kyub @ kyub @discuss.tchncs.de

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2 yr. ago

There are really only 2 options I think: a) either Dump is a Russian asset, in which case he's lying, or b) he's not a Russian asset but simply doesn't care about the war in Europe and wants the US not spending any money there, and to achieve that he's also lying. Both cases kind of result in the same, so it doesn't even matter whether a) or b) is true. He will in both cases just say whatever makes him look the least bad but so that he can still achieve his goal of not supporting Ukraine or Europa in its war against Putin. I've never seen such obvious lying, deflection and (in other contexts) corruption from any other administration. Sure, many politicians lie and are corrupt, but here it's orders of magnitude more extreme.

Good choice, welcome. But generally, desktop Linux right now is quite mainstream-compatible. So it's not really just for nerds anymore. It was like 20+ years ago.

1. Arch
2. For gaming, ~7 years. For everything else, ~20 years. I've used Windows for gaming in the past, but I've been a long-time Arch user in general, who switched to Linux full-time (also for gaming) once it got so compatible with running Windows-based games. Which was approx. 7 years ago. Since then, I don't have any Windows partitions anymore.
3. For gaming, really minor things only sometimes, and that amount also decreased over time as the compatibility layers and tools got better and better. I think Linux is in general very newcomer/mainstream-friendly for gaming and general use right now, just pick the right distro for you. Since I'm on Arch, I obviously have to put in slightly more time, and I wouldn't recommend Arch to new users, unless that new user is also willing to enjoy the benefits of having a technically simple and lean OS while not caring about the disadvantages (having to invest slightly more time into it). That said, I also usually game on Steam and don't play games with invasive anti-cheat-systems in them. Which makes it even easier.
4. No.

For newcomers, best picks for a gaming-optimized Linux distro right now would be Bazzite, Nobara or simply any general-use but up to date distro like Fedora, Pop!OS, Kubuntu, OpenSuSE, CachyOS, EndeavourOS, Arch (the last three only if you can deal with the Arch-based distros, it's not for everyone). If you have a designated gaming machine, I'd probably use a gaming-centric distro. If you also use the machine for other tasks, I'd pick a general-use distro which can do gaming just fine as well. There's really no difference in capability between the two types other than what's already preconfigured OOTB and how fast you can go from zero to gaming.

The key people from the Trump administration and their key supporters need to be jailed for their complete disregard of the constitution and laws. If you can't stop them your justice system is broken. Any regular citizen doing a tiny percentage of what these criminals do would already be jailed for life. Enforce the laws and the constitution. Put those criminals where they belong.

Well, they massively expanded jail space everywhere, as well as funding for ICE. Of course they're going after much more people than just "illegal immigrants". That's just the low-hanging fruit for them (still anti-constitutional). Fascists will always move on to other groups of people because they constantly need to find new enemies, not realizing that they themselves are the only ones causing actual harm. They will also turn on each other if someone blames another one of "treason" or "aiding the enemy" or whatever. It's a purely destructive cult-like force and if you can't stop it it will cost millions of lives over a couple of years.

A pigeon is strictly better than Trump because they don't destroy the environment, societal and scientific progress, or other people. Now that I've thought about it 1 second more, it's not even a fair comparison. Because Trump existing means active harm and destruction in many areas.

Well, the point in time where it was maybe possible to defend against Trump and his cronies normally or legally is already over. Now they have gathered too much power and also already pretty much operate above the law. The Supreme Court is on their side I guess, not on the side of the constitution or the laws anymore. So it'll only get worse from now on, and quickly. Only regime-approved media will soon be left over, i.e. media distributing the regime's propaganda even further. And they will soon throw all of their opponents into concentration camps, not just "illegal immigrants". That's just the low-hanging fruit they needed for initially starting building concentration camps and expanding other jail space and their ICE army massively. Technically they would only need jail space for themselves and all supporters of this fascist regime, but they will jail all others they can get their hands on instead.

You will have an actual fight on your hands if you want to revert all this. Either just from the inside, or both from the inside and the outside once they start waging war on former allies like Canada or Denmark (Greenland). You should probably create local communities of people who are ready to help each other vs. ICE raids. Create logistical and resource problems for them. Make it hard and costly for them to destroy people's lives. If you let them kidnap too many people, you will not have enough people for resistance anymore.

