kennebel

@kennebel@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the internet overflowing with rubbish ads – and what can we do about it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I can’t block the ads, I always opt for the “non-personalized ads” option, since I know they are getting paid less.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 is nagging users to try OneDrive to "fully backup" your PC⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry, when I said “life critical”, i mean things like email, banking, self-hosted NextCloud for files, etc. For me, everything else is flexible as I don’t have business things that have to run on Windows (that is my work provided laptop), so I don’t have to have the Adobe suite for photo editing, i can use one of several open source alternatives, and all of my hobbies have open source alternatives like Blender.

  The only game I cannot get to run is Space Engineers. Numerous other newer and older games work great. To be fair, I’m not an online/multiplayer gamer, so the challenges people run in to due to anti-cheating requirements don’t affect the games I play.

  What was really interesting to me, is that I tried Windows 11 Pro and 6 or 7 different Linux distros over several months before landing on Pop!_OS. I mention this because it was all the exact same hardware and so I was able to compare performance in an Apples to Apples situation. There is an obvious application loading improvement. Even comparing against something like Garuda that is supposedly all about performance tweaks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 is nagging users to try OneDrive to "fully backup" your PC⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I switched to Pop!_OS earlier this year and couldn’t be happier. All apps run way faster than they did with Windows on the same hardware. All but one of my Steam games run great (one day I’ll get that last game to work). My “life critical” things are web based, everything else is adjustable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mac users served info-stealer malware through Google ads | Full-service Poseidon info stealer pushed by "advertiser identity verified by Google."⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  (Hyperbole) I’m shocked! I have been informed for decades, usually at high levels of snootiness, that Macs don’t have viruses unlike those pathetic other operating systems…

  (hahaha)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Visions of a Post-Apocalyptic Internet: The Future of Democratized Information⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Recently I was thinking about how I missed webrings for websites instead of reliance on search engines, many of which aren’t even directing you to the sites anymore just showing AI summaries.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft PC Manager App 'Repairs' Your System by Making Bing the Search Default⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How many times? Every single time…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hadn’t realized that change was in there. What a mess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft to face antitrust case over Teams⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The only thing worse is New Outlook. They took away all of the power features and a good deal of the customization, and so you are left with something that feels like it was designed for a mobile app while you try to manage thousands of emails.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is testing Game Pass ads on the Windows 11 Settings homepage⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Over the last few months I’ve tried half a dozen Linux distros. PopOS has been the best so far for me. Plays the games, didn’t have to force the audio to work, and regular apps open way faster than even other Linux options, it is astonishing. I have used Linux on servers for ~30 years, and this is the first time I’ve been really comfortable on the desktop side.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking, and color-coding of employees⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We had a large layoff a few months ago, including people with over a decade of time at the company, and a meeting afterwards where an exec said, “Yes you were working hard before, and now with many hundreds of people let go, we are asking you to work even harder.” Not all rainbows and butterflies where I am, just that one piece about remote work. :)

  Got a weird speech recently that we all need to work hard for the company to succeed, but raises and bonuses were dependent on the “economy and stock market” doing well, if “the economy” was going to continue to do poorly, then there was nothing management can do about skipping another year of raises, and we should just be glad we haven’t had another RIF.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking, and color-coding of employees⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My current company stated that if you have a local office and want to go there fine, but otherwise do your job where it makes sense. Of course my boss is on one coast, the rest of my team is spread out in multiple states on the other coast, and I’m kind of in the middle of the country.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dell responds to return-to-office resistance with VPN, badge tracking, and color-coding of employees⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “You must go in to the office, so that you can get on calls with your team or other teams, which are in the other global offices.” (rolling eyes)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 just isn't enticing Windows 10 users to upgrade, and its market share is actually falling⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I tried Garuda as well, and was not happy with the hoops I had to go through. I switched to Pop OS, and have had very smooth sailing so far.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People left seriously creeped out after woman shares how to find out everything Google knows about you⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  some people might like that it helps them get targeted ads - after all, the tech has crunched all the data, and can advertise things to you that you might actually want.

  Hahahahaha Next best thing to ad blocking, is generic ads that you don’t care about and can ignore more easily, and you know that the company is getting paid less for those ads showing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows 11 will reportedly display a watermark if your PC does not support AI requirements.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been trying to switch back to Linux desktop for a couple of years. I’ve been very successful lately with “Pop! OS (nvidia)”, I think this one might finally stick.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks, I’ll look in to this and maybe dual boot and try it out. I tried with Arch/Garuda and liked the window manager experience, but ultimately ran in to problems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  but even as a relatively technical person, it was a massive pain sometimes.

