Onihikage

Onihikage , 1 day ago

As a fellow virgin, if you actually do want to not be a virgin, but see yourself as having "failed" then think deeply on what the reason is.

First of all, if you've "failed" then what did you actually try that failed? Do you constantly take steps to meet new people and find friends, male and female, whether in hobbies or online or anywhere? If not, why not? If you have, and therefore have lots of friends you speak with regularly, are you recruiting them to help you find a romantic partner? Meeting lots of people, making friends, and then asking those friends for help is a great way to accomplish almost anything. It's much easier early in life, but it's never impossible.

If you have taken steps to meet lots of people (and I mean a lot of people), but none of them or their single-and-looking friends wanted to date you, then did they give reasons? What is it about you that they don't like? Are you taking care of yourself? Maintaining good personal hygiene? Dressing well? Do your peers find you unpleasant to be around? Are you simply boring? If you meet lots of people and all of them reject you, there's likely something you're not doing that you need to be doing. Work on yourself to be someone that people want to be around.

If any of what I've said here is relevant to you, even if it's unpleasant to think about, it's very important to be consciously aware of it so that you can accept that your current reality is one you've chosen, consciously or unconsciously... and that you can choose differently.

I'm one year younger than you, also virgin guy who would maybe like to have a partner, but through introspection and years of learning shit on the internet, I'm aware of the likely reasons I haven't gotten one yet - I just don't meet people, and when I do, even when we get along, I tend to fall out of touch immediately. I believe I likely have undiagnosed and unmedicated ADHD along with some steep but situational social anxiety, both of which I know have and will continue to keep me from forming and maintaining many social connections that I otherwise could have, which I could be leveraging to find people to date.

So, I recognize what my stumbling blocks are, and that if I decide I really do want to find love and get laid, I have to deal with those stumbling blocks. For me, that will involve speaking to a head doctor and learning more precisely how my brain works and what strategies I can use to overcome those blocks. It's not about fixing me, it's about being able to be more me. But until I do that, I accept that my current status of "virgin, but maybe wants to change that" is there because I have, in some way, chosen up to this point not to change it.

If you figure out what your stumbling blocks are, or even if you haven't, tell a close and trustworthy friend or family member about where you're at, where you want to be, and how you feel about it. They might have options, or be able to help you take whatever steps you need to be where you want to be. If you feel like you just can't make yourself do the thing, get someone else to give you a kick in the ass.

Onihikage , 2 days ago

For some reason the article leaves out that this firmware is specifically for Intel chipsets. If you've got an AMD CPU, you're not affected.

Eclypsium Automata, our automated binary analysis system, has identified a high impact vulnerability (CVE-2024-0762 with a reported CVSS of 7.5) in the Phoenix SecureCore UEFI firmware that runs on multiple families of Intel Core desktop and mobile processors.

[...]

However, Phoenix Technologies has subsequently acknowledged that the same issue applies to multiple versions of its SecureCore firmware that runs on Intel processor families including AlderLake, CoffeeLake, CometLake, IceLake, JasperLake, KabyLake, MeteorLake, RaptorLake, RocketLake, and TigerLake. These are Intel codenames for multiple generations of Intel Core mobile and desktop processors.

Source

Onihikage , 6 days ago

Bazzite, from Universal Blue, based on Fedora Atomic Desktops. Immutable-style distro which means critical OS files and folders are read-only and all system apps (the ones preinstalled) are updated together as a full image rather than piecemeal. Anything not preinstalled can be installed in a distrobox or as a flatpak/appimage/aur, or as a last resort, layered with rpm-ostree. Extremely user-friendly, everything a gamer needs is either installed and preconfigured out of the box or available as a flatpak. Bazzite's the first time I had a good enough experience on Linux that I made it my daily driver; now Windows is the secondary OS I only go to when I really need that one thing that only works there.

Onihikage , 5 days ago

The biggest thing missing for me is good VR support at the OS level. Even with all the optimizations in Bazzite making regular games perform about equivalent to Windows, latency in VR is awful, and motion smoothing just plain isn't supported in Linux yet, on any hardware. Those two pain points make the experience much worse than on Windows, I'd be motion sick in minutes if I tried to actually play something. Thankfully, normal gaming works just fine, and I don't play VR as often as flat games, so I can just boot into Windows when I want to do that.

The second thing is the poor state of music players. I'm used to the very extensive feature set in MusicBee, and not a single native player hits all the boxes that MusicBee does. It can be run in Bottles, but not very well, and as a newbie, it took me a lot of extra tinkering to get things working even sort of right - file permissions, dotnet stuff, font libraries, etc. I still haven't quite gotten file permissions working right, and font rendering is pretty bad (and custom font selection is broken entirely), but maybe I'll figure some of that out eventually so I can stop booting into Windows whenever I want to make changes to my library.

Onihikage , 4 days ago

It's a little more tinkering than Windows, but definitely less than it's ever been, and getting better all the time. I've found it to be basically exchanging one set of weird OS quirks for another. And hey, if you have any issues, the folks in the Universal Blue Discord are super friendly and helpful!

