> The settings feel like you're almost in a config file.
What on earth?
No, the config has dialogues and intuitive controls. There is a settings-editor you can go into if you need to, with a bit more of a regedit kinda feel, but I haven't looked in there in years.
> Gnome or Cosmic are safer starting points.
In Gnome, can I move the UI elements to locations I want them in? Or are we still in a situation where it's opinionated and you have to seek plugins to get an experience that you actually want?
> In Gnome, can I move the UI elements to locations I want them in?
No.
> Or are we still in a situation where it's opinionated and you have to seek plugins to get an experience that you actually want?
Yes, 100%.
COSMIC feels like GNOME but done right to me. It's not as pretty but while it looks and works pretty much the same by default, you can choose what goes where.
I concur with the author - XFCE is a great desktop.
I first used it on an eeepc because something light was the order of the day. But then Gnome 3 happened and I made the switch on my full-strength machines too.
It works and it works well. It's theme-able. It's not opinionated about how I should use it so I can put bars wherever I want, launchers, menus, systrays wherever I like, and I can do it all with a few clicks and dragging and dropping stuff.
Generally a great DE and one that won't screw you over on update, which is something I've come to value.
You can do some xrandr magic to make it better and set a virtual rendering target that keeps things consistent across screens. It's a bit of a pain to work out though.
That was a standalone piece though, rather than some sort of trend. The choose-your-own nature of it was integral to the story and referential to the contemporary books which were CYO.
Your theory fits fine with “We’re not going to make a series like this or turn it into a genre”, but not so well with “we already made this thing and it was really popular, but we’ve decided to take it off the platform”
I am not a supporter of Nigel Farage and his many different parties in the UK ('Reform' just being the latest incarnation), and I don't believe his policies offer any real answers.
But what the rise of Reform does show us is the utter disillusionment with the mainstream parties of the UK, who have spent the last several decades afraid to make meaningful changes. They tell people they can't have what they want because it would be too risky/expensive/whatever. We can't do that, the bond markets won't like it. We're running high on debt so we can't afford to make this better. Here, I'm going to add 0.4% to this tax so we can give this service an extra 0.3% budget.
All the while government takes more in tax every year but the country feels like it's in a state of managed decline as services struggle. People wonder where all the money is going and there's no particularly good answer. And the managerial politicians' cautious approach hasn't led to economic growth either, so people don't feel like things are getting any easier.
With that background it's hardly surprising that the populace flock to someone loudly offering change, even if it's bullshit change.
(I left the UK a few years ago but I do visit and keep up on the news. Australia is on a similar path but less extreme, though with accelerating house prices and other forms of inequality, and the collapse of our traditional centre-right, expect things to get more populist in the coming years)
While I sympathise and agree with the point, it’s easiest to blame political parties but the electorate are also to blame.
They simply want to have their cake and eat it too. Plenty of times post-GFC where parties have tried or proposed much needed reform only for the voters, gerrymandered by the press, to throw their toys out of the pram. Theresa May’s “demantia tax”, Starmer’s winter fuel allowance for example.
Sadly it feels like it’ll probably be taken out of everyone’s hand, through some sort of economic crash or worse, to get people to be realistic again.
To me this is a prime example of the problem - they were really just fucking around at the edges anyway. It wasn't any sort of major reform. That old scene from Futurama often springs to mind -
"I say that your 3% Titanium tax goes too far!"
"And I say that your 3% Titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!"
Completely. That was the thing about the winter fuel allowance. It was largely a nothing burger and yet they couldn’t allow them to get it through. You could see almost immediately after they pulled back, what little confidence and ability the government had melt away. It’s been more of the same ever since
> People wonder where all the money is going and there's no particularly good answer.
That's because people don't want to open their eyes, it's mostly going in pensions and public services and is increasingly more paid with debt.
As for decades and decades politicians have avoided to become unpopular by raising pension ages (or did it way too slowly), those are the results.
Look at what happened in France under Macron when he raised pension age or tried to stop the bleeding in public financing: raise in national populism yet again, as if the far right in France (or the far left) had some magic wand (same for reform UK) to stop the bleeding.
Actually, if you look at the rightist populist across Europe (Poland, Hungary, Italy) they made the problems worse by actually jumping into very (historically) leftist measures such as throwing even more money at the public (benefits, pensions) at the expense of public debt.
Poland feels it slightly less because it has more growth (largely attributed to the nearly 2 millions of Ukrainians that settled there bringing with them their skills and tons of money).
It's not my contention really that the UK or other nation can or can't afford to do things differently, it's more that that is the constant refrain coming from mainstream politics, along with a multitude of other excuses for relative inaction.
Yes, that is the other side of the coin, that people are not just attracted to change because of loss of faith in the mainstream, but actually going over to support the populists.
And this is not aimed at you, but I do see all too often that people in the more mainstream spaces look at that side of the coin exclusively. "They're supporting reform because they're racist/stupid/brainwashed/propagandised". Sure, sure, those are definitely factors. But the opportunity to do that brainwashing and propagandising is there for a reason.
And those two effects feed off each other in a way that either one of them could never accomplish, the 'sum' (or rather the difference or negative sum) is much larger than those parts individually.
> I don't believe his policies offer any real answers.
Indeed, it's a shame that people are too dumb to realise they're just lining themselves up to be fleeced by a different "elite", instead of actual change.
Meanwhile we bail out large corporations on mere speculation they might fail. I don't know where you live, but around me a large chunk of the population have nothing to fail down to other than homelessness which is a huge drag upon the economy.
In the UK at least the biggest portion of welfare goes to the state pension.
It’s hard to deal with that when people have been paying into the system for their whole working lives on the promise that they will be looked after in old age.
