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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)BA
Posts
3
Comments
652
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Trump has cognitively declined since 2016 and is increasingly incoherent and nasty. I think the Dems are gambling that many voters aren't watching his stump appearances so this is a good way to expose him to voters.

    I think its too big a gamble and mute him. I think he will expose himself enough on his own turns to speak.

  • You can add games to Steam to use proton so where they came from doesn't matter. You can also use Proton forks and bypass steam altogether - much of the underlying tech is Wine; proton is a patched and optimised version of Wine not a stand alone Valve product. Its great what they've done but it is still a collaborative open source effort.

    As for which store, I go on price and sometimes go with GOG even if more expensive because of DRM, and sometimes Steam because of the convenience of the workshop.

    I don't think it needs to be any more complex than that - these are company's taking your money for the same product. Its kinda pointless being "loyal" to a retailer - its more important to focus on value for money and quality of service for each purchase.

  • Isn't it too late to change VP candidate? I saw speculation on this before and the issues were around the need to reconvene delegates for the RNC to approve the change and also to be on the ballot? Early voting starts in September so October is also too late?

  • "Yacht maker who makes yachts for billionaires scrambles to blame the crew so he can save more yachts and not be sued"

    That's the story here. He's trying to set the narrative as entirely human error rather than a design flaw. For example one concern is how quickly an intact vessel sank - 30 seconds is being claimed in some areas - and the yacht may have an overlong aluminium mast which contributed to it capsizing .

    People saying they don't care about billionaires dying are missing the point. The yachts maker is trying to pin it on the crew before its even been properly investigated.

  • What you're asking is if you can run the existing Linux Mint on your drive within Windows running on the same drive?

    It may be feasible if VirtualBox or VMWare are able to access/mount the existing Linux partition as if its a virtual drive, and boot the OS but its likely to be difficult. The main issue is that windows does not easily mount Linux partitions. It is also an edge case use for most users so there will likely not be much guidance on how to achieve this easily.

    It might work more easily the opposite way round - boot Linux and mount Windows within Virtualbox but is not likely to be straightforward. Windows may be less flexible about being booted into a virtual machine with totally different hardware.

    All this may be overkill to the problems you're trying to solve. You can mount the existing NTFS Windows drive within Linux Mint to access all your windows files without any virtualization. But I'm not clear what "settings" you're looking at when you boot back in to windows? That seems to be the stumbling block. Is is specific software / tools you're trying to migrate settings for?

    Another approach may be to launch windows, create a new linux Mint VM in Virtualbox, share a folder between Linux VM and Windows host, create whatever settings you're trying to migrate in your VM Linux Mint, and when happy copy the home folder / settings folders into the shared folder. Then boot your PC into linux, mount the windows drive and pick up the settings files from the shared folder to migrate into your main Mint system. But whether that is even worth doing depends on what you're trying to migrate.

  • It still helps damage reddit's commercialisation of users because historic posts have gaps or disappear for new users. Editing posts and replacing with gobbledygook is probably more effective.

    Also, its not clear reddit is able to retain deleted posts. They have a vast live site to maintain - why would they ever have been focused on having an immutable back up of all deleted posts? They may have snapshots to restore after short term issues but it does not follow that they keep snapshots going back in time. Perhaps they do or perhaps like many companies they do the bare minimum in favour of keep costs down?

    I personally think its worth using sites that edit your posts and replace with garbage, as that is harder to separate out from true edits and helps pollute the data set for AI companies.

  • Likely consistency of the product. The Cavandish cultivar is a clonal population; it makes then very susceptible to disease but also very consistent in terms of size and taste over time. The original Gros Michel cultivar was similar but then devastated by panama disease. It was also supposedly tastier and better.

    But Plantains are also bananas and totally different in terms of taste and consistency. If you were to freely cultivate bananas there is a huge range of possible tastes and textures.

