gian

@gian@lemmy.grys.it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!

  The only times I got this kind of problems where when I didn’t read some announcement or for some reason some packages (the kernel) were way too old, normally never had it on a normal update. But as I said, you have a point, even if in the end I would point out that a grandma would never be able to solve any problem caused by an update, irregardless of the distro or the OS.

  It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists.

  Only partially. Normally Arch put the new configuration file as a [something].pacnew and it is the user that should then do something, but as long as the software that use the new file could undertand that it is using an older file and it is able to handle the eventually missing new keys or removed ones there will be no problem. On my desktop I have a bunch of [some_program].conf.pacnew and everything works. Is it optimal ? Maybe not but it is not broke.

  It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that.

  Honestly, a grandma would just need Firefox with a couple of extension (uBlock Origin and really few others) and a network with all inbound ports blocked (so no one can connect from outside) and few outbound ports open (very few, just the common ones to use a browser). Maybe she need Openoffice, probably a DE (but a window manager could be enough) but she don’t need a lot of software we all install on out machine. It is true that Arch could be a problem when updating but I think we are talking of a very small set of packages that need to be constantly updated and in my years of Arch usage, basic packages rarely break something while updating.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gemini for Home is Google’s biggest smart home play in years⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that people don’t know or don’t care about a corporation selling their data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gemini for Home is Google’s biggest smart home play in years⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Gemini for Home is Google’s biggest smart home play in years

  For the next 3 to 4 years (if you will be lucky), then they will pass to something new and they will simply kill it, like they done with a lot of other projects.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.

  True, but that would be the end result in any case where an update do something wrong or require some sort of manual intervention, it is not strictly tied to Arch. But you have a point here.

  So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?

  Only to have some newer software, but you can also update Arch every once in a while, the fact that it is a rolling release does not mean you need to update every day. The everything will depend on which distro normally uses the person who install the grandma machine

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In my opinion also Arch is usable on grandma desktop.
  True, it is a rolling release but I would suppose that on such machine there would not be that many packages installed and if the network is configured correclty (so nothing can connect from the outside) it would be not be a big problem, after all what grandma use is not updated on a daily basis.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft's latest Windows 11 24H2 update breaks SSDs/HDDs, may corrupt your data⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not ? I suppose that as long as a browser (and whatever else she need) is working, my grandmother would not need much more. And I could also install a windows11 theme on KDE, if I really want to. A icon is a icon

  And in the end I think that my grandmother would be able to mantain neither a window machine, so I don’t see the problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Perplexity AI is complaining their plagiarism bot machine cannot bypass Cloudflare's firewall⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Carefull, this way even not looking at an ads positioned at the bottom of the page (or anyway not visible without scrolling) would mean to remove authorisation brought to you by ads.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My petty gripe: forced software updates just make everything worse⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Should we blame the old house builders for using asbestos?

  Unequivocally, yes. Those shitheads knew or should have known. Don’t believe me? Here is a handy link: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0169500224003623

  Do note the decades between when it was understood the shit was dangerous and when the decline as a building material happened.

  I suppose he was referring to the ones that used it before it was understood.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My petty gripe: forced software updates just make everything worse⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And why not ? Care to explain ?

  In a sane development model there is not any technical problem to do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Codeberg: army of AI crawlers are extremely slowing us; AI crawlers learned how to solve the Anubis challenges.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  get out of the internet.

  At some point, this would be the best option, sadly

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to disable Microsoft Recall & stop the AI from taking screenshots of your desktop.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If we go down this road, I am old enough to remember people pinning 5 1/4 floppy disks to the cabinet using magnets and then being surprise it did not work anymore, or people that when asked to do a copy of the disk went to the copy machine.
  But that was at the beginning (199x), now I would not consider “average user” someone who is not even able to realize that the pc is not plugged in, tbh.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to disable Microsoft Recall & stop the AI from taking screenshots of your desktop.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Then you are probably using Excel for the wrong thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to disable Microsoft Recall & stop the AI from taking screenshots of your desktop.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Windows and Mac are both easier to use for the standard user.

