Depends how these new laws are written.

Is it fair to say: The field is benign

It is benign if it is optional, remains 100% local and under the user’s control and doesn’t prevent other software from functioning as expected.

Those are also entirely optional and not having them filled in doesn’t cause other software to stop doing what the user wants.

So… if the law interferes with your goals, apparently it is now perfectly fine to just ignore it.

That seems to be the approach the US government is taking.

Even sadder that people keep falling for it.

I am Pentium of Borg.

You will be approximated.

I don’t care if it’s an ancient reference.

Hello my brother.

Epstein’s “day job” was being a socialite.

…

because he was the guy who knew everybody in a position of power, his network shows who has the power.

Exactly. He was actively seeking out wealthy and influential people to add to his circle of influence.

there’s no reason why we can’t have pretty colours too

The reason is the bell curve of body shapes and the marketing departments in the mainstream companies desire to only target the very middle of the bell curve.

Sail the seas matey.

It has always been a better “customer experience” than being an actual customer.

the machine is 99% boomers to begin with.

These people don’t look like boomers to me.

I didn’t claim I had a hundred of them going at any give time.

And, regardless, I also don’t keep them open forever. I just close the one I’m finished with, check out the next one, then repeat until I’m through with them.

Why not just close them and open them back up later?

Because that’s extra steps for no actual improvement.

I close the tabs that I’m done with and add new ones when I want to not forget to look at something a bit later.

That doesn’t need the “permanence” of a bookmark. (And, obviously I know editing bookmarks is a thing, but that is also extra steps for something I’ll only want once in about 15 min from now)

Op’s post was a long and winding road. It’s hard to know what to react to.

When tying your shoelaces what images or dialogue you have in your head?

Uhhh… none.

Is that a thing that happens for some people?

I’m closer to 3 or 4 on OP’s scale, and that may explain why I have never been able to wrap my head around OpenSCAD.

I’ve settled on FreeCAD. It is visual enough that I don’t have to strain my brain too hard to imagine what my project might look like.

To be fair, it’s never DNS ;]

Sometimes it’s BGP.

This is your brain on MAGA

If it is a cheat sheet as in commands

With most modern distros, I would say that most typical users shouldn’t have to go to the command line any more than they had to in windows (which is to say very seldom).

Yet there is that lingering reputation that you have to be some sort of command line guru to even think about using Linux- and that simply isn’t true. Hasn’t been true for decades.

back then, I thought it was some scary OS for people who’s tech savvy

That “too hard, too scary” reputation is a big part of what has held back linux adoption.

But when people actually give it a try, most realize that reputation isn’t really true.