Linux_in_a_Bit

EeveeEuphoria, 21 days ago to random

isn’t it just, extremely fucked that smartphones are basically a requirement in day-to-day life, to the point where it’s somehow more essential than basic fucking utilities like water?

and yet, despite this, it’s not treated like government infastructure, and corpos get to price the usable ones at twice or even thrice the price of a fucking game console

when government bodies started using QR codes to sign in to the fucking DMV, that’s when we should’ve had, like, literally any government-funded ISP and/or mobile plan

it’s gone real fucking quick since the iphone first launched to now where if you don’t have a smartphone you’re basically fucked, like, i’d argue computers weren’t even really nessecary in the modern world. like, you’d be really hurting yourself, but you could get by! but now? if you don’t have the latest and greatest smartphone, you should die in a ditch because you can’t use this place’s stupid fucking app

oh, but if you do have a smartphone, you also need a mobile plan, because if you don’t, good fucking luck finding reliable free wi-fi spots in the places that you need it for! and of course you can’t use the main function of it fucking taking calls, in which it’s often expected of you to have your phone working 24/7 to take calls.

hell even take people like me who REALLY fucking hate smartphones, you can’t fucking truly escape their wrath. i had to settle for a flipphone that runs android, because despite how much i hate android, i need either android or iOS, because without it, i’m basically fucked because i can’t run any essential apps. like, my bank account requires an android app. shit’s fucked, ain’t it???

atomicpoet, 26 days ago to random

WOW!!! 😲

Microsoft really just made MS-DOS 4.0 open source.

This is 38-year-old operating system. Why should anyone care?

For one thing, people have been trying to make an open source version of DOS for decades. FreeDOS is the most well-known example of this. And now, suddenly, the actual MS-DOS is open source.

But also, DOS gamers are going to love this. Right now, people are using emulators for most DOS games. But how cool will it be to use FPGA and tweak the OS for a better experience?

RE: https://mastodon.social/users/reiver/statuses/112335750397384712

mhoye, 29 days ago to random

Who'd have thought that a mad rush to shove a feature zero people asked for into the last place it belongs would end up going poorly, that's wild, nobody could have predicted.

https://512pixels.net/2024/04/ai-overlay-tmp-home-folder-mac-os/

spiralganglion, 1 month ago to random

To whoever needs to hear this:

Your blog is better without an image than with an AI-generated one. I came here to read your words — let them stand for themselves!

If you must use an image, and some soulless AI mockery would suffice, do this instead:

Step outside, and take a photo of wherever you are.

Include a lot of sky, if you can.

This implicit "here's where I am" is a better reflection of your work than whatever midjourney or stable diffusion would splort out.

haverholm, 1 month ago to random

almost every […] open source license all limit liability and explicitly do not provide any warranty. In short, any open source software you use can delete all your production data and you can’t sue anyone because in using the software you agreed to accept personal responsibility for any negative consequences.

In practise, however, when there are issues, maintainers often work quickly to resolve them and apologise in the same way as a company does. This is one of the biggest causes of burnout; most open source software is developed by volunteers in their free time but both maintainers and users of open source software have adopted an unsustainable business/customer-like relationship.

Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing
https://mikemcquaid.com/open-source-maintainers-owe-you-nothing/

eiZen, 1 month ago to retrocomputing

Remember: If you can't just draw a line on your screen it's not a "personal" computer at all.

#RetroComputing

ifixcoinops, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

Mildly spicy web advertising takes

• 468x60 static non-animated non-tracking banners for cool webcomics and weird hobby blogs are brilliant and only the most tedious of people have any problem with them at all

• blog writers and webcomic artists getting paid a couple bucks here and there for running non-intrusive ads is Good Actually

• the shittiness of web ads scales exponentially in accordance with how much money you're trying to make off them - if you want a few extra quid each month for pizza and beer money, web ads are great and useful to everyone, that's the perfect use case; if you want more money than that then ads are the wrong tool for the job, and you can in fact use the wrong tool wrong enough to destroy democracy

Edit: one more

• the fact that my adblocker will look at a 468x60 non-animated non-intrusive non-spyware banner ad for a gay webcomic and go "ah yes, this can go in the same hole as this 50 megabyte video ad for a toothbrush you bought last week, loaded with so much spyware javascript that your processor fan roars like a jet engine," by DEFAULT, is... honestly tragic. These are Different Things but, remember the most tedious people in the world I mentioned above? They made the adblocker

