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Guys, I’m starting to think this Elon guy isn’t as smart as he claims…

I think OP is trying to say:

• There was the Reddit API catastrophe
• That led him to lemmy/ActivityPub
• Which gave him exposure to Linux
• Which he used to give Linux a shot

And he seems to be having a great time with LInux

RMS has been a divisive figure in the FOSS community, but I don't think anyone deserves cancer.

Hope he fights through it and comes out of the other side well and healthy.

I'm pretty sure it started with Lil B "Thank You Based God".

Lil B was an underground rapper with... varying levels of quality (at least at the time). His thing was calling himself "Based God" as people were calling him "based" as a negative (presumably to mean he was dumb), but thanks to his music and understanding internet culture and turning it in his favour, he managed to turn "based" from something that was negative to a positive.

Then 4chan got ahold of it for Donald Trump's election and that word has never recovered.

Fun fact, back in 2018, Tesla factories have less safety signs and signals because Elon Musk hates yellow (so no safety tape telling people where not to stand) and cannot stand the beeping noise forklifts make when they reverse.

Source: https://revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is-safer-but-it-left-injuries-off-the-books/

Absolutely baffled how more people aren't killed at Tesla factories, tbh.

Man, I'm enjoying life since I got off Reddit, which was when they first announced the API changes. Deleted my account there and then. Same goes with Twitter.

Turns out all these places just churn dumb online drama that is so inaccessible to the general public, that I ended up being a bit withdrawn because I had all this online drama in my head and I couldn't really talk to folks about it.

Now I'm ironically much more sociable that I've moved over to the fediverse. Outside of the reddit drama, conversations have been much more human. And even with the drama, I've learned to stop caring about such things - everything is in change, it will be okay. Companies don't matter - people do.

Least horny lemmy poster

Like others have said, there are multiple factors at play:

1. The official reddit app sucks in terms of basic usability
2. The offiical reddit app has poor accessibility
3. The official website, while generally well optimised for mobile, keeps forcing users to use the reddit app - see point 1
4. Reddit is trying to position themselves as an ad company (see here for one user's explanation), so it's in their benefit to get people using the mobile version where they can hoover up sensitive information for serving ads.
5. Reddit are trying to grow their ad platform. Third party apps interfere with that. Reddit understandably wants to kill them off.
6. Reddit are aware that people like third party apps and people don't like their official app.

Now, if Reddit had been honest and transparent throughout the entire process and just killed off the APIs without charging for it and gave the straightforward explanation, I think people would be sad as they are emotionally invested in their apps, and there would be some people who would go for good. But a lot more people would come back to Reddit - let alone seek alternatives like Lemmy, KBin, Tildes, etc.

What has happened is that the CEO has tried to make apps "the villain" and reddit the "poor little company" - sort of like DARVO but for 3rd party apps, so they could paint their official Reddit as the "wholesome" one.

Except the reddit community is large and pretty smart - technically and legally too. Receipts were kept, the CEO was exposed for his blatant lies, and then he has become incredibly unhinged and angry that things haven't gone his way, giving incredibly aggressive interviews. And the Reddit community notices, because whenever Reddit is in the news, it's very rarely for a good reason. The CEO was shown to be wearning no clothes after all.

I've seen Reddit go through drama, but never quite like this. It's quite incredible and astonishing how one person could fuck up a transition this badly. Spez has repeated that the Automod is going to be killed, but given the blatant lies that came before, it's no wonder why folks aren't trusting him on his word. He's made his bed, he has to lie in it.

I was using unhook to do the same thing! Thanks, Google!

Seeing what folks have said, I kind of feel bad griping about my own issues, but as of now I have nobody else to really talk to (or at least that's the way it feels), so here goes:

• Work has been up and down. It has been super stressful and intense at times - especially on Mondays, and then calms down as the week goes on. It doesn't help that we have half our team members and next week our team lead is going on holiday. And next week is going to be the start of support, where I'll need to be available 24/7 (it's a thing, and apparently it pays super well and also can help for a promotion)
• I bought a house in March and things are still ongoing from the sellers side despite being virtually done on my side. This wouldn't be so stressful had it not been for the fact that I have a mortgage offer that will expire at the end of October, and given how the seller wants 4 weeks to paint their new house before I get the keys(!!!) that means I'll need to factor the 4 weeks into the expiry and eventually consider putting my foot down and pulling out (which I don't want to do, but interest rates have drastically changed in the UK, so I'm unlikely to have an extension or the same offer again)
• A few weeks ago I got shingles, and I had medicine for that (stress from house and work). Went over to my sisters and she started talking to me about the foot fungus she saw on my feet as well as fungal infection behind my ear. The behind-the-ear requires a shampoo, so that's simple. The toenail fungal infection requires toenail clippings as well as blood test to check my liver. Yesterday the results came back slightly borderline for my kidneys, so I'm going to have to repeat the results (also I have to avoid alcohol and eat more fruit). At this point I can't help but feel like my body is a Rube Goldberg machine and while it's nice that my sister is spotting these issues, it just makes me feel slightly depressed about my body.
• The weather in the UK as well as the health issues has left me a bit house bound, and more importantly, I feel incredibly lonely.