Onihikage , 8 days ago

Putin: "I don't see what's so hard to understand. All you have to do for the fighting to stop is to give me everything I want."

What a clown.

Onihikage , 8 days ago

The Billet Labs prototype water block being so poorly handled was a consequence of them growing too big for Linus to manage; he hadn't internalized that they weren't six guys working out of a house anymore, but a proper medium sized business that didn't need to strain for every bit of content to keep from going under, and could afford to slow down a little to get things right. They ended up taking a break from the constant grind to reorganize after GamersNexus put out a big piece on all the things LTT was doing wrong, all the sacrifices they were making to quality and accuracy for the sake of pushing out more and more content to stay relevant, and how badly they mishandled the prototype.

Not sure Linus has forgiven GN for the "hit piece" but I think they really needed the shock of it in order to get them to actually course correct immediately rather than keep putting it off.

Onihikage , 19 days ago

I switched to Bazzite not long after the Recall AI announcement, shrinking my Windows partition to leave it for just VR stuff which currently doesn't work well outside of Windows, at least on my system. It's pretty great! Not perfect, but the problems I have on Bazzite are similar enough in quantity and degree to problems I had on Windows that I've basically switched out one set of weird OS quirks for another. The big difference is now I don't have to think about the OS being disrespectful corporate spyware.

Onihikage , 18 days ago

Not that I know of; Bazzite is completely based on Fedora Atomic Desktops, which are an immutable type of distro that makes the core OS a read-only image that all gets updated separately from system apps. The Ubuntu equivalent of Fedora Atomic Desktops is Ubuntu Core, but I don't know if Bazzite has a Ubuntu Core-based equivalent. Bazzite is released by a group called Universal Blue, which makes prepackaged OS builds based on Fedora Atomic Desktops, with particular focus areas. Bazzite focuses on including all gaming-related tweaks, apps, configs, and optimizations out of the box, Aurora focuses on general desktop PC functionality, and Bluefin focuses on productivity, but in the end they're all Atomic/Immutable distros based on Fedora. It's worth poking through it all and picking one that best suits your needs.

Onihikage , 19 days ago

Is Live Captions not an option?

Onihikage , 19 days ago

It says in the list that there's not enough space to produce a reasonable quantity. So you're correct, it's not there.

Onihikage , 23 days ago

Remember that a dance party is a party - most people are there to have fun. I think the main thing to avoid, if you can manage it, is being so caught up inside your own head that you aren't looking at the people around you. Keep your back straight, your head high, your eyes off the floor. Basically, avoid the posture of a shrinking violet and you'll feel less like one. Even if you don't feel confident, maintaining a pose that looks confident will keep some of your fear away, and it will passively invite others to interact with you, which boosts your confidence a little more with each person you talk to.

Even if you spend the entire party standing around and watching other people dance, as long as you are actually watching the event, and mentally present for what's going on, you will gain something from the experience. Just remember that standing around and not talking to anyone is as much a choice as going up to someone and asking for a dance. Neither choice is wrong, but you have to live with what happens - or doesn't - based on what you choose.

All that said, you can do this! We believe in you!

Onihikage , 22 days ago

That's wonderful, I'm so glad you enjoyed yourself! And I'm glad I was able to help :)

Onihikage , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

If anyone's bothered by the horrendous image quality, the best source of each panel I could find is this page from UKFIET's 2021 materials. The credit in the lower-right indicates someone by the handle @lunchbreath built it for John Maeda's Design In Tech Report 2019, but I can't seem to get his site working to a point where I can view the report itself.

Edit: Better source.

Onihikage , 1 month ago

Good.

Onihikage , 1 month ago

I was in your shoes for ages, but HeliBoard has predictions and other languages out of the box. Voice transcription works if you have FUTO Voice Input. Gesture typing uses a swypelibs binary extracted from Gapps; you just have to download it manually since the app never requests network access (instructions are on the Github page). I started using it today and some of its features actually seem to work better for me than Gboard, like the swipe gestures on delete or space, and it has at least a few more features I'm pretty sure Gboard doesn't. Give it a look at least.

Onihikage , 1 month ago

Net Neutrality is about not policing content online. That's kind of its whole thing:

These net neutrality policies ensured you can go where you want and do what you want online without your broadband provider making choices for you. They made clear your broadband provider should not have the right to block websites, slow services, or censor online content. These policies were court tested and approved. They were wildly popular. In fact, studies show that 80 percent of the public support the FCC’s net neutrality policies and opposed their repeal.

The closest we get to online censorship is obscenity laws, which one might think applies to porn, but obscenity is actually defined much more narrowly than just "content designed to arouse". Obscenity is basically stuff that even Hugh Hefner would find offensive, stuff the average adult would find deeply repulsive and abhorrent (not just a little bit, the exact language is "patently offensive"). Adult content in general (obscenity & indecency) is banned from broadcast media during daytime hours to keep kids from seeing it; subscription-based services are exempt from such rules, which presumably means that the adults who pay for the subscription are supposed to be the ones preventing kids from using it to view adult material, if such is possible. I expect this is why anything which does manage to qualify as obscene is typically very hard to get to unless you really want to see it, so nobody who might report it ever actually finds it.

