Here's some "high quality" (heh heh) anecdata for you: I navigated from my house in Somerville to a restaurant in the Seaport district of Boston last night, in the POURING rain using public transit and walking.

Google maps literally was leading me around in circles downtown once I got off the train, so I switched to Apple Maps and it was straight shooting from there on in.

I think GMaps is more susceptible to the tall buildings fouling the GPS. Not sure why?

I get it.

I don't love Snaps either.

However, a thing I try to remember and wish others would as well is simply this: Canonical is a company. Their goal is to make money. They are not out to create the ultimate free as in freedom Linux distribution.

This does (to my mind) not make them evil, and ESPECIALLY doesn't make the folks who work there evil. It makes them participants in the great horrible game that is Capitalism, and expecting anything else from them is going to lead to heartache, as you've seen.

If you want a Linux distro that shares your preferences and won't try to jam snaps down your throat, you might consider giving Debian a whirl as many others have.

Continuing to ride the Ubuntu train and raging against the dying of the light when it continues chugging in the direction it's been headed for YEARS seems ... futile :)

This project just warms the cockles of my nerdy old heart :)

Bringing a crappy CRAPPY old protocol to life with awesome, secure, new 100% FLOSS technology so boatloads of homegrown art and culture can be saved?

YES PLEASE! :)

Github

All the benefits of the network effect without the crippling reliance on a single MegaCorp to keep the lights on and not turn hostile like the owners of SourceForge, Reddit, and Freenode IRC.

Would also solve a problem I'm not hearing anyone at all talk about - what happens when the Gitlab / Gittea / whatever instances projects are hosting run out of money and go dark? Those sources are lost forever.

I think by far the biggest problem with open source is that the user community fundamentally mis-understands the nature of the transaction involving them and the developer(s) of the software they're using.

I think if we could make everyone sit down, take 10 minutes and just read The Social Contract Of Open Source a lot of people would keep developing OSS software.

Brass tacks: You are being given a gift. The person who gave you that gift owes you NOTHING because.. They gave you a gift and by using their software you chose to accept it.

I see it all the time in the open source project I co-maintain, and I have it SUPER easy beacause ours is really just a bundle of configuration files for Neovim.

Couldn't agree more.

For what it's worth I think Brett Cannon wrote one of the best posts ever on the social contract of open source and how Not To Be That Guy :)

https://snarky.ca/the-social-contract-of-open-source/

Should be required reading IMO for anyone ever on Github :P

Long shot here: Donate to charities which help people in need in predominantly Trump held districts.

Less of a long shot: Volunteer for organizations like Vote Forward to try to reach folks. We're all human beings at the end of the day, and appealing to people can't hurt.

It's great!

The single biggest problem i see is the lack of network effect.

We need more people to use Lemmy and create and participate in communities. I know part of that is actually using and participating ourselves. so I will try to be better about seeking out active communities already here and patronizing them regularly :)

Post pandemic, this kind of ID "verification" is SUPER bogus, but it's quite common unfortunately, and, tbh, I can't think of a better way to handle it that isn't either in person or via snail mail.

Not great for sure, but most likely not racist, or at least not purposefully so (not that that matters).

A thing I wish more Linux enthusiasts were more up front about: And prepare for PAPER CUTS! Because they're there. Most Linux folks ^1 probably do 5-6 things a day that new folks would find confusing or infuriating, just because they Get Used To It.

A perfect example: My Linux desktop is a System76 Thelio-r2 running Manjaro KDE latest, which I LOVE. Every time I boot it up, if I want to use my BT speakers or headphones ^2 I have to go into the BT settings panel, wonder why it says "Bluetooth Disabled - Enable Bluetooth", click the button, and move on with my day.

Turns out this is because of a kernel bug in the latest kernel versions with Intel bluetooth hardware. The driver times out at system boot, and thus the system is disabled by default. By the time you're fully booted, that time out never happens so if you just click Enable, you're good to go.

And these things are additive. They pile up and increase frustration for end users who aren't savvy enough to know which forums to search on or what search terms to pump into their search engines.

