Zink
@Zink@programming.dev
- Comment on [deleted] 1 day ago:
Gross.
I continue to have my own little cognitive dissonance about the Fediverse:
The world needs more FOSS and information needs to flow in a decentralized, democratic kind of way.
Howeverrrrr… Lemmy is awesome for we few that it clicks with. For the good of the users and especially the volunteer admins who run our instances, I am glad Lemmy is not the big glowing target that reddit is.
Maybe we just hang out and keep the lights on no matter whether it’s for occasional lost Linux users or for when mainstream folks decide to ditch oligarch-tech en masse.
- Comment on Android won't kill sideloading after all, but new verification rules will make it harder 1 week ago:
Cool story, goog.
I’m just going to keep waiting for a linux/foss phone so that its features and capabilities are actually predictable year to year.
But maybe I’m just too picky about what features and capabilities I want. I admit I’ve gotten used to some pretty outlandish stuff like… lemme check my notes here… “the device does the things I tell it to do.” Real galaxy-brain shit!
- Comment on Microsoft CEO warns that we must 'do something useful' with AI or they'll lose 'social permission' to burn electricity on it 1 week ago:
Holy crap, I think you’ve cracked it.
LLM AI is the trillion collar costing, terawatt consuming rubber ducky for the new millennium!
- Comment on AI boom could falter without wider adoption, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella warns 1 week ago:
I can only hope that THIS time, with the sheer amount of information available, that future historians will convince society that it’s better to run society based on evidence and progress and humanity.
We have the old boys club running our companies, grifting and building a giant economic bubble to make a quick buck they have no use for, and casually destroying some of the most valuable brands out there.
They are running many of our governments too, and that’s not working great.
- Comment on Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch 2 weeks ago:
I didn’t say there were no issues.
My 4-monitor setup at work functions considerably better in both ubuntu and debian based Linux Mints than it does in Windows. Just your standard corporate Dell laptop & docking station.
No computers have zero weird stuff wrong with them. But over time the design intent has mattered more and more versus just the bugginess of the execution.
In my experience though, Linux has pulled ahead in both. And by a lot.
- Comment on Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, my old machines (and work laptop!) are all nvidia, and it’s nice how seamlessly it works.
With the main version of mint that’s based on ubuntu, you get a driver manager so that you can choose between driver versions if needed.
With Linux Mint Debian Edition, it worked fine for general use out of the box with the open source driver. I went looking for info about the nvidia driver out of curiosity, and after stumbling upon some forum discussion I went ahead and tried “sudo apt install nvidia-driver” and it freaking worked!
- note I might be slightly off on that command, this is just from memory. And I probably enabled non-free software previously, because I know nvidia’s reputation with linux enthusiasts.
- Comment on Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch 2 weeks ago:
Go install Linux Mint and you might just realize that line is already way behind microsoft.
- Comment on Bluesky just verified ICE 2 weeks ago:
I’m not sure where to start here, so here are two equally important building blocks.
First, aside from other reasons the Nazi/minority is wrong, you are comparing a label somebody gets for existing the way they were born with a label somebody gets for actions they take that harm other people.
Second, some kind of mishmash of the terms “social contract” and “paradox of tolerance.”
- Comment on Digg launches its new Reddit rival to the public 2 weeks ago:
Oh I want those things too. The current size of Lemmy is not my ideal. It’s just really really nice in its current form for me as a unique little nerdy place hidden in plain sight from what most of the internet has become.
It was more the juxtaposition of how the world needs all these open technologies that people band together to create for the good of all, buuuuut if nobody notices this particular one then that will serve my personal interests. And to be clear I’m not hoping for that or trying to hold it back. Just pointing it out. :)
- Comment on Digg launches its new Reddit rival to the public 2 weeks ago:
Yep, I’m ready to read the news that this platform surpassed the user base of Lemmy on the first day and never looked back. And I am ready to not be bothered by it.
