Keynote Address at Wordcamp Canada 2025
I’m proud to say that I (Evan) will be a keynote speaker at WordCamp Canada 2025. My talk, Beyond Microblogging: WordPress Leads the Way With Long-form Text on the Social Web will cover the work that the SWF has done on long-form text with our supporters WordPress, Ghost, Write.as, and others. I’m excited to have the discussion and point the way forward for a more integrated experience of blog posts, newspaper and magazine articles, and other texts on the social web.
WordCamp Canada has a focus on interoperability and open standards this year, with a number of great speakers talking about the Fediverse, feeds, and protocols. I’m really looking forward to the content and to talking to the WordCamp community about the opportunities for the social web.
WordCamp Canada 2025
When the leaves turn, do you ever think about the days you used to head back to school? The crackle of new ideas and energy, the excitement of seeing new faces and old friends? Remember that insatiable sense of possibility, where curiosity ruled, and…WordCamp Canada 2025
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Hamas’s Strategic Gamble
Since Trump’s election, Hamas officials have said the only chance of halting Israel’s genocide resides with Trump. In the immediate aftermath of the release of the 20-point plan, Palestinian leaders from across the political landscape publicly denounced it as a surrender order and an attempt to use diplomacy to crush Palestinian resistance after Israel’s two year military assault had failed to achieve that goal.
A senior Hamas official told Drop Site that the group’s leadership understood that “this proposal was not put forward to find an end to the war. It is either total surrender or continue the war. Take it or leave it.” They viewed it as “catastrophic in the short and long term, for the resistance and for the whole Palestinian cause.” But on a strategic level, Hamas officials and other Palestinian leaders knew that formally rejecting Trump’s offer would be disastrous. The public narrative would almost certainly portray Hamas as rejecting peace even after a broad coalition of Muslim and Arab countries had endorsed it.
It was a strategic gamble; at its core, Hamas’s response was not an unequivocal acceptance of Trump’s demands, but the text was also void of any language that explicitly rejected any of his terms. It was aimed at threading a needle by crediting Trump, linking him more closely to a diplomatic alliance with Arab and other Muslim nations, and sending a message that Hamas was embracing the essence of Trump’s plan. But it also needed to preserve Palestinian rights and, most significantly, defer any answer on most of the terms laid out in the proposal. The key goal was to achieve an immediate Gaza ceasefire and to win Trump’s buy-in to restrain Netanyahu’s bloodlust and to start real negotiations.
Hamas officials knew that what Trump most wanted to hear was an unambiguous commitment to release all remaining Israeli captives and that Hamas would step down from power in Gaza. In principle, this was not difficult. Hamas had repeatedly offered to enter into an “all for all” deal throughout the genocide and to free all Israeli captives. It also repeatedly said it would relinquish governance of Gaza to an independent technocratic committee composed of Palestinians. Even though these overtures had been systematically rejected or ignored by the U.S. and Israel for months, Hamas negotiators leaned into the idea of centering them. The hope was that Trump would celebrate these commitments from Hamas as his personal victory and the product of his demands.
Hamas’s Strategic Gamble
While President Trump enthusiastically welcomed Hamas’s response to his Gaza plan, the White House and Israel deal in deception.Jeremy Scahill (Drop Site News)
Trump’s Texts to CNN Host Renew Health Speculation
Trump’s Texts to CNN Host Renew Health Speculation
CNN viewers demanded “proof of life” after the 79-year-old president conducted the interview entirely by text.Katie Francis (The Daily Beast)
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It's always neat to see how their propaganda reflects their fears and what they see in their daily life way more than what we see. Like the actual neo nazis part. If they were actually in the US they'd see all the far right neo nazis comfortably gobbling up the republican party position that - hey maybe russia isn't so bad.
It's only in Russia where they have massive amounts of neonazis directly opposed to the Russian government, who then decide to fight for ukraine. It's massive amounts of RUSSIAN neonazis they are mad about. Because Russia has a massive neonazi problem.
They tell on themselves with their propaganda constantly.
Top: hmm perhaps decades of empowering nazis has led to nazis being in power in Ukraine
Bottom: your entire comment about how everyone pointing out the above is a secret Russian
Yeah I was equally shocked by the revelation. Wait, didn't they start the whole Mccarthism thing? But all the good ol boys out there think strongman putin is neat and based for bashing the gays or something. Every talking head on the right has repeated this for years. 'We should try to be like putin.' Tucker Carlson even went and interviewed him. Did you watch the part of that special where tucker goes to a Russian grocery and gawks at Aldi style shopping carts with the quarter locks? Tried to make them out to be the pinnacle of human invention. With the wrinkled brow, he was confounded that russia could possibly be this perfect. Dumbass has never been to an Aldi.
Tucker went over there because it wasn't like putin was going to come over here right? Right? Oh wait, republican president, putin is in the US. He'd get arrested if he went to literally half of the world, but ya this normal.
What do you think MTG meant when she said "No funding shall be made available to Ukraine unless restrictions on ethnic minorities, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted"?
Not a rhetorical question. Please decipher and understand each word in that statement. I guarantee she doesn't. But you should try to understand the statement. That's not something an American would even begin to have an opinion on, let alone leverage it against ukranian aide? Let alone from MTGs mouth? I mean come on who told her to say that be real with yourself right now lmao.
Then of course there's the low level grifters like Tim pool and Laura loomer getting caught taking money for spewing russian talking points. Was kirk caught up in that? Maybe not, it just feels right.
There's been a lot of Americans that defect to Russia. They're all from the right. Either LARPers sent to the meat grinder or weirdos chasing the trad life just to be sorely disappointed. Anyone heard from Derek Huffman yet? He'll probably end up like Russell Bentley
The targeted propaganda and disinformation has been massive and they're out in the open about it. Republicans regularly share RT clones even though their main site got nuked. Margarita Simonyan will get on russian TV and straight up brag that they're spinning up thousands of fake accounts to target Republicans and any republican I meet still scoffs at the very idea like it doesn't happen.
If you've never experienced it, I dare you to install telegram and join some conservative channels on there. You think that's not a pipeline? Don't go no true scots-ing Republicans now, they're all over that shithole. It's freedom, baby.
Most certainly a giant heap of it across the board has also been some weird ass behavior of supporting russia to own the libs. Support for Ukraine had to become a partisan issue for them, because everything the left does is wrong. They've been buttered up by russian propaganda for years so saying russia good just felt right I guess.
