A MicroNation Community


I'm just asking if there's a Lemmy/Mbin/PieFed community (or any federated community/forum) that's dedicated to MicroNations here ?

(The Youtube link is just for knowledge purposes

I was also adviced that this was the appropriate community to post this)

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Considering switching from Windows 11 and I have some questions


Considering switching to Linux, but I have many questions.

  1. Gaming - I enjoy gaming and want a Distro that will let me play most games. I have read that keeping nVidia drivers up to date can be (was?) a problem. I currently use steam for 99% of my gaming, I’m aware steam is porting a lot for SteamOS, but what are the limitations of this? Will I have to wait for a port before I can play a new game? Are there stability issues?
  2. I’ve developed a lot of pretty basic macros for excel in Visual Basic, I’m not a programmer by any means, but I can write some algorithms to do QoL coding. Is making the switch to open office seamless? Will my .xlsx docs incur formatting issues? Will my macros translate to whatever editor is used in open office? Does open office use the same codes for cell functions? Are there statistic package add-ons like with excel? Essentially, I’m asking how much work is ahead of me if I make this switch?
  3. I do enjoy the old version of outlook and work with many people who use outlook calendars for scheduling. Is there a similar program that will work with the same functionality on their end? (E.g. a mail client that will allow me to accept calendar invites from others and confirm it on both ends?).
  4. I am familiar with Visual Studio and use it as my IDE for very basic programming (I like to tinker with automating certain tasks in games, again by no means a programmer). Is there an equivalent FOSS version that would have a low learning curve coming from Microsoft’s IDE?
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to exothermic

OpenOffice has seen essentially no development since 2011, when the trademark got transferred to Oracle after they bought Sun Microsystems.

The project got forked into LibreOffice to dodge the trademark issue, but it's the same devs, practically the same project, but now under a non-profit organization. Well, and with 14 more years of development.

So, use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice. It will most likely come pre-installed on whichever Linux distro you go with. But you can also try it out on Windows beforehand, if you have concerns.

in reply to exothermic

To me it looks you are pretty deep in MS ecosystem. The easiest to switch to Linux are developers because development on Windows sucks and casual users because they depend only on their web browser. Since you are both a gamer and deep in MS office suite it will be very hard because its completley different ecosystem.

My proposal: recreate your environment in VM and switch on linux host with that same setup. And then try get step by step over a year outside of that VM.

What were some computer programs and games you grew up with?


Post a pic if at all possible

Jumpstart 4th Grade Haunted Island


Teaches a bunch of subjects and helps develop problem-solving skills; its soundtrack has zero right to be so bitchin' but it is

Was asking about this today because I couldnt remember the name or franchise and Lemmy came thru, reuniting me with yet another thing I could remember sound of but not the content or name, long thought lost to the sands of time

Looking for stuff like Reader Rabbit, KidPyx, etc

This entry was edited (3 weeks ago)

Disabling Intel Graphics Security Mitigations Can Boost GPU Compute Performance By 20%


What Books did inspire you for your gardening?


My garden has 3 core functions. Recreation and play, Growing vegetables and fruits, and givin nature more room. The so called Controlled Wildernes. I Love to see all the different species the are coming by. But i always want to make it better, especially the combination of space for family and nature. Ive got inspired by the book The Garden Jungle from Dave Goulson. It just gave me more ideas and motivation to protect the smal animals, and make the garden usefull for more. But what about you? What books, articles, documentary etc, did inspire or would give me some ideas to let nature have more space in af garden?
in reply to with chicken

I wouldn't say any book, but the news. Our planet is failing quickly, with no concerted effort to stop it. My zone has had massive collapses in insect and wildlife year over year, and I aim to help combat that as much as possible by planting native plants, providing extra fruit and vegetables for the wildlife (I keep a decoy garden for them), and doing it all as resource conscious as possible. Nothing but good things can come from having even a few native flowering plants around for bees and hummingbirds, and going a bit of an extra mile to compost to keep the good insects that contribute to that process happy and expanding their colonies.
in reply to TheRealKuni

I'm trying not to to be an asshole about it. She knows my stance and I'm not budging. That said, I don't throw it in her face. In fact, I only told her once that I won't do the vow renewal until she quits. We have an otherwise perfect marriage.

We haven't had the vape conversation, but I'm not in favor of that either. You don't quit drinking by switching from beer to vodka. I honestly don't know how I would feel about her switching to vape. I hate the smell of her addiction but that's not my biggest issue. I hate the effect on her health but that's not the complete picture either. I hate the concept of a smoking addiction. It's not my identity, and I don't want it to be the identity of us as a couple. We are blue collar AF, but I still feel like her smoking diminishes us.

I used to be proud of her for quitting and staying quit. Now I'm not anymore.

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

That identity thing seems counterproductive. The way addictions works, you generally kind of stay addicted indefinitely even if you manage to quit and stay off the substance forever. And in contrast to beer vs. vodka, vapes are healthier than cigarettes - even if that doesn't actually change anything for you, it's definitely better for her.
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Microsoft Tried To Steal A Project And Almost Got Away With It....


cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/32033583

Direct link to a text article about the situation
in reply to QuazarOmega

As with a lot of 90s software, it’s a bit more complicated than which source code did they download (or, rather, mail order on floppy… because it was the 90s). Not the least of which is due to the fact that many of the projects don’t exist anymore and there weren’t that many copies to begin with.

However, they both embrace and extend LDAP and Kerberos among other open and not open projects of the time. Both choices were related to the results of the Protocol Wars and Microsoft’s attempts, in the 90s, to do to the Internet what Google is doing today.

How much music theory do folks here know?


Original question by @Electric_Druid@lemmy.world

Just out of idle curiosity. I went to music school and teach at a local music shop, so I'm very familiar with music theory but I'm aware that my experience is most likely not the norm.

If you are familiar with any theory (even just scales and keys), where did you pick it up? Lots of the resources I've seen both in and outside of formal education can be both confusing, and it's often hard to see the application of what you learn in the short term.

Music Production and Software Synthesizers/VST's under Linux


Hey everyone,

When I was previously on windows I had a lot of fun doing music production. My workflow took place in FL studio and used a lot of software synthesizers (VST files mainly).

After my switch to Linux, I am 95% better off. Everything is great except I have to rediscover a music workflow.

It's quite painful because I had licenses to some very expensive software synth libraries (The Arturia V collection for example). I have done some reading and have found that while it is possible to get FL studio working in Linux, it still doesn't have the greatest of results.

As far as that goes, I am not terribly concerned - Reaper, Bitwig, and other Linux DAW's exist and I am fine using those instead even if it means purchasing a license for the paid ones.

But the real problem is the software centers/Licenses/installations for my software synths. It would be such a shame and a waste of money if I couldn't get these working, but I don't know much about dealing with this on Linux, so I am appealing to your collective knowledge.

I wanted to ask if anyone has successfully installed the Arturia V collection on Linux for use in a DAW, and if so, what you think I should know about it. I thought I read somewhere about some software these could be emulated/installed through (not wine), but I'm just really open to hearing about recommended options for something like this if anyone knows.

Otherwise, I wanted to ask my musical Linux friends here what they have for VST's and what their workflow is on Linux, because it's always fun to develop new work flows.

Thanks

in reply to golden_zealot

As others mentioned in this thread, yabridge running in a native Linux DAW is a great setup. I personally use Reaper with yabridge, Serum, and a few other vsts here and there.

