Thumbing through the feed, the news on how this or that organization letting go of commercial options for day to day operations are mounting.

This led me to wonder what would be the impact if FOSS, be it on the OS front, productivity front or whatever, was to become truly a relevant option.

I'm painfully aware of the difficulties I've faced trying to take a few online courses to be faced with borderline desdain for not using Windows/Office/Etc and opting for FOSS solutions.

Paying/supporting a FOSS solution does not offend me. I'm happier when giving money directly to a developer or project than to an opaque company. But I'm just one.

But what could happen if the ones became millions, actively contributing with a few coins per year to projects we use daily?

What could/would happen in the short term (under a year), medium-long (one to three years) and the long term (over ten years)?

I have a GigaByte AB350M-DASH motherboard.

This motherboard has a M2_WIFI socket, M keyed, if I correctly understood what I've been reading on it.

I have already bought a standard PCI card, as buying an M2 card would end being more expensive, but would an E keyed card work on this motherboard too?

I was looking at an AX200 card, and it keyed as such.

Looking at my own digital dependency and comparing it to people I know, although being personally more of a tech geek than most, I find my dependency of technology lower.

Hardware wise, I tend to run everything I buy until it is rendered completely unuseable or it breaks down. This obviously ties with my preference towards FOSS but I think it is more of a tangent.

Services wise, I am a complete outlier. I never subscribed to a streaming service, I was quick to leave mainstream social media behind, I never boarded fads around wearables. Most applications that inhabit my acquaintances smartphones don't find a way to mine (Whatsapp, Amazon, Aliexpress, Uber, UberEats, etc).

This is the most extreme part of my behaviour but I have refused services that do not have a means of contact/interaction besides an application.

And I do not feel inconvinienced in my day to day life by this.

I'm feeling out of touch with how the world, society or whatever is trying to function.

I wanted a cake some time ago. Just a little something to celebrate a special moment. So I decided to stop at a local bakery that makes cakes on order.

Now let me underline the following: I wanted a cake. Something sweet to share.

However...

Once I say what I wanted, they call the "cake designer" to come sit with me to go over the details of the cake.

I wanted a plain old cake, rectangular in shape, light fluffy sponge, double layered, with strawberry jam filling, with vanilla scented cream cover and a single word on it, written in dark chocolate.

I could see the disdain mountain on the "cake designers" eyes as I described what I wanted. Followed by their soul leaving their body as I refused every single alternative or change to what I wanted.

Order settled, I asked to pay in advance, against an invoice. Some hesitation but it did happen.

Then, as I was about to leave, I was asked to add the bakery in Instagram, to which I asked why. It was for them to tag me in the photo of the cake, so I was alerted it was ready for delivery. But I don't have Instagram. Nor FB. Nor Whatsapp.

I literally live 50 meters away from the store. I said I could just stop by the next day and pick up the cake. It was like explaining an alien concept.

I'm going insane. It has to be that.

The cake was fine. But I won't risk going there again.

I'm in need of a CAD program with an easy aproach for someone with zero experience on this type of software.

3D printing is not a concern

I intend to draw the blueprints for my house. The building is old, no blueprints exist for it, and I intend to make renovations to it, so having blueprints to work on to plan the renovations will be a huge help.

A long time ago, when I was more invested into TTRPGs, I grew increasingly frustrated with the system of only distributing advancement/experience points at the end of a session.

This always made me think that certain challenges could be better dealt with if the players could access/develop abilities as the game progressed in real time.

At some point, I started to divise a play system that relied on a split experience atribution system, with players being able to automatically rack experience points from directly using their skills/habilties, while the DM would keep a tally of points from goals/missions achieved, distributable at session end.

A practical example: a burglar would have the lockpick skill. The skill would be tiered, with each tier having 100 points to max it out, and the higher the tier, the less experience would be given by making use of the skill, as the skill would be further and further refined and new breakthroughs in its understanding become harder to achieve. But DM attributed XP could either be spent towards maxing out the skill faster or gain a new or linked one, like disarming booby traps.

I drifted away from TTRPG and simply let my idea sit in a drawer in a notebook. Today I found my notes again as I was rummaging through the junk and the it brought some nostalgia.

To those with more experience in TTRPGs: would this be feaseable? Or enticing? Interesting?

I just got served with this. It is a real novelty item.

Simple shrimp and clam pasta. Quick, simple, nourishing. The picture is missing the parsley on top and the dish was missing a lot of chilli spice but there was one person at the table that can't tolerate it.

Per the title, what options exist in Europe for independent authors and creators to make themselves known and sell their work/receive support from fans, besides through their own personal websites?

Smashwords was the almost default option for years for indie authors; Amazon also took their piece of flesh. Then there was Patreon.

It always made sense to me to have an european alternative to those sites.

I've already found Xinxii and am in the process of exploring it.

What else is out there?

I'm getting constant system notifications alerting me that my alert - AMBER, etc - settings have been reset.

What is intriguing me is that these alerts are not broadcast in country. I'm in Europe. And those who do are broadcast through SMS service.

The first line on the system alert mentions something about "presedential communications".

Anyone else?

Pretty much that.

I've been trying to get a degree since I was in my early twenties. Too many things happened and I never got around to do it.

I have close to zero probability to ever work in my field of choice, which is Social Sciences, with a minor in Psychology, given my age.

Theoretically, I could try to become a high school teacher, as there is a great demand for teachers in my country and it will only grow in the next years to come, but entering public teaching is extremely hard and was made even harder after schools were handed direct hiring; nepotism grew ten fold.

I would like to be the first in my family to get a degree, if nothing else to say that I did it.

There is no need of going into debt for it, as I can enroll in a college where I can enroll only in one or two classes per semester and only pay for those; tuition would be around €98 per class.

But I know myself. I like to work alone. I have no patience to deal with group tasks. Never could. I don't mingle, I don't socialize. And I really have something against stuck up people, be them be teachers or fellow students. I'd get in trouble really fast.

I guess that is it. What do you say?

My partner is currently job hunting and I've got to know some very ugly behaviours from interviewers and train staff, towards the people applying for those jobs.

From snarky attitudes, to blattant lies and attempts on trying to withold information or ignore legal impositions and rights, these companies are power tripping and the people in them are deranged.

Well, I happen to have a job and am fairly aware of my rights, so I'm considering applying for these interviews and throw some poison back at this people.