    Thats not to say its not feasible; a range of cultivars could be developed. Its also worth bearing in mind that most farmers do not generally develop new cultivars; their business is mass producing the fruit. People experimenting with new cultivars are effectively fringe and it's likely difficult to break into a market where consumers expectations of what a banana is are so fixed. Most people don't even think of a plantain as a banana. Its hard to break in and make money with different bananas as people expect a banana to he a Cavendish.

    Unfortunately consumers and retailers are the enemy of variety. Even fruits where people known there are varieties, such as Apples, are dominated by a couple of commerical cultivars. And that extends across into many plants and even animal products - there is huge commercial pressure for homogenous consistent products which in the shirt term out weighs long term risks of bad agricultural practicea.

  • This is badly written and ignorant article. Fat32 supports up to 16Tb partition size (depending on cluster size - 2Tb -16Tb).

    Its microsoft's windows tools that arbitrarily only allow users to create 32Gb partitions, and it is this that is being changed. This is not a change to Fat32, this is a change to windows. 3rd party tools on Windows and other systems like Linux have long offered more options for partition size.

    That its taken to 2024 for Microsoft to fix the command line tool (and still not fix the GUI tools) is ridiculous.

  • Firefox will support Manifest v3. However Mozilla will be implementing Manifest 3 differently so the routes Ublock and other extensions use to maintain privacy and block ads will still be available. Firefox will support both the original route and the new limited option Google is forcing on Chromium.

    Googles implementation deliberately locks out extensions by removing something called WebRequest, supposedly for security reasons but almost certainly actually for commercial reasons as they are not a neutral party. Google is a major ad and data broker.

    Apple will apparently also be adopting the same approach for Safari as Mozilla is for Firefox.

  • The pollster is kind of right - on paper the economy should be an issue in Trumps favour. We've just come out of a period of high inflation and people are feeling the cost of living. Immigration is also supposedly an issue that should be favouring Trump.

    That's not to say that Trump has the answers - he does not - but in a conventional election cycle he would be in the stronger position as the "outsider" attacking the incumbents.

    Yet instead the entire news cycle is dominated by Harris and Walz at the moment. Republicans are desperate for Trump to get back "on message" but instead he's flailing around as his ego can't take the Dems attack lines, biden dropping out and Harris apparent popularity.

    So although the pollster is obviously biased as a Republican, I think he's right in the sense this not playing out like a conventional election.

    Also, I have to say as an outside observer from the UK, the excitement around Harris reminds me of Obama's first election. Obama came from no where in the primaries and huge momentum built behind him as the hope candidate. Harris has emerged much later in the election cycle, and oddly she feels like the exciting unknown candidate even though she is Vice President. Yet it does feel like the momentum is with her and she drawing in people who have been otherwise alienated by the republican / democrat arguments over the last 4 years.

    I have no idea if it'll carry on to election day. But I must say on a personal note, the more I see of Harris, the more I warm to her. I suspect a lot of voters will feel the same. Her humour, and warmth are in stark contrast to Trumps meanness and petty nastiness. I'm beginning to think Trump is not capable of beating Harris.

  • I get what you're trying to say but I disagree with this. Software can be a barrier to switching OS but it very much depends on the individual user's needs - it's not as easy as substituting open source for closed, and is only part of the difference anyway. For example, I use Outlook at work; Thunderbird is great but it is in no way a substitute for Outlook. Similarly, I use Microsoft Office 365 at work; OnlyOffice is in no way a substitute for an individual user (it can be for a whole business or for personal use, but not if you're tied in to an organisation or employer using Office). If you're tied into those platforms with work, then for occasional use you can just use the online versions of Microsoft Office in Linux via a web browser. And if you need to work from home or do more, then realistically you need to have Windows and access to the full suite installed locally.

    But software does not preclude switching to Linux; for example I dual boot between Windows and Linux on my home PC. I have an M.2 drive for Windows and another M.2 drive for Linux. I rarely use Windows at all now, but when I do it's if for some reason I need to be doing work related stuff from home or rarely if I can't get a game working in Linux. In Linux I can do all my web browsing, social media, video streaming, music listening, even gaming and I know I'm doing so privately and securely.

    I'd say the best way to switch to Linux is to switch to Linux. New users do not have to be "all in" - they can dual boot between Linux and Windows (or MacOS and Linux), and then have a low level of risk to try out the OS. It can even be beneficial in itself as they can compartmentalise work and free time by OS. And if they don't want to dual boot, then just try it out by virtualisation.

  • I think you're absolutely right.

    The announcement of dropping SMS at the time gave those vibes. They were basically saying to users "we know what's good for ypu better than you do".

    It was a huge strategic misstep. SMS was the perfect route to get people to use Signal - you'd start with SMS conversations and then as people joined signal conversations could switch to secure chat. Now its very hard to persuade people to switch to Signal.

    Now google has used the same trick to push its own messaging standard RCS.

  • Yes absolutely - looking at electoral college prediction sites based on the polls, if the Dems won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania alongside the leaning and safe states, they would get 270 electoral college votes and win. Obviously they need to work tirelessly to go way beyond that and it's a long way to November, but it shows how the switch to Harris has completely upended the election and reinvigorated the Dems electoral chances.

    It's crazy to think only a few weeks ago Trump was on a massive high - Biden on the ropes from a disastrous debate, Trump survived an assassination attempt, had a triumphant conference, and had multiple unexpected legal successes. And overnight by Biden stepping down and Harris stepping up unopposed the Dems have changed the entire narrative and are dominating the coverage.

  • I suspect the other big consideration is the IP. When they made BG3, the IP had lain dormant for years and D&D wasn't a priority for Hasbro.

    Larian made a hugely successful game and Hasbro sat up and has started talking about how its going to push forward with the IP. The terms for BG4 are probably not as favourable for Larian (maybe they weren't great for BG3). That may be worse revenue split and may also be much more direction and involvement of the IP holder restricting creativity.

    Why would Larian expend all that creative effort again on someone else's IP? They can chose what they do next and it will get attention as they are the studio behind the biggest game of 2023. Probably makes sense from the studios perspective not to do BG3, and go back to developing their own IP. And the industry is littered with failed studios screwed over by big publishers or IP holders - I think Larian are very sensible to move on.

  • The left axis is average number of ratings per app. As all rating except the 3 month, 6 month etc lines have dropped then to me this suggests there has been an explosion in the number of apps in the database.

    The more apps, means more smaller apps with frwer user ratings so the lower the average number of ratings per app overall would be?

  • Probably Obama's endorsement which finally shut down the prospects of a contested primary.

    The Dems got into the mess with Biden because they wouldn't test him with an actual open primary process. Not having a contest for Harris may be pragmatic but it may dog the party in the future. If she loses then there will be recriminations. And if she wins they will have to think about what they do in 2028 - does she get a free pass again or does the party get a say? Do all those ambitious contenders step aside again?

    Problems for another day. I think the dems are doing the right thing in coronating Harris now as they have been left with no choice. But they really need to think about what happens with sitting presidents and the primaries - waving Biden through was disasterous, and him dragging his feet on steeping down shut down all other options. I have very little respect left for Biden - he did the right thing but took far too long to do it, risking everything.

  • Nah I think this is just another example of Elon Musk being impulsive and not thinking through the consequences of his statements.

    He can't actually afford $45m a month. His wealth is in Tesla shares (which are difficult to draw done further both while he continues to try to fleece the company with an absurd pay package and also can't risk destabilising the share price - its something of a house of cards with its value largely based on the future possibility of a flawed self drive tech) and Twitter (which took $20bn of his actual liquid assets and then debt and which he is running into the ground).

    Also he may be realising the PR mistake of backing trump when he runs an electric car company that is losing market share and valued speculatively rather than actual financials.

    His focus is really gettingnas much out of Tesla as hebcan before the markets turn on it.