For others who are more knowledgeable than me: is there any reason (engineering-wise) why these plugins are made for Windows? Are there not cross platform and open source frameworks that let you compile audio plugins for Windows + Mac + Linux with minimal effort?

I genuinely don't know anything about audio programming, I'm just curious.

in reply to golden_zealot

Welcome and congrats on your migration under GNU/Linux.

VST is a proprietary format therefore it is made to not work on linux.
On linux synth or virtual instruments are LV2 plugins (like Helm, Surge or Vitalium) or SF2/SFZ soundbank (played with Sfizz or Fluid Synth).

Now Ardour, Bitwig and Reaper can load VST plugins, but :
- Some won't just work,
- Some will work pretty much the same (Kontakt seems to be working for some person, but it depends on the version I think),
BUT if the VSTs needs to be installed before hand (like Kontakt, Spitfire, SINE and I think Arturia V falls into that), you will have to install them first using Wine (or with a wine front-end, like Bottles, Heroic, Lutris). Then load them in your DAW, if they don't work there after being properly download and installed, I don't think there is anything much to do...
... Apart from try using a bridge (like Lin-VST or Yabridge), but here against results are still very unpredictable. I got some pretty good results with both on the past, but on my new setup none would work for my plugins (Spitfires mostly).

These companies won't make their plugins available under Linux cause 'there isn't enough people using it on linux' (words of someone at Spitfire who I was asking the question).

My workflow for production in a few words :
- One PC (recording, mixing, mastering) with a midi keyboard,
- One PC virtual instruments only, I use it when project requires lot of instrument tracks.

Edit : Yeah Carla can be used as well, it can load VST plugins and act like a plugin library (pretty much like Kontakt).

This entry was edited (1 week ago)

Fedora


Hello fellow linuxers

I am kinda confused as to why certain Linux distros are mentioned in in every others post while others seems to get litten attention or are being bashed at worst.
People advertise for Mint because it's so easy to use, while I personally miss it's benefits over Ubuntu.

Personally I used KDE Neo for some time and switched to Fedora 42 a few weeks ago. It has all the same tools as basically every other distros. What is missed is not necessary or available. I can also seamlessly manage my proxmox server through ssh and fish and take up minor programming tasks on python or arduino.

Am I missing something important, or just seeing a loud minority with very specific requir?

External monitor power management issues


It feels weird to just jump into a generic Linux community and ask a question. It's nice being so small - kinda like the internet used to be.

Anyway, I've been running Linux servers for decades but only recently switched my desktop. I first tried Debian 12 and I'm now on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - I switched in the hope of getting newer drivers and maybe fixing this issue.

I have a HP laptop with onboard Intel graphics and an external monitor connected with USB-C. In general it works great - until it doesn't. From time to time the external monitor does not wake up after a suspend. Normally turning the monitor off and back on will cause some sort of driver reset and it comes back. Once or twice this has not helped and I've had to reboot.

I'm running Xorg as Wayland on Tumbleweed won't start on t his machine. Wayland may have worked with Debian, I don't recall. I don't think it's worth listing details of my versions as it's happened on two distros and through a couple of minor updates to Xorg on openSUSE. It happens with KDE or LXDE.

Any suggestions?

in reply to catloaf

Does it work if you unplug and replug?


In general, yes.

If you hit a button other than power does it wake up, or does it say "no signal" or something?


Yes.

Does the laptop see it?


I'm assuming not as it does not display on it. Next time it happens I'll see what xrandr says.

Anything in any log?


Nothing in Xorg.0.log and nothing that seems related in the journal. I'll keep journalctl --follow running and see if anything that I didn't pick as being related comes up next time it happens.

Can you force a redetection from the laptop?


Probably, but I don't know how.

in reply to GreatBlueHeron

you're running way too old a distro for what you want. debian 12 has its merits as a server, you install it and leave it be and it just works.

what you want - fluidity with power management, dock/undock, etc - although achievable with tweaking this and that isn't being worked on, not on X, not on debian 12, so it's not like those things will eventually get there. so you need a semi-modern distro, like ubuntu or fedora or even trixie.

wayland isn't new, it's default on a lot of distros since 2021 or so, so you can be sure that your use case was previosly met and solved. costs you nothing to boot e.g. F42 off a USB and try it out (has to be 42 as earlier live sessions default to X11). if you have lots of RAM, add the rd.live.ram switch so it copies the image to RAM and everything is super-snappy for testing and it doesn't touch your SSD.

Where to go for help with https://eggplant.place?


Total user error on my part.... I've managed to delete all the categories on my eggplant home page. This is stopping me from seeing my watch lists. I still have the edit layout button but there are no options for categories to edit. Any help would be appreciated.

Selfhosting DJ sets? (Soundcloud-style)


Hi!

I have a subsonic instance running but I rarely listen to Albums. Stuff I really like are DJ performances like by the channel The Moment.

So I thought: why not download and self-host them before Google makes Youtube sign-in only, (like Elon and Facebook did).

That stuff is probably quite hard to organize. But the type of music simply breaks the common services, like Jellyfin, or Subsonic.

I know of funkwhale. But I'd like to keep the contents private. I just wanna listen to music at work (so being open to the web is a plus). I thought funkwhale is a bit too... "social" for me. I'm a (re)uploader, not creator.

You got any ideas? Maybe a youtube-cloner with audio-only support? (I know how to download videos already)

Edit: Of course, I'd download the sets legally, e.g. from their patreon discord, or whatever. ;)

Also: I know that restricting it to my VPN would be ideal for security and legality reasons. But that's a bit inconvenient. And I want to check my options.

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

Doesn’t get any more secure than a battle-tested web server hosting simple MP3 files and a text file.

Convenience might be a thing, though. I’m in the Apple ecosystem so their Podcasts app shows that feed on all devices and tracks listening progress, etc.

If I didn’t have that, I’m still a lifetime customer with PocketCasts and PocketCasts Web. So, that’s that. But if you don’t have anything similar in place, a self-hosted streaming server might be the best way to go, yes.

xkcd #3106: Farads


xkcd #3106: Farads

Title text:

'This HAZMAT container contains radioactive material with activity of one becquerel.' 'So, like, a single banana slice?'


Transcript:

[Cueball holds a stick while talking with Megan and White Hat.]
Cueball: This stick is one meter long.
Megan: Cool.
White Hat: That's a nice stick.

[Cueball holds a smallish rock.]
Cueball: This rock weighs one pound.
Megan: I'd believe it.
White Hat: Looks like a normal rock.

[Cueball holds a small battery.]
Cueball: This battery is one volt.
Megan: Seems fine.
White Hat: Might need a recharge.

[Cueball holds a capacitor while Megan and White Hat panic.]
Cueball: This capacitor is one farad.
Megan: Aaaaa! Be careful!!
White Hat: Put it down!!


Source: xkcd.com/3106/

explainxkcd for #3106

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

The last time I checked, mods weren't supposed to be able to ban people from communities that those people never interacted in before. Did something change or is this a form of abuse/glitch/oversight?


I’ve been noticing this more and more in the modlogs, with it proven via the “creator” option in some instances’ modlogs that the people doing the bans were mods and not admins, and when I first joined Lemmy, one of the things that were held as a universal truth was that this absolutely could not happen.

Building A Multi-Platform Feed Reader App - is it Worthwhile?


The idea


I want to build an app, in which you can subscribe or follow profiles or feeds from multiple platforms, including various fediverse platforms (lemmy, Mastodon, Friendica, etc), blogs, and others (no idea what else yet).

