BananaTrifleViolin

@BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US Senator Warner Presses Valve to Crack Down on Hateful Accounts and Rhetoric Proliferating on Steam⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Politicians would be better focusing on things that matter like how the Democrats lost the election to Trump and how they’re going to win the midterms.

  A crappy paper finding rude words and phrases on steam is not really worthy of anyone’s attention but Valve’s

  “Millions” of examples sounds dramatoc until you look at how many billions of exchanges have been made in valves forums and comment pages. It needs addressing but it’s not of international or even national importance.

  Instead of virtue signalling, Warren should be asking how the Dems managed to allow Biden a free ride through the primaries, held on til the bitter end blocking alternatives and then endorsing Harris blocking any debate.

  I’d rather Warren focus on fixing the Democratic Party. A bit of democracy in the Democrat party would be a start.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For electricity generation: Solar across the UK was about 5% in last year, while Wind was about 29% and Nuclear 13.9%, and hydro 1.3% - so 49.2% of energy over the last 12 months was carbon neutral.

  That’s a huge success story - still a long way to go, particularly as that does not include Gas burned in homes, but the UK is moving in the right direction. And Scotland is a huge source of Wind & Hydro power for the whole country.

  So even if the barriers to solar in your home are still high, the grid is getting cleaner and cleaner every year. There are also community projects installing wind generators which you can join/invest in if you do want to try and get a slice of cleaner energy and solar is not realistic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RazerGenie for configuring Razer devices on Linux v1.2 brings new features⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Great that people are developing tools but personally I use OpenRGB as its broader focused than just one manufacturer. It also uses the same underlying OpenRazer drivers for Razer devices as well as supporting other other RGB devices.

  RazerGenie seems a little too focused to me but maybe there are benefits of such a tool I’m missing?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a thought experiment, not an observation. The idea is that if you have infinity and it’s truly random than eventually all possibilities emerge.

  The idea of infinite monkeys typing randomly on infinite typewriters is that eventually one of them would accidentally type out all the works of Shakespeare. Many more would type out parts of the works of Shakespeare. And many many many more would type random garbage.

  If we imagine for a moment the multiverse is infinite and random, then every possible universe would exist somewhere in that multiverse.

  It can be taken in other directions too. It’s a way of cocneptualising the implications of infinity and true randomness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Zuckerberg: The AI Slop Will Continue Until Morale Improves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The metaverse a resounding failure, Facebook has latched on to the AI hype train in hopes of making the company relevant. They’re basically put of ideas on how to feed the beast of “forever growth” the markets demand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are laptop adapters so much larger than phone adapters of same power rating?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One significant difference that has been missed here is that Laptops can and often do run on the power supply, while phones usually use the power purely to charge the battery.

  It’s a significant difference as the laptop needs a stable electricity supply to supply all it’s components or the laptop would crash. That means not only does the brick need to dissipate heat, but it also needs to be able to deliver a stable continuous DC current. So as well as a taanformer and rectifier (that together convert AC to the correct DC needed) there are smoother and potentially capacitors to ensure a smooth continuous output even if the wall supply is janky.

  If you turn off the power at the wall / unplug you often see any light on the power brick stay on - that is because of the capacitors and there is still a small amount of energy available to the laptop as it discharges.

  While phones are mini computers they are usually designed to always run on the battery. Even when charging, the phone draws it’s power from the battery and it’s in built circuits to smooth the current; there isn’t usually the redundancy in a phone to switch between different supplies in the same way as a laptop. There isn’t also the expectation that they need to run off the wall continuously by users (even if users might plug their phone in and expect to continue to use it, they will find their phone shuts down if its at 0% and they push it beyond what the recharging battery can supply; a laptop would be expected to run solely on the wall not shut off).

  Things are blurring now with USB C power supplies for laptops - but you will find the plug itself has more of the electronics built in or some of the functions of the power brick have moved into the laptop to reduce charger bulkiness. Look at how bulky a USB c charger plug is for a Mac - they’re not simple USB chargers you’d use for a phone or tablet, they’re bulky because they are also doing the smoothing and stabilisation people expect for their laptops.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Ever Happened to Netscape?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s rather simplifying history and not the main reason Netscape failed.

  Netscape lost because Microsoft used it’s dominant monopoly position to bundle Internet Explorer with windows. By 1999 the writing was already on the wall - IE had already overtaken Netscape market share and was growing rapidly.

