C’mon. Live a little.

Just imagine needing to give a company-wide demo of a newly completed platform initiative, so you wanted to make sure your camera and mic were working, but you care about privacy so you want to do it locally.

You dont have an app for that, as this is a purpose-built, minimal, Arch Linux workstation, so you use pacman to install a local webcam GUI. While you’re using pacman, you think, might as well update too.

Update, reboot, uh oh.

WHERE’S THE ARCHISO USB?!?!

You can’t find it anywhere! And you even check that weird place you found it last time! Think! … Your phone has a USB-C port and a terminal right? And right there is a USB-C Flash Drive… Surely you can just flash - Ah shit, not without rooting the phone!

Thinking quickly, you unscrew the back panel and replace the M.2 SSD with the one from your personal Librem 14 laptop [you care about privacy, remember?] that’s currently out for repairs for the (now infamous) power issues. It’s Arch too, but it hasn’t been updated yet – thank the good Dennis Ritchie, so you’re able to boot with it and check the ArchWiki homepage…

Those dreaded words… MANUAL INTERVENTION NEEDED… Ugh! Why does this only happen when I need it not to!

You frantically download and flash the archiso to your available usb stick, swap ssds, boot up, decrypt the drive, mount it manually (remembering fondly the carefully chosen partition layout), chroot in, perform the “intervention”, and reboot.

Perfection. Smooth as freshly polished glass. Smoother even – probably – with these sweet new updates! You log in, slide directly into the meeting, you were only 30 seconds late. You give the presentation expertly, they’re all impressed by your fancy words like “kubernetes” and “admission controller”. “What a genius” you know they’re thinking. They have no idea.

You sign off, and wipe the cold sweat from your brow. These are the moments when you remember why you run Arch at work. Not because it’s easy – because it’s hard. Because every time you’re faced with a situation like this, you get a little bit better.

Sure, you could be an Ubuntu Urchin, a Debian Dweeb, a Mint Mistake, but you’re not. You’re better than them. You’re an Arch Assassin, because you know the moment you lose your edge – is the moment you lose your job.

You sit back and start your favorite database UI tool, DBeaver. It full screens instantly thanks to your tiling window manager. You love how it’s always been reliable on Arch Linux. Why anyone would bother doing anything else is beyond you.

Um, actually it’s pronounced png

Ummm…

I use Arch btw 🙃

Punch the keys for god’s sake!

I mean…

And what I’m saying is it doesn’t take more time to opt out in my experience. Its just as quick to get manually verified as to be biometrically scanned.

¯\(ツ)/¯ maybe, but as long as I have the option and it’s not tedious to do so (which is the case), I’m gonna opt out and encourage others to do so. Fair enough if your perspective is you want to accept whatever new security theater data collection is implemented in exchange for some perceived convenience. Making your case here with me in this conversation has taken more effort on your part than opting out of facial recognition at the security checkpoint in an airport would have, and I find that fact amusingly ironic.

I’ve been in and out of DFW, BOS, and JFK since these facial recognition scanners went in and I can tell you with a great deal of confidence that there’s no additional wait time, or queue, or anything else if you opt out. There’s a TSA agent right next to the scanner who collects your ID whether you get scanned or not. That’s the same person who otherwise just checks it if you opt out. What are you even on about? Maybe its different at some airports, but I’ve been opting out every time I fly and it’s no big deal.

Actually no, they look at your face and your ID, make sure the information matches, and move you along. No secondary inspection, no difference except you didn’t get scanned with facial recognition. It’s the same process as before facial recognition was implemented.

Why even write that comment?

All good, I’ve been there too :)

My guy they (formerly I) know. After you’re hooked it feels out of your control. It becomes a mechanism your brain uses to alleviate stress or to relax. For me, for a long time, it helped me socialize, as I was alone in a new city, working a serving job. After it became a part of who I was, stopping wasn’t just ceasing buying and smoking cigarettes, it was now changing my identity and my personality.

I’ve quit now but I’m here to tell you its big ask of someone, and you shouldn’t judge folks who try and fail, but treat it as a vallient effort, and encourage them to try again.

I hear you though, having been a non smoker for a few years now I can smell it and I know what you mean. Just try to remember those are real people behind the addiction, and that for those of us old farts, some of us thought it made us look cool, and were led into it, despite the warnings.

Hey I’ve been there, and after reflecting on it, the truth is, (at least from my perspective), you don’t really, truely want it yet. Don’t take that as judgement, I’m certainly not in a place to judge, but I’ve kicked severeral multi-year addictions, and weed was one I had the pleasure of just “deciding to quit”. For me quitting weed came with breaking a friendship of the longtime smoking buddy I had, though after getting off of it and reflecting, I realize he was just using me as a convenient spot to store his weed. YMMV, but I think you got this, and hopefully my experience lends some light onto your difficulties with quitting.

Oh I thought that was an April fools joke! I’m pretty sure I saw something about it on April 1st on the homepage. Had no idea it was a real thing.

What the heck is archinstall?

This looks great. Where’d you find it?

Hey, I’m not disagreeing with you here, but keep in mind none of those things are necessary for survival, and most such products can last decades if properly maintained.

I think you’re arguing against the most extreme interpretation of what this person said.

To give you an example, I’ll show you what it looks like if I were to interpret your comment in the same way:

In some capacity, you have to admit, self sufficiency is possible. Forged metal, magnets, and batteries aren’t necessary to sanitize water, grow, forage or hunt food, or to build shelter.

S6E4 Game Changers dropped literally yesterday and you wasted no time recycling the joke

Isn’t that… Just like… How you write titles and names?

I think it would look wrong if the title didn’t use title casing.

My solution is to host a virtual machine with my dev workstation, and use Windows or Mac for business admin stuff like email, slack, etc.

Are you sure there’s a conspiracy here, and not just a bunch of folks laughing at and copying a popular meme format?