App will have optional smart filtering and sorting, and optional algorithm based on your reading habits.

The north star goal is to make this app give the user the feel of being officially supported by the platforms it reads from. It should feel like a lemmy app if you see a lemmy post, feel like Mastodon if it's Mastodon, etc. This is obviously a monumental effort, so I will have to make concessions (hence north star).

Motivation


I see the recession of multi-source or Multi-Platform feed readers (RSS) as quite unfortunate to user choice and freedom.

I think this app, will promote a few ideals of mine:
- being intentional about content we want on our feed
- breaking boundary between different platforms (which is the spirit of ActivityPub)
- promoting open platforms: encourage non-profitting creators to make their content accessible on these platforms, and readers to read from them.
- consuming internet content without data mining, addictive scrolling, and having the choice to smart filter or sort your feed.


What are your thoughts? Do you agree that this is worthwhile?

Besides blog posts (RSS), lemmy, Mastodon, and other big fsdiverse platforms, what would you want to see on this app?

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

I think a lot of open social media accept the RSS format.

Like for example if you add a “.rss” to the end of a bluesky profile url you get the rss feed for it.

So this actually seems quite doable!

I would say its something you dont need top efficiency. Don’t do it in Rust. It’s fine to use python or something.

Mitigating the "7 Deadly Fediverse UX Sins"


This article is a response to Tim Chambers' recent writeup, titled The Seven Deadly UX Sins of the Fediverse Web Experience (To Fix). It's a pretty great read, and I'm writing this not as a rebuttal, but to analyze and expand on the points made.

This is a musing on 7 problems that have been pointed out, with some ideas on what progress has been made to fix them.

in reply to 反いじめ戦隊

Well, no, this was just responding to a critique on UX shortcomings, and highlighting how different efforts could solve various problems.

It sounds more like you're talking about one of my previous blog posts, where I was talking about a super-flexible frontend that's basically a pagebuilder. Make no mistake, I would love to see custom profile music and radios! And I agree that accessibility needs to be way better!


My Dream Fediverse Platform


This article is a follow-up to an older post of mine, Towards a Greater Federated Architecture, and also a response from the wonderfully-thought out piece by Ben Werdmuller, If I Started Fresh. The goal here is to take the lessons learned from a variety of systems to propose the Fediverse platform I have always wanted to build: Postmodern.

No code has been written as of yet, but I am learning to program, from the bottom up, backend to frontend. I have some background in game design, Web development, and API clients, but I'm working on the more elusive foundational stuff. This is the only way I can possibly develop the confidence needed to build this thing.


The Fediverse, Social Web, Peopleverse, whatever you want to call it, has evolved considerably since it originally started back in 2008. During my entire time on the network, I've longed to design a platform of my own. I've learned a lot of lessons from amazing projects along the way: Hubzilla, Bonfire, Emissary, and ActivityPods have all done some really interesting things beyond what Mastodon offers to the network. I also think there's some really valuable ideas in both Nostr and Bluesky that are worth closer examination.

Before I dive into my technical brain-droppings of the past decade, let's establish a few core concepts.

Guiding Principles

1. It needs to be fun


On the surface, this might sound superfluous. What does it mean for a platform to be fun? This boils down to a few key areas that Fediverse platforms struggle with:

  • Ease of use - Good UX design is hard to execute well. As time goes on, I'm convinced that people want to use something without having to think too hard about conventions or side effects. They shouldn't have to dig under countless menus to find where the decentralization is.
  • Discovery - For the time being, the act of finding new, cool things to interact with or peruse is pretty bad. There's some promising work happening with Fediverse Discovery Providers. Regardless, discovery needs to also extend beyond simply finding stuff, and include a laser focus on finding people. Onboarding still kind of sucks, and there's a number of issues with trying to find your friends and connect with them.
  • Resiliency - One of the shakiest aspects of the Fediverse involves just how fragile instances can be. If an instance permanently goes down, and you didn't already have some alias set up to migrate your followers, you're dead in the water. Having to rebuild your social graph from scratch is the opposite of fun.
  • Control - This can mean a lot of different things: control over your timeline, control over how your space on the web looks, control over your connections, control over your data. A big missed opportunity in the space is that we'll say things like "you own your own data", but it's not exactly true. Your data mostly exists as a series of tables in a database, which can be serialized into a JSON export that you mostly can't use with anything.

It might seem like this is a catch-all, where you can throw any old thing into the guiding principle. Maybe it is. What I know is this: if the experience is bad for users, if they're getting harassed and seeing drama every day, if they don't really have much control over the platform, if they can't find their friends or cool things that interest them, then your platform is the opposite of fun.

2. Users should have maximum agency


Building on top of Principle #1, individual users should have total agency of how their experience is shaped online. This can be categorized in four ways:

  1. Visual / Conventional - the user decides what interfaces, themes, apps, and clients they will leverage to access the network. Custom designs and behaviors empower users to make their online space truly their own.
  2. Data Sovereignty - the user has strict controls over their data: what apps and services can use it, the extent to which different pieces are exposed to the Web, and the ability to seamlessly port the sum of that data from one place to another.
  3. Filtering and Connectivity - users should always be given the opportunity to decide what they see on their feeds, and what other people can see from them. This could take the form of filtering out keywords, blocking users and domains, leveraging a third-party labeling service, or being able to connect to individual accounts that may otherwise be banned instance-wide for everyone else.

Of course, this isn't to say that admins and moderators don't have a suitable place in community-building and curation. It's just that solely relying on them tends to result in communities where users have minimal input on policy, and admins have absolute authority. To me, this is a major barrier towards world-wide adoption of the Social Web, which is a goal for some of us in this massive, sprawling movement.

3. The platform must move the Fediverse forward


There's some absolutely amazing developments happening in the space. Most notably, the Fediverse Enhancement Proposals project has helped many different platforms standardize on undocumented behavior. It's the closest thing we have right now for improving ActivityPub implementations, in lieu of a formal update to the protocol spec.

FEPs are the reason why groups mostly just work across a variety of systems now, and related efforts such as the Threadiverse Working Group allows NodeBB, Discourse, Lemmy, PieFed, and Mbin to federate together with minimal issues. It's not perfect, but the project is bearing a lot of fruit.

The problem is that some of the biggest projects in the space, such as Mastodon, have historically been pretty indifferent to these efforts. Often, they choose to forgo established agreed-upon FEPs to do their own thing, forcing everyone else to bend over backwards and support their unique way of doing things. At the end of the day, FEPs still aren't advancements in the ActivityPub protocol itself.

We need more Fediverse platforms to champion these collaborative efforts, both to help influence further development of the protocol as well as putting pressure on larger projects to work with the community.

4.) The experience must be unique


This might come across as wildly conceited, but I don't want to build yet another clone of a service that already exists. I mean no disrespect towards the people doing that, but I think we've barely managed to scratch the surface of what can be built. There's a certain appeal in imitating existing familiar designs and paradigms, and iterating on them to be better.

What I want to do is develop new concepts that aren't quite like anything else. Sure, there may be a passing resemblance to half a dozen different things, but I want to develop something bold. I'm tired of describing the Fediverse as "the alternative" and want so badly to instead describe it as "the future", but we have to take much bigger risks to get there.

Implementation Details


Here are some of the pipe-dream ideas I've been refining over the years. There are probably a lot of aspects that still need key considerations, some of which is still above my ability to program! I'm currently going to school for Computer Science, and practicing to make my coding skills more capable of tackling these big ideas.

