Is it possible to boot a disk image in DOSbox from the host OS terminal, or by double-clicking the disk image?


I'd like to just casually boot straight into a game sometimes, or at least a mounted floppy. I don't want to type commands is DOSbox for casual situations like this.

I'm focussing on games that can run straight from the floppy drive. Thanks!

Edit: I tried variations of this command in the macOS terminal:

/Applications/DOSBox\ Staging.app/Contents/MacOS/dosbox -c "imgmount a '/Users/io/Downloads/Prince.img' -t floppy" -c "a:" -c "dir /p"

The idea is that it would open DOSbox in the A: location, run dir /p. I should see prince.exe listed. Unfortunately what actually happens is I'm given a listing of Z: instead. When I try to switch to A:, I'm told that it needs to be mounted first. But I thought my terminal command takes care of that.
This entry was edited (59 minutes ago)
in reply to FarraigePlaisteaċ

I'm not home right now, but I once wrote a batch script to help do exactly that as a context menu option for Windows systems, to boot an IMA/IMG image directly into DOSBox.

Once I get home, I'll see if I can locate those old scripts and try to share. Granted the difference between Windows and Mac, but the basic command lines for DOSBox should effective work the same.

No promises, but if I find those script files (holy crap I have way too many files!), I'll see about sharing them later, translation to the Mac environment will be up to you though.

I think my approach was to copy the default dosbox.conf file to a temporary file, then append the temporary file with what image to boot from under [AUTOEXEC], and just consider the temp dosbox.conf as exactly that, temporary, to be rewritten every time I used my custom DOSBox Boot Floppy context menu thing.

I dunno, I'll see later, when/if I get a good chance soon.

in reply to Cracks_InTheWalls

Taurozzi had pet insurance, but it didn't cover Coal's full medical bills. He said Coal's medical care cost more than $30,000.

He raised more than $15,000 through a Go Fund Me campaign, which helped extend Coal's life and gave him the best medical care available.


I was devastated when I decided I couldn’t afford $900 in vet bills for my cats, but this is insane.

How come I've got my NVIDIA GPU to work for every game except Hogwarts Legacy? (More details in post body)


So, I have this new laptop I got which has an NVIDIA RTX 4090M GPU, and also an integrated Intel GPU. Obviously, I only want to use the Intel GPU for less intensive apps, and to use the NVIDIA GPU for games or other intensive applications, such as AI.

Through trial, error, and lucky searches on the internet, I figured out some things that do and don't work.

  • Plugging in the laptop makes the NVIDIA GPU run much faster
  • The default Fedora NVIDIA drivers work fine, I don't need to install any alternatives
  • To make a normal app use the GPU, all I have to do is right click the icon and click 'Launch with discrete GPU' (on GNOME), or to make it open with discrete GPU by default (and launching with the integrated GPU would be an option in the context menu), I have to copy the desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications, and edit the .desktop file so it contains the line PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true
  • For Steam apps, the previous method doesn't work (for some reason - maybe it uses a custom launch process?), but after trying many different ways, I was able to get most Steam apps to use the correct GPU (GPU 0) by adding the custom launch option PROTON_USE_WINED3D=0 %command%
  • For some reason, this doesn't work for Hogwarts Legacy. It, of all games, really wants to use the Intel graphics - even with the custom launch command, PrefersNonDefaultGPU=true, and in game setting the preferred GPU to my NVIDIA one - yes, it is listed and recognised in game - I can tell both from the Resources app and the abysmal performance that my NVIDIA GPU is not being used and my Intel GPU is
  • Other apps like Portal RTX, The Witcher 3, ComfyUI (running through Krita AI Diffusion), Blender, and Civilisation 6 are running great with the NVIDIA GPU
  • I do not have prime-run installed and do not need it

My laptop model is MEDION Beast X40.

I'm honestly at my wits end.

Any suggestions?

Dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev: "Calling out our propa- NEWS‽ That's bigotry! Removed and BAN!"


Source: lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/19989…

Modlog: photon.lemmy.world/modlog?=&us…

Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!

And consider donating to individual instances instead

@Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev: "And I took that personally, BAN!"


Source: lemmy.ml/comment/19765848

Modlog: photon.lemmy.world/modlog?=&us…

Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!

And consider donating to individual instances instead

@ctrl_alt_esc@lemmy.ml

Laggy performance on fedora linux


Hello all. I've recently installed Fedora 42 on my laptop, it's a microsoft surface laptop studio so it's running with the custom surface kernel. The feature matrix on their github page says that everything should be supported for my laptop and that's pretty much been my experience so far but I've been having issues when testing out games.

The laptop has a 3050TI and is more than capable of running most of the games that I usually play on windows, and I've almost gotten it working on Fedora. They'll launch and run just fine, everything even looks pretty decent graphically, but it just has really bad stuttery input lag, even in more lightweight games that I've tested such as balatro and stardew valley.

