MystikIncarnate

@MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  From the wording, it looks like they’re just going to georestrict their content to places that are not Turkey.

  Far from a problem, unless of course, your primary following is from Turkey; or that’s where you live.

  I don’t blame bluesky here, they operate internationally, and they have to obey the laws of the locations they operate in. Personally I’m wondering what kind of Internet posts are restricted in Turkey? Who has laws to say you can, or cannot say things on the Internet? Besides… I guess, China, and obviously illegal things like CP…

  Were they posting CP?

  IDK, I’ve never used bluesky. I barely used xitter, back when it was relevant, if I were to use anything as a replacement it would be Mastodon.

  Anyways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Balatro yet again subject to mods’ poor understanding of “gambling”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Dunno why it’s even rated M. Seems high for what it is

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  … But why?

  I would pivot to W10 LTSC to avoid Windows 11… So why would I move to the LTSC version of the OS I’m trying to avoid?

  Makes zero sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  While I get why they want to do all online accounts, no. Just no.

  Ironically, for business users, online accounts are basically the way the industry is moving. Some integration with Azure active directory (now known as “Entra ID” - a useless rebranding of the exact same product), you can connect systems using someone’s email, and it can tightly integrate with your work email account on Microsoft 365, and everything just kind of fits together.

  This prevents admins from having to go and do prep/setup on each system and/or maintain a library of system images with all the standard settings for the organization, since connecting with AAD/Entra can also enroll the device into Intune and those policies are just as powerful, if not more powerful than what you can do with images and prep; just now is entirely automatic.

  For home users, it’s less about the convenience of system management and more data harvesting of their clients. The irony is that a lot of the business versions still have an option to bypass the online account (usually by selecting an option that you will be joining a classic domain).

  So business has the option and largely, business is moving away from it, and home users don’t, but that’s something that a large number of home users want.

  The only thought I have on it is that: bitlocker is enabled by default on many newer versions of Windows, by signing in with your M$ account to the PC, those bitlocker keys are backed up. If you don’t use an online account, it’s up to you to back then up, and users either don’t do that, or do it in such a way that it’s ineffective, like saving the recovery key to the very drive that needs that key to unlock it in the event of a problem.

  I’ve seen more than one person fall victim to their own lack of knowledge and understanding when bitlocker is enabled, and Windows update screws their boot sequence to the point where they need to do a recovery, which requires the recovery key, which they do not have. It basically makes all of their data inaccessible, and gigabytes of data, just from the people I’ve known affected by this, has already been lost as a result.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I hear what you’re saying, but, there have been some pretty significant improvements to Windows, generation after generation.

  Windows 10 finally seemed like they were on the right (and hopefully final) track with the direction of the operating system. Probably the last big improvement was to bring basically everyone to 64 bit.

  XP moved us from the 9x kernel to the NT kernel that’s used in Windows today. Vista introduced security features and driver updates that help to keep systems free from many common root kits. 7 brought in a very standard UI, that would be the basis for things going forward, 8/8.1 existed… Then 10 basically uplifted everyone to 64 bit as a default.

  Of course this is far from a complete list.

  What did W11 add that we didn’t have before? A TPM requirement? Ads? AI slop/shovelware/spyware?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I won’t be doing pretty much anything about it. I have 10 pro, I don’t really give a shit about what Microsoft thinks I should do. My computer is behind a firewall, and bluntly, it’ll be a while before the security issues become such a problem that I need to go and upgrade.

  However. I already did the legwork. I went out and upgraded the hardware TPM 1.2 in my system to TPM 2.0, and I picked up some (relatively cheap) Windows 11 pro product keys. I can upgrade if I want.

  I also have access to W10 LTSC, so I can always pivot to that if I need to.

  I get the security and other concerns with Windows 10. I do, but the windows 11 changes, to me seem like they’re changes for the sake of things being changed. Windows 10’s user experience was already quite good, apart from the fact that every feature release seemed to have the settings moved to a different location (see above about making changes for the sake of making changes). IMO, as a professional sysadmin and IT support, the interface and UX changes have made Windows, as a product, worse; it is by far the worst part of the upgrade process and I don’t know why they thought any of it was a good idea. I also hate what M$ has done with printers, but I won’t get started on that right now.

