Stillhart

@Stillhart@lemm.ee

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Stillhart ,

Personally, I'd use the router to limit access to locations and times. It's more reliable, easier to do, and lets you be less picky with your distro.

Using a DNS level content blocker like Adblock DNS is a great option, IMHO, and is super easy to setup.

(For the record, parent of 8 and 11 yr olds)

Stillhart ,

Having your router limit internet connectivity time is effectively the same thing these days. There are some things they can do offline but not much anymore.

Apple pulls WhatsApp, Threads and Signal from app store in China ( www.washingtonpost.com )

Apple has complied with the Chinese government's request to remove several popular communication apps from its app store, including WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram, due to national security concerns. This action was taken following a directive from the Cyberspace Administration of China. These apps have been crucial for...

Stillhart ,

You know with Android, you can just sideload any app you want. Still not sure why anyone buys Apple products, but hey at least you get different colored chat bubbles!

Stillhart ,

I wonder if it matters that they buy a lot of their power from other states like NV (which has a ton of solar and a somewhat famous hydro-electric dam). I feel like it's great that CA is doing this but it would be better if it they were closer to self-sufficient.

Stillhart ,

I've always been partial to "wintermute". Not many people will get that reference these days.

Stillhart ,

Not quite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer

Amazon- and Google-backed AI firm Anthropic says “general-purpose AI tools simply could not exist” if AI companies had to pay licences for the training material ( www.computerweekly.com )

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) company Anthropic has claimed to a US court that using copyrighted content in large language model (LLM) training data counts as “fair use”, however....

Stillhart ,

It doesn't matter what business we're talking about. If you can't afford to pay the costs associated with running it, it's not a viable business. It's pretty fucking simple math.

And no, we're not talking about "to big to fail" business (that SHOULD be allowed to fail, IMHO) we're talking about AI, that thing they keep trying to shove down our throats and that we keep saying we don't want or need.

Stillhart ,

I don’t know if you noticed this but some really big companies with high stock valuations are only existing because investors poured tons of capital into them to subsidize the service.

Exactly, they PAID MONEY to make it work. No they don't make the money back and depend on outside capital, but they are still paying their employees (not enough) and suppliers, etc.

Stillhart ,

Linux can be a hobby, not just a tool. If you want to have fun with a new hobby, distro hopping will have plenty to keep you busy. But if you just want something to run your computer and your current distro does it for you just fine, then you're not missing out on anything but a headache.

It's funny, I'm in an opposite situation. I don't want to distro hop, but my current one has some issues that I'm getting a little fed up with (issues that are a result of my hardware and use case) so I am working up to swapping distros to find something with fewer issues. For me, I just want my OS to be transparent. I don't want a hobby. That's why it took me so long to swap to linux in the first place.

Anyways, IMHO, unless you're really into the idea of playing with your OS as a hobby, don't let FOMO trick you into making the mistake of throwing out what works in the hopes of greener grass.

Stillhart ,

OP, 5 minutes of research on Manjaro will give you a very different impression of how easy or reliable it is.

Stillhart ,

I swapped last summer and landed on Pop!_OS after trying a few different options. If you game, Nobara is a great choice too. Other ones I considered were Mint, Ubuntu and SUSE Tumbleweed.

I would highly recommend trying them all with the live disk thingy. Mint didn't even work at all on my computer for some unknown reason, which was rather surprising considering how often it's recommended. It kept freezing right when the GUI logged in. So yeah, try em out for a little bit just to make sure there aren't any weird incompatibilities.

Stillhart ,

Pretty sure I've heard this every election since Trump got elected. Though, admittedly, not from a noted gorilla scientist.

Stillhart , (edited )

No I don't mind them. I am a linux noob myself and these kinds of posts are what helped me decide to switch.

While we're complaining, you know what I don't like? Completely incomprehensible posts about some super specific subsystem. "fdplq updated to 0.5.pi.007.69!" Wow, that will change my life the next time I boot up my computer to read some Lemmy and play a game for an hour or two.