I'm not sure what would be causing this, as far as I'm aware I'm running the right gpu driver, I've double checked that they're using the dedicated gpu rather than the integrated one with nvidia-smi, but honestly that's about the extent of my knowledge. Does anyone have any thoughts / suggestions? It would be much appreciated.

in reply to ayyo

This kind of problem is going to require some deep debugging of the surface kernel drivers. This isn't going to be a simple or quick fix. Somebody is going to need to do some extensive debugging and analysis to chase down an issue like this. A solution to this problem could take a few hours, or it could take a few months of meticulous trial and error to narrow down the problem space and gather enough data to enable somebody to zero in on the problem.

If you want to dive into tracking down the problem yourself, I suggest starting with the kernel's own docs on the driver architecture and debugging tools, etc.

in reply to QuentinCallaghan

It's astounding how accurate this is. I spent 2016 - 2024 playing this game with a friend that I eventually cut off.

He'd parrot something insane that he didn't fact check.

I'd point out the flaws.

He'd come back with his google search results.

I'd actually read them and point out half of them disagreed with him and the other half were verifiably trash.

He'd run away from the conversation and refuse to respond to anything political I say until he forgets; cuz he never learns.

This entry was edited (6 hours ago)
in reply to cm0002

Until 2021 when I got my new PC, I still had a bluray/cd/dvd burner, although I don't recall ever using it for burning anything. I guess that era is finally getting laid to rest.
Also, way back when it was a requirement to burn CD's and DVD's in order to install operating systems like linux, I don't ever recall using a CD-RW disc. I guess I thought of them a bit like potions in skyrim where by the end of the game I end up with hundreds of them and then never using them when I really needed to.
in reply to Pro

They're only doing it cause almost no one wants to pay for the news.

Then again, so many of them make it painful; I bought a sub to the Guardian a few years back and my reward for that was to get even more popups telling me to subscribe to additional features.

Naturally, to cancel it, you have to call someone in the UK during their business hours.

That's why all these megarich assholes own newspapers and media companies; it's a cheap way to establish narrative control and kill off independent media.

Poilievre worried there won’t be enough government left for him to cut


Federated Social Media with Topic-Based Following and Blocking?


I'm looking for a federated social media platform that allows for easy topic-based following and blocking, similar to how you can follow or block hashtags on Twitter. On Lemmy, you can follow communities, but there are so many that it becomes overwhelming. I want a platform where I can see or block everything related to a specific tag, and also view only the most popular posts about that topic, similar to how Lemmy communities work. Mastodon, for example, only shows the latest posts, which isn't ideal for trending content. I don't want a chat-like experience; I want to quickly see what's trending about a topic or what's trending in general, while being able to block a few specific topics. Ideally, I wouldn't have to spend hours curating a list of communities or followed users. Does anyone know of a platform that fits these criteria?

Could someone help me setup local file sharing?


Hello, I've been working towards fully migrating to linux, but this is one issue I'm having a hard time with. I have a couple of folders on a storage drive that I share on my local network to stream movies and TV, but I can't figure out how to do it in my Linux install. I'm running Linux Mint 22, have installed Samba, and have tried a few different walkthroughs with no success. Can anyone point me in the right direction to get this set up?

Thanks for your time!

Manitoba again declares provincewide state of emergency due to wildfires


Manitoba has declared another provincewide state of emergency as wildfires continue to threaten communities.

Garden Hill Anisininew Nation is being evacuated Thursday after a wildfire entered the First Nation, leadership said Thursday morning. Snow Lake, about 590 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, issued a mandatory evacuation order on Wednesday, with people ordered out by noon Thursday.

More than 4,000 people are expected to leave Garden Hill alone, the premier said. Snow Lake has a population of more than 1,000 people.

The Canadian Armed Forces has been assisting with the evacuation from that community. Hercules and commercial flights are slated to help bring residents out on Thursday, Kinew said.

Spain, Ireland and China to join more than 20 states to declare ‘concrete measures’ against Israel


More than 20 countries are convening in Bogota next week to declare “concrete measures against Israel’s violations of international law”, diplomats told Middle East Eye.

The “emergency summit” is due to be held on 15-16 July, co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and South Africa as co-chairs of The Hague Group, to coordinate diplomatic and legal action to counter what they describe as “a climate of impunity” enabled by Israel and its powerful allies.

The founding members of the group included Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa.

States due to take part in the summit include Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Honduras, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Portugal, Spain, Qatar, Turkey, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Palestine.

US warns ICC member states to drop proceedings against Israel


The warning was direct, blunt and left no room for doubt. "We expect all ICC actions against the United States and our ally Israel – that is, all investigations and all arrest warrants – to be terminated," said Reed Rubinstein, legal adviser at the US State Department, before delegates of the 125 member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday, July 8, at a meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York from July 7 to 9.

If the ICC arrest warrants for crimes against humanity and war crimes issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on November 21, 2024, as well as ongoing investigations into crimes committed in the Gaza Strip and the settlement of Palestinian territory, are not dropped, "all options remain on the table," he declared.

