How much time to learn

[tomcat]

and be prepared to hear the truth, not lies.

It's a pain. Sometimes it is very painful.

[Ricardo2020]

I find that, the more I avoid the crapware, the less painful things are. I also find I have more time to do other things (like learning how to use Blender!) I find that my digital equipment runs better when secured and has all the useless marketing doggerel blocked.

I am not agianst selling a product, and having worked in commercial broadcasting during the early years of my engineering career, I understand time sale and such. I also understand the cost. Back then, adverts actually paid for the cost of broadcasting.

This is not true today. Advertisers do not make any money off their ads. The brokers who sell the ad space make the money. The advertisers trust them to put their ads in front of eyeballs belonging to those folks who might click through to learn more and maybe even buy their hawkings to offset the broker bill with their accounting department.

The click through rarely happens. The ads are mostly annoying, in the way, untruthful, and laden with harmful code since most are not vetted before placement. The brokers do not care, the ads are too many, and people all over are so gullible and not paying attention that it works out for the brokers.

They do not even care if bots are the only eyeballs, since anyone with any intellect blocks this crap for safety and time saving. It runs down batteries. It gets in the way. It takes up time. It serves no real purpose other than to concentrate wealth among the brokers, who usually are part of the antisocial cesspool. Again, fondle your "smart" slab much? Ding, ding!

When this forum was established, spam and scam had not taken off. The coders who built the template we are using here did not foresee what the damage would be let alone build in provisions which would guard against it. Today, things have changed. However, taking advantages of these changes will necessitate creating a new forum.

This sux balls because the entire community will be forced to move to the new home. Links to the old one will persist and newbies will become more confused as AI search bots continually burp up polluted answers, most of these being ads. Until folks wean themselves from the crapware infested gadgets and the places these godforsaken things take them to, do not look for an easy solution, even if one exists. Today, things do not look good. Tomorrow, they will surely become much worse. That's how stupid most folks really are.

And I am being optimistic...

Now, about getting those Blender plugins to work right... 0100111100010101000011111, etc... C:\>_ Oh, wait. Wrong machine! SUDO apt get