Political Custard

I have AtlasOS. I only use Windows for two games, Rust and Destiny 2, that absolutely do not play on Linux. You will absolutely get better performance because the number of background tasks running all the time is quite minimal - it’s clean and there’s no store, no crappy apps you don’t want. I don’t care about security on the machine because I literally only game on it and maybe a little bit of web research if I get stuck on a game somehow. Anyway, I think it’s good, it’s really how Windows should be - if Windows didn’t get so bad perhaps I wouldn’t have gone to Linux.

You could try dual-booting for a bit to see how you like it.

Shit in… shit out, or to put it another way: racism in… racism out.

I propose we create another LLM… a Left Language Model.

Sorry, you are correct. I researched plans to get a Kobo last year and I guess what I found out morphed from a rooted Kobo with Koreader into Kobo being open source. My apologies.

I can’t wait to get a (regular) Kobo, my Kindle Paperwhite is still going strong and it’s 10 years old, but I really want a Kobo because it’s opensource. Amazon’s OS is dreadful, mine’s been in airplane mode for most of those 10 years and I just use a usb cable with it. I hope it dies soon so I will have a good excuse to replace it.

Let’s hope they chose a memorable password for the account… a very very memorable password.

@genocide.joe@beehaw.org?

People in India were watching people checkout?! Poorly paid workers watching Westerners consume… this is so grim.

Time to dust off those guillotines.

People are still printing? I love it, proppa old skool that is. I thought the only person who printed stuff anymore was my mum who prints out her daily crossword.

Don’t forget to boycott HP because, not only are they shit printers, they provide computer hardware for the IDF, Israel’s police, and their Immigration and Population Authority. https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp

I was listening to a Linux podcast and one of the people on it said that their partner didn’t mind adverts and didn’t mind their data being mined because it meant that the adverts were more appropriate. I was absolutely stunned, I didn’t think anyone, for one moment, would actually think like this. I had to have a sit down after hearing that. 😅

If I were to ever see an advert on my computer or phone, I would immediately flip out and have to go searching to find out how it got there (though admittedly this never actually happens).

That’s a good idea about the VPN on the router but it’s just my computer and phone that connect to the internet and I maintain a non-“smart” home. It would be nice for guests though. That’s interesting about Matrix, I didn’t know about that. Sadly, for the moment it will be something I have to live with; I’m in a few groups that use Matrix, but it’s good to know though, thanks.

I am finally really happy with my privacy setup, I am not feeling like there’s anything more I need (or want) to do at the moment…

1. NextDNS on PC and phone
2. Linux on PC - I do have a drive with Windows (AtlasOS with no Microsoft login) on it for dire emergencies (Rust and Destiny 2)
3. Mullvad VPN
4. Degoogled phone with LineageOS
5. Non-self-hosted Nextcloud
6. Browsing: FireDragon and Mullvad Browser on PC and Mull on phone
7. FreeTube for YouTube

I am against MTX because they have put parents in debt when their children have racked up huge MTX bills and it’s very difficult/impossible to get refunds. Yes, parents can protect themselves against this but many parents are not particularly tech savvy and games companies will see these as potentially huge revenue streams and abuse the hell out of them… like EPIC did.

Also, gaming addicts should also be considered and potential routes to indebtedness avoided.

Knowing a game has MTX just makes me less likely to buy it. Price the game correctly in the first place, and offer DLCs if you want some extra revenue.

Oh, this looks great. Honestly, I am very happy when closed-source apps become worse, these are all just opportunities for open source to move in and take over.

Matt Mahmoudi, a researcher with Amnesty International, said Israel’s use of facial recognition was a concern because it could lead to “a complete dehumanization of Palestinians”

Oops, bit late for that, mate.

Welcome to the modern day equivalent of wrist tattoos…

I really wish they had; I was playing again today and her character was just being so awful to people. It would be fine to have such a character if over the course of the story she realises she has attachment issues and gradually tries to deal with them throughout the game, but she doesn’t, she just keeps being mean. I have no idea why you would have someone like this as the main character, I have no sympathy for her and the game is not even attempting to get me to empathise or sympathise with her. She’s meeting some really lovely people and I’m getting embarrassed by her behaviour! 😅

Games, for everything else I’ve found a foss alternative that I prefer. I will do a google search once every couple of days if I’m really struggling to find something but even as a last resort search engine it’s been getting worse - I heard they put an ad person in charge of search… so that would probably explain that descent.

It’s still clunky and repetitive. I didn’t finish Zero Dawn and the more I play Forbidden West the more I feel it likely I won’t finish this either. I think you’re right to make a comparison to Ubisoft. Fine looking games with loads of potential but I suspect fear of bad sales result in bland, generic characters and storylines that are just not engaging.

The main thing is that Plasma 6 comes with some HDR support and it is possible to have it in some games now as well as in some apps like mpv that also have HDR support.

As for the Garuda Gamer version of the distro, it comes with a bunch of gaming stuff preinstalled and a Garuda Gamer app which makes it really easy to install gaming related apps, emulators, and hardware support for controllers, rgb, and all that kind of thing. It’s just all handled very well and would make a nice distro to recommend to gamers who might want to make a switch to Linux from Windows, mainly because things are made so easy - which is nice for an Arch based distro because you have access to yay without it being overly complicated.

Horizon Forbidden West, stunning graphics. I find the main character a bit off-putting as she can be a bit arrogant and rude and those are traits I don’t have a lot of patience for, but it really does look good.

I use Garuda Linux and FireDragon is maintained by the same people so it’s been customised to have the same look. FireDragon was previously a fork of Librewolf (another fork of Firefox I have always liked), so I just switched over to FireDragon to try it out. I’d also used Floorp in the past and really liked that, so to have FireDragon and Floorp become one was really nice. FireDragon is nifty and has the privacy focus that LibreFox has. Garuda Linux is also a really nice distro and a lot of care and effort has gone into it - it also has a Plasma version for gamers… which is lovely for me. It’s late and this is a dreadfully rambling answer… but hopefully you get the idea (roughly!) 😅