My understanding is that the victory was too decisive to really argue over. He can’t really cry foul or cheating effectively since it was his damn government running them. He just… Doesn’t really have a good way to fight it. Rather than looking like a petulant toddler *cough*Trump*cough*, he bowed out and accepted defeat.

If you want to use it for fun, someone suggested a Luanti server, and you can also find a lot of really easy to set up game servers using a tool like LinuxGSM. Most games they support require very minimal configuration if any.

If you want to use it for something educational, depending on the age range of the kids, you might be able to use it to teach computing skills. For example, you could set it up as a pubnix/tilde where kids can get shell access, basically a remote connection to the command line, and you or someone can set up some services for them. Pubnixes tend to provide things like chat over IRC, something like a forum maybe over something a lot like Usenet, a webserver where users can host their own webpage they had to design themselves, less commonly but good for the kids would be voice chat with something like Mumble, they often have an array of programming tools, collaborative tools like calendars or something akin to Google Docs… It could be a good place for technically inclined kids to learn about computers, servers, Linux, programming, basic web development, etc. All the services could be kept internal to keep strangers away from the kids, maybe remote access strictly through accounts only given in person to members. If you’re interested in something like that, I might be able to help. Feel free to DM me or check out the Tildeverse to get an idea of what sort of things tildes and pubnixes offer their users.

Don’t worry, with all these data centers going up, they’ll have enough hardware power to track the rest of us, too, not just the women.

I never really had any issues with mine. I did have it die after about two years when it just stopped charging and/or turning on, never was quite sure where the issue was. But I bought it refurbished and on a steep discount, so I felt I got my money’s worth out of it at least and that that was just an inherent risk of cheap refurbished tech. My only real complaint was that it managed the battery really poorly when I tried to put Linux on it, but it ended up being useful to keep one Windows machine around for the occasional one off use, so even that worked out for me in the long run. As someone who’d prefer to run Linux on everything I can, I have to admit I had like zero problems with it until it died.

But if I had to use one with Windows 11 on it, I’d rather learn to live on my smartphone.

I used one in school a couple years ago, and I can’t deny it was pretty great for it. I like to handwrite my notes, and any math-heavy assignments are way easier to just handwrite, so I used it so all my notes and homework and textbooks could be saved digitally and automatically get backed up to cloud storage. I still use it occasionally as a super light and portable laptop occasionally, but I use a desktop far more often these days.

From my understanding, the biggest issue is that just about every smartphone is closed hardware with no real info on how to make drivers, so it’s extremely difficult to get hardware support.

Cue the classic Arthur meme, “do you really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?”

How about for money? How many grifters pushed their own protective supplements? You think pharma maybe would pay some astroturfers to push the ivermectin that didn’t do dick for anyone that didn’t have worms already because it’s fucking dewormer? How many antivaxxers made up bullshit about it just like they do every other vaccine? How many wealthy people down played everything and helped push lies so their workers would get the fuck back in the office/factory? How many people just said some stupid shit and doubled down to protect their ego when called out?

Like here’s the real issue. You’ve put no real thought at all into why someone might lie about it, as evidenced by the fact that you can only conceive of it being state actors while I came up with all those people incentivized to lie off the top of my head. And then, after putting no real effort into reflection or anything, you look around at all the people who can come up with reasons you’re wrong and claim it feels like a cult.

Probably more to do with the fact that there is, at most, a tiny grain of truth at the core, but it’s wrapped in a mountain of bullshit.