Indeed, I don't trust those either. As for RAR being "bad", no I don't agree with that - but I've only ever seen it used in that context. If someone sent me one it would raise an eyebrow, much more so than if someone sent me a .7z file. Likewise if I used it professionally, it would arouse suspicions amongst my peers more than if I used 7zip.
I've never come across a legitimate use of RAR, you are quite right about the link to warez/virus/trojans and other malware but it will never shake that association. As for Kaspersky, I trust that steaming pile of Russian spyware even less.
This is great news, I've just switched to Firefox & Firefox Focus on Android as a longtime user of Mobile Chrome and Desktop Firefox. It always felt weak on mobile, but things have changed. Still hating the purple though, and the placement of the new tab button but that's a small price to pay.
It's much the same when I send .tar.gz / .tgz files. Folk get uppity about it not being .zip. I don't bother with other formats purely because I know I can expand them anywhere without installing additional software.
As for .rar, I always view them with suspicion. Dodgy.
I know I'm probably in the minority here but.... I'm a desk jockey.
I don't use Lemmy on a handheld. I didn't use Reddit that way either. The web interface works well enough for me, or rather whatever lemmy.ca uses is good when set to vaporwave-light. Try the different themes, some are better than others.
The pagination though... it's a little short for my taste but I prefer it over doomscrolling.
I kinda dabbled in most of them, except 4chan. In no particular order: Various webrings, usenet, tumblr, stumbleupon, digg, kiro5hin, reddit, slashdot, twitter, lots of rss. More reading than posting.
I use ChromeOS because I use Google Workspace. It gives me a cheap portable machine for work, and for meetings I rather carry that than a £2000 overspec'd heavy 15" laptop. It's the cheapest of the cheap, and it can run Linux in a VM with Firefox. It has fantastic battery life. I also run Linux on the laptop, and on a Desktop PC, as well as servers.
In my mind, ChromeOS works. It's literally a browser with a screen, a keyboard, and some deep-rooted privacy concerns.
As for Windows, that I don't understand the need in 2023. I switched to Debian, and immediately saw better thermals, less fan noise, faster boot, longer battery life, and all sort of other improvements. Given Linux/Windows/MacOS/DOS/iOS/Android are all effectively launchers for apps and provide broadly the same services I don't really care which, but I will choose the ones that make me most productive.
Here's hoping that happens, but it still won't fix two things: Firefox is kinda weird and clumsy on mobile, and it'll still need attestation if that's implemented on key websites as a hard-barrier to usage. I'm now on Android (I alternate between the two, so next cycle will be Apple), and even as a highly technical type I don't sideload on there anyway, so I think few will sideload on iOS either.
This is good in some ways and I welcome the BBC to the fediverse as an important step to universal acceptance. It's far better than using flaky bridges from other social networks.
What is disappointing is the very small range of content provided so far, Radio 4 & 5 plus some curiosities. I'd hoped for the excellent 6 Music channel. Let's see if they keep up with the sports in particular on 5. I'm glad that it's divided by station / topic so I can follow only what interests me.
I too would like more national broadcasters to get onboard. CBC I'm sure have some interesting content to share with the world, as do ABC, RTE, NZBC, others? I'd love to have culture from across the globe, which is the real value for Mastodon for me rather than as a news feed.
Whilst gnome 3 wasn't for we it did have charm and I prefer it over Windows or KDE. I'm using xfce4, and really like Window Maker and CDE, but I get why these wouldn't work well on ultra wide displays. It's all personal preference and finding what works, which is part of my love for Linux.
While you are at it, convince Apple to allow Firefox on iOS, and decline to use WEI in Safari. Otherwise there's no way to avoid WEI on iPhone, and only one mainstream rendering engine free of this insidious malware. Many companies will shy away from it if it breaks mobile apps on the Apple platform.
I use Ansible, Docker, and Emacs OrgMode files committed to Git. Diagrams are a mix of Miro and Graphviz. There's also a few markdowns in there too. Joplin is used for rough notes only.
I run Chrome to use work (Google) email and services, and Firefox for as much as possible. The challenge is that about a 10% of things I use only work properly on Chrome. It's IE6 all over again, history repeating itself.
Register your own domain name with Gandi and they gift you free email with a choice of two webmail interfaces. It's really good, and owning the domain name enables moving to a different provider later if you wish.
As someone who has had to actively contact an AI company and expressly deny use of digital images on our website, I'm confident there are no boundaries with what they scrape from the Internet. They don't have any respect and slurp up everything in their path, which unfortunately leads to only one possible outcome - a culturally desensitised dataset. It will become the 'neutral average' of the internet, banal in many ways and biased in others. Don't expect anything that resembles Canadian sentiment to come out of any non-Canadian AI (Same problem but different locale for me - UK/Eire).
Any that's before it starts eating it's own tail - there's pictures of generative images where they fed data back in, and it's as interesting as it is amusing and horrific. Keeping the data clean is an unsolved problem because it's hard to differentiate organic and synthetic sources.
All of this pales into insignificance with (as far as I know) all AI lacking the ability to admit when it doesn't know. It just makes it up from nothing.
I have access to ChatGPT, Bard, etc. I haven't found a use for any of it yet (software engineering) where I trust it enough and the experiments I've run have proved this, for me personally. It's a novelty, a toy, it will evolve. As for the Online News Act, I'm conflicted. I believe in a free and open Internet, which goes against both restrictive legislation and against the likes of Google and Meta who abuse their position in the online landscape. My instinct is I'd rather have the Online News Act than Bard as the publisher should own their content, so good luck with that.
Indeed, I don't trust those either. As for RAR being "bad", no I don't agree with that - but I've only ever seen it used in that context. If someone sent me one it would raise an eyebrow, much more so than if someone sent me a .7z file. Likewise if I used it professionally, it would arouse suspicions amongst my peers more than if I used 7zip.