pythonmegapixel

That is a very misleading statement. The vast majority of Linux systems do not make you link an online account. In Linux Mint, that popup doesn't appear automatically  - to get it at all you have to find it manually or launch a Gnome application such as Evolution which actually uses that functionality before it will appear in the first place. And even in this screenshot you have an unambiguous Skip button which makes it go away and not come back.

That is a very misleading statement. The vast majority of Linux systems do not make you link an online account. In Linux Mint, that popup doesn't appear automatically  - to get it at all you have to find it manually or launch a Gnome application such as Evolution which actually uses that functionality before it will appear in the first place. And even in this screenshot you have an unambiguous Skip button which makes it go away and not come back.

That is a very misleading statement. The vast majority of Linux systems do not make you link an online account. In Linux Mint, that popup doesn't appear automatically  - to get it at all you have to find it manually or launch a Gnome application such as Evolution which actually uses that functionality before it will appear in the first place. And even in this screenshot you have an unambiguous Skip button which makes it go away and not come back.

There are two problems here.
 
Firstly, the file name extension (.txt, .pdf etc) is a description of what should be in the file, but changing it doesn't actually affect what is in the file. Think of it as having a box of apples with "apples" written on it. I could cross out "apples" and write "oranges" instead, but doing that doesn't change apples into oranges. In this case, when you change the file extension from PDF to TXT, the file itself is still in PDF format.
 
Secondly, PDF format files aren't readable as text, which is why Python is throwing errors - it is expecting to see Unicode characters but the bytes it is reading from the file are not valid Unicode characters.
 
There are Python libraries available that allow you to read PDF files though so I suggest you use one of them.
 
If all you want to do is copy the files, use the builtin shutil module
 https://docs.python.org/3/library/shutil.html

There are two problems here.
 
Firstly, the file name extension (.txt, .pdf etc) is a description of what should be in the file, but changing it doesn't actually affect what is in the file. Think of it as having a box of apples with "apples" written on it. I could cross out "apples" and write "oranges" instead, but doing that doesn't change apples into oranges. In this case, when you change the file extension from PDF to TXT, the file itself is still in PDF format.
 
Secondly, PDF format files aren't readable as text, which is why Python is throwing errors - it is expecting to see Unicode characters but the bytes it is reading from the file are not valid Unicode characters.
 
There are Python libraries available that allow you to read PDF files though so I suggest you use one of them.
 
If all you want to do is copy the files, use the builtin shutil module
 https://docs.python.org/3/library/shutil.html

This seems quite meaningless to me. Putting the CPU in the slot is only one part of building the computer, and the brand of CPU doesn't realistically affect what it's like to use, no?

This seems quite meaningless to me. Putting the CPU in the slot is only one part of building the computer, and the brand of CPU doesn't realistically affect what it's like to use, no?

Banned for not thinking of a ban reason

Although that does entail giving money to Elon Musk. And it's rather a lot of money, too.

Although that does entail giving money to Elon Musk. And it's rather a lot of money, too.

I still maintain that the actual solution to this problem is high quality alternatives to driving,  and offering strong incentives to use them.
 
Until we live on a planet with unlimited space and 100% renewable energy generation,  cars will always be suboptimal from an efficiency perspective.
 
As with all such things it's a trade-off, and I'll be the first to acknowledge that cars have fantastic advantages. But I believe, for example, that those North American suburbs where you have to get in the car to do almost anything have got the balance way wrong. 

I think OP's question was probably adequately answered by the first 4 replies, before all that nonsense about Linux being the "one way" to have an acceptable computing experience....

The equivalent to stealing cable in the internet space is... um... stealing cable (or ADSL if you use that), surely?
 
Ad blocking would be the equivalent of turning off the TV while the ads are on.

So by this logic, any high school kid who has been bored and messed around with the Google Chrome DOM inspector tool to edit the text on websites as a joke has infringed copyright? Give me a break.

So by this logic, any high school kid who has been bored and messed around with the Google Chrome DOM inspector tool to edit the text on websites as a joke has infringed copyright? Give me a break.

