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lemmy.ml

rockSlayer , to memes in Freedom units 💯

For the other Americans that came into the thread hoping to see a conversion:

  • 10c = 50f
  • 30c = 86f

Edit: I’d like to note that 10c is a very reasonable temperature for shorts. I’m a Minnesotan (basically Canada lite (please annex us)), people start raising eyebrows at around 0C

STUPIDVIPGUY ,

its true, legs are immune to cold. shorts and a jacket is a reasonable outfit

MeatsOfRage ,

The quick conversation I use is take off 30 and half the rest to go F to C or double it and add 30 to go C to F.

20C doubled is 40 and add 30. 70F

80F take off 30 is 50. Half that is 25. 25C

It’s not completely accurate but close enough for conversation purposes.

lowleveldata ,

F = C * 1.8 + 32

Just want to leave this here

WarmSoda ,

Oh come on. Now you expect us to learn math too??

TheAndrewBrown ,

And if you want to do the math fast and just get close enough, you can just do “double it and add 30”.

Blastasaurus ,

Yeh 0C was exactly what I thought and then you mentioned it.

Trainguyrom ,

I learned during the polar vortices that when it’s -40 out it’s the same in both Celsius and Fahrenheit

Fosheze ,

0C? Fellow Minnesotan here and I’ve definitely seen plent of people wearing shorts at temps below -5C. But I’m also in a college town so that may change things.

MasterBlaster ,

I once amusedly watched girls sunbathe in bikinis at St. Lawrence University with patches of snow nearby in, I think March.

Conversely, I personally wore shorts and a tee one fine vacation in Florida around Christmas. It was 60f, and everybody was running around in jackets looking like they were in Chicago in January.

rockSlayer ,

Lmao, that brings back memories of going to open gym in high school while wearing basketball shorts in -40 with my winter jacket on

AlligatorBlizzard ,
SharkEatingBreakfast , to memes in Abe-sama gives advice
@SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works avatar

Work hours are long and grueling. Childcare is phenomenally expensive, and that’s assuming you can even find childcare, which is near impossible. Children are expensive. Cost of living is high. Cheating and domestic violence are rates are high. Women have no confidence that they will be supported or be able to provide support if they decide to have a child, and they are very right to think that.

Scarce resources avaliable for women who have children is the reason for the decline. You could never pay me enough to ever have a child in Japan.

Not mention, plenty of Japanese adults grew up being abused and/or neglected by their own parents while growing up in a pressure-cooker society. Maybe they’re thinking twice about bringing another human into the world because of that, as well?

candybrie ,

They also have this fucked up idea that pain is an important part of becoming a mother so they don’t really offer things like epidurals. Yeah, no thanks.

SharkEatingBreakfast ,
@SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works avatar

I am not personally familiar with the Japanese medical system, but I would not be shocked if that were the case.

Add “treating women really shitty and unfairly” to the checklist.

Addfwyn ,

Japanese permanent resident here.

Epidurals are very rare. They exist but they are not popular at all. Some is the belief that a “natural” birth is better. In some cases it is just availability of an anesthiaologist that is equipped to do one. Some people just don’t even realise it is an option. The only people I know here who have had one were non-Japanese residents.

I don’t think people necessarily look down on a mother who has one, it’s rare enough that nobody would even ask probably, but it’s just not a common procedure.

interdimensionalmeme ,

Human reproduction is an astoundingly bad deal reserved for the richest and most powerful who can outsources the endless source of problems briefs and complications that it is.

The only reason this continued for so long is that we were too stupid to realize not doing it was an option.

Cbizzle31 ,

Idk man I really love my kid.

tiredofsametab ,

assuming you can even find childcare

I think this needs an 'affordable' thrown in. The free and cheap stuff is really hard to get into, but there are other, more expensive options (though out of reach of most).

plenty of Japanese adults grew up being abused and/or neglected by their own parents

Do what now? Source?

SharkEatingBreakfast , (edited )
@SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works avatar

These links are not for the faint of heart.

japansubculture.com/child-abuse-in-japan-why-japa…

japantimes.co.jp/…/japan-record-child-abuse-cases…

metropolisjapan.com/the-controversy-of-japans-bab…

And this is only what gets reported. Rest assured, a majority of abuse is never reported.

Poverty is so much more prevalent for single mothers, as well.

rijag.org/en/child-poverty-in-japan/

tiredofsametab ,

Yeah, it was definitely up during corona. All domestic abuse was up then (and in a lot of the world).

For your first link, it states that the abuse found is more extreme, but the source they link to doesn't work. I do remember the horrible story of that poor child from the news here. It then goes on to just give numbers with no citations or sources whatsoever. The whole publication also seems a bit weird.

Abandonment of infants is definitely a thing that happens and I'm glad that a baby hatch solution now exists.

I do agree that often abuse goes unreported and/or un-prosecuted (as do rapes and many other crimes in Japan). I just don't see anything here stating that it's on the scale I seemed to think you were saying.

Things for single mothers does need to get a lot better; making women more equal in society and actually enforcing the protections on their jobs and family leave could go a long way to this.