But they are all part of the linux community. I'm not gonna say the way I use linux is any better or worse than anyone else.

And fortunately, nobody is forcing us to click on those posts we don't care about.

California, billionaire-backed futuristic city gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Solano County that would clear the way to build a city from scratch ( www.latimes.com )

Theoretically, the new city could have a population of several hundred thousand people. Plans call for it to rise on 18,000 acres just west of Rio Vista, a town of about 10,000 people on the Sacramento River. The city would be separated from Rio Vista by 712 acres of parkland, sports facilities and open space....

Stillhart ,

An entire city built and run by a single billionaire... what could possibly go wrong?

You're Not Imagining It: Google Search Results Are Getting Worse, Study Finds ( gizmodo.com )

For the past few years, a growing number of users, analysts, and experts raised alarms about a truth that feels obvious to a lot of people who surf around in web browsers: the quality of Google results is in serious decline. Google disagrees.

Stillhart ,

as supposed to

Not to be that guy, but it's "as opposed to". Hope this helps in the future!

Stillhart ,

Cyberpunk 2077 is the poster child for this. That game was easily 7/10 even when it came out as a buggy mess. Now that it's had a few years of polish, it's much better than 7/10.

But the public perception was bad mostly because of unmet expectations. I don't know if I'd call them "unreasonable" a they were set by the devs themselves, but either way, the game was and is much better than a lot of people think.

Stillhart , (edited )

The salt is real. (And the edits.)

Stillhart ,

I get it. I said I didn't think the expectations were unreasonable.

I think you're pretty much proving my point, though, that the game is unfairly maligned due to unmet expectations. The game they released, while buggy, was fun. You're pissed off about a lot of things that aren't how fun the game is to play.

Stillhart ,

Yes, NMS was overhyped and completely failed to meet expectations. But it was also complete garbage on release. 7/10? Not even close. It's one of the only games I ever bought on physical disk that I returned because it was so bad when it wasn't unplayable. That wasn't a problem with expectations, that was a terrible fucking game.

Stillhart ,

Fair enough, we can agree to disagree on the OP's intent for this post. Thanks for the civil discussion regardless.

Stillhart ,

I don't know what to tell you, I played it on Xbox just fine. Played the whole game through from start to finish and had fun. I believe the issue was with last gen consoles specifically.

And again, I think a lot of the criticism was reasonable. But my point is that the game itself was and is fun, but suffers because of the bad reputation it got at launch thanks to some ill-advised (intentional understatement alert!) decisions by CDPR.

Stillhart ,

Seemed to me you called the console version unplayable. You said they didn't work. I was just correcting that statement for anyone who wasn't aware that your were bending the truth to make a point.

Stillhart ,

This. I already don't own my music (Tidal, Spotify) or my movies (Netflix, etc) and I already have been using Gamepass for years just fine.

But movie streaming is a HOT MESS right now. I looked up the X-Men movie franchise the other day for some reason. No joke, it's split across 3 or 4 different streaming services! And next month, it could change. There are streaming services like Peacock or Paramount that have absolutely NOTHING worth watching except one or two shows (e.g. Parks and Rec or Picard) and I really want to watch it but there's no way I'm throwing down money for a streaming service just to watch one fucking show. All it does is piss me off.

If the same garbage happens with gaming where everyone thinks making their own is the way to go, instead of just using a few big ones, it will not succeed. Ubisoft making their own is a bad idea. It's bad for us for the reasons above and it's bad for them because we won't use it.

Stillhart ,

It's funny that he mentioned Spiderman and John Wick, two other examples I was thinking about mentioning because they came up recently.

The Pokemon bit ending with "Easy." was solid. :-D

New solid state battery charges in minutes, lasts for thousands of cycles ( www.pv-magazine.com )

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times — more than any other pouch battery cell — and can be recharged in a matter of minutes....