  The Mozilla project and code base change was a gamble to try and fix the problems. When Microsoft released IE6 2001 they didn’t bother releasing another major version for 6 years as they were so dominant.

  So while the code base change was arguably mishandled, at worst it accelerated the decline. Instead the whole story is a poster child for how monopoloes can be used to destroy competition. The anti trust actions in the US and EU came too late for Netscape.

  Ironically Microsoft was the receiving end of the same treatment when Google started pushing Chrome via it’s own monopoly in search. They made a better product than the incumbent but they pushed it hard via their website that everyone uses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What does this emoji mean? Is this a British thumbs up?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the “call me hand” emoji.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What does this emoji mean? Is this a British thumbs up?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It is not the shaka. It’s the “call me sign” emoji.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Subnautica 2 early access should last "2 to 3 years" - it'll launch with "several biomes" and "some narrative"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It is but it’s also one of the few options available to devs. They can sign up with a big publisher and then be beholden to them financially and creatively. Or they can try the kickstarter route, or they can take out huge loans or investment and be beholden to them. If they’re lucky they can get grants from governments but that is sporadic and uncommon. Or they can scale back projects to reduce financial risk.

  Some devs can self fund once very successful, but even a successful dev like the makers of Subnautica won’t have lots of money on hand. Plus even if they have cash, it is also about risk and sharing that so they don’t go completely bankrupt on one project and all their employees lose their jobs.

  Early Access has its down sides for definite but it does allow game devs to get revenue in while developing, and also (if done well) focus on delivering a game the players actually like. The biggest benefit is definitely that it allows devs as much independence as feasible.

  Of course for the players, it can be hit or miss but that is the risk with any game. And no one forces anyone to buy an EA game - if you don’t like it, don’t buy and wait til 1.0. That’s no different than waiting for any game to release so not sure what the problem is from that point of view?

  For players in terms of a pure “investment” then of course it’s a bad deal - the only return you get is the hopeful 1.0 game, and you get no share of any profits. You’re actually just another customer, who has been tapped very early. But again, it’s a choice and gamers can just not buy early access.

  I’ve bought quite a few games via kickstarter and EA routes, but only games that I’m passionate about and are relatively niche (like small indie projects, or genres that don’t get much mainstream action now like Adventure games). As much as I enjoyed Subnautica, I personally wouldn’t buy its sequel on EA except maybe if it was very close to release.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who use firefox how do you see what website you visit on a specific date? (say on september 12) for me it just shows like this⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a detailed history window? The sidebar isn’t it; just a quick overview. Control+Shift+H for the full history screen. It’s also in the menus under history, at the bottom. Like the full bookmark window is control+shift+B and linked St the bottom of the bookmarks menu.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TSMC execs allegedly dismissed Sam Altman as ‘podcasting bro’ — OpenAI CEO made absurd requests for 36 fabs for $7 trillion⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no market. This whole thing is a huge speculative bubble, a bit like crypto. The core idea of crypto long term make some sense but the speculative value does not. The core idea of LLMs (we are no where near true AI) makes some sense but it is half baked technology. It hadn’t even reached maturity and enshittification has set in.

  OpenAI doesn’t have a realistic business plan. It has a griftet who is riding a wave of nonsense in the tech markets.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Twitter's UK userbase has been absolutely decimated since Musk took over⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty rubbish article to be honest. It’s all hyperbole and no data or facts. It includes one embedded tweet with a graph about sharing political content.

  While I suspect it’s true, it’s hard to trust a article that doesn’t back up it’s claims with any data or even quantify the claims it’s making. The closest it gest to data is “millions” but that’s pretty meaningless on its own.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube Premium is getting a huge price hike in over a dozen countries, sparking user backlash. Some countries are experiencing hikes between 30% and 50%⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I pay for my email (Proton) password manager (last pass), and VPN (nordvpn).

  I’d say subs that maintain your privacy and security are well worth it - there is no such thing as a free lunch and instead the tech giants are dining out at the expense of users.

  Googles ad monopoly needs to be torn apart. Because YouTube premium prices may actually represent what it really costs to maintain video sites like Google, but Google have managed to destroy all competition with the free model and now there is no one realistically able to compete on content or price.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please make sure to check the expiration date on your toilet paper⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  if you’re american, manufactured 18 July 2023?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[rant] I want computers to become personal again⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are plenty of options for personal computers; you have to make the choice to go private and personal.

