Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the...
First of all, I already have Game Pass, so you don't get any new sales.
Second, if I open the settings app in Windows 11, it just straight up crashes. (Can access the other tabs, e.g. through desktop customisation. But if I go to the front page, it crashes.)
It was broken by the update that supposedly added some other ads. But I've not seen them! I had to disable the "recommendations" in start menu because it made the start menu not work at all (due to the aforementioned crash, same deal).
This actually really sucks, though. Windows Store apps do not update themselves, Xbox services stopped working (due to being unable to update WS games), and I don't know if Windows Update works or not. I guess I need to reinstall when I get arsed to.
I miss my SoundBlaster Live! card. Excellent sound quality. Last used with the last computer I built, in the late-mid-2000s. That was the second computer I had that had on-board audio, and I just didn't bother with on-board audio because I just straight up assumed it was going to be shit. Unfortunately it stopped working at some point, along with the GPU (I suspect a static electricity fuck-up on my part, or something) which didn't matter all that much because I was mostly using the system as a server at that point.
(I'm going to build a new NAS server from ground up later this year, and I'm contemplating getting an external DAC for it for use with musicpd. Wonder if there's still SoundBlaster branded DACs, or are they gone? ...Oh they're still around!? Good.)
I mean, C is a high level language? Now, sure, C isn't a super expressive language and every C statement compiles to very few assembly instructions comparatively speaking, but it has a whole lot of stuff that assembly doesn't have. Like nice loops and other control structures and such, and not worry about which processor registers are used.
There's still a few sites I deploy changes to using ssh+rsync. ...which is made considerably easier by the fact that it's just a static website generated with Jekyll.
Oh no. You know shit is really terrible when they cannot even afford to communicate at 8 bits. It's 5 bits Baudot code. Capital letters only. They actually had to pay extra for @, #, and $. Thankfully, by 1870s, % was part of the character set. My heart's with anyone who can't just blast UTF-8 out wherever they can.
(Edit: In case you're wondering why it has a weird gif attached to it: The Memelord, Musky Elon, has decreed that you can actually attach a shitty random gif FOR FREE. So of course any cash strapped institution will do so.)
The whole "The_Donald was a FBI honeypot" is a pretty strongly persistent urban legend. And obviously false. Surprises me how many people thought that was legitimate.
Ask yourself: Shouldn't there have been results sooner? Would FBI (or whoever) have left an obviously dangerous forum open for honeypot purposes for years and years? If this really was a honeypot operation, wouldn't they have made arrests as soon as they could? And if this really was the case, shouldn't we have the details by now (FOIA requests or whatever)?
Of course not. US law enforcement would have immediately involved themselves if there were any credible threats posted there. But they don't really do much about festering pits of far-right radicalisation. It was left open with the full approval of Reddit admins. Can't really claim ignorance on their part either.
Hillary was hardly alone in that. Can't find the exact video, but the point of the video that Jimmy Kimmel platformed Trump, with the guise that the show was "apoliticial". The video argued that that was not the case. The broader argument: "If you're atheistic, you denounce the existence of gods. If you're polytheistic, you acknowledge the existence of multiple gods. Now, if you acknowledge the views of all political candidates going your way, you are not apolitical. You're polypolitical."
The applications for "NOSLEEP" and "R/NOSLEEP" were filed by Reddit Inc in... August 3, 2018?
And "THE NO SLEEP PODCAST" by Creative Reason Media (the actual publishers of the podcast) was filed in August 5, 2016, but... got dismissed or abandoned?
In 2020 I bought a new tablet just so I could get back to reading books.
99% of time I've used it for YouTube.
I'm getting back to reading more ebooks just now, OK?
(A local ebook store said it's quitting this month. As I was transferring my EPUB purchases to Google Play Books, I realised I hadn't actually used this app for ages. Despite, you know, it being one of the few ebook readers I like.)
Oh wow, FBReader was literally the first Android EPUB reader I used... In 2013 or so. I guess I need to see how it has improved since then.
