BananaTrifleViolin

All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).

However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google’s control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google’s priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.

The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it’s compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox’s compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).

Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we’re all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.

The BBC article that this article is a bizarre summary of is far better (the Gizmodo article even links directly to the BBC article). It give a far better overview of the issues; the main crux is they cost most than anticipated through both theft and cost of the machines themselves. The consumer’s disliking it is a less point and more naunced essentially “customer’s want the technology to work but it isn’t” which is also what you’ve said.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240111-it-hasnt-delivered-the-spectacular-failure-of-self-checkout-technology

Personally I preferred the self checkouts because I don’t want to interact with someone, but th they fail so much (because of the weighing which is to stop me being a supposed thieving scumbag, not to benefit me) and you end up standing around waving at a random stranger to come and fix the machine awkwardly while a massive queue waits impatiently for a machine. I’ve recently switched back to the manned checkouts for bigger shopping trips.

Actually a good example:

• If you have AIDs (A) then you have HIV (B). True
• You have HIV (B) if, and only if, you have AIDS (A). Not true
• If you don’t have HIV (B), then you don’t have AIDs (A). True, and the actual inverse of “If A then B”; which is “If not B, then not A”

I deleted my account.

You may have the GPU drivers installed but are they active? Look in “Software & Updates” on the Additional Drivers tab and see which drivers are active.

Installing the drivers is not enough, you have to select them to use them too.

If the latest drivers are active then you may need to think about switching to a legacy version (you have a pretty old CPU and GPU by current standards; newest drivers are not always best). You may also want to look at using older versions of Proton than the latest for similar reasons - there may be features and changes in newer versions that are just not going to work with your set up or your set up just isn’t tested to work with.

You can use PowerPoint in a web browser with office 365. Really don’t need windows to run it anymore.

Yeah, “stupid” is not defined around average intelligence. This whole panel is an example of a straw man fallacy to undermine someone saying “people are stupid”.

This is an interesting concept but doesn’t seem like it has long term legs.

It depends on what you mean by open source and also even eBook reader (I’m assuming eInk), but if people want open source e-readers I would say flashing existing reader hardware with open source operating systems would be the way to go. However I’m not sure if there is much motivation to do that.

There are Android based eink ereaders available with more freedom than Kindle devices (Boox is an example) and you can side load free or open source reader software onto Kobo (maybe not Android Kindles though?), and you can load free books onto e-readers via software like Calibre. So you can read books in privacy outside the vendors ecosystem - it kinda reduces the imputus to build an open source ereader (hardware or OS).

I’d love to see a truly open source Eink device - particularly software wise. But I doubt the demand is enough. And this Open Source hardware solution seems a bit too cut back to fit the bill.

And the commanding officer only tried to stop them when they heard the last victim asking for help and realised it was in hebrew.

Seems the IDF shoots first and asks questions later. This is what’s happened to unarmed jewish hostages, who were shirtless, holding a white shirt on a stick which is the universal sign of surrender. What about the million people living in gaza coming up against this? Holy fuck.

That valve uses Arch is irrelevant in all honesty. Proton is not a Valve product, Valve is merely one of its users and contributors, and it is not wedded to one distro…Similarly Valves own Steam packages are not distro specifi, and there are other gaming platforms to consider which also benefit from Proton (for example you can get Gog windows games working in Linux too quite easily), as well as all the Retro gaming options.

Pick a distro you personally like. I use Mint as I like the cinnamon desktop interface and the distro is pretty much good to go from fresh install. I use Mint both as a dual install with Windows on my PC and also within VMs in Windows. I still spend a lot of time using Windows because of specific games compatibility and work related apps.

EndeavourOS seems a good choice if you do want to go the Arch route but it’s only something I’ve played with in a VM.

If you want something gaming specific then Draugar seems like a good choice - it apparently uses Ubuntu LTS but with the mainline Kernel updates optimised for gaming. But I have no personal experience with the distro.

I also see a lot of people seem to like Pop!_OS, but again no personal experience.