  I built my own desktop, which remains very common and is relatively easy to do. I have Linux and Windows on it, and use Linux nearly 100% as I agree I don’t like ads etc. I use a Firefox with ad blockers and don’t get ads; I use lots of open source software even to access services like Youtube (Free tube).

  There are also even linux laptops, and the Frame.Work laptop which is fully modular and bring your own OS.

  There are open source OS for phones.

  You’re right about the corporatisation of the internet and services, but it remains up to users to vote with their feet and chose to take back their privacy and person computing.

  Linux is at 4% of desktop users in recent months - that is many millions of people actively choosing to exist in a space where they control their personal computers. People don’t need to remove computers, just chose to set them up to be what they want them to be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wales 20mph: Calls made for 1,500 roads to revert to 30mph⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who drives to and around Wales multiple times a year, it’s a poorly thought out and implemented policy.

  Many people speed and break the limit, particularly on main roads, and it’s lack of popular support is an issue in itself.

  The policy could work if the speed limits was reverted to 30mph on bigger roads but local councils and the Welsh assembly blame each other for the issues.

  There is also little enforcment at present - that is changing and once people start getting fined for breaking the 20mph limit it’s likely to become much more unpopular.

  It could have probably been implemented successfully and with popular support and more careful designation of 30mph roads. It’s a failure of politicians rather than the idea itself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is linux actually gaming ready or is it just not for me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Its not about memory size its about the asymmetric sticks. It was a classic problem with OS memory management in the past. Modern OS are better at dealing with it but it is not the optimal set up.

  You’re running windows game which use proton/wine that manage memory for the game and use linux for access to RAM. The asymmetry could easily cause issues you wouldn’t notice with native apps.

  I’d try removing the 16gb stick and see what happens with the games you’ve been trying. It might not he the issue but the only way to know is to test it, rather than dismiss it because its not what you expected.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is linux actually gaming ready or is it just not for me?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The common denominator in your issues would be your PC. If games are working according to protonDB and you’re unable to get them to work on multiple distros that suggests its your PC.

  There are two candidates in your specs - your RAM and your Graphics card.

  As others have said, asymmetric RAM is unusual and it certainly was warned against in the past as it caused system issues. While OS may be much better at managing RAM bow, that doesn’t mean all scenarios can tolerate it. Given what Proton is doing is complex (running Wine, which is essentially a windows layer) I would not be surprised if the memory configuration is just a step too far - you have windows software using a windows compatibility layer for memory asking a linux is for memory access.

  An obvious way to test this is to remove the 16gb stick from your machine and see what happens.

  The other side is your graphics card - are you using the latest nvidia drivers?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Worst examples of Treknobabble⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think Discovery had the worst. It isn’t the technobabbke it self that was the problem, it was how it was delivered.

  Everyone seemed to be needed to be the most intelligent person in the room. So one person would start with some sudden realisation and solution, and then another would interrupt them and pick up the idea and then either back to the first person, or yet another person would interrupt. Between then all they’d build a tower of technobabble and deus ex machina, and self congratulatory nonsense. It was just so silly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is "disk" just a different spelling of "disc" or are they actually different words?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Disc and disk are varient spellings of the same word that pre-exist computing. Disc is more common in British English, Disk more common in American English. But yeah since computing came along disk has also been used more for magnetic media (hard disk) while disc has been used more for optical media (compact disc). I wouldn’t be surprised if this only happened because of how the CD was marketed and branded as a “compact disc” as a trademark while hard disks and floppy disks etc were more generic terms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe he broke terms of service with the streaming companies but they should be pursuing him in civil courts. This feels like abuse of the criminal justice system to retrieve money for companies that were negligent in how they were running their streaming businesses.

  This guy produced music and he alsp streamed the music even if it was bots at industrial scale. He seemingly met the criteria needed to get money from the streamers. I’m not a lawyer at all but on cursory look at the definition and elements of wire fraud, I guessing this will hinge on whether this was a “material deception” - but he produced actual music and he streamed it, so is it?

  Also i wonder whether it can be proven that the intent was to “defraud” rather than take advantage / game a system.

  It feels like the tax payer is bearing the cost of prosecuting someone for a dispute between a person and the multi billion dollar music industry.