This does not mean you shouldn't try Linux. Please do! It can be a life changer and a serious power up! But be aware that the path will have many small roadblocks that need to be traversed, so just set your expectations accordingly, explore and have fun!

^1: I use Windows, Linux and Mac as need dictates. Let "tool to task" be the whole of the law :)

^2: Perfect example: Many Linux users wouldn't use Bluetooth speakers! They'd get wired ones or one of those RF thingies that has long time Linux driver support. But if you're new, you don't know that!

Interesting assertion, but is it really?

The Linux kernel is a single software product produced by a single entity and ultimately controlled by a small cadre of highly trusted people.

Joplin because I struggled for years with a consistent way to keep and refer to notes that I could find easily at a moment's notice and access from any device, anywhere.

(Please don't tell me about how you use a text editor and markdown in your home directory Like GH* INTENDED because I tried that FOR A DECADE and it didn't work for me. I'm old and cranky. Get off my lawn! :)

I think pretty much anyone would agree that pervasive public transit with pervasive coverage and short wait times would be pretty much ideal.

I hate to be cynical but I can't see us getting there any time soon in the US. Mainstream American culture is so delusional about the idea that we're all RUGGED INDIVIDUALISTS that the idea of touching people is utterly repugnant.

I would love to dream of a world where this could happen, and maybe I should stop dreaming about self driving cars and start dreaming about this instead :)

Meanwhile, public transit everywhere in the US besides Manhattan is utterly abysmal and even in cities like Boston where public transit is decent-ish most people who can drive do.

Those who can't either take a taxi/Lyft if they can afford it, and if they can't afford it they suffer. It's the American Way.

I think "malls" in the traditional sense of giant concrete behemoths with nothing but row after row of stored and fast food were killed by online, but if you open up the definition a bit, some are thriving.

Like where I live, it's an 'archology'. A mix of residential units on top and commercial on the bottom. All outdoors which is a draw for folks in the forever pandemic world.

Computer Engineering For Big Babies

I love objects that teach and are fun to play with :)

Points for honesty, but how does one find exploitation free porn? I know some smart women who would say there is no such thing.

So being a sexual creature like any other, I get it but also maybe it's OK if that just lives on pornhub or whatever :)

I don't understand this.

How would one federate a shopping cart or an e-commerce store?

I mean, I'm not asking for technical details because we're brain storming, but even in concept I'm struggling with this :)

Is that contract copyrighted?

I looked at their site and thought: What a #!@$ stupid idea.

The whole thing stinks of Twitter brain. "Follow topics, not people"? So what you're saying is that the null brains on Twitter are far too focused on whenever one of the Kardassians farts to focus on anything real?

Puhh-lease. The Fediverse isn't about that all.

Hard pass.

Kinda disappointing how much of the community just takes a giant 💩 on Mozilla whatever it does these days. Funding open source is super crazy hard folks. Notice that the really successful well funded projects are fueled by megacorps?

Offering constructive criticism is great but if you don't have better ideas around how to fund an open browser without selling your soul to GOOG or MSFT then perhaps your energy might be better spent elsewhere.

This. I've seen SO much hype and FUD and all the while there are thousands of developers grinding out code using these tools.

Does code quality suffer? ONLY in my experience if they have belt wielding bean counters forcing them to ship well before it's actually ready for prime time :)

The tools aren't perfect, and they most DEFINITELY aren't a panacea. The industry is in a huge contraction phase right now so I think we have a while before we have to worry about AI induced layoffs, and if that happens the folks doing the laying off are being incredibly short sighted and likely to have a high impact date with a wall coming in the near future anyway.

Hey would you be willing to pass the site you found this on so we can all studiously avoid it? :)

I think a lot of the hating on Gamepass is justified, but I've just gotta say as a partially blind gamer it has been a godsend for me.

I used to struggle with whether or not to buy a game every single time because in most cases there is no way from descriptions and reviews for me to know how any given game will work with my vision and fine/gross motor impairment.