I've been living in Japan the better part of a decade. I've had friends from all walks of life. Some did open up to me about abuse (I was also an abused child for a good chunk of my childhood and have sometimes talked about it), but I've really heard no more here than in the US. There are two problems with this. (1) it's anecdotal based on the experience of one guy in Tokyo and (2) what some people would call abuse, others would not making things even more sticky.

I do think that, whatever the scale of abuse, non-zero is too much and that should be addressed, but I also don't think it's some super-regular thing which is what I think you were intending to write,

TxTechnician , to memes in Toss a coin to your witcher

I was so confused when I started that game. I thought I’d get arrested or something for looting.

DharkStare ,

When I first played Morrowind, I was quite surprised when people took offense to me robbing them of all they owned. Now when I play games I’m never sure if theft is a crime or not.

Knusper ,

And Morrowind still makes it far too easy to empty complete rooms in NPCs’ homes. They just can’t be in the same room as you.

It’s certainly more of a traditional role-playing game, i.e. you have to pretend that you can’t rob everyone blind. The whole money system in that game collapses immediately, if you don’t…

jafo , to fediverse in Second largest Lemmy instance preemptively un-friends Facebook

(Apparently) Unpopular Opinion: I think defederating Threads is the wrong move, because it just locks people into Threads. If people on Twitter had the ability to move to Mastodon AND still interact with all the people they did before, I think we would have seen even more people move. The only reason I still check twitter at all is because I have a few close friends who didn’t move. Meta is likely going to have big adoption of people who aren’t ready to go to Mastodon, but are interested in getting out of the dumpster-on-fire that twitter seems to continue to be. But blocking those people from being able to join the more popular Lemmy instances, given no actual policy violations, just will keep people in Meta that otherwise could leave. With the “however” being: It’s not quite clear to me that Threads users will be interacting with Lemmy as much Mastodon, if Threads were a Reddit replacement, it’s more directly connected.

Anubis ,

The problem isn’t with the user base. It’s with Meta and their business practices. People very simply do not trust Meta or Facebook and with good reason.

alphalyrae ,

That’s exactly it. Deleted my Instagram account when I learned they signed me up for a Threads account automatically. Haven’t used Insta in years, but Mark says I have to have a Threads account. So Fuck Zuck.

jafo ,

Sure, I have no love of Meta either, which is why I would love for people to have an easy escape hatch via the Fediverse…

R51 ,

If they add user-level defed, I’d be pretty on board with defederation being used for stuff like bot farms.

As it stands, with the current lack of user-level defed-- defederating is a server/user-whitelist, server-blacklist function.

Ideally I think it should be a server/user-whitelist, user-blacklist function, where a server-blacklist is reserved for botfarms/illegal content.

HelloHotel , (edited )
@HelloHotel@lemmy.world avatar

more ideally would be as many levels of granular control as possable for users and their clients.

The point is to blacklist as specific as needed, EX: dont block lemmy dot Marxist Lennonists just its extremist communities (ml admins have a communism chinaphile problem)

However Servers ghould get

  • whitelist/blacklist of users
  • blacklist/whitelist of communities (prevents blocking servers for just their groups)
  • blacklist/whitelist of servers
  • server federation
Powerpoint ,

I understand your viewpoint but you have to realize meta/Facebook has done this before. The best solution to protect Lemmy/mastodon in the long run is to cut the cancer out before it has a chance dm to spread.

abhibeckert ,

When you cut off a cancer, it dies. When you defederate a social network orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than you… it doesn’t even notice and continues to thrive. It’s not the same thing at all.

HelloHotel ,
@HelloHotel@lemmy.world avatar

No, there are conciquences, we are at a point where its hard to see them

We take a risk no matter what we do, when we pull that plug both FB and us loose control of eachother,

FB will likely try to Embrace Extend Extinguish

We really shoud try to get along until they go evil. but…

at the same time we do somthing with our end of the link (3E method but without coersion like they will) or we die.

OR we cut them off

we sever the link and both sides lose power, Huge company with propaganda factories vs Good will and word of mouth alone,

FB could also force federate by webscraping (likely read only)

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

Threads got 80 million users in 48h. Those people are not gonna use Mastodon anyway. They don’t care about their privacy, they don’t care that some proprietary algorithm is gonna decide what they will see, they don’t care that it’s Facebook. Those people have no standards. The only way we can help them is by educating them and if that doesn’t change their mind, then there is nothing we can do, because freedom and privacy is not something they value. People who value them are capable of making a small sacrifice of not using some website when an alternative exists.

Facebook either just wants to use the Fediverse for their own benefit or they want to destroy it before it becomes a bigger competitor. We shouldn’t risk all that we have built just because we live in an ignorant society that doesn’t understand technology.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Just because they won’t use Mastodon now, doesn’t mean they never will in the future. Especially when (not if) Mastodon sorts out some of their usability issues around signup and interacting with posts from other instances.

