Greetings, and to begin, I have been diagnosed with Asperger’s and also have OCD. Recently, I have been feeling like I need to open a discussion on something that may be going on with me at this time and may need someone to talk to about it. For starters, I have been thinking about setting up a koala community on here that was originally going to focus on koalas and the dangers they are facing, and conservation of their habitat.
But at this time, I feel that I might cause it to include more since I began feeling very concerned as well as anxious about stuff I have been hearing about such Driverless EVs, Quantum Computers, Privacy Evading Stuff, Musk Brain Implants, Dream Reading Tech, etc. that could be related to the hype it has.
And I’m also currently feeling concerned about what I had been hearing about Windows 11 having Adware stuff with it even though I currently have Windows 10 Home on my desktop computer as well as my laptop, and Windows 10 Pro on the other two computers that I use like servers. Many years ago, I used to have Windows XP Home and Windows XP Pro which was my comfort zone for many years, and since I’d been through Windows 7 to Windows 10 now, I had been using software like Open Shell to get my start menu and task bar to be similar to Windows 7 and perhaps Windows XP again.
Another thing that is becoming a worry for me is I’m reading about Microsoft were trying to kill off Paint, but a public outcry had stopped that for now. But it appears that they are getting rid of WordPaw which I have used in the past for notes and writing. It seems to be related to the Qbot malware operation using a DLL hijacking flaw in Windows 10 WordPad to infect computers, though I don’t understand why they don’t just patch that flaw. At least, I have found LibreOffice to use which is free and OpenSource and finding that I like it.
In that past, I used to be in a program called Flying Colors to work on artwork and stuff even though it was 256 colors, but now I’m kind of stuck in Paint for that stuff and worried if something were to happen to that. And I did find LibreWolf for a browser that I had added a number of extensions to for privacy and stuff, though I’m worried about what Google is doing to try to break that with Adware from Youtube and trying to make it hard to watch videos via Invidious.
It currently has me wondering why don’t they just fix and add any new improvements to existing programs and stuff instead of deprecating and obsoleting stuff that will be missed. I just has me feeling there is likely stuff which should just be preserved and kept instead of being tossed out, and I probably can find a bunch of examples which could make you wonder WTH are we walking away from and why.
Now, to move on from technology, I have also been finding ways to try to help me cope, such as finding long sound recordings of forest sounds, heavy rain and thunder, the gentle flow of a stream, the sounds of waves crashing onto a beach, .etc since I find more comfortable being deep in the wilderness. And I also have been focusing more on story writing about kids who go into the forest and end up in a medieval like fantasy world while in the process of escaping from strange and scary tech.
Right now, I feel like could be crossed into a number of communities here like c/technology, c/autism, c/fantasy, c/nostalgia, c/technophobia, etc., but I’m not sure if any of the existing communities would allow this topic to exist in them, so I’m stuck thinking to just have it under general discussion, at least until that I can get the banner and stuff finished to get my idea of a community started here.
Short on time here, so I’ll just throw some things at you:
Don’t be technophobic. Our technological advancements are a beautiful wonder to marvel at. It’s what we usually do with it that’s questionable. And win11 isn’t that much worse than win11. Except the startmenu-changes. I hated it so much, I ended up coding my own startmenu 😔
As for paint, you might wanna give “gimp” a look. If that’s an overkill for your needs, try “paint.net”
That’s Microsoft. I’m a pro and have all their titles and certifications, but sometimes I just wanna punch them. Instead of adding just new features, they love to ban access to the old ones. Horrible design-decisions.
Just avoid the “home” versions. And maybe buy a cheap raspberry pi and install pihole there. The end of all ads, tracking and spying.
LibreOffice already was the best replacement for wordpad. No need to look back. One should never rely (or adapt to) ms-tools. They often just die.
For your aural pleasures, go check Mynoise.net You’ll love it. Even for free it’s totally beautiful and a labour-of-love.
As for your community-idea: I’m the wrong one to advice anything.
I’m a huge fan of gimp and use it a lot, but it’s not super friendly to someone not familiar with it and may be overkill for OP’s purposes. Krita and paint.net might be more to their preference. But of course, the nice thing is that they’re all free and you can just try them to see what you like!
Yeah, I have not been in gimp yet and it may be overkill for my purposes.
+1 to MyNoise.net. I use it everyday and it’s really the best website out there. So much that I’ve set up a monthly donation to the site owner.
Me too 😊 And there’s an app!
It appears the app is only in the Google Play Store for anyone who is using an Android device, not in the Microsoft Store for those running Windows Something on their computer.
Nah i think they didn’t do an MS-app. But on a desktop the website works fine, so there isn’t really a reason. If you absolutely need one, there surely are apps to containerize websites as an “app”.
I have started checking that site out and it seems very good. I’m currently trying Primeval Forest, even though the water stream in it sounds more like a raging waterfall than a trickling water.
And yeah, I prefer to speak to the right one to advice anything regarding my community-idea(s).
I’m not exactly being technophobic here, I’m referring to technological advancements that I feel are very questionable while I look back at what technological wonders we used to have in the past, and wonder why they were depreciated and obsoleted instead of made better. I’m thinking of what we had that was analog vs digital. For one thing, we had some good old OSes such as Windows XP and I wonder why it wasn’t just updated to work with newer computer improvements and security patched against hackers. It feels like we could be at Windows XP SP8 going into Windows SP9 now at this time and age. And I did real that someone at Microsoft did said that Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows, but with Windows 11 being out now, makes you wonder wasn’t Windows 10 supposed to be the last version of Windows, what gives.
Also, it should be noted that at least two of my four computers that I have which have Windows 10 on them states “This PC doesn’t currently meet the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11” in Windows Updates, which I believe is due to their ridiculous system requirements.
Well, there are some (good) reasons. From different perspectives:
sometimes you’ll end up at your own restrictions from “back then”. Where you can’t fix or add anything but need to rebuild the foundation.
a simple monetary reason. Just giving updates for free to people who bought a license 15yrs ago, is not a sustainable business-model.
technological advancements you couldn’t predict. Like TPM and whatnot.
simple marketing for clueless people. “I’ll better get the newest macos, windows still is at winXP” or the likes.
I’m not fan of it either. Win10->win11 wasn’t much of a change. Except things most people don’t care about (but need more modern hardware for) and the horribly nasty startmenu. For gamers there are some nice things, but those could’ve been a patch, like you say.