As we all know, Roblox is garbage tier gameplay structured around psychological cues to get children to fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money....
Don’t do Minecraft when Minetest is open source. It’s not meant to be installed as vanilla per se tho as mods are for building gameplay and vanilla is just a sandbox/canvas to build Minecraft-like or addjacent games. Especially if you can get him on PC, I could be a hopskip away from creating his own open mods (as opposed to the content farm of underpaid “devs” for Roblox which have wild stories if you look it up).
Veloran is also a good alternative for free software with an adventure MMO aspect that might appeal to the guy.
Being projects without a profit motive & a strong community where the players are the developers is a safer route where you would never expect loot boxes, microtransacitions, dark/addictive patterns because those aren’t fun & money isn’t an incentive. With the source available your son is more than welcome to read it to figure out how games work, contribute ideas/code, & learn to make mods which are all great, real-life skills learned while accidentally gaming & trying to make the game better for yourself & friends—and if he’s not a future coder, there are assets & stories to build, or just playtesting a friend’s mod.
If it’s set up correctly. The biggest selling point of a console is that it boots you to “play game” mode as the default & games have better expectations since the hardware is standardized. That said, in the case of Steam, there’s nothing to say you can’t install Linux & have it boot directly into Big Picture mode (but you’ll still need to remember to get software updates for the OS as they aren’t integrated like a console).
Today, Mozilla announced more than 450 new extensions (software that adds new features or functionality to the browser) to users on Firefox for Android at Mozilla’s AMO Android page. This milestone marks the launch of a new open extension ecosystem on mobile where developers are now free to create and publish extensions and...
Most distros are running the same software. The biggest difference is your package manager & community. Personal preference is NixOS but that ain’t beginner-friendly even if the rollbacks from bad states would help. Arch isn’t as difficult to set up as it used to be & has been more stable than a lot of distros in my experience so I wouldn’t discount it but .pacnew files can bite you if modifying in /etc instead of in the home folder (when possible). Of the things folks normally suggest as a first go, Fedora would probably be my pick (not yet had a problem) as everything Ubuntu-based still rubs me wrong for support & leadership.
Nothing would make me more happy. I really wish it weren’t such a pain to deal with the telephony. You check devices on postmarketOS & while some devices can boot, it’s usually the actual phone part that isn’t working–which is kind of an important part. The open hardware phones work fine, but their specs are ancient while being as expensive as flagships. I still have eventual hope tho as device needs have started to plateau.
Unfortunately given the stalemate of the mobile duopoly & service providers like banks thinking attestation is okay & what you run on your hardware is their business, Linux phones will have a hell of an uphill battle to take on. Wild to me is hearing the average Joe is happy their phones now don’t let them do whatever they want & they like the attestation since they don’t trust themselves with operating the device. These are the masses that will obviously be catered to, but maybe eventually be the only ones supported as banking websites age with little maintenance & receive no feature parity.
Good catch! The Lemmy UI isn’t straightforward. I thought I needed to upload a separate image for the post—not that you choose between URL vs. image despite the UI seemingly allowing both. Fixed!
This is why I don’t trust Rich Communication Services (RCS) being developed by the big tech giants. I can almost guarantee it’s meant to meet minimum legal requirements otherwise Google, Facebook, et al. would have reverted their services to XMPP federation on a protocol with now even more years of battle testing.
One advantage of linking a YouTube video in an aggregator setting is if the video goes viral, everyone is spamming Google’s server for delivery instead of hammering smaller services. Video is pretty expensive, so for now I see no issue abusing YouTube (assuming everyone here is already ad-blocking & DNS sinking anyhow).
That’s still a lot of monthly money for a lot of folks which hurts accessibility for many, not all. The fact that we can’t agree on codecs throws yet another wrench in things as you need multiple resolutions & formats. I’m happy it exists tho & uses distributed serving.
There’s a cost to doing the (re)encoding & storing multiple version of video. It’s relatively not more data to send one codec versus another, but storage & processing aren’t free either (especially with AV1 requiring hardware encoding unless you want to grind forever on a file).
