This is a very smart strategic move on behalf of Microsoft that I would have never guessed (not because it doesn't make sense but simply out of corporate pride, considering they are the authors of the "Linux Facts" memorandum...).
I think it's smart because this will capture all those Linux people who aren't super comfortable administrating their own distro and even for those that are it's now giving them another option if they ever need to run things both in Windows and Linux at the same time or just run into some Linux issues and don't want to spend the time on them they can switch to Windows 10 WSL.
At this point the only thing that I still think it doesn't make much sense is Microsoft running/developing their own kernel. It's entirely possible for them to start running Linux and run all the WIN32 support, drivers, DirectX, etc as a separate sandbox (similar to the type of sandbox WSL runs). The performance overhead from doing that should be negligible on modern hardware.
EDIT: note that I only mean switching to Linux kernel for their desktop OS, there are plenty of usecases of Microsoft kernels where every bit of performance matters but I suspect those will continue to use their own kernel as part of Windows Server releases.
Corporate pride took a huge hit after they completely wiffed on mobile, then went on to throw good money after bad for a long long time before they were willing to admit that they had lost. Think about where MS could be if they taken google/android seriously at the beginning. For a while, the prevailing opinion was that Microsoft was nearly (or already) no longer a a supermax tech company.
Lots of business orthodoxy got nixed, most prominently the supremacy of Windows over all.
> If you sell your house, even in a sellers market like today, you will immediately become a buyer in a seller’s market, facing the same inflated costs to get back into a house.
Whether it's a seller's market, buyer's market or balanced market, as both a seller and buyer _in the same market_ you will experience things from both sides, I don't think the market situation really matters in that case.
But what does matter, especially in market of constantly increasing prices, is that already owning a house means your stake in the house is already following the general market pricing so you only need to pay some extra "if you move up" in the market or you cash in some money "if you downsize". This is vastly better than just being a first time buyer, in that type of market.
> If you can fully pay off the mortgage, you’ll immediately get more monthly income and this income can be applied towards actual investments that make you money. (But you could have done this instead of paying off the mortgage too, so it’s economy dependent)
Really depends on the mortgage interest rate, term (years that the interest is applied over) and the expected returns from those said investments. In other words, I find it hard to find enough motivation to pay off a 2% interest rate 10 years long mortgage loan. 2% is same as inflation, that mortgage is almost free.
Yes I agree, owning is better than renting, but it’s effectively not a positive investment return. Either rent out your property or put as little into it as you can would be my advice. Your other investments will outperform your house, when you consider the fundamental need to have housing.
Also agree on the mortgage rates which are economy dependent along with the stock market. Right now you should certainly not pay off the mortgage but there are some times in history where it might make sense, which is why I noted it.
Having to use something like Steam (Internet based DRM) to play games effortlessly on Linux seems to beat the purpose. At that point I'd rather just have a separate Windows 10 install where all I do is just gaming.
You don't have to use Steam. I just use it as a one-stop shop for updates and launching. Some games work in native Linux and most of the rest work fine in plain Wine.
If you don't like Steam as a launcher then there's also Lutris and GOG.
> - google can push chrome on people in their search results. and google pushed HARD. So hard they dominate the browser market and chrome is unfortunately not known for privacy.
I didn't pay Google $200 (Windows 10 Pro retaile I payed for recently) for the privilege to use their search, so they are free to push some advertising alongside it. When I will pay $200 to use their search then I don't want any advertising from Google either.
> - google pretty much makes it impossible to get away from chrome entirely in android. Example being that you MUST use chrome webview when using the google search app. Even though everything else uses firefox for me.
Funny, I have used InBrowser ever since I started using Android 10 years ago (which btw, makes it possible to read all those news articles without running into free article monthly limits because InBrowser doesn't store any state between sessions). Doesn't seem impossible to not use Chrome at all to me.
> - ms doesn't have search results. sure they try with bing but its not nearly as good or widespread. MS does have windows itself though, so they push where they can.
