This is beautifully familiar.

Am I seeing too many similarities between how Twitter/X was taken over and singlehandedly being irreversibly ruined?

While Windows is stubbornly becoming increasingly user-adversarial (advertising, constant intrusive updates, forced transition from your favorite browser to Microsoft Edge, etc.) and unintuitive (sometimes even counter intuitive) interface design, placement and inaccessible settings.

Well, delighting in schadenfreude, I won’t complain. Microsoft is inadvertently helping me help transition many friends, family and colleagues to various flavors of Linux systems, namely Linux Mint (whichever desktop they prefer) and/or Pop!OS most of the time, but also occasionally Fedora or a particular flavor of Ubuntu.

I never recommend Arch or rolling release systems or immutable systems to first time Linux user so as to preemptively avoid additional layers of complexity, learning curve, downtime and troubleshooting.

Ah, I suppose it’s TOTP/HOTP or HMAC challenge.

I am waiting for FIDO2 to work between keepassxc and yubikey. 🥳

Hmm… I may be mistaken but can they not already arrest troublemakers, arsonists, violent/aggressive individuals and other sort of rioters/agitators with preexisting laws/bylaws/regulations ?

On the other hand, I’m trying to see the silver lining here… perhaps this new law will make it difficult for agent provocateur¹ from operating without repercussions and anonymity unless the law specifically has a carve out for them (I wouldn’t be too surprised, but it would be another major blow to the resiliency of democracy in the United Kingdom).

Source: Pentney, K. (2021). Licensed to kill…discourse? agents provocateurs and a purposive right to freedom of expression. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 39(3), 241-257

I’ll skip. Just like how I skipped AOL, MySpace, LiveJournal, 4Chan, Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, Bebo, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, Blogger, Google+, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Quora, Twitch, YouTube, Vine, Netflix, OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Bumble, Discord, TikTok… oh all of the Apple ecosystem, and many other I missed by being oblivious or simply never heard of…

I liked the Slashdot, Digg, Reddit and now the Lemmy format/style. Will continue to move on to whatever I find stupid simple and publicly accessible I guess. I am naturally lazy, advertisement averse and hate having to provide personal info just to use something non-governmental or non-essential.

Now, with the increasing prevalence of LLM based bots, I will probably ineluctably reduce my time spent posting anything (I certainly hope it doesn’t get that bad, only time will tell) on any kind of “social media” and focus on current and new family, friends, coworkers, colleagues and acquaintances.

The essential part at the end:

“ When reached for comment, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt directed me to Reddit’s API FAQ page and said the company couldn’t comment further because it’s in a quiet period and doesn’t “comment on confidential business conversations and/or agreements.” ”

We can infer that it was not the fountain of money they thought it would become.

More telling is their silence. Who doesn’t want to promote and advertise how profitable they are to potential shareholders just before an IPO.

Like most others have stated here, I’ll also add my recommendations for Linux Mint.

I have helped most of my family, relatives and several friends move and familiarize themselves with Linux Mint, especially those that do almost everything within the web browser (shopping/email/Facebook/youtube/travel reservation/etc…). Since I already was their goto tech support, I showed them around on Linux Mint and they pretty easily got going as everything was intuitively similar to Windows. All was point and click (after my initial setup with their network, peripherals, printer and some basic automatic updates configuration), no terminal voodoo magic for them.

For the younger ones I typically set them up with Pop!OS and Steam and they are ready to jump without me having to explain much. Sometimes, I had to install and help setup a server (Minecraft) so they can play with their friends.

Personally, I use a mix of LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition), Alpine Linux, TrueNAS Scale, OPNsense and VMware ESXi/Workstation/vSphere for virtual machines.

Mind you, I would not recommend VMware as I am currently evaluating my transition options toward XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra or LXD/Incus or something else entirely.

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I attempted to try Garuda Linux (cinnamon) on a mini PC (Ryzen 5800H based APU), but graphic artefacting was a constant issue as soon as the install started.

