because people from the global south are nothing more than rhetorical constructs to liberals


::: spoiler Transcription

Screenshot of a Tumblr post by imsobadatnicknames2:

"A couple years later it's still amazing what a perfect distillation the original 'anonymized people of the global south' tweet is of the absolute callousness of yankee liberals;

(Screenshot of a Twitter post by @loudpenitent: "An anonymized 'people of the global south' is not worth more than domestic queer citizens or any other member of any other marginalized community - or, bluntly, any fellow citizen at all. Real-ass human beings matter more than rhetorical constructs.") (end of Twitter screenshot, back to imsobadatnicknames2’s commentary);

If I wrote a character saying this into a piece of media about how much americans suck it'd be too on the nose."
:::

in reply to ByteOnBikes

We can all collectively thank Reagan, among other terrible things we have to deal with today due to his administration, he is also responsible for the state of news media in the US in 2025. Previous to Reagan we had a policy called The Fairness Doctrine, it was a policy introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. Broadcasters could show opposing viewpoints via option pieces, news segments or talk shows, but if they reported on one side they were required to show the other.

In 1987 under Reagan the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine. Broadcasters were no longer required to air apposing viewpoints of controversial topics. This has directly lead to the echo chambers that you see in the news media today.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Can we appreciate how horny everyone is for Mario in TTYD?


So I am playing through Paper Mario TTYD on my Switch for the first time. I never played these games growing up, and while I kinda enjoyed the Super Mario RPG remake for its quirkiness, I strongly believe that if you don’t have specific nostalgia for it, it just doesn’t hit the same.

TTYD is great. It’s so fun and captures a sense of adventure, with big swings from light hearted comedy into some dark territories. I was not expecting that, but I absolutely was not expecting just how horny everyone seems to be for Marty-o!

All the ladies swoon and mention how manly he is, commenting on his moustache. I was not expecting this coming from a Nintendo game. It’s pretty funny and I love it!

Help Installing Kubuntu


Hello! I posted yesterday asking questions about which distro to pick, so first of all, thank you to everyone who responded. I wanted to thank you all there but lit cafe is down, so I'm on my other lemmy acc and can't edit that post. As you can tell from the title, I ended up picking Kubuntu, mostly because the touchpad didn't work on Mint (thank goodness I have a mouse handy) and Kubuntu has a nice little welcome walkthrough that made exploring it really easy and comfortable. So I went to install it, but I'm confused about this part of the installation. For reference I'm doing this on a Lenovo Ideapad and it has "128GB eMMC and 256GB PCIe." (honestly I don't exactly know what the PCIe means). There's two options for storage devices at the top.
The prior picture is with the first storage device selected. The following picture is with the second storage device selected.
Are there two options because there's technically two different hard drives in the laptop? Does it matter which one I choose? And I have no idea if I should erase disk (there's literally nothing on this laptop, so no worries about deleting documents or pictures) or do a manual partition? And if so, how do I do a manual partition because even if I click that I don't seem to be able to do anything (also what does manual partition mean)? And would Kubuntu take up all the storage space on the drive like it looks like it will? Because that would be a problem?

I had a lot of fun checking out the distros and trying out all of the customization options in Kubuntu and taking a look at everything in the software center, but I'm starting to feel like this might be too advanced for me. I'm sick of windows, but maybe I should just not risk messing with operating systems I don't understand? (Also I really hope those screenshots don't doxx me or something)

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Declare gender-based violence an ‘epidemic,’ B.C. review urges


The review, conducted by lawyer Kim Stanton, makes numerous recommendations, including the appointment of an independent commissioner on gender-based violence.


From this RSS feed

Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades execute complex ambush on zionist force in Gaza


Al Green introduces article of impeachment against Trump


Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) filed an article of impeachment against President Trump on Tuesday, accusing the president of failing to notify or seek authorization from Congress before the U.S. launched strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend.

The resolution alleges “abuse of presidential powers by disregarding the separation of powers—devolving American democracy into authoritarianism by unconstitutionally usurping Congress’s power to declare war.”

“President Trump’s unilateral, unprovoked use of force without congressional authorization or notice constitutes an abuse of power when there was no imminent threat to the United States, which facilitates the devolution of American democracy into authoritarianism,” Green’s resolution reads.

Congress has the sole power to “declare war” under the Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. Presidents of both parties have struck adversaries without approval from the legislature.

in reply to spv.sh

Yeah, sorry, that came a bit harsh. I'm just a bit salty, because i dislike monospace and white-on-black for reading. But i'm working on something, that lets the user choose the reading settings. In the meantime, i just create a usercss (Stylus) for pages i see often.

But that's another reason i'm salty; please don't do * {…} CSS hacks. Just set the rule on body, because children inherit, if not set otherwise. And * is the worst for performance, use the rightmost selector instead.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to MonkderVierte

no problem! i'm frequently described as "abrasive" so i guess what goes around comes around...

i do appreciate the CSS tip(s) -- that stylesheet is a few years old with many alterations over time, so there are bunch of weird hacks that i'm not even sure why they're there. off the top of my head, for some reason the header is a div-within-a-div: #header and #header_internal. no idea why. 😛

in reply to geneva_convenience

They are also spending big on domestic arms production. France will be a big winner out of this since they've long valued independent military arms production and the rest of Europe will want to buy French stuff (yes along with American stuff) while they get their arms production up and running. South Korea is also a big arms supplier internationally.

The reduction in US support for NATO is largely part of a pivot to focusing on Taiwan and China. The US military industry would love it if the US focused on both and kept cozy relations with europe. I'm sure they're happy with the whole world increasing defense spending amid rising tensions, but they aren't happy about the US scaring away customers. I hate how involved the US military is globally but acting like Trump is some mastermind of American imperialism is reductive and giving him too much credit. The thought that Europe shouldn't be worried about Russia (the ones currently invading a European country) is bonkers.

Deutschland hat weltweit die meisten Superreichen nach den USA und China - und es werden immer mehr


Wenn knapp 4000 Leute zwanzig Billionen Euro an Vermögen haben, würde sich eine Vermögenssteuer sich lohnen.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

I could use some troubleshooting help for a Linux laptop


I was helping my friend install Mint on his laptop, it all went well and the installation finished, but the driver for the wi-fi module wouldn't turn on properly, or something. I assumed this was due to secure boot messing with the drivers, so I tried to disable it in the BIOS (it's an older laptop, no UEFI). But I have spent the last 3 hours trying and failing to open BIOS, and even GRUB. Nothing I try seems to work.

I tried all the function keys, as well as delete, escape, and enter, and the only thing I found is that F12 opens a boot options menu.

I tried holding and mashing shift throughout the boot procedure to get to GRUB.

I tried using the novo button (it's a Lenovo laptop) which did open a new menu allowing me to select a "BIOS options" button, but it just rebooted after showing me a few rolling lines of text.

I tried plugging in the installation media I used before, which does take me to it's GRUB, but choosing the UEFI options option there just causes a reboot.

I tried disconnecting the battery and the CMOS battery and waiting for 30 seconds in hopes of disabling fast boot, which didn't work.

I edited GRUB config files to change the timeout to 10 and the type away from hidden, which didn't do anything.

I disconnected the disk in hopes of it defaulting to the BIOS, which works for some laptops.

No option worked. I just cannot access BIOS or GRUB. I really don't know where to go next, and could use some help.

in reply to ssillyssadass

If you haven't solved this yet I would try using the novo button again with your camera ready to get the text and see if it's useful. Beyond that, I'm not sure how to get into the bios. Assuming it still boots and doesn't have a soldered wifi card you could always get an AX210 for fairly cheap off of ebay. Should have good linux support.

Edit: Nvm the card suggestion, I see your comment on that.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to matte

Hard to say. I'm not a historian, so I can only speculate. I would assume that Hitler would eventually select a successor and there is no way of telling how good that person would be at keeping the Reich in order.

comparable to say Soviet communism’s collapse in the real world


As far as I understand it, the fall of the Soviet Union was preceded by at least a decade of economic struggle that was caused by a multitude of factors. Basically the only thing they had to export was oil and weapons and the only nations they could trade with were relatively poor. When their oil production cost kept rising, they just couldn't keep their exports high enough to import enough food and luxury goods to keep their population happy. This was a prime driver for unrest in regions that bordered the west, especially East Germany who of course got news of what life in West Germany was like. The Soviets were eventually forced to open the Berlin Wall and from there, there was nothing they could do to keep people from just leaving and fully collapsing the economy in the process. To this day, 35 years after the reunion, former East Germany is way behind the rest of the country even though on paper they have the same chances as everyone else, just because there has been a massive brain drain.