Good on them for any pain they inflict on reddit. And I do hope the fediverse takes over the global media landscape because that is better for humanity than corpo-governmental gatekeepers. But if Lemmy’s user base just hangs around in the tens of thousands rather than the tens of millions, I am content.
- Comment on Lemmy's active userbase has been stable since September 2025 3 weeks ago:
So are we living in some kind of Bizarro Eternal September?
Where instead of being flooded with normies, a few dozen thousand of us are walled in behind barriers to entry that the greybeards of old could only imagine.
It’s like a social experiment that would be unethical if we weren’t all self-selected to be here. Will we flourish or will we go mad?!?
Given my experiences so far, I’m gonna ride this thing as far as it takes me. Just today I was inspired by a fellow lemming to format my entire hard drive just to switch to a slightly different Linux distro. On my work laptop! :>
- Comment on Mama! 3 weeks ago:
Fun, fun, we skip along together!
Swirling towards the center…
Where there is no pain and we are truly together, forever.
…
Eat at Arby’s
- Comment on Windows users keep losing files to OneDrive, and many don't know why 3 weeks ago:
Because the standard version of Mint uses the ubuntu repositories. You get to utilize most of what makes up ubuntu, but decoupled from the stuff Canonical wants to push. It has some added polish as well.
It was more of an ubuntu-specific reply rather than “what’s the best distro” thing.
But now that you mention it, there is also Linux Mint Debian Edition! :D
I might actually start using LMDE at work, since we have some stuff that’s more focused on debian than ubuntu.
- Comment on Windows users keep losing files to OneDrive, and many don't know why 3 weeks ago:
If they want ubuntu, let them Linux Mint! :D
- Comment on Self-hosting in 2025 isn't about privacy anymore - it's about building resistance infrastructure 3 weeks ago:
Thank you for this post!
For me, getting into self hosting was nice because of the privacy and tinkering yes, but a huge part of it was just having my stuff work reliably and without enshittification.
I just set up my Home Assistant server and new Zigbee network in the past few weeks and it’s pretty awesome. Was already using Jellyfin despite having a lifetime Plex pass. Feels good man.
- Comment on always watching 3 weeks ago:
I’ll proudly wear my Space Nerd badge all day long!
It does look like an artist’s rendition of the Milky Way galaxy like it’s an alien meme pointing at us. But, wouldn’t you know it, it’s not pointing to the right place. :D
It looks like we are half way out between the core and the outer rim. (very sci-fi sounding sentence, but I like it)
- Comment on always watching 3 weeks ago:
That couldn’t be a picture of Andromeda though, since that is not the perspective you get from our galaxy. Andromeda is facing us more with the edge than being broadside like in this image.
I’m not complaining though. Thanks for including the alt-text!
- Comment on Ubisoft Closes Canadian Studio After It Unionizes 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, that’s another fun aspect of our culture. Jobs that many people actually want due to what they are passionate about lead to abuse.
It’s the reason I never seriously considered getting into game development or becoming a teacher.
I am the rare father involved in the PTO (parent-teacher organization) along with my wife at our kid’s elementary school. We were handing out basic cheap supplies to the teachers last month as a Christmas thing. We’d interrupt the class to give the teacher a SINGLE roll of paper towels and then a small box of tissues or some glue sticks or whatever, and they were excited and grateful every time!
- Comment on I can still smell them 3 weeks ago:
I remember it well…
The smell of the gunpowder. In the play room.
- Comment on Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds - Saigoneer 4 weeks ago:
My fellow americans and I look at this concept and tilt our heads to the side like confused puppies.
- Comment on Microsoft Office has been renamed to “Microsoft 365 Copilot app” 4 weeks ago:
Your use case sounds perfect for using LibreOffice as a drop-in replacement. Opening a Word doc or an old Excel spreadsheet is effortless. You don’t sound like the “I use Excel every day for my job and there is no replacement” folks with very specific needs.
And I will echo what the other reply said: try Linux on your laptop! Not only will it probably work fine, it will probably also feel much faster and more responsive.
