defaults are either not apparent or not given, so you kind of stumble around trying to figure out what to do, unless you really know what you want, it can be a terrible experience.

Mac is customizable… With one big asterisk on that. You basically need to be a very advanced user to really customize anything beyond whatever the mighty blue Apple wants you to be able to do. You’re given a short list of “options” and if you want anything beyond whatever is sanctioned by Apple, here’s the command prompt, good luck 👍

Windows has been in this middle ground for a very long time. Not as free as Linux, with recommended settings across pretty much every piece of software, and defaults that generally work and provide a good experience in general. They might not be optimal, but they work. You have the option of basically doing whatever the hell you want, within reason, without having to get a PhD in computer science to do it.

With Mac, you either fit into the Apple ecosystem box, or we’ll make you fit.

Linux has no box. No walls, no limits, no rules, not even a guideline. Figure it out yourself.

… At least, that’s my take on it. I’ve used all three to some extent for various purposes. Mac is awesome when doing everyday things, a lot of what you need is abstracted away and “just works” ™, so thinking is at an all time low. Windows is very meh, it does what you want, but it’s like a moody teenager at times. It’ll just go to hell and you’ll be left to figure out wtf is going to fix it. I use Linux mainly for servers, but the UI/UX for it is essentially the aesthetic of Windows 9x/2000, but after you’ve taken LSD. When you need to get anything fixed, here’s your console, good luck. Don’t forget to sudo.

All are related to the original statement.

I’ve commented on this meme before. All I’m going to say this time is that OneDrive has redeeming qualities. The way that Microsoft pushes it, like many things Microsoft has pushed lately, is pretty shitty.

Quickly: good examples of shitty Microsoft pushes for what they want you to use: persistent pop-ups about upgrading to Windows 10/11 from earlier versions, making the default browser setting in Outlook/office/teams/whatever, to be separate from the system default, and that default is always edge, OneDrive… I don’t need to say more about the push to OneDrive, considering it’s the point of the post.

Regarding OneDrive specifically, you can change the default save locations for MS apps to be not OneDrive. However, OneDrive does offer benefits that are great for the less technically savvy, specifically syncing user data (mainly desktop/documents/pictures)… If you don’t need a crazy amount of storage for your images/documents, etc, then having the OneDrive backup/sync enabled is a good backup solution. The only thing you need to keep on top of is that OneDrive is actually still connected to the service (logged in) and working as intended. OneDrive seems to have this tendency to logout or expire your connection, so checking on it monthly just to ensure its still backing up is the best practice.

The benefit to this backup is that it’s built into Windows, and almost entirely transparent to the user. “Saving to OneDrive” is just putting the information into a dedicated OneDrive sync folder (usually under "C:\users(username)\OneDrive - (account name)" ) which saves locally, then syncs to OneDrive in the background using something similar to the “BITS” service (background intelligent transfer service, also part of Windows).

Since this is normally very transparent to the user, it’s good for less tech savvy people, in case they suffer a failure like a hard drive loss, system crash/failure/corruption, lost/stolen/destroyed hardware, etc. All their files are synced/saved to OneDrive and they lose nothing, all they need is a Microsoft account (Hotmail/outlook.com/live.com), and to take the 30s or so to set it up. Then use the computer pretty much normally and their data is safe from loss.

There’s an absolute shit ton of alternatives, not just from cloud storage providers. I personally use both OneDrive (personal, on a Hotmail account - free tier, which IIRC is 100G), Google drive, and my Synology. OneDrive on my PC backs up documents/pictures mainly, which I use as a sync to my laptop, and I use “Synology drive” to back up my entire C:\users\username folder to my local NAS. Google drive is exclusively used on-cloud, mainly for shared documents that I collaborate with others on; mainly financial records (no credit/debit/bank info, just costs, etc), and other tracking type documents and stuff I need to share with others.

I won’t get into other alternatives just due to the sheer number of them. Needless to say, I’m very contentious of my data and losing it. I am aware that my free/public account data might be anonymised and used to train some AI somewhere, so I tend to be careful about putting any password/account data/confidential data on a service that may have access to something I don’t want it to. I use a password manager, so I don’t generally keep login info anywhere except there.

Anyways, enough about me, I want to hear what people use for their backups!

IMO, this kind of meme post is from/for those that are scared and confused by settings dialogs.

OneDrive is a default, which can be changed.

They’d rather complain about it than spend 10 minutes fixing it.

I’m not sure we’ve hit the highest values on everything.

Until everything crashes, IDK.