  For all the nitpicking I could do, Windows was, for all intents and purposes, exactly what it needed to be, between Windows 7 and 10. There hasn’t been any meaningful progress in the OS that’s mattered since x86-64 support was added. Windows 10 32 bit was extremely rare, I don’t think I ever saw it (where W7 was a mixed bag of 32/64 bit). Having almost everyone standardized on 64 bit, and Windows 10, gave a predictability that is needed in most businesses. The professional products should not follow the same trends as the home products. If they want to put AI shovelware and ads into the home products, fine. Revamp the vast majority of the control panel into the settings menu, sure. But leave the business products as-is. By far the most problems that people have with Windows 11 that I hear about, relate to how everything changes/looks different, and/or having problems navigating the “new look” or whatever the fuck.

  Microsoft: you had a good thing with Windows 10, and you pissed it all away when you put out the crap that is Windows 11.

  Stop moving shit around, making controls less useful, and stop making it look like the UX was designed by a 10 year old. Fuck off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Note: before tariffs⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  With the switch 2 coverage, this is something that bugs me quite a bit… Not the meme, Nintendo games, by comparison, are worth more than the slop that Ubisoft craps out. No matter how good a Ubisoft game could be, Nintendo has them beat in terms of quality.

  Back to my point. The cost of games is insane. The price point for most video game systems is around $500 USD. Whether PS5, Xbox, switch, whatever, they’re all either at or near, $500.

  You buy 6 games, and you’ve spent more in games than you did on your console. The fuck is this? We might as well go back to the days when you would buy a whole ass console that could only play a single (or small selection) of games like the Coleco Telstar.

  I think they figured out that you make money from selling the add-ons, so they dipped the price of the console and jacked up the cost of all of the games so they could increase profits and shareholder value.

  Oh wait.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At least Quark had some integrity.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  More or Less. I would think of it more as a third person direct versus indirect. Third person direct being: referring to a specific set of people, eg, they’re in the room with you, where calling them females would be rude… Third person indirect, where you’re mentioning the concept of that group of people while not citing a specific or present subset of that group, would be rude.

  You’ve made some good examples. Overall I think you understand the concept I was trying to get across.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At least Quark had some integrity.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Female is still an acceptable term in some context: eg, when referring to the social group on a societal level, female can be fine, also for identifying someone’s genetic/biological sex as “female” for medical/official contexts, that’s still okay in most cases.

  Where it’s not okay is to use it on an individual level or to refer to a small group of ladies. The term is seem as cold, clinical, and in some cases, dehumanizing. It comes off as boiling down a person to their function in reproduction and nothing more. “You are the female and you carry children.” Kind of thing. Like women are some kind of bakery for your crotch goblins, and not people worthy of respect.

  But something like “the female population of the country” is fairly okay, since you’re referring to the entirely of the people who identify as female, not an individual or small group of individuals.

  At least, that’s my take. I’m just some guy. If any women want to correct me, I defer to your judgement and opinion, and happily retract any contradictory statements I may have made. I am always happy to be corrected.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musk 'Pressured' Reddit CEO to Silence DOGE Critics, Leaving Moderators Outraged: Report.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Narrator: they didn’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musk 'Pressured' Reddit CEO to Silence DOGE Critics, Leaving Moderators Outraged: Report.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can likely fall into some version of a category of learned professional. IMO, it’s fine, many of us have made our migration to Lemmy. Reddit can burn.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You guys have to end it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately Peugeot and Citroen are not names I’ve ever seen for cars sold here.

  I have, of course, heard of both mentioned at some point, but here in Canada, neither seem to be brands we can buy. I’m not sure why that is, I have never felt the need to look into it.

  Our major players are GM, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, BMW, Mercedes, VW, Kia, and all their subsidiaries (off the top of my head). Not sure if I missed any major ones there… There is of course some more niche companies but they’re not really on my radar, so to speak… I’ve also omitted Tesla on purpose for obvious reasons.

  Hyundai only has hybrid sedans, some plug in hybrid, which is better than most, beyond that we’re stuck with mostly SUVs and light trucks as EVs, or whatever designer-looking monstrosity someone wants to release… The story seems to be the same across all major players, to the point where I just kind of gave up the search a few years back, for the most part. Anything I’ve looked up or looked at since seems to follow the same trends.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You guys have to end it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My only real personal problems with EVs, have nothing to do with them being electric.

