I did also find this: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/boot-error-ucsi-ccg-0-0008-failed-to-get-fw-build/27842

Which suggests you could work around the issue by editing your kernel cmdline to blacklist the module ucsi_ccg.

On systemd-boot you can do that temporarily to test it by spamming the e key as the system starts up. You’ll eventually be able to edit the boot params.

Grub should have something similar but I don’t really use that these days.

In theory adding this to your cmdline should block the module from loading: modprobe.blacklist=usci_ccg

Maybe try a more commonplace distro just to rule out a hardware issue. Try Ubuntu or Fedora’s live USBs.

If you’re still getting that error, it might be that somehow you’re not actually booting into the live USB environment, or something more fundamental to your system is broken.

If you boot into the installer again you may be able to reinstall without wiping your personal data.

At the very least it’ll give you the chance to copy off anything you don’t want to lose. Then you can install fresh and see if that helps.

I never get Christmas gifts either, not even cards.

I buy myself the same snacks and treats every Christmas, and cook a nice Christmas dinner. I then zone out in front of the TV.

It’s a nice tradition, very peaceful, unlike past Christmases with the now estranged family.

I stream with Tidal and for my favourite bands I’ll buy their music on 7digital or Bandcamp.

I’d go with Qubuz but they have this whole Qubuz Coin thing that I really don’t like. If they removed that I’d switch immediately.

Despite claims to the contrary ChatGPT is very accurate with its responses when such responses involve web searches. Where it falls apart is complex multi step things like coding questions.

I make heavy use of it to skip past all the clutter of Google search results and end up with clear summaries that answer my questions. That’s all I’d really use it for as anything more than that its output is highly variable in quality.

I’ve had asthma since I was 7. I’ve had periods in my life where I’ve exercised a lot, and periods where I haven’t at all. The one constant? My asthma never changed. It’s always been a pain in my ass regardless.

I’ve been using Syncthing-Fork for a while now. It seems to work fine for me, however you do need to launch it occasionally as sometimes it can get killed when backgrounded depending on your flavour of Android.

I’d say charging cables / most kinds of wires.

People are used to and comfortable with wireless charging these days despite it being spotty in terms of availability.

Better charging rates and capacity to power larger appliances might end up with you having a completely wireless home.

I like the concept, but personally I see the decentralised nature of the Fediverse as a benefit rather than a hindrance, and moving all identity functionality to a centralised system would create more problems than it solves.

Suddenly you’ll have a single point of failure for the entire Fediverse. A very appetising target for hackers and DDOS attacks.

An alternative that’s in the spirit of your idea would be to allow for auth delegation, i.e. if you sign in with an Activitypub ID rather than a plain username, redirect to that instance to sign in then redirect back to the instance you started from, auth token in hand.

The nice thing about this approach is it’s basically just OAuth 2. It’s familiar, simple to implement and built in to a lot of web frameworks already. The only extra step would be advertising the server’s auth URL via the nodeinfo endpoint, which is fairly trivial to do.

Since desktop mode is basically just KDE but without the ability to install software packages you could try Fedora.

They do a version just like desktop mode that has you install everything through the store, or you can get the regular variety to get a bit more flexibility.

Personally I’d steer clear of anything special as your first Linux install. Go with standard Fedora, then you can experiment and branch out if you’re interested, but you don’t have to if you like what you’ve got.

I think it suits you. Definitely keep.

I’m glad I switched to Tidal already

Run. Run as far as I can and never stop.

You can self host the services you need, but admittedly that’s not feasible for most people.

Thanks for recommending JShelter! I’ll add it to my list

I really wish there was a foolproof way of preventing fingerprinting. Disabling JavaScript unfortunately isn’t really an option, no-one builds websites with progressive enhancement in mind these days.

I sleep with a stuffed animal I’ve had since I was a kid. I don’t think it’s that unusual.

CLion’s worth checking out. It’s free for non-commercial projects.

I lived in the US for a couple of years and when I left I signed up to Traveling Mailbox so I didn’t miss any mail at my old address. Just set up mail forwarding with USPS and you’re good to go.

As far as the IRS goes - you can use your foreign address just fine on a 1040/1040-NR.