Equally as shocking as ALL of this combined was the fact that the one republican that blew past it all and consistently wished nuclear rain against russia from the very start was Lindsey fucking Graham. What
First of all, you have no clue what you're talking about if you think the "left" supports Ukraine. Bureaucratic neoliberal technocrats in the Democratic Party turning on the money printer for Zelensky are not the left. The left doesn't exist in the US, at least not in a way that gives it agency about what foreign countries receive funding to do the US' bidding. And if the PSL got in power just to give Nazis in Ukraines guns for them to do terrorism with for 20 years after this war ends and they think Europe betrayed them, the PSL would be doing a very silly thing (but it is in character for the Dems or Republicans to pursue this strategy, it's just a repeat of operation Bloodstone, except this time they're supporting the Nazis from day 1 instead of only after the war)
Secondly, you're looking at statements by pundits and influencers to figure out what the strategy of your enemies is. That's really not very smart. If you were analyzing the collapse of the American Empire 100 years from now looking back, would you look at what Tucker Carlson was saying about Putin to discern what the state was trying to accomplish with its foreign policy? No, that's silly. You would look at what foreign policy papers from the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, the Strategic Studies Institute, and whatever other think tanks were putting out. You'd look at hearings with strategists from those think tanks, military command, and economists. And what they have to say right now is pretty clear: they want to squeeze Ukraine for all it's worth against Russia. They have no love for Russia.
The posturing from right wing influencers that you're talking about is essentially just culture war nonsense. They call the war in Ukraine a Democrat war as a culture war tactic, but that doesn't actually reflect reality. I mean, FFS, John McCain was at Kyiv during Euromaidan shaking the hands of the nazi leader of the coup! To confuse the rhetoric of false promises to their base that they would stop funding Ukraine to put America first for anything other than a boldfaced lie, just like their lies about locking up Hillary or going after big tech, is a mistake that you make for thinking the spectacle is real.
Finally, that's a funny MTG quote, it is pretty clearly something someone fed her and I agree that I don't think she could keep the names of Hungary and Transcarparthia in her head for more than 15 minutes. Which actually makes it pretty easy to answer why she would say it: one of her nazi staffers was telling her to implement one of the line items from some report from the Heritage Foundation/some other RW think tank outlining concessions to extract from Ukraine in pursuit of a nebulous goal? I honestly don't get what Russia would get out of it if Ukraine ethnically cleansed Hungarians and Transcarparthians, so I don't know if you actually meant that Russia was getting her to say that.
We shouldn't purity test a country that's being invaded, regardless of whether it's Palestine or Ukraine
An absurd thing to say when one of the countries is being genocided with western support and the other is run by actual seig-heiling nazis who were doing ethnic cleansing also with western support. To equivocate between the two is nonsensical, It's the geopolitical version of equivocating between kicking in a door as part of a robbery and kicking in a door as part of a hostage rescue operation. But if you really must reduce everything down to black and white principles about what is and isn't acceptable, try this one: There is never a good reason to side with nazis.
Also, I curse whoever came up with the thought-terminating cliche that is "purity testing". In cooking and chemistry, in metallurgy and biology and a million other things, you need "purity testing" to achieve anything, because it turns out that making a habit of disregarding basic standards consistently leads to failure and disaster. I don't cook with dirt, I don't build out of bubblegum, I dont make tea with metal shavings and I don't give critical support to genocidal goose-steppers.
I dislike the way "purity test" is used to shut down any expectation that we can or should demand better from our leadership. However, when you start purity testing a country collectively like this and ignore the realities of what a defeat or victory would mean for the people living there that's not good.
The Nazi battalions are not the entirety of what Ukraine is as a nation.
In Crimea they, when surveyed, said they would prefer to join Russia. That isn't the same as voting to join Russia. It was non-binding and people don't vote the same when something's non-binding, sometimes they just vote out of protest regarding the state of the country. This isn't to say Crimeans didn't want to join Russia, we don't know. Nobody knows.
I think if I was in a situation that would warrant Russian military intervention, and Russia was so close by, I would leave instead of hoping for Russian occupation.
I don't really know about the press gangs.
I don't know how trustworthy any information about the LPR/DPR recruitment numbers could be. They have an interest in presenting high numbers, and there'd be no way to distinguish between Russian citizens and Ukrainian citizens from the outside.
The Nazi battalions are not the entirety of what ~~Ukraine~~ Germany is as a nation.
Yeah they're only in charge, hardly anything important. But you're right, I have changed my mind and now think that ten years of government-sponsored ethnic cleansing in eastern Ukraine is an acceptable price to pay for keeping the savage Muscovite on his toes
Germany didn't have a Jewish president.
This isn't to say that absolves Ukraine of all it's issues, but it's not Germany.
Germany didn’t have a Jewish president.
You are saying that ethnicity gives you an automatic unbreakable political convictions? Good, i'm very glad all the Slavic neonazis are the figment of my imagination, it would be impossible to support ideology that literally wanted to exterminate their people! Not to mention certain Jewish prime minister straight up publicly whitewashed Hitler of holocaust.
As I said, that wasn't meant to be an argument. Just to illustrate that a find and replace approach isn't appropriate.
Ukraine and Nazi Germany are wildly different.
Ukraine and Nazi Germany are wildly different.
"...for reasons that I cannot or will not elaborate on, but which are nonetheless self-evident"
So basically your argument is "nuh-uh".
You'll find that it's the "centrists" that most support Ukraine. The far-left and far-right tend to be the ones that don't. Even then support for Ukraine has been quite muted. This suggests that support for Ukraine is based more on a naive belief in democratic values and multilateralism than some furtherance of Western aims.
That said, I don't think the war started that way. I think Biden willfully created this war to give America leverage over Europe and to rally the American populace around the flag. I also think NATO expansion into Ukraine (aside from being unrealistic) would not be a good thing. Regardless though I think support for Ukraine is driven by people who still have faith in the values of the west rather than just the might of the west.
Ukraine loses the war within the next 24 months since it has outlived its usefulness, the US pivots to the Pacific, and Europe doesn't have the capacity to support it. What do you think happens when these reasonable moderates wearing Black Suns and Tottenkopf patches, armed to the teeth by NATO with any kind of weapon you can think of, are no longer fighting Russia?
Ever hear of operation Cyclone?
So many reasons this is funny
-You apparently believe in evil, like a child
-You don't know what fascism is
-Theres no way you can define the word dictatorship
-You seem to think that someone on the internet who doesn't believe that Enemy Country is literally Mordor is part of "the problem" (what problem? The problem of other countries existing in a way that displeases you?)
Overall I give it a 2/10, deeply stupid and infantile, try throwing in a Star Wars reference next.
Bro they have literally had the same man in power for the last 25 years.