  Early EVs all looked like science experiments… I’ll give some examples. The Nissan leaf. The BMW i3. And a more recent example is the VW ID.Buzz mini bus thing.

  I want a car, not a statement piece, and until recently, Tesla seemed to be the only ones selling EVs that didn’t look dramatically different than other cars on the road. I just want a car. I want it to use volts instead of gasoline.

  The second issue I have has more to do with the automobile market than EVs… Everyone seems to have a sport crossover or SUV converted to EV, but very few have just plain sedans, and those that do, a nontrivial number of them violate the first complaint.

  I like EVs, I want to drive an EV, but I don’t want it to look like it’s straight out of someone’s LSD trip. That’s just not groovy man … I’m not a fan of SUVs, I just want a small sedan or coupe that’s normal except it uses batteries instead of Jurassic remains.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I was not provided details as to what he did to argue it, or who he spoke to.

  … That being said, I don’t think it was the latter example you gave

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I had no idea that was a thing… Mainly because it’s never been relevant to me… At least, until recently.

  Thanks for the info.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do tell!!!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It is and you can buy them, but you pay a significant premium for them.

  IIRC Cavendish is supposed to be more resilient to the fungi than Gros Michael is, but it’s not immune. The fungi mostly exists underground so it’s difficult, if not impossible to remove from the land once it’s “infected”… And it takes decades to clear naturally once the trees are removed.

  The good thing here is that we already have Gros Michael and AFAIK, Cavendish seeds in the global seed vault, so we’re not at risk of losing the ability to bring the trees back at some point in the future. We still haven’t lost them, as you mentioned, there’s still small batches being grown.

  IMO, it’s all a bit sad, since apparently Gros Michael is so much tastier, and there’s a shrinking number of people alive who are old enough to remember what they tasted like at all… So without investing in buying some from one of the small batch plantations still growing them, very soon, all but those that specifically went out of their way to try them, will have no idea what they taste like.

  I’m not old enough to remember what they taste like (if they even existed as an option in the grocery when I was born at all, which I’m not sure about). I’ll probably never know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You guys have to end it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  … Which is probably why I had no idea they exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My dad literally went to the city and argued against them raising the book value of his home, which would cause him to have to pay more in property tax.

  He won too.

  That loon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do tell!!!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  We switched to Cavendish because all the gros Michael trees were dying from the fungi.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do tell!!!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Clearly you’re unqualified, you know about stuff, they’re looking for someone with experience in anything and knowledge of something. Your knowledge of stuff isn’t needed here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You guys have to end it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  With Tesla burning right now (sometimes literally), I’m concerned for the future of EVs.

  There are other EV-only makers, most notably in my mind, rivian, but not many others come to mind.

  Most other manufacturers have either stopped making EVs entirely, or switched to hybrid, or hybrid adjacent technologies. Honda is a good example of this backpedaling. They dipped their collective toes into EVs with proper hybrid vehicles during the pre-pandemic years. Between 2015 and 2020 (ish) they had a PHEV, the clarity. It was discontinued in 2020. I forget if the last model year was 2019 or 2020. Either way, I still kind of want one… Regardless, they took everything they learned and put it into their fancy new e-CVT, which essentially, at most speeds, turns the gasoline motor of the vehicle into a generator, powering an electric motor that drives the wheels.

  Don’t get me wrong, that’s still more efficient than burning the Jurassic forests to drive motion, but it’s not as efficient as running the drive motor from batteries that were charged from green sources.

  Most other manufacturers have done something similar in abandoning BEVs for HEVs or whatever Honda is doing. There’s a few stand out exceptions, like the F150 lightening. Good on you Ford… But the list is pretty short, especially compared to the fuel based alternatives.

  It’s a good time for other companies to pick up the ball that Tesla dropped here, and I’m hoping they do. … I mean, they won’t because they’re too busy buying yachts with all that fossil fuel bribe money they get, but I can dream.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I know a lot of people who use and like brother printers. Years ago the go to was HP, then it was Xerox for a while when they had decent small format printers, but they seem to have gone back to their roots of large multi function printers for the most part and priced themselves out of most markets. They’re still good, but you pay for the name.