So overall, the collapse of the Soviet Union was less a failure of communism itself and more a failure to counteract their economic weaknesses as well as a result of their isolationism. The USA didn't win the Cold War because of the inherent superiority of capitalism but because the world drinks Coca Cola, wears jeans, watches Hollywood movies and works with IBM-compatible PCs. If the Soviet Union had pivoted their economy to those kinds of goods and had managed to export them to the west, they might have become what China is today.

So it all comes down to the question if alternate-history Germany manages to do that. With technology advancing slower overall and therefore becoming less of a factor in global markets, and at the same time keeping a lot of top scientists who in the real world left for the other superpowers, they could probably do it.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Melatonin

I don't see that as cursed, but rather that humanity is so resilient no matter the size of the evil, humanity always endures. And it's not just the US, but pretty much any population in any region going back to thousands of years. The God that helps survive all this evil is called Oneness (cooperation & empathy). And that we are the product of strong ancestors.

PS: we'll be alright.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

KDE Connect refuses to work - (solved, thanks for help!)


Hi, on fresh install (multiple) of Fedora 42 GNOME the KDE Connect app after install wont open.

Either it will stay running in processes but nothing will display or it will immediately crash with an error.

GSconnect doesn't even show up after install.

If I install Fedora 42 KDE it works fine. But I don't like KDE. Any idea what's up with this?

EDIT:
Thanks for help, anyhow. In the end I found that I will just use KDE Connect for clipboard between my laptop, PC and phone but the desired functionality I wanted when connected to my phone is available with scrcpy and it's quite something. Can't believe it has such a stupid name as I never heard of it. It's so freaking good!

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Vincent

So got GSConnect to work... I had to also enable it in Extension manager for some reason. I had no idea it's an extension since I've just i stalled it as RPM package from the discover store.

Anyhow, it's just confusing. I was installing KDE Connect on both my PC and laptop. I never even heard of GSConnect until I started troubleshooting and I thought it's just some GNOME fork of KDE-Connect, not actually a mandatory replacement for KDE-Connect on GNOME.

It may make sense in the name but the name makes it even more confusing. Since it works on Android/Windows,... Why would I not assume it will work on Linux GNOME?

in reply to BalakeKarbon

So nice of her to include a comprehensive disclaimer list, much appreciated.

Lucy A. Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning writer and the author of the forthcoming Tor Nightfire novel Sister, Maiden, Monster. She also wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess, the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head For Fun and Profit: A Writer's Survival Guide, the poetry collections Exposed Nerves and Chimeric Machines and the story collections Halloween Season, Garden of Eldritch Delights, While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger.


wiki/Lucy_A._Snyder
\
www.lucysnyder.com

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Vapes threaten to undo gains in tackling dangers of tobacco, health leaders warn


WHO calls for higher cigarette taxes, plus graphic warnings on vapes, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches


Archived version: archive.is/newest/theguardian.…


Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Could Windows and installed apps upload all my personal files?


Could Windows and installed apps upload all my personal files?

Dear all

I have deleted Onedrive and disabled File system access in Privacy.

  1. I would like to know, which other ways that my personal files could be uploaded in a non-malicious non-hacker way?
  2. Just by using Windows, Microsoft could upload all my personal files to themselves if they would?
  3. Does every installed App / software have full access to my whole drive? How can I found out, how much access it has?

Thank you for your interest and reply

Best regards


@Rikudou_Sage@lemmy.world

Yes, every application has access to everything. The only exception are those weird apps that use the universal framework or whatever that thing is called, those need to ask for permissions. But most of the apps on your PC have full access to everything.

And Windows does collect and upload a lot of personal information and they could easily upload everything on your system. The same of course applies for the apps as well, they have access to everything except privileged folders (those usually don’t contain your personal data, but system files).

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Autonomous User doesn't like this.

I hear a lot of "ACAB", why don't I hear "APAB"? (P as in Politician)


Politicians make the laws, if people are being oppressed, its more of the politicians being the root cause of evil.

So... ACAB + APAB?

EDIT:

I'm using these definitions for the word politician: dictionary.cambridge.org/dicti…

noun. [UK] - a member of a government or law-making organization

noun. [US] - a person who is active in politics, esp. as a job

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to FuglyDuck

Well today I learned, that school board members are elected. I assume you're referring to the US?..

I'm 42 years old and just learned this today. I attempted to run a petition at age 15 for our school of ~1200 students to keep the pizza lunch line, and I got approximately 420 unique signatures.

I still actually have the signatures somewhere in a file drawer in storage. Back when I did this, I asked people where to turn in my petition. Everyone told me to go to the superintendent's office.

But nobody would actually tell me where the fuck that was, nor would anyone take me there ☹️.

I got more than a third of the students to sign my petition, but nobody would tell me where to take it, like what the actual fuck?

Motorcycles should be banned entirely


There's no good reason for them to be on the road. Consider the following:

  • They're extremely loud and cause noise pollution
  • They're very dangerous on the road and have high accident rates
  • They're bad for the environment and cause air pollution
  • They're extremely inefficient as they can only carry 1-2 people max
  • They can't carry cargo
  • They're dangerous for pedestrians
  • They're very demanding to operate
  • They're virtually useless in the winter when there's snow, ice, and hail
  • The people who tend to drive them tend to be assholes who don't respect road laws

People complain about cars all the time, and while our car dependency is definitely a big issue that we need to address, cars still have a lot utility. Motorcycles on the other hand? Not really. I think getting rid of them once and for all is good way to immediately make our roads safer, simplify traffic, and open up a pathway to move away from cars.

in reply to Gorilladrums

Motorcycles get much better mileage than gas cars. Most cars on the road carry only a single person during Rush Hour. Motorcycles create much less pollution and traffic in those situations. A typical motorcycle tends to get double the fuel economy of a typical gas car. A gas car only comes out ahead if you carpool with more than 2 people, which almost nobody does.

As a pedestrian, getting hit by a motorcycle going 30 km/h is much is much less lethal than being hit by a car going 30 km/h. the amount of kinetic energy is a fraction of that of a car

At least in my area, motorcyclists are on average safer drivers than BMWs or Teslas, probably even safer than average. At least they bother to signal most of the time.

You have some points but some of your arguments are totally untrue.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to LandedGentry

My local library uses CloudLibrary, which doesn’t actually support ebook readers. It forces you to install an app and read from your phone. I literally have a card in a neighboring town, just to have Libby access on my Kobo e-reader.

Every time I go in to my local library, I make a point of mentioning that CloudLibrary doesn’t work on e-readers, in the hopes that they’ll consider switching to Libby instead.

Whats a better name for 'graphics cards' that describes the kind of computational work it does


I now do some work with computers that involves making graphics cards do computational work on a headless server. The computational work it does has nothing to do with graphics.

The name is more for consumers based off the most common use for graphics cards and why they were first made in the 90s but now they're used for all sorts of computational workloads. So what are some more fitting names for the part?

I now think of them as 'computation engines' analagous to a old car engine. Its where the computational horsepower is really generated. But how would ram make sense in this analogy?

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Self Hosted File Drop / File Upload


I'm looking for some kind of File Drop / File Upload service.

I'd like to be able to create a folder, and create a share / upload link for that folder that I can give to a customer to use to upload their documents.

I've been using nextcloud but I don't use nextcloud for any other purpose and it's a behemoth so I'd like to transition to something else.

Some of these requirements are essential (!):

  • no login for customers uploading (!)
  • optional password protection for uploads
  • can't see / download files already present in the shared folder

How can I make LUKS show me the number of characters I'm entering when unlocking my drive?


It's kind of buggy where I'll enter characters but they won't register. I can verify this because when booting, sometimes my num and caps lock keys will have a delay after pressing before their light changes.

This is very annoying when trying to unlock the computer, because I essentially have to wait an arbitrary amount of time before I think inputs will register properly. This wouldn't be as much of an issue if I could, you know, get some feedback that they keys I'm entering are actually being entered.

Is there a way to change this to suit my needs better?

Having to search to do everything..


Not that I don't still love using linux daily, but it is getting a little old having to search for how to do anything even just install a simple program (recently, had a. Deb file to install unifi software that wouldn't install and had to find a custom script to do it).