These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.
I had read a story once that if I recall correctly, one manufacturer would send the signal back thru the coax cable to the cable box just in case to make sure your data was captured somehow.
At least webviews don’t (yet, Google be trying) have the ability to request attestation & ban me for not using the stock, bloatware OS every device comes with. Bonus that I get to keep my data inside the browser’s sandbox; it’s the easiest way to be safe with proprietary software.
If only my bank could get the memo & make their website not suck (it legit checks for Netscape Navigator 4 in the source) so I can be at peace with microG+LineageOS in the phone space (all the banks here do it & I already switched once until my bank, slowly but inevitably ‘modernized’ their app).
At least Google does this one. Mozilla & Apple like to lag on the PWA front. Sucks that Mozilla dropped SSB before it ever even launched. Apple only just this year announced supporting the Notification API which ended up stonewalling a past project since it was a required feature for our app.
Yes & no is my take. Usually no Linux support means a free software app is born to replace it which is awesome–or better, a previously-obscure or deserves-revitalization free software application gets its moment in the sun (rather than reinventing shit that already works cough Matrix). …The downside is when employers/client/etc. demand you use some proprietary sludge so luckily you have Electron app to get over that hurdle–tho 90% of apps in this category largely should be fine in PWA form instead of needing Electron.
Reminder: this is a social media feature to try to keep you on the platform. It’s okay to take a break, or just block the feature if it causes you anxiety.
A user’s activity on the Microsoft GitHub social media network/code forge is not a good indicator of a user’s activity in open source. There are gobs of free alternative forges, self-hosting, mailing lists, committing under different accounts. It’s as grain-of-salt worthy as how my ‘stars’ a project has for code quality.
Just curious what are the top 3 podcasts you listened to this year on whatever platform. Antennapod released a feature that summarized your year and well the amount of hours kinda surprised me in a good way, haha....
How do notifications work in the official Telegram Android app (Play Store vs Site version maybe)? Does it have the same mechanism as Signal, which only recognizes the presence of notifications via Google services, but sends them via its web socket service?
Normal people do care about their privacy, they just don’t know enough about tech to understand what services to use—which is why they trust the surface level privacy marketing from Apple. But if you are someone that does understand the tech, then you should feel empowered to help these folks out on their messaging front. If you host it & give them accounts, many come. You could set up an XMPP server for messaging & a Mumble server for voice coms & folks will be happy to chat with you regardless. My longer-term experience is folks are happy wdth how much lighter weight these 10±year-old technologies are that they start to prefer it.
An ejabberd instance can handle 2 million concurrent users. The free software XMPP server is used by the likes of League of Legends, Fortnite, Zoom. If it’s a good enough for them, it would easily handle your community, big or small.
Great info. I can understand modifying YouTube to remove ads, PnP, & screen-off usage for an entertainment app, but I don’t know I would tolerate that for messaging actual humans. It’s a shame these efforts aren’t going into self-hostable, decentralized options. :(
Seeing how the dumb community feels trapped now that Meta stopped supporting KaiOS, I can tell there are a lot of people that wish they could leave the service. A lot of spaces make you feel like you have to use it, not want to use it. I used a few months while I was in the UK, but after that I’ve been lucky enough to delete my account as the service was useless elsewhere where other places I lived, no one used it.
…That said, I now have issues with LINE as a defacto chat option locally that gets in the way. My account was crushed after they canceled LINE Lite which was 10× smaller with no bloat or trackers & I refused to “upgrade” (where like WhatsApp & Signal, one is forced to have a mobile device as a primary device). Largely I can inconvenience everyone by making them choose a different means of communication (with email be largely the only common denominator) but if I were dating again, I would inevitably be forced to use the unsafe app putting myself in the position a lot of WhatsApp users feel they are without effective choice.