Composable Interfaces


This is probably the biggest idea behind Postmodern, the platform I hope to one day abuild. What are Composable Interfaces? To keep it simple: composable interfaces are a way to construct a custom frontend with whatever data is available.

Composable interfaces are not necessarily new; prior art exists in the following Fediverse projects:

  • Hubzilla - You can write pages, a custom theme, and widgets using an elaborate template system. You have to write it yourself by hand, there's not really a way to preview these changes, and some of the more high-level customization has to be done by making calls to pieces of code that aren't super well-documented.
  • Bonfire - Customization is largely accomplished through modules, which can be bundled together into a sort of unique software distribution. So, you can choose to add a group forum module, a wiki module, and a video module, and Bonfire will snap those pieces together for you. Super interesting, kind of complicated, still yet to be battle-tested for communities.
  • Emissary- Really wild template system built on HTMX and HyperScript. Emissary is really different from other projects because it allows developers to dictate data schemas and actions from within the view template. A lot of contemporary developers might balk at this, because it kind of violates the MVC design pattern. However, Emissary is crazy flexible, and makes it possible for a developer to add support for custom Activity types and actions with a single template.
  • Dokieli - a full-blown decentralized client-side editing tool. It implements ActivityPub, Linked Data, and a swath of other technologies related to Solid. It's extremely powerful, but the interface looks like it has a significant learning curve. It's hard even for me, a Fediverse nerd with 15 years of experience, to fully grok.

Looking at these concepts, I think Emissary and Dokieli come the closest to what I want to build. The ability to build a custom UI with unique capabilities just by dictating what the template is doing is awfully compelling.

My personal head-cannon differs in one specific way: take Dokieli, and marry its capabilities with that of Emissary. Focus on the page-building, widget-building, stream-building elements, and give people the power to delve into a vast pool of social data that they can edit client-side without having to touch any template code themselves.
Don't worry, this ugly thing is just a mockup. There's a lot to figure out.
Instead of taking inspiration from page-building tools like Gutenberg, Elementor, or Wix, my thoughts are to instead take inspiration from layer-based image editors. Each layer in the builder/inspector thing is a component, which can be altered, rearranged, and adjusted in a number of different ways. You can mix and match existing components, or compose your own from scratch by reaching into the pool of data that your account is aware of. It's not unlike the WordPress approach to Blocks in 2025...but, hopefully this approach can be more intuitive.
Again, this is just conceptual. A whole lot of things need refinement.
For this to be viable, a lot of work would need to be done to overcome any potential learning curve. The tools need to be accessible, with the page layout exactly matching what the user sees on the screen.The experience could really suck if it's not implemented carefully. After all, we have to follow the first guiding principle: it has to be fun. Fighting with an editing tool is not that.
I wanted to draw more widget ideas, but I need to finish writing this.
To accomplish this, the most straightforward approach would be to create a core set of widgets with data types and settings, bundled together for different experiences. I'm calling these bundles-of-things complications, which can be thought of as the snapping together of atomic units to make something greater. An experience that has a lot of complications put together would pretty much work as its own frontend made of stylized, curated pieces.

If this sounds way, way complicated: yeah, I know. For a social client frontend, this idea pushes a lot of boundaries. I have some ideas about how to get there (maybe use GraphQL for the builder?), but a lot of it is going to probably diverge from the standard Web application stack. I have a lot of homework to do.

Next-Gen Permissions System


I've written about this a bit before in my last article about moving the Fediverse forward, but we need to get our act together about permissions systems. Mastodon's offering is woefully lacking when it comes to granularity.
Sigh.
ActivityPub has these nifty things called Collections, which is really just a representation of a collection of objects. You can pretty much put any object in there, so in a roundabout way, you can create a scoped list of people you're connected with. Theoretically, you could use collections of people as privacy scopes, dictating who can see certain things, or certain versions of things.



Projects such as Bonfire have taken the logical next step, where it's possible to establish boundaries and barriers for different collections of people, under a variety of conditions. This can apply to everything from individual posts to group communities to whatever else you can come up with.

I think it's absolutely important that we build a system that not only accounts for message delivery and access, but capabilities as well. You the user should be the one that dictates whether people can see a post, boost it, reply to it, whatever. In a decentralized system, this is kind of hard to figure out, but not impossible.

I still hold the belief that Object Capabilities might be our best bet, and Christine Lemmer-Webber published a paper a few months ago detailing what oCap-enabled ActivityPub would look like.m

Data as Documents


Some people will disagree with me here, but I think a document database architecture might be the way to go for this whole thing. A traditional relational database might be too limiting for this kind of insane flexibility, especially when you consider how different platforms try to account for the complex data structures necessary for ActivityPub.

Pleroma, for example, historically used the jsonb data type in PostgreSQL to hold reams and reams of nested JSON data. At a small scale, it's not so bad, but ActivityPub data can grow exponentially when you're interacting with lots of people and content.

For some time now, I've been thinking a lot about Sir Tim Berners-Lee's Solid Project. When first approaching Solid, it seems super abstract and complicated. You get all these people talking about RDF, TripleStores, Quads, WebID, and a lot of other stuff. As someone that has a pretty firm grasp on Fediverse systems, Solid initially caused a vein to bulge in my temple. I went on to explain the semantics here.
A file manager, representing files in a Solid Pod
TL;DR: Solid is kind of a specification for data, data storage, and access. It allows users to store their data in pods, and that data is represented as different kinds of documents and metadata. There is no relational database. Instead, the data in your Solid pod is used as a database itself. If you wanted to migrate all of the posts you've ever made, Solid makes it super easy to pick all that stuff up and move it somewhere else.
An ActivityPods instance. All of these applications access the same pool of data.
ActivityPods manages to marry the two concepts, and does the heavy lifting to translate these documents and data into something ActivityPub implementations can understand, and vice versa. The real magic here is that ActivityPods makes the act of building ActivityPub apps relatively seamless and straightforward. Developers don't have to think about both ActivityPub and Solid. They just need to write an ActivityPub app.
Mastopod, an ActivityPub social app that uses Solid.
I still have some outstanding questions about whether ActivityPods can effectively scale up. The Solid community in general is pretty small, and ActivityPods is an even smaller subset of either Solid or ActivityPub communities. A large-scale community instance with over 100,000 users (who all individually have their own pods) doesn't feel that feasible to me.

Still, I respect everything these guys are doing, and I think about building on top of ActivityPods pretty often.

Relay-Based Supportive Infra


Fediverse instances suffer somewhat from a fragile network. In fact, I would go as far as stating that tethering user accounts to Fediverse instances is an antipattern. We've mistakenly followed this trend for a long time, and put the sum of a user's entire social graph into one server. If that server goes down for good, you're toast.
A Nostr client's network settings, showing many different relays.
Nostr doesn't have this problem, because it doesn't have instances. Instead, user accounts are free-floating, peer-to-peer identities that dispatch posts to individual relays. Instead of individual instances where everybody logs on to post, everything is done through clients. Your identity is basically a public key, tied to a profile and some posts.

What I'm advocating for isn't necessarily the prioritization of one method over the other, but a hybrid approach that includes the best of both. What if Fediverse identities could be free-floating, separate things from instances, that persist even when an instance goes down?

Suppose that the Move activity in ActivityPub was just a method for detaching the identity from one instance, and attaching to another? Or, taking the approach that Hubzilla takes, suppose that you could mirror your identity to multiple instances by attaching your identity to multiple servers? You post in one place, it shows up somewhere else, too.

