That’s what I’m here for lol. I mean this is how reddit was when I first started there. Same with digg

This is what people always miss. Generally, sites become popular because niche subcultures form outside of the "big" websites as they no longer really serve their purpose of connecting to like minded individuals. They never "start big", they generally snowball from small hardcore users to larger more generalized userbases over time.

When I mentioned I was going to be old at 30, they practically started a riot

I mean, to be fair, there's been riots for stupider reasons. But probably not many. 🤣

Young people don't even understand that the internet isn't only the 5 websites that have existed since before they were born lol

That's probably a big part of it. We kind of designed the internet to become an information super oligarchy, even if it wasn't intentional.

I'm 33 for the record so I guess I'm an older tech nerd. Nice. 😎

speech to relay detailed information it does so in a short and efficient message

So the antithesis of modern capitalist mindset of cheap devices that are designed solely to advertise?

Yeah, IDK if that's ever going to happen unless we achieve Star Trek levels of societal restructuring.

I kill you now

Whoa, that escalated quickly.

Yes, brave Sir Donald turned about and gallantly, he chickened out.

Right?

Lemmy ml and a history of Putin defense?

Alright fam.

I noticed this as well. It's a shame as I still use it as my daily search driver.

Taylor Swift should just make her own social media company. Put mastodon on a server and call it a day for X dot com lmao

Regarding VPNs, I wish this was an easier way of doing it. Unfortunately it requires all friends to be tech savvy enough to understand why a vpn is necessary.

Yeah, thanks for sharing this. I'm going to have to give this a try sometime.

I had previously been building it manually, but I think I'm starting to realize that gitlab/github CI is basically essential to running a proper repository anyway.

I definitely agree with this.

My experience with earbuds (not headphones) that were "noise cancelling" before active noise cancelling was a thing was never all that great. The seal is too difficult to design in the same way over the ear headphones can be for passive noise cancelling. This is probably due to ear size differences and all that, so ymmv on whether or not passives work. Obviously, passive noise cancelling over-the-ears are going to be better, but that's basically always going to be true for any debate of Headphones vs Earbuds IMO.

I think there's a confusion caused by mixing up headphones and earbuds, which I think are for two very different markets. Earbuds have always been for the more casual audience.

My experience with battery life has been pretty much non-perceptual, but I did make note that I'm not sure how long the batteries in these devices can even really last. I agree that the disposable nature of battery-based headphones are a bit disconcerting.

As someone who uses FLAC for all of my audio needs, yeah I agree that Bluetooth bitrate is pretty bad (and often uses the lower quality.)

But this image is basically claiming that "cheap passive" plug-ins are superior to the more expensive bluetooth ones. That's simply not true. My experience with those have basically always been bad, so I'm not a big fan of ear buds to begin with over headphones. I don't take the person in the image that OP posted is all that worried about lossless (or even high quality lossy) and is more concerned with money to value. So while the analogue audio out can be high quality, you're simply not benefitting from it if you buy any sub $100 earbuds where the EQ profiles are all trash. And if you're going to spend over $100, at that point you may as well go for the bluetooth connected for all of the other pros mentioned.

I am a firm believer that super-high-quality seekers already know what they want: Over the ear cans that deliver awesome sound and have noise cancelling by their sealed design. They were never the people buying throw away headphones anyway. That's basically why I said that they're great but certainly not for anyone who wants to do professional audio (unless for sound testing what normal humans are likely to hear, ofc.)

edit: Oh and, just to be clear, I think every phone should have a headphone jack as well because the option for analogue is important! I wouldn't say I'm 100% thrilled with less options, mind you.

Even better: do a git history of certain files to get a broad sense of history and understand it's evolution.

I highly advise this practice for familiarizing yourself with parts of a codebase you may otherwise not know anything about. Interesting commits you should git show.

Though combining this with scripting would also be interesting. 🤔

I hate writing a serialized format

I mean, that's why it's serialized. It's not supposed to be written by hand, that's why you have a deserializer. 🤦

🙂 Daily Quordle 958
8️⃣🟥
4️⃣5️⃣
m-w.com/games/quordle/
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩 ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟩⬜🟩 ⬜🟨🟩⬜🟩
⬜⬜🟩🟨🟩 ⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨⬜🟩⬜🟩
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩⬜🟩🟩🟩

⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩⬜⬜⬜🟩
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Missed the upper right. 🤷

I didn't believe the hype about wireless headphones until I bought some with noise cancelling and all that for around $130.

Pros:

1 - You don't realize how "tethered" you feel on older headphones until you really try to use wireless headphones. There's a certain freedom you feel when you realize you can place your phone on a hotel table but lie down in bed.

