ThePowerOfGeek

@ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton releases a new app for two-factor authentication⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, not good if them to not share that information.

  But for anyone who’s wondering, here’s a decent article that goes over the shady companies that discretely own most VPNs apps.

  Amusingly, and in counterpoint to the guy who you replied to, this article concludes that Proton is actually a solid VPN option that isn’t beholden to one of those sketchy VPN-hoarding companies.

  They also recommend Mullvad as a good option. I’ve never used them, but I’ve seen mentioned positively in other articles about VPNs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bitchat is a new private Bluetooth messaging app that doesn’t need the internet – here’s how it works⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Genitalia (supposed to be gen-Italia - an Italian electricity company. They got rid of their web domain they they finally realized.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bitchat is a new private Bluetooth messaging app that doesn’t need the internet – here’s how it works⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the ExpertSexchange of the 2020s!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get ready to be embarrassed: YouTube will start using your view history to guess if you're an adult⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Was gonna say… my kids keep accidentally using my profile to watch their videos. YouTube is going to think I’m a teen/child with peak gen alpha brain rot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Another Google Pixel 6a catches fire after battery-nerfing update⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I put my IMEI in and it said I was eligible. But then it gets stuck in an infinite loop of support links with no option out (at least when I selected to get a replacement battery).

  I think I’m just going to get a new phone and move on. Not a Pixel though. Fuck this noise. My wife had a Pixel 5a and the motherboard fried itself after a couple of years. Google sent her a Pixel 6a replacement about 2 months later (long after we’d found her a non-Pixel replacement). So I upgraded to that replacement for in a 4a. But now this battery/fire bullshit? I’m done with their shitty products and their shitty support!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Another Google Pixel 6a catches fire after battery-nerfing update⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the link. I put my phone’s info in and it told me I’m eligible. But the color of the phone was completely wrong.

  I’m done with Pixels. The first one was amazing. But the quality has been going gradually downhill for both the main series and the A series phones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Introducing Lumo, the AI where every conversation is confidential | Proton⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I came so close to switching over to them at the start of the year. I was in the middle of planning that change, then their founder or CEO or whoever he is started going political. So I held off. And now just like everyone else they’ve jumped on the AI bandwagon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heroes For Hire (in development), an MMO guild management game using an OS like interface for gameplay (the game calls it "GuildOS"), released in early access on Steam.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Having managed a reasonably large MMO guild for several years, this game sounds about as appealing as getting an eye gouged out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Inserting "Anal" infront of trailer model names at the RV park makes some interesting combinations.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Anal Pilot

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Holy sh*t: Jack Dorsey just Announced Bitchat(A secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app for iOS and macOS that works over Bluetooth mesh networks) Licensed Under Public Domain.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a good point. And to add to it, I’ve tried using Briar as an emergency option if there’s no Internet. And there seems to be a massive flaw in that scenario: you need the Internet to authenticate yourself on the app. So if there’s no Internet it’s useless. I just tried switching off WiFi and 5G on my phone and yup, can’t log in, so can’t use it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have any empirical evidence for you on this topic, but in my opinion yes, I think some people are - especially with oral language adaptation. And I think I’m one of them too.

  I’ve tried learning French on and off for most of my life. Did it in school for several years, got a French tutor who helped me scrape by with a C in it, spent a few years with it on Duo Lingo (I know I know, that so is far from perfect), spent time watching French news. And after all that I’d say my French language skills aren’t even closer to a conversational level. I especially struggle with the oral side of the language, even though multiple teachers have told me I have a good jack for pronunciation.

  I haven’t lived there, so maybe that would push my over the edge? But I don’t know. I think I’m in the same boat as you.

  The language your are learning also factors in. I’ve also tried learning Spanish and have found that easier. Meanwhile, I tried learning Mandarin and was completely lost. And English is often described as being ready to learn at as basic level but difficult to master. It’s such a relatively unstructured language with so many weird exceptions.

  But with all that said, don’t give up! It might just take longer for the oral part to lock in. And your written English is excellent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing “woke filters”⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The interesting thing for me is that Grok was originally pretty ‘woke’ itself. Then Musk lobotomized it and turned it into a Nazi.

  100% agree about boycotting everything that toxic nepo-baby asshole touches. Tesla, Twitter, Space X, whatever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unless users take action, Android will let Gemini access third-party apps⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I just went into my settings after reading this article (and getting a bit frustrated that it was a wall of text with no clear instructions right up front).