Wrong, they have a federal government system that you naively think is "one guy runs everything" like a marvel movie: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federa…
The elections are far too one sided to be legitimate
According to some random on the internet? Then what does that say about, for example, Ukraine, where opposition parties have been openly banned and elections have been canceled altogether? What possible reason is there to support such a government?
They enforce heavy military propoganda
What does it mean to "enforce heavy military propoganda"? You mean like we have at NFL games, only scary and foreign? Literally what do the thought-terminating cliches you're using even mean, and how do they not apply to us?
They have wealthy oligarchs while they working class is barely scraping by
So like...they're a capitalist country, but scaaary and foreign?
And they have been trying to forcefully take land from other countries for years at the expense of citizens of both sides
Other country, singular, because that's how warfare works. I'm not sure if you realize that's how warfare works, but it is. It's weird of you to just say countries plural as if you're not expecting anyone to fact check you. In fact, that's kind of how you guys talk about any country the US tells you to hate in general: the strongest possible existential condemnation in the vaguest and most 
Please explain how everything I said isn't true, or would you rather just hurl empty insults again instead and make yourself look even more ridiculous
Sorry, I don't entertain the vague fever dreams of de facto nazi supporters who hold childlike beliefs about good and evil that they selectively apply to entire countries. Start talking in concrete terms if you want to be taken seriously, or would you rather just lean on empty cable news-ass buzzwords again and make yourself look even more like a hysterical dorkass?
For the record you seem to believe I support America, I don't.
He maybe doesn't have the control of the entirety of the country, but has been the central figure for 25 years. That simply doesn't happen legitimately in a country that isn't basically a utopia, and we all know Russia is far from that.
No I meant other countries, they have been manipulating the border along Georgia as well, just not as forcefully.
I urge you to watch some of their military parades and festivals, they are straight up dystopian.
By all means, keep deluding yourself into thinking Russia is somehow on the right side of this, just don't be surprised when the world keeps get worse.
The fact that my original comment was straight up deleted speaks volumes about this community. I was banned from reddit for speaking out against ultra conservatives (in America specially) so I came here. Turns out this community is literally no better than the other side
Putin gained mass support because he sided with the nationalists that kicked out the western imperialists that were looting the remnants of the former USSR's industry. The 90s were a period of violent reaction, devastation, and incredible poverty for the whole of Eastern Europe. The liberals want to capitulate to the west, and repeat the 90s. The nationalists want to retain the status quo, where the wealthy Russian capitalists retain their hold but without handing over everything to western imperialism. The leftists want socialism again, and this number is rising dramatically:
Trying to understand complex geopolitical issues through a frame of "good vs evil," rather than a class analysis, pushes you into all forms of absurd contradictions. You need to understand, in Russia hardly anyone supports the liberals, so the nationalists are seen as the best thing by most people outside of the growing Russian left. That's why Putin keeps winning elections.
Final tidbit, leftists are far better than fascists, and it isn't even close to comparable. The idea that we are "no better than fascists" just because we disagree with your analysis is wrong, the left stands for progress and the end of western imperialism, we support the working class, not the imperialists and the capitalists.
You realize these things are true in Ukraine, in some cases more than even in Russia? And Ukraine was doing ethnic cleansing in the civil war for 8 years before Russia invaded, too, so if you want to apply this childish "I support the enemies of countries that do evil things" view instead of materialism, you could just as easily land on the conclusion that supporting Russia against fascist (vibes based definition) Ukraine is correct.
If you did a materialist analysis and try to figure out what the forces at play are, which classes stand to gain from different outcomes, and why the ruling class interest of Western imperialist states are aligned the way they are, you'd probably arrive at a much better conclusion though.
Russia being messed up doesn't contradict the meme at all. People in the imperial core can be happy, every time comrades in Russia (or Ukraine) have a success against their government and their oligarchy. But the best thing every anti-imperialist can do, is fight the imperialists they can actually fight: the ones in their own country. If you're in a NATO country, that means your priority should be to fight NATO and the US oligarchs who benefit from it's constant wars all over the world. If workers on both sides just continue to fall for the propaganda, they'll never stop killing each other.
I'm not just randomly claiming, that this strategy is what works best. Have you heard of Lenins revolutionary defeatism? It's the method, that made the revolution possible.
Have you heard of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht? They were both killed for their anti-war stance and their commitment against national-chauvinism. Liebknechts famous line was: "the main enemy stands at home", by which he meant the national oligarchs and imperialists profiting from the war.
Why are you convinced that your moral enemies are also your political enemies?
And why is it fascist?
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Chicago students and youth disrupt Union Station for Gaza
cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/73460
Chicago, IL – On October 2, 60 protesters disrupted Union Station to take a militant stand against the U.S./Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Momentum was high after the illegal kidnappings of 497 activists of the Global Sumud Freedom Flotilla from 44 countries. This is the first time since 2009 that a boat has made it into Palestinian waters and broken Israel’s siege of Gaza.
The emergency action was led by Students for Justice in Palestine-Chicago (SJP Chicago) and successfully disrupted traffic as well as people trying to leave and enter the Amtrak station.
Escalating for Gaza
Protesters gathered on a corner across from Union Station. A member of SJP set the tone, chanting defiantly, “Gaza must have food and water! We won’t pay for Gaza’s slaughter!” As momentum built up, members of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), New Students for a Democratic Society at UIC (New SDS at UIC) and more took to the streets.
As the march proceeded, protesters rushed inside of Union Station. They progressed downstairs as the racist Chicago Police Department (CPD) attempted to isolate and intimidate young activists. Rather than freeze and look away, protesters surrounded said officers chanting, “Back up, back up, we want freedom, all these racist ass cops we don’t need em need em!” and “Move cops get out the way, we know your Israeli trained!” leaving officers no choice but to stand idle and concede to their demands. Protesters continued, rushing to the lower level and catching people there by surprise.
Protesters gathered at the center of the station as Jinan Chehade, from American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), expressed the urgency of the situation in Gaza, stating, “We are here today to make some noise! Over the last 24 hours, 500 activists from 44 countries have been kidnapped by the Israeli military for delivering baby formula and medicine to Gaza. The global Sumud Flotilla showed us that Israel is not invincible. That the siege can be broken and will be broken.”
The final vessel made it through to Palestinian waters despite the seizure of 44 boats. This is the first time a boat has entered Palestinian waters since 2009. Chehade continued, “This just shows, two years later, that our movement is strong, it is not weak, we are strong, we get louder every single day! They are calling this week the global crossing to Gaza, from Naples, to Rome, to Italy, to Malaysia, to Chile, these people have taken to the streets to protest against Israel.”
