How did you manage that Pacman ghost prompt?

This isn’t exactly the mainstream opinion I don’t think, but I’ll tell you what Oberst Reisner thinks. He’s an analyst and now social media sensation from the Austrian military. He’s got some “superior NATO tactics” brainworms and at least one far-out take, but also generally better analysis than other “experts” touring German media, so there’s that. He thinks this:

The US does not want to escalate too much (being the wise and measured dudes that they are), so they’re providing Ukraine with just enough capabilities to match the Russians. The US wants to convince Russia that they cannot win and the same time avoid WW3, by providing Ukraine with just enough stuff to cause a stalemate whenever the Ukrainians fall behind in some area.

I don’t think that’s correct. While there is certainly some escalation management going on, sending weapon systems is really hard. So I think it’s either the generals saying sending all that stuff is pointless or counterproductive, and then the politicians get pressured into sending it anyway. Or some of it probably just took a while to get ready.

No… Not in practice anyway, maybe in theory. I know on ARM SoCs there’s lack of auto-configuration (like you have on PCs with e.g. PCI), and the kernel has no way of knowing what hardware is available. So there’s a file that lists all the devices, and how to talk to them, called (I think) a “device tree”. This file gets appended to the kernel image, and so the bootloader just loads that together with the kernel. The kernel doesn’t do any auto-configuration and rather just reads this file and loads the relevant drivers based on that. I guess it might be (in theory) possible to do this on PC, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. I also don’t expect that to make any noticeable difference for boot times. Pretty sure boot times are dominated by user space, and not the kernel anyway.

Sidenote (don’t do this): You can compile your own kernel (this used to be pretty common back in the day). You can select only the drivers you need, and can also select whether they should be compiled directly into the kernel or as modules that can be loaded later if needed. Pretty sure the auto-detection happens regardless for most hardware, since the driver needs to be initialized and told where the hardware is to be found. Compiling a driver right into the kernel just means the driver code is in memory right from the very start. I don’t recommend doing this btw, the only difference you will notice is shit not working due to you screwing up, and you’re going to waste a bunch of time and electricity compiling your kernel with every update. You sometimes needed to do this to get all your hardware working, but I haven’t done this in ages.

Should just work. No need to reinstall. You are correct in thinking that all the drivers are included, and furthermore, the drivers on Linux are typically loaded automatically when the hardware is detected on every boot, and this is not configured anywhere in a file or anything like that.

Usually, anyway. In theory it’s possible that you manually (or some tool) hardcoded drivers somewhere, like in xorg.conf, but I’m willing to bet that isn’t the case.

It’s not though? Like what percentage of matter in the universe even is in these states?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_of_matter

Around here most people were actually against the Iraq war, so they are somehow stupider and more bloodthirsty than twenty years ago.

Debian’s popcon has by-category lists, so e.g. here are the most popular packages from the category “shells”, sorted by most installed:

https://popcon.debian.org/main/shells/by_inst

What file structure? I just put everything in /home and then try to vaguely remember part of the filename and glob *part-of-filename*.

Ok, actually, every couple of years, I move all my files into a new directory, /home/old. I think I’m up to /home/old/old/old/old/old right now. I recommend using find to look for files in there.

Did you source this right out of your ass? Trust me, most Germans are not thinking of Napoleon. They’re not thinking of the Third Reich either, because the Freikorps were integrated into the Reichswehr in 1920 already and the name wasn’t used after that. If they remember this term from school or media at all, then almost certainly in the context of the Freikorps squashing socialist uprisings under direction of the Ebert government in 1918/19. They might also remember them murdering Luxemburg, Liebknecht and others, and in general being far-right proto-fascists.

Germany’s Baerbock decries weak impact of Russia sanctions

“Economic sanctions should have an economic impact. But that is not the case. Because the logic of democracies does not work in autocracies.”

New economic theory just dropped.

“We have learned that with rational decisions, rational measures, agreed between civilized governments, it is not possible to end this war,” Baerbock said in the interview carried out on July 10.

Again with the chauvinism. They don’t say what her conclusion to this is, but I’ll bet it involves kidnapping people and marching them into mine fields.

I think it’s smoking cigarette that was lit from the wrong end.

Oh god I actually watched half of this. He says the left (apparently Jeffrey Sachs is left now?) just bought Putin’s argument about security concerns, but (big reveal about halfway in, choir music swells), Putin is actually driven by mystical thinking and megalomania.

So Putin is lying when he talks about realpolitik or says anything that makes any sense. But when he speaks of history or the motherland or whatever, then he’s telling the truth. He’s definitely not just doing a bit of story telling to hit on those emotions. No Sir! That’s a window right into his soul. And apparently his personal feelings are enough to move whole armies.

Maybe, just maybe, there are actual material reasons for why stuff happens, and it’s not just ideas in the minds of individual “great men”.

I’m mocking you. You’re the one that drew a line from Germanic tribes and their heroic culture to modern-day Ukraine. These are some pretty völkische theories you got there.

Well that’s better! Someone so interested in tales of Germanic valor should be ready for another Volkssturm. What I don’t get is why you wouldn’t sacrifice yourself in Ukraine, what with the blood relation and all. Maybe Ukrainians aren’t quite as Germanic in your mind after all?

How is this an excuse? The Germanic tribes of Ukraine used to fight down to the last elderly person I hear.

A brewing conflict at the border, that can be ramped up or down on US orders, can also be used to get concessions out of the Russians. Even better if NATO is there, because Russia has to avoid getting into a direct confrontation with them. Ultimately this allows them to destabilize Russia and undermine state control over the border region. If Russia doesn’t want that to happen, they might have to agree to some other bullshit, like allowing some NGOs to operate or something like that.

This one’s about food security. You’d rather the free market decide what crops should be grown? Because that’s happening in plenty of countries, the IMF encourages countries to deregulate and grow export crops. You know what happens when these countries default on their loans? They can’t pay for food imports and they can’t subsist on coffee beans.

If you think the state regulating what farmers can plant is unfair, wait till you hear of health & safety regulation. It’s mad!

Is the OEM kernel getting security updates? Then it should be fine.

If you want a specific feature that’s available in the newer kernel, then just try it out. You can select the kernel during boot. If it all works, uninstall the OEM kernel and it should default to the generic one.

Edit: If you want to find out whether you’re getting security updates, I’d check the changelog. It should be somewhere like /usr/share/doc/linux-image-somethingsomething/changelog.gz. The entries there should have a date. If the last security fix is older than a couple of weeks, that would be concerning.

Help help, I’m being repressed.