  I did a search in settings for “gemini” and found the Gemini settings. There’s no clear ‘off’ switch. But there’s is an option to switch back to Google Assistant. So I did that. And not when I search for Gemini in settings it urges me to enable Gemini.

  I’m taking that as a good sign that I’ve disabled it permanently. Thought I’d post this info in case it helps someone else. Or so if I’m incorrect somebody else can correct me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Holy sh*t: Jack Dorsey just Announced Bitchat(A secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app for iOS and macOS that works over Bluetooth mesh networks) Licensed Under Public Domain.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a great idea, but it would be difficult to manage.

  It reminds me of the instant messenger wars during the late 1990s/early 2000s.

  AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) had a virtual monopoly on the industry, and so when Microsoft started breaking into it with MSN Messenger they cracked AIM’s protocol so their users could communicate with AIM users. This enraged AOL, and there was a wild cat-and-mouse updates battle for a few months. AOL would push an update to block Microsoft, then Microsoft would push an update to get around that. Sometimes there were multiple updates from both sides per day.

  And then there was Trillian messenger just sneaking through the middle providing access to both, mostly unnoticed (at least for a while).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Holy sh*t: Jack Dorsey just Announced Bitchat(A secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app for iOS and macOS that works over Bluetooth mesh networks) Licensed Under Public Domain.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay. But one of my points still stands that there are already a bunch of p2p Bluetooth-based messaging apps out there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla loses $68 billion in value after Elon Musk says he is launching a political party⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And smart.

  But it turns out he basically steals the ideas of better people and takes all the credit. Truly a modern day Thomas Edison. But even worse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Holy sh*t: Jack Dorsey just Announced Bitchat(A secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app for iOS and macOS that works over Bluetooth mesh networks) Licensed Under Public Domain.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh great, yet another secure messaging app.

  Getting people to move off Messenger or even WhatsApp is tricky enough already for to interview and resistance to change. But even when you can coax them to move, you then often end up in a debate about where to move to. Signal, Briar, Viber, whatever proprietary thing Apple is currently pushing, or the thousands of other options/apps. I guess we can just add this one to that long list.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Prime Reasons to Avoid Amazon⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I try to use local stores or other websites, and only use Amazon if I can’t find what I need there. But at least half the time I end up having to use Amazon because I can’t find what I need.

  It’s probably a kind of vicious cycle: as Amazon eats further into profits of other companies they are more limited in what they can offer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I learn how to "photoshop" images without PhotoShop^TM and also on my iPhone?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Photoshop as in the general concept of editing photos? Sure. There are a lot of decent tools out there, including for mobile devices.

  Photoshop as in use the proprietary Photoshop UI? Probably not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can AI run a physical shop? Anthropic’s Claude tried and the results were gloriously, hilariously bad⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  With tungsten cubes apparently. Lots and lots of tungsten cubes!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No JS, No CSS, No HTML: online "clubs" celebrate plainer websites⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  JavaScript, AJAX, and modern web frameworks have pushed us away from displaying information in a pure and clean way. We need to go back to a better time!

  Looks at no-HTML websites

  Shit, we’ve gone back too far!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RFK Jr. Wants Every American to Be Sporting a Wearable Within Four Years⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RFK Jr. Wants Every American to Be Sporting a Wearable Within Four Years⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Screw that. Give the government a way to track my vitals 24/7 and sell that information off to their cronies in the private sector? No thanks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk wants to rewrite "the entire corpus of human knowledge" with Grok⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not how knowledge works. You can’t just have an LLM hallucinate in missing gaps in knowledge and call it good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The White House is paving over the Rose Garden with concrete⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay, what crazy shit is he trying to distract everyone from now?

  Flag poles were for the possibility of an Iran invasion.

  Trump Mobile was for his sagging poll numbers.

  Sending the Marines into LA was for the popularity of the No Kings matches.

  So paving over the rose garden is for… invading New Zealand or some other insane idiocy?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty good advice. Although they are probably recommending that for more than just it being a Meta data farming scam.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Awesome, thanks for the tips!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plex has paywalled my server!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I started down the Jellyfin path after they made that announcement. It’s super easy to install, and in many ways the UI is nicer than Plex. But I ran into challenges getting my server safely accessible for users outside my LAN. And I haven’t had the time to look into that further.

  Would be great if there was a clean, easy way to set up the webserver portion so it’s as easy to share content entirely as Plex. But I get they are a volunteer project with a lot on their plate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨WhatsApp is officially getting ads⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Good news good Signal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Map shows US states with best—and worst—economies⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If you tap on each state (on mobile device) or hover over each state (on desktop) it gives you that information.