Another way that relays could be useful is in attacking the notorious Discovery Problem so prevalent in the Fediverse. As Nostr has continued to evolve, different relays have emerged that specialize in specific things:

  • Caching
  • Hosting Media
  • Search
  • Premium Long-Term Storage

Theoretically, it could also be possible for relays to take on the role of Fediverse Discovery Providers. These things could not only act as an index of content and people, but conduits that pull in news, book reviews, events, and maybe even a contact directory. Maybe your instance could just subscribe to relays, rather than trying to broker message dispatching and pulling in new content itself.

A Single-Identity Ecosystem


Finally, we get to what I consider to be the Achilles heel of today's Fediverse. As highlighted in previous sections, I think we do a terrible job of handling identity. In fact, we don't really do any job at all.
Sigh
Part of the problem here is that every Fediverse server in the network is a full-blown platform, rather than a client. The decision of the Mastodon project was to forgo the Client-To-Server part of the ActivityPub spec, instead opting for a bespoke API of its own. Mastodon's API grew so popular that many other Fediverse platforms adopted it, just to have access to a vast amount of compatible apps.

The primary side effect of every Fediverse server being a platform instead of a client is that every platform needs its own account to be used. This quickly leads to a nightmare scenario where it's possible to have 15 different accounts floating around that don't actually connect to each other in any meaningful way.
Reimagining various platforms as client frontends instead, using the same profile.
Granted, the Client-To-Server API has its fair share of complaints. It's under-documented, clients are expected to handle all logic on the client side, and seemingly nobody uses it anyway. However...it still exists, can be improved upon, and could be used in conjunction with ActivityPods.

I'm greatly interested in the prospect of building ActivityPods apps that work with Postmodern, where you're really just viewing different crafted experiences in specific clients.

In Conclusion


Congratulations on getting to the end of my big, weird rant about how I'd do things. Some of these ideas remain unproven, and may not actually be the solutions I end up going with. Still, much of this exists as the byproduct of lessons learned from observing different Fediverse platforms evolve over time. I hope to start by building small prototypes to test out various ideas.

Some of this (all of it?) might be super convoluted and complicated. The biggest thing I want to focus on, however, is the experience of building composable interfaces. I think this idea really has legs, and could potentially be a radically different approach to building for the Social Web.

If you have any insights, ideas, suggestions, or critiques, please feel free to reach out! This article was, believe it or not, something of a shortlist. There's a lot of things I didn't discuss (Bluesky-styled labelers, custom feeds, etc) that still belong in this vision somewhere. For now, these are simply the topics most resonant to me, that I wanted to pay special attention to.


in reply to Sean Tilley

critique on UX shortcomings, and highlighting how different efforts could solve various problems


Which are solvable by creating a customized SNS frontend.

Lemmy is a community first centric ActivityPub network, thus most frontend tailor UX for community engagement, and not SNS.

Similarly Peertube is for videos, thus the UX will tailor for videos centric experiences.

What you detailed was a SNS tailored UX, not a community or video one.

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

Technically Schyzerdütsch is High German (you could even say it's the Highest German, considering elevation), while what most Germans call 'Hochdeutsch' is actually standard german (which, to be fair, is mostly derived from High and Middle German dialects, as opposed to Low German (and Middle German is much more similar to High German than to Low German)).
This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

[Solved] "[OK] Reached target Graphical Interface" after login before getting booted back to the login screen


Hey all, semi-novice Linux user here.

I'm running EndeavourOS with KDE on a Lenovo with an Intel CPU and integrated GPU.

I was attempting to update my system today but kept getting the error referenced in this newsletter that I found after looking for the error online. I ran each command in the newsletter exactly as written and then rebooted my system.

After rebooting, I'm able to successfully get to the login screen and input my username/password but, instead of my desktop, logging in takes me to a command interface for about a second before reverting to the same login screen. The line in the title is the last entry shown in that command interface.

I've looked online for solutions but it doesn't seem like anyone with my same error is getting stuck on the login screen (most people seem to be stuck on Grub and are able to use e, ctrl+alt-F2, etc) and I'm just sorta lost on what to do at this point.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: Thank you to MyNameIsRichard for your help. It turns out that I needed to install plasma-x11-session as I am still an x11 user and a recent update made it necessary to install this package manually.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

I saw a guy carrying a stack of board games in my neighborhood today


He must have been going to a party, he had catan, he had uno, and he had Scrabble way up at the top. His stack wasn't balanced very well though, and Scrabble fell, the box burst open, spilling tiles everywhere.

So I went up to him and asked, "what's the word on the street?"

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

XPipe - A connection hub for all your servers: Status update for the v16 release


Today I can share a major development status update of XPipe, a connection hub that allows you to access your entire server infrastructure from your local desktop. It can make your life easier when working with any kind of servers by eliminating all the commonly tedious tasks that come up when interacting with remote systems, either from the terminal or from a graphical interface. XPipe comes with integrations for SSH, docker and other containers, various hypervisors, and more without requiring setup on your remote systems. You can also keep using your favourite text/code editors, terminals, password managers, shells, command-line tools, and more with it.

Hub

Docker compose


This release introduces support for docker compose. Containers in compose projects are grouped together and can be managed all at the same time via compose project entries.

The container state information shown is also improved, always showing the container state in combination with the system information.

Compose

Batch mode


There is now a batch mode available that allows you to select multiple systems via checkboxes and perform actions for the entire batch. This can include starting/stopping, automatically adding available subconnections, or running scripts on all selected systems.

You can toggle the batch mode in the top left corner.

Batch

Password managers


The password manager integrations have been upgraded:
- There is now support for KeePassXC
- All password manager integrations have been reworked to work out of the box without configuration
- There is now support to use password manager SSH agents more easily
- You can now unlock the xpipe vault with your password manager

Password Manager

SSH


Various improvements were made to the SSH implementation:
- The SSH gateway implementation has been reworked so that you can now use local SSH keys and other identities for connections with gateways
- The VSCode SSH remote integration has been reworked to allow more connections it to be opened in vscode. It now supports essentially all simple SSH connections, custom SSH connections, SSH config connections, and VM SSH connections. This support includes gateways
- There is now built-in support to refresh an SSO openpubkey with the opkssh tool when needed
- There is now the option to enable verbose ssh output to diagnose connection issues better
- For VMs, you can now choose to not use the hypervisor host as SSH gateway and instead directly connect to the VM IP

Other


  • Connection names, e.g. VM names, will now automatically update on refresh when they were changed
  • You can now launch custom scripts within XPipe with a command output dialog window without having to open a terminal
  • Various installation types like the linux apt/rpm repository and homebrew installations now support automatic updates as well
  • The k8s integration will now automatically add all namespaces for the current context when searching for connections
  • The application window will now hide any unnecessary sidebars when being resized to a small width. This makes it much easier to use XPipe in a tiling window arrangement
  • The webtop has been updated to have terminal multiplexers, proper konsole tab support, disabled kwallet, and more
  • Various error messages and connection creation dialogs now contain a help link to the documentation sections


A note on the open-source model


Since it has come up a few times, in addition to the note in the git repository, I would like to clarify that XPipe is not fully FOSS software. The core that you can find on GitHub is Apache 2.0 licensed, but the distribution you download ships with closed-source extensions. There's also a licensing system in place with limitations on what kind of systems you can connect to in the community edition as I am trying to make a living out of this. I understand that this is a deal-breaker for some, so I wanted to give a heads-up.

