First off, that's not the orb's fault. Denethor's Palantir was hacked by Sauron. If a Maia wants to hack your wizardry equipment, then they're going to get in, orb or not. Any threat model that tries to defend from the fucking Dark Lord himself is completely bonkers. The only way to protect yourself from threat actors with that much power is to not make yourself interesting enough to be worth their time (see the Blue Wizards).
Second, Denethor wasn't even a wizard. If he was, he may have been able to recognize Sauron's influence and avoid pondering. But again, it's ridiculous to think you can defend yourself from those kind of threats.
I'm sick of people romantizing life before the orbs. I'm old enough to remember what that was like, and let me tell you: it sucked. Yes, it's true that it's easy to get hooked on doompondering and neglect your duties. And yes, it's true that sometimes demons can possess you through the orb. But the orbs have advanced wizardry more than any other invention since the wizard staff. We can't stay stuck in the past.
It depends on the role. My first job was doing manual QE on Windows, and knowing Linux wasn't much help at the time, but it did help me transition to a coding role in the same company a year later. I'm now doing platform engineering at a major tech company, but that has a high barrier to entry, which I suspect is the case for most roles that are Linux-focused. If you're trying to get your foot in the door, I think you should look at job profiles for low barrier to entry roles (e.g. tech support) and try to work your way up.
Probably because the individual engineers working on Takeout care about doing a good job, even though the higher-ups would prefer something half-assed. I work for a major tech company and I've been in that same situation before, e.g. when I was working on GDPR compliance. I read the GDPR and tried hard to comply with the spirit of the law, but it was abundantly clear everyone above me hadn't read it and only cared about doing the bare minimum.
There's no financial incentive for them to make is easy to leave Google. Takeout only exists to comply with regulations (e.g. digital markets act), and as usual, they're doing the bare minimum to not get sued.
On the contrary, continuous duck exposure has inoculated me to bird flu, ensuring I will be one of the few survivors of the next pandemic. Out of the ruins, I will lead my duck army to conquer the wasteland. Their quacks will herald your doom.
Can't tell if you're serious, but Maggie doesn't have rabies, the poster is just worded weirdly. It's saying the dog has a rabies vaccination tag on her collar.
That's basically the Boltzmann brain thought experiment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain