Kethal @ Kethal @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

There's always some post in here saying for people to use Linux. I find an admonishment to be pretty hollow, so I'll share my recent experience installing a Linux distribution rather than simply saying it's something people should do.

I installed one of the many Debian variants. Getting the installation media is certainly going to be a challenge for casual users. Otherwise, it was easy. It walked through the steps. It was different from installing windows, but I felt it was no more difficult. I am well versed in this stuff, but I feel like nothing in the installation process would be a problem for a casual computer user.

It offered several desktops programs at the login screen. This could likely throw off a lot of people. However, if you just logged in and ignored that you might never even know there were different options. The default was KDE. Everything worked. Nothing needed to be tweaked. This is in starck contrast to Windows, where once you get past installation, you need to get rid of a ton of crap it throws at you. The Windows 10 start menu is an unbelievable collection of weird boxes and shit and the task bar is similarly full of junk. The KDE start menu is just a menu. The task bar has your tasks. There's nothing to do.

I did try Cinnamon too. I prefer the simplicity. I don't think casual users are going to care.

Overall, I think for casual users, it's actually easier to set up and use than Windows. Getting installation media prepared is not something most people are going to readily do, but I think it's the same with Windows. They have the advantage there of having manufacturors install it. Otherwise, whatever issues there have been installing Linux distributions in the past aren't there now. Conversely, installing and especially the configuration after installation is much harder on Windows than it used to be. If you're slightly tech savvy, give Linux a try.

Without evidence I will say it's more likely that she has significant funding from the fracking industry and is under the thumb of rich executives. The difference is that they likely understand that supporting fracking could cost them the election, but they know that by not supporting it they lose a huge source of funding. They have weighed the costs, benefits and risks, and decided it's a risk worth taking.

A good solution is to get corporate money out of politics. There are narrow ways to achieve that, but a broad solution that fixes a lot of problems is to end corporate personhood. This organization has made steady progress toward that and I think is worth supporting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_to_Amend. Considered signing up for their email list.

Another solution is more wisely voting. People don't vote in primary elections, but they're more important than the general elections. They determine what the field of candidates looks like. Vote in primary elections. You don't necessarily want to vote in primary of the party you most align with though. An obvious example where you'd vote in a different party is if you live in a gerrymandered district. There's a near 100% chance the gerrymandered party candidate will win. It doesn't matter who the other candidates are. Vote for the least bad candidate in the other party. You won't get everything you want, but you'll get more than you would otherwise. It will also force the party to change.

That's not the only time you'd vote in a party you don't align best with. Maybe you're relatively happy with all of the candidates in a party, so why split hairs if you'd be ok with any of them? There are so many considerations that the only advice is to keep an open mind about party membership, evaluate where you make the most impact (not what looks the most like you) and vote in every damn election, primaries included.

What's with the wording used in this article, fake, imitation? They look like the original games. If someone copied a book and sold it, violating copyright laws, you wouldn't call it a fake book.

What an embarassingly obsequious viewpoint.

Ubuntu benefited from an open community for years, and when it came time to create a solution for a problem, they chose to develop something and not share it with community that helped them get where they are now. That's a straight up asshole move.

I'm pretty sure you meant this as a joke, and I laughed at the thought of someone making something as stupid as an app for a soldering iron. But then I thought I'd check. Ugh.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.eduardom.ironos_companion

The OP article said the same thing, and like this article, it provides no evidence for the statement. I looked for some numbers, and for world bests, men had better performance in every category I found. The study linked below looked at speeds over decades and in every case men had better performance. Both men and women have improved over time, and as a percentage the difference is getting smaller, but in absolute difference it appears the same. It is an admittedly brief search, but I can't find evidence in the form of measured times (not conjecture about estrogen) indicating at all that women perform better in ultra marathons. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3870311

I bought Tillamook because their cheese is good and I thought they'd make other good dairy. It seems like a rip off though. It's fluff, so it weighs nothing. A serving of Tillamook has 30% less ice cream than a serving of regular stuff - 95 grams in 2/3 cup compared to 136 grams in 2/3 cup. The ingredient list isn't as bad as others, but it's got some odd stuff. In comparison, the Aldi stuff is just straight ice cream.

That's disappointing.

Tillamook has a weird fluffly texture and would be good otherwise. I haven't had Breyer in a while, but recall that is used to be good. The Ultra Premium, or whatever dumb name it has, at Aldi is good.

I haven't used this in a bit so I thought I'd check it. They somewhat recently updated the desktop program and nothing works at all now. It appears to be just Edge pretending to be another program. It's literally just a browser, so surround sound doesn't work now.

It's a weird thing for them to do. Why would anyone download a copy of edge that can only watch Netflix? You'd just use a browser.

I attach a computer to a TV and open streaming Web sites in a browser. There aren't much benefits of the streaming devices compared to that unless you're using surround sound. The Netflix desktop program has surround sound, but that's the only service I know of.

What did he say about apostrophes to indicate possession?

I doubt it accounts for much, but a lot of authors pay up front now for open access. If the majority of authors did that, then subscriptions wouldn't make sense for most people. I don't think it's anywhere near the majority of publications now though.

What happens in California and Texas isn't the problem so obviously one wouldn't start there. They'd start with swing states.

As above, those things don't matter. You say "simply get rid of the electoral college" as if that is the easier solution, but having a handful of states change laws fully under their control is far, far simpler than having numerous states agree to a change to the constitution, but the two things have the same effect. Do you want to stop having an unpopular president elected in the next 20 years, or the next 80 years?

It is a common misconception that disproportionate power of states is what has resulted in the winner of the popular vote losing the electoral college. That isn't what has caused it in the past, despite the possibility. What has caused it is the fact that nearly all states allocate 100% of their electors to the simple majority winner. If three candidates get 49%, 48% and 3% of the vote, the top candidate gets 100% of the delegates. That swings the electoral count out of alignment, and if that happens in enough big states, then the popular vote winner can get fewer delegates.

That historically has been what happened. If you were to imagine elections where all the states had equal power but still allocated their delegates that way, as far as I know, not a single election result would change.

If however you were to imagine states allocating delegates in proportion to the votes they received, that would have changed election results. There are different ways to do that, but the details are not that important. It's the solution. Is unequal power among states fair? Not really. But it hasn't had any impact in the past, so let's focus on something we know has unfairly altered multiple outcomes.

States should be doing this. Currently only two do: Maine and Nebraska I think. It wouldn't take a lot of states for this to fundamentally change elections. Five key states are all that's necessary. There's no reason to allocate all delgates to the simple majority, and no one likes it. It's unfair to the minority in locked down states, and it's stressful in battleground states. It results in candidate pandering to battleground states and ignoring everyone else. This is something people should be aware of and talk about more.

They have chosen as thier candidate the least popular president in recorded history. He had a decent shot when he was running against the second-least popular president. But now ...

They should have gone with Haley. She'd be a powerhouse at this point.

Google is genuinely bad now. I switched to Ecosia which is just Bing with a simpler front end and they use their profits to plant trees. I don't think Ecosia is particularly special though. Duck Duck Go, Bing whatever, they're all better than Google.

Whenever I set up a new computer then search for something, I'm always surprised at first seeing the awful layout and quality of the search results before I realize that I haven't changed the default search from Google. It's awful now. Seriously, how are people using it?

My new favorite way to search is perplexity.ai. It's an AI search tool that summarizes the loads of crap out there so you don't need to read through the junk that people write. It provides sources, unlike using ChatGPT, which is incredibly valuable. All AIs make shit up, so having links to double check it is a must. Unlike Bing Chat, or whatever Microsoft calls it this week, you can ask follow up questions to home in on what you want.

I think you've confused vegan with strawman.