Chehade concluded, “Finally I want to end by saying this showed us that even though Israel has U.S. backing and billions of dollars it is not invincible, their navy is not invincible. Let a thousand flotillas sail next time, while a thousand conflicts still happen, we will keep sailing, we will keep marching, we will keep screaming, until we break the siege on Gaza.”
As protesters continued further into the station, attempting to reach the railroads, CPD proceeded to continue grabbing protesters, brutalizing them, smashing megaphones, threatening arrests and stealing megaphone batteries in the process. Through this hectic confrontation, it was clear the police were caught completely off guard by the youth.
Protesters proceeded outside, marching in downtown Chicago, chanting and creating a spectacle of green smoke that gained support from onlookers. The march ultimately landed in front of the Israeli consulate. Protesters gave full energy as Farah Chalisa, an international human rights lawyer for a U.S. Freedom Flotilla member, spoke, along with a member of the Malcom X Grassroots movement.
#ChicagoIL #IL #AntiWarMovement #Palestine #PYM #SDS #AMP #SJP #MXGM #StudentMovement #Featured
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Chicago students and youth disrupt Union Station for Gaza
Chicago, IL - On October 2, 60 protesters disrupted Union Station to take a militant stand against the U.S./Israeli genocide of Palesti...Fight Back! News
Ukraine’s SBU Abducted Kharkov Residents Who Criticized Regime Online
Ukraine’s SBU Abducted Kharkov Residents Who Criticized Regime Online
People who voiced their dissatisfaction with the Zelensky regime began disappearing without warning - Kharkov residents chat admin.Sputnik International
Kiev Forces Are Losing Costly Bet In Dobropillia And Pokrovsk (Videos)
Kiev Forces Are Losing Costly Bet In Dobropillia And Pokrovsk (Videos)
Despite deploying large reinforcements in the Dobropillia salient and the nearby city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk direction, Kiev forces...Anonymous1199 (South Front)
Balene, anticipazioni ultima puntata del 12 ottobre 2025: Milla chiede il divorzio e nasce l’idea delle “Balenine”
La prima stagione di Balene – Amiche per Sempre si chiude domenica 12 ottobre 2025 su Rai 1 con l’episodio 4. Il capitolo finale intreccia commedia, rosa e family drama: Milla prende una decisione radicale, Evelina spinge l’indagine sulla morte di Adriana, mentre al pastificio nasce un progetto capace di cambiare il futuro di tutti.
LEGGI LE ANTICIPAZIONI: Balene, anticipazioni ultima puntata del 12 ottobre 2025: Milla chiede il divorzio e nasce l’idea delle “Balenine”
Balene, anticipazioni 12 ottobre 2025: Milla chiede il divorzio
Anticipazioni ultima puntata di Balene (12 ottobre 2025): Milla chiede il divorzio, Evelina indaga sul Conero, nasce la pasta “Balenine”.Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)
Pod man out: Trump's support with influential podcasters waning...
Pod man out: Trump's support with influential podcasters is waning
Some of the internet’s most popular voices with young men — almost all of whom either hosted Trump or spoke highly — have some thoughts on what he’s doing wrong.Alexandra Marquez (NBC News)
Tony Blair, Tapped by Trump for Gaza Plan, Brings Peace Expertise and Baggage
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Should Mastodon Potentially have a feature similar to Bluesky's Feeds?
I’ve been using Bluesky for a bit, and one feature I really like is Bluesky Feeds.
Essentially, Feeds let users organize and curate content into separate streams beyond the default chronological or algorithmic timelines.
You can follow different feeds based on interests, topics, or curated lists, which gives a lot more control over what you see.
I’ve never used Mastodon-specific solutions for this, but I know there are some related projects like:
github.com/SamTherapy/fedifeed
Customizable Feed System Inspired by Bluesky (Github)
I’m wondering if Mastodon should consider something similar—perhaps via third-party integration.
The idea would be that a user could connect their account to a service (if the instance allows it), and their curated feeds would appear right in their chosen Mastodon app, fully managed through that external service.
Would love to hear thoughts—do you think this could improve content discovery on Mastodon, or is it something that goes against the platform’s decentralized ethos?
allthings.how/what-are-feeds-o…
xatakaon.com/basics/bluesky-fe…
bsky.social/about/blog/7-27-20…
Bluesky Feeds: A Breakdown of Feeds and How to Add Them to Customize Your Timeline
In this article, we’ll explain the basics of Bluesky Feeds, a key feature of the platform’s user experience. Bluesky is emerging as a major alternative to X,...Yúbal Fernández (Xataka On)
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Hungary: Banned Pride march draws thousands
The rally in the city of Pecs defied a police ban under a law passed this year by Viktor Orban's right-wing government that prohibits LGBTQ+ demonstrations.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/dw.com/en/hu…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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'If people let this fail, it'd be unforgivable': councillors ask Your Party to 'leave egos at the door'
West Yorkshire councillors Jakob Williamson and Stan Bates spoke to the Canary ahead of a regional Your Party rally on 8 October
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French prosecutors launch war-crimes probe into photojournalist’s death in Ukraine
French prosecutors have launched a war-crimes probe into the death of French photojournalist Antoni Lallican, who was killed in a drone strike earlier this week in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Lallican was embedded with Ukrainian forces at the time of the attack, which President Emmanuel Macron has blamed on Russia.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/france24.com…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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Mount Everest rescue under way after snowstorm traps nearly 1,000 people
Hundreds of trekkers stranded by blizzard on eastern face of mountain in Tibet already guided to safety by rescuers
Archived version: archive.is/newest/theguardian.…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
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Israel Condemned as Sumud Flotilla Organizers Report 'Harsh Treatment' in Detention
US Congressman Ro Khanna demands the release of US citizen David Adler, mistreated in Israeli detention. Will Israel ensure his safety? Greta Thunberg subjected to harsh treatment. Protests worldwide in solidarity with Gaza.
Archived version: archive.is/newest/commondreams…
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Israel Condemned as Sumud Flotilla Organizers Report 'Harsh Treatment' in Detention
US Rep. Ro Khanna demanded that Israel release American flotilla member David Adler, whose family has not heard from him since October 1.julia-conley (Common Dreams)
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Bitmap Books
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Fire destroys Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available
cross-posted from: lemmy.bestiver.se/post/658762
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NIRS fire destroys government's cloud storage system, no backups available
A fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) Daejeon headquarters destroyed the government’s G-Drive cloud storage system, erasing work files saved individually by some 750,000 civil servants.Korea JoongAng Daily
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Suppressing evidence? Looks like this was a deliberate oversight to later erase data.
Probably data retention safety was overruled earlier by one person.
So, I think the designed erase worked as designed .