Trying most of the big Linux distros is super easy and zero commtment, too. When you boot from the install media, it loads directly into the OS desktop running natively on your hardware! Then once you’re ready to install it, there’s usually a shortcut on the desktop or something.
I recommend trying Linux Mint. It is so simple to install and full featured out of the box, plus being based on ubuntu and being very popular itself, information and help is everywhere.
- Comment on wisdom 4 weeks ago:
I appreciate the juxtaposition between your username and this comment wanting to beat one of the universe’s most useless life forms.
- Comment on How is Donald Trump able to get away with being part of a child trafficking ring but I get 20 years in jail for littering? 4 weeks ago:
Wilhoit’s law:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
In looking up the exact text, apparently it is often attributed to the wrong Wilhoit, lol.
- Comment on Belief 4 weeks ago:
Ouch, that line sure as hell would work on me!
But I’m not just an American who watched his show. I’m local to his area and I’ve been to the actual studios at WQED multiple times, on top of all the show artifacts I just saw the other day.
- Comment on EU lawmakers to study ban 'loot boxes' and other addictive features in video games 5 weeks ago:
It was probably organized by corporations to slow down EU
Cries in red white and blue American tears
The owner class, their paid shills, and their useful idiots had half the population convinced decades ago that all regulation is bad and that government entities literally cannot do anything correctly.
I started believing some of that stuff when I was young and thought that people in the media argued in good faith. Plus I was more accepting of the cornerstone conservative axiom that money and “progress” are the marks of good people and good societies rather than silly nebulous concepts like “being alive is a positive experience for as many people as possible.”
- Comment on Belief 5 weeks ago:
I found myself among some Mister Rogers quotes and artifacts yesterday, of all possible things.
So just for today I’m gonna push back on this one a little bit. I think the goodness is out there, but unfortunately much of our society is kinda designed to separate us from our humanity and mental peace.
- Comment on ASUS plans to produce RAM amid shortage problems 5 weeks ago:
Yep! The most expensive equipment they might need is a magic smoke compressor, if that.
- Comment on With how the republican party works in 10 years the presidential candidate will be an open pedophile and they will say they defeated wokeness. 5 weeks ago:
The Democrats really suck. Our FPTP 2-party system is really some bullshit. However, it is really difficult for me to buy into the validity of the slippery slope you are describing when the people around me keep voting for the option that is #1 worst by a whole fucking lot.
And the further that #1 worst keeps surging and lapping #2 on the evil-dex, the further their psycho supporters seem to like it! We’ll see if the pedo shit can finally reverse that.
This would be a different conversation if we’d elected democrats over and over to avoid republicans and somehow still got dragged to the right. At the end of the Obama administration, for instance, there was the concern of the bait and switch.
But no. He gets impeached a couple times for betraying the US in different ways after being openly terrible for years, and dozens of millions of people still turn out to vote for him. He tries some light coup and all the daily otherwise career ending craziness, and they turn out to vote for him AGAIN in HIGHER numbers.
The fact that the democrats are the good cop capitalists to the republicans’ bad cop capitalists is definitely a problem, yes. Any of us who get to vote in the US should be keenly aware of that. And there are multiple things we can try to fix in parallel. But sometimes you have to fix things sequentially too.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
I can imagine a future device with an e-ink page that’s so thin and flexible that it looks and feels like a paper book with magic changing text. I don’t know how many consumers would pay a premium for that, but I would definitely buy my wife one.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
I’m just here to point out that the fact you genuinely care about your carbon footprint probably puts you ahead of 80% of the population, and the fact that it has materially affected your device choices probably puts you ahead of 80% of the remainder.
There’s definitely a unique satisfaction that comes from filling tech needs with hardware that already exists, and which does a great job at it too.
That goes across hobbies and mediums too. I just finished a big outdoor carpentry project where I was able to find perfect long-term uses for pieces of wood from The Initial Build in the construction of The New Hotness.