Outlook


If this project sounds interesting to you, you can check it out on GitHub, visit the Website, or check out the Docs for more information.

Enjoy!

in reply to crschnick

Are there any plans to make a Flatpak version of this? I've moved to an immutable OS and none of the options you have will install. Flatpaks are their preferred method. I know I could self host my own version which may be what I may end up doing anyway, but I'd prefer to have it more local yet another docker container. 😀

Edit: I just went with the Appimage which works.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Tiny cocktails


I am all in favor of this. There are beer flights at so many restaurants but tiny strong & delicious cocktails with small foods would be such a great starter to a meal. Something bitter but not enough to get drunk and not be able to enjoy the food.

When I am working up a recipe, often I will invite people over and make 4 different versions but then split each drink into 4 little dixie cups so that each of us have only one drink's worth of alcohol. That doesn't fix the drink getting too warm problem but does let us test them clear headed.

in reply to RBWells

Using downsized recipes is pretty standard for me when I'm drinking at home. For a lot of cocktails, half-size or third-size is just fine, especially when you start experimenting with ingredients and ratios. And I have something of an issue with actually committing to a full-size drink (i.e. I often get bored of it halfway through).

However, one of the biggest barriers to entry is the need for smaller glassware, which, while not impossible to source, is limited in its variety. “Where I see a lot of room for improvement is tiny rocks and tiny Highball glasses,” Zielinski says, noting that miniature coupes or diminutive Martini glasses are more readily available.


This is definitely an issue. I've been using stemmed liqueur glasses for small Martini-style cocktails, but even in somewhat smaller rocks glasses a half-sized Old Fashioned-style drink just looks lost.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Mod managers for Linux?


I've finally started having some free time lately and have been working through my Steam library, most of which is Windows games I'm playing with Proton.

I wanted to install some mods, and wanted a mod manager for this. Nexus Mods has Vortex, which is not available for Linux. In any case, running Windows games on Linux through Proton on Steam is fairly specific; the game files will be at certain locations on a Linux filesystem, not at the same locations as they would be on a Windows filesystem. So I think I would need software that has specifically been designed for this use-case (Windows games from Steam running on Proton).

Are there any such mod managers out there? What do other people do when playing games on Linux? I can't be the only person who wants to play video games with mods.

in reply to communism

github.com/sonic2kk/steamtinke… for when you need MO2 or Nexus (that isn't Stardew). Keep in mind this will install a new instance of the app for each game you use it with (in its proton prefix folder).

github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMod… is the current version of the new Nexus Mod Manager App, which has linux support. Currently it only has game support for Stardew Valley.

As many others have said, go with PrismLauncher for Minecraft. Modrinth's launcher works fine too, but doesn't have curseforge support.

Paramilitary


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramili…


A paramilitary is a military that is not a part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934.[2]

photo: Legion of Frontiersmen, Edmonton Command, 1915 – a nationalist paramilitary group not officially affiliated with the Canadian Army

Fedora's FESCo To Decide Whether To Replace Upstream X.Org Server With XLibre Fork


How to get AUDIO forwarding to work... if it's possible?


Hi, so I will try to hopefully explain as best as I can.

These are my devices:

  • Windows PC -> Cable Headphone1 output
  • Linux Laptop -> BT Headphone2 output
  • Android Phone -> Phone speaker output

What I want to achieve:

Have audio from all devices output from Headphone1 on my PC without having to use physical or software mixer.

What I managed to get working but sux due to audio stutter or delay:

Have audio from all devices output from Headphone2

How?

  • Phone paired via BT to Windows PC, using app on Windows PC called Bluetooth Audio Receiver gives me the ability to listen to my phone audio via Headphone1 (does not work for Laptop)
  • Linux Laptop paired to my Windows PC as an audio device allows me to set the Laptop as a output audio device for the PC so I can listen to PC and thus to the Phone via Headphone2

BUT, this causes phone audio to stutter via Headphone2 and audio from PC has at least 500ms delay.

Wish there was a way to forward audio from Linux Laptop to Windows PC the same way as from Android Phone to PC.

Any clues?

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Square Enix acknowledges Expedition 33 success as inspiration for next Final Fantasy as turn-based is still beloved by gamers


Mozilla: AI is Going Deeper in Firefox, But Trust me Bro we Are Not Going to Data Mine You or Sell Your Data.


Bad issues with system load on Mint Desktop


Hi!. Currently running Linux Mint 22.1, but i suspect it's not strictly a distro issue. This laptop was running VERY well but was outdated, running Mint 19.3, some things were unable to be installed because the system libraries were old (didn't expect Calibre to be one of them, figures), so i updated all the way to that moment's current version which was Mint 21.3. All of a sudden it felt like the laptop got downgraded two whole computer tech generations. As soon as i ask it to do something mildly complicated that made it break no sweat on Mint 19, it gets VERY slow, all the cores start running at max, system load increases, until it finishes doing whatever it was doing several minutes later, something between a couple of minutes when lucky, to 20 or more. Typically what triggers the issue is something on the browser (what i use the most on the computer is browser tabs and lots of terminals) but not exclusively. Thought it was the browser but replicated it on an empty Firefox profile, and has triggered with simpler stuff like the Discord client. Been trying to find the issue for a while trying to avoid a full reinstall, no luck so far.

If i were to describe how it feels, it's like there was a bottleneck on tasks being done by the system, as soon as you ask it to do something mildly complex it chokes on it and tasks accumulate. No idea if it's some kind of kernel misconfiguration, if it's some hardware incompatibility, or something else entirely, checking the changelogs of Mint all the way between 19.3 and 21.3 showed nothing i could pin this onto (or at least nothing i could notice).

The nuclear option would be a brand new blank install but I'd MUCH rather avoid that if possible, made the comfortable but now unwise choice of a single partition for everything (instead of a separate /home and whatnot as i used to do) so reinstallation would wipe it completely, if i must then i must but much rather not.

Would welcome VERY much ideas on stuff to check or try.

Edit: It's got an NVME drive, which seems to be healthy as far as i can see

Edit: When it happens it doesn't seem to matter how much RAM is free, seen it happen with only 8 of the 32Gb of RAM in use and zero swap

Edit: Found a great way to describe how it feels like: Have you done heavy video encoding on a computer that's adequate for the task but not more than that, and noticed how everything in it stalls heavily, even if there's plenty of RAM free and the computer feels like it's giving everything to that task only? Pretty much that, but for nearly everything even moderately heavy

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

Given that as i mentioned elsewhere i did not separate the /home into it's own partition like I've been doing since the 90s, formatting this thing right now would likely lead to losing stuff, i need to organize the files first before i do the nuclear option: A full reformat/reinstall. If that makes no difference in the end, I'll have to consider the possibility of getting a new one. No idea how long will each step take so not the foggiest on when will i do each thing, and that's even without taking procrastination into consideration... 😅

‘FuckLAPD.com’ Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly Identify Cops


cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/31924287


‘FuckLAPD.com’ Lets Anyone Use Facial Recognition to Instantly Identify Cops


A new site, FuckLAPD.com, is using public records and facial recognition technology to allow anyone to identify police officers in Los Angeles they have a picture of. The tool, made by artist Kyle McDonald, is designed to help people identify cops who may otherwise try to conceal their identity, such as covering their badge or serial number.