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Pretty big conspiracy theory for a situation where incompetence doesn't seem out of the ordinary.
SysAdmins saying "We need X, we need Y", someone who signs the cheques saying "But it works fine! Why would there be a fire? We already spent so much on those UPSs"
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I don’t know a lot at this time. The cool thing is this will be discussed for years , and any who follow this will know a lot more.
I’m just saying if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck it may not be a squirrel
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What you described isn't "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck".
This is a fire in a government (publicly-funded) location in an industry that's often overlooked and underfunded... in a traditionally conservative country (with a Liberal leader for the last few months) that is part of a very top-down hierarchical structure. Which would suggest that the complaints of a systems administrator are likely to be ignored. And that's assuming that the systems administrator is competent, which isn't a guarantee in and of itself.
I'm seeing what looks like a duck, I'm hearing the quacks. The conspiracy theory is that it's a squirrel in a duck costume that learned how to quack so people would toss it bread.
Here we have a glass of water, it’s half full.
Did someone forget to fill it up, or did someone drink it.
Is it institutional incompetence or criminal conspiracy?
I don’t have any argument, just my natural suspicion only.
But you likewise are thin on facts, your natural inclination is to see this as more a system issue.
Either we will never know , or one of us will be correct later
You know for a fact that the people doing the largest share of the recovery effort have nothing to do with the decision to have no backups.
...but with the way social/work hierarchies work in SK, it was probably never brought up.
You know for a fact that the people doing the largest share of the recovery effort have nothing to do with the decision to have no backups.
Exactly. How they got there is no consolation to those dealing with it now.
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For a long while, I had hoped it was at least 6 physical places, with various redundancies. A few billion small-ish servers at internet network hubs.
That or the magical floating bits that go over hackers heads in the movies. Those also look like the cloud. Not very secure, but quite convenient.
Korean government's
South.
(Just in case anybody else isn't a clairvoyant either)
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Government people get jobs by schmoozing and making deals, not by merit or skill.
Pournelle's Law always seems relevant.
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Wow. this is one of the biggest instances of IT incompetence that I've heard of in recent years. Hosting a server farm without remote backups? Sound like the London Magnetic Tape Incident.
The LMTI: One employee was sent to the other end of London with the magnetic backup tapes every day. He got money to take a taxi, but saved it and took the tube. His favourite seat was right above one of the motors, where he sat the bag with the tapes on the floor for the journey. The tapes were just stored at the destination, and not checked in any way. Guess what they learned the first time they had to rely on those tapes?
Disaster Recovery Concepts:
- Recovery time objective (RTO): maximum time to restore system function.
- Recovery point objective (RPO): maximum age of data needed to resume operations.
- Recovery consistency objective (RCO): how many inconsistent entries are allowed in recovered data.
- Sierra Madre objective (SMO): We don't need no stinkin' backups.
Get disaster insurance, wait for failure, collect a big c-suite payout and move to the next company.
Everyone else gets to find new exciting jobs.
Even though they historically used to have a great backup system for their historians and government records.
see link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritabl…
What are you talking about? There's one Korea and half of it is occupied by an imperialist army.
Am I on .world? Why are people downvoting objective reality?
You can accept or reject the claim that South Korea is an imperialist outpost of the US. I don't care about that right now.
But you do know that nothing in OPs comment implies that the two korea's share passports or anything like that, right? Like, come on, these are basic reading comprehension skills.
Computer Science Lecturer at Berkeley Is on Day 36 of His Hunger Strike for Gaza
Computer Science Lecturer at Berkeley Is on Day 36 of His Hunger Strike for Gaza
UC Berkeley turned lecturer Peyrin Kao’s name over to Trump, but that hasn’t stopped Kao’s solidarity organizing.Brooke Lober (Truthout)
How Icelanders are grieving the loss of 'dead' and melting glaciers
How Icelanders are grieving the loss of 'dead' and melting glaciers
Iceland’s glaciers are disappearing. For locals, it’s a profoundly sad loss.TheJournal.ie
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Iceland's Okjokull glacier commemorated with plaque
A plaque placed on Sunday commemorates Okjokull glacier, which was officially declared dead in 2014.By Toby Luckhurst (BBC News)
Russ Vought is Trump’s shutdown hero. His neighbors think his work is "abhorrent."
The people living near Trump’s “grim reaper” of government cuts have put up signs letting him know they stand with federal workers.
The budget chief has been in the spotlight lately as Trump’s shutdown enforcer. He is pressing on with threats to permanently cut federal workers en masse during this crisis. It is part of his long-held dream of shrinking the federal government and giving the president unrestrained powers. Vought’s combination of bureaucratic know-how and hardline ideology has made him a star in right-wing circles.
But on the quiet, residential street tucked in the Virginia suburb where Vought lives, the perception of him and his role in the shutdown is less than favorable. Several homes in the neighborhood have a yard sign in the front proudly declaring: “This house supports federal workers.” That includes the house right next door to his.
Russ Vought is Trump’s shutdown hero. His neighbors think his work is "abhorrent."
The people living near Trump's "grim reaper" of government cuts have put up signs letting him know they stand with federal workers.Mother Jones
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Introducing KRetro: a Libretro game emulator from KDE! (Alpha Release)
Introducing KRetro: a Libretro game emulator from KDE! (Alpha Release)
The first KRetro Alpha Release is here! KRetro is a libretro frontend from KDE written in Qt with Kirigami! That means when given both a libretro core, and a game cartridge/disk ROM, it plays your favourite games.Seshan.xyz Blog
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Convocation à l’Assemblée Générale Extraordinaire
Le comité du HTTPS-VD vous invite chaleureusement à son Assemblée Générale qui aura lieu le 19 octobre à 10hau local de la SDMB, à la Rue Caroline 16, à Lausanne. Cette séance sera principalement consacrée aux prises de position sur les votations du 30 novembre 2025, tant au niveau fédéral que cantonal.
Votre présence et votre voix sont précieuses pour faire connaître nos engagements et nos valeurs sur les objets de votation. Alors n’oubliez pas de payer votre cotisation et rendez-vous dimanche 19 octobre!
mobilisons.ch/events/69c29e7d-…
Horaire:
- 9:45 – Accréditations
- 10:00 – Assemblée Générale
- 12:00 – Repas
Accueil et administration
- Désignation des organes de l’assemblée
- Approbation du règlement d’assemblée
- Motions d’ordre
- Acceptation de l’ordre du jour
- Lecture et approbation ou modification du procès-verbal de l’Assemblée Générale précédente
Assemblée ordinaire
- Modifications des statuts
- Rapport de présidence
- Rapport de trésorerie
- Élection du comité
Élections ou votations
Votations fédérales du 30 novembre 2025
- Initiative populaire « Pour une Suisse qui s’engage (initiative service citoyen) ».