Vancouver council lowers speed limit to 30km/h on local streets to reduce collisions


Avoid Paywall
in reply to MightBeFluffy

I think a lot of peope understandably misunderstand this post because it doesn't really explain the situation. After reading OP's comments I gather that OP put a new server online (not on AWS) and was immediately port scanned by a host that is on AWS. Since OP did not consent to being port scanned, they filled out an abuse complaint with AWS, the hoster the scan came from, out of principle, knowing that it probably won't do much. Which is totally fine if that is how you want to spend your time.

I think what most commenters thought is that OP was hosting with AWS and complained to them that someone else scanned their server. This does not seem to be the case.

This entry was edited (14 hours ago)
in reply to uzay

Absolutely not — the issue here is OP knowingly submitting false abuse reports.

Port scans of public hosts are not considered abuse per the CFAA or Amazon’s AUP without other accompanying signs of malicious intent.

aws.amazon.com/aup/

Amazon may take action against egregious mass-scanning offenders per the “…to violate the security, integrity, or availability of any user, network…” verbiage of the AUP, especially if they’re fingerprinting services or engaging in more sophisticated recon, but OP’s complaints are nowhere near meeting that threshold.

This entry was edited (5 hours ago)

Need Advice - Linux gaming - Mint


Hi. I've been using Linux for decades on my work machines, but most of my knowledge is pretty rusty. However for gaming I've always used a Windows machine. I'm thinking of getting rid of microsoft entirely, since I've been hearing such good things about steam & proton lately.

I was going to just install Mint on my gaming computer, but since there are a ton of experts here, I figured I should check in to see if there is any reason not to use Mint for this? And if there is any other considerations or setup I should be aware of to keep my games running well?

in reply to Levi

Mint is fine, as the others have said, and there isn't going to be a WILD performance difference between any distros (+/- 5%, you can check Phoronix for benchmarks), so just pick whatever feels okay for you.

To expand on the general difference between distros: if you want something that is running the most up-to-date kernel versions and Mesa drivers, you'll want something that does rolling releases like Fedora, CachyOS (Arch-based), or Tumbleweed.

If you want something that is more generally stable and unchanged over time, and doesn't upgrade the kernel or drivers, stick with Mint LTSbor Ubuntu LTS.

Social media can support or undermine democracy — it comes down to how it’s designed


It is a design choice to offer a news feed that combines verified news sources with conspiracy blogs — interspersed with photos of a family picnic — with no distinction between these very different types of information. It is a design choice to use algorithms that find the most emotional or outrageous content to show users, hoping it keeps them online. And it is a design choice to send bright red notifications, keeping people in a state of expectation for the next photo or juicy piece of gossip.

Platform design is a silent pilot steering human behavior.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/07/social-media-can-support-or-undermine-democracy-it-comes-down-to-how-its-designed/

in reply to technocrit

No, it cannot.

They are confronting what is obvious, effective tools to undermine democracy with some weird experiment that is at best a niche effort to do online social engineering much more than it is social media.

Social media is a destructive force. By nature. Yes, Fedi as well.

You learn to manage in society, maybe. Like you do addiction and cancer and crime. The techno-optimism stuff is borderline delusional at this point.

Fluffy Kitty Cat doesn't like this.

in reply to Davriellelouna

But one Toronto MP, who asked not to be identified to speak freely, said the mayor didn’t act because of her electoral considerations.

The next municipal election is scheduled for fall 2026, and a recent poll found that 53 per cent of residents disapproved of Chow’s performance.

Chow was elected mayor in a 2023 byelection, winning just over 37 per cent of the vote. She dominated the central wards and won most of Scarborough, but lost in suburban Etobicoke and North York.

The areas that blocked sixplexes (Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough, with the exception of Ward 23) are also the areas most resistant to density, and where council opposition was strongest.

The MP said Chow’s decision on sixplexes is an effort to “hold on to every vote” she won in the suburbs north of Bloor Street while reassuring her downtown base.


I hate that too often politicians base their decisions on what could happen in futire elections.

I mean almost none of them prioritize their civic duty and what's best for their constituents anymore. It's all "But what about my re-election!" bs now.

in reply to HellsBelle

I hate that too often politicians base their decisions on what could happen in futire elections.


I struggle with this point. Isn't respecting their constituents' democratic wishes their civic duty? Isn't this exactly what you'd want from a mayor or city councillor you voted for? If she steamrolls her voters, they'll elect a John Mandatory who promises to listen to them and they'll reverse the zoning changes. On one hand what constituents want could be counterproductive, on the other, going against their democratic wishes is also counterproductive. The only case where I can see steamrolling them is if you can make a change so quickly, so that they see the material benefits from it and change their mind as a result. Otherwise I think you have to get the democratic buy-in from people for the changes you make. E.g. work with councillors to propose solutions to what people resistant to density are afraid of, or give them something in exchange, in order to get enough buy-in so that that changes and likely you survive the next election. Meanwhile rezone parts of TO that aren't as opposed to density.