Stillhart ,

Excuse me while I hold my breath...

Stillhart ,

Now? They've had the option almost since they first started selling them. It's like $10 to remove them permanently. Honestly didn't realize anyone would get the one with ads on purpose but hey, I didn't think people would use Twitter when I first heard about it either.

Stillhart ,

Jedi Fallen Order. I've tried a couple times because I really WANT to like the game. But I just can't stand the fucking souls style of everything comes back when you save. And the boss fights are just too punishing (for me). It's so frustrating to get stuck on a boss or lost in a zone and come to the realization that I WAS having fun and then the game got in the way of that.

Elden Ring. I had a lot of fun with the game restarting and playing through the first zone on like 6 different characters to try different styles and see what I like. But at some point in the second zone I realized I was just stressed out all the time. It wasn't fun, it was stressful. I can appreciate the game and I don't regret spending the money on it, but I realized it just wasn't for me.

I think I'm done with souls games. They're just not for me. I really wanted to play Jedi Survivor but I suspect the new cool stuff will just make me more frustrated with the souls aspects, Oh well.

Why Are American Drivers So Deadly? After decades of declining fatality rates, dangerous driving has surged again. ( www.nytimes.com )

The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers....

Stillhart , (edited )

WTF? Seatbelt use is down?? I'd be really curious to see a Venn diagram plotting anti-maskers with the mind-numbingly stupid people who would voluntarily choose not to wear a seatbelt in the face of decades of science and societal pressure.

Seriously, hearing that seatbelt use it down to me is as shocking as when I was watching "Anchorman" and they were walking in the park and just dropped all their trash on the ground. Except that movie was parodying the way people used to think in the 70's. This is real life.

Stillhart ,

The timing coincides with COVID so I wonder if it really is the whole anti-masker "government can't tell me what do and besides I'm immortal!" mentality.

Stillhart ,

Windows 98 enters the chat

Stillhart ,

In case we needed yet another reason to avoid that company. I have no idea why they're so successful despite being absolutely despicable.

Stillhart ,

Yeah I knew someone was going to respond to my rhetorical "I have no idea" and explain it like I actually care. It's like saying I have no idea why people buy Microsoft or use Twitter despite them being despicable. Obviously there are lot of things about them that a lot of people like. Obviously not everyone knows about all the despicable things these companies have done and continue to do. Obviously not everyone would care enough to stop using them even if they did know.

But it still frustrates me. I wish the world was a place where companies like VW couldn't possibly exist because their own employees would never let them do the things they did, much less their customers or the regulators who are supposed to protect us despite ourselves. But, alas, we do not. And I have no idea why. (<--- Rhetorical! Nobody has to try to explain why.)

Is linux good for someone tech illererate.

Now i've been considering moving to linux. I don't have much of a history using a computer and find it tougher to use than my phone. But I also really appreciate the foss movement. I've currently got an old laptop running windows 11 I think and it would prolly speed up with linux too. But I'm afraid I'd fuck smth up trying to...

Stillhart ,

If you're not doing anything crazy, there's no reason linux should be any harder to use than Windows.

Once you're up and running, daily life will be pretty straightforward.

Plenty of great advice in the other posts that I won't rehash. One thing I didn't see mentioned is using a live boot to try out linux. You can basically run it off a USB stick before you install it to get a feel for what it's like. Most "beginner friendly" distros will have tutorials on how to create the live disk. Example for Pop!_OS: https://support.system76.com/articles/live-disk/

Stillhart ,

Sure, that’s definitely a feature for customers.

You misunderstand: the advertisers are the customers.

Stillhart ,

Garuda. It feels like being inside a gaming rig full of blinking RGB lights. Way over the top with the "gamer aesthetic".

Stillhart ,

Google.com

Surprising how many people won't just go search for the answer to their question before asking it online.

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