Spiracle

I’ve had issues since kernel 6.4. Since early December, one pair of Bluetooth headphones works again (mostly, with occasional connection issues), but the AirPods still fail to pair at all.

It did. I must have mixed them up. Not sure about the desktop/gaming divide, I mostly get my info from random articles.

Based on a brief search, you may be correct on both counts. I’ll fix my post. Thanks for pointing it out.

If Windows works fine for you and does not annoy you, there is no need to migrate.

Personally, I’ve been mostly happy using Linux as my sole desktop OS for ~15 years. However, I only switched because Windows kept breaking and reinstalling no longer fixed it. I couldn’t imagine going back now, but a big part is probably being used to it.

These days most major Linux distributions should be fine for desktop use.

Linux Mint Cinnamon use to be the go-to beginner distribution. Its design is apparently somewhat similar to Windows, giving you some initial familiarity. Linux Mint is also based on Ubuntu, which used to be so widespread that many support pages and simple how-to instruction still default to explaining it for Ubuntu.
(This can still lead to confusion if you search for “install [Windows program] Linux” and the instructions work for Ubuntu based distribution only, not for any other distros.)

The last few years, I’ve seen a switch to Arch-based distributions around. Valve itself switched away from Ubuntu to Arch in some ways. (On Steam, the system requirements still use Ubuntu as default.) SteamOS used to be based on Debian, which Ubuntu is related to, until the Steam Deck. Now it is based on Arch. More specifically, Valve seems to default to:

Base: Arch
Desktop environment: KDE Plasma (more powerful/options than Cinnamon)
Compositor base: Wayland for gaming, old X11 for Steam Deck’s desktop. (Apparently Wayland isn’t quite ready yet for that in their opinion.)

EDIT: Fixed thanks to feedback.

Arch itself is seen as a more technical distribution. There are extremely many support pages for every issue or question you may have, similar to Ubuntu, but some may be more difficult to understand. Still, support systems improve as the user base grows and Arch is growing.

For specific distributions, EndeavourOS is the one I’ve heard about being the most friendly. Manjaro is also beginner-friendly, but the folks who maintain it have some serious issues with seriously fucking things up sometimes.

https://itsfoss.com/arch-based-linux-distros/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVlD17OjFAc (Video compiling Manjaro fuckups.)

Dang it.

At least the new vaccine is supposed to protect against the newest variant. Not looking forward to another shot, though.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/what-to-know-about-the-eg5-variant

It failed to boot for me, too. Only worked when I stopped asking it to encrypt the hard drive.

To be honest, only laziness is stopping me from switching to another OS, though. Very poor experience so far.

Finally. I haven’t seen a single positive use of these yet due to the poor performance. Only slightly more accurate than professors or lawyers asking ChatGPT whether something was written by ChatGPT.

Direct link to the (short) report this article refers to:

https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:vb515nd6874/20230724-fediverse-csam-report.pdf

https://purl.stanford.edu/vb515nd6874

After reading it, I’m still unsure what all they consider to be CSAM and how much of each category they found. Here are what they count as CSAM categories as far as I can tell. No idea how much the categories overlap, and therefore no idea how many beyond the 112 PhotoDNA images are of actual children.

1. 112 instances of known CSAM of actual children, (identified by PhotoDNA)
2. 713 times assumed CSAM, based on hashtags.
3. 1,217 text posts talking about stuff related to grooming/trading. Includes no actual CSAM or CSAM trading/selling on Mastodon, but some links to other sites?
4. Drawn and Computer-Generated images. (No quantity given, possibly not counted? Part of the 713 posts above?)
5. Self-Generated CSAM. (Example is someone literally selling pics of their dick for Robux.) (No quantity given here either.)

Personally, I’m not sure what the take-away is supposed to be from this. It’s impossible to moderate all the user-generated content quickly. This is not a Fediverse issue. The same is true for Mastodon, Twitter, Reddit and all the other big content-generating sites. It’s a hard problem to solve. Known CSAM being deleted within hours is already pretty good, imho.

Meta-discussion especially is hard to police. Based on the report, it seems that most CP-material by mass is traded using other services (chat rooms).

For me, there’s a huge difference between actual children being directly exploited and virtual depictions of fictional children. Personally, I consider it the same as any other fetish-images which would be illegal with actual humans (guro/vore/bestiality/rape etc etc).

Yay, more heat. Looking forward to my skin melting off soon.

With how cyclical heat seems to be, probably the hottest year until ~4 years from now.

Just long enough for sceptics to dismiss it again, because any day without high heat means climate change is fake.

OsmAnd is my family’s go-to app for navigation. I didn’t notice it missing information compared to Google Maps. The opposite really, with several hiking trails or small side-roads not being on Google some years ago. The only issue it has is navigation for more than ~200km at a time. Often, it just times out if you try that. That’s why Google Maps is still installed on some devices.

I haven’t added anything actively. I think I might have enabled an option to send location data to improve the accuracy of the streets or something at some point, but I’m very unsure about that one.

Sadly, not that easy, since “income” no longer accounts for the huge wealth gap. Until stocks and assets are counted and taxed appropriately, the top 0.1% will remain just as wealthy.

It might work on parts of the 1% to 0.1%, though.

Not to dunk on you too hard, but this question is on the same level as “Do people actually use OnlyFans” and “Do people actually pay money on scummy gambling sites?”

Of course they do. The reasons vary from charity towards poor creatives to paying for access to exclusive content to simping for your favourite thirst trap to simply wanting to support a creator you like for a month or two.

I don’t fully understand what people get out of it in many cases like supporters of creators who get 50k+ every month but only release a bit of content once per year, but in general it makes a ton of sense.