But make no mistake, very few people want construction projects going on around them for years, without anything to soothe the pain. If you tell them you'll freeze their property tax for 10 years because the new development would pay more, then they may be okay with listening to construction noise for a few years.

I don't mind construction noise too much but if I had the choice to have it or not have it, and didn't see a good reason to have it, I'd vote for peace and quiet. Now I do see there's a good reason so I would've voted pro-density if I was in TO (am just across the border in Peel), but the west end of TO around me is full of "Fight the Height" and "Stop the Lot Split" signs.

This entry was edited (6 hours ago)
in reply to Avid Amoeba

make no mistake, very few people want construction projects going on around them for years, without anything to soothe the pain. If you tell them you’ll freeze their property tax for 10 years because the new development would pay more, then they may be okay with listening to construction noise for a few years.


Canada has a very high immigration rate combined with strict zoning rules.

The result? The country is facing the worse housing crisis in the Western world. Rents have increased at double digits. Visible homelessness has skyrocketed. People are ending up on the streets. Landlords are abusing vulnerable women.

Olivia Chow claims to be a progressive fighting for ordinary people.

That turned out to be a lie. If you live in a country with a major housing crisis and oppose making housing more affordable, you aren't a progressive.

This entry was edited (4 hours ago)
in reply to Davriellelouna

I'm aware of all that. It doesn't address the mechanism I described which prevents or reverses progressive changes if enough people are against them. I'm trying to explain why change isn't happening and what's needed for it to happen in our system. What I'm saying is no amount of scoffing at Chow or whoever else we elect would help get out of this mess unless we and our representatives convince enough people on the ground to vote for building housing. Chow was elected with 37% of the vote, not 50 or 80.
This entry was edited (3 hours ago)

Immigration caps are contributing to lower asking rents in Canada, CMHC says


The article has a loooooong list of rent decreases in major metros across the country. Generally, we're seeing decreases that seem to erase the increase from the same period in 2024.

Over the past year, the average asking monthly rent fell between 2 per cent and 8 per cent in condos and rental-only apartments – also known as purpose-built rentals – said the report released Tuesday by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp (CMHC).

The drop was due to a surge in new condos and apartment buildings hitting the market along with limits on temporary foreign residents such as students and new permanent residents.


...

“It is quite evident on the demand side that there have been signs of weakening,” said Tania Bourassa-Ochoa, CMHC’s deputy chief economist, adding that there were stronger rental declines in regions with slower population growth.


archive.is/wosmf

in reply to Kevin Russell

Immigration is a policy. Noting the effect of the policy is not racist.

The feds/provinces failed to factor population changes into policy, meaning we don't have enough housing, medical professionals, teachers, classrooms, etc.

The ideal scenario is that we build enough houses (possibly using the immigration system to invite more construction workers to become citizens of our country), train enough healthcare professionals (possibly by inviting existing professionals in, or training during foreign students who stay), and ensure workers that we invite into the country receive the same benefits Canadians do.

in reply to sbv

Liberals stopped building houses, as they had for decades. That is what happened. Billy fell off his bicycle. Sarah bought an ice cream cone. Planes flew overhead, and Liberals stopped building residential units.

Conservatives also built no housing, but they didn't "stop"- just kept serving the rich.

Immigration increases economic activity far beyond its costs.

So racists have to lie about its economic effect, because using racism is very exposing.

#canada #cdnpoli #racisn #cmhc

This entry was edited (5 hours ago)

Europe is slowly ditching Microsoft: why it's happening & why it could fail.


in reply to cm0002

Um, why are you linking this from another instance? Here's the link to the original instance: tilvids.com/w/v4wYzqLEpaURCg6W…


Europe is slowly ditching Microsoft: why it's happening & why it could fail.


Head to squarespace.com/thelinuxexperi… to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code thelinuxexperiment

Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: tuxedocomputers.com/en#

👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:
Get access to:
- a Daily Linux News show
- a weekly patroncast for more thoughts
- your name in the credits

YouTube: youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join
Patreon: patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment

Or, you can donate whatever you want:
paypal.me/thelinuxexp
Liberapay: liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperime…

👕 GET TLE MERCH
Support the channel AND get cool new gear: the-linux-experiment.creator-s…

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:51 Sponsor: Squarespace
02:09 EU ditching MS products
04:42 Counter example: Munich
05:28 Digital Sovereignty
08:32 The Cost argument
10:57 Why this move is good
14:04 It's still very fragile
17:07 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers


in reply to yessikg

Hi, the OP this was crossposted from here. The answer is simple: I am using PeerTube Companion, a Firefox add-on that automatically redirects me to my home instance when loading any PeerTube video - so I can easily comment and like and subscribe. So when using the "share" button or copy-pasting the link from the address bar, I will default to posting a link to my instance - in essence, it is the same video, loaded from the same source, federation being what it is.

[theoretical] What would the real impacts of FOSS software becoming more prevalent in all segments of society?


Thumbing through the feed, the news on how this or that organization letting go of commercial options for day to day operations are mounting.

This led me to wonder what would be the impact if FOSS, be it on the OS front, productivity front or whatever, was to become truly a relevant option.

