bbbhltz

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I only just picked one up a week or two ago. I was always a Nintendo person… Then an ex wanted to get an Xbox 360 to play Rock Band or something so I was stuck with that for a bit, then my partner wanted a PS4 to play Crash Bandicoot when it was only on PS4 so I’ve had that for years. I was completely ignorant to the ease of the Switch. Underpowered? Whatever! It is quiet, it is small, and that OLED screen is gorgeous.

The sun is setting for the Switch, but at least I’ll get to experience it before it is fully retired.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I have a friend / colleague who was a bit like this. It is a “see it to believe” situation. For her it was when she was at work and she watched her mouse stat moving on its own.

When she thought about how she never did anything bad on her work computer, but sometimes accessed her personal email… She got it.

And now she pays closer attention to things. Like in our city you’re pinged via WiFi when you get on a bus, but you can opt-out or jut turn of your WiFi, so she does that. And she makes email aliases now too. Nothing too serious, mind you, but she is 50 and figuring this out on her own and then teaching her friends and colleagues about it which is way better than going down the rabbit hole. Now there’s a bunch of boomers refusing to use Teams or access work email on their personal devices because she explained that they do have things to hide: the names and ages of their children and grandchildren, where they go for drinks after work, what they watch on YT, etc.

I don’t get into it with people though. People just write me off as some nerd, which is not the case.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

This is brilliant

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Professor in France… Same boat as you.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Ha, that’s fairly close. Except my students are 19 to 25 and play Suika Game on their MacBook Pros. We keep a journal of what we taught and said each day because when the he exam comes they complain the content wasn’t taught in class, then they give bad evaluations to the prof and leave comments like, “the professor should be more strict with computers and phones in class.”

No phones / No computers is my only rule!

They’re excuse is, “I’m taking notes! I didn’t spend €1200 on this to leave it in my backpack!”

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Yes!

Still have it. I asked for a game for my birthday that year. At the last minute I said I wanted ST instead. My mom took back the game she had and swapped it for this. I played it like crazy. Although it wasn’t until last year that I realised how to beat the Borg.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I was only allowed 1 or 2 new games per year so I played non-stop. I took my Gameboy everywhere. My mother saw something on TV at the time saying that games improved hand-eye coordination so she encouraged me to play like crazy. That might have helped haha.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Cultural differences make for major differences sometimes.

Some cultures are more about observing and acting immediately. Other cultures are handicapped by lobbies, for example, or politics as a whole.

e.g. France has a major teacher shortage.It has been talked about forever. Empty promise’s were made. Money was spent on research that did nothing to solve the problem. Since I’ve lived here, the only major change has been to make school obligatory from age 3 to 16. My kid had to do that. I would say it has not helped them much. At age 6 they read at the same level as someone who started school at age 5 or 6.

My son has already dealt with bullying at school. It lasted months. The school called it “teasing”. Well, that bully decided to bully a girl instead of my son. Once. He did it once and got sent home for the day.

Denmark saw a bully problem and stopped it in its tracks: conversation is key, speak ao they listen, listen so they speak. Easy to say, hard to do.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

MuPDF mupdf.com It does PDF and Epub and is pretty light.

epy github.com/wustho/epy is a cli Epub reader

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I have no idea how I would be banned, I’m not super active. How can I find out if I’ve been banned?

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Just checked the modlog. I don’t appear to be banned. Funky Federation stuff.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Just a window manager? Not a DE?

Under X11 there is Openbox, bspwm, herbstluftwm, dwm, i3, Awesome, Ratpoison, spectrwm, Qtile, …

Under Wayland: Weston, LabWC, Wayfire, Sway, River, Cagebreak, dwl, …

I keep things pretty dull and use Openbox + LXQt. It is a stacking WM that is stable, and LXQt is snappy.

If you are looking for a light DE LXQt is very light, Plasma is lighter than it used to be, but it also has loads of features. Xfce has more options for configuration than LXQt and I think it isn’t quite ready for Wayland.

Maybe Sway would be up your alley?

(Note to self: check arewewaylandyet.com)

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Better than complacence I guess.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I decided to buy a Switch yesterday. Don’t know why. Something piqued my interest to play Nintendo. I bought it with Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It’s fantastic and light and fun and my kid loves it too. I almost regret not buying it on launch. It is such a pleasure to play a cartridge-based game without load times or hearing a fan whirring.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

You’re right, but it isn’t like some games I’ve tried with my son on PS4 where is has enough time to go to he toilet while the next level loads.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I might be inclined to drop some cash on this.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Not sure if you can relock the bootloader

Their site doesn’t include that info

doc.e.foundation/devices/panther

/e/ is a “degoogled” experience, but as noted on their site and by others here:

Google Services are replaced by microG and alternative services (see below for more details)

For a regular uninformed user like myself (I just use the stock ROM on my phone because I am stuck with it) I read that as:

We made this experience as frictionless as possible at at a cost.