After several tries I had to abandon ship and wait till a new release to maybe try again, if I remember. Not exactly “Nope, this one’s not for me” as I had yet to properly try it.

Otherwise, I tried Crunchbangplusplus and just gave up for being a bit too minimalist or not yet ready for prime time as I kept geting issues after issues and did not have the patience to wrangle the whole OS for everything from getting network working to audio and screen issues on my system.

Anyways, it is always fun to try new systems/apps/protocols and see where thing are headed towards.

Copyright should have stayed the original initial 14 years with possible renewal to 28 years. But like in France back then, also include the original authors (last one alive, if several) lifespan. Hence, a copyright would last either the authors lifespans or 28 years, whichever is longer.

Moreover, the patent system is being abused and does not serve the original goal of “any useful art, manufacture, engine, machine, or device, or any improvement there on not before known or used.” It granted the applicant the “sole and exclusive right and liberty of making, constructing, using and vending to others to be used” of his invention.. It needs major changes, including the requirement to have the “invention” be under examination by reputable third-party laboratories (such as Intertek, SGI, Underwriters Laboratories, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technischer Überwachungsverein, SGS - Société Générale de Surveillance, etc…) before being granted a patent. Nowadays, patents are given almost willy-nilly to anyone no matter how vague or obvious the supposed invention.

Nowadays, patents are being misused in Patent Ambush mechanisms and scenarios, meanwhile Patent Trolls and Hoarders whole existence is are to impede/obstruct legally and impose exorbitant levies/fees onto organization and companies actually innovating and developing useful art/process/devices. Even more incredible, there are Submarine Patents being hidden away to suddenly take hostage existing products and process of various companies by imposing extortionate royalties.

I have a single windows 11 system while everything else is on some form of Linux distro.

That windows system has never been connected to the internet, and it has been great without ever causing any of the typical update issues (although I update applications/components manually over an isolated NAS link).

It’s sad to see that everyday users have gotten habituated to these constant workflow braking updates. No wonder many people I know are jumping to the Apple ecosystem after getting a taste with a M2.

That reminds me, some time ago I tried installing Garuda on a Ryzen 5800H based mini PC but there where so many issues (namely worrisome graphical artefacting, which has never occurred with other distros on the same mini PC) I had to abort and abandon trying it until maybe the next or a future release.

I simply wanted to check out Garuda (arch based, if I recall well). I used the Cinnamon iso with Ventoy (not sure where the issue arose from).

Here we go again… 🤣

https://lemmy.world/post/5730713

The result last time:

In Canada, Apple is taking most of the increase, I wish Linux was more prevalent but I’m happy to see the downward slope for Windows:

Excellent writeup! With constant updates to boot 🥳

I’m saving it for future reference.

Thank you for putting your time and effort on this.

The future I want to foresee is one where everybody runs and keeps their data locally (or their dedicated VPS):

• where everyone has access to at least 10Gbps symmetric fiber optic connection to the internet at their home/apartment at affordable price (doesn’t have to be unlimited, but pricing per TB of bandwith usage needs to be less than USD $1 as it is the actual cost of operating & peerage)
• whereas net neutrality is a prerequisite to any corporation/organization/government/municipality getting network backbone peerage with other network operators
• whereas registering to a website or service actually creates a local secure database/bucket/pod where that website/service organizes/sort/manipulates our data and stores all generated modified data/metadata within our local personnal server, every time we interact with that same external website/service it gets access to the database/bucket previously created. Look into the Solid protocol specification to get a better idea (it doesn’t have to be that specific protocol)
• whereas FIDO2 or WebAuth or their successor is widely accepted for passkey implementation or just multifactor authentication
• whereas all communications are direct peer-to-peer without transiting third party servers (as in not managed by either communicating party)

Moreover, even better would be to teach everyone from elementary school various concepts (from simpler to more complex gradually) of science, programming, critical thinking and empathy.