Hi, I am currently working on a website I plan to release under the GPL3 license. I was wondering what copyright notice I should put in the footer of the web page. The notice I currently have is “Copyright 2023 ”, but I do not know if this conflicts with the GPL licence. Should I change it to something like “Copyright 2023...
GNU does not own a monopoly on the definition of free software. It wouldn’t be hard to argue that capitalist exploitation of the commons ruins the freedoms many would like to see.
All I’m saying is folks should be more open towards these extra clauses if they feel it can prevent exploitation of their work along with being open to different definitions of free.
There is also only a finite set of English words for the concept & it seems silly that that one entity would get the final say one what one true Scotsman is. Even the average layman thinks “free software” only applies to gratis. Words can have multiple meanings, but what would you propose software in licensed as free-but-anti-capitalist be called without invoking a long hyphenated adjective?
I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with what OSI & FSF are putting forth nor would I discount all of the importance of the past & the trail they have blazed to get these ideas in the software zeitgeist—but I will say is there should be room in the discussion for supporting these alternative ideologies on what “free” and “the commons” should be. You can choose words like “ethical” and that might be applicable, but as a result, consider your perception of a software now being tagged “nonfree”—I know I get a bad feeling about that personally.
Copyfair & copyfarleft licenses offer an alternative interpretation that I think a lot of folks agree with on priciple—such as megacorp with its massive profits gained by using our software should be contributing back in maintenance, documentation, marketing, or cold cash for financial compensation (e.g. not agree without exception to FSF’s freedoms)—because a work wasn’t created with those entities in mind. Where this gets tho most messy however is taking such stances (obviously) makes one’s project incompatible with the large body of existing work, but also shaming of folks interested in choosing those software licenses or even going CC *-NC on creative works due to compatibility with strict OSI/FSF definitions.
Speaking of the “nonfree” thing, nixpkgs as things labeled only under those terms while these other banners such as “ethical” are missing. Perhaps I should take a look at what it would take to cover those licenses too as you’re almost meant to feel guilty for using “nonfree” software which requires environment variables/config flag & for, at a high level, trying to accomplish a similiar goal of allowing users to share their source with the commons.
Yet folks often say their $0 software is free software because gratis. Words evolve/change & only mean what the folks think it means. If anyone wanted to take over a word, they could. To say it’s not open to interpretation is silly. To assume the ideas they first put out long ago never need a revision or update or were infallible missing no changes to software/society is a religion. Right now we see folks come to terms that outside GPL, a lot of code is being used for AI training models & then sold while not giving users a hint at who wrote it or where to get the source. These ideas probably need to change & projects like Peer Production or Blue Oak or License Zero feel they want to actually take on your enshrined terms like “free” & “open source” because there is not a better word to describe what they are proposing, then I don’t see a problem other than possible confusion (but folks might be confused either way like saying those licenses are nonfree just because a for-profit entity can’t use even if individuals, collectives, nonprofits can).
In Thai folks stopped saying -ร -ล clusters outside of educated/business settings & has led to spelling errors popping up everywhere. An example: กร- is a common start to words, but the most popular dish, กะเพรา (ga-prao), is seen as กระเพรา, กระเพา, or even กะเพา.
On a semi-related note, I think it’s really sad that the majority of Chinese dialects are slowly being replaced by Mandarin.
It really is. If not too disruptive, I always make a speaker clarify “which Chinese language” as I guess the propaganda + ignorance has worked leading many to believe there is just one language of China. …And it’s not just English treating it this way either.
A email provider shouldn’t require a closed, premium-only, lock-in-required sidecar program just to use IMAP/SMTP. I don’t think the release these bridge apps on BSDs or smaller OSs & you’re forced to use their apps on Android & iOS (no support for KaiOS or other smaller mobile OSs). This should be a giant red flag—kinda like waiving around a Swiss flag as more secure when they will sell you out just as fast as others.
These free-tier-loss-leading strategies are expensive too. If you bump up to premium it’s like $5/mo, but less marketing-heavy options where everyone pays get you all the features–like what I’m using @ 1€/mo.