I’ve had no issues with Mint on my setup.

Well first off have Taco Bell stopped providing napkins? One person couldn’t find napkins in one store and suddenly it’s greed driven corporate policy according to OP?

It seems unlikely that a food chain would completely abolish napkins. It is possible they’re no longer freely available because people were taking them “for their car” whatever that even means!?

Not strictly correct. Spotify pays out from its net revenues (revenues when billing costs and tax are removed) and it pays to the various industry rights holders who then distribute the money. There are lots of complex deals in place and big rights holders are likely to have better deals than ad hoc users, plus it’s different in different countries.

The 70% figure is a PR thing Spotify pushes about as part of its constant battles with rights holders on exactly how much it will pay them. It’s trying to claim most of the money goes to artists but it’s opaque how much goes where.

I don’t understand? You can download Dosbox and Dosbox-X in desktop mode and add them to Steam like other apps. Why do you need a website?

Are there bigger versions of the same communities elsewhere? One of the problems at the moment is duplicates, and finding the one where people have coalesced can be be hard, sometimes just dumb luck.

Yeah it’s a nonsense. Argentina and Turkey have atrocious economies, with inflation at crazy levels. Turkey’s is at 60% and Argentinas is at 143% currently, on a background of years of terrible economic decisions. Their local currencies are effectively trash so it makes absolute sense for Steam to move to dollars if they’re going to continue bothering trading in those countries.

This may also be about trying to take control of OpenAI. Despite owning 49% of OpenAI, the company is seemingly set up so the 5 board members have control and they’re seemingly not under the control of investors.

Could this actually be about Altman and his allies trying to take the company fully for-profit so they could benefit? It also seems Altman is very close to Microsoft, so rather than product roadmap this might actually about trying to take control of the company.

Microsoft hiring the staff and forming an AI unit is a boon to them if it happens, but OpenAI still own and controls everything they’ve worked on up to date, and it seems the Investors don’t control that judging by the boards independance.

Meanwhile Altman is tweeting very concillatory OpenAI but pro Microsoft position. This may be a battle for the whole company, not just a personality thing.

It’s how hyped it was and expectations set by Skyrim. Starfield was seen as the next step on from Skyrim in terms of game scale, and Bethesda hyped it up as their biggest and best game ever. It’s neither of those things.

Also frankly in terms of RPGs, it feels dated. Witcher 3 set a new bar for what an RPG should be, but Starfield doesn’t seem to have learnt those lessons. Baldurs Gate 3 has also set a high bar for RPGs this year, and Cyberpunk 2077 (for all its own flaws) also set a high bar for RPGs.

Starfield is an ok game but when it’s hyped as it going to be the greatest game ever from Bethesda and going to be biggest game of the year, I’m not surprised it’s being shat on when it turns out it’s not.

But hopefully Starfield will be an important bump on the road for Bethesda. Bigger is not necessarily better and hopefully that lesson will carry in to Elder Scrolls VI.

Yeah reptuational is part of the issue but there is also a big financial issue too. Delaying a game is financially difficult as it affects financial projects for each year with shareholders (who only care about share price growth). If you release a game in a poor state you get to hit some of the financial targets which benefits the publisher particularly, but for the developer it means longer terms sales are much lower as reviews and feedback come in that the game is crap. You then have to patch and repair the game.

Patching has allowed publishers and developers to get away with this releasing of games in bad states, but it doesn’t change that fundamental issue which disproportionately affects the developer. Dev studios often only have 1 game being worked on at a time. An unready early release which is poorly recieved can be an existential crisis. For publishers, a poorly recieved game is a disappointment but generally have other many other games also on release so they can move on and not care as much.

No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are high profile exceptions. The gaming world is littered with abandoned flops, often due to not being ready for release.

The sequel Yoot Tower is worth a look too. Sim Tower was a rebadge of a Japanese game called The Tower.

It’s not immovable, it’s just locked so you don’t accidentally move it by clicking and dragging. Try right locking on the bar in a blank area lower down - the right click menu should have an option for moving it.