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zephr_c ,

Neither one of them have any particular Linux specific problems. Just get whatever suits your needs best.

zephr_c ,

I worked at a pizza place that shut down, and it never even occurred to anyone. For one thing the owner was obviously stressed out worrying about a bunch of other things, both in the restaurant and in her personal life, and you’d be surprised how much of the food you get at restaurants is really just purchased from a company like Cisco and warmed up for you. We did make the actual pizza from scratch though, and that place had the best crust of any pizza place I’ve ever been too. The problem there was that the recipe was very simple. Just flour, water, oil, salt, sugar, and yeast. That’s it. The trick is the exact ratio, and a proper pizza oven. The oven a recipe can’t help with, and for reasons I don’t understand scaling down recipes, especially in baking, does not produce the same result. A recipe that starts with a 50 pound bag of flour is useless to you, and if you just try to divide all the weights by 100 the end result just isn’t good. All you really know is that you can make good pizza dough with flour, water, oil, salt, sugar, and yeast. That is not exactly shocking news.

zephr_c ,

Yeah, I had a brainfart there. They’re pronounced the same, but the company I was actually thinking of is spelled Sysco.

zephr_c ,

Yes and no. You can get amazing pizza just as good as a proper pizza oven with a pizza steel or a pizza stone if you know what you’re doing and have a good oven, but again there are subtle differences that make it so you can’t just replace one for a large pizza oven with no other adjustments and still get the exact same results.

zephr_c ,

The problem with measuring by volume isn’t that math is hard. The problem is that you can get surprisingly inconsistent amounts of things. Tiny differences in how you measure can make a huge difference in how much air you have mixed into your dry ingredients. Measuring ingredients by weight doesn’t have that problem.

zephr_c ,

That is a problem, and also as someone else pointed out the yeast is another, but also in my experience water is as well. I don’t know if it just dries out differently because of the change the in mass to surface area ratio or what, but for whatever reason you have to change the ratio of flour to water when you change the scale of a recipe. It can even make a difference just to be at a different altitude. Baking is a weirdly complex mix of chemistry and even sometimes biology. The more I learn about it, the more surprised I am that it ever even works.

zephr_c ,

That’s a fair point, but I think you’re overestimating how difficult it is to convert units in less rational measurement systems. People who’ve used metric their whole lives seem to have it stuck in their heads that it’s some kind of herculean task to look up a couple numbers and plug them into a calculator and then write that number down for your recipe. If it was as hard as you seem to think it is even America would have changed over by now. Metric is better, but it’s not that much better.

zephr_c ,

On the other other hand, maybe we only understand the dangers of the Torment Nexus and use it responsibly because science fiction authors warned techy people who are into that subject about how it could go wrong, and the people who grew up reading those books went out of their way to avoid those flaws. We do seem to have a lot more of the technologies that sci-fi didn’t predict causing severe problems in our society.

zephr_c ,

I think you don’t understand what motivates a lot of science fiction authors. Sure, there are a lot of science fiction novels that are really just science themed fantasy, but there are also a lot of authors that love real science and are trying to make stories about realistic interpretations of its potential effects. To say that science fiction authors don’t care about interpreting the Torment Nexus in a realistic way misses the entire point of a lot of really good science fiction.

zephr_c ,

I’m glad I don’t live in central Washington anymore. I still remember a few years back I was stopped at a sign and the smoke was so thick I could watch the dark red sun setting behind the even thicker smoke to west at 4 in the afternoon. It was surreal.

Police in England installed an AI camera system along a major road. It caught almost 300 drivers in its first 3 days. (www.businessinsider.in)

Police in England installed an AI camera system along a major road. It caught almost 300 drivers in its first 3 days.::An AI camera system installed along a major road in England caught 300 offenses in its first 3 days.There were 180 seat belt offenses and 117 mobile phone

zephr_c ,

Nobody cares about false negatives. As long as the number isn’t something so massive that the system is completely useless false negatives in an automatic system are not a problem.

What are the false positives? Every single false positive is a gross injustice. If you can’t come up with a number for that, then you haven’t even evaluated your system.

zephr_c ,

Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad system. Maybe it’s great. “Most probably 0%” is meaningless though. If all you’ve got is gut feelings about it, then you don’t know anything about it. Humans make mistakes in the best of circumstances, and they get way, way worse when you’re telling them that they’re evaluating something that’s already pretty reliable. You need to know it’s not giving false positive, not have a warm fuzzy feeling about it.