I'm painfully aware of the difficulties I've faced trying to take a few online courses to be faced with borderline desdain for not using Windows/Office/Etc and opting for FOSS solutions.

Paying/supporting a FOSS solution does not offend me. I'm happier when giving money directly to a developer or project than to an opaque company. But I'm just one.

But what could happen if the ones became millions, actively contributing with a few coins per year to projects we use daily?

What could/would happen in the short term (under a year), medium-long (one to three years) and the long term (over ten years)?

in reply to qyron

From enduser perspective the most visible change would be that all software wouldn't be hostile to users because with propreitary you have to be very picky to get that.

In the long term we would see that companies could not build walled gardens to block off competition. Contrast Windows & MacOS vs Linux with its different distros, DEs, toolkits etc.

The least difference would be for enterprise because support is expensive either way.

Mr. Robertson, tell Toronto a deal is a deal


The housing crisis is screwing generations of Canadians. Toronto City council is enabling it.

The feds need to call out Toronto's bad faith negotiations and withdraw the promised funds.

(The feds also need to change tax laws to definancialize housing, enforce money laundering laws, build affordable housing, etc - but I digress)

In 2023, Toronto city council voted in support of an agreement signed with Ottawa, pledging a variety of policy changes that included allowing buildings with six housing units on a single lot anywhere in the city. Federal money allocated from the Housing Accelerator Fund started to flow in return and then, during a debate last month, a lot of councillors got cold feet.

Instead of voting to allow the sixplexes they had pledged to permit everywhere, council watered down the proposal. In fact, they took a fire hose to it. These buildings will be allowed in only nine wards, which together make up less than one-quarter of the city’s area. Councillors for the other 16 wards can opt in later, as if they are mayors of their own area.


archive.is/DoPVJ

🔒 Setting Up Headscale & Tailscale on NixOS: A Zero-Trust Networking Guide for ❄️ NixOS - YouTube


Cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/33674513

Any general suggestions when getting started with headscale?


🔒 Setting Up Headscale & Tailscale on NixOS: A Zero-Trust Networking Guide for ❄️ NixOS - YouTube


Sascha Koenig looks to have some quality deep guides around NixOS!


🔒 Setting Up Headscale & Tailscale on NixOS: A Zero-Trust Networking Guide for ❄️ NixOS - YouTube


Sascha Koenig looks to have some quality deep guides around NixOS!
in reply to CanadaPlus

Speak for yourself and being mainly physically targeted, I came to Lemmy to get off of Reddit, I miss the local community as many people do not have the interest in figuring out Lemmy. I have cancelled all of my streaming services from the US, if there is something I want to see that is strickly on a streaming service I put on my pirates hat and sail the high C’s, other wise I watch it on the Canadian Channels app (with my pihole on so that I do not see ads so that it becomes less valuable for the Canadian channel to continue paying for it) I subscribed to CBC Gem+ or whatever it is called and watch Canadian content on there. I us Unwatched to watch YouTube so that I am not paying Google, I feel for the non US videos I watch but they are still getting money from Google but Google is not getting it from me.

One of the first buy Canadian things I did was move my blog hosting from a US provider to hosthero.ca and changed it from .com to .ca then I looked at my iCloud stuff and started finding other options. Sure they are not all together anymore and do not easily communicate together it is however far less expensive than what I was doing before. I was using Apple’s hide my email feature I had 60 some email address (I think). After going through all those addresses and finding out what was dead or not I moved something like 45 addresses to my hosthero email server, and I started moving more things that did not already have their separate email address to my address. I would later find out that my ISP changed to an exchange server, I have no idea if they have to pay Microsoft for that or what but I have been transitioning all of the emails I get from there to there own email address. This is not a short process and I am up to 120 some email addresses, all of the pseudo-random email addresses are forwarded to 1 of 5 email accounts that I check. I can have unlimited free trials for things if I so choose (have not done that with this yet, I had done this a couple of times for things in my iCloud days). I do not trust myself with hosting my own password manager so bitwarden is not really an option for me so I went with 1password, for my cloud storage I just downloaded everything to one of my pi’s but I was having all kinds of difficulties with hosting my own VPN and NextCloud crashed on me a couple of times so I decided to go with sync.com. If there was any real competition for youtube I would not be sneaking in via other apps I would be using the real alternative platform.

Truckers Freedom Convoy leader says he is seeking political asylum in the United States


This entry was edited (7 hours ago)
in reply to MudMan

...the way Switch carts are made there is no difference at all between a cart used on a console and the same cart resold for a different console.


IIRC every cartridge has its own cryptographic key and can be uniquely identified. When it became possible to dump game cards and load them on a flash card, there were reports, that it is possible, that this might lead to a detection - as the flashcards need to replicate this key. Now, Nintendo might have no way to tell if you lend the game to someone, of the other switch that uses it bought the game from you, etc. BUT if it is pirated, it's possible to detect, when the original and the copy are played at the same time, as the cartridge cannot be physically in two switches simultaneously. There were never any reports, that someone really got banned because of this, though...