The equivalent to stealing cable in the internet space is... um... stealing cable (or ADSL if you use that), surely?
 
Ad blocking would be the equivalent of turning off the TV while the ads are on.

To be fair, another important thing has changed from that 100-year-old game. In the past, the content producer was paid for the ads whether people paid attention to them or not. Now, they only get paid if people view them and click.

To be fair, another important thing has changed from that 100-year-old game. In the past, the content producer was paid for the ads whether people paid attention to them or not. Now, they only get paid if people view them and click.

I said it wasn't cheap enough to be considered in the same segment as Moto Gs and Xiaomi Redmis. What I meant by that is people looking at these ultra budget devices are unlikely to be considering SE as an alternative. That doesn't mean the SE is bad, or that it's too expensive for what it is, it just means it isn't the same.
 
It was a purely factual comparison of the two "ecosystems" and not meant as a criticism of either.
 
I appreciate that my phrasing might have been unclear, but now I have clarified my position, I see no reason for anyone to keep nitpicking my original post.

I said it wasn't cheap enough to be considered in the same segment as Moto Gs and Xiaomi Redmis. What I meant by that is people looking at these ultra budget devices are unlikely to be considering SE as an alternative. That doesn't mean the SE is bad, or that it's too expensive for what it is, it just means it isn't the same.
 
It was a purely factual comparison of the two "ecosystems" and not meant as a criticism of either.
 
I appreciate that my phrasing might have been unclear, but now I have clarified my position, I see no reason for anyone to keep nitpicking my original post.

Apologies if the tone of my post made it appear that I was complaining - I really wasn't - but if you have to put phrases that never appear in the thing you are quoting in quotation marks to prove your point, it's a good sign that you are embellishing what the writer is saying too much and assuming they mean something they actually don't. The words "too expensive" do not appear in my post, because I do not actually believe the SE is too expensive for what it is - if your budget is $400 then the iPhone SE is reasonable value for money and by some metrics is better than its Android competitors.
 
What I do believe, however, is that the iPhone SE isn't really in the right price bracket to be considered as a budget phone, when Android manufacturers are churning out devices for sub $200. I personally know many people who find these perfectly reasonable for their needs, but also plenty of people who don't and would like to spend more money. Both of those positions are fine. Other than that, I did not make any judgement about the quality of these cheap Android phones - again, that is embellishment on your part.

The equivalent to stealing cable in the internet space is... um... stealing cable (or ADSL if you use that), surely?
 
Ad blocking would be the equivalent of turning off the TV while the ads are on.

I'm not sure I understand this. Is your 2020 SE already unsuitable for use (in which case it's lasted less than 2 years, which is quite poor so I'm not sure why you'd buy another one from the same range)?
 
The (current) iPhone SE isn't really cheap by Android standards anyway, with a starting price of $400. Unless the price is vastly reduced it won't be able to compete with budget ranges like the Moto G or some of the Redmi (which still give you a perfectly reasonable phone experience nowadays) or with the huge numbers of good condition approximately 2-3 year old flagship Android models that are sold quite inexpensively by people who buy them on contract and then get a "free upgrade" (meaning they continue to pay the same extortionate monthly price and get a newer model) after a few years
 
 I think a lot of people like the small screen on the SE.  And (I know this is kinda cliche to say now) bezels at the edge of the screen are really a necessity. I know the trend is to make them thinner and thinner, so anything that doesn't look 'edge to edge' looks outdated, but there are lots of functional sacrifices being made with this.
 
You mean the iPhone 6 aesthetic; arguably even the iPhone 4 aesthetic.. they'd been making phones that look like that for much longer than the 8!

The equivalent to stealing cable in the internet space is... um... stealing cable (or ADSL if you use that), surely?
 
Ad blocking would be the equivalent of turning off the TV while the ads are on.

So by this logic, any high school kid who has been bored and messed around with the Google Chrome DOM inspector tool to edit the text on websites as a joke has infringed copyright? Give me a break.