The friction here would be banking and/or tap-to-pay apps that I think cause some issues for some people (please correct me if I am wrong).

So, you would lose something that is offered by GrapheneOS and gain a different interface and access to apps that have a hard requirement for GSF.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

☝️ this is correct. GSF calls home and /e/ is a different beast. The founder of Murena and /e/ is on Fedi so you could drop him a message on Mastodon and see how he answers.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Of all the privacy-related changes I’ve made, Signal is the only thing I’ve managed to get anyone else to use.

It was a matter of saying “I don’t use WhatsApp anymore” and that was that. Some friends didn’t make the switch, but they know where to find me.

Quitting Facebook lead people to believe that I was in need of help, though. They thought I was crazy. Still, today, people ask me why they can’t tag me on FB or why I unfriended them. When I tell them I stopped using FB they’re shocked and say things like, “but you’re such a techy computer nerd guy.”

Quitting Google was confusing for others too.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

if only they knew how not-so-techy I really am…

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

If you go with Alpine, the general setup instructions should be OK and similar to other distros.

Get the image on a USB, boot from USB, run setup-alpine and choose system-disk mode. Possibly encrypted if you think you need that.

After install you’ll be dropped to the terminal again.

There are some post install notes here wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installation#Post-Insta… but you can run setup-desktop and get it to install a usable Xfce desktop, for example.

The LXQt DE is a good choice for older devices. The wiki has a guide for it but needs a slight update. It should still work but may require switching to edge.

Puppy Linux is a fine choice too if your computer is a little on the old side. Lite, Peppermint, Trisquel, antiX, and a slew of others are worth looking at.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

repology.org/repositories/statistics says that Alpine Edge has a higher percentage of up-to-date packages.

I do agree that a new user should use something like Fedora first. But OP wants Alpine.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

No. The projects are not related.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Pour info…

github.com/olvid-io/olvid-android/issues/2

On parle de mettre olvid sur f-droid depuis un moment.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I’m usually an optimist.

Not regarding this, though.

Ridiculous choice of host. Sounds like the plot of a dystopian hard sci-fi.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Never tried on a TV. Give Droidify a go.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

I use Tasks.org on Android which does sync with DavX⁵.

There is no “countdown” but it shows due dates in he widget and has notifications.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

Not a complete answer, but I stand behind Privacy Browser. The dev has a great blog explaining how the browser works:

www.stoutner.com/webview/

www.stoutner.com/…/core-privacy-principles/

www.stoutner.com/…/permissions/

I appreciate the transparency of the Dev and I am looking forward to the long-teased 4.x series that will ship with its own webview.

If you decide not to use it, keep it on your watchlist.

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

wholesome, awesome, fun

bbbhltz, 6 months ago

As far as I recall, it never was relevant. It was generally viewed as a rant written by a non-professionnel. Perhaps I am wrong? Sorry if I am wrong?? Don’t start reporting me, please.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

This is something keeping me from returning to Canada.

I live in France now. Looking at the ranking linked in the article I see that it doesn’t score very well here either. This is shocking because I find it so much better here in terms of health care. Today, for example, my son was unwell. At 8:30 we called and were given an appointment for 9:15. By 9:30 we had seen a doctor and had a blood test. By the end of the day I was emailed the results. This is the type of experience I’ve had again and again here.

The last time I was home, my partner waited 5 hours in agony in a waiting room. It took us 6 hours to find an clinic or ER that would take us. We drove over 200 km. When all was said and done, they charged us over $900 just to see a doctor. The doctor’s bill was separate.

I cannot even fathom what things must be like in countries that rank higher.

I really hope Canada can find a solution. It should not be like this in any developed country. In fact, it should not be like this in any country.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

Nova Scotia. I am not a resident anymore. No doubt to be had friend

Check it: nshealth.ca/…/hospital-fees-out-country-visitors-…

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/99d5d9aa-7ad8-43f7-91ef-8bb85539c43c.webp

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

Sorry for the confusion. I am Canadian, but you lose plenty of rights after 6 months. My wife is Spanish.

We were able to get a partial refund once we returned home.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

I guess you could give a few a try.