I feel like there's no way I'd ever learn all the random commands I've been copying and pasting (and keeping in a text file for later) and can't help but feel it's kind of clunky. And I don't feel like I really know anything of what Im doing. Even man pages baffle me. I've been into computing for 20 years but only used linux a little like 8 years ago, but now it's been my main os on my desktops for probably 2 months. I know, maybe that's just not long enough. I just don't like the fact that if I couldn't search, I'd be completely stuck on a lot of tasks.

in reply to bridgeenjoyer

A good start is to install tldr. You use it like man, but it gives you shorter explanations – or rather, a short list of illustrative examples.

As for man pages themselves (which I often find overwhelming, too), if you're not doing that already, you can pipe it into grep to extract just those lines that contain your search string:

man ps | grep user

# or for two lines of context above and below each match:
man ps | grep user -C 2 

Going further, check out Fish instead of Bash. I haven't use Fish yet, but it's said to be much better for learning Linux commands as a beginner. Later on, you may switch to Zsh. In any case, hitting Tab once or twice will often give you a list of possible completions to the command you are typing.

PS: I see no good reason why anyone should downvote this question.

Edit: As it so happens, just today I've stumbled into the O'Reilly book "Classic Shell Scripting" by Robbins and Beebe (ISBN 9780596005955). What can I say – its age notwithstanding, it's apparently an extremely good book for understanding things and learning how to solve real problems. (It presupposes some familiarity with Unix-like systems and with the shell, so if one's just starting out, the book "Learning the Unix Operating System" may be better.)

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Mindestlohn für Erntehelfer: Bauernverband für weniger Lohn an Aus­länder als Deutsche


when GIMP helped solve a murder


cross-posted from: midwest.social/post/30406057

"simple technology available to anyone identified the victim of his crime." -forensic files s12 e26 (06:26)

the skateboarding "computer guru" cracked me up XD

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

The Administration Plans to Defund the US Chemical Safety Board. In Response, They've Produced This Video.


I find it disgusting that they feel the need to appeal to their importance for economic activity. Safety should be a worthy enough goal to maintain such a lightweight organization. Trump says he wants to bring industry back to America. With moves like this, it's clear the actual intent is to keep workers subservient and expendable.
in reply to Echo Dot

pcmag.com/news/us-house-bans-w…

nytimes.com/2025/06/18/world/m…

And to your last comment about not being able to find anything, I don't believe you even tried: forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2…

in reply to MrsDoyle

My advice: run a server (any server) or three, and keep your important / personal stuff there. It can be as simple as a Raspberry Pi with a big external SSD. The PC you use as a desktop environment should be easily built / configured from the base distro into whatever customizations you want, and you can either work with your personal files on the server, or mirror copies of them to your desktop system as appropriate (things like "living documents" should be primarily stored and backed up on servers, things like photo collections etc. can be stored on the server, but copied to the desktop for easy access like rotating wallpaper or whatever.)

If (when, really) any one of your systems goes down, it shouldn't be a big deal. If it's a server, restore from another server mirror / backups. If it's your desktop, install a new desktop and get your customizations off a server.

Of course this is an ideal, but keep in mind that SSDs are not "forever" devices, they do wear out and each single copy of your data will be corrupted some day. Spinning rust is even less reliable, in my experience, although I have one 2TB hard drive that has been online for more than 10 years now. It's mirrored, twice, on SSDs.

in reply to MangoCats

I've never learned about servers - never worked in IT, just a simple old hobbyist. Also never used a Raspberry Pi. But thank you! I might get around to reading up on the topic of servers over the winter. My computer has two drives, the original "spinning rust" and an SSD I installed (so quick! so quiet!). My thought is to keep Windows on a partition until I'm sure I like the distro I've chosen.

I have multiple backup drives, from a wee 4Tb Toshiba to a SparQ drive with 1Gb cartridges (a whole gigabyte, how will I ever fill it?). I'm pretty sure I've got everything saved, but I'm equally sure there'll be something I've missed.

What's the best distro for a windows user with some linux experience


I have used linux in a past job (I did not set it up), so im not a total noob with linux. But I am far from an expert. I bought a tablet that had a flavor of linux on it and found myself woefully unprepared trying to navigate the tablet. I was planning to use it for DnD for pdf reading, but it apparently wasn't capable of that bcz it was a rather custom OS. With windows 10 support being dropped by Microsoft in the next few months, I want to transition my desktop to Linux, and I thought I'd get a headstart on that. I have a windows 11 laptop (and I hate it), but im kinda stuck with it for now. So, in the spirit of I am a noob who isn't quite a noob, what do ya'll recommend? p.s. I used Ubuntu for a bit way way back in high school

Edit: I do game dev with Unreal. Another user pointed out that may affect my choice of distro

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Linux and Foss Signal Group Chat


My friends and I are hosting a Linux and FOSS group chat to have some casual chat, help, and anything related to the topic really. We chose this platform to chat on to keep a privacy preserving way to engage with one another.

signal.group/#CjQKIBshKeuikl5H…

This 7 inch mini-laptop with an Intel N100 chip sells for $250 and up


Netbooks may have gone out of fashion years ago, but a handful of Chinese PC makers continue to crank out cheap, tiny laptops with hardware that’s just good enough for basic tasks… sometimes by stuffing newer components into older models.

Case in point? The X-Plus Piccolo Series71 is a mini-laptop with a 7 inch display, an Intel N100 Alder Lake-N processor and 16GB of RAM. It also has a […]

#alderLakeN #miniLaptop #piccolo #piccoloSeries71 #piccoloSeries71 #toptonL4

Read more: liliputing.com/this-7-inch-min…

in reply to remon

Israel also supplied Drones to Russia after the Crimea invasion, didn't join sanctions and as reported by an Ukrainian official demanded Ukraine to surrender behind closed doors.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E…

Now with the US getting itself dragged into another Iraq style war by Israel, Ukraine could suffer in two major ways:

  1. Western military aid will be cut short in favor of Israel and US
  2. The rising energy prices will lead to Russia's strained warchest to replenish and could even lead to EU countries easing sanctions to buy oil and gas from Russia again.

Ukraine is being played by the US and Israel but either plays along because Zelensky is high on Zionism or because Ukraine by now is owned by the US and he has to say everything Trump wants him to say. Either way this is bad for the Ukrainian people and it is delusional to think that anyone in the West would feel emboldened now to bomb Russia.

in reply to Saleh

Israel also supplied Drones to Russia after the Crimea invasion, didn't join sanctions and as reported by an Ukrainian official demanded Ukraine to surrender behind closed doors.


This is clear whataboutism. Iran and Israel can both be bad. Ukraine wants max pressure on the Russian war machine. So they cheer the weakening of a Russian military supplier. They also probably figure that if America is itching to fight again, it might as well help them out. They also probably sense the news cycle further shifting away from Ukraine and are trying to bring themselves into the conversation.

Venice against Jeff Bezos wedding (23rd June)


Original post from u/Kvolti on reddit

More informations and pictures here:

greenpeace.org/italy/storia/27…

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to dejected_warp_core

Talk about a gross oversimplification. Venice grew out of mosquito infested lagoon due to necessity. The Venetian people were driven into the lagoon multiple times over centuries as a means of protection from Germanic invasions in the 7th century. They capitalized on shipping and trade just like any other population would do and used those riches to make their citizens lives better. What would you have expected them to do? Turn away from the money spice trading and Mediterranean shipping traffic brought them because it would make them too rich? Because again, they were a people used to fleeing into a mosquito infested lagoon when their farming population was invaded by multiple armies.

For that reason, comparing an entire cultural population like Venice to a singular person is a false equivalency. Bezos hasn't used his shipping fortune to enrich anyone but himself, but at least Venetian royalty built buildings and public spaces for their population.

in reply to Gutek8134

A lot of games are going to work without you having to do anything and some will need some tinkering. In that case, protondb.com/ will be your best friend, telling you exactly what you need to do to get things running.

That being said, some games simply can't be run under Linux. They might work in the future as compatibility improves but some won't. If it's an issue for you, you might want to dual boot windows as a workaround.

in reply to Kwdg

Just quoting the readme so there's no misinterpretation:

This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with BigTech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activists groups, state actors, etc. It's explicitly free of any "DEI" or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed.
It doesn't matter which country you're coming from, your political views, your race, your sex, your age, your food menu, whether you wear boots or heels, whether you're furry or fairy, Conan or McKay, comic character, a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, or just a boring average person. Anybody who's interested in bringing X forward is welcome.
in reply to Leny

Also the guy got told off by Linus Torvalds for being an anti-vaxxer theregister.com/2021/06/11/lin…

So imo this isn't a project that should be supported

in reply to chimay

This isn't coherent, and even if it was, the burden of stance interpretability is context-dependent.

