wizardbeard
Considering they said they admin multiple Linux servers, I highly doubt they're unaware of LibreOffice.
Having used both, Calc is severely lacking in the ease of use department once you start trying to use it seriously with formulas and such. Some of that is familiarity, but it goes deeper than that.
This company has illegally installed their cameras in more than one town, then tried to sell the local police force on them.
They have lawyers on staff that they use to coach local politicians on how to hold the votes to establish contracts with them in ways that aren't technically illegal, but ensure that no community opposition has a way to have their voices heard.
You can find a lot of these sprts of stories by searching online. In local subreddits, ones dedicated to talking about flock, and local news.
Benn Jordan has a good 40 minute video giving an overview of these systems, how they work, what they track, and why they are a problem. He highlights some cases where families were held at gunpoint by police due to failures of these systems. He also experiments with defeating the AI that reads plates.
Louis Rossman is currently leading a campaign against their installation where he lives in Austin, Texas right now. Has a number of videos on it.
Overview before the Austin City Council vote: https://youtu.be/4RM09nKczVs
Call for people to show up at the Austin City Council session to discuss the potential contract with Flock, and showing how difficult it is to find this sort of stuff and be involved with your local government: https://youtu.be/g4vL1ERdZ9Y
Call to action 2: https://youtu.be/hDOmYqlwxD4
Austin City Council reschedules the vote (in a questionably illegal fashion) with less than 24 hours notice when they realize they kicked the hornet's nest: https://youtu.be/iscDYp6dtl8
Minor followup during the wait for the revised time, at two of the three parks with 90% of reported car break ins these cameras are meant to deter: https://youtu.be/2QbtDWrlPpc
No way that holds up when challenged. Gacha games alone prove existing work.
Worth noting that the Internet in Cyberpunk was, and is, closer to the old arpa/darpanet of interconnected individual networks rather than the world wide web we have today.
Climbing down from the trees was the begining of the end.
Look man, I get it. The world is heading to hell in a hand basket, and in a lot of ways accelerating towards it.
But there's a difference between awareness and... I guess feeling the "doom" of all of it constantly. Existing with that weight constantly pushing down on you. At least part of that is a choice.
Letting the weight of all of this impact you constantly is not a virtue. Do what you can to push back the oncoming waves where you can. Don't beat yourself up for not being able to hold back everything. And enjoy the joy and beauty where you can find them.
Living your life bent out of shape about things you can't do anything about is just wasting what little time you have, and wasting time while things are comparatively better than they're likely to be later.
And I get the need to speak out about all of it. But it doesn't help. What helps is getting involved with stuff locally, being active in local politics (to a degree, the rot and shitty lying politicians exist on local scales too). Doing what you can. Trying to discard the worry and upset about what you can't. Try to influence those close to you to do the same.
Slap a fur shader on it and ship it!
They can't leave, they can't opt-out.
If you're going to be this pessimistic about simply existing as a human being, it's worth noting that this is absolutely false. There are plenty of ways to opt-out permanently, and some of them are even peaceful.
Less darkly, there are communes and mutual aid communities and the like. Some even arguably self-sufficient.
Beyond that, if you truly feel existence is that fucking bleak, do you really think it helps to spread this shit to people who might otherwise be happily ignorant to it? Or are you content just making the collective experience of existence worse by putting this out into the world? Explicitly desiring to bring others down with you into the pit because you haven't grown enough to find life worth living and enjoying anyway.
My wife and I had a daughter with her at 45 and myself at 31. We had to use IVF, and in the end, donor eggs. So it is possible, despite the age. You're probably in a better situation biologically with him being the older one.
That said: don't have a kid if you just think it might be nice.
Kids aren't some sort of casual addition to the existing patterns of your life. They disrupt almost all of them. They are hard work, take up more time than anyone without could imagine. You can't just put them to the side and deal with them later when it's convenient for you. They need you when you're sick, when you're having a bad day, when you're grieving the death of a loved one, when you haven't had your coffee and are still waking up, when you're just trying to get some sleep, when you're hung over, when you're trying to cook, when you're trying to clean, when you're trying to get five minutes to yourself to take a shit, when the last thing you want to do is deal with a kid.
They are 100% reliant on you for years. They need to be taught everything, and I mean everything. Basic stuff like "don't bite people because you wouldn't like being bit" isn't intuitive. They will fight against you trying to get them to do something they enjoy. They will break things that are important to you. They will push boundaries intentionally and unintentionally.
And you need to handle all of your shit and all of their shit, and still have energy to handle them with kindness, near infinite patience, understanding, and with an eye for their learning and growth. You at least need to strive for this outcome, and hit it the overwhelming majority of the time. No one is perfect, but you have to strive to be for them, especially early on.
It's exhausting. It is one of the most gratifying things in the world. Just don't do it unless you're 100% sure you want to sign yourself up for it.
But look, at the end of the day, there are people having kids older than you two, and grandparents having to take sole guardianship over kids as well. You can do this, if it's something you both want.
Not much of a metal head, but the whole Nonagon Infinity album by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard is great. Also their album PetroDragonic Apocalypse.
What got me even slightly into metal, and stays mainstays on my playlists, are the albums Black Hole Space Wizard Parts 1 and 2 by Howling Giant. Cannot reccomend those enough. Also, their album The Space Between Worlds is great too, but isn't like one long story.
So... in more readable English, they patented how you can send a Pokemon out to run around with you, and if you throw it directly at an enemy it can start a standard battle where you control your Pokemon, otherwise it automatically paths to the enemy for an autobattle.
That's a little more specific than just summoning characters, but still absolutely bullshit to be able to patent. I'm sure there's prior work that should disqualify this, they just couched it in such overly technical terms they can act like it's novel.