I am similar, except one thing.

I have separate hdd with offline windows 10 installation for gaming. It never gets internet access, never gets updated. Everything totally offline. I dont have a stomache to deal with Wine.

I just use Lutris now and it all works, there's no more screwing around with Wine for me; if you had problems with Wine in the past, I suggest you try Lutris, you might find it is no longer a hassle.

If you use Steam, it's all automatic and transparent in the background, but I don't use Steam for everything.

how do you get those games onto the machine if it's offline these days? Unless you exclusively buy off GOG, and download the offline version...

You could look into LTSC, it's about as close to W7 as you can get in terms of user control (e.g. no forced updates) and still enjoy semi-recent Windows features like D3D12 ""Agile SDK"" (lol)

Are there games you want to play, that won't allow you to start the game if you don't have an active internet connection?

Don't know about him, but if a game requires an internet connection at any point, it's not a game I want to play.

Call it what you want. Russia is switching from export to internal consumption. Getting something like 30 years mortgage on house, was unheard of until recently. If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?

Because you cannot eat money, or live in money.

A country can QE forever, but this will not put food on the table or shoes on people's feet. If people want those things, they must either be produced or imported. QE doesn't help with either of those. Production is a physical act, not a monetary one.

And if you want to import from somewhere, then you need that nation's currency to do so. Which means that in turn you must have produced something to exchange for that currency.

They have more than enough food to eat (except of course things that don't exactly grow there). They have surplus in energy and fertiliser.

What they would lack in the short and medium term are high tech products like chips, advanced medicine.

Given enough time and drive any energy and food surplus society can reinvent the high tech stuff.

Of course it doesn't mean they would, seeing how corrupt the whole ruling class is. But it is theoretically possible for them to be totally independent of the rest of the world. They are blessed with too many natural resources to not be able to do it.

There's also a question of trajectory of the high tech stuff vs the rest of the world. I don't see any reasons for it not to lag more and more behind.

Especially because lagging more and more behind is exactly what happened to the Union.

Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.

> Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.

It would, if USA was pursuing QE with already-high inflation.

It absolutely, definitely does. And it's a shame that we (I'm a United Statesian) never examine our policies from this perspective. We focus a lot on solving money problems (inflation, inequity, etc), but never consider how our solutions to these issues affect production, which is what matters most. If we solve inflation and kill productivity, what have we gained?

> Which means that in turn you must have produced something to exchange for that currency.

You mean stuff like oil, wheat, fertilizer or aluminium? Yeah, there's no way Russia will be able to manage that. /s

Russia produces lots of these things as you're saying, and as long as they continue to do so they'll be fundamentally fine. I don't think QE will help though.

> Which means that in turn you must have produced something to exchange for that currency.

and Russia still perfectly sells oil and gas.

Yes exactly. But I don't think QE will help.

why do you think Russia is doing any QE and why they would need it?..

I don't know anything about whether or not Russia is doing any QE. I was responding to the question: "If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?" by explaining why, even if they could do QE forever, it would probably not help.

Because that won't help them...Russia's is an "emerging economy" (or was before the war), basically all they do is selling commodities...but that's not the issue here, the issue is how it is governed...this country sold Alaska for $140 million and now are trying to get their hands on land the size of Washington for already 100k lost soldiers (and counting)...so historically a disaster of governance with the luck of its natural resources

> If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years

Who did that? US did 6 years starting in 2008 due to the Great Recession and less than 2 starting in 2020 in response to the unusually deep, if quite short, pandemic recession, and the latter of those, because it wasn’t tapered quickly enough for the circumstances, triggered the highest inflation seen in a long time.

> why not Russia?

Russia can do QE as long as it wants, but QE is just self-inflicted inflation. It is a band-aid for incipient deflation, which isn’t a problem Russia has.

Because the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world. This won't work if you're an isolated economy with a barely traded currency.

Some people argue if the US were to lose its reserve currency status, this is likely how it would start. Nations doing QE, against a tightening dollar, and starting to seek doing international trade in currencies other than dollars. Russia is doing this now. China is also seeking to do the same with Saudi Arabia (https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/dollar-...).

Sounds like "policy tricks."

> if West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?

Is it the West or specifically the US. United States can do this because of the dollar's role in global economy: essentially everyone else will be paying for it.

Obviously, Russia can't do that. But might you have had something else in mind, since you've said "West" and not specifically "the US"?

Because people want dollars

I use pure Alsa on virtual machines. Image is stripped down so much it barely runs XServer.

Another reason is future proofing. PipeWire is yet another audio protocol, and may not be around in 5 or 10 years.

Not everything has PipeWire. Some flavours of linux has support for 10 years. Even some of my desktop boxes still use Pulseaudio.

And finally what PipeWire actually offers? If you need to dump audio into output, ALSA seems sufficient.

From what I've read PW's official stance is to keep using the existing protocols such as PA and JACK. PW comes with a PA-compatible server, replacement JACK client libraries and an ALSA plugin. So it supports clients from all three at the same time. Precisely so software does not need to be rewritten (I imagine).

Companies may ask, but usually people quit and productivity drops.

For me return to office would be 60% pay cut. Good luck finding another developer :)

Everyone thinks they're a special snowflake, but the reality is that 75% of devs are easily replaced

Most non-trivial software projects require at least 3 months of onboarding to be fully productive. Hiring takes even in the best of cases about as long.

I would not consider that to be "easily" even for mid-tier devs.

Is it really? I feel like I can easily tell who is easy to replace or who is not in my team.

If you can't tell if you are a special snowflake or not, you can check if your company behaves you like one. Getting promotions, extra RSUs or very high bonuses should be an indicator

I think it's more like: everyone is aware how lengthy a process it is to replace them.

Everywhere I went companies had bold plans regarding hiring, but somehow never managed to realise them.

Maybe now with all the layoffs… but a year ago finding a good dev was very hard and expensive.

OSS is business as any other, there is no need to take it personally. Be happy you discovered toxic customer before even signing contract.

Benchmarks like this are pointless without thermal info. Frequency (and possibly core allocation) are decided based on CPU temperature.

You obviously care about your friend, but I do not think you really understand his position.

For some people company is "nice to have", something like owning a sports car. Maintaining friendship costs energy and has real risks (being used, emotional blackmail...). And benefits for short, obese, bald guy are really not that great.

Even more, it has to work completely offline! And if it makes ANY network calls, it is a huge red flag for some!