Jgbird, 2 months ago to random

Felt like it was a gift to see this Red-shouldered hawk. The exposure on my earlier photos from the morning was wrong and I was prepared to leave with nothing. Then from the corner of my eye I saw something big flying and slowly went over to it. It took my breath away.

amoroso, 2 months ago to random

Respecting customers and employees is the ultimate growth hack.

bigzaphod, 2 months ago to random

It's interesting how many articles I've seen trying to twist things into pretzels to find an excuse to slam that White House report about using memory-safe programming languages just because it was the White House that said it. It's not like it's a new revelation - the entire industry has been on that track for decades for pretty obvious and logical reasons. Of course now that someone "political" mentioned it, it's suddenly bad somehow in the eyes of a few.

Urban_Hermit, 2 months ago to random

People who try to teach you cynicism never try to teach you anything new. They just tell you stuff that is bad that everyone knows, they repeat pop culture tropes about helplessness, and they try to normalize not doing what little you can do.

They are either plants for the awfuls, who need apathy to get away with their crimes, or depressed quiters.

Life is for the lively, play every hand you are dealt.

Gargron, 3 months ago to random

There is an ongoing spam attack on the fediverse for the last couple of days. It's more widespread than before, as attackers are targeting smaller servers to create accounts. Before, usually only mastodon.social was targeted and our team could take care of it. For server administrators out there: If you don't need open registrations, switch over to approval mode. If you do, blocking disposable e-mail providers is a massive stopgap to the problem. Mastodon also supports hCaptcha.

tweedge, 3 months ago to random

A friend sent this to me and y'all might enjoy

Linux_in_a_Bit, 3 months ago to random

If the solution for preventing any kind of crime is to ban simple consumer tools used to commit them, you as a government are incredibly misguided.
Imagine your government just flat out banned power tools if there was an increase in people using them to commit crimes.
That's basically what Canada just did. :blobcatgooglytrash:
Maybe next time try dealing with the actual crime.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/02/canada-vows-to-ban-flipper-zero-device-in-crackdown-on-car-theft/

pluralistic, 4 months ago to random

Giant Teddy Bears R Us

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

#TransparentRuses #Enshittification #GiantTeddyBears #MrBeast #X

If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you'll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket. The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he'd carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one. The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers – as a convincer in a "Big Store" con, a way to rope in other suckers who'll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.

freakonometrics, 5 months ago to random French

idiot detection system...

video/mp4

brion, 5 months ago to random

i find that my fedi feed is way more chill with all boosts straight-up filtered out

EposVox, 6 months ago to random

Ever wonder why the SBMM debate just seems like a bunch of people saying "git gud" vs people saying "I wanna stomp on n00bs"?
B/C the issue was never the SKILL element, but the engagement-optimized manipulation of it. It's gross & ruins the experience. https://kotaku.com/mw3-sbmm-definition-meaning-cod-1851037016

Linux_in_a_Bit, 6 months ago to random

deleted_by_author

eff, 6 months ago to random

HTTPS encryption for EU residents is at risk, as the soon-to-be-passed Article 45 removes browsers’ control over security for their users.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-back-web-security-12-years

jeromesegura, 7 months ago to random

There is a live Google search #malvertising campaign targeting #KeePass users. The malicious domain name uses Punycode to trick victims.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/threat-intelligence/2023/10/clever-malvertising-attack-uses-punycode-to-look-like-legitimate-website

image/png

cloudguy, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to random

This pretty much explains the Fediverse

Share this post and if you can, post a comment because, genuinely I woke up this morning to a staggering number of shares and favourites.

The comments PROVE Mastodon is the place where common decency is being restored. I feel hopeful for the future.

What lovely people you all are.

Comment to be part of this new town square, or as I like to think of it, our tearoom. And add me, I'm going to be brewing lots of tea.

mookie, 8 months ago to google

I would say that Google is trying to cut their way into profitability, but that would be a lie since they made $60 billion in profit in 2022.

I guess Google is trying to cut their way to more profits. 🤷‍♂️

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/technology/google-layoffs-recruiters.html

#google

chris, 9 months ago to random

deleted_by_author

thomasfuchs, 9 months ago to random

Why are so many good and well-meaning people so obsessed about fixing all bad things in the world at once?

This will just lead to a failure of fixing anything at all.