With gamepass I can try things and if I can't play it? I move on and try something else.

Kinda sad that we can't find some middle ground between making games accessible for disabled folks without bankrupting developers and ultimately hurting consumers.

Yeah definitely more musical genre related subs would be great. I loved /r/electronica and /r/dubstep before Reddit's CEO made me wanna hurl and I stopped using their site.

Yes I loved /r/draw /r/digitalpainting and some others.

Steam groups are simply a way of finding others to play games with online. The group doesn't need to be game specific and could involve whatever game the members wanted.

I myself can't really do shooters / twitch gaming so I hear you!

That's really great to hear! It's an incredible vision for an open source future not dependent on MegaCorps, and I am SO here for that!

I won't moralize because that never stopped anyone from doing anything, ever :)

What I will say is, with the vastness of the internet available to me, I would not personally choose to sift through the reams of malice and hate to find the useful grains that no doubt exist, buried.

Plenty of other permissive fora where even somewhat radical ideas can be expressed but without the embrace of genocide, Neo-Nazism and rape.

I would spend more time doing charity work and contributing to open source.

I already volunteer for a reproductive justice charity, and I would LOVE to devote more time to making the Linux desktop more accessible for visually impaired folks like me.

I don't love this question.

I spent a huge chunk of my life putting so much focus into being "nice" that some friends sremovedd about me being "a doormat".

Also? The word "nice" has so many soft negative connotations in 2024.

Subtext: if you're "nice" you're fundamentally un-interesting Subtext: if you're "nice" you're a push over and ripe to be taken advantage of.

GOOD person? MORAL person? OK.

Nice? Asking anyone to attribute this to themselves is a foot gun.

Former Amazon employee here - Twitch is IMO a perfect example of Amazon tactics. Acquire, ignore, drain the engineering team down to a skeleton crew, further en- 💩 -ify the platform, and then wonder why profits are dwindling.

What I initially wrote:I'm old and nervous, and while some small part of my brain reads this and says "Cool! Neat!" the larger part IMMEDIATELY leaps to other ... things.

I feel like I need to say the quiet bit out loud here, and will do so in the hope that it will be taken for what it is - collegial discourse around a topic of shared interest.

I'm super concerned about this idea. There are so many ramifications that verge into the negative here that it makes my head spin.

How can we be sure that the training corpi used to create said Porn AI will be free of images drawn from sex trafficking and/or abuse victims? What about images from folks who gave freely when they were 18 and in high school but now are 28 and applying for jobs as school teachers?

Also, how will the AI "understand" things like informed consent? Even more questionable are things like social norms

Anyway, it will certainly be interesting to watch this space evolve.

I'll take "Product Categories That SHOULD NEVER EXIST" for $1000 Alex!

Yeah, "brand new" hardware is rough in the Linux-verse :) I think Linux advocates need to be more up front with that as well. Quite a number of them are rocking 15 year old Thinkpads because that's what they read will maximize compatibility.

We do have horses! Some horses. Not nearly as many as just about any other state you could think of :)

But mostly we have apples. And baked beans. Didn't you watch Goodwill Hunting ? :)

Mostly? I have uncompressed FLAC encoded music on my Plex server, and I listen to that streaming through over ear (Bose NC-700) headphones on a computer, or on our home theater system (Monitor UK, 2 stand speakers, 2 rear wall speakers, 1 subwoofer) with an Onkyo receiver.

I also listen to Tidal hifi a bunch and electronica on youtube because some of the Boiler Room and other club mixes are pretty dope :)

Hat tip to you for including some classic games. Most of the respondants are making me feel positively antediluvian :)

• Last Splash by the Breeders
• White Album - The Beatles
• The Wall - Pink Floyd

They publish Runescape.

I never played it, I know it was ENORMOUSLY popular with a certain generation of folks :)

Baldur's Gate 3 on the desktop because it's so good and Bayonetta on my Steamdeck because I got it dirt cheap from humble bundle and it plays great there :)