“We deserve to know who is shooting us in the face even when they have their badge covered up,” McDonald told me when I asked if the site was made in response to police violence during the LA protests against ICE that started earlier this month. “fucklapd.com is a response to the violence of the LAPD during the recent protests against the horrific ICE raids. And more broadly—the failure of the LAPD to accomplish anything useful with over $2B in funding each year.”

“Cops covering up their badges? ID them with their faces instead,” the site, which McDonald said went live this Saturday. The tool allows users to upload an image of a police officer’s face to search over 9,000 LAPD headshots obtained via public record requests. The site says image processing happens on the device, and no photos or data are transmitted or saved on the site. “Blurry, low-resolution photos will not match,” the site says.

fucklapd.com uses data provided by the City of Los Angeles directly to the public,” McDonald told me in an email. “This data has been provided in response to either public records requests or public records lawsuits. That means all of this information belongs to the public and is a matter of public record. fucklapd.com is not scraping any data.”

In addition to potentially identifying officers by name and serial number, FuckLAPD.com also pulls up a police officer’s salary.

“Surprisingly it [the domain name] only costs $10 a year to exercise my first amendment right to say fucklapd.com,” McDonald said.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
I tested the tools by grabbing an image of a white and bald police officer from an LAPD press conference addressing its use of force during the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. I uploaded the image to the site, and within a few seconds the site presented me with nine headshots of officers who could be possible matches, all of them bald white men. The first correctly identified the cop in the image I uploaded.

Clicking “view profile” under the result sent me to the Watch the Watchers site by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a community group based in the Skid Row neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. “All of the information on this website comes from records that were deliberately made public by the City of Los Angeles in response to either public records requests or public records lawsuits,” the Watch the Watchers site says. “We plan to keep refreshing this data from new public records requests as well as to add other data.” Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is not associated with FuckLAPD.com and did not endorse the site.

McDonald told me that since the site launched, it had around 50,000 visitors, but “Because the analysis happens on-device I have no way of knowing what people are using it for, except for some people who have posted screenshots to Twitter or Instagram,” he said.

In 2018 McDonald made another tool called ICEspy which used hundreds of photos of ICE employees from LinkedIn and does much the same thing as FuckLAPD.com. “This app is designed to highlight and embarrass the organization committing atrocities against refugees and immigrants to the United States,” ICEspy’s website says. That tool originally used a Microsoft API, before Microsoft restricted access to it. McDonald said on X that he recently relaunched the tool to run locally on devices. 404 Media tested ICEspy using images of ICE employees on LinkedIn to verify if the tool worked and each result was incorrect; McDonald indicated on X he was looking for others to re-scrape LinkedIn and update the database.

Over the last few months ICE officers have consistently worn masks, neck gaiters, sunglasses, and baseball caps to shield their identity while often refusing to provide their name or even confirm the agency they belong to. This includes while violently assaulting people, detaining U.S. citizens, and pointing weapons at bystanders, leaving little room for recourse or accountability against the individual agents or the agency.

ICE’s constant use of masks has created a climate where people cannot be sure that the heavily armed group of men coming towards them are really federal agents or not. In Philadelphia, a man pretended to be an ICE agent in order to rob an auto repair shop and zip tie an employee. In Brooklyn, a man posed as an immigration officer before attempting to rape a woman.

ICE claims that assaults against its officers have increased by 413 percent, and use this as the justification for covering their faces. But as Philip Bump showed in the Washington Postthere are still plenty of questions about those numbers and their accuracy. ICE says its officers’ family members have been doxed too.

Neither the LAPD or ICE responded to a request for comment.

Joseph Cox contributed reporting.


in reply to Nibodhika

Again, I want to establish that I've learned a ton and really appreciate your writings. Thank you!

That looks interesting, although I would be weary of learning a layout that only works on specific keyboards, it will make it hard for you to use a laptop on the go, work in an office with a normal keyboard or any other similar situation.


Thanks for the reminder! While I can't completely ignore the main takeaway, I do find myself only rarely (read: less than 5%) engage with normal keyboards. And, AFAIU, by only adopting the exotic layout for splitting keyboards, I can keep the muscle memory for QWERTY on regular keyboards. Though, please feel free to correct me if I say something that goes against your own experiences.

which btw I strongly recommend you check out wrist and finger stretching exercises as they help a lot


Would you be so kind to share what has worked for your wrist? While there's no reason to assume that your exercises work out for me, I can at least discuss them with the physiotherapist. BTW, to be clear, I've already visited the physiotherapist a number of times and we've discussed exercises that I've eventually incorporated in my daily routine.

Lots of the changes I made (e.g. split ortholinear keyboard) were probably not needed


Question: If we focus on the split ortholinear keyboard, is only the ortholinear aspect (possibly) redundant? Or..., the split itself?

in reply to HayadSont

Damn, I thought I had sent the reply and it's been erased.

I'll keep it short, muscle memory for qwerty doesn't go away that easily, at least it didn't for me, but I'm able to type blindly in qwerty (just not touch typing). Still I think that something I can use in my laptop is very useful so I can keep the ergonomics on the go.

I don't have the exercises, it was just something someone told me to do, I'm sure whatever your doctor is telling you would be better.

For the split vs ortholinear I think split makes more difference, whenever I use a normal keyboard I feel this, but never had any pains related to it, it's just more comfortable.

Sony faces another class-action lawsuit over PlayStation Store prices and monopolistic practices


in reply to Agent Karyo

To be honest that would just be the end of the consoles system as there is a reason Sony is selling the PS5 for so cheap.

As much as I understand why Apple shouldn’t be allowed to keep everything in the Apple Store, Sony’s situation isn’t the same.

But what would bother me more is if Sony starts to raise the prices of everything without justification.

I got a Steam Deck and I’m slowly migrating my gaming from Playstation only to Linux/Playstation gaming. Still a Playstation 5 is a great product, especially with kids and its ease of use and great graphics for your bucks.

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

Maybe it’s because I don’t use it enough but the last Sony console I bought was the absolute opposite of “no fuss”. It was nothing but mandatory unskippable updates and I constantly got signed out and had to sign in and the 2fa app kept changing names. And also all those updates and sign-ins had mandatory EULAS you had to scroll through. Such a hassle.

Edit: also it tried to talk to my Sony tv in some “smart” way over HDMI (so I couldn’t disable it) which would sometimes cause my TV to crash and reboot for several minutes.

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

For the updates: I put it to sleep. However my power cuts out every now and then. When the power comes back, the ps4 turns itself back on on and makes obnoxious beeping noises, just to tell me the power was cut. The dumb thing is it will stay on that screen until manually dismissed and won’t auto-update until you dismiss that screen, with no timeout. The hassle-free appliance experience!

For your claim that the eulas being easy to skip, keep in mind that sometimes there were back-to-back updates that each required me to agree to a eula. So I would babysit the thing, walk away when it was taking forever, and when I came back it wouldn’t even be ready for gaming. Even windows isn’t that obnoxious.

Also my tv at the time had no way to disable CEC (my new one does, and also doesn’t crash lol).

in reply to LandedGentry

I don’t understand where the confrontation came from, but I guess if that’s what you want you can have it. I literally told you two posts ago about how it’s not just waiting for 20s and clicking a button. It’s an attended upgrade and scrolling process. I won’t bother quoting what I wrote 3 minutes ago, go scroll up and read it again yourself. No, my microwave does not present me with EULAs when the power goes out.

What “score” are you talking about? Do you take personal offense when a Sony product sucks? Did you invent the PlayStation or something? I was just sharing my lived experience.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

Mamdani Wins Stunning Upset in Democratic Primary as Cuomo Concedes Race


Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani is on track to secure the Democratic nomination for mayor, after former Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded to him Tuesday night following the first round of ranked-choice primary votes.

