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@pivot_root@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I was going to make a joke that they could also replace the taskbar search bar with an AI chat bar, but after reading the article, it turns out that they’re planning on doing that for real:

  Windows 11 taskbar is now being “upgraded” with AI-first features. Microsoft is working on the Ask Copilot bar, which may replace Windows Search in the taskbar.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Edge Pushes an "All in One Browser" Message on Chrome’s Download Page⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, no. I’m saying Microsoft owning your operating system and using it to push their browser as a default browser is a monopolistic practice, whereas using Chrome by is just reinforcing an existing monopoly. The same goes for Mac and Safari.

  Neither browser is good, but it’s a step in the right direction to punish a corporation for their active attempts to subvert competition in a bid to establish their own monopoly in place of the current one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI-authored code contains worse bugs than software crafted by humans⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But that takes skill and effort. Instead, just follow up the LLM prompt with, “and this doesn’t contain any vulnerabilities?” and submit the code while it’s still generating a response. If it finds one, log a ticket and deal with it next sprint. /s

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Edge Pushes an "All in One Browser" Message on Chrome’s Download Page⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you have to pick between two monopolistic corporations, using both of them but giving each a little less of your data and attention is a way to mitigate the risks and damage.

  If Microsoft can harvest data on how I use my computer, I can at least make it a bit harder for them to harvest my browsing habits too by not giving them browser telemetry too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Edge Pushes an "All in One Browser" Message on Chrome’s Download Page⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s plenty:

  • Not supporting monopolistic practices.
  • User preferences.
  • Diversifying your software so you don’t get trapped in an ecosystem.
  • Not having Copilot stuffed down your throat.
  • User preferences.
  • Making it possible to rip Edge out of Windows for the purpose of debloating.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That was something they could actually market to the consumer as a necessary upgrade, though.

  • “Sure, you need a new cable, but component video has cleaner edges and less color bleeding.”
  • “Sure, you need a new cable, but HDMI has better resolution and no fuzziness.”

  Going from HDMI 2.1 to DisplayPort 2.1a doesn’t offer anything other than higher bandwidth, and not even high-end PCs are capable of pushing resolutions at high enough framerates for that bandwidth to have been the limiting factor for games.

  Even though DisplayPort is objectively better than HDMI, the optics of replacing HDMI on consumer devices that are meant to be connected to TVs isn’t good. It will come across to consumers as an unnecessary, arbitrary change meant to push their TVs towards planned obsolescence.

  They’re going to complain about it, the media will pick up on the story and try to turn it into a scandal, and then legislators and regulators will step in and make decisions based on limited understanding of the technical reasons. By that point, one of the console manufacturers will have been pressured into backing down and promise to keep HDMI in their next-gen console, and the other ones will have followed suit because they don’t want to lose sales over it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve: HDMI Forum Continues to Block HDMI 2.1 for Linux⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As long as the manufacturers are competing against each other, that’s never going to happen.

  The “gamer” consumer demographic has some of the most whiny, entitled vocal minorities. They’re going to endlessly complain about the next generation of console needing a special cable/dongle to connect to their TV, one of the manufacturers are going to fold, and then the other one is going to walk back the lack of HDMI because they don’t want to lose sales to their competitor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve CEO Gabe Newell’s Neuralink competitor is expecting its first brain chip this year⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Musk’s strategy is to constantly build hype and gain investments by promising something will be “ready by next year”, even if it’s nowhere close to ready. And then, when those investors start pressuring him about timelines, he pushes a half-baked, low-quality dumpster fire out the door.

  It’s hard to fuck up worse than that. And to Newell’s credit, he’s run Valve in the exact opposite way that Musk runs his companies: waiting until they have a working product before saying anything.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The richest people in the world are morally bankrupt⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Even Musk, for all his recent evil got rich trying to reduce our dependence on gas cars.

  Everybody else already covered his role in Tesla, so let’s look at something else that demonstrates his concern for the environment and his fellow species:

  He has a datacenter in Memphis running 35 “temporary” methane generators to power Grok, the self-described “Mecha Hitler” AI. All but a dozen of them are being used without permits for permanent generators, and none of them have air pollution filtration systems installed. Oh, and it’s near a low-income community that was already plagued by air pollution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SteamOS tested on dedicated GPUs: No, it’s not always faster than Windows⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Unsurprising. Drivers are better than they used to be, but some of them (Nvidia) have a long way to go in terms of optimization.

