ForbiddenRoot

First I’ve heard of that.

It is indeed a new thing. For the reasons you’ve mentioned this was an option for enterprise customers for earlier versions of Windows as well, but this time they are making the option available to home consumers too. I can’t really see too many people paying for this though. Those who care will move on to Windows 11 (or whatever is out there by then) and others will simply keep running an unsupported / not updated OS. In all likelihood, MS will keep providing security updates for the latter for free in the end.

I thought you were kidding, but then I looked it up on the net and it seems this is really a thing. WTF Microsoft!?

Vasco quite frequently blocks the door everywhere for me, but at least I have been able to push my way through so far. He’s like my Golden Retriever in that respect so I am used to it from real life.

I somehow entirely missed the hype around this game and came across it again only accidentally on early release day when looking at some other sale on Steam. Been playing it and it seems fine to me in a vague Skyrim-in-space sort of way, which is all what I was expecting from a Bethesda RPG.

The world seems alive enough and there are plenty of side-quests and amusing / interesting things to discover. Now suddenly I have been coming across a bunch of posts everywhere where the game is supposed to be terrible or something. Still seems fine to me, but maybe I have lower standards after decades of gaming. shrug.

I know you are joking but based on my purely anecdotal personal experience, the French (at least in Paris) can now speak and are willing to speak in English much more than a few decades back.

The first time I went to France, almost 25 years back, I had a rough time communicating at restaurants or even buying tickets at the Paris metro stations. Not sure if the latter was an ability or willingness issue because even holding up two fingers and saying “two tickets” was apparently indecipherable. Had to muster my school days French and say “deux billets” to produce instant results.

Edit: And no, the two fingers I was holding up were not the middle finger of each hand :P

I’m no huge fan of Windows, but it sounds like you had (No offense) PEBKAC errors.

I think so too and no offense meant to OP as well.

I am an early adopter of all things tech and so I had a Gigabyte Xtreme X670E mobo on pretty much day 1 to go with a 7950X. Everything worked fine on both Windows 11 and Linux despite being a pimped-up mobo and brand new CPU. At this much later date, OP’s B650 mobo should be working without a hitch, especially with Windows (and almost certainly with Linux as well).

Interestingly this may piss off more people than the real issues. Most people didn’t seem to care at all about the API / 3rd party app support issues as long as they got their Reddit doom-scroll fix. But I bet whole bunch of these will be upset at having an ugly pixelated icon on their phone, muhawhaw.

This is true. I work in a related field, and my company and almost all of its clients are falling over themselves trying to identify what can be already replaced with AI.

Systematically processes are being broken down to identify activities that are “cognitive” are can be done by AI, with the goal of eventually replacing the human workers with AI almost entirely for those tasks. All these companies, including mine, are super profitable for most part but that is apparently not enough, and everyone fears being left behind and their share price tanking if they don’t adopt AI too. So there’s a mad rush to get it done everywhere.

Over the years I have visited the usual suspects as a tourist and sometimes for work: Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Zurich, Berlin etc and some other cities in the same countries.

Mulling over it, I think Paris remains a place I always love to revisit. It’s not exactly warm and inviting from a people perspective, but the architecture, food, and general feeling of being there makes up for it. I am a history buff so Rome comes in second for me. People-wise I found Barcelona to be most friendly, though I have not been there in a decade now.

What I love most about European cities is that they are all so walk-able, which is in stark contrast to US cities (which I therefore rarely visit as a tourist, only go for work).