Danielle Smith says Canada is punching Alberta in the face


This entry was edited (9 hours ago)

Exclusive: Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest


Europe is slowly ditching Microsoft: why it's happening & why it could fail.


in reply to berber

I guess the engagement bait "please contradict the headline"-title is working well, I always want to keep editorialising to a minimum when sharing videos like this, but this was one of those "what they meant could have been made a little bit clearer, and they knew it"-things.

Really the stuff he is talking about concerning that - mainly initial cost vs long term savings and lack of existing infrastructure/expertise - are just realities that are important to address in the political process. He could have gone into more detail considering Munich's attempt at Linux (LiMux) - where to my knowledge the reason it failed was a combination of lobbying by Microsoft, Conservatives (CSU) winning the local elections, and costs (as well as employee complaints) from having processes be more complicated, the latter mostly thanks to Microsoft's outright obstructionism concerning document format standards, as well as expertise being relatively costly (whereas finding MS-certified anyones in the office space was relatively easy). Those are considerations to have, but I think more and more, the advantages of Linux and Open Source clearly outweigh that stuff in the face of rising costs and enshittification, and he does talk about all the good stuff pretty well in the video.

in reply to AbnormalHumanBeing

indeed, the anti-limux stuff was a sort of microsoft marketing campain in disguise.

microsoft lobbied munich to abandon linux after they adopted it while abandoning windows, and also put in great effort to paint the narrative that it was due to linux being bad. they successfully pointed to things that didn't work with linux, masking that the reason these things didn't work were not due to linux but due to not updating or other administrative problems not related to the operating system.

This entry was edited (2 hours ago)

Europe is slowly ditching Microsoft: why it's happening & why it could fail.


Canadian media giant Rogers named as victim of Chinese telecom hackers


in reply to Doubleohdonut

Technically three since Videotron/Freedom run their own network but the coverage is so limited that you'll be on one of their "Nationwide" partners most of the time outside urban areas which means Rogers or Bell/Telus (they network share in so many areas i always bucket them together even if there are places where they maintain their own networks and they do have separate backhaul but anyway)
in reply to Nanook

Yeah, the centralization of public Internet infrastructure around Cloud flare has been concerning, not only as a single point of failure but also in terms of consolidation of trust.

As a prior student workout a public IP deep behind several NATs, with little funds for self hosting hobbies, these kinds of tunnel services were a handy gateway in getting started.

Although, I hope ISP adoption of IPv6 or cheaper bandwidth quotas for VPS providers help compete on this front for self hosting networking.

in reply to ruffsl

@ruffsl I have no bandwidth quota on my vps's, only memory and disk. See eskimo.com/services/virtual-pr… further our shared hosting is extremely robust, this friendica site runs on it, friendica.eskimo.com/ and runs around 7-16 hits/second (between slow and peak times) and response time is generally between 240-500ms which is better than most major providers. It is doable, for me the big issue is you are proxying https, is that data getting un-encrypted / re-encrypted in the chain? If so do you really want them looking at all of your traffic?

Which hardware for stable sleep?


I'm contemplating to replace 1-2 aging desktops in our home by "gaming" laptops.

What really bugs me with the Linux laptops I currently have is that sleep is unstable or inefficient. On one device it sometimes just won't wake up. On both the battery is drained fully within few days. I have a MacBook at work and know I'll probably not hit the same level of stability and efficiency in sleep, but I'm wondering whether hardware choice can play a role in improving the experience, especially seeing how I might make this my primary device moving forward.

I often grab the Linux laptop and end up going for the work MacBook or my ipad because the battery is dead and I only wanted to check something real quick - it's okay with an old leftover device but it sort of irritates me.

in reply to just_another_person

Thanks for your input! What's the issue with Asus? Their Rog series has some really nice hardware it seems and might be something I can actually walk into a store and try in person.

What about Lenovo? As an owner of two ThinkPads and with friends happy about their Legion devices that's the one other manufacturer I have on my radar regarding "might be available in a store in my country".

This entry was edited (3 hours ago)
in reply to 4shtonButcher

The main issue is that a lot of these bigger manufacturers have 3 tiers of hardware they kick out:

1) consumer-grade/junk
2) professional/developer/niche
3) enterprise hardened

If you find a model of something you're looking to buy for sale at big box stores, it's going to be total junk: windows-centric hardware with low reliability, but really cheap to produce. Stay away from those, as their Linux compatibility is going to be horrendous UNLESS you've heard otherwise specifically about a particular model.

Lenovo has done something interesting in the last few years and blurred the lines between #1 and #2, so now it's a crapshoot. ASUS ruined their #2 tier stuff years ago by including gimmicky stuff like touch bars, and secondary displays without ANY support except for Windows.

For Linux compatibility, you need to make sure your components either already have driver support, or is made by a company who directly releases or contributes Linux drivers. AMD and Intel are top of that list, with Nvidia kinda/sorta doing the bare minimum for consumer-grade components, but full support for enterprise-grade stuff.