  More importantly, however, is the complete lack of info the article provides about their testing methodology.

  • They said they tested on SteamOS—ok, but it’s not officially available on non-handheld devices. How did they install it? Did they actually use HoloISO?

  • How did they run the games? Directly through an embedded gamescope session like the Steam Deck, or through KDE Plasma, which has a compositor that can’t be disabled on Wayland. Or, did they take the double hit and run gamescope as a window within Plasma?

  • Speaking of Wayland, did they use Wayland or X? They have different performance characteristics, and it’s not negligible.

  • How many runs did they do? One-and-done, then record what the game said the average FPS was?

  • Did they pre-run the scenes to ensure the assets were cached from the disk and the shader caches were available?

  And the way they present the results are also bad:

  • The graph the FPS achieved by each platform, but they have absolutely no detail about the 1% or 0.1% lows—and at a sufficiently-high average FPS, these are what make the games feel slow and stuttery.

  • What about frametime graphs and frame pacing information? If Linux can achieve more consistent pacing at 85% of the average FPS, it would still be a better experience than having the same frame being presented repeatedly because the game missed the vblank window.

  • They didn’t try multiple resolutions to identify where the bottlenecks are occuring in each game. If a game is CPU bottlenecked by their hardware choices, it’s not a good comparison of GPU performance. Likewise, if it’s GPU bottlenecked, it’s not a good comparison for CPU performance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux usage hits an all-time high in Steam Hardware Survey—and AMD processors continue their march against Intel⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They make entire SOCs. None of them are x86 because of the duopoly that Intel and AMD have thanks to their cross-licensing agreement, but they still have functional CPUs with a common ISA.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux usage hits an all-time high in Steam Hardware Survey—and AMD processors continue their march against Intel⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AMD: “Our partners will fry your expensive CPU on some boards.”
  INTEL: “Our software will fry your expensive CPU on all boards.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve dev counters calls to scrap Steam AI disclosures, says it's a "technology relying on cultural laundering, IP infringement, and slopification"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  He wants to allow AI slime on his own platform

  Don’t forget the blatant scams called crypto games! He proudly announced Epic Games Store would happily sell games centered around NFTs and crypto after Valve said they wouldn’t allow it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I signed up for Trump Mobile two weeks ago and I still don’t have my SIM⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s next?

  • Trumpla, the EV manufacturer?
  • Trumpmart, selling nearly-rotten food at marked-up prices.
  • Trump Burder this one already exists.
  • Trumple Inc, consumer phone dropshipper.
  • Trumpazon, a marketplace where he takes a cut on all sales.
  • Trump Sauna, a PC games storefront.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:
  • A version of libc that has POSIX shims.
  • A filesystem with reflink support.
  • A consistent UI design across old and new programs.
  • Dark mode that works everywhere.
  • Respect for their users’ autonomy.

  Need I go on?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox to block children from talking to adult strangers after string of lawsuits⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, no. It makes perfect sense from an investment standpoint. Their actual target audience would love to be able to pay for access to that catalog.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox to block children from talking to adult strangers after string of lawsuits⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Company profiting from allowing pedos to groom children enacts steps to prevent pedos from grooming children? Like that’s going to happen.

  Whatever solution they come up with, I can guarantee that it “accidentally” has a loophole in it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can disable UAC (thinking practical, not necessarily security minded - but for an auto login w/o password, what’s security?)

  It’s not just the UAC prompt. Any window created by an elevated process will block synthetic input events created by lower privilege processes.

  Popups: yes. But then you’d need to actively use other software besides steam. Why would you do that, if using only a controller?

  • Game launchers installed as part of the Steam game.
  • Driver software automatically installed by Windows.
  • Windows itself, sometimes.

  Also that can happen in Linux, too.

  It depends on your DE and configuration. In KDE with Wayland, you can set it up to strictly enforce focus stealing prevention. The way that works is essentially by only allowing another program to steal focus if it’s the result of some user interaction.