Also, Calibre and I have a strong frenemies relationship. Once upon a time I wanted to meticulously download, de-DRM, catalog and locally archive all of my ebooks. But while Calibre has the technological chops to do it, usability is a bit quirky. I actually just installed Calibre at my current system and will bring over my old ebook library as soon as I dig up my old laptop. And also bring over about a decade of Kindle purchases (most unread, yeah).
Edit: Wikipedia on FBReader:
In 2015 the software for all platforms became closed-source: the old open-source code hasn't been updated since. The Android app was split into Free and Premium versions,
Awwwww crap. Hope there's an actually maintained open source fork.
True! One of the big things that really put me off from reading ebooks was that I used to buy book bundles (e.g. from HumbleBundle) and then just dumped them in my library. I really should have been cataloging each new book bundle, but I didn't, somehow. I just saw a giant big mess of my own doing in the ebook library and went "nope" and that just became another Big Pile of Stuff I Need To Deal With Later.
Despite the obvious levity, this is actually serious. It was made by why the lucky stiff, a pretty prominent member of Ruby community, back in the day. This, however, was part of his mysterious burnout manifesto, for lack of better term. He really really bloody needed a break....
Also shout out to all shell programmers and turtle graphicians and turtle roboticians! Turtles are really awesome, they have shell access! And won't be rushing to push anything on production too fast either.
Clearly, the superiour mode is to just use keyword based scoping (à la Ruby do ... end). When I was a kid I read an OBSCENE MAGAZINE where I saw a Forth program go dup dup dup and I was like "ok so what's the problem here? Things happen and everything is just keywords?" and my young mind was corrupted forever I guess
Here's an amazing business plan: take the old designs for a railbus. Remove chassis, design a new chassis, but make it all futuristic. Show it to the investors. They'll say "but I want a pod!" And then you say "But it is a pod. A megapod, even!" And they'll squint and go "oh I see. Let's make 1000 of them."
(And actually this is exactly what people have done in the past. Cool futuristic exterior hiding what's basically just a diesel bus with train wheels.)
When I read the sentence, I was like "Wh... w... how? WHY? ...and OF COURSE it was distributed via FTP, I mean, what else do you use for entertainment in AIX. Or business, for that matter."...
Heh. I should try digging out the Nintendo DS browser and see how it works with Lemmy. That thing worked with barely any damn websites even when it was new. And it didn't help that DS only worked on open Wi-Fi (and WEP, but that was pretty much broken already by the time the browser came out)
It wasn't really Microsoft that killed Nokia's cell phone division, but gave it the final blow that made the house of cards fall.
Nokia was basically getting super arrogant. "Oh, trust us, we're the #1 phone manufacturer on the planet. We know what's best for the market". They got caught completely pants down when iPhone came out. Despite the fact that they had already made successful smartphones (Nokia Communicator line). Despite the fact that there was this one small Finnish company that had made a touchscreen based phone and Nokia just laughed them off when they offered to help.
Every move Nokia made after iPhone was basically playing catch-up with some really strange decisions.
I believe that Nokia could have salvaged themselves if, instead of going with Windows Phone, they had just announced they'll be Yet Another Android Manufacturer. But Nokia had to be special about it. They had invested in Ovi (app store) and Here (map service) and they just had to be special. (And even more ironic is that HMD Global is doing just fine as a maker of Nokia-branded Android phones these days.)
The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google....
I really need to go through my old files and find The Screenshot from around 1999-2000. Basically, I searched for something in AltaVista and got back a page that was super chock full of ads and "portal crud". ...and a tiny little text that you really had to squint for, somewhere in the middle, that said there were no search results, actually. I got the strong impression that this search engine was fucked.
Sometimes Google's results are kind of starting to look like the same, except the crud is in the actual results. Which is something Google could do something about. I mean, they used to care about SEO spam.
TERFs? Posting interesting and positive content? I don't think so, Elon - they're usually regurgitating same bullshit over and over, and being as miserable as possible. Just like the Twitter's usual far right user base, but somehow even more so.
Homebrew people: "This patch changed nothing, except they tried to plug a hole. Damn, took us almost 10 minutes to counteract that this time!"
(OK, there was one system update where they added the ability to run stuff off of the SD card, but beside that, there were a whole bunch of updates where they tried to stay ahead of homebrew/pirates and failed spectacularly.)