It would be nice to give them the option.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

We need to build a strong society that isn’t dependent on big corporations for being able to do the most basic things like talking to each other. The usability issues seem like a tiny price to pay for that and for privacy and freedom of speech. Those people can join Mastodon any time if they wish. But if Facebook manages to destroy the Fediverse, there will be no freedom for anyone.

Millie ,

It’s not just about having the biggest reach, though.

I’ve noticed that some of the folks who are generally against defederating, whether it be between independent fediverse instances or from large companies, seem to have this impression that fediverse needs to take a huge chunk of some market share in order to compete. But the whole point of the Fediverse is that it doesn’t need to compete.

It’s not a company looking to increase their size, following a bottom line, and trying to increase profitability. It’s a network of people who communicate and share content. There’s no need to compete with anyone in order to accomplish that. We’re doing it right now regardless of whatever else exists out there.

We’ve gotten so used to this model where there are only a few really culturally relevant social media sites, but that’s literally because we’ve just bought into the business model of these companies as societies. Slashdot has been going strong since 1997. Is it the biggest forum or news site on the internet? No. It gets a tiny portion of the internet’s traffic. But that’s plenty to be what it is!

The fediverse is not facebook or twitter or reddit, and it shouldn’t be. We don’t want or need it to be.

I heard someone make the point recently that nobody walks into a nice, small restaurant and says they wish they were at McDonalds. Facebook is the McDonaldsification of the internet. Let’s be a bunch of small mom and pop restaurants instead.

ninekeysdown ,
@ninekeysdown@lemmy.world avatar

I agree with you on all of that, though I have a feeling that it’s overly idealistic and optimistic

jafo ,

You probably aren’t wrong about it being overly idealistic and optimistic. :-(

blirdo ,

Fully agree. It would be like saying people with @gmail addresses can’t email people on @someFederated.com email addresses. Also I think (and correct me if I’m wrong here) the idea of “defederating” gives power to some in a way we hated reddit admins having power. Suddenly it’s “totally the fediverse except when…”.

Imo fuck that. If I don’t like threads I won’t use threads the same way if I don’t like lemmy.someinstance I won’t interact with lemmy.someinstance. leave it open and let the users choose. But also let’s educate. Some will listen and some will roll their eyes. But it’s a choice.

HelloHotel , (edited )
@HelloHotel@lemmy.world avatar

Being the “Ban Happy” socal media is a bad thing and an even worse reputation.

I debate if its a good thing to let FB just have free content with asterisks as I have no idea whitch way the cup of users will spill

EDIT: FB is a parisite that has a small enugh heart to use agressive tactics like Embrace Extend Extinguish, be careful if we do let them in and always be ready to shut that door)

Another thing, lemmy.ml, reddit, twitter, (tiktok for good mesure) as well as Facebook and sons (and likely more) have sensorius admins, moderating above what most users want and warping conversations to pretend like this is what people are saying online and nothing more nor less”. To be overly flippant: “lol problem child blocked other problem child”

either way, do what you think is right,

jafo ,

That’s an interesting point, one of the reasons I chose lemmy.world was that it wasn’t ban-happy.

Cyyy ,

perspective: if i can still reach everyone on the fediverse with threads… why should i switch to lemmy and co? there is no incentive for it. so 99% will not do it if they don’t have to or get a incentive from it.we don’t get something from it, but facebook does (userdata and money).

so its a one sided deal where only facebook wins and we lose in the end.

jafo ,

Since writing my comment above, I’ve come across Cory Doctrow’s “Let the Platforms Burn” article where he argues that interoperability and the ability for users to move to other platforms is the best way out of the Meta situation. …medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

DVD ,
@DVD@lemmy.world avatar

i mean, could lemmy even work with threads? completely different layout and functionality. im having a hard time understanding the Fediverse past lemmy instances interacting haha.

ekZepp , to memes in Big scared
@ekZepp@lemmy.world avatar

The idea that wolf packs are led by a merciless dictator, or alpha wolf, comes from old studies of captive wolves. In the wild, wolf packs are simply families

scientificamerican.com/…/is-the-alpha-wolf-idea-a…

UltraMagnus0001 ,

Baboons act more like that, you know primates like us.

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks ,

Bonobos, primates like us and more closely related than baboons, do not.

Shou ,

I mean. They are a matriarchy. So one could say the oldest is the alpha female. Who only accepts a new female in the group if she’s able to sexually satisfy the matriarch. And in case you want to see what bonobo gay sex looks like… don’t. It looks like two sopping tumors rubbing against each other.

zero_spelled_with_an_ecks ,

Oh thank god the tumors aren’t dry.

ekZepp ,
@ekZepp@lemmy.world avatar

…There are a range of animal behaviors out there, and just because humans choose to identify with some more than others doesn’t mean we have to.

discovermagazine.com/…/the-science-of-alpha-males…

MossyFeathers , to lemmyshitpost in i hate this meme

Friendpilled visitmaxxer.

Napain OP ,

🤣

niktemadur ,

Friendmaxxed pillcored.

xx3rawr ,

That is so friendstethic visitwave

ThePac , to memes in The essence of liberalism

The conservative version is the same but removes the poster from the left window.

brain_in_a_box ,

Which is why Conservatives are ultimately a kind of liberal.

