Eugenia

To each other, of course not. But to others, yes.

We’re talking about people living there, not tourists.

Sorry, as a Greek-American (currently in Greece), I disagree with most of the people here. When you’re part of a new country, you need to be able to do your business with the authorities in the official language. For that, some level of understanding the native language is required. In fact, to get any passport from any country, you need to have a B1-level understanding of that country’s language. So yes, being in a country, you need to know the basics. And if you don’t, then make sure you learn the basics within 6 months, in order to be able to live there without issues. I don’t see that as xenophobia, I see it as common sense.

I moved to Greece from the US this year with my French husband. He doesn’t speak Greek. I can tell you, it has been a nightmare for him doing paperwork, and I need to go with him EVERYWHERE in any government office in order to get setup. It wasn’t pretty in the first few months, he was full of anxiety and he wouldn’t leave the house without me.

Also, I worked in Germany in my youth, for a few months. I couldn’t understand most of what was said (although I could pick up a few words, but certainly couldn’t speak back). It was a nightmare. There were no free programs back then to learn the language, and so I went there without any preparation. Today, I wouldn’t have done it that way. I would first learn the language in some basic form (today there are apps to do that), and then move there.

Depends what you mean by “nice”. Nice as in “genuinely good” person, or nice as a “nice behavior towards others”? There’s a difference, because in the latter one, it can involve not being honest, just so you can appear “nice”. So I’m not “nicely socially behaving” most of the time, I’m instead hammering with facts (without being aggressive). My underlying reason for being like that is because: 1. I’m not diplomatic at all, I wasn’t born with that gene it seems, 2. I don’t believe I help the situation if I just be nice for the sake of being nice. I feel more useful when I’m straight up, clear as water, without being combative or aggressive. If that makes me not nice because I’m not sugarcoating with socially expected bullshit, then I’m not nice. If that makes me nice because I try to help and my intent is pure, then sure, I’m nice.

DOS - Win3.1 - Win95/98 - BeOS - Red Hat Linux - WinXP - Mac OS X - WinVista/7/8 - MacOS X - Win10 - Debian Linux (and staying with it).

As someone who lives in Greece, 10 minutes from the beach, I actually agree with you. I never liked the Greek heat. I like the sea when there’s not many people in it though.

Eat bread (celiac). And riding a bike…

I’d say that it was the 80s, because most types of art peaked in 1984 (in terms of cultural significance).

I dislike modern pop’s mixing of the human voice, mixed so high compared to the rest, to the point where you can’t hear instruments anymore. The music is often there just for accompanyment, elevetor music. I rather have chillwave, where everything is one big reverb trick pony, than having to hear people screaming.

Woman here. I met my husband on IRC, on a channel about BeOS, 24 years ago. So don’t knock the internet or the bar as potential ways to find someone. If you’re meant to be together, it can happen anywhere.

In December of 1994, in Greece, finally my parents agreed to get me a computer, as I was finishing college (was studying to be a computer programmer). I come from a very poor family, so it took some convincing. I ordered a modest 486 DX-40 Mhz, with 4 MB of RAM (10 months later it had to be updated to 8 MB in order to run Win95), 4x CD-ROM, 1.44 floppy drive, and a 420 MB Conner HDD. It had a Cirrus Logic graphics card (which I later upgraded to an S3), and a plain soundblaster sound card. The monitor was an 800x600 14" CRT monitor, and I think I also got a joystick with it too. I ran Win3.1 originally, and DOS. I was programming mainly in Turbo Pascal, and dBase III.

The only “computer” we had at home before that, was an Atari 2600, that I bought my brother as a gift, in a yard sale in 1991, Germany. Already extremely outdated by that time, but that was the only one I could afford (I was in Germany for 8 months in early 1990s, before I went to college back in Greece, working menial jobs: janitor, kitchen help).

I installed a bunch of shareware games found on magazines when I got the 486, so I got viruses a couple of times too because of that (Greek PC magazines at the time weren’t as careful as they should have been). I had no access to the internet or BBS, you see. It had to be through magazines, especially since almost no one else in my small town had a computer at the time to share software with.

That’s the computer I had when I moved to the UK in late 1996, to go work as a programmer there. I got paid well there, so I upgraded a few times, particularly the graphics card (at one point I had a voodoo SLI).