He is the one with the politically charged README that reads plainly like the thoughtless garbage MAGA types in America put out. I mean cmon man, "[...] we'll make X great again"?

Also your shallow and brainless dismissal of all this criticism coming from his "detractors" (and who would not become a "detractor", after actually investigating his terrible dribble?) is defeated easily by just reading the actual words he said.

As in, for instance, the original source of his garbage antivax posturing that he posted in the linux kernel mailing list: lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/ke… .

These are not alleged opinions, he's just full of shit.

And this isn't even mentioning the fact that Xorg is going to be dead, should be dead, and will continue to die. And good riddance, too! Terrible and borderline unmaintainable.

The argument that choice diversity is good inherently is stupid, too. Wayland is a god damned protocol! There is no reason to have lots of diversity there! It has no tangible benefit.

There are already many different compositors that implement the Wayland protocol, and there are also many 3rd party extensions! Can you think of a single, material benefit to simply having different basic desktop protocols?

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to solardirus

Also your shallow and brainless dismissal of all this criticism coming from his “detractors” (and who would not become a > “detractor”, after actually investigating his terrible dribble?) is defeated easily by just reading the actual words he said.


I was merely pointing out that these opinions, whatever they really are, have more publicity from people
criticizing the founder. The best from your point of view would be not to speak about it.

And this isn’t even mentioning the fact that Xorg is going to be dead, should be dead, and will continue to die. And good
riddance, too! Terrible and borderline unmaintainable.


If it were true, all this hatred against the project would be pointless.

The argument that choice diversity is good inherently is stupid, too. Wayland is a god damned protocol! There is no reason > to have lots of diversity there! It has no tangible benefit.


Free software is all about freedom, and diversity means freedom of choice. If you don't agree
with that, you miss the all point.

in reply to chimay

I was merely pointing out that these opinions, whatever they really are, have more publicity from people criticizing the founder.


Why yes, friend, I will just conveniently pretend that you bringing that up is completely outside the context of whether or not to seriously consider the criticism.

And if you are trying to make a point of whether or not the ideology is seriously impacting the project, you need-only take a casual walk through the issue list, and find (among other evidence) that a suggestion to move to codeberg was criticized for... "DEI". Wow. How technically-focused.

The best from your point of view would be not to speak about it.


You are getting more and more incoherent the more of these replies you churn out. What, precisely from my point of view (which I guess apparently you know very well? the irony...) here implies that "not talking about it" is the best choice? That's absurd.

I find it very important to understand the motivations, technical and ideological, behind a project.

If it were true, all this hatred against the project would be pointless.


I don't spend any effort talking about in any other respect than telling people that they should likely disregard if for both technical reasons (it cuts out Xwayland, his commits frequently lead to very blatant regressions that are nontrivial, etc.) and ideological (his terrible, awful politics and motivations for making the project, to begin with!)

The reason I replied to your comment is mostly out of idle curiosity and a deepseated longing for genuineness and critical thinking of other people that I have not yet managed to kill (despite its impracticality in the modern age).

Free software is all about freedom, and diversity means freedom of choice. If you don’t agree with that, you miss the all point.


This is all such a massive and disheartening reduction of what software freedom is. I hope that you eventually manage to think less shallowly about this.

Tell me, do you have any particular, material distinction you are making by making a choice between desktop protocols? The desktop protocol is a purely technical thing, and I have not heard a single peep out of you in regards to specifics.

To elaborate, in Xorg, it is a very monolithic beast. It is very convoluted in its purview and carries a lot of preset implementation of its various facets. It contains an entire networking stack for deciding how to communicate windows over a network.

It is significantly less flexible and modular than Wayland, because in Wayland basically everything of significance is decided by the compositor.

This, ironically to your point, actually gives you more choice and freedom in how things work (this is also why tiling window managers love wayland to death, it's pretty easy to just build upon the basic wlroots implementation!). So I have to ask you, frankly, what in the fuck do you think you're actually saying right now?

The issue, in this way, is that you only seem to care about software freedom in the sense of the abstract concept rather than the reality. Which is impractical, and arguably antithetical to the very process of trying to foster software freedom to begin with. As evident by literally everything to do with this situation. My lord.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to chimay

What is there to fear? Seriously. Pretending like this has anything to do with fear is the most childishly narcissistic framing possible. Grow up.

Xorg is nearly dead and buried. Nobody actually cares about Xlibre. Notice how the only thing being mentioned is the sidenote that this fork is run by a racist troll whose been kicked for cause from several prominent OSS projects. Literally the only reason XLibre exists is because this individual needed to start his own project because he's worn out his welcome in many others.

And, considering the geopolitical state of affairs at the moment. It's pretty plainly obvious that the only sort of person who is "anti-DEI" are fascists. And the only people making excuses for the fascists are other fascists. So, thanks for letting us know who you are.

in reply to wakko

Listen, I was willing to ignore your low-level insults until now, because I know that
people tend to say things they don't really mean when they are upsed, but THAT
uggly thing on the end is totally inacceptable! I find disgusting ALL kinds of tyranny,
so don't you dare presuming such horrible thought. I demand a full retractation and a
public apology!

If you don't know the distinction between refraining from having a moral judgement on
someone you don't really know, and making excuse for anyone, that's your problem.

All of that fuss because somebody want to talk about a software ? The air is toxic around here.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

The strenghts and weaknesses of atproto and activitypub.


There is a lot bluesky gets right, and a lot it gets wrong, the same is true with Activitypub.

(Some) strengths of Atproto


Atproto is content-addressed, and portable. This means that posts can exist independantly of their original server.
Instead of giving posts a https uri, which will stop working if a user moves servers or their server disappears, they give them at uris.
For example, this post on bsky.app: bsky.app/profile/ponder.ooo/po…
Has the at:// link is: at://did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk/app.bsky.feed.post/3lk4yrmyugc2f.
The post does exist over https at https://porcini.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.getRecord?repo=did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk&collection=app.bsky.feed.post&rkey=3lk4yrmyugc2f.


Atproto is very easy to build apps on. For example, tangled.sh, frontpage.fyi and flushes.app are all apps built on atproto.
Atproto allows more flexibility in what an app can do, as opposed to lemmy or mastodon's api.


Atproto is better documented. The ActivityPub spec leaves a lot up to the reader.


Atproto has some really good moderation tools for users. People can make public blocklists of users, and people can subscribe to labellers, people or services which give users/posts a label.

Weaknesses of Atproto


almost everyone is on bluesky's PDSes. I thought mastodon.social and lemmy.world were bad, but the people on alternate PDSes altogether adds up to only a few thousand.

Its decentralised identifiers are actually completely centralised!
DID:PLC, their DID method, originally stood for placeholder, but they renamed it to Public Ledger of Credentials.
To use it, you have to use plc.directory.
You can use a DID:WEB DID, but if your website linked to it goes down you lose your identity.
(I find it extremely funny that its not actually a requirement for a decentralised identifier to be decentralised. )

Everything on the network has to be public to work.
since relays have to be able to collect all the information on the network for Appviews to be able to make use of that information, anyone can find out who's blocking someone, or who is on a list, or who's following who, with no way of hiding that information.
Private accounts and posts are impossible to do on atproto.

Since everything is public, DMs (for now) are centralised. They do seem like they want to change that though.

Strengths of ActivityPub


AP (ActivityPub) is better distributed. While it has large servers (like mastodon.social or lemmy.world (and threads, but we don't talk about threads)) the majority of users are not on those servers. There is no single point of failure. If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, atproto would still exist, it would just have a negligable amount of users.

One node in the network lets you do everything, as opposed to bluesky which has three parts (You can do stuff without a relay though). This means you can trust a lot less of the network.

ActivityPub scales better than ATProto. Atproto scales quadratically, meaning that having a lot of nodes in the network harms performance.
AP scales horizontally, meaning it works better with a lot of small servers.

ActivityPub can keep stuff private, like blocks and posts.
Though, a lot of implementations can leak posts.

Weaknesses of ActivityPub


The spec leaves so much out. They didn't propose a way to make sure requests between servers are validated, so mastodon chose HTTP signatures.
They didn't add any way of looking up handles, so mastodon chose webfinger.