It's worth mentioning that obscenity laws apply whether Net Neutrality is a thing or not, so having it will be a net reduction in the avenues through which content may be censored or policed. Now if only they'd ban ISPs from selling your data to brokers...

Onihikage , 1 month ago

Vivaldi > Brave

Onihikage , 1 month ago

VPN subscriptions about to explode.

Naturally, they'll try to ban VPNs next.

Onihikage , 2 months ago

Grayjay still works? YT-DLP still works? I sleep.

Onihikage , 2 months ago

Blog commenter Frank Wilhoit made a now somewhat famous assertion that the human default for nearly all of history has been conservatism, which he defined as follows:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

He then defined anti-conservatism as opposition to this way of thinking, so that would be to ensure the neutrality of the law and the equality of all peoples, races, and nationalities, which certainly sounds left-wing in our current culture. It would demand that a legal system which protects the powerful (in-groups) while punishing the marginalized (out-groups), or systematically burdens some groups more than others, be corrected or abolished.

Onihikage , 2 months ago

It can, there's an Open Subtitles plugin that can automatically download subtitles in specified languages that match (or don't) the file hashes of your media. Being an open database of subtitles, though, YMMV. You configure it on a per-library basis.

Onihikage , 2 months ago

Yeah, we only have to look at the FTC's lawsuit against Amazon to see what they consider an antitrust problem:

[...] Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging. By stifling competition on price, product selection, quality, and by preventing its current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of shoppers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance.

That isn't what we see from Valve - in fact it's the opposite, as Valve's strategy with Steam is simply to provide the best service and be the gold standard. The competition is almost always compared unfavorably to Steam, because gamers know how it feels to use a mature platform that isn't trying to abuse them.

Valve has even taken some steps that wind up increasing competition in adjacent markets, such as operating systems (Proton has contributed significantly to Linux popularity) and even handheld game devices (Steam Deck set off an arms race when electronics manufacturers realized Nintendo is asleep at the wheel). Steam is as pro-consumer as it gets, with the exception of GOG and possibly itch.

Onihikage , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Edison Motors has already proven hybrid retrofit trucks can be inexpensive, less complicated, and far more fuel-efficient than traditional diesel trucks while burning cleaner and offering a huge amount of all-speed torque to the wheels and even more energy efficiency from regenerative braking, so truckers really don't have a leg to stand on here if they're against moving the industry forward. If any of the naysayers actually used a hybrid truck and saw the relatively low cost to retrofit compared to a new truck, and the lower total cost of ownership, they wouldn't want to go back.

Onihikage , 2 months ago

Trucks and trains serve different purposes. If you want to get a mountain of stuff from the shipyard to distribution centers, trains are a great way to do that. If you want to get stuff from the distribution center to individual stores within a 200-mile radius, now you're talking trucks, and a lot of their destinations will be much closer than 200 miles, meaning even plug-in hybrid trucks would often be able to make trips without using any fuel.

Onihikage , 3 months ago

It's also on Odysee.

Onihikage , 3 months ago

Not cars per se, but with a few tools and a kit, you can convert a bicycle into a pretty great pedal-assist e-bike from the comfort of your own garage, cost-competitively with pre-built e-bikes, especially if you already own the bike you're converting. Everyone has their own preference for the ideal bicycle, and there are plenty of DIY e-bike build guides on the web, so that might as well be open source.

Onihikage , 3 months ago

The fact they killed Omegle over pretty much exactly this but it's apparently fine when Snapchat does it makes me angry. The only difference is one of them has billionaire investors to please.

Onihikage , 4 months ago

Ctrl-f: genocide
Phrase not found

It's frustrating that so many who even talk about this are apparently too chickenshit to say what it actually is. Israel is openly committing Genocide. History will not be kind to Benjamin Netanyahu or the IDF.

Onihikage , 4 months ago

To save folks time looking for it, that video is More Lanes are (Still) a Bad Thing: Nebula link | YouTube link

Onihikage , 4 months ago

Probably a local credit union, provided it's FDIC insured and has decent terms of membership. Most credit unions aren't in the business of spying on the people that own them, their purpose is just to manage their clients' money and facilitate spending.

Onihikage , 4 months ago

We keep saying that blocking ads is a security feature, and it keeps being true.

Onihikage , 5 months ago

Adding to sleepyTonia's comment, many flash games have been preserved through Flashpoint Archive, which is like an epic DRM-free Steam client for flash games (as well as other web game technologies, like the shockwave player). However, Flashpoint uses old flash player binaries that, as stated, may one day stop working as hardware and operating systems evolve. If that happens, it'll be great to have a replacement interpreter ready to go that can be compiled to run on newer tech.

Onihikage , 6 months ago

The title does need updated, but I suspect it was accurate at the time of posting 23 hours ago. The article appears to have been updated at least twice, based on the URL.

Onihikage , 10 months ago

You can still do that by adopting kids someone else made. No sense adding to the population when some kids already don't have parents.