Prunebutt ,

The kind of liberal that’s already gone further into fascism.

ThePac ,

Or the topic is inaccurate and should say “The essence of consumerism”.

AVincentInSpace ,

You’re not serious

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

You’re on Lemmy, what leftists call a liberal refers to the economic philosophy of liberalism, ie pro-Capitalism. Leftists do not use liberal to refer to leftists like the average American does.

CileTheSane ,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

If your meme uses definitions of terms that are different from what people generally understand when hearing those terms, then it’s not a good meme.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

The audience is Lemmy, most people here are leftists. Specifically, this is Lemmy.ml, which has many Marxists.

People here generally understand it how I described liberalism.

yogthos OP ,
@yogthos@lemmy.ml avatar

you’re drunk, go home

Kyatto ,
@Kyatto@leminal.space avatar

This comment is like being mad there are gay people hitting on you at a gay bar.

Jax ,

Other way around

EstraDoll , to piracy in I'll never understand this kind of mindset.
@EstraDoll@hexbear.net avatar

this person was the kid back in middle school who reminded the teacher about the homework

paskalivichi ,

Hall monitor type for fucking sure

UnRelatedBurner ,

I love this anology so much. It’s something everyone can relate to. It’s something so incredibly low and despised that you can’t understand why it exists, but it’s also so very common.

BlueMagma ,

Wrong, I was that kid and I hate denuvo just like everybody else.

Also I don’t think it works as an analogy, the kid reminding the teacher about homework does it because he likes school, and learning, he does it for himself and everybody else, he never imagine other kids would not like it. This guy doesn’t do this for himself or others, he does this out of spite of others, to punish people, he doesn’t gain anything.

jjlinux ,
@jjlinux@lemmy.ml avatar

I beg to differ. We made pretty sure that kid had absolutely no doubt that we did not want homework. If it was different for you, there must have been something huge at that school keeping you from getting a whooping every other day.

VirtualOdour ,

That’s what the commentor thinks too, he imagines all the good people who want a fair and sane world will cheer him on and the nasty criminals to slink off Into the night mubling how they’d have got away with it if it weren’t for that nobel hero saving the day for the good capitalist folk and their billionaire corporations.

DoctorButts ,

People downvoting your comment are the kids back in middle school who reminded the teacher about the homework

BlueMagma ,

Why would they ? I was that kid and I still upvoted his comment, I don’t use downvote as a disagree/punish button, I only use it for agressive/uninteresting comment. I think we should upvote any comment that create interesting discussion, even if we disagree with the core message.

DoctorButts ,

I was just making a joke. I actually wrote this comment before I read your other comment lol.

jjlinux ,
@jjlinux@lemmy.ml avatar

Those boot lickers 😩

not_that_guy05 , to memes in Fascism everywhere

Poor Russia. The only non-fascist fascist.

megane_kun , to linux in You think Linux is living a Renaissance with Gaming and New Non-Technical Users?
@megane_kun@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

This is just based on my personal experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.

Rather than gaining ground from the wider population, I see the recent rise in Linux usage as coming from a pool of “interested users” who have in one way or the other, had some prior exposure and thus interest in Linux. These people have already been interested in making the jump, but have been held back in one way or the other.

This shouldn’t be taken as discounting the recent advances amongst Linux distributions, however. Personally, the reason why I’ve made the jump is two-fold: dissatisfaction with Windows, and the advances in Linux itself that have made the jump far less intimidating than ever before. Not being a gamer, however, advances in Proton was only seen as a bonus, though a very welcome one.

Only one other person in my current friend group daily-drive Linux, and like me, they already have had experience with it beforehand. There are some other people I know of who have used Linux, but still, they all have had prior experience from school or work. For everyone else I‌ know of, if they’ve even heard of Linux, they think of it as “for advanced users” and as one contact put it “way above my pay grade”. Unfortunately, in so far as personal experience goes, I don’t have confidence Linux will be shedding that image anytime soon.

As for the Steam Deck, I am guessing it’d be similar (with a lot of caveats) to how people see Android. It’d be seen as a separate thing, and not occupy the same mental space as “desktop Linux”. For one, it being a hand-held system will reinforce that difference, and people aren’t as willing to tinker about with their handhelds as people are with their desktop systems. Steam Deck’s OS might as well be BSD or even Temple OS as far as the ordinary user is concerned. I am hoping I am wrong here, however, as interoperability might make a difference here: if people can install and use their desktop programs to their Steam Decks in as much the same ease as installing an Android app in their phones, then perhaps the choice of OS here will make an impression on the users and not just the tinkerers.

Despite saying all that, however, I still think Linux is undergoing a renaissance. There’s quite a lot of improvements going on even as we speak. Usability, in a very general sense, like being able to daily-drive Linux without being hampered by a lot of issues, is way better than it was when I first used a Linux machine in a school computer laboratory close to twenty years ago. Advances like this is starting to pull people who are curious, interested, and already leaning towards making the jump—and if this trend continues, will lead more people into using Linux, leading to more people contributing towards advances, and so on.