Again, I don’t know if someone else has already done that. Maybe they have. I don’t live in the Netherlands. I don’t trust it until I see the numbers that matter though, and the more numbers that don’t matter I see without the ones that do, the less I trust it.

zephr_c ,

For a post on a site like this that kind of anecdote is plenty to add to a conversation, and it does actually make me feel a tiny bit better about the whole thing, but when you lead with statistics you’re implying a level of research and knowledge that goes beyond just anecdotal. It’s not really fair to you or any of us, but using the numbers that sound good to avoid using the ones that reveal flaws is one of the most popular ways for marketing teams and governments to deceive people. You should always be skeptical of that kind of thing.

Close to half of American adults favor TikTok ban, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows (www.reuters.com)

Close to half of American adults favor TikTok ban, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows::Close to half of American adults support a ban on the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos survey that also asked questions about national security concerns and China.

zephr_c ,

Cool, can we ban all the American apps that do all the same spying too? Because otherwise this is just whining that China is stealing our shtick.

zephr_c ,

Steve released a video pointing out a bunch of technical errors and ethical concerns about how LMG is run, Linus just straight up admitted that he thinks it’s unreasonable to have his fancy new multi-million dollar lab spend even $100 on retesting even though he absolutely knew that his results were inaccurate, doubled down after people started calling him out on it, whined that he didn’t “sell” the one of a kind prototype that he’d promised to give back to the manufacturer, he “auctioned” it for charity, even though that had been explicitly stated in Steve’s video, and then completely separately a former employee said that she had been sexually harassed while working there.

zephr_c ,

He’s the host of Gamer’s Nexus, a YouTube channel that does extremely in depth and technical gaming hardware reviews, and occasionally also equally in depth and well researched videos about tech companies doing shady crap.

zephr_c ,

To be fair to the disgusting parasites who are ruining Earth for everyone else who has to live on it, I don’t think most of them are actually racist. They just like to use racism as an excuse to keep the rest of us divided and fighting each other instead of our real enemies. They look down on poor white people the exact same way they look down on poor people of any other race.

That’s important to remember, because ignoring it is part of how they keep us divided.

zephr_c ,

Some of them, of course. It’s not caused by being poor and white though. It’s a thing people are taught. It’s not exactly trivial to undo decades of belief, but we can and should fight against it.

zephr_c ,

Overall 16:9 is mostly better than 4:3 if you aren’t scaling up the size and price of your screen with the cube of the diagonal length, and I’m glad we’ve moved on to 16:9, but 4:3 wasn’t actually ever that bad. It’s fine. Not great, but fine. There’s no need to be melodramatic about it.

zephr_c ,

I’ve never personally understood why people get so obsessed with which works of fiction are more real. It’s just a silly thing to worry about.

zephr_c ,

For your second point, you can do that without worrying about canon. In fact it’s easier if you don’t.

For the first one, that can be interesting for a single coherent work with a single writer or team of writers that planned out at least an outline of a story beforehand, but there are rarely questions about canon for those kinds of stories. For something worked on for over half a century by hundreds if not thousands of people many of whom have very different visions for what it should all be about, in my experience it just leads to people getting mad at each other based on which of those visions they like more, and lots of self-contradictory nonsense crammed into the story to try and make it all work. That is just my opinion though. You are free to like different things than I do.

zephr_c ,

Fair.

zephr_c ,

I mean, arguing over the best sword is a silly thing to do anyway. Swords are sidearms. People carried them around in case their actual useful weapon broke, or for some reason they ended up fighting in a melee unexpectedly. Could be you were ambushed, could be you’re an archer that got caught in the fighting. Point is, if you’re in a sword fight something has already gone very wrong. Spending a bunch of money on a fancy high quality sword is a thing only rich people did, not soldiers, which is why fancy swords became associated with status in the first place.

zephr_c ,

That’s one of the things I meant by ending up in a melee unexpectedly. Presumably most people aren’t going around doing things they know will end up with them needing a weapon for self defense. It happens, but it’s not usually plan A. You are right though. That was a reason to have a sword. The theme is that swords were good when you needed something you could carry without it getting too much in the way. That’s what they’re good for. If you expected to be fighting you’d bring something better.

zephr_c ,

Depends on the place and time. Everything before the invention of modern firearms didn’t all have the same rules and norms. Spears are just a dramatically better battlefield weapon than swords though, while also being cheaper, and bows are better than spears. There were times and places where it was illegal for most peasants to own a sword, and it did even occasionally happen that they were levied without being allowed to carry one, but that was pretty rare. In fact, in some places men were required by law to own one in case they were levied. By the time swords were widely outlawed professional armies and mercenaries were starting to be more common, and those were absolutely allowed to have swords.