2 - Noise cancelling and noise passthrough is a transformative experience when travelling or find yourself abroad. Airports are much easier to feel relaxed in when 80% of the noise or so can be filtered out as you wait for your flight to board. Additionally, the flight experience is less annoying (no engine drone gets through, even passengers can mostly be ignored) but you still have the option for pass through if someone absolutely needs to talk to you.

3 - Many of these headphones come with some kind of EQ feature, which can occasionally mean that you get speakers with more tunability and thus slightly better bang-for-buck that works globally across apps.

4 - Audio quality. Since these are expensive drivers, you're often going to get better sound quality than those cheap 30 dollar throw aways were ever going to give.

Cons:

1 - Latency. These things could never be used in professional audio situations other than listening to a pre-rendered song for quality judgements. I don't thing gaming would be nice with these either, even if I've tried (and failed) to play counter strike on these on occasion to keep noise levels down.

2 - Mic quality of the built in is lacking on my particular headphones (Sennheiser CX Plus). They're really only intended to capture the outdoor for noise cancellation IMO, not the greatest for calls or recordings. They're servicable, but it's the area I'd like the most upgrade (and it would probably improve noise cancellation features as well.)

3 - Environmental / Sustainability Concerns: Other than people just "losing" these devices with built in batteries that are bad for the environment being a problem in and of itself, there are other long-standing concerns I have about these devices. They often require proprietary non-open software to configure, meaning if the software gets delisted, you will no longer be able to configure them until someone comes up with some kind of alternative using reverse engineering (good luck). Batteries are likely to degrade over time, meaning you'll eventually end up with a worthless ear bud on the left or right and the only solution will be to throw them out. These things are often pretty bad scoring on repairability metrics, and I can't even blame the companies producing them here because they're so small.

4 - Despite passthrough being a feature, it's hard to convey to people that you can actually hear them through the device. There should be some kind of blinking light on the outside that indicates that passthrough is enabled or something.

So I actually do love these devices, but #3 of the cons is really the biggest real issue I have with them. If they're going to cost over 100 dollars, I would like to know that these things won't just become ewaste in the same way that cheap crappy wired headphones end up being as well (which sea life often chokes on or gets tangled up in.) If they costs a premium, I would really like to know that they aren't a figurative dead end when they eventually fail.

I do agree that developers should use their own software, but doing so on a smaller instance with strict active user limits is probably the right call -- at least until you are certain the software has a "stable" version, but even then you probably will want to run a master branch instance that is much less stable and prone to errors. Until you can afford it, it's probably not a good idea for developers to be spending a huge amount of time debugging in-progress features (which IIRC, firefish had a lot of those.)

Oh don't worry, we do.

But I agree that we should turn off the bots only because I was really disappointed when I noticed it was a bot talking all about Sekiro. 😄

2024 is the year of a lot of gaming and gaming-tangential products being made with a ridiculous price tag but not a clear audience of people who ever asked for it. 🤔

This is the craziest fucking timeline.

It goes to show streaming services are not long for this world with the introduction of AI.

Link to the video. I agree, it was a really good video on this topic and how wrong it is philosophically.

I was on firefish's previous instance, known as calckey, before I migrated back to Mastodon.

There were definitely warning signs that the project was facing maintenance issues in those days as well, and it felt that the Firefish rebrand was an attempt to "start a new".

But just like my post on KBin's demise, it should be a warning to those who want to make the software and host a "big" instance: Don't do it. I think it's smart to host your own mini instance for testing, but you should probably solely focus on the code development side of things to make sure that you aren't over burdening yourself with managerial tasks. If your software is good, people will make spins inevitably. If people use it, then you will probably have enough people contributing that you can scale up your mini-instance if needed. But don't jump in without the finances in place, because you're essentially taking on two jobs.

The internet as we knew it is doomed to be full of ai garbage. It's a signal to noise ratio issue. It's also part of the reason the fediverse and smaller moderated interconnected communities are so important: it keeps users more honest by making moderators more common and, if you want to, you can strictly moderate against AI generated content.

I mean, yes. But also no, it sort of depends.

If you have very low bar of needs (needing a web browser and some utility apps, without specific apps in mind) then it's actually never been easier. If you use a Silverblue based system, all updates are done in a transactional way and old versions can be booted into at any time in case something breaks (which basically never happens with silverblue, with some exceptions.) Read only systems means you can't muck around with the root files and can't accidentally "break" your system in the way you used to be able to on older OS designs. I would say that "Linux with Guardrails" is effectively invincible, and I would like to recommend that new users try OSTree based systems. For example, Fedora Silverblue, Ublue's Aurora / Bluefin, Bazzite (Steam OS clone), etc etc.