BassTurd ,

I jumped all in least December just to get away from Windows. I went Arch because I like a challenge and I thought it would fast track learning how to Linux. I work IT so I’m skilled with Windows and software in general. Once I got it setup, which took a while, I haven’t had too many issues, or at least not many more than I had with Windows. Most of them have been related to hibernation, which I just disabled, and Wayland with Nvidia. It struggles remembering positions when I disable and re-enable monitors, since I use the same station for work. Other than that, it runs so much better than better, faster, and more efficient than Windows.

If you want to be a power user, the sky is the limit to what you can do, or go with a stable, user friendlier distro like Ubuntu or Mint, where the out of box experience is fairly intuitive. If Linux shipped stock on laptops, most people would assume Windows got different and be none the wiser. Not having native MS Office apps is also going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

megane_kun ,
@megane_kun@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I’ve switched to Linux as my daily driver sometime late 2019, and initially went with Manjaro (with XFCE, because I was using an ancient laptop back then) after it was recommended to me. The installation and set-up process was pretty quick and painless.

When I got my current desktop, I stayed with Manjaro. However, I got some problems with my NVIDIA video card’s drivers. Proprietary support for it was dropped shortly after I got my system. Nouveau was decent. I can use my system at the very least, but gaming was a lot iffy. I didn’t mind since I don’t really do gaming, however. Since then, I’ve moved on to Arch, btw. Also since then, I’ve got an AMD‌ card. Neither of them gave me much problems. A lot of my problems with Arch deal with the changes I’ve made to my configuration.

This is basically my Linux experience: when it works, which is 90% of the time, it’s excellent. When I do have some problems, 90% of the time (9% overall), I can get by with a few internet searches. That remaining 10% of the time (so, 1% overall), I feel that I’m just too smooth-brained to resolve it, and even attempting to resolve it seems to be a foolish errand.

While lot of help is out there online, I don’t appreciate the elitist tone of some of the more Arch-specific fora—they’re helpful, but I’ll never want to put myself to the position of asking those people for help, not with how newbs are treated. That is basically why I said earlier that I have no confidence that Linux will soon be able to shed its “for advanced users” image. Newbs to Linux don’t have the knowledge to “properly ask questions” required by a lot of those online fora. IMO, they only resort to asking questions online when they’re knee-deep in shit and are desperate for an answer. Being faced with an “elitist RTFM attitude” when one’s already desperate for help doesn’t alleviate that “Linux is too hard for me” image.

So, yeah, there’s that.

90% of the time, Linux works swimmingly fine. 9% of the time, some problems might arise, but an online search (Arch Wiki is very helpful in this regard) and digging around some fora would resolve it. 1% of the time is where you’d find yourself wondering if you’re smart enough for Linux. Unfortunately, it only takes a handful of (second-hand) bad interactions (thread closed with no answers, being told to RTFM, being told that the query is too vague without any helpful nudge towards a refinement of the query, etc.) to sour a user’s impression of Linux as a whole.

I must admit that newbs not knowing how to ask questions isn’t a problem exclusive to Linux alone. However, Windows and even Mac have the luxury of larger user numbers, and more importantly, paid staff to address user queries. With Linux, as a rule, the ones answering user questions are but other users volunteering their time and effort to answer questions. It’s understandable that facing the same malformed question again and again is infuriating. However, I think it takes time and effort to be rude. IMO, it’s just better to walk away from a possible unpleasant interaction. Of course, this wouldn’t help the user at all, but I’d rather see a thread with no replies than someone telling me to shut up and read the fucking manual. Perhaps there’d be someone more helpful who’d step in before the thread inevitably gets locked due to inactivity.

I don’t want to be negative about Linux, but if the “year of the Linux desktop” is to happen, this is one crucial thing that we (and I count myself in being a Linux user myself) must address. Every Linux user is, whether we like it or not, an ambassador, and how we deal with newbs/noobs asking questions will shape their impression of not just us, but Linux as a whole. I think there are a lot of people who are still on the fence, not because of Linux’s capabilities, but because of a pre-concieved notion of what a Linux user must be: tech-savvy and above all, willing to devote the time to learning about their machine and OS. A‌ lot of people aren’t like that. Moreover, I think there are some people using Linux (even Arch, btw) who aren’t like that, but … yeah.

At any rate, I agree with you that a lot more people will be able to get by with a pre-installed Linux system. I think Linux is ready for being a mainstream daily driver.

Oh, yeah, I don’t think not having native MS Office apps isn’t that much of a deal-breaker. I personally use Libre Office, and despite some hiccups (their documentation do have a lot of problems IMO), it’s got a decent amount of feature-parity with MS Office. For almost all of what I want to use an office suite, Libre Office would suffice. For the exceptions, I can usually find a workaround.

Overall, I’m happy with my Linux system—to the point I barely even touch Windows anymore (my SO installed Win10 on a separate SSD for me so that I can dual-boot), but I’ve got no reason to log on Windows. I might have had some problems (mostly of my own making), but with that small exception of times that made me wonder if I’m smart enough for Linux (or yeah, basically Arch), I’m more than content a huge majority of the time.