  Toshiba’s printing division was absorbed by Xerox, no help there. Dell… Has printers? I guess?

  Brother is kind of the stand out. Everything else you can buy as a consumer is either HP, which went completely nuts on the whole “genuine” printer ink/toner, which is why a lot of people ran away screaming. The quality of the printers declined as they tried to force people into, what is basically printer ink as a service. Stupid.

  But yeah. Bother is a decent mix of functional, affordable, and being low on the bullshit of using a printer. … That is, as long as the article isn’t a sign of things to come…

  I’m hoping that by the time I need a replacement for what I have right now, there will be something open source… Cries for an open alternative to the current printer market have been ongoing pretty much anytime printers are mentioned. I expect someone is, or will be developing something to the effect of an open source hardware printer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Quick story, I bought a bubble jet printer for college in the mid 2000s, with all the fixings.

  I set it up and got it working and promptly never used it. Almost all of my courses allowed either digital submissions or provided the printouts you actually needed, like course work that you would fill out. So I basically wasted my money, especially considering I could always use the large format printers at the school for like 5 cents per page.

  Anyways. I did a few test prints and everything was fine and I got to work in college. Almost every time I needed the printer in order to actually print something, I more or less had to go and buy new ink. At first I was like “I guess I printed more than I thought?” But it kept happening. I would print maybe twice a year. Eventually I stopped using it as a printer (it was a multifunction, so I kept it as a scanner), and just used the printers at school. It was cheaper, considering the fact that printer ink is worth more by volume than basically any other substance; and while I was only buying a small amount, maybe $20 or so (adjusted for inflation, this is probably like $50 today) each time, it was a lot for a broke college student.

  After college, I picked up a random laser printer, the printer cost more up front (I got another multifunction, but this time with a network port because I’m a nerd). I basically never bought any toner for it, given how little I had to print year over year, and it always was ready to go. I had it for years until a new windows version (maybe the OG Windows 10? Maybe Windows 8/8.1) made the drivers stop working and the manufacturer wouldn’t make drivers for that model that worked with the new requirements from Windows… I did a little print server for a bit to give it some more longevity, but ultimately it had to go to the IT storage in the sky.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This speaks for itself⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  CONSUME

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Why thermal? Seems odd, but alright.

  I recommend laser for just about everyone.

  Don’t print much? Get a laser. Otherwise you’re ink will dry out and you’ll have to get new ink every time you want to print.

  Print a lot? Laser. Super reliable, can do tens of thousands of sheets before there’s a problem, maybe more.

  In fact, the only time I’d recommend an ink printer is for color accurate work like photo printing, and if you’re not using photo paper for it, then there’s not really much of a point, is there?

  I used to think bubble jet/ink jet was the shit, then I started working in IT professionally and discovered the truth.

  Just buy a laser printer folks. Don’t bother with all the rest of this shit. If you want/need inkjet, then you already know you need it and why. If you’re not sure, get a laser. You’ll pay wayyyyyy less on materials up keep it running

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  1000x this.

  We’ve got all this figured out for 3D printers with all kinds of cool tools to make the job easier, and yet, take away a dimension and there’s crickets?

  The hell?

  Let’s make a 3D printable 2D printer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this green or blue?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the correct answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meow⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been witness to the great cat distribution system.

  Our current cat has moved house with us twice. The first house at lived at, we were on the ground floor of the place and this furball just waltzed in and took over. Much to the dismay of the cat we already had.

  The preexisting cat was similar. She would hang out at a bus stop that my SO would frequent to get to work, didn’t take long before she followed my SO home. She was a shit, but she was cute enough to get away with it. Rest in peace Zora.

  Anyways, I would submit that the only reason we haven’t had more cats distributed to us is that we lived on the fifth floor of an apartment for a long while. We recently moved into a house so that might change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨nuked from orbit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨nuked from orbit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Between the post and some of the comments, I’m pretty sure we’re on the worst time.

  At least, the worst surviving timeline. I’m sure plenty of “worse” timelines have existed that killed off the entirety of the planet.

  This is just the worst of what’s left.