Oh. Project 2025… Okay. I was really confused.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_25

I’m sad this isn’t actually a domain.

I can’t buy it since .de is a country domain and I don’t live there.

I mean, I probably still can buy it, but I don’t want to be rude and buy domains for a country that I don’t live in

I would have some choice words for my past self if given an opportunity to say anything to them.

Buy stock in Apple, and pick up any stock you can in an little startup called Tesla when it is founded.

That Bitcoin thing that will come along? Yeah, it’s dumb, just mine a couple of Bitcoin for the fun of it, put it in a safe place and document everything you need to know to access it, then forget about it for about a decade.

Houses, they’re expensive right? Ha. Ok. Buy one anyways. Like, as soon as you can. Just do it.

Don’t buy that, or that, or that, or that, or that either. It will only lead you down a path towards lifelong debt. Just don’t do it man.

Oh, and the girl isn’t worth it, stay living at home for a while longer, don’t get kicked out because of some broad. Dump her, and go spend your money on a house.

Go play this Geo game in (nearby city), you’ll meet an awesome girl you’ll want to marry, on that app. Just trust me on that one.

I feel this comment in my bones.

It’s not as bad if the HDD is dedicated to games. With your os and games on the same drive, you’re going to get wrecked.

I’d still recommend all flash everything in a decent home computer/gaming rig, but on a budget, at least separating your os from your games on different physical drives can help quite a bit.

My usual go to drive layout, when it’s impractical to put everything on a single drive, is to have a fast, but small, OS drive with core applications, if it’s large enough then also use that for user data. Add in drives for anything/everything else size intensive. Like for games, I’ll get a lower quality SSD that’s larger than my OS drive, like grabbing a SATA SSD that’s 3-4 TiB for games, with a 500GiB NVMe OS drive for programs and user data.

If money is tight, then having your fastest storage for OS and using a HDD for everything else, is a decent option…

For a while there I was running a 240GiB OS drive, and relocated all my user data, and games to a 1TiB HDD. The system ran fine like that, with few exceptions.

One big issue was that major windows updates basically failed every time, it would seem that having your user account/profile anywhere other than C:\ is problematic for that kind of thing. It’s odd, but ultimately not that big of a deal. Regular security updates and whatnot worked without any issues.

I’m so sorry.

Ironically, the entire premise of this article is steeped in a class war. It’s the rich trying to keep us focused on fighting eachother, rather than realizing that they’re fucking all of us in the ass.

I think we need a community just for this guys work. He’s brilliant.

Look, I’m all for equal representation and equal opportunity for everyone. The US had a black president already, which is awesome, but I’m not thinking the next step here is to “recently convicted felon”. Maybe try for a woman as president first?

Just saying.

Busybodies are definitely the problem. When someone directly asks me about my age I just kind of silently and blankly stare at them until they stop asking.

Bluntly, I’m here to work because that’s how I make money which I need to survive. You’re my co-workers, not my friends. I’ll be friendly, but let’s keep discussions work-related. My age, is not an important piece of information for anyone to do their job. My birthday is the same.

People tend to guess, but they’re met with the same silence and blank stare. If they start asking why I’m not answering, I just tell them that I’m not willing to discuss my personal information.

If they can’t respect my boundaries, that seems like a “them” problem. If try to make their problem into my problem, then it will become HR’s problem.

Personally, I don’t work in highly social environments anymore (I work in tech, almost entirely remote work), so generally I don’t have a lot of opportunities to have small talk with my co-workers. I’m fortunate like that right now. Previously, I would mainly deal with it by exercising my constitutionally protected right to silence. It’s amazing how effective it can be to give someone zero reaction to their question. You didn’t say no, nor give them a reason, nor did you give them an answer. It weirds them right out.

Now, I’ll add the caveat that I do not give any shits about what people think of my beyond my professional capabilities. I think the only times I’ve given a reaction to it is when someone asked why I wouldn’t entertain the questions about my age and birthday, and my go-to reply is that “I’m a very private person”. I don’t talk about family, friends, dating/love life, personal finances, the things I own, where I live… (It’s a long list) When I’m working. The only other topic I try to avoid at work is politics, since it’s so universally polarizing. Discussions about literally anything else, totally cool. My personal life and politics? I’ll be over there points working. Tyvm.

Idk about OP, but I don’t tell people my age, nor do I tell them what day of the year my birthday is.

I also never divulge my middle name.

This is all personal information, which I do not willingly share.

I’ve never really had a problem. Nobody knows, and they don’t need to know.

OP can do whatever they want with their own private information, which is none of anyone’s business.