A posts's id is its https uri, this means thatif a server goes down, stuff can't be fetched. A user can't move their followers if their server goes down (you can on ATproto). There is a standard to fix this, FEP-ef61, but it breaks compatibility with a lot of implementations.

Missing information is a problem. Its not really a problem on lemmy, but on mastodon likes and replies from other servers may not make it to your server at all (you can fetch replies in newer versions of mastodon though).


All this aside, I do think the two can coexist. I don't see anything like lemmy working on atproto. ActivityPub seems closer to social networking, as opposed to social media.
Something like facebook would be impossible to make on atproto, because not everything is made to be public.

I am hoping for a bridge, but good (bridgy is opt-in, making it useless).

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Share a script/alias you use a lot


A while ago I made a tiny function in my ~/.zshrc to download a video from the link in my clipboard. I use this nearly every day to share videos with people without forcing them to watch it on whatever site I found it. What's a script/alias that you use a lot?
# Download clipboard to tmp with yt-dlp
tmpv() {
  cd /tmp/ && yt-dlp "$(wl-paste)"
}
in reply to Kawawete

With how many new Linux users we get recently, I don't like this joke at all without a disclaimer. Yes yes, its your own fault if you execute commands without knowing what it does. But that should not punish someone by deleting every important personal file on the system.

In case any reader don't know, rm is a command to delete files and with the option rm -r everything recursively will be searched and deleted on the filesystem. Option -f (here bundled together as -rf) will never prompt for any non existing file. The / here means start from the root directory of you system, which in combination with the recursive option will search down everything, home folder included, and find every file. Normally this is protected todo, but the extra option --no-preserve-root makes sure this command is run with the root / path.

Haha I know its funny. Until someone loses data. Jokes like these are harmful in my opinion.

in reply to als

\#Create predefined session with multiple tabs/panes (rss, bluetooth, docker...)
tmux-start 

\#Create predefined tmux session with ncmpcpp and ueberzug cover
music 

\#Comfort
ls = "ls --color=auto"
please = "sudo !!"

\#Quick weather check
weatherH='curl -s "wttr.in/HomeCity?2QF"' 

\#Download Youtube playlist videos in separate directory indexed by video order in playlist -> lectures, etc
ytPlaylist='yt-dlp -o "%(playlist)s/%(playlist_index)s - %(title)s.%(ext)s"'

\#Download whole album  -> podcasts primarily 
ytAlbum='yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --split-chapters --embed-thumbnail -o "chapter:%(section_title)s.%(ext)s"'

# download video -> extract audio -> show notification
ytm()
{
    tsp yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 --no-playlist -P "~/Music/downloaded" $1 \
        --exec "dunstify -i folder-download -t 3000 -r 2598 -u normal  %(filepath)q"

}

# Provide list of optional packages which can be manually selected
pacmanOpts()
{
typeset -a os
for o in `expac -S '%o\n' $1`
do
  read -p "Install ${o}? " r
  [[ ${r,,} =~ ^y(|e|es)$ ]] && os+=( $o )
done

sudo pacman -S $1 ${os[@]}
}

# fkill - kill process
fkill() {
  pid=$(ps -ef | sed 1d | fzf -m --ansi --color fg:-1,bg:-1,hl:46,fg+:40,bg+:233,hl+:46 --color prompt:166,border:46 --height 40%  --border=sharp --prompt="➤  " --pointer="➤ " --marker="➤ " | awk '{print $2}')

  if [ "x$pid" != "x" ]
  then
    kill -${1:-9} $pid
  fi
}
in reply to Arthur Besse

As much as we might want to romanticise the idea of spending 6, 12, 24 months attempting to come up with an even vaguely competitive alternative to systemd,


There are alternatives like runit, dinit, s6. About some of the more useful features of systemd, how about we recreate them without thight coupling to one specific init+service manager-in-one?

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to Tony Bark

Thing is, there's no real software KVM (or rather KM) solution for Wayland. Barrier (and the others) works only on X11.

It's a minor thing, but unfortunately major enough for me to be unable to switch to Wayland at all.

Completely dropping X11 sounds a nightmare in my case. I'm not against dropping X11, if Wayland proves to be a better alternative. But not with "holes" like this. :c

in reply to Tony Bark

On the one hand that means future Kubuntus (for a while) won't have remote desktop, remote UI commands, global hotkeys, nor other such useful features. Or, heck, won't have accessibility. On the other hand, from the progress I've seen KDE are among the better positioned to change that, so who knows. Prepping for a Kubuntu LTS?

~~On the third hand, it's still Ubuntu. The Wayland fixes are probably going to be shipped as snaps for the Pro version.~~

No Internet For 4 Hours And Now This


Well, I'm back online after a 4 hour blackout due to the heat in Brooklyn.

I found out that my ISP Optimum had issues with their equipment in Brooklyn due to the heat and humidity set on by this week's weather.

Now I'm worried that things will be really harsh on my equipment in the living room.

Any suggestions on how to keep the modem/router from overheating and causing problems?

Are there any examples of Linux (desktop) viruses that are actively or were recently in circulation?


Or historical exploits/trojans/etc. that deserve more attention? I've mostly heard about lucrative vulnerabilities that concern Linux servers, but what about the end-users on desktops? Or is the Linux desktop market small enough that we mostly just see one-off instances of users blindly running malicious scripts?
in reply to monovergent 🛠️

TLDR: While Linux is less susceptible to malware in some ways, it mostly boils down to Linux having a more technically minded userbase whereas Windows is a "mainstream" operating system.

Most Windows malware nowadays come from social engineering scams (complete this "captcha" by pressing Windows+R and pasting in this powershell script we conveniently put in your clipboard) or untrusted third party installers because Windows doesn't natively have a package manager. Like others have said, the old school self-propagating worms and drive by downloads that activate just by clicking on a link aren't really possible anymore (outside of state actors with unlimited budgets to buy zero days) unless your system or browser is horrifically outdated.

In terms of social engineering, Linux is not necessarily better at preventing it than Windows. In fact, sudo in Linux will unquestioningly delete the kernel and system software or make unlimited changes to them. Windows, for better or for worse (tbh more worse than better), uses TrustedInstaller to limit access to system files. Windows 11 won't easily let you delete or modify System32 for example, even if you're an admin. So it's in theory easier to do more damage to your system on Linux if you don't know what you're doing. But if someone is using Linux full time, they're most likely technical enough to not be fooled into running random untrusted bash commands. The biggest thing is to be careful with those Linux terminal tutorial sites that have a "add to clipboard" button, they can put literally anything into your clipboard, including an enter key to run the script as soon as you put it in your terminal (though this may or may not be possible depending on your terminal app). Actually, they don't even need you to use their copy button. They can just set an event listener for control-C anywhere on their site and automatically replace the clipboard content. Just double check everything you copy before running it, especially since there's a lot of times where Linux users have to rely on obsecue tutorials hosted on untrusted websites.

You also don't really need to run untrusted installers on Linux because almost everything you need is in a properly moderated software repository, be it your native package manager, Flatpak, or Snap. Everything is signed by the authors and has a ton of eyes from the open source community on it. The only things to look out for is compiling something from GitHub, random AppImages, random Elf binaries, and last but not least random third party repositories that can be added as an installation source to your package manager/Flatpak/Snap. Basically, Linux gets most of its "doesn't get malware" reputation from the same place Mac does: you rarely have to manually download and run an executable from a random website, which is the norm on Windows. Add to the fact that even when that's needed, the Linux userbase is more technical and is more able to discern which sources are reputable and which are suspicious.

Another major source of malware is pirated versions of Windows or untrusted "license activators" from the internet. This just isn't a problem on Linux because there's no license to activate and it's free to begin with so there's nothing to pirate. And again, if someone is running Linux, they're probably technical enough to know not to run random pirated versions of paid software to begin with, helped by the fact that the vast majority of paid software is Windows only.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to rumschlumpel

That's a good point about alternative rock. I changed the title from usually to sometimes, maybe usually was too much.

I've never thought about the word alternative being synonymous with progressive, I tend of think of as meaning against the grain or against the mainstream but in practice sometimes it just means bullshit like in the title. For example RT calls themselves "alternative media" but they're really just propaganda slop.

in reply to BoycottPro

I think there has been a certain amount of cultural change in the rightwing - used to be they just considered themselves the status quo upholders, the ones who were subversive were hippies, educated-but-not-rich city-dwellers, artists etc.. Now that more progressive forces became somewhat mainstream and the rightwing radicalized, major parts of the rightwing have adopted a more subversive identity and messaging.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to JillyB

Iran is a totalitarian theocracy that has been trying to develop nukes for a long time.