- Initiative populaire « Pour une politique climatique sociale financée de manière juste fiscalement (initiative pour l’avenir) ».
Votations cantonales du 30 novembre 2025
- Modification des articles 74 et 75 de la Constitution du Canton de Vaud pour que toutes les Vaudoises et tous les Vaudois, y compris les Vaudois de l’étranger, puissent élire les membres du Conseil des États ;
- Modification des articles 74 et 142 de la Constitution du Canton de Vaud ainsi que l’ajout de l’article 179d visant à mettre un terme aux discriminations en matière de droits politiques contre les personnes atteintes de troubles psychiques ;
- Initiative populaire « Pour des droits politiques pour celles et ceux qui vivent ici ».
vd.ch/actualites/decisions-du-…
Divers
Clôture et annonces
Assemblée Générale extraordinaire
Le comité a le plaisir de vous inviter à son assemblée générale. Nous vous rappelons que vous êtes les bienvenus parmi nous et que nous avons besoin de votre participation pour exister.mobilisons.ch
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Despite the clickbait headline this isn't open source
Open Printer will use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license
The NC license isn't open source, it violates point six of the OSD
The Open Source Definition
Introduction Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open source software must comply with the following criteria: 1. Free Redistribution The license shall…Open Source Initiative
Open source is generally about the code, not the hardware, even less manufacturing. OSHW (hence the clarification even though a bit longer) is about the hardware and has specific requirements in order to get the label and ID, e.g certification.oshwa.org/de0000… and process certification.oshwa.org/proces…
AFAIK there is no terms that means open source + OSHW but I'd love to learn if there is one and apologize in advance if I missed that.
Anyway as I'm interested in the project, which part is proprietary exactly? In theory as they sell via CrowdSupply crowdsupply.com/apply it should be both OSHW and open source but I didn't dig.
OSHWA Certification Process
This guide is intended to be used as a reference to best practices to ensure that your projects comply with the definition of Open Source Hardware.certification.oshwa.org
Thanks, I just checked crowdsupply.com/open-tools/ope… and its says "Open Printer will use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for all of its files, including electronics and mechanical design files, firmware code, and the bill of materials." so I don't think that's related to the source code but rather the resulting binary of the built firmware.
The latest CrowdSupply project I bought was the PGB-1 and they did realize their firmware source code github.com/wee-noise-makers/WN… and as GPL3 so I assume they will clarify that before starting the crowd funding campaign. I don't think they can, even if they wanted to, have a CS project without releasing the source code.
Edit: to be safe I asked on the CS Discord for clarification.
Open Printer
Finally, an open hardware printer you can actually understand, repair, and upgradeCrowd Supply
Can’t give away free ink, but can’t compete either. That was my point.
Can’t sell spare parts for a good price
They will use CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Which means it's not open source, and no-one else can sell replacement cartridges, parts etc.
It might still be a good printer and enjoyed by some, but it really annoys me when companies mix these terms up, almost certainly deliberately.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Isn't it about documentation or design rather than code or hardware? Typically CC isn't used for software or hardware.
from their own page
Open Printer will use the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license for all of its files, including electronics and mechanical design files, firmware code, and the bill of materials.
While maybe it's not self repairable (did not break down since I bought it years back so I have not yet tried) other than nozzle clogging which once happened but is an easy fix. It's hardly customizable which have not been a limitation so far. So i'm happy with my Epson ET printer that takes any ink I feed it.
Þ is a thorn. It makes a th sound, as in the or Thor, also written as þe and Þor. When using a printing press most typesetters did not have a thorn, so a y was used as a replacement, causing things like ye oldde, rather than the oldde (þe oldde).
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It's technically more money upfront, but you're not just buying the printer itself: you're also buying the starter ink/toner cartridges that come with the device. The starter toner gives you vastly more pages than the starter ink, and it basically never goes bad. According to Brother, the size of a starter toner cartridge is 1000 A4 pages. According to HP, their Deskjet and Envy starter cartridges print about 150 and 250 pages, respectively.
So that higher upfront cost doesn't just go into a better, more efficient machine; it also goes into quadruple the starting pages or more. There are people who could seriously never print more than 1000 pages, whereas the starter for a Deskjet is so small that you practically ought to buy a spare cartridge alongside the printer for when it near-immediately runs out.
Basically, if I'm not flat-ass broke, I'm paying another $63 upfront for an XL ink cartridge from HP for one of these printers. And what's the page yield? 430. I'm still not even near the starter toner cartridge page capacity after spending an extra $63 on ink. To me, the upfront cost of an inkjet printer is pragmatically higher unless I'm so boots-theory-of-economics broke that all I can afford is the printer unit and only print a few pages a month tops.
Setup Cartridge Page Yields | HP® Official Site
Determine the number of pages your printer or cartridge can produce. Find the page yield for specific Inkjet and LaserJet printers.www8.hp.com
Unless something about inkjet has improved in the 15 years since I was more inclined to know everything about them, the "goes bad" is what anyone with a brain should be focusing on. The first time you use a cartridge to print, it has a shelf life. It gunks up, prompting cleaning cycles that use dozens of pages worth of ink. If you only print a few pages a month, there's a good chance you're getting <40 pages out of that $63 cartridge.
I have a Brother DCP-7065DN, paid $64 for it in Feb 2014 (obviously a very good deal), page counter reads 3626. We're on toner #3 including the starter, first was replaced in 2019, second in July 2025. Toner was $55 each.
I hope there aren't people seriously advocating for inkjet printers for black and white anything. The only thing they are good for is photos, and even then you are paying more per print for a worse photo vs local print or online order options. That holds true even if you get good deals and somehow actually use the entire cartridge set without waste, I did the math a few times over the years. The only use cases are printing shit you're too embarrassed to risk printer shop seeing, or is illegal/copyright, or you just like giving money to these garbage companies.
Maybe projects like this will change the math. I think if they targeted commercial print specifications it would be quite interesting. The jump to larger format printers is so expensive.
I bought a toner printer in 2020 and I'm still on the first replacement cart. I have over 2000 pages printed.
Considering I spent $80, plus $40 on the new two pack of toner, I consider it money well spent.
~~I do wish I had bought a laser printer though... There are things I would like to begin printing that will be several thousand pages after it's all finished. Mostly reference materials.~~ DISREGRD THIS I DUM
Inkjet, liquid ink is the media, sprayed through a nozzle while moving back and forth.
reads manual
You're only confused because I'm dumb! For some reason I was thinking toner and laser were separate types.