It did happen more in Japan, but even a halfway functional sword was crazy expensive in Japan. Their iron just isn’t good for making cheap swords.

zephr_c ,

Clearly the solution is to get a second password manager to manage your password manager password for you.

zephr_c ,

If there’s nothing between you and an object you can feel it at a distance. Texture is a little dulled, and some textures are easier to feel than others, but there’s also a whole second kind of texture that we call color. As light gets dimmer it gets harder to feel the difference between those textures, and it gets harder to feel the distance to things, until there is nothing left but a single all encompassing flat texture at a single unknowable distance which we call dark.

Also, some objects only partially block your ability to feel what’s behind them, and things like windows are designed to be so easy to feel through that it’s hard to feel them at all. Unless they get dirty. Then you can feel the dirt on them.

What is your unbiased opinion on Manjaro?

I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based...

zephr_c ,

What even is an unbiased opinion? That doesn’t even begin to make sense.

That being said, my very biased opinion is that it’s a great way to install Arch without learning how Arch works so that when it inevitably breaks you don’t even know how to ask the right questions.

zephr_c ,

If you don’t want to spend the time to completely customize your system just don’t use an Arch based system. Seriously. Arch has some neat things about it, but it’s not the magical be all and end all of distros. If you don’t want to use what it’s good at use Mint, or Debian, or PopOS, or Ubuntu, or Fedora, or if you want something bleeding edge use OpenSuse Tumbleweed. You don’t have to use shitty imitation Arch if you don’t want to use Arch. You also don’t need experience with Manjaro to use Arch. I jumped straight into Arch after using Mint for years and it was fine. I still use Mint on my laptop and as a backup on my old drive I moved to my new computer just in case I do something stupid in Arch. Mint is great. I just like playing around with completely customizing my system. Why would you want something Arch based if you don’t care about the main thing it’s actually good at?

zephr_c ,

I’m not gatekeeping. Arch isn’t fucking magical. Do whatever you want. I just actually don’t get it. What’s the point? I don’t even use the AUR. It’s not that good. It’s an inconsistent mess of janky conflicting build scripts and trust me bro binaries, and you can get basically anything there in almost any distro nowadays. Hell, most of it’s on Flathub. You can also customize anything you want on any distro. Arch is just the easiest one to start from a very minimal system and build something up that’s totally yours. Why use a distro that only takes that away and adds nothing?

zephr_c ,

The reason Arch users all end up like this is that we’ve all tried to help someone, been run around for hours, and then finally figured out that the problem is caused by some stupid thing that Manjaro did despite the person insisting the whole time that they’re using Arch and there’s literally nothing we could do to help, only to be called an elitist gatekeeper for trying to point it out because “It’s the same thing.” Fuck that, and fuck you for calling me a gatekeeper.

If you want to use Arch use Arch. You are welcome to use it. It’s not actually hard. If you can read a wiki, you can install Arch. It’s not a fucking herculean task that only super-geniuses can manage. I get it. Some people’s brains don’t mesh with the wiki style of information presentation, and that’s okay. That doesn’t make you inferior or unintelligent, but if you think the Arch wiki is good for other things then you can just install it in an afternoon. I promise. And you’ll learn more in that afternoon than you learn in a year of using Manjaro. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

If that’s not what you want, there are almost certainly other distros that are way, waaaaaaay better for you than any Arch-based distro is. I can’t actually stop anyone from using Manjaro, or Endeavor, or whatever else they want to use, and I wouldn’t want to be able to. I’m not in charge of your life. If you want to do something stupid you should be able to make that choice. I just want to point out how stupid it is. Is that so wrong?

zephr_c ,

There are certainly still a few edge cases where the AUR is the least shitty option, and if those apply to you then go for it, but my experience has always been that the more I use it, the worse my experience gets, and everything I need has had better options for a while now, and those edge cases where it even makes sense are rapidly dwindling. But yes, I was exaggerating how bad it is. There are still more than just a few uses for it. EndeavorOS is maybe okay if you want that without having to install Arch, but Manjaro messes with things enough that it’s not as compatible with the AUR as it likes to pretend to be.