  I really doubt that a standard user would have that much problems to do his work with the normal programs (an office suite, a browsere a little else) once Linux with a DE (let be KDE, GNOME or whatever) is installed.

  The limitation is not the disto itself, it is the lack of support for some software (like Grasshooper or CAD)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to disable Microsoft Recall & stop the AI from taking screenshots of your desktop.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Resistance is futile

  Lately is not going that well for the borg, better 8472 😜

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women’s ‘red flag’ app Tea is a privacy nightmare⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What intrigue me is this:

  I’m confident vibe coding was not to blame in this particular case,

  So they used vibe coding, they are only saying that they think/hope that it is not the cause of the break (and maybe also of the second one)

  And if vvibe coding is not caused then they are even more incompetent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to disable Microsoft Recall & stop the AI from taking screenshots of your desktop.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So just putting as background one random nude pic do the job ?

  I was hoping that they learned something from the time the protection on audio CDs was just that they were not read from the PC because the first track had invalid data (while it was ignored by a stereo) was defeat by a simple marker, which make the PC just ignore the track… I think I still have one of this CD somewhere…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wyoming to host massive AI data center using more electricity than all Wyoming homes combined⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, and my bill become 1/5 of what it was, so maybe is was a not so stupid thing to do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wyoming to host massive AI data center using more electricity than all Wyoming homes combined⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Because solar and wind plants, while they can be cheap and relatively fast to build, are not as reliable as a datacenter need and it is not predictable, so at most they can supplement some other generation method, in this scenario. Then ok, you probably need less fossil fuel (but gas is not necessary fossil these days).
  And a nuclear plant is probably way longer to build than the datacenter itself, if you ever get the green light to build it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Selfhosted peer-to-peer reddit alternative built on IPFS⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As long as they are able to create their own subplebbit , otherwise every subplebbit (by the description) has as moderator the owner (or someone given the permission).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women’s ‘red flag’ app Tea is a privacy nightmare⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I am not sure, but I read somewhere that the developer(s) used vibe coding to create the app so…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women are anonymously spilling tea about men in their cities on viral app⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  <sarcasm>Else how can you certify you are a woman ? We don’t want a man lurking around</sarcasm>

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU age verification app to ban any Android system not licensed by Google⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Edit: German eID works on any Android btw., flawless actually. I sure hope I can use that for verification

  Same in Italy… I mean, I can pay taxes with that application but I cannot be verified for my age ? Seriously EU ?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe a larger volume is noto importante for you, but to others maybe it is.

  But his point is what you are basically saying that a bike is more expensive than a bicycle looking only at the price tag.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox is fine. The people running it are not⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I noted it. That is why I said that the problem is the punishment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox is fine. The people running it are not⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Only thing that will stop it is heavy regulation.

  Would you agree if someone told you that the only thing to resolve some political problem is heavy artillery?

  Well, if everything else failed…

  “Regulation” of the “property rights protection” kind is needed. Providing a service presented as a good that doesn’t work without dancing to a certain tune is simply cheating, it’s theft. Providing a “communication platform” augmenting and weighing your words for recommendation system leading to some intended effect is cheating, theft and impersonation at the same time. These should be prosecuted. But that’s not heavy regulation, that’s an update to pretty light regulation.

  The problem with light regulation is that it would probably be too easy to workaround, not that a heavy regulation do not have the same problem btw, but more than the regulation itself is the punishment (and the certainty and timeliness of it) that is important.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apparently Debian has alienated the developers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, FOSS has always been political, just not the politics Debian dipped itself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Connor Myers: As if graduating weren’t daunting enough, now students like me face a jobs market devastated by AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s can be true and it is ok.

  But from the “don’t buy the bullshit” to “be a decent worker” there is a very big difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘You can’t pause the internet’: social media creators hit by burnout⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  How does one unintentionally eat a tide pod?

  The same way a bulb end up in someone ass…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘You can’t pause the internet’: social media creators hit by burnout⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Children were never eating tide pods either.

  Somewaht true, back at the time we had not tide pods.

  But we did a lot of stupid shit even without social media.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Prime Reasons to Avoid Amazon⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Not the stores don’t use this trick during sales… This is probably the only thing Amazon has in common with everyoen else…