If you're not sure all the components in the machine you're buying already have Linux support, it's going to be a crapshoot. ASUS specifically makes crappy moves by including things that notoriously DON'T have native Linux support like: Broadcom chipsets, or random audio codecs and speakers that are essentially windows-only.

You can look around and see people's experiences with specific models of ROG, but even those are kind of iffy because of the above. Depending on what you want to use it for, you may be able to work with certain things not working, but if you're talking laptops and Linux, I'd steer clear of anything with Nvidia in it for the battery life alone.

in reply to Preußisch Blau

All this effort instead of constructing traffic calming road features. Oh wait, that doesn’t generate revenue…


Speed cameras actually generate very little revenue compared to the financial cost of car crashes: Ambulances, drugs, police, surgeons. If speeding fines were to truly reflect the social cost of car crashes, they would be significantly higher.

Also, the people who oppose speed cameras will absolutely FREAK OUT if you propose to reduce lanes. Look at what just happened to Toronto bike lanes.

This entry was edited (4 hours ago)
in reply to DeuxChevaux

Partially for sure. Other part of this would be somehow executing a command on the attackers machine that originated as their own input, but they wouldn't be privy to that due to the alias.

I've seen some videos where people will willingly let scammers into their machine, and Honeypot them with a file that they execute, typically named like credit card info or bank info or something. But they knowingly click that and open it, I don't know what needs to be done on the "make this code execute on the attackers machine" part.

If someone is ssh'd into your machine, are there any escalated privileges you'd already have back to their machine because they've willingly come to yours?

This entry was edited (14 hours ago)
in reply to chingadera

I've þought about how to do ðis myself. Ðe best idea I've had is to build a virus, or simply someþing destructive, or a program ðat downloads CP and emails it to the FBI; and use Justine's APE to build an executable and call it "bitcoin_wallet.exe". Entice ðe hacker to download a malicious program and execute it on ðeir computer.

Ðen I lose interest and spend the time instead doing someþing to furðer tighten security on my VMs.

Miracle-WM 0.6 Brings Many Improvements For This Mir-Based Wayland Compositor


just_another_person doesn't like this.

As the Texas Floodwaters Rose, One Indispensable Voice Was Silent


Opinion - Zeynep Tufekci
July 9, 2025

[as usual, independent thinking from #ZeynepTufekci ]

"What Kelly didn’t mention, but which has since become well known, is that the Weather Service employee whose job it was to make sure those warnings got traction — Paul Yura, the long-serving meteorologist in charge of “warning coordination” — had recently taken an unplanned early retirement amid cuts pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. He was not replaced.

To a Washington bean counter, his loss might have looked like one tiny but welcome subtraction in a giant spreadsheet, but not in a region so prone to these perilous events that it’s known as Flash Flood Alley. Hundreds of kids at summer camps slept in cabins along the river. The plan was for folks at the upstream camps to send word to the downstream camps if floodwaters got scary. But if even the highest official in the county wasn’t on high alert, how were the camp counselors supposed to understand the danger — or, in an area without reliable cellphone coverage, to act on it?"


archive.ph/lh7ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/opinion/texas-floods-nws.html

Israeli Settlers Set Fire Near Ancient Church in West Bank Christian Village - Antiwar.com (2025-07-08)


Israeli Settlers Set Fire Near Ancient Church in West Bank Christian Village - Antiwar.com (2025-07-08)

news.antiwar.com/2025/07/08/is…
———

>> Three priests based in the village of Taybeh issued a statement calling for help in the face of growing settler violence

>> In a joint statement, priests from the three churches in #Taybeh — the Latin Church, Greek Orthodox, and Melkite Catholic — condemned the attack and asked for action in the face of growing settler violence against the village, which comes amid a spike in settler attacks across the West Bank…

#WestBank #EndOccupation #SettlerViolence

@palestine@a.gup.pe @israel

Mark Carney's latest LinkedIn post is celebrating the right wing premiers of Alberta and Ontario


in reply to HikingVet

When the Reform Party took over the Cons, the Cons moved to the Liberal Party and the Liberals moved to the NDP. Historical voters of each moved accordingly

As for the oil plan, it makes no sense; The UCP closed the refineries the ANDP opened to ensure oil has to be traded to the US and bought back by us. A pipeline to Ontario to then sell it to the US and buy it back doesn’t make any sense

A Carney disaster scenario shower thought


I did support Carney and I hope he does good things, and I don't think the following scenario would occur but I realize this belief is entirely based on my judgement of Carney's character which could be wrong.

I was thinking about the proposed gas pipeline to the east coast. If Carney hopes to be re-elected, he can't ram a pipeline through Quebec using emergency powers if such exist. Or he'd lose his seats in QC. Instead he's gotta give significant concessions to QC, like ownership, high royalties, etc. Stuff that he and Blanchet can sell to the Quebecers. I think this is certainly possible for a gas pipeline.