When I got married and left for the US in 2001, I had a dual Celeron at 333 Mhz, 128 MB RAM, and an nVidia TNT2 Ultra.

I got a cellphone for the first time in 2003 I think, some Nokia ones I think. I was writing tech reviews online, so companies were sending me loaners to review. However, my phone usage was spotty, since I was on a pay-as-you-go (with limited, or no data plan) for about 10 years. It took the 2010s for me to get a family plan, with enough data. I did get my hands on the first iphone though, and the first android too (my husband was part of the original android team at the time, at Google). These days, I’m back in Greece as of the beginning of this year, and I run Murena e/OS, the de-googled version of Android that is privacy-focused (based on LineageOS).

Being a geek, I have tried many linux distros (I’ve been using Linux since 1998, on and off). Curiosity was what was driving my usage of it.

In the early 2000s, when I used to write for OSNews.com (second only to Slashdot for OS tech news back then), I really didn’t find any distro polished enough to be a daily driver for me. Red Hat was big at the time, but even when ubuntu came around, it was still not as polished as it is today. These days, I’m using Debian-Testing mostly, however I concede that the best distro for newbies (and for me really, I’m too old now to be tinkering) is Linux Mint (flagship version). Mint really is well-thought out for daily usage. It might not have the latest tech innovation in it, or be bold with its choices, but it just works 99% of the time.

As time has gone by, and seen corporations taking everything for themselves (via enshittification), I have stopped using Linux because it was the geeky/cool thing to do, but I started using it because it frees me from all the spyware, and corporation agendas. Back in the 2000s, when I was a news editor for foss matters, I was mostly siding with the BSD license side of things (and mit/apache/ etc). I felt that the GPL was too restrictive, and that we should allow innovation take its course as it wants to. Now, that I’ve lost all my faith in corporations doing the right (smart) thing, I’m now a GPL3/AGPL type of a gal. The more “restrictively open” something can be, the better. Don’t allow anyone to manipulate you, or use you, or take away your data etc.

My dad would always smoke at home. It was what it was, standard in Greece at the time, so what could I do? Ask him not to smoke so I could get beaten up? So I survived by shutting up and leaving home after 18.

The Matrix (1999). The one existential movie for all. Then, it’s probably “Serenity” (2005). Then, probably Galaxy Quest (1999).

So basically you’re saying that you would prefer the “recommendation” system, and not the Reverse-Chronological system. You would give up equality and fairness in posting, just so you could conveniently avoid 2 seconds of scrolling to find the posts down the line.

It’s the recommendation system that destroyed FB Pages, and Instagram for photographers and artists. Suddenly, the system found they were not worthy of recommending their posts. Careers were lost.

I personally avoid AI recommendation engines like the plague. Lemmy/Reddit’s voting system is as far as I go.

Yeah, I have had in the past, but it’s a pain to find roms with the right version of mame. At least that’s how it was back in the day.

I like Ltris, Gweled, and Frozen-Bubble. I like simple games. I wish there was a good pacman for Linux too.

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I don’t like short form video, or ultra-personalization. I prefer reverse-chron posts, and content that is useful. That’s why I use Mastodon and PixelFed, and even long form youtube (via my Sub page). I avoid IG these days, or anything that’s pure recommendations. So if they ban tiktok, I won’t be that unhappy…

I think the last decade has about 10-15 classic songs (e.g. rolling in the deep, get lucky etc), but that’s nothing compared to the '80s, where the classic songs measure upwards to 700. There is cultural stagnation in the last 10 years, particularly after the death of the indie music as a vehicle for innovation (i.e. the Pitchfork golden era of 2008 to 2012 where indies became the next hot thing). I could say the same for movies. For me, the highest point of cultural significance, was 1984 (more precisely, the last 3 months of 1983, the whole of 1984, and the first 6 months of 1985, ending with the Live Aid). That’s the most classic, highest point IMHO for both music and movies, where pretty much what was getting released, was becoming an instant classic. Basically, most of it was good, rather than bad with exceptions. There are a few articles online talking about the same thing as I did here, and there’s also a couple of books, all recognizing 1984 as THE year of culture. Today, we’re running on fumes.