Iran is a s religious country ruled by the supreme leader , Khamenei had released a religious decree prohibiting the use of nukes. So no Iran is not pursuing nukes or even getting it from Russia . You just believe Satanyaho claims , Satanyaho was saying Iran is so close to having nuclear arms for over 30 years . Israel and America under trump has the biggest chance to drop nukes than any other countries

Israel attacked a lot of Iran's air defenses and convinced Trump this was a unique opportunity to strike Iranian nuclear sites. Israel doesn't have the capability since they don't have bunker busters and the sites are underground. They probably convinced him he would be seen as bringing peace to the middle east which is why he ended his post about peace.


Trump is a zionist just like all previous American president not because he care about Jewish supremacy but because of American imperial interests like it always been. Israel didn't convince him to do anything he willfully helped Israel just like any other American president will always do

Trump legit thinks this is a 1 time thing and he can be done with it. He's not trying to turn Iran into a puppet state, just wipe out their nuclear capability.


Another BS , both Israel and America want a regime change. From Israel perspective they want to destroy or control any country that effetely support Palestinian liberation movements. Iran support for Palestinian is of course based on geopolitics but still they are supporting Palestinians. For American all what they did against Iran was for natural resources and to have more leverage against America biggest two enemies Russia and China . Instead of the united state with diplomacy have good relation will Iran , it decided to overthrow Iranian democracy in 53 and impose sanctions since them

Iran trying some 9/11 style attack on the US, dragging America back into the middle east.


Iran could have done terrorists attacks since 79 in American soil they never did and will never did. That would be a very dumb idea, It will hurt people who support Iran. Iran will just attack military bases and trump will use that excuse to call it an aggression against American and American interests and keep getting involved in the war

How clean is your living space usually, and how often do you clean it? Also: Do Men/Boys usually clean their living spaces less frequently than Women/Girls? Or is that steroeotype incorrect?


I don't know why, but I always have this mental image of people who identify as male/masculine to just have their living spaces look like a dumpster (okay maybe its a bit hyperbole, not a literal dumpster, but you know what I mean), while people who identify as female/feminine to be extra tidy? (Perhaps its mainstream media's portrayal affecting my subconscious?) Is this actually true?

Sorry if this sounds offensive, I don't mean it that way.

Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates Meet for the First Time Ever


Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds have apparently never met in person before, despite their pseudo-rivalry.
This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)
in reply to LandedGentry

I don't think you realise the bad things he did (and still does, like patenting everything he 'funds' in research) versus the "some good" things coming out of it, that's about it I think. That's why your comments make me feel like you excuse an execrable people "just because 'some good' came out of it.

BTW I had to scroll throug the whole original post, Connect (the lemmy soft) lost your answers, so if you answer to this I might not be able to respond.

LandedGentry doesn't like this.

Vaxry: About Hyprland Premium


account.hypr.land/

(from Vaxry, creator of Hyprland)

Hey hey people, vax here.

I've seen the post about Hyprland Premium go a bit viral and people don't seem to understand fully what we're doing.

There is a reason no pages link to the account. subdomain, because it's a work in progress, after all. That's why wording is a bit lacking, that's why registrations are closed.

Anyways, here are some key takeaways:

Yes, it's real

It's the official website. I did not get hacked.

Hyprland is not going closed source

It says that in the first sentence on the page. No paid features, beta branches, etc. We continue development as always.

Why money

I need something to eat too. Once I end university, if I can't make this my full-time job, I will have to severely decrease my contributions in favor of a real job. If this gets us somewhere, it will be only with benefits to you, the users. If I get enough money to hire another guy to help me work on Hyprland full time, I will.

Forums:

Already on forum.hypr.land. To log in, you need a Hyprland Account, that's why we haven't "fully" launched them yet.

"Premium" Forums:

Additional categories on the same forum for premium subscribers - these include premium support (where you get answers from me instead of the community at large), Q&A with me, and some banter chats.

Desktop Experience:

Free desktop experience: Dotfiles provided by us, with one-click installs and updates.

Premium desktop experience: Same as above, but with more customization options. (dotfile customizations, e.g. "bar on what side", "what button where", etc, not Hyprland features)

"Further premium services":

A general catch-all clause if any premium services come out in the future, they will most likely just be a part of the premium subscription. This might be dotfile sync, or other ideas. We don't know yet, that's why we didn't say.

Cheers, happy Hyprlanding.

Vaxry: About Hyprland Premium


account.hypr.land/

(from Vaxry, creator of Hyprland)

Hey hey people, vax here.

I've seen the post about Hyprland Premium go a bit viral and people don't seem to understand fully what we're doing.

There is a reason no pages link to the account. subdomain, because it's a work in progress, after all. That's why wording is a bit lacking, that's why registrations are closed.

Anyways, here are some key takeaways:

Yes, it's real

It's the official website. I did not get hacked.

Hyprland is not going closed source

It says that in the first sentence on the page. No paid features, beta branches, etc. We continue development as always.

Why money

I need something to eat too. Once I end university, if I can't make this my full-time job, I will have to severely decrease my contributions in favor of a real job. If this gets us somewhere, it will be only with benefits to you, the users. If I get enough money to hire another guy to help me work on Hyprland full time, I will.

Forums:

Already on forum.hypr.land. To log in, you need a Hyprland Account, that's why we haven't "fully" launched them yet.

"Premium" Forums:

Additional categories on the same forum for premium subscribers - these include premium support (where you get answers from me instead of the community at large), Q&A with me, and some banter chats.

Desktop Experience:

Free desktop experience: Dotfiles provided by us, with one-click installs and updates.

Premium desktop experience: Same as above, but with more customization options. (dotfile customizations, e.g. "bar on what side", "what button where", etc, not Hyprland features)

"Further premium services":

A general catch-all clause if any premium services come out in the future, they will most likely just be a part of the premium subscription. This might be dotfile sync, or other ideas. We don't know yet, that's why we didn't say.

Cheers, happy Hyprlanding.

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

US to screen social media of foreign students for anti-American content


The State Department had temporarily paused issuing visas for foreign students at the end of May while it came up with the new social media guidance and it will now resume taking appointments.

"The enhanced social media vetting will ensure we are properly screening every single person attempting to visit our country," a senior State Department official said.

US consular officers will conduct a conduct a "comprehensive and thorough vetting of all student and exchange visitor applicants," the official said.

Accessing Jellyfin Help


Good morning all,

I'm having an issue with my Jellyfin server and hoping that you lovely wizards can help me...again.

So I initially tried and failed to set up Jellyfin on elementaryOS(skill issue), I wasn't really invested in the OS so I just switched to Ubuntu. Things have been much easier for the get go. I now have set up Jellyfin on my ubuntu 24.04.2 and uploaded my library from my external hdd. Now I cant figure out how to connect other devices so I can watch my media on my macbook. I currently also use a PIA vpn with port forwarding on due to my qbit seeding. I feel like that is important info. I've looked up how to connect while one the same network but since I need my vpn to stay on I'm feeling a little outside my depth again. Ultimate goal is to be able to access my library on other devices mainly, mainly my macbook, while also being able to seed from Qbit safely.

I appreciate any assistance you all can offer!

in reply to Kelp

I haven't had to deal with this specific kind of use case before (accessing the local Jellyfin service while the laptop is connected to a VPN), but after some cursory research, one of these approaches may work for you:

Easy Option (only available on some VPN software):

There may be an option in your VPN client that lets you access local network addresses like your Jellyfin server. Check your settings and see if there are any options like "allow local network traffic" and then try opening up your Jellyfin server in a browser (e.g.: 192.168.1.100:8096/)

Less Easy Option:

If your VPN client doesn't have an option for allowing local traffic, you can open up the command prompt on your macbook and run a command like this:
sudo route add -net 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.1.1

Where 192.168.1.0/24 is the local network you want to connect to, and 192.168.1.1 is your local gateway (change these depending on how your local network IP addresses are formatted).

This should update your routing table to handle local network addresses without the VPN and this should persist between reboots.

Hope this helps.

Zelda Tears of the Kingdom - it finally got me!


I bought Zelda TotK right after release for Switch 1, just to be presented with a bright, blurry game with loading screens that I, personally, couldn't live with. I retired it after about an hour, uninstalled it from my console and sold the game on eBay.