  I’m glad to hear this… I’ve been writing code and using Linux on servers since Red Hat (pre-fedora) had “Redneck” as a language option… But so often I get told, “Oh, you must be a technical newbie, because real techies can handle recompiling the kernel in order to get everything to work…” ( rolling eyes ) There is a world of difference between a headless server, and wanting to use an OS for your primary direct interaction. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:
  • When I decided to get a new laptop, I failed to look for reviews of Linux driver compatibility while making my selection. That one is on me. I’ve run Linux on servers for so long, where I need network only and no graphics, sound, or even input usually (just remote in), that I forgot about the driver limitations.
  • I’m also a developer. :)

  Sound never worked right, occasional app worked, but not most things. CPU control was touchy, and this new laptop on full performance drowns out the TV on high volume, so I need fine control to manage the noise in order to stay where the family is and still use my system. :)

  Blender was a problem until I learned you have to use “prime-run” (or something like that) to force the dedicated GPU, then that started working. Was trying to determine a system to make 3D environments (like Unity, Unreal, etc.), but didn’t find anything great, and then found out that that a secondary interest of VR/VR development is poorly (or not at all) supported on Linux (something about the window manager not managing display access correctly). File syncing with services like Dropbox and Google Drive were problematic.

  Then of course is gaming. I have a small handful of games I enjoy, and after a couple weeks I finally found a Steam setting using an older Proton version that worked well enough (but a lower overall performance compared to native Windows), with only occasional crashes for no reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For Steam/games, i was trying to run “windows” stuff, as the games were not native. For other things, like sound (never worked right), Blender (took me a few days to learn i had to run Blender through an app that forces GPU), or the file sync, they were supposed to be native. But I was doing a lot of fighting. I wasn’t reading distro recommendation sites, I was trying to troubleshoot issues. “Here is how you fix this issue on Ubuntu, no instructions for any other flavor).” (but I installed a derivative of Arch because I was interested in the rolling release instead of fixed releases, and turns out there was significantly less troubleshooting material)

  I might go back again, maybe with a dual boot scenario, and try again without

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  (my personal experience)

  A couple of months ago, I bought a new laptop that came with Windows 11. I turned off the safe boot stuff, plugged in a Linux USB drive, wiped out Windows, and went to it.

  The next 6 weeks or so, i spent about 75% of my time reading articles that included things like, “In order to get this non-Microsoft program/service/etc. to mostly work (‘will still randomly crash, we don’t know why’), you have to get Linux to pretend to be Windows, here is a lengthy process, different than how you made Linux pretend to be Windows for that other program.” The other 25% of the time, I was reading articles about why I chose the “wrong” Linux flavor, and that was the cause of the rest of my problems. “We know you have this wide choice of Linux options, but if you don’t pick this one variety of Linux (that has a fair amount of controversy), no one wants to support you, sorry.” (this just sounds like Windows, with extra steps)

  Some of these things to me were basic, like, running Windows I have a good amount of control over the CPU speed, which indirectly helps me manage how much noise the fan makes. The Linux options were “Do you want the worst CPU speed or best? That is all we can do.” Or, i wanted to connect to a hosted file sync service, which it could only do through it’s own graphical file manager, that not all installed applications supported, and that WAS NOT SUPPORTED ON THE COMMAND LINE. An app, built natively for Linux, didn’t support the command line. (meaning, i couldn’t open the command line and see the mounted remote source in the folder structure and correct file names, it was mounted there, but all the file names were IDs in one giant folder) My brain broke a little that day as someone that has dabbled with Linux for Server for 3 decades.

  I feel like anyone that has tight enough app expectations where Linux/Windows doesn’t really matter, is probably someone who would be well served by a Tablet and could stay entirely out of the whole conversation. I really wanted Linux as my primary OS, and I worked hard at it, but I have a family and 1-2 jobs, and just couldn’t spend any more time fighting the OS to run basic apps/have basic control. Went back to Windows, installed WSL and a Linux on VM, and spend less time fighting to get non-MS things to work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 could send 240 million PCs to landfills: Report - CNA⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure average Joe doesn’t even know what EOL means, or knows when it happens. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer Burnout⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m teetering on this edge currently. “Oh, I haven’t made GitHub contributions to my two open source projects in awhile, and I need to brush up my coding skills in case I cannot find another Director level job, and …” then I’m exhausted and dreading the next day’s meeting schedule.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Navigating the Complex Landscape of Tech Recruitment: Personal Insights and Open Discussion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Asking questions about the company, tools, processes, and other aspects is the right direction to find out if you want to work at a company.

  If your only question is “when do/can I start?”, you have utterly failed the purpose of an interview. Also, before you have finished asking that “question “, it is likely the interviewer has already mentally thrown your resume in the trash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X has started reversing the throttling on some of the sites, including NYTimes'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Or an alternate question, what other changes have they made that haven’t been noticed yet that is quietly degrading experience?