But on the plus side:

• I have a very, very well paid job that seems to actually compensate me for the effort I put in - much, much more than my last job
• I have a genuinely very caring family that wants the best for me
• I'm lucky to live in a time when I can just write this post and several strangers will see it, even if they don't respond. In some ways, the loneliness is much more in my head
• I already ate 3 bits of fruit yesterday and I had one before my dinner (this is actually quite a big deal for me) :D
• I'm self aware enough to spot when I'm catastrophising and (hopefully) I can make an active effort to nip it in the bud. Sometimes its easy, and other times it's mentally exhausting.
• I'm sure there are others out there who are doing much worse with taking care of their bodies than me.
• I am not depressed yet. I may have bouts of anxiety through the day, but I think this is manageable.

It is such a shame for Matthew Perry to pass away at 54. It's a very young age, too.

• maybe some games you don’t want to spend time tweaking the launch options, the graphics, the sliders, the mods etc and you just want to play the game as the devs intended. Switch is good for that.
• maybe there are times you don’t want to deal with all the hassles of a handled pc as a gaming system. Switch is good for that.
• maybe you want to play Nintendo games, but you don’t want to go through all the hassle of emulation (especially switch games). Switch is good for that.
• maybe there is an indie dev you want to support, and you know their game is more expensive on switch than on pc, but it’s well within your budget and you want to give them extra coin. Switch is good for that.
• while switch games are generally low fidelity and low frame rate, you know what to generally expect going in.
• maybe your group of friends mostly own switch and play switch online compared to steam.

Truth be told, once I got my steam deck, I sold my switch. Not because the switch was terrible by any means, but I realised that I missed my pc game library, I didn’t care for online multiplayer, and I didn’t care for Nintendo games. Also, I grew up with Linux and tinkering both Windows and Linux - it’s in my blood at this point, so getting a steam deck was just pure joy for me, even if I spent 90% of the time configuring the thing and 10% playing games.

It's funny. When I saw this last night, I was in such disbelief that I was watching the real trailer that I was nitpicking all the way going "Nah, this looks bad, R* wouldn't do that. That looks too good for a GTA game" etc until I double-and-triple-checked the links and went "oh".

Now I've had a few hours to digest:

• The buildings and environments look absolutely beautiful
• It seems to be running at 60FPS? Thank goodness
• The characters look... waxy... I will say that black characters look absolutely phenomenal - much better than previous entries
• This whole game sort of feels like "GTA V+", which makes sense. Unfortunately, I've overhyped myself to a level that R* could never achieve. Not really R*'s problem, but still a bummer.
• Looking at some of the social media/news freeze frames, it seems a lot of the satire's edginess has been toned down a lot. Honestly? Thank goodness. GTA V was nauseating in how much it was trying to be a shock-jockey. However, I hope R* will still have its political leaning. Even if I don't agree with R*, it (usually) is something of substance and is usually somewhat grown up (with exception of GTA V)
• I would bet money that GTA VI will be delayed to 2026.
• It will be interesting to see how the writing will be now that Dan Houser has left. It seems OK so far.
• Everyone's faces look so expressive except for the two main characters. They just look kind of robotic

EDIT: One massive thing I forgot - the marketing for this was so stupid. R* kept saying "Upcoming Grand Theft Auto title" as if it wasn't going to be called "Grand Theft Auto VI" like they called GTA5 "Grand Theft Auto V" and the one before with roman numerals. Like, for goodness sakes guys, get over yourselves. We know it's going to be called Grand Theft Auto VI.

Well... it has a headphone jack (at least according to this)

I don't think folks realise how much effort and investment Valve has put into making Linux a viable gaming alternative for modern-ish games.

Most distributors use Windows because it is easy to install and setup for gaming. Is it perfect? No. But any vendor can pay Microsoft and get a viable OS for gaming.

Linux will need a lot of custom graphics card drivers and a lot of tweaking (think power as well as graphical features, memory, CPU etc) to get the optimum performance. Most OSes out of the box have OKish performance for gaming, which is OK for any hobbyist but would be a disaster for a consumer product.

And before Valve came along, Proton wasn't even a thing. Proton is now a thing, and the way Steam utilises it makes it effortless, but it will need a fair bit of custom args to get it working well.

Each of these things separately can be quite painful in its own right, but altogether it would be a headache for any company not well versed in Linux. Not only that, but having to provide customer support for a Linux OS would put the fear in most companies.

I would imagine most vendors would just slap Windows on their machine and be like "you know what to do with this" and let them go nuts.

Your avatar gets cat ears (more like extra triangles like cat ears on your avatar)

About damn time

How to tell if you are chatting with an AI chatbot

Given the revelation that it hooks into Spotify to get playlists etc, I really wish there wasn't that strong of a dependency on Spotify, and that I could just search for songs and start playing.

I was hoping for more YouTube music player, and less Spotify.