But then the following disaster scenario occurred to me. He likely has significant Brookfield investments in that blind trust. He likely has a seat open on that board whenever he quits public service. What if he uses emergency powers to ram a whole bunch of infrastructure, through P3s, where the private partner retains ownership, and the partner is Brookfield. Do as many of those as possible, get kicked out of office and sit on Brookfield's board, that much richer, while we get saddled with an even angrier and vindicated CPC fascism.

Thoughts?

Edit: Thanks for wading into my election PTSD nightmare!

This entry was edited (2 months ago)

I think there is no proper social media platform to express oneself.


I wanted to publish constructive criticism towards Reddit on Reddit but unfortunately that's basically impossible since they'll do everything to censor/silence that for their own gains to not hurt their reputation (you might also get censored for mentioning Reddit alternatives like Lemmy).

So I have to do it here.

I'm addressing censorship because that's basically the biggest issue.

I'm not always against all censorship as it can be beneficial in some circumstances to provide constructive discussion to not end up like X where everyone is shouting hateful opinions without getting heard anyways. (But very generally I'm still strongly against censorship).

My main problem is about wrongful censorship. Reddit is basically unusable for me since I had the experience multiple times that I get banned from a subreddit for actually no reason just because a moderator feels like it. And when I then ever accidentally post on the same subreddit with a different account (which is hard when there are multiple to keep track of) your whole access to Reddit gets banned for about 12 months by advanced fingerprinting (so even if you create a new account it gets automatically banned, so you basically cannot post anything on Reddit for a year).

While Lemmy is somewhat better in this regard I think it's mainly only because it's so small, is only known by a very small enthusiastic group and therefore needs less moderation. But I realized that even here once a post is slightly controversial it will get removed sooner or later. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if this gets removed too. I know that the fediverse theoretically provides protection against censorship by being able to host your own instance but practically that's very unrealistic to see properely moderated instances being used by enough people.

I think it's a shame that if you're looking into providing high quality topics and discussions that are valued by many people and you just want to learn by broadening your intellectual horizons, you can get banned every second because some moderator had a bad day.

And I'm not just talking about posting something maybe somewhat controversial that a moderator might not like. I literally had many situations where I posted completely normal posts that completely aligned with the subreddits rules. I could literally post a normal cat picture on a cat picture subreddit and get banned seconds later without being able to talk to the moderators. In some instances the cat picture post (I'm using that as a metaphor) didn't even get published and I got banned anyways. Often it's enough to have a single wrong word that is filtered by Reddit so your whole post won't publish.

I think the core concept of platforms like Reddit and Lemmy can be very valuable but it's executed very badly. There should be multiple independent steps of verifying if someone should get banned and in what way. And probably integrate a good test for joining the community so that it's more likely for people to be rational from the start (that way you don't even have to look at so many potential flags).

Maybe AI could be better for this by having less human emotion based judgement?

But I'm conflicted because on one hand these platforms can have such a great potential and value but on the other hand it's maybe better to not use it anyways since it can be quite unhealthy to spend much time on there.

Anyways I think it's sad we can't freely express ourselves on social media and can't have proper discussions. This really feels like being in a 3rd world country with dictatorship and this shouldn't be the case in 2025. Especially nowadays where it's extremely important to have open and trusted discussion about topics.

There should be a platform with good/useful censorship and a platform truly without censorship that isn't owned by a Nazi billionaire. Or even better: have an all-in-one solution that has spaces without and with censorship to varying degrees (preferably a degree that can be decided by the users and not by the corporation).

in reply to valuable_discussion

i cannot see what you were actually banned for, but the fact you've been banned everywhere from reddit is kinda red flag tbh. i've seen people posting everything from the constructive criticism to 'fuck spez' for months and no one banned them.
you might've been banned for different reasons except censorship. might it be that you just didn't "read the room" or didn't keep discussions constructive?
in reply to froufox

I think it's really just the fact that there are moderators who ban people based on their mood. It has nothing to do with the actual content as I've seen many posts that seem actually questionable but haven't been banned. Of course you only see the people who didn't get banned and can post and you can't see the people who are banned because well, they cannot post.

If I'd show you the times I got banned you will see that it is basically randomly and those moderators invent things that are far detached from reality.

in reply to valuable_discussion

There should be multiple independent steps of verifying if someone should get banned and in what way. And probably integrate a good test for joining the community so that it's more likely for people to be rational from the start (that way you don't even have to look at so many potential flags).


How much would you pay to join a community with that level of protection for user rights? Like the old subscription based forums, some of which are still floating around the internet?

Because "multiple independent steps of verifying" is, frankly, going to be a lot of frustrating, thankless, and redundant work for moderators. I mean, we know how to safeguard people's rights through legalistic processes. Courts do it all the time. It's called due process. And due process is frequently a slow, complicated, and expensive pain in the ass for everyone involved. And I think very few people would want to do that work for free.

(Conveniently, this would also serve as a good test for joining such a community - people are more likely to follow the rules and act like decent human beings if a subscription they paid for is riding on it, and it would price out AI and spambots in the process.)