Only for colour laser because they're much more complicated internally. My B&W isn't any bigger than an inkjet scanner/copier/printer combo unit.
Exception: Definitely heavier.
Certification mark applications
A certification mark is a type of trademark that is used to show consumers that particular goods and/or services, or their providers, have met certain standards.www.uspto.gov
I'm biased towards all software being open sourced.
Certificate marks look potentially useful if many more people cared about the value of open source (software freedom). People who do care probably already know common licenses, and custom licenses do not inspire any confidence (law ain't easy).
It's difficult to tell when people are internationally misleading others saying "open source" because many devs just say it to mean "you can see the code". Some would sincerely, without ill-intent, call Unreal Engine open source. Would certificate marks promote an understanding?
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While I’d personally love to see an open color lazer printer more. (Less wasteful and more rugged)
I use a black-and-white laser printer, but if I were going to use a color laser printer, I'd like to have an open color laser printer simply because I'd like to have a printer that isn't dumping printer tracking dots into each image I print.
News Corp and Advance called to Australian misinformation inquiry
News Corp and Advance called to misinformation inquiry
Right-wing activist group Advance has disdain for the Senate inquiry into energy and climate misinformation, but it just can’t help getting involved.Karen Barlow (The Saturday Paper)
Bezos plan for solar powered datacenters is out of this world… literally
Bezos plan for solar powered datacenters is out of this world… literally
: Aspiring Bond villain believes the best place to train our AI overlords is in orbitTobias Mann (The Register)
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Billionaire seem to have a... unscientific view of a sci fi future. Especially Musk, since he thinks he's so transcendental, but apparently Bezos can't help himself now either.
It doesn't look like Star Trek.
It doesn't look like a Cyberpunk movie.
I'd recommend diving into this for a more scientifically 'thought out' and optimistic extrapolation: orionsarm.com/
Interestingly, this is a neat idea waaay down the line, in the way a Dyson Swarm is interesting. But not anytime in the near future, not until humanity is very, very different (assuming we survive that long).
It doesn't look like a Cyberpunk movie.
The real world looks surprisingly like a cyberpunk movie already.
Billionaire seem to have a… unscientific view of a sci fi future.
That's cause due to network effects people who are making such projects are equivalent to grocers in qualification. Just were in the right place at the right time. They are not engineers, not philosophers. But since they've read and seen in sci-fi that they have to show something engineer-philosopher-like, they are doing all this bullshit.
Our world's problem is in these monopolies which should be busted. After they are busted, we'll see a lot of goodness through the usual normal competition.
And also I don't think the sequence of events that led to the current state of things should be treated as some proof of "capitalism not working" or "computer-driven futurism being a dead end" or even "space travel not ever happening" or anything as radical. Every time is different. It's like living all your life alone after one bad relationship.
We should dream, and we should make, and we should try, and we should tell those who think it's their "vision" or none to go kick rocks.
I'd recommend diving into this for a more scientifically 'thought out' and optimistic extrapolation: orionsarm.com/
Man... if the Technopocolpyse is what you consider optimistic, I'd hate to find out what you consider pessimism!
Humanity survived though. Even with 'humans' dying out, I'd like some form of life to expand and go on.
My biggest fear is Earth 'fizzling' and never expanding before the Sun eats it, and the odds of that happening are pretty high.
Well, I'm not sure you've considered the time-frames involved in that concern. We have a whole lot of time before the sun goes out on us. It took Earth about 2 billion years to develop multicellular life. It then took another 2.5 b before we got vertebrates. That was the hard part though and it's done, I don't think there's any undoing it. There aren't many things that could wipe out all forms of vertebrates on earth, so I'm confident that would be as far back as the planet could reasonably be set back by any disaster.
Just 60 million years ago, mammals were not at all a dominant form of life, yet that's all it took for early rodent-like mammals to evolve into human beings (as well as all the other mammals we know today). So based on that timeline, if all human life on the planet were wiped out tomorrow, I'd estimate (pessimistically) it would take less than another 200 million years before another species gained a similar level of intelligence and began a new era of civilization (and perhaps as little as 10 m years, as some species are already quite intelligent). In fact, if the next species screws up, and gets themselves killed, I expect earth will get another go at it in another 10--200 million years, over and over again.
On the other side of the equation, the sun will expand into a red giant and consume the earth in about 5 billion years. That gives us a whole lot of tries to get it right.
I have, but I’m also concerned that humanity got “lucky” so far and that this won’t happen again. There are theories positing that there are several blocking “gates” to civilization, and humanity passed an exceptional number of them already.
It’s reasonable to assert that’s a misleading, human centric perspective; but I’d also point out that the Fermi Paradox supports it. Either:
- The conditions that gave birth to our civilization are not exceptional, and spread intelligent life is hiding from us (unlikely at this point, I think)
- They are exceptional, and we just happened to have passed many unlikely hurdles so far (hence it is critical we don’t trip up at the end here).
- They are not that exceptional (eg more intelligent vertebrates will rise, and would rise on other planets), but there is some gate we are not aware of yet (which I have heard called the Great Filter).
Another suspicious coincidence I’d point out is that we are, seemingly, the only advanced civilization from Earth so far. If we died out soon, other vertebrates that rise would find evidence of us by this point, wouldn’t they? Hence odds are we wouldnt be the first and we would have found precursors if ‘vertebrates rising and then killing themselves off’ was a likely scenario.
TL;DR: I suspect vertebrates -> our tech level is a difficult jump.
Well that's all true, we don't actually know what the real filters are, are we already past them, or are they still ahead of us? Certainly people have speculated about this for a long time, and I won't pretend to have any more real answers than anyone else. But honestly, I'd have a hard time believing that the really rare event, that the great filter lays somewhere between the development of the brain and the development of the kind of intelligence humans have. It just seems like a relatively small jump (relative to all the other hurdles) between many of the smarter animals on earth and human beings. For example, many species use tools a whole lot actually. Only a few other species actually make tools or alter them to a large degree, but you know, give it 10 million years and see if that changes. Likewise, many species have languages, some species even give themselves names, so they can intentionally address other individuals in their social group.
If you don't mind a bit of total speculation on my part, in my opinion, the explanation to the Fermi paradox is actually pretty simple, there really is no paradox. Intelligent life is probably relatively common in the universe, the reason we don't see aliens all over the place is that intelligent life thrives too well for that. Once a species is capable of traveling other stars, it's just a matter of time before they settle most of their galaxy, like within a million years (which is very quick on evolutionary scales). We're just the first intelligent life in this galaxy, we can assume this because if there were others, they'd already have colonies right here on earth, because it's a great planet.