Not sure there will be a big change there, because they are already powerful enough for most common tasks since several years now. And everyone owns at least one phone or tablet already. So I don't think that number is going to rise significantly anymore. Those people who are OK with using a phone/tablet for everything probably already do so right now. Maybe if living conditions for the non-super-rich become worse and people look for more affordable computing devices. But even then, older devices which can run Linux desktops for example are already dirt-cheap. I just don't think that the UI/UX of phones or tablets is on par with desktops or notebooks running a regular desktop OS when using a big screen. Those UIs are primarily made for touch and for smaller screens. Trying to do everything with just one UI paradigm just leads to Windows 8 ugliness.

Desktop Linux' marketshare is going to steadily increase, but as time progresses, so will the speed of that increase. Linux was at or below 1% for a really long time but within the last 5 years or so it jumped to ~5%. As this not only means more users, but also more attention and developers, this will of course snowball. The end of Win10 will also give a bump. And if the enshittification of Windows continues (it probably will) and if US-based companies are becoming a red flag for non-US-customers (will probably also happen) then it will snowball even faster.

First they came for the Communists
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not a Communist
\
\ Then they came for the Socialists
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not a Socialist
\
\ Then they came for the trade unionists
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not a trade unionist
\
\ Then they came for the Jews
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not a Jew
\
\ Then they came for me
\ And there was no one left
\ To speak out for me
\
\ — Martin Niemöller

Adapted for the fascist regime in USA today, it should probably go like this:

First they came for the illegal immigrants
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not an illegal immigrant
\
\ Then they came for the legal immigrants
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not a legal immigrant
\
\ Then they came for the political opposition
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not in the political opposition
\
\ Then they came for anyone not loyal on social media
\ And I did not speak out
\ Because I was not on social media
\
\ Then they came for me
\ And there was no one left
\ To speak out for me
\
\ —Someone who survived what's to come

Always saw it as white/gold first but after a few seconds I perceive it as blue/black and then it stays that way.

Yes. Unfortunately, these systems are also a great gift for any upcoming fascist regime (like the Trump junta currently) which will not only happily continue using the existing infrastructure but also extend it like mad.

Maybe humanity's greatest weaknesses overall: the lack of foresight and the lack of wisdom learned from historic precedents (e.g. Nazi Germany? Forgotten by now). Everything's always about short-term goals, ignoring any long-term disadvantages. See also: climate disaster.

Its popularity.

Currently playing Talos Principle Reawakened (the UE5 remastered version). For anyone wondering whether it's worth it, yes if you have the hardware for it. Because they also massively improved one of the most complex but also most frustrating mechanics in the original game (with the recorder thingie). So there are very useful improvements overall. Also, it has an entirely new DLC I think, which is again noticeably harder than the 1st DLC Road to Gehenna. Game looks great as well, but you need serious hardware for it. It's not very performance efficient anymore. :) The Talos Principle series are probably the biggest and best 3D first-person puzzle games out there, together with the Portal series. Absolutely recommended.

Other than that, I've played The Ten Bells and Exit 8. These are great small anomaly-hunting games. I've never played this genre before so it was a great discovery for me. If you're curious about this genre, start with Exit 8. If you liked that and prefer more horror elements in it, as well as a bigger "map", play The Ten Bells. Awesome small games, needing only like 2-3 hours to finish.

In other words: Users of proprietary OS like Windows have so little control over their own devices that it's newsworthy when the vendor allows you to uninstall 2-3 bundled things out of many more. But only in some countries! It's pathetic.

Yes, but that somehow doesn't change anything ever. They do horrible thing A, world is shocked about A, then they do horrible thing B, world is shocked about A+B, then they do horrible thing C, world is shocked about B+C (A has already been forgotten by that point). And so on. We don't really have proper checks & balances in place against malicious politicians with too much power and too many loyalists in key positions. So they can do whatever and get away with a ton. I mean I thought there should be checks and balances working to correct this in any modern democracy but then again checks & balances also fail regularly in other areas, e.g. in anti-corruption or in pro data protection. Everything's conveniently broken in some way and can be exploited. The key people from the Trump administration and/or Heritage Foundation should already be behind bars for lifetime.

I prefer FLAC. Don't know if there's an option in whipper for that. But the Arch Wiki has an article for converting: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Convert_FLAC_to_MP3

Corrected, thx.

Thanks, didn't know. It's indeed a well-established myth then. Corrected my post.

It's inherited from a historic convention from the UK. Historically the rationale was that the month was more important than the year, so they put it first, although this has no useful consistency or order to it.

Unfortunately, kind of dumb decisions from the past tend to stick and keep existing for an unnecessary long time because people get used to them and then never change them. Popularity or habit can beat reason, objectivity etc...