  For the logoff or shutdown: Set or createHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks to 1 to auto kill hanging/not ending processes automagically. Also you can use WaitToKillAppTimeout there to define how long windows should wait before killing the processes (in milliseconds).

  The fact that these are buried in the registry… thanks, though. These will be useful. I concede this point.

  And regarding bitlocker after a bios update: why would you use bitlocker on such a machine (auto login on boot which would allow access to all files anyways)?

  Because it’s the default that is forced onto the user.

  Anyways, set or create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BitLocker\PreventDeviceEncryption to 1 to prevent bitlocker from running after an upgrade. With Pro, you could also leverage GPOs for that.

  Call me cynical, but I don’t think this will work forever. Microsoft has been boiling the frog with local accounts over Windows 11’s entire lifetime, at first allowing them, then hiding them, then making the bypass command only work under specific circumstances, etc.

  All it takes to destroy the UX is force-enabling BitLocker exactly once, and most of the people using the device won’t know how to undo it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unremovable Spyware on Samsung Devices Comes Pre-installed on Galaxy Series Devices⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Neither” is also an acceptable answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unremovable Spyware on Samsung Devices Comes Pre-installed on Galaxy Series Devices⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Please fill in the blanks:

  • China’s socioeconomic model is _____.
  • In the Russia—Ukraine war, Russia is _____.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Respectfully, I’m going to have to disagree about stock Windows working fine. There are multiple places where it necessitates having a keyboard and/or mouse connected.

  • Interacting with UAC prompts and other elevated-permission windows that block synthetic input events.
  • When a popup hijacks focus away from the game window.
  • When Steam (or other controller to mouse software) is not open, such as during the logoff screen where you sometimes have to click “Close Anyways”.
  • After a BIOS update, when the TPM refuses to unlock and you need to enter the BitLocker recovery key within the pre-boot environment.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  am still running Windows on it, but only for one reason: no first party support from SteamOS.

  For the most part, it SteamOS isn’t really necessary to get a serviceable desktop gaming experience. Pick a well-supported rolling release distro or a derivative, install Steam and Proton, and games mostly just work.

  It’s not perfect, but it’s usable. The only real pain point around gaming is getting HDR working properly.

  Closed-source software is a different story, however. Discord’s Wayland support is basically nonexistent and the AFK detection thinks you’re always in front of the computer, suppressing mobile notifications.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If other hardware vendors are going to follow, they have to be using SteamOS or something similar out of the box. Handhelds can somewhat get away with using Windows because of the touch screen, but a “console” experience that occasionally requires plugging in a keyboard and mouse to get past some controller-unfriendly menu or pop-up is just going to annoy users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I never understood what it was people did on Twitter. I understand it even less now that it is X.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The other reason is that I’m kinda verbose.

  Some say, “why many words when few work?”

  Others express their freedom to choose exactly to what extent of verbosity and verbiage they consider necessary in order to accurately and effectively communicate their previously-unspoken thoughts either through private correspondence or statements to some subset of the general populace.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  [Citation Needed]

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At this SF grocery store, you can't leave unless you buy something⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  And for that very reason, it’s also extremely illegal. If the fire exit is the only way to get out in the event of a fire, and it’s blocked by said fire…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Can you recommend me other (non atomic) distros that play nice with both secure boot and nvidia drivers?

  I wouldn’t exactly recommend it because of the learning curve, but I have the exact setup you’re looking for working on NixOS.

  Lanzaboote made it pretty easy. The downside is that you need to put secure boot into user-managed mode, and some asshole anticheats might not like that even though only Microsoft-signed executables were used in the boot chain of Windows.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For gamers who are newcomes to Linux, Ubuntu (or Debian) should be a hard pass. Linux gaming is advancing too fast for the 2-3 year gap between LTS versions to not matter, and trying to work around the stable (outdated) packages is typically what ends up breaking installs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For gaming, you can’t go wrong with Bazzite. It’s meant for gaming to mostly just work out of the box, so you likely won’t need to tinker with anything.

  It’s that tinkering that introduces stability risks. Adding third-party package repositories and trying to install newer software on top of older LTS distros is what tends to end up breaking them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Smells Great⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If the steam doesn’t get you, the enzymes breaking down your proteins would surely give you horrible skin irritation.