They are free to do whatever they want with their software but I don't find it acceptable to pay $200 for that and still get ads. If they were to give me Windows 10 Pro for free, then sure, go ahead and put a bunch of ads on my desktop.
1. Personally, working from home has been a mixed bag. When I'm allowed to focus on one single task, I can do pretty well. The comforts of having my own office room, high quality monitors, keyboard and speakers listening to music are very nice. The additional latency accessing my remote workstation not so great (and that is required, because of company rules not allowing source access outside of corp network). Also, anything that required a lot of human interaction has been pretty bad, video conferencing is a poor substitute, I've found (as someone who doesn't really enjoy socializing) and depending on where you are in the project (is the team already established, do they know each other IRL, the tasks are clear or are you just starting a new team for a new project, scoping up tasks and everything) it requires more or less interaction. At the beginning of a project there is a ton of little details that get missed in the initial plans which can be resolved very fast in person and which always seem to resolve slower remotely, no matter how good use we attempt to make of all the tools available (team chat, video conference, etc). As such, whenever my company asked in WFH surveys how I would rate my productivity, I always rated it lower than 100%, around 60%-70%. In terms of commute, it's a wash-off: yes, I don't spend time commuting now but the extra time I have I just spend it in longer videogame sessions at night (so not exactly the best/most healthy way to use that extra time) and when I was commuting to the office I'd often commute by bike (at about 100 miles biked per week) while now I barely bike a third of that because I force myself to get out on the bike every weekend to at least have some physical activity.
2. Company wide, based on the the surveys done, it seems most people have rated their productivity lower than when in office. As such, it is no surprise to me that the company is looking at an accelerated schedule to get people back in office.
> Maybe album cover art is just less meaningful in the year 2021. I couldn't care less what the album art looks like when listening to music on Spotify or YouTube.
Do you listen to full albums or just mixes/random?
I see it much less important for the latter but significant for the former. For a lot of the albums I listen the cover art complements the music/message of the album. I really like it and it enhances my music listening experience.
I grew up in the 70s, and spent most of my life listening to music as albums, but that time is pretty much passed. What percent of new music is even released as albums any more?
My impression is most music is still released as albums although I don't have numbers. I assume there are various reasons why it makes sense for a band to produce and release a batch of music at the same time (especially given that vinyl and CDs are still a thing, even if a much reduced thing).
I don't think I qualify for either introvert or extrovert (that is, I tend to be self-reflective about some things and outgoing about others).
There are plenty of other reasons too. It is much faster to communicate face to face (for me) and I tend to be much better at resolving micro-miscommunications that can blow up in hours of days of work delays when I'm face to face than when I'm remote. Compounded with the fact that I am not good at reading people in general (but much worse so remotely), in the WFH setup I end up having a lot more situations where I don't know exactly where a coworker and I stand on a certain issue, which even if it happened in the office it would be resolved in < 5 minutes face to face.
I think it's because in the office, interrupting someone with a quick question is a much lower barrier/less hassle than asking them to join you on a short video conference.
Well considering the sheer extent and breadth of influence that Amazon has, I'm not sure how narrow it really is to write on Amazon's abuses.
Besides, you're comparing apples and oranges. It would be a better comparison if there were loads of attack articles on specific employees of Amazon instead of a giant multi-national company engaging in aggressive union busting behavior that is one of the largest employers in the world.
I think it's smart because this will capture all those Linux people who aren't super comfortable administrating their own distro and even for those that are it's now giving them another option if they ever need to run things both in Windows and Linux at the same time or just run into some Linux issues and don't want to spend the time on them they can switch to Windows 10 WSL.
At this point the only thing that I still think it doesn't make much sense is Microsoft running/developing their own kernel. It's entirely possible for them to start running Linux and run all the WIN32 support, drivers, DirectX, etc as a separate sandbox (similar to the type of sandbox WSL runs). The performance overhead from doing that should be negligible on modern hardware.
EDIT: note that I only mean switching to Linux kernel for their desktop OS, there are plenty of usecases of Microsoft kernels where every bit of performance matters but I suspect those will continue to use their own kernel as part of Windows Server releases.