With 95% of precincts reporting two hours after polls closed at 9 p.m., 44% ranked Mamdani as their first choice while 36% chose Cuomo first and 11% had city Comptroller Brad Lander.

Mamdani emerged to raucus applause at his election party on a brewery rooftop in Long Island City, about 20 minutes after midnight.

Finding an instance that blocks least and is least blocked


Is there a way to shop around for a Lemmy instance based on how many instances are blocking it and how many instances it's blocking? For example, I noticed that the lemmygrad.ml instance is relatively popular, but it seems like a lot of other instances block it. It also blocks a bunch of other instances. So, if there are any communities on there that might be relevant to me then I would be missing out. I guess I could just create an account on a walled instance, but I would prefer not to keep creating accounts. I'd like to just find one instance that maximizes my access. Is the answer to just run my own instance?

Federation map?


After the Apicalipse there was a website where you could see which instance de/federates with others, as a map. It's url was lemmymap.feddit.de/ but I guess it went down with feddit.de I found even a screenshot in a thread:

screenshot of lemmymap

Currently with the instances button you can see defederation from one direction, but not from the other, e.g. if an instance is defederated by a lot others you can't see that easily.

Does something like this exist?

in reply to infeeeee

The source code for it can be found on codeberg.org/wintermute/lemmym…

But with Wintermute going missing and feddit.de shutting down is has been shut down as well.

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

It was a nice map. If it still works I will try to redeploy it.

Edit: This is an early prototype of the lemmymap, not the latest version of it. I don't think it's worth to deploy. I may recreate it from scratch in my free time.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

We can't figure out how to disable secure boot


My girlfriend is trying to run Bazzite. She installed it, but she can't run it, because secure boot is turned on. She's using an Alienware M15 R7, and we can't find the secure boot setting. The manual says it should be in the boot configuration menu, but it's not there or in security either. How do you disabled secure boot on an M15 R7?

Is there a Linux version that is similar to Freedom app?


This app just starts some productivity session while forbidding some programs from starting. Is there a Linux and most importantly FOSS version of it?
in reply to Tony Bark

I know it's just an early mockup, but Calamares looks waaaay better than this, and I wouldn't want to see this replace it in anything even close to this state. This is not slick.

Though serviceable, [Calamares is] not as slick as the initial setup on Windows, macOS or even GNOME.


Setup on Windows? Slick? Dude fuck, I do not want whatever vision this author wants for Linux if the minefield of dark patterns is "slick" to them. Calamares is the slickest, most straightforward OS install I've ever had, far surpassing Windows.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

AI tools are helping teachers with grading and lessons. They say it makes them better educators


Across the country, artificial intelligence tools are changing the teaching profession as educators use them to help write quizzes and worksheets, design lessons, assist with grading and reduce paperwork

Any ways to access Azure Virtual Desktop with multiscreen support?


One of the reasons I can’t move away from Windows is that I use Azure Virtual Desktop (Windows App) to log in for work on my home computer.

I could get a laptop/desktop from them, but I don’t want to be responsible for their equipment. Plus I really don’t want all the spy stuff they have in their machines on my network. And we set up AVD specifically for my team because we refused to get company devices, so this was the compromise.

Anyway, I have used the web version to access and it works well on my laptop. But the problem is that I want to use both of my monitors and I don’t think that’s possible. Maybe I’m wrong?

Any ideas on how I can use Linux and still access AVD with multiscreens?

Edit: Microsoft supports literally EVERYTHING except Linux. It’s nuts. macOS and ChomeOS and Android and iOS and iPadOS are supported. All Linux gets is the web client and that’s for any device with a web browser.

So this got me thinking.

Could I use this with Wine/Proton? I don’t think so because it’s an msi file, not an exe. I’m admittedly not too familiar with this process outside of installing Windows games from Steam on SteamOS on my Steam Deck. I haven’t had success when trying to install apps through Wine in the past.

Is there a way to run macOS packages in Linux? I haven’t found anything in my online searches that says this can work. Anyone have something on that? I’m pretty sure this would be a dmg file.

I tried installing the apk for Windows App from the Google Play Store onto my Linux laptop running KDE Neon to test through Waydroid but I have been having issues getting it installed. Plus, even if I can get the apk installed, would it support dual screens?

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

The concept of secure boot and the TPM and BitLocker and all that stuff is somewhere between protection against hackers with hands on access to your system, protection against rootkits infecting the boot sector, protecting the average amateur end user from themselves doing something dumb, and keeping you in the Micro$haft ecosystem.

If you're fairly comfortable that none of these should be a significant risk to you, then I'd say disable it and do whatever you want with your own system without all the headaches.

Something like TeXstudio, but for markdown?


On occasion, I'll have to work with markdown files, sometimes with inline LaTeX. I'm surprised how limited my options are, or I'm looking in the wrong places. Pandoc does the job, but the lack of a integrated graphical workflow isn't my cup of tea.

Has anyone found a good graphical markdown editor that can handle inline LaTeX and doesn't pull a gigabyte of dependencies? Preferably also can render the final output to PDF.

in reply to OneSpectra

This guy is a quack at this point.

"AI" at this point would only jailbreak because they were programmed to do so. There is no concept of novel ideation in models as they exist, so it wouldn't occur to them to do anything like this unless THEY WERE TOLD TO DO SO.

I'm about as anti-"AI" as you can get, but even I know these dumbass headlines are clickbait bullshit, and most of them are originating from the companies trying to make their tech look super awesome when it's total shit.

There was a post yesterday havin a giggle about low resource usage Linux setups, shout-out to LOW←TECH magazine's solar-powered site (running Armbian Stretch)


I hope this place won't hug it too hard, it's on 61% battery as of writing. Has translations in fr, de, nl, es, it, pt

The average page size of this website is below 0.5 MB – roughly a sixth of the average page size of the original website

SERVER: This website runs on an Olimex A20 computer. It has 2 Ghz of processing power, 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of storage. The server draws 1 - 2.5 watts of power.

SERVER SOFTWARE: The webserver runs Armbian Stretch, a Debian based operating system built around the SUNXI kernel. We wrote technical documentation for configuring the webserver. [comfy's note: worth checking out]

DESIGN SOFTWARE: ~~The website is built with Pelican, a static site generator.~~ [comfy note: Teppichbrand replied confirming they now use Hugo]


I also like the dithering aesthetic with the site images, both practical and stylistic.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)

AI can kill information


Let's take an example.

We know that searching stuff on Google got worse, but imagine if AI replaced it completely. Searching the web would be something like making prompts to a chatbot, a complete
black box of information. AI could make sure that you don't get conflicting views on state policies or acess to copyrighted materials...

FOSS stack for MIDI composition


I want to put together a stack for hobbyist midi music composition. I understand there are a few more components to it than one might expect, but I think VMPK and Qtracer are going to be part of it?

Any tutorial links or suggestions appreciated!

vmpk.sourceforge.io/

qtractor.org/

in reply to ordinarylove

Whatever you end up using, have JACK sync 'em up. I used to have two Macs, one for recording with Nuendo and one for doing MIDI sequencing and programming. They synced via MIDI sync and there was always issues. Now I have everything on one Linux machine (Ardour records and mixes, Reaper sequences MIDI and Renoise does beats and other sampling related stuff) and with JACK the sync is seamless ❤

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.


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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)