Can we just say that Cybertruck is basically a sum of everything wrong with right wing wackos?
"Look at me, I'm a badass, driving around in a badass vehicle, unlike you filthy libruls. ... Aww shucks! There's road salt! And my accelerator pedal just fell off wtf. ...OH NO! A LITTLE WATER TOO! Anything but that!"
Debian, the cool guy distro in 1999. The machine overlords run on Red Hat.
In the low budget parody version, Neo ran Slackware, and the climatic battle was basically about Agent Smith somehow fucking up his libc.so.6 but then Trinity got him a copy of the file on 3.5" floppy from another system. Or something.
It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you'd love alternatives for?
The frustrating thing is that, at least for me, there are no perfect word processors geared for novels and other scenarios where you manage large text masses.
Scrivener is one of those cases where you have a pretty excellent software that doesn't have a lot of problems OSS alternatives have. I have smooth time with it. But at the same time, the software always could be better.
Probably the best OSS novel writing software I've used is Org-Mode for Emacs. But, you know, it's based on Emacs, so it squeaks around the edges and gives the impression that it's a miracle it runs as brilliantly as it does.
Microsoft has gone too far: including a Game Pass ad in the Settings app ushers in a whole new age of ridiculous over-advertising ( www.techradar.com )
Windows 11 is getting out of hand with its push for advertisments, frankly - remember the recent full-screen pop-up to persuade users to install Edge or other Microsoft services? Then another advertisment was placed in the Start menu, and now Microsoft has finally worn my temper thin - with a new Game Pass ad coming to the...
"Soundblaster" was such an 80s/90s name for a computer part. ( lemmy.world )
It's called attaining divinity ( sh.itjust.works )
Old timers know ( sh.itjust.works )
The dying gasps of NY Public Library Social Media ( lemmy.world )
Of course they did, and of course Reddit caved. ( lemmy.world )
Shocking News: Reddit has trademarks for forum names like "Explain Like I'm Five" registered on USPTO. ( tsdr.uspto.gov )
I thought stuff like "Explain Like I'm Five" and "AMA" was proprietary to the community, or at least the Reddit community, not Reddit as a company....
Reader's Block ( lemmy.world )
Programmer Pain Chart ( lemmy.world )
Despite the obvious levity, this is actually serious. It was made by why the lucky stiff, a pretty prominent member of Ruby community, back in the day. This, however, was part of his mysterious burnout manifesto, for lack of better term. He really really bloody needed a break....
Happy World Turtle Day! One of my favourite turtle-releated software development things is that Firefox console will show a little turtle icon on slow requests. Picture also related. ( lemmy.world )
Also shout out to all shell programmers and turtle graphicians and turtle roboticians! Turtles are really awesome, they have shell access! And won't be rushing to push anything on production too fast either.
Not really sure whether S-expressions or Python indentation-based scoping get more hate... ( programming.dev )
...from people who seem to refuse to install paredit or coloring plugins for either?...
Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand ( newatlas.com )
People keep telling me that Nuon is probably the most obscure video game platform ever created. Oh, they've not heard how the greybeards entertain themselves. ( lemmy.world )
When I read the sentence, I was like "Wh... w... how? WHY? ...and OF COURSE it was distributed via FTP, I mean, what else do you use for entertainment in AIX. Or business, for that matter."...
hey lemmy.blahaj.zone fix your ruleing website ( lemmy.blahaj.zone )
if i can use reddit on my 3ds then why not lemmy
That time when Microsoft bought and killed Nokia phone unit ( www.theregister.com )
When bad management meets bad software, even great hardware is useless
The Verge shows how Google search is useless ( www.theverge.com )
The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google....
That feeling when even Elon Musk thinks you're insufferable ( lemmy.world )
So what's changed Microsoft? ( lemmy.world )
Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after car wash ( www.theregister.com )
Bulletproof? Is it waterproof? Ts&Cs say: 'Failure to put Cybertruck in Car Wash Mode may result in damage'
What distro he uses? 🐧💻 ( lemmy.ml )
What apps would you love to have open-source alternatives for?
It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you'd love alternatives for?