Years later, the Switch 2 released and I was hyped. Bought it on release day and had the urge to give TotK another go. This was the start of something beautiful.

This game is an absolute blast. I wasn't as hooked since Elden Ring. The map design, the sheer possibilities, the love for detail, the way the game guides you in the right direction: it's absolutely fantastic.

This game is a master piece, and on the Switch 2, the game feels the way it should have felt on the day it released.

I can not recommend this enough.

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

What are some "toy programs" you've created?


Little programs or scripts or automations you've created ad-hoc to solve a particular single use case

I have lots of shortcuts i make on my phone and I have one i love that detects when bluetooth accidentally or purposefully disconnects from my speaker and reconnects it and fixes a playback glitch so its back to playing properly

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

I'm getting "Error setting installer parameters" while attempting to set up a new VM in Virtual Machine Manager [SOLVED]


EDIT: tldr - I was having issues creating a VM using Virtual Machine Manager on Bazzite Linux. Several responders chimed in that it's likely because I'm using the flatpak version of VMM. I probably still could make it work on Bazzite somehow, perhaps w/ the help of distrobox, but instead I've fired up a VM on an old laptop running Linux Mint and everything is smooth sailing. Thanks to all who took some time to help me find a solution.


Original body:

Background: I'm looking to set up a virtual Debian server using Virtual Machine Manager, but I'm stuck on creating my first VM. I'm running Bazzite on my host machine if that makes any difference.

Steps to Reproduce the Issue:

  1. Launch Virtual Machine Manager.
  2. Click File > New Virtual Machine, which opens the "New VM - Step 1" window.
  3. Select "Local install media" and click Forward, which brings me to "New VM - Step 2."
  4. Click "Browse..." which opens the "Locate ISO media volume" window:
  5. Click "Browse Local," which opens the file browser.
  6. Choose ISO file (in my case, I'm using debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso) and click Select, which returns me to the "New VM - Step 2" window.
  7. Because the OS is not detected automatically, I uncheck the "Automatically detect from the installation media / source" checkbox, start typing the word "debian" in the text box above it, and select Debian 12 from the pop-up selection menu.
  8. Click Forward.

Actual behavior:

Input Error - Error setting installer parameters. Validating install media '/run/user/1000/doc/c0a3c3fc/debian-12.11.0-amd64-netinst.iso' failed. Could not start storage pool: cannot open directory '/run/usr/1000/doc/c0a3c3fc': Permission denied.

Expected behavior: Create the VM and boot into the ISO that I selected in previous steps.

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to yo_scottie_oh

Virtual Machine Manager's GitHub page for its flatpak includes the following lines:

NOTE: By default, this Flatpak only includes the Virtual Machine Manager client application and does not include the libvirt daemon or QEMU. Depending on your use case, you may have to install other applications or extensions:
  • Connecting to a remote libvirt instance: nothing else needed
  • Connecting to a libvirt system instance: make sure that libvirtd is installed on the host, either via your package manager or using a system extension on image based systems for example
  • Connecting to a libvirt user instance: install the QEMU extension using flatpak install org.virt_manager.virt_manager.Extension.Qemu


So, in this case, have you either installed libvirtd on the host^[Technically, you could also install libvirtd as a sysext.] (i.e. have you installed it with rpm-ostree) OR have you installed the QEMU extension as per its own instruction?

If neither, then you should at least do one of them and report back.


EDIT: While what's written above remains relevant beyond Bazzite, Bazzite's ujust scripts do provide handholds for a myriad of situations including this one:

  • (Step 0: Uninstall^[The ujust script will likely install another instance of VM Manager. As such, the flatpak is no longer needed and would only cause confusion.] the flatpak of Virtual Machine Manager)
  • Step 1: Install Virtual Machine Manager with ujust, i.e. invoke the ujust setup-virtualization command

I suppose the ujust way handles a bunch of gotchas you'd otherwise have to tackle yourself. And, thus, is most likely preferred over all other methods.

As a side note, please consider consulting Bazzite's excellent documentation first. We'll be more than happy to help out regardless, but I'm sure there are a bunch of gems you'll be missing out on otherwise.

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

Bluesky is more open than you think.


I see a lot of misinformation about bluesky here, so I want to address a lot of the talking points against atproto/bluesky.

This is partially inspired by accounts like mastodon migration and feditips being really annoying about bluesky.

How Bluesky Works


I see a lot of people misunderstanding how it works.
The network has three main parts:
1. A PDS -- This stands for Personal Data Server. These store information in records, like who you are following, your posts, who you are blocking and your images.
2. A relay -- These crawl PDSes and keep a copy of all the records on them. They give a "Firehose" of all the data on the network (that they crawled).
3. An AppView -- These index and work through the data from the firehose. All interactions are handled through these, meaning if someone follows me on bluesky, that app.bsky.graph.follow record will be crawled by the relay, and recieved by the AppView. bsky.app/ is an Appview. Appviews don't always have to use the relays, whtwnd.com/ connects to PDSes directly.

This is different to ActivityPub, where if I follow someone, my server sends that information directly to the other person's server.

Common misconceptions

An atproto relay is too expensive to run.


atproto.africa/ is a second full-network relay run by the blacksky team. We already have a second relay, and they're not even that expensive to run anymore, a lot of people run non-archival (meaning it doesn't backfill every post) relays for less than $40 a month.

There is no instances available except for bsky.social


bsky.social isn't actually an instance, its just the domain name assigned to users by default. This is explained here: app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/f…

Wafrn has (opt-in) bluesky support, they act as a PDS and AppView, so if bluesky disappears tomorrow they can switch to the atproto.africa relay. (There is DID:PLC which is a problem, but I'll get to that later.)

You can't defederate bsky.social, this proves atproto is centralised!


app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/f… also explains this, bsky.social is just the name assigned to users, each PDS has names like brittlegill.us-west.host.bsky.… (where my account is).

While you could ignore records from a specific PDS on the App layer, its pretty pointless, since atproto is portable/content addressed, meaning a user could seamlessly move to another PDS. (AP does support moving, but its pretty seamful.)

(While I was writing this someone posted a pretty good blogpost about this: blog.cyrneko.eu/there-is-no-bs…)

Bluesky can censor people in turkey, this proves they're centralised!


Those posts weren't removed, people on third party bluesky apps in turkey could still see them.
People in Turkey are automatically subscribed to a Moderation Service which hides those posts, as the government requires it.
If a person unsubscribes, or uses a third party app/server the posts are still there.

Bluesky isn't decentralised as someone was banned for pointing out the head of T&S liked jailbait porn.


That person came back on a different PDS. They literally are still on bluesky because they joined a different server.

Bluesky went down due to a DDoS, this proves they are centralised!


The DDoS only crashed the Bluesky PDSes. People self hosting were fine.


Wafrn


Wafrn is a federated tumblr alternative. It started off as a tumblr clone, the dev added AP support, and eventually, Atproto support.
Its a great example of how bluesky can be built on.
If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, Wafrn could switch relays to atproto.africa, and still interact with people on other PDSes.


AppViewLite


appviewlite is a cool project I forgot to mention in the original post. It lets you self host an extremely lightweight Appview.
You can crawl PDSes yourself, eliminating the need for a relay.

github.com/alnkesq/AppViewLite


The main reason I made this post is because so many people are blindly anti-atproto, without fully understanding how it works and how it can be improved.

There is obviously problems with it, but it does a lot right. (There's a lot ActivityPub should do, like content addressing, DIDs and composable moderation).

I also think we could do with a better bridge. bridgy isn't really cutting it right now.


Note on did:plc, its the only centralised part of the network as of now, its essentially the underlying ID every account has. It is possible to use a did:web id instead, which is tied to a website name.



There is no bsky.social instance:


Why Feditips is either ignorant, stupid, or both.

I am going straaaight to name-calling I don't care anymore


Very recently I had the great displeasure of arguing with FediTips which you may know for creating all kinds of informational content about the Fediverse and surrounding topics on their website, fedi.tips/.

That's great and all, if not for all the blatant disinformation regarding...literally any microblogging or even social media platform at all that isn't the Fediverse. Most notably, Bluesky.

FediTips, or rather the person behind it, Fedithings loves spreading plain disinformation regarding Bluesky and completely disregarding proven facts about Bluesky. Facts that are obvious by just reading one or two pages of the spec overview or the Wikipedia page on ATProto.


