upstream @ upstream @beehaw.org

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Sounds perfect! /s

How often do you see a worthwhile firmware update to something older than two years?

Besides, running Linux isn’t a blocker for firmware updates if the vendor supports it.

Ars mentions that Apple (on average) now supports new Mac’s for 7 years, but even though Apple stops delivering updates at least the (non-Safari) browsers and other software may continue to receive updates for quite a bit longer.

In this day and age browser security is the first and most important line of defense, and as long as your browser is updated and your firewall is up you can have some sense of security.

I personally never touched a Chromebook, and have no idea how hard it is to get Linux onto them, but it sure proves Stallmans old argument about freedom.

Even my 2005 Audi A6 had software locked features.

Some were probably tuned for different markets, like lock confirmation beep, but others were added as later model year updates like visualization of parking sensors which, IIRC, was added with the 2006 model year update.

Now, granted, the Audi dealer that had serviced my car prior to my ownership never bothered to install firmware updates, but even when I did it was off by default.

To update I needed to flash new firmware onto the ECU’s using 3 CD’s with various updates while the car was hooked up to a charger. The whole thing took about 3 hours.

And then I could use a third party diagnostic tool (VCDS) to set and enable the visualization of the parking sensors. Honestly can’t remember if it actually worked, but at least I got other features made available due to the software updates.

The problem, IMO, is the trend towards never owning anything - not software gated features.

And that trend is certainly negative.

That whole thread reeks of biased short seller.

All cars catch on fire sometimes, but apparently Teslas are death machines (and allegedly do it every time they crash, which is easily verified to be false as long as you actually use real objective sources not randoms on social media).

I’m sure there’s people who believe this crap, but if you actually look at the stats they show something completely different.

High energy crashes kills people regardless of fuel type. High energy crashes are also more likely to cause a fire.

Advertisement has ruined journalism. Click-bait and light weight articles that lure people in to see as many ads as they can possibly cram between the lines and around the article, before they sell your reading patterns and digital fingerprint to the highest bidder.

Put words like Elon or Tesla in a headline and you get more clicks than if you didn’t. Bait the headline so people get curious and click in.

Make sure that you fill the top half of the page with generic text and copy-pasta so that you can show a few more ads before you actually come to the point of the article.

Use some AI to generate extra fluffiness or automate writing of sports and finance articles.

Social media certainly didn’t help, but when almost every news outlet wants to participate in the race to the bottom - a race to the bottom it is.

IMO the only way to fix it is a Time Machine. Every news paper linked here, or elsewhere, think they can sell me a subscription just because I followed a link or two. I live in Norway, I’m not going to subscribe to the New York Times just because they had an article I actually wanted to read.

It might not be perfect, but we need a system where journalists and media can be paid for creating quality content that people consume.

Not influencers who knows how to optimize the length of their YouTube videos to maximize income and minimize content.

Real deep journalism is dying. It’s a shame.

We’re happy to serve 🙃

I was never big on Twitter, I’m here thanks to Spez.

As much as I agree with the author, I’m also skeptical to bet against Musk.

On the other hand, Twitter is a mess he got himself into - not a project he actually pursued.

With that in mind I’ll give him (a very generous) 20-30% chance that X lives on to actually be a somewhat relevant platform of sorts and hasn’t gone belly up within the next two years.

Mostly because of the gravity Twitter had and the following that Musk has, not because the ideas seem like sound business concepts.

Just like every minute of the Donald’s presidency.

Can’t have world domination on credit!

Money is money. X% of something is always better than 100% of nothing.

I’m fine dealing with PayPal, but when I just tried to set up a monthly donation I had to identify twice and got stuck on a PayPal login site.

Now maybe that’s because I was in a webview inside a PWA (Voyager), but at the moment I have no clue if it worked or not.

In general I prefer not to do things like this in ephemeral webviews, but didn’t realize until I was halfway through and at that point I didn’t want to restart the process.

IMO too many clicks to contribute and I’m sure some people will be turned away by not being able to just click and give.

A lot of candidate donors might not want to commit to monthly donations and honestly it should just be a page with a few preset options/tiers and an “other amount” field. Followed by a button that says “pay with Apple Pay”, PayPal, Google wallet, or whatever else is trending.

Lowering the effort involved is important. You can ask for an email address for receipts afterwards if the payment service doesn’t have the option to provide one. Same with registration.

Plus the lawyers defending Trump must seriously be bottom feeders. It’s not the kind of lawyers that is good for society.

Not saying they’re assholes, but self-centered maybe.

That is a good question.

I suspect the answer can be found by looking at the Linux ecosystem.

20,000 opinions and 200 of them are willing to build their own distribution.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Unix and Linux, but there’s a metric ton of toxic personalities involved.

I’m sure a lot of it can be attributed to people having to be somewhere on the spectrum to even spend time contributing to free software on their own spare time, but a lot of people who build their own stuff tend to get quite attached to it as well.

Maybe all this friction actually is a good thing and it causes progress, but on the other hand I can’t help to think about where we could have been if everyone was pulling in the same direction.

Or the fact that a lot of people don’t like to live on top of each other, or that a lot of people have to live not in cities to enable city life.

It’s almost as if people think produce magically appears in the store shelves.

But it’s 2023 - we should be able to mine ore responsibly, not keep digging like it’s 1903.

But how do you know that the frontend is trustworthy? People assume that frontends only talk to one backend.

Web should have thought people otherwise, but for most people it’s pretty indistinguishable from magic.

Of course they did, but the world be so much better if games were available for all platforms and the platforms competed on the merits of their hardware and software instead of the merits of their exclusive titles.

Nintendo does their own thing, “always”* has, and is hardly relevant in this discussion.

What astonishes me is that paying for exclusivity in what is, in practice, a two player market isn’t considered anti-trust.

And yes, with “paying for exclusivity” I do mean both Sony’s approach and Microsoft’s acquisition-based approach.

: Eg. everyone who was a Nintendo switch also has something else, unless they’re < 12 years old.

I used to think that not having a built in rechargeable battery was a dull idea.

However: Whenever I wanted to play on my PS3 the batteries were empty and the controllers needed to be recharged.

Around the time I got my first Xbox I came to the realization that I had more units than I ever thought consuming AA or AAA batteries, so I decided to go all in on rechargeable batteries.

I love it. Whenever my Xbox tells me that the controller needs new batteries it takes me 20 seconds to swap in a new pair.

I don’t ever think about having to plug the controller. I don’t care if I pick it up and it’s dead. Etc. etc.

And best of all, there’s literally no drain when it sleeps. My switch controllers drains the battery when it’s resting. The PS3 drains the controller. Don’t know about the PS4 and PS5.

Can’t compete… because Sony is paying publishers to make games exclusive for the PS5.

As a PC gamer at heart exclusives suck.

Over the years I almost bought a console on a few occasions due to exclusives, or games shipping first on console.

Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV, then GTA V.

By the time RDR2 came out I had bought an Xbox One S - because it was the cheapest 4K BD player on the market.

Oh, the irony. Still haven’t bought a 4K BD. Prices were ridiculous. Probably still are. Found that 4K streaming titles on Apple TV were so good I didn’t need better than that.

But since stumbling into the One S led me to buy RDR2 on release day.

Halfway through I upgraded to the One X, and when Series X came out I had it less than a month later after putting in a pre-order about a month before release.

A colleague who pre-ordered PS5 six months before I even thought about the Series X had to wait 7 months from release for his.