If I may dare to push even further, with technology (secure authentication, work from home familiarity, collaborative softwares, digital signing, distributed version control), give every citizen (from the age of 12 or earlier; because one has to start learning early to make mistakes, understand and form good habits) the ability to vote/abstain on every proposition, motion, new/modified law and decision regarding their own country. Have a publicly accessible historical account of every vote by everyone (excluding secret ballots obviously). Most importantly, every year end, 4 years, 10 years, 25 years, 60 years have a collective review/retrospective of past motions/decisions that were implemented and let everyone vote on if those were overall beneficial or harmful for the country/state/municipality. Empower those who tend to regularly vote and tend to historically vote beneficially (at least 70% of their votes after they reached 25 years old) for the country/state/municipality to become a local representative.

I know it’s getting wordy and perhaps a bit complicated but keep up with me. Give accredited/qualified individual in very specific fields the retractable/overridable power to have their votes on certain very specific motion/law/decision be inherited by active delegation by any other citizens up to a limit of ~290 (Bernard–Killworth number) per qualified inviduals. For example, a citizen could separetely delegate his/her votes:

• relating to healthcare to their own family doctor if they like/respect their judgment or even a familly member who is licensed for medical practice, it doesn’t matter who as long as they are qualified for the subject matter
• relating to renovating a specific bridge to their neighbor who is a general contractor or their nephew who is a civil engineer
• relating to military procurement to their veteran uncle still with a sharp mind and keenly informed with world event or even their weekly indoor hockey teammate who is a unstoppable adventurer exploring every part if the world but also a office worker and a reservist

All while always preserving the option to change their vote anytime for any reason; by delegating to someone else for specific issue/concerns or voting on their own (always takes priority over delegation).

Well… I am being too hopeful and probably pushed things far beyond what is realistic, but it is nice to make thought experiments on what may be possible with technology.

I want that‽ 😆

When I’m old and decrepit with an out of sync heart, I would like to go with a nuclear pacemaker.

I could then say that I am henceforth Plutonium powered 😎.

It is fairly easy to differenciate DNA samples from different species and exclude them. Since it has always been an issue to have contamination by foreign DNA (bacterias, fungus, virus, plancton, fauna and flora of all sorts, etc.), tools/methods/protocols are specifically made to quickly separate out (amplify the DNA we are interested in) from whatever is not to focus of the current study.

Moreover, a random anonymous sample without associated information can quickly be analysed and compared against large libraries of genome datasets/maps to ascertain and corroborate what it is from, closest species, even family trees of related inviduals and most importantly get an overview of multiple phenotype of interest.

From the day the full human genome map had been declared complete in 2003 (at 85% of the genome), research has only accelerated in improving the map while understanding the various functions of many different parts of our DNA.

I have a fairly generic full name. Searching me online comes up with everything else but anything actually about myself. So many people of all ages have my name I was pretty surprised.

Moreover, I kept myself off of Facebook and most social media including all those meetup/dating/influencer/vlogging apps.

However, a few friends, colleagues and familly may have a few inadvertent cameos of me in their photos/videos. Which I do not mind, as they are unavoidable in day to day life.

Overall, I have taken mesures to leave as much of a messy digital footprint I can with things totally unrelated to me, my preferences and my knowledge.

We can’t really have complete and true privacy in our modern age with big data, “vacuum” everything/anything and decrypt later, deep learning and multi-domain tracking/inference. We can at least consciously (by choosing more privacy aware services, or by choosing to not give any/all our info) and unconsciously (through automation, scheduling of unrelated “activity” generation and mixing of different activities with others on the same profile or tracking token) leave a noisy footprint of ourselves and others.

Exactly! I always wondered about that particular issue.

Although, if one encrypt themself their email through GPG or other means before sending it, it’s almost a non issue excepting metadata (sender, receiving email address, timestamp, etc.).

Would you recommend a particular Beelink model?

I have been interested after seeing some reviews, but I’m not sure what would be the best deal.

Hence would greatly appreciate some recommendations.