I’m sorry for the rambling wall of text, and I hope I’ve put my message across clearly.

Zacryon ,

Cheers to that. Being welcoming and forgiving with new users or just ones who don’t know yet how to state their problem better, is a must. Assholes, like those elitists you spoke of, are not only unique to the Linux bubble, but are a sickness spread through all kinds of volunteer-based software related streams. I mean, just take a look at stackoverflow or forums and github pages of some open-source projects.

I can understand if someone is annoyed by insufficiently detailed problem threads, if they see that very often, but don’t take that out on the user, because that would be the best way to deter people from using that project. And also because it’s super unhelpful and inconsiderate.
That doesn’t mean serving someone everything on a silver plate and not expecting anything from the user. It’s okay to expect more involvement of the user to solve their own problem. However, do it in a nice way. Some mere hints, even if someone is not at the capacity to completely help, can go a long way.

As you nicely put it, every user and voluntary contributor is an ambassador of the project.

megane_kun ,
@megane_kun@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Indeed, the phenomena of people being assholes to newbs isn’t limited to Linux. Heck, I even witnessed this in a lot more places other than you’ve mentioned (like language learning). There is just this fact that people don’t start out with enough knowledge to get the help they need. We need to be aware of this fact.

What makes this really problematic in Linux circles is how Linux is “a minority of a minority.” Being a computer nerd is relatively rare enough, and being a computer nerd who is into Linux is even more rare. This makes the knowledge of the mores and culture of Linux circles even more scarce.

If you ask me, one good way to alleviate this is to “adopt a noob”. That is, someone helps a new Linux user along, not only helping them in the installation, configuration, and maintenance of their system, but also how to interact online with other Linux users, and more importantly, how to get and use the debug data one would need to resolve their problems on their own, or ask for more expert help if necessary—or even to make a bug report or feature request if all else fails. All of this in the hopes that this new Linux user grow into someone who can pay things forward. That way, not only can users get the help they need, but also give the contributors the information they need to improve things (assuming more people make good bug reports and feature requests).

But if we’re going by Linux user stereotypes…

Seriously though, I’ve seen this happen in real life, having been a member of a Linux users group in university. That group didn’t go as far as teach members how to retrieve and use system debug data though, let alone how to ask for help online, but simply being part of a group of people who help each other with the inevitable challenges of using a Linux computer system is oftentimes enough to encourage someone to keep at it.

TBH, if it weren’t for that group, I might have stayed a Windows user, with my Linux experience being negatively colored by schoolwork and struggling with vi 😅

gravitas_deficiency , (edited )

A number of years ago, I put 2 and 2 together and realized that while most of the time stuff “just works” in Linus (especially with modern versions), some hardware manufacturers have absolute ass Linux support. Predominantly, this occurs with Realtek components.

If at all possible, swap any NICs (wired, wireless, copper, optical, m.2, PCIE - doesn’t matter, it’s just that Realtek linux drivers tend to suck, and the hardware is often just not as good or efficient at the IC level) to Intel models - anything that meets your bandwidth requirements should do, and you can find them used all over the place, or salvage them from old hardware (cheap eBay 1L thin clients are a good place to pull these from, since you get a tiny computer AND a wireless NIC that you otherwise probably wouldn’t even use).

Also, sleep/hibernate is a thing that often gets wonky on a lot of Linux systems for a whole host of reasons, so simply shutting the thing down is often a better call if we’re talking about a laptop.

BassTurd ,

You nailed it. Too often when I search for an answer to an issue, someone comes in and links to the arch wiki. The wiki is great and full of information, but it doesn’t have answers for specific cases. Sometimes I just need someone to tell me which parameter I need, or to tell me my formatting is fucked up or something. I’m not a Linux expert and trying to understand what configs do what and all of the options needed all at the same time is a lot. Forums are a place to ask questions and discuss solutions, but my experiences at least with Arch have not been that.

I also use libre when I need it, but I think Office apps not being around, warranted or not, will be a disqualifier for some people. The web apps work well, but for a power user, it might not be the ideal experience.

gravitas_deficiency ,

I just had to go through an absolutely catastrophic rewrite of a bunch of official documentation that needed to be done in Word (with sharepoint stuff) and let me tell you: holy fuck their collaborative editing stuff is fucking atrocious. We lost work on that fucking doc SO MANY TIMES. Particularly, the formatting (which is important, as it’s an official Work Instruction that the FDA might ask to look at at some point) got completely fucked at least a dozen times, and we had to go through and reapply everything… only for someone to come through with a minor change (and we got tired of asking people to stop making edits, changes, or comments - with or without revision tracking (which did not seem to be actually tracking revisions, because at no point were we able to successfully roll back any changes to a known good state) because nobody fucking listens to anything and “it’s only a minor change”) and wrecks everything again. I’ve talked to various people about how flaky and sketchy our whole MSO setup evidently is, and the response was “yeah, our hosted Sharepoint instance is super fucked, but it’s not a priority to fix right now”. I don’t know why this is an acceptable state for things to be in.