I use Xed and Geany and they seem to work as expected.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

People have no clue what fascism is these days… But, this is just a comic. No plot here. Just having a laugh at people that don’t know the meanings of words like “woke.”

The movie studios are pandering and scrambling for ideas. We are just getting duds. No CIA to see. No “woke agenda.”

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

Here is the list with my opinions:

1. ONLYOFFICE (I might need to give it a try again some day)
2. OpenOffice (should probably stop including it in repos)
3. CryptPad (more of a Google Docs alternative)
4. SoftMaker FreeOffice (never heard of it)
5. WPS Office (nah, thanks)
6. Calligra (looks good on KDE)

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

Interesting. I’ll have to find some of these videos. I worked customer service in the early 2000s. We were trained to never let a customer be in a situation where they would need to say “thank you,” and that we should thank them. This was in Canada, by the way. If we did get a thanks, we would never say, “you’re welcome.” We would say something like, “don’t worry about it.”

In France, where I live now, in some of the situations mentioned in the article the response would be a simple “c’est moi,” meaning, “it’s me who thanks you.” In a restaurant setting the waiter might just answer with “bon appétit.”

Thanks for this share, because I teach international business and communication and this will be an excellent subject for discussion.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

I like an “it’s all good,” that would put a smile on my face.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

so that’s what that means

I was a little lost too for the first few weeks I lived in France. Equally, when they said things like “il (n’)y a pas de quoi” which I had to figure out on my own. I finally just straight up had to ask someone after asking for a lighter and thanking them.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/d5b2e59d-8e47-45be-b2c7-8d633f5ca6c2.webp

Don’t like that he called some distros pointless. I would have found a better word. Lots on there that I have never used, obviously, because I am not a sadist. I couldn’t tell you what would be good for gaming or not, but flatpaks have made some things easier (or so I’ve heard, don’t quote me on that). And Fedora is a “Devil?”

Anyway. While I don’t watch this channel ever, I am aware of it as a reputable channel for things like this, so it might be trustworthy.

Why are Debian and Arch at the top? Debian is one of the grandaddies. Many distros are built on Debian—MX, Mint, Ubunu, Pop, Zorin, Neon, etc.—and there are many packages in the repos, which are divided into stable, and testing, and unstable sections. So, a Debian base can be stable or extremely up to date. The Debian community and maintainers are another reason the distro is so well-liked. Arch also has a large selection of packages, an excellent wiki, and the AUR to have access to anything missing from regular repos. Manjaro and dozens of others are based on Arch as well, meaning the community is rather large.

No need to follow rules and conventions though. There are many people, myself included, that use Alpine for their desktop because the packages are very up to date.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

How much had the amount of options for packages an effect on you, or anyone, while choosing your distro?

The number of packages was not something I looked at. I checked the availability of the packages I wanted, and whether or not they we’re up to date.

When I switched to the current distribution I’m using, I did not plan on using it for more than a few days. I just wanted a quick and easy way to try out an up-to-date version of a DE on a low-powered device and have the newest version of the browser I use. It worked so I put it on my main laptop and it still works

If I were going for numbers, Nix has the most I think. The AUR is up there as well. Debian is in 3rd place. But, like I said, I didn’t really think about that.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

Anki is a great one. Less invasive than others.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

They banned the rental scooters. People were far too careless. Riding on the sidewalk, causing accidents, even deaths, and just leaving them in heaps on certain street corners.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

There was a major investment in bike lanes, but many people were being twits and knocking people over and fleeing the scene.

When they did ban there were quite a few angry people, particularly people who worked late at restaurants and used them to get home quickly without worrying about being bothered or taking late night buses and metros. After reading their opinions I would have to say I agree with you, banning may not have been the answer.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago

You can run LanguageTool locally. While it isn’t as great as the paid version, I use this to check nearly everything I write for work in my native language, and in the other languages I speak

caderek.github.io/gramma/ is a cli spellchecker that has the option of installing a LT server locally. Not ideal if you are writing things with Pages/Word/etc., but a possible backup.

bbbhltz, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

This works for so many sites. Sometimes it is worth checking the formats the ste streams, because many of us don’t really need that 4K clip of a video with lossless 7.1 surround sound audio.

It also works for podcasts.

Of you are on a site that has a stream that cannot be grabbed by yt-dlp you can look for other, sometimes sketchy, tools that can get the job done.

If you like to pull your hair out a bit, you can inspect the page (not look at the source, but use the web inspector) and find a link to the streams. Occasionally you may need to download the audio and the video separately and put them together after downloading.

I need to do this regularly for colleagues.