If you have more specific needs, it can be a crapshoot depending on whether or not the hobby in question has a strong linux presence. Particularly, bespoke non-game windows apps are still a bit tricky to get working and require some Wine (Windows process wrapper for compatibility) knowledge. There are edge cases where running certain applications in flatpak (Steam, Bitwig) can mean that, while it's impossible for these applications to break your system, you'll be very limited in options for these programs. For Steam, this can mean more difficulty with out-of-steam application management. For Bitwig, this can mean no choice in VST. These are all programs that have work arounds, but on a read-only system like Silverblue (which I would like to recommend for new users due to the indestructibility) those are all a little more difficult to implement and require you to know a thing or two about virtual desktops. (Thus, not new user friendly.)

I would still say that it's never been easier, but as you get more famililar with any system, you generally demand more and more from it. Thankfully, with linux, its always been a case of "if there's a will there's a way" and the UX utility applications being made by other people have been getting better and better.

My recommendation to you would be to try UBlue Aurora. It's familiar to Windows, it's being managed in a way that makes gaming relatively simple, and it has an active discord community to help new users. It also has that indestructability that I was talking about before, but has a lot of the "work arounds" pre-setup for new users.

6 years ago I got about 70 dollars on my limited pokemon card collection from when I was a kid (like 2000-2001 era) with only a few good ones. I'm pretty damn sure I spent more on the starter box + other packs combined than that lol. On the other hand, I actually used part of that money for a new graphics card, so it was in general a pretty good time.

I know this is The Onion, but I just wanted to share. I can't imagine anyone making any actual money off these things unless they have been playing speculative investment from card #1 and never bought a pack in their life. Yet people do seem to talk about the card game as if it's some lucrative thing. 🤷

P.S. as an aside, did anyone else have any difficulty getting the right group of friends who actually cared about playing the cards instead of collecting them? I had maybe one friend who liked playing the card game as it was, but we had to make a special rule about evolutions because we didn't have enough cards to make it make sense (Something about playing certain energy cards to sacrifice an introduction of a evolution directly, I can't remember exactly how we did it or if it was any good at all.)

Linux

🥳

Crypto and other bullshit

🤢

Well, you know, I guess I'll take the good with the bad.

If he wins this, I guess everyone should just make their Jellyfin servers public.

Because if rich tech bros get to opt out of our copyright system, I don't see why the hell normal people have to abide by it.

Is China tailoring the content to politics or are political influencers just better at pandering...

It's hard to say without proof so I won't pretend to know the answer. What I do know is that, if the roles were reversed, China would 100% believe that any movement that caused chaos within the country was somehow orchestrated by the United States as that's what they've done in the past. So, until we have a hospitable relationship where the countries see eye to eye on any social issues, it really doesn't make sense for either control to have the keys to a popular social media network in the other -- if you get my drift. I will also say that promotional programs of games and movies from China, like the recent Wukong controversy, highlights that China very much believes in pushing their political narrative to the degree that it would be hard to imagine them not using it with a widely popular social media network like Tik Tok.

This is where federation is smart though -- the content is dispersed enough that the idea of removing a server is less daunting and there are fewer entities that are too big to fail.

It's a fair point. Frankly, considering where I am, I think America's social media should really be forced to engage with some kind of open federation standard (doesn't have to be activity pub) as I think it better reflects how the United States itself is designed as a republic. That feels like a long shot, but it's the dream.

We could force control of Tik Tok's algorithm to be managed by a United States entity. You know, basically what China does to US businesses who want to sell product in China.

If they don't want that, they could let Google serve wikipedia articles about Tienanmen Square again lol.

"Wouldn't it be much nicer and easier if we lived in an oligarchy?" Said the man who would benefit the most from an oligarchy.

It's such a crazy stance to have when you consider the fact that America is basically already a corporatocracy and this guy literally owns parts of the corporations that have huge influence on American law and policy. Like, I guess already being able to lobby and fuck over the people just isn't enough for these people and they need to have full authoritarian control?

I guess it's true what they say, "Give them a inch..."

In reality, mastodon doesn't achieve the same dopamine hit by design. This is both a good thing (less addictive, more conversational) and a bad thing (less retention, more opaqueness in statistics) depending on why you want to use or don't want to use social networks.

As someone who has been going to 7-11 more now than ever in the past, I actually kind of hope they succeed in this.

The Japanese ownership has made the chain much better than it was prior in the 90s, for instance.

That moment when you realize you live a very different life from most other people lmao.

I would use BTRFS and Snapper over using Timeshift due to the lack of granularity it has. You should be able to back up any volume you want, not just the home directories like Timeshift does.

This is 100% justified.

These types of features have been regulated in fighting games for a long time. The ideal situation here would be for Razer to open source their firmware and establish a community-driven approved firmware design and let valve greenlight a specific configuration which can be parsed by the game's executable (or, for tournaments, can be flashed for valid gameplay).

That's my 2 cents at least.

White painters tape on top of LEDs generally makes the light a bit smoother and, importantly, less bright.

I have done this to devices with poorly dispersed LEDs.