We are still trying to finalize the doc.

It’s been over a month.

I’m a software engineer. I deal with complex and nuanced systems on a daily basis as my job. I avoid, and will continue to avoid, MS Office like the plague.

BassTurd ,

I just switched from the sole IT guy at small/med business, about 50 employees, to a much larger one. I didn’t experience the issues you have with collaboration but it’s probably mostly the lack of use in my environment, meaning less chances for things to fuck up.

Berny23 ,
@Berny23@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Spot on analysis.

some_guy , to memes in stop playing tetris!!1!1!!

This was the first post of the day when I opened lemmy. And it was the first to make me super satisfied with a big grin. Absolute joy. Love it! I’m not even gonna scroll cause I love this moment too much to ruin it. I’m gonna fuck off to watch some saved videos instead. Hat tip.

RedWeasel , to programmerhumor in that ain't legal either

Seriously. If you are going to do it, write in assembly or something else no one understands.

Ineocla ,

Tbh jia tan really wasn’t lucky some mf at Microsoft noticed a 500ms delay in ssh. The backdoor was so incredibely clever and Well hidden and ingenious i almost feel bad for him lmao

conditional_soup ,

A really good point I heard is: this was likely a state actor attack, so how many others just like this are out there, undiscovered?

B0rax ,

Unpopular opinion: what if it was not a state actor and just some bored person somewhere that thought it would be cool to own a bot net?

What if this is just one of many backdoors and it’s just the only one we found?

thisisbutaname ,

I heard that person actively contributed for something like 2 years, providing actually useful contributions, to gain the level of trust needed to plant that backdoor. Feels a bit too much to chalk it up to boredom.

As for the second part, that’s an interesting question. Are there lots of backdoors and we just happened to notice this one, or are backdoors very rare exactly because we’d have found them out soon like in this case?

Appoxo , (edited )
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

You’d be surprised what I manage with motivation and boredom.
You’d be surprised what a highly skilled scalled person can manage to achieve.

Boredom, Skills and Motivation are dangerous things to have if improperly handled.

neeeeDanke ,

highly scalled person

You might be on to something, it might have been the lizzard people!

trolololol , (edited )

Another speculation from the suse team was a private company with intent to sell the exploit to state across actors

I think there’s lots of known backdoors that are not publicly disclosed and privately sold.

But given the history of cves in inclined to believe most come from well intentioned developers. When you read the blogs from the Google security team for example, it’s interesting to see how you need to chain a couple exploits at least, to get a proper attack going. Not in this case, it would make it very straightforward to accomplish very intrusive actions.

PapstJL4U ,
@PapstJL4U@lemmy.world avatar

The design is Moriarty lvls of complex. State actor might be too specific, but everything but a group of people would be highly unlikely.

agent_flounder ,
@agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

Nobody is both that bored and that motivated. Unless paid.

B0rax ,

You forget that a lot of brilliant open source projects are one man shows from geniuses somewhere around the world. They are usually not paid.

In the other hand, if you get your hands on a powerful botnet, you can rent out its services (like ddos for example) for quite a bit of money.

GissaMittJobb ,

Realistically I think it’s probably easier to acquire a botnet of less secure systems. This was a targeted attack.

B0rax ,

Easier, yes. But some people will do stuff because it is more challenging.

InputZero ,

Yeah, well that’s just, like, your opinion, man. (You mentioned the word opinion in a post referencing The Big Lebowski. I had to. Thank you for coming to my shit post.)

SzethFriendOfNimi ,

It’s scary to think about… a lot of people are now thinking about how we can best isolate our build test process so it works as a test suite but doesn’t have any way to interact with the output or environment.

It’s just blows my mind to think of the levels of obfuscation this process used and how easy it would be to miss it.

Vilian ,

the guy was even in microsoft he was at his house testing debian

RegalPotoo ,
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world avatar

Jia Tan probably wasn’t one person - most likely the identity was operated by a team of people at an intelligence agency, probably Russian or Chinese

TheGalacticVoid ,

I’m surprised that nobody suggested that he was a kidnapped dev. This seems like a different implementation of the pig butchering scams that target ordinary people.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar
TheGalacticVoid ,

I wasn’t joking.

A good chunk of scam calls and texts come from people who themselves are victims of kidnapping. Many of those victims (primarily in Asia) got into the position they were in because they were looking for work, went to a different country to start a promised job, and then got trapped and forced to work for scam centers that do social engineering attacks.

These scam centers are sophisticated to the point where they can develop very legitimate-looking crypto trading platforms for targets in the US and other wealthy countries. They then assign one of the kidnapped people to a target. These kidnapped people then social engineer their way for months to get what their captors want - usually money in the aforementioned trading platform. Then, they cut all contact once they have control of the funds.

How does this relate to XZ? Well, if they can kidnap ordinary people looking for jobs, there’s not much stopping them from including devs in their pool of targets. Afterward, it’s just a rinse and repeat of what they’d done before.