And yeah, I agree, there are lots of ways to build up your own system. You can do it with any distro if you’re determined enough, and there are other decent options besides just Arch. I just find Arch to be the easiest one to do it with, and I like easy. It’s maybe counter-intuitive to say, but I like Arch specifically because it makes the things I want to do easier than any other distro does.

zephr_c ,

I can’t fucking help a Manjaro user if Manjaro just broke an AUR package by having the wrong version of a dependency. It’s not that I don’t want to help. It’s that somebody lied to me for hours while I was trying to help them, and then when I tried to explain why I couldn’t they started spewing the exact same bullshit name calling that you’re using right now. If thinking that’s a bad thing that should be avoided makes me a “gatekeeper” to you then fine. I’ll wear that gatekeeper badge with pride. We all do stupid things sometimes, I’m just trying to help people who will listen do it less. If you think that means I’m calling you stupid, that’s your opinion.

Go fuck yourself. I’m done with this conversation.

zephr_c ,

In my entire life it’s happened twice and you think that’s proof that I’m the problem, and not just that I’ve met two assholes in 45 years? Sure dude.

zephr_c ,

Actaully, most people aren’t violent psychopaths, so no, you don’t normally get punched in the face for being rude to someone who is being rude to you. Maybe you should look into your own issues.

zephr_c ,

You’re welcome.

zephr_c ,

I’ve got two, Arch and Mint. Arch on my main home PC where I spend most of my free time and don’t mind the OS being a bit of a hobby, and Mint anywhere I just want something that works.

I want to like Gentoo, but maintaining any software that’s outside of the official sources is just too much work even for a hobby computer for me personally, and for some reason I could never get ssd trim working right.

zephr_c ,

Linux does exactly what you tell it to. If all your experience is with systems designed by engineers trying to guess what you really want, that can be confusing and intimidating.

zephr_c ,

It’s still way too early days for RISC-V to have something like that yet. Somebody will probably make something like that eventually, but since there’s no single corporation that controls RISC-V it will probably remain optional.

zephr_c ,

I support any country’s right to not be conquered by capitalist, imperialist oligarchs whether I like their internal politics or not. I hate it when the US does it, so it would be hypocritical to not hate it when Russia does the same thing.

zephr_c ,

The Chinese government never actually had any authority there. It was completely within Hong Kong, and the British didn’t let them go there.

Tesla’s secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints (www.reuters.com)

From the article: “About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel...

zephr_c ,

In golf you start a long way from the hole, so when you first start a hole you’re probably not trying to make it exactly, you’re just trying to get the ball to go a long way to get near the hole. That’s known as a drive. A driving range is a place to practice doing that.

zephr_c ,

Then seal the ends.

I mean, leave ladders to escape. I don’t want to murder people. I’d just like to bury all the cars is all.

zephr_c ,

Holy crap, dude. Obviously I’m not actually literally suggesting we should just bury all cars with the people still inside them. Long term cars are actually terrible for standard of living, but there needs to be a rational transition and effective mass transit in place before we start getting rid of cars. It is stupidly, ridiculously obvious that no one in their right mind would actually want to bury people alive for doing the only things that work with our current terrible transit system.

Maybe don’t just go around assuming everyone who says anything you don’t like is a monster in a medium famous for it’s lack of a serious tone?

zephr_c ,

Yeah, it’s kinda sad, because I really like Mate, but it does feel like it’s too much of a jack of all trades. It’s like Mate is always good, but there’s always a better option. Plus it seems like every update takes longer than the previous one. I’m starting to worry about it’s future.

zephr_c ,

I’ve never heard of anyone getting an unsafe package from flathub, but they certainly aren’t all as thoroughly vetted as stuff from a well maintained distro. Any major package is almost certainly fine, but if you’re downloading something obscure I’d use Flatseal to make sure it’s very well sandboxed, just in case.

They’ve also recently added verified checkmarks to the website for flatpaks that are officially maintained by the developers of the app, so that’s another thing to look out for.

zephr_c ,

There is certainly some overlap in what Discord and Matrix can do, and personally I like Matrix about a thousand times better, but it’s not really a direct replacement. That’s not a criticism. I don’t really even want Matrix to be more like Discord. I just think presenting Matrix as a Discord replacement kinda sells it short and is likely to leave people looking for an alternative to Discord disappointed.

zephr_c ,

Most modern distros are either new distro trying to have more modern sensibilities, distros based off of Debian, Arch, or Fedora, or occasionally original things that are okay with being superficially similar to one of those while doing things differently at lower levels. OpenSUSE is one of the few remaining distros from the olden days that has been independent and doing their own thing for decades without spawning a bunch of forks or dying off. If you want to try something even older and crazier Slackware is sure an experience.

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