I have Spotify Premium which I pay for, and the desktop client is very fast and snappy to play songs. SpotTube is OK, but it isn't as snappy as Spotify. For something that is free, that is absolutely fine, but the fact it requires Spotify for playlist etc...

I definitely get why. Spotify does playlist generation like no other, and it is the biggest platform by far. But I kind of wish I had a version that wasn't all about the algorithms.

Also, the way you "login" to Spotify on the desktop is incredibly user un-friendly at best, and incredibly brittle at worst. Copying and pasting a cookie that Spotify uses shouldn't be used as a way to login to any service, like, at all. And if Spotify are smart, they'll break this functionality within a month or so using something like Fingerprint.js to identify which device the session belongs to, thus invalidating the session.

I had no idea! Thanks for the list, I'll check them out!

EDIT: It seems like a lot of these are Android apps. I was looking for desktop apps if I was being honest. That, and I have an iPhone.

It's weird. There have been folks who have been charmed endlessly by this man, and then there are folks like me who saw him for the hypersexual creep that he has always been.

Also, it's been known that Katherine Ryan has effectively called him out to his face on a panel show, and also did a documentary with Louis Theroux and talking about Russel Brand's behaviour without directly or indirectly addressing him for litigious reasons.

Just checked the guy's YouTube, and it seems he is on the anti-vax, right-wing train for some time.

Here is a reddit thread from about 9 months ago when it was just rumours:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/z2pnjz/which_famous_british_comedian_is_katherine_ryan

So I have phenylketonuria, and a big part of this is being in tune with my brain and my mental/emotional/physical well-being as to try and gauge when my phenylalanine levels are high.

Since I’ve had my phenylalanine levels so low, I was able to correctly find out my levels were high.

As to catastrophising, unfortunately that is a symptom of high phe levels. I’ve been working on lowering my phe levels, and today was the first day I didn’t feel any anxiety or catastrophe despite starting something 24h support at work today for a week.

Thank you so very much!

It's a joke.

I feel a lot better today. I think part of it is writing things out and actually visualising my situation. I think another part was your reply, which helped me feel seen, so thank you.

Sorry to hear about your depression. Sounds like a hell of a bump from your old job - good on you for getting the job!!

For anyone who wants a bit more condensed version, you can read his Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrissey#Race_and_support_for_Anne_Marie_Waters

The funniest thing to come from Morrissey acting like an utter bellend was when The Simpsons did a parody of Morrissey and he got very upset: https://www.morrisseycentral.com/messagesfrommorrissey/hello-hell

I didn't really consider 2D indie games. For 3D indie games, some games are cut down while others are "good enough" to the average Switch end user.

At the end of the day, if the ability to play 3D games from about 5-10 years ago in 30-60fps sounds like a dream to you and you are willing to jump through some Launch Properties/Proton version hoops for some games in order to get that perfect gameplay (for example, I have GTA 3/Vice City/San Andreas OG games, and I spent days modding the games on the SD to get it running close to flawlessly as possible) rather than settle for compromised ports - which for the average person playing video games, they wouldn't care too much about framerates or graphical fidelity as so much as the convenience to push Play and just go), then Steam Deck is for you.

Otherwise, Switch is perhaps preferrable. OR, if you care more about visual fidelity more than anything, maybe consider getting a PS5/XSX. I say this as I do love my Steam Deck for GTA5 sessions, but for RE games I often go to my XSX.

No worries. I'm genuinely relieved you were joking too!!

I absolutely love this song. I'm glad someone else in lemmy land loves the song too!

And here I am, just waiting on the next fediverse app to be written in Java so I can actually contribute code 🥲

So a few weeks back it's been officially confirmed I'm being made redundant.

I had a job interview last Friday - late stage. I'm hoping they come back with some positive news. The interview went okay. I think I did well with the Java stuff, but when I was asked about Javascript Event Loops, I was completely befuzzled.

Back at work, and we all have to act like we give a shit. Not too great, I wish I was done with the company overall.

Luckily I have another job interview next week - something to look forward too!

Overall, a pretty resounding "meh".

That’s actually a really good point. I think, ui wise, skype and slack served a different audience. I think skype was about 1-2-1 messages and calls, whereas Slack was about chatting amongst team members.

Teams as a product feels like a really direct competitor to Slack in a way that Skype could never do (at least in the last iteration I used it in).

As for Teams, same here. In my last job I had slack and it was quite pleasant to use. Now at my new(ish) job and we are all forced to use Teams as part of the license. And I guess that is the reason behind EUs decision right there.

D:

Please Christ let this be better than gta definitive edition!!!

This is absolutely something I would expect to come out of the Mastodon community, and I'm all for it.

zapper lads

I think you got it the other way round - EU are upset that Microsoft used its massive customer base with Office to ship a video conferencing product like Teams for free in order to dominate that market.

I assure you, very few people would actively seek an individual Teams license. I’m very sure companies force their employees to use Teams as it’s part of the license.

Teams, especially when compared to Slack, is incredibly slow and bloated while being entirely lacklustre. Slack is lean and efficient at what it sets out to do (while being pretty expensive).