  Also the music industry trying to paint this as theft of money from other artists is a bullshit - the streaming fees are supposedly divided out proportionately from overall streaming. He caused more streaming so the pot was bigger, and he took a proportionate share of that bigger pot. And any disproportionate sharing reflects the shitty practice’s of the streamers and the big music rights holders who are essentially monopolies squeezing out the smaller competitors from the system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are doctors so hands off and unhelpful in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The US healthcare system is built around money and profit. A cheaper procedure which does not require general anaesthetic costs less, and reduces profit. That can be beneficial to the providers but bloat is incentivised in the US healthcare system as providers battle with insurance companies for money. Crudely healthcare providers don’t care about saving you money; they want to take as much money as they can get.

  Meanwhile, countries with tax funded health care opt for the most cost effective procedures, investigations and treatments. The incentive is to reduce costs and offer the most effective things to the most people possible. That can also sometimes have negative side effects if not carefully regulated but in such systems generally Doctors advocate for the best procedure and best medical practice, as they themselves do not directly benefit financially from which procedure is pushed. The downside is you do get the opposite side of things where patients are dissuaded from things as they’re not deemed cost effective by those who control the spending.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space - Liliputing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The article is a bit vague on the pros and cons of reflective LCD screens.

  It seems to be pros that it has a good refresh rate, can be used without a backlight so is good outdoors and indoors in a bright room, and maybe better for your eyes due to the lack of the backlight/blue spectrum light. It also may offer better colour depth than e-ink currently.

  The cons are not clearly addressed but presumably battery life is worse than e-ink but better than a backlit display such as OLED or AMOLED, that colours are still not as good as other LCDs even if better than e-ink, and it seems cost (although that may be due to the small market at present).

  Also there is no obvious innovation noted in the article so its not clear what has changed about these displays? It sounds more like some small companies are just using the displays in a new way to try and mimick paper. But maybe thats wrong or will change?

  Maybe this would compete with e-ink if cost comes down. The battery benefit of e-ink with a static image is one of its big benefits, to the point that its being used for shelf labels in supermarkets. E-ink isn’t going anywhere but good to have more choices in the tablet space.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you prefer to buy games on Steam or GOG?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can add games to Steam to use proton so where they came from doesn’t matter. You can also use Proton forks and bypass steam altogether - much of the underlying tech is Wine; proton is a patched and optimised version of Wine not a stand alone Valve product. Its great what they’ve done but it is still a collaborative open source effort.

  As for which store, I go on price and sometimes go with GOG even if more expensive because of DRM, and sometimes Steam because of the convenience of the workshop.

  I don’t think it needs to be any more complex than that - these are company’s taking your money for the same product. Its kinda pointless being “loyal” to a retailer - its more important to focus on value for money and quality of service for each purchase.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft boosts Windows’ FAT32 partition size limit after nearly three decades⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is badly written and ignorant article. Fat32 supports up to 16Tb partition size (depending on cluster size - 2Tb -16Tb).

  Its microsoft’s windows tools that arbitrarily only allow users to create 32Gb partitions, and it is this that is veibf changed. This is not a change to Fat32, this is a change to windows. 3rd party tools on Windows and other systems like Linux have long offered more options for partition size.

  That its taken to 2024 for Microsoft to fix the command line tool (and still not fix the GUI tools) is ridiculous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨is there a trustworthy SMS MMS app for Android that's not Google?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re absolutely right.

  The announcement of dropping SMS at the time gave those vibes. They were basically saying to users “we know what’s good for ypu better than you do”.

  It was a huge strategic misstep. SMS was the perfect route to get people to use Signal - you’d start with SMS conversations and then as people joined signal conversations could switch to secure chat. Now its very hard to persuade people to switch to Signal.

  Now google has used the same trick to push its own messaging standard RCS.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox CTO Responds On Collecting User Advertisement Data⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah totally agree. The central premise of Mozilla’s argument is wrong: that we need to care about what advertisers want.

  No compromise is needed as advertisers problems are not users problems. Mozilla has massively dropped the ball on this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stoke-on-Trent couple fined £1,200 after clearing up rubbish⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So while I personally disagree with the fine, technically they were fly tipping as they added their box to the rubbish which included their address.

  Yes it is seemingly petty and the council are now PR wise idiots for enforcing the fine, but legally it is pretty clear cut. The council would have to take it on trust that the rest of the rubbish wasn’t theirs and wave the fine, and why would they believe them? We all believe them because its in a BBC article and they kicked up a fuss, and publicised it.

  Its one of those stories which isn’t quite as clear cut as it first seems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Onlyfans creators will eventually market meat of themselves⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well planned obsolescence is a good thing for the content maker - have to buy it again of you like it. The ultimate DRM?