I didn’t do more due dilligence than looking at the ProtonMail downloads page + system requirements page—neither of which mentioned source which would instill better trust. So you’ve got me there, but really dumb there isn’t a link.
Open source or not, you still have to use their clients on mobile OSs even if you prefer running a client like K-9 & can’t run on a low-spec OS KaiOS (I suspect the site wouldn’t scale down to this either), etc. Mail protocols are old & should be able to run on a potato without many hoops.
Where I definitely don’t agree tho is the free-tier thing. Having access to the bridge cut off as well as not {Cal,Card}DAV is a real pain that forces the premium subscription, switching providers, or using something like Google for calender/contact defeating much of the purpose. If there was no free tier to subsidize everyone could pay a lot less & get “premium” features others deem as essential. $50 annually is a lot—$12, not so much.
It’s also not altruistic to pay more for to subsidize in the manner you are alluding too since it misses the larger picture of how these wide free tiers have allowed contemporary services to gobble up users to impress investors with growth despite loss-leading products (in code forges look at the publicly-traded GitLab free model vs. SourceHut where everyone pays a small amount to keep servers running (post-beta plan)).
My affordable provider encrypts their servers & the account storage just fine without needing to reinvent the old, tested protocol (might just be a ZFS pool encryption passphrase). But it isn’t security/privacy that’s in question but the accessibility of this standardized protocols with years of tooling built around it & a business model that I don’t think is sustainable.
I banned my kid from Roblox.... what next?
As we all know, Roblox is garbage tier gameplay structured around psychological cues to get children to fill an endless pit with fake money bought with real money....
The instances blocking Zuckerberg's Threads.net (fedipact.veganism.social)
Made by Nume MacAroon at Veganism.social veganism.social/
New extensions you’ll love now available on Firefox for Android (blog.mozilla.org)
Today, Mozilla announced more than 450 new extensions (software that adds new features or functionality to the browser) to users on Firefox for Android at Mozilla’s AMO Android page. This milestone marks the launch of a new open extension ecosystem on mobile where developers are now free to create and publish extensions and...
Looking to switch to Linux in the somewhat distant future
Any distro I should use?
Your mix tape isn't fire, it's smouldering at best (lemmy.world)
KDE Plasma Mobile 6 Porting Underway (www.phoronix.com)
Ok, but what is XMPP? | Video (lemmy.ml)
A quick primer on XMPP & how/why you should host your own server for low-resource-usage, encrypted chat & other pubsub server.
I love piped bot (lemmy.ml)
Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching (themarkup.org)
These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.
Looking at you Ionic, Tauri, ... (lemmy.kde.social)
It also smells nice... (pawb.social)
What podcasts did you listen to the most this year
Just curious what are the top 3 podcasts you listened to this year on whatever platform. Antennapod released a feature that summarized your year and well the amount of hours kinda surprised me in a good way, haha....
Telegram Android Notifications
How do notifications work in the official Telegram Android app (Play Store vs Site version maybe)? Does it have the same mechanism as Signal, which only recognizes the presence of notifications via Google services, but sends them via its web socket service?
venture capitalism goes brrr (feddit.de)
What is a privacy friendly application that you'd love to have, but no one has developed yet?
What copyright notice should I put on my FOSS website?
Hi, I am currently working on a website I plan to release under the GPL3 license. I was wondering what copyright notice I should put in the footer of the web page. The notice I currently have is “Copyright 2023 ”, but I do not know if this conflicts with the GPL licence. Should I change it to something like “Copyright 2023...
Speakers of non-English languages, what common mistakes do native speakers make that drive you crazy?
For example, English speakers commonly mix up your/you’re or there/their/they’re. I’m curious about similar mistakes in other languages.
Google is putting ads in gmail. WTF? (sh.itjust.works)
Why would anyone use this over Proton Mail or the gazillion alternatives if it treats people like shit.
what caused you to get into Linux?
What caused you to get into it, are you an evangel and are you obsessed?