It’s hard to see how you can fix this whilst pensioners continue to vote whilst young people don’t.
>It’s hard to deal with that when people have been paying into the system for their whole working lives on the promise that they will be looked after in old age.
They weren't paying "into the system". They were being taxed.
Treat it for what it was, and stop feeding the pyramid scheme.
That's about 25% of UK government spending. 33% if you include pensions.
The UK does have an issue with a lowering number of people in productive work and ever more on various kinds of disability payout, it's true, but this -
If education is welfare then so is everything. Defence is welfare becuase before you might have to hire private security. Police and fire serviecs are welfare because they used to be private. etc....
Ok so can you name me a single piece of government spending that isn't welfare Or are you advocating for governments to just cease existing all together.
The answer is the ultra-wealthy. Those on welfare are getting increasingly poor, while the ultra-wealthy are getting increasingly wealthy. It's clear where the money is going, and it's not to poor people.
> There are people who bought a house for $100k in 1990 where that house is now worth $2M. Are you $1.9M richer? No.
This is often repeated but not 100% correct.
You are in fact richer, and you can leverage this $2m in equity to take on debt and buy more houses. This is what has been happening here in Australia, and it's a major factor in the continued rise in prices.
When you've done this, hung on a handful of years and all of your houses have gone up 20-50%, you can cash out for a very nice sum indeed. AFAICT this is now a pretty mainstream middle-class retirement plan in this country, and it's terrible because, as you point out -
> Increasing house prices are simply stealing from the next generation
The money is coming from people, usually younger people, who are funding the insane market with ever larger mortgages and staying in rental properties longer, both of which benefit the equity-holder.
In the US you can often buy houses with no money down.
Also, if you're taking the equity out of your $2M house, how are you servicing that debt?
My point is that it's an awful lot easier to buy 6 $100k houses than it is to buy 6 $2M houses and if houses weren't speculative assets, maybe we wouldn't get those buyers driving up prices.
> In the US you can often buy houses with no money down.
Presumably you can't just walk up to a bank and say "I'd like finance to buy 10 houses please!" with no collateral beyond the houses you're purchasing?
Here you usually need a 10% deposit. If you already own a house you can borrow against equity. The bank considers multiple houses as a single portfolio to calculate loan to value ratio (LVR), and will take tenants rents into account on affordability. A quick worked example based on local figures (average first home price $700k, average home price $1m):
New market entrant looking for a $700k house: Needs $70k in cash for deposit plus $28k stamp duty, takes $630k loan and now has a 90% LVR and 70k equity.
Existing homeowner with $1m house, bought at $300k some years ago and now has $100k left on their mortgage: Has $900k equity. Takes an interest-only loan against equity for the full $728k on the same 700k house. Total property worth $1.7m, 48% LVR qualifying for a lower interest rate and paying much less per month as they have taken the loan interest-only. Didn't have to save up a single cent to cover deposit or stamp duty. Still has $872k in equity on the two properties so does it again three more times. Buys a total of four investment properties, still comes in under 80% LVR.
If the market goes up another 25%, the new entrant is sitting on $245k equity.
The landlord's IPs are now worth 3.5 million on total debts of 3 million, at which point they can sell four houses, clear all their debts including their original mortgage and pocket $500k (and while capital gains tax is chargeable on sale of investment properties, it's heavily discounted compared to other assets). Or they can use this new equity to buy more houses.
> if you're taking the equity out of your $2M house, how are you servicing that debt?
Rent. There's also a rental crisis going on over here. Rents are really high and can pretty easily cover investor mortgages. There's lots of people who would have been able to buy few years back but can't scrape together the finance to do so now that prices have gone up, who are forced to keep renting. So the investor crush creates its own client base!
Plus if you do end up making a loss on mortgage payments, property upkeep etc, the government allows you to offset that against your all-sources income for tax purposes, potentially reducing that loss by 45% if you're a higher rate earner.
> My point is that it's an awful lot easier to buy 6 $100k houses than it is to buy 6 $2M houses, if houses weren't speculative assets, maybe we wouldn't get those buyers driving up prices.
It kinda isn't in Australia. The market rising makes it much easier to access more debt and leverage that into more houses.
But I very much agree that housing shouldn't be a speculative asset and this market is broken. The government should be putting in place disincentives, not discounts and offsets. Unfortunately established homeowners now see this as a normal way of 'getting ahead' and I know multiple people who are effectively playing monopoly like this.
I hate it. Even though in theory I could go out and buy four or five houses next week if I wanted to. But with the rising cost of living and general bleak economic outlook everyone is continually fed, and the seeming impossibility of 'winning' for the average person, I'm not surprised people do it.
I think the problem comes when someone makes a cool, fun, silly little game that is otherwise great when played with randoms, and cheating just sorta spoils it.
Case in point from a few years back - Fall Guys. Silly fun, sloppy controls, a laugh. And then you get people literally flying around because they've installed a hack, so other players can't progress as they can't make the top X players in a round.
So to throw it back - it is just a game, it's so sad that a minority think winning is more important than just enjoying things, or think their own enjoyment is more important than everyone else's.
As an old-timer myself, we thought it was despicable when people replaced downloaded skins in QuakeWorld with all-fullbright versions in their local client, so they could get an advantage spotting other players... I suppose that does show us that multiplayer cheating is almost as old as internet gaming.
What on earth?
No, the config has dialogues and intuitive controls. There is a settings-editor you can go into if you need to, with a bit more of a regedit kinda feel, but I haven't looked in there in years.
> Gnome or Cosmic are safer starting points.
In Gnome, can I move the UI elements to locations I want them in? Or are we still in a situation where it's opinionated and you have to seek plugins to get an experience that you actually want?
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