On the Fediverse, as I'm sure most of you will know, we use a sort of “message-passing” approach to sharing our posts around the network; We pass our posts directly to those which should see it, and we know who should see it because “oh hey, that guy followed me that one time!”. This is great! Everyone gets their posts no matter where they are, from completely different communities! (unless you deny them, we'll get to that)

These places, communities are often referred to as “Instances”. It's basically just the fancy term for communities though. But it's important to keep that in the back of your head for the rest of this.

Another important detail to keep in mind is how, on the Fediverse, your identity is usually tied to the community you chose. Your handle will quite literally look something like @[url=https://blog.cyrneko.eu/@/sunny@wonderful.garden]sunny@wonderful.garden[/url] (I don't think that's a real instance...I hope lol) and people will see you as being from that community

What about Bluesky? Oh boy, Completely different model.

Are there even instances?


To get this right out of the way: No. At least not how you think.

Whereas in the context of the Fediverse and all our communities we just sort of pass posts around directly, like people sending eachother letters, Bluesky went a different route

There is basically three important components:

  • Personal Data Servers – This is where the posts are
  • Relays – This is what gets the post from A to B
  • AppViews – Fancy speak for “the app the posts are in” / “The Bluesky app”

now, Personal Data Servers sort of explain themselves. It's where your posts are. If you or anyone else wants to go right to the source of those memes and shitposts, that's where they'll find them. Right open for everyone to see.

I'll refer to Personal Data Servers as just “PDS” from here on out.


Relays then take the posts from every single PDS they can possibly find and turns them into one long, always-updating list of all posts in the order they were posted.

And the AppView has the job of, well, letting you actually see those posts and interact with them; Make new posts, like stuff, share stuff. You know the drill


Notice how I didn't say what data is stored on a PDS? That's actually an important detail to know, so let's compare

So with a Fediverse server, because you're passing posts directly between eachother as if they're letters, you need to hold on to the posts yourself so that you can, well...read them.

This means that you have a copy of not just your posts, but also the posts of everyone you follow and interact with regularly. Anyone that appears on the feed, basically

On Bluesky though? You don't keep the posts of others, only your own are stored. Well, your own and anyone you happen to share space with on the PDS.

What is “defederation”?


Now we're back to the whole “denying” thing that I hinted at earlier.

Due to the fact that posts are exchanged directly between people, there might be like superevilcommunity.com that does nothing but send you like hatred or something else you plain don't like. And blocking those communities is known as “defederation”

Now, this is a stark difference to how Bluesky fundamentally works.

Because everyone gets their posts from the same place, the Relay, one cannot really block the server a post comes from; You're not getting it from there anyways.

But even if they did filter out posts of that kind, there is another issue that makes it near impossible to have this sort of moderation tool.

Account Portability and Moderation


Bluesky had one arguably good reason to not use the same tech that the Fediverse uses: Fedi's account moving ability is not robust enough.

on the Fediverse, you can move your account to a different server by setting up an “alias” or “redirect”. This will make it so that anyone which follows you will automatically follow the new account, and anyone that searches for your old account will be redirected to the new one.

But for Bluesky, this wasn't enough. Posts weren't moved across, and you had to take up an entirely new identity on that new community. So for their new tech they were developing, they have a new identifier that isn't tied to a server. This is called a DID:PLC identifier.

The important thing here, just so I don't lose myself in technical details, is that even when you were previously at one given server it is trivial to move to another one, keeping this identity. Unlike a fediverse identity which is tied to the community it was on.

And this is why “defederation” doesn't work on Bluesky.

The Point


The things I've discussed here are basically a breakdown of what I talked about with Feditips.

Repeatedly, feditips refused to acknowledge the fact that Bluesky works differently, that it isn't even “federation” per-se, and eventually they pulled the “think of the minorities which are scared for their lives” card.

social.growyourown.services/@F… (archive)

On a Trans person. They were talking to a trans person. That is one of the minorities which are scared for their life.

At that point, I stopped talking to them and advised them to shut the fuck up

Feditips does this on the regular. They frequently spread disinformation about Bluesky in an effort to feed their superiority complex for using a different social media site. They blame those which use Bluesky and see them as below themselves. You can see them posting about oh how much better the fediverse is on the regular.

Preaching to the choir, on the fediverse.
my {preferred term} in christ, you don't need to preach to fediverse users how good the fediverse is. Especially when those which ACTUALLY moderate and run communities and those which have been here for MUCH LONGER THAN YOU all agree that no, the Fediverse is not this perfect safe haven. Far from it.

If you come to me screaming about how “think of the minorities” how come I don't see you taking action on transmasc erasure on fedi, or how people of color are treated on fedi? Those are marginalized too, and you say you care so much about safety which is why you redirect everyone there. Why can't they find a home here? Could it be that fedi is...not perfect? That the structure we've built over many years makes it at best uncomfortable for those people to be here?

No, it couldn't be. The fediverse is perfect and we are all superior for using it. What's that, Blacksky is a thing and they are running completely independent infrastructure for the black community? No no, you must be hallucinating. What is that, they in large parts feel much safer there? Nope. Can't be. The Fediverse is perfect.

expanding on blacksky a bit...Just to expand on this a little bit, everything I've seen from the blacksky community is genuinely amazing. They are building their community and keeping eachother safe, and it is working much better on there than anything I've seen on fedi. Seriously, these people make their own software completely independent from Bluesky PBLLC, and I've heard some rumours they even want to have their own AppView.

Thank you for reading.


↓ it'd mean a lot if you supported my work ↓


liberapay.com/cyrnekoko-fi.com/cyrnekoAny little bit helps ❤


↓ it'd mean a lot if you supported my work ↓


liberapay.com/cyrnekoko-fi.com/cyrnekoAny little bit helps ❤


This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Outside groups organize to form unbiased, independent vaccine panel


Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the members of the CDC’s esteemed vaccine advisory panel, medical organizations and experts are looking for alternatives.

In the wake of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to shake up a key federal vaccine advisory committee, outside medical organizations and independent experts are looking for alternate sources of unbiased information and even considering forming a group of their own.

A leading contender is a new group led by Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm is launching the Vaccine Integrity Project at CIDRAP as a potential alternative to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

“We’ve always just taken for granted that routine child immunizations and other vaccines would be readily available and that they would be supported by the public health system,” Osterholm said. “Now that’s in question.”

Sprache auf dem Smartphone


Ich hab gestern mein Smartphone von Englisch auf deutsch umgestellt und ich Frage mich wie ihr das macht.

Hab jetzt schon zweimal (Reddit und newpipe) Videos mit komplett bescheuerter KI Übersetzung vorgelegt bekommen, weil das Original in Englisch war.

Auch viel content scheint übersetzt zu sein, da bin ich aber nicht sicher.

Also zur Frage: Handy auf Deutsch oder Englisch? Wie geht ihr mit Maschinenübersetzungen um? Bin ich der Einzige dem das auffällt oder der saß untergeschoben bekommt?

[solved] Plasma 6: display brightness changes on its own


solved: not plasmas fault: the monitors own smartcontrast did that.

Hi, please kindly direct me to the right community to ask this:

Plasma 6 is my favorite DE and i use KDE neon.
The screen brightness adapts automatically to the windows i focus on, which is a good idea. But it does that the wrong way IMO. Dark windows are dimmed and bright windows are lit up. Why? Now i have both extremes switching back and forth all the time. Can we turn that the other way around or turn it off please?

I like that the screens hardware brightness setting is used now from the desktop. Great! But now i have no control over it anymore, since when i open a bright window, the brightness setting goes up too. I hate that at night.

Usually adjusting the brightness for me has one purpose:
- bright room: max display brightness (day)
- dark room: min display brightness (night)

...maybe something in between for transition.
All the other features are nice to have but please only work on them when this main feature is secured.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Taiwan is 'of course' a country, president says in rebuke to China


Taiwan is "of course" a country and China lacks both the historical evidence and legal proof to back up its sovereignty claims, President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday in a strong rebuke to Beijing and its stepped up political and military pressure.

China says democratically-governed Taiwan is "sacred" Chinese territory that has belonged to the country since ancient times, and that the island is one of its provinces with no right to be called a state.

Lai and his government strongly reject that view, and have offered talks with China multiple times but have been rejected. China calls Lai a "separatist".

Giving the first of 10 speeches in a series called "uniting the country", Lai drew on Taiwan's history, including the millennia-long connection of its indigenous people to other Austronesians, like native Hawaiians, to show what he said was Taiwan's separate and distinct development from China.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/taiwan-is-of-course-country-president-says-rebuke-china-2025-06-22/