If you want to look more into pig butchering, John Oliver has a great episode on it.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

You don’t kidnap extremely highly skilled internet malware developers and force them to code for you, you just pay them appropriately.

TheGalacticVoid ,

The malware, sure, but you’re ignoring how they were able to push the malware in the first place.

Iapar ,

Jupp. If you trap someone highly skilled and give that person a weapon, the chances are good that this person will use that against you.

Like how does a less skilled person know that this code will not send location to the police with a message?

TheGalacticVoid ,

A bit late, but the police are often paid by captors, so calling the police just leads to punishment.

OurToothbrush , (edited )

Any sources there or do you just lie for fun?

Edit: an article on this kind of behavior:redsails.org/false-witnesses/

kieron115 ,

All they did was offer an opinion, chill.

winterayars ,

There’s a high likelihood it was Russian or Chinese work tbh. That’s a pretty reasonable take.

ElCanut ,

Aggressively writes a backdoor in COBOL

Wooki ,

Whoa hol up.

Write the build script in assembly?

Thats not okay man.

RedWeasel ,

No, it this case the backdoor. Hide it in plain sight.

Bene7rddso ,

Assembly wouldn’t run on multiple architectures

RedWeasel ,

Neither does the blob it downloaded. Would you think twice about AVX10 support if it was commented as AVX10 support in a compression library? Some might, but would they be the ones reviewing the code? A lot of programs that can take advantage of “handwritten” optimizations, like video decoders/encoders and compression, have assembly pathways so it will take advantage of the hardware when it is available but run when it isn’t. If the reviewers are not familiar with assembly enough something could be snuck in.

systemD is using dlopens for libraries now and I am not convinced malware couldn’t modify the core executable memory and stay resident even after the dl is unloaded. Difficult, yes, but not impossible.

Zehzin , to memes in This is the way
@Zehzin@lemmy.world avatar

*Don’t actually drive fast unless you’re a racer on a racing track

SayJess ,
@SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Its a scientific fact that I can’t drive 55.

AngryCommieKender ,

I used to have a “driving CD.” It started with that song, and the second track was “Highway to Hell,” followed by “Highway to the Danger Zone.”

Surprisingly, while I do have 3 racing licenses, I have never gotten a speeding ticket.

Grayox OP ,
@Grayox@lemmy.ml avatar

Dont worry, I keep it under 140 mph. And I only speed when I have a spotter.

Flax_vert ,

Or if you’re boozed up

Thteven ,
@Thteven@lemmy.world avatar

Also try not to hit the wall at 180mph.

EmpathicVagrant ,

Damn that’s some solid advice, thanks! I’ll hear it for ~250

supersquirrel ,

Just drive fast in racing games, it is surprisingly not just safer but way more affordable than buying a sports car and paying for tires and getting speeding tickets…

monsterpiece42 ,

Even a decent driving rig can be had for under a grand. Way cheaper than almost any car.

AstralPath ,

It’s also convenient that you can just press the reset button when you inevitably launch your video game vehicle into a fence at high speed. A single crash in a real car is real expensive when you gotta fix the parts of the track you just wrecked too. See: nurburgring barrier repair costs + towing

supersquirrel , (edited )

You can also still experience that strange calm people love that comes from driving at your limit, where there is zero room for anything other than your presence in the moment reacting to the road, your vehicle and what is coming around the corner……

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others – the living – are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

The above is a quote from Hunter S. Thompson on this odd but enchanting species of calm that he gets from driving his motorcycle too fast and though I am sure it is much more intense to do in real life, the fact is if you play a good driving game you absolutely go to a similar place in your mind. You face the same mental situation of the road coming at you so fast that all you can do is exist in the moment, except instead of the edge-y boy antics of almost killing yourself or someone else from driving like an asshole (and also burning fossil fuels for no reason, though with a motorcycle that point is moot they get such good gas mileage usually) you are playing a video game where a spectacular crash is part of the fun (looking at you Flat Out, Burnout and Wreckfest :P ).

That mental state that people who love driving fast crave is the same mental state gamers who like playing competitive games pursue (you ever see someone play quake multiplayer competitively? It is the same exact flow state even when it isn’t a racing game), it’s just one hobby puts human lives at risk and the other is a fun time no matter what.

AstralPath ,

Absolutely agree. There’s definitely a meditative aspect to driving on the edge; your entire brain is focused on doing one thing.

RizzRustbolt ,

Or you’re bootlegging.

bort , to memes in Beercycling

As usual, the US is already one step ahead: they cut out the middleman by skiping a step.

1995ToyotaCorolla ,
@1995ToyotaCorolla@lemmy.world avatar

Really saved us a lot of time when we figured out you could just piss in the can

arandomthought , to technology in This was the first result on Google

Uh, watt?

LazaroFilm ,
@LazaroFilm@lemmy.world avatar

Volt

cmoney ,

Jiggawatt

gibmiser ,

Whaddid u call me

DarkDarkHouse ,
@DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

uwattm8

WindyRebel ,

OHMybad

name_NULL111653 ,

Jigga deez nuts!

arandomthought ,

Thank you for clarifying.

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