To double back on the great filter though, my best guess about which events might be truly rare, my money is on Eukaryotic life and mitochondria. That feels like a real freak accident, as well as an absolutely vital requirement for complex life.
Yeah, I buy the filter (or at least a big filter) being early. That does seem like a freak accident, even with all that time for it.
But on the spread of civilization, this is why I love Orion's arm: it posits that if a civilization like ours makes it another few thousand years, it'll expanded in a bubble at a significant fraction of the speed of light and be extremely difficult to extinguish at that point, meaning civilization should have spread across galaxies by now:
orionsarm.com/eg-article/49333…
That makes a lot of sense to me.
And the fiction, even as wild as it is, gives the still somewhat unsolved Fermi Paradox a lot of thought:
orionsarm.com/eg-article/464d0…
I particularly like the 'Ginnungagap Theory' that, perhaps, there's some unknown barrier to expansion.
orionsarm.com/eg-article/464e9…
"Even with all the equipment available in the Civilized Galaxy and beyond the amount of the Universe which can be examined in detail is tiny. Imagine our own Galaxy as a deep sea fish, with very sharp but tiny eyes, peering at the other galaxies with trepidation."
With the caveat that I only read the transcripts, I don't find that compelling at all.
The initial sentiment is correct; folks like Sam Altman responding to existential problems like “oh we can just build a Dyson Sphere in 30 years” should be in freaking jail instead of power.
But the only other justification I see is “well, this is stupidly impractical in the context of current humans.” Things like:
- “What, we make all those nanobots and get all that energy with fusion and use it to disassemble Jupiter?”
- “Why don’t we just use that energy to leave the solar system?”
- “Say it’s a Dyson Swarm; what do we do living on all those solar satellites?”
She’s fallen into the same trap of “existing sci fi” she accuses other of falling into.
We’re not talking about a bunch of people in space looking to expand a habit. At this point, we’re talking about some AI that’s already converted an entire moons worth of mass into computronium, can upload folks to VR and simulate realities, that can reconfigure atomic nuclei into ultradense strings of matter or construct and control tiny black holes to generate energy and elements.
It’s left the solar system loooong ago.
Its capabilities, needs, and goals are completely umhuman, and at that point pondering how to efficiently capture the output of all this stellar mass sustainably is absolutely practical to plan. A Dyson Sphere (or more practically a swarm) isn’t the only way, but it’s not the worst idea for a “young” intelligence. And in OA, at a certain point, the Sephrotics seem to construct “sci fi” dyson spheres as habitats for aesthetic reasons, whereas their actual industrial/computational bases are more utilitarian arrangements of masses.
No, I just skimmed the transcript because it’s an hour long, heh.
I did get that bit about SETI and the original paper, which is interesting, and also agree that astronomers looking for them over the paper is hilarious and stupid.
We've had the template for this for decades. Put the solar panels in space where the thick soupy gunky spunky atmosphere doesn't stop the little energy things from the sun. Collect the power in orbit. You just do that up there up in orbit okay? And then you fucking beam the power down to the surface you numpty fucks. Use a maser to send the power down to the surface and you can pick a frequency that isn't affected by the gunky spunky and then the receivers on the ground can pick it up and they send the power through these things called wires to a building that uses the power and the building can use this neat little thing called CONVECTION to more efficiently remove the heat from the things using the electricity wow.
Or just, y'know, use less power and make use of ground based solar. We don't need fucking AI data centers in space. Don't get me wrong, I think it might be useful to, say, have some compute up in geostationary orbit that other satellites could punt some data to for computation. You could have an evenly spaced ring of the fuckers so the users up there can get some data crunching done with a RTT of like 50ms instead of 700ms. That seems like a hard sell, but it at least seems a bit tenable if you needed to reduce the data you're sending back to the earth down to a more manageable amount with some preprocessing. That is still not fuckass gigawatt AI data centers. Fuck
That's a more interesting idea but still quite questionable, given how expensive sending anything to space is, and then maintaining it.
It made more sense with solar was expensive per square mm, but that is no longer the case.
Also, transmission is a huge problem. It's easy to say 'make a maser,' but making giant one and aiming it reliably (lest one fries nearby terrain as the satellite moves to track the sun), and making a receiver big enough from how much the laser spreads out from geosync orbit is a tall order. Geosync is super far away.
There's plenty of space on the ground, for now.
That sounds like privacy, not evil.
Because history, as well as current events, tell us that governments will absolutely make privacy illegal, so if you can do an end run of them by not being beholden to ANY government, then that is absolutely a good thing.
That sounds like privacy
Oh boy you are naive if you think that's the result of no regulation.
The real result will be monetization, using and selling the info to everyone who wants to buy including governments.
If you care about your data, keep it on servers in EU or Switzerland, it may not be perfect, but the protection is more crucial than the risks under their protective laws.
USA is a cesspool, and the worst of both. The only difference from space being that the government can take the info without paying.
Naive? No. What's naive is thinking that if you give power to anyone over your own data , even your government, that it will.protect it.
You think the EU cares about your privacy? I know my own government is doing it's level best to destroy mine, but at least I'm aware of it.
You, however, have the naivete of Pollyanna and think your vaunted EU is better.
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Analysis: Record solar growth keeps China’s CO2 falling in first half of 2025 - Carbon Brief
Clean-energy growth helped China’s CO2 emissions fall by 1% in first half of 2025, extending a declining trend that started in March 2024.Lauri Myllyvirta (Carbon Brief)
They are currently laying the foundation for the future where they can shift the balance from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Take a look at the amount of renewable energy they're producing. Not only is that growing fast, it's already a large quantity.
Some industries, like steel, will take longer to switch, so getting rid of fossil fuels entirely will probably take a very long time. Total energy consumption is also likely to increase in the future, so the existing emitters will likely continue to be in operation for decades. However, as the energy demand increases, more and more of that energy will be produced by renewable means. This means that, due to renewable energy production, the total emissions won't grow as fast as they otherwise would.
How two blonde suburban moms gave Democrats an answer to the rightwing media ecosystem
When Donald Trump scheduled a press conference after a weekend in which rumors about his health swirled, two women in red-state Oklahoma launched a livestream for their more than 1 million followers on YouTube to speculate about the condition of “Cankles McTacoTits”, shortened to Canks “for expediency and spite”.
It was fitting for the profanity-laced, straight talking liberal podcast ‘I’ve Had It’ that quipped, after interviewing Barack Obama, that the former president has “big dick energy”.
How two blonde suburban moms gave Democrats an answer to the rightwing media ecosystem
Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan’s podcast I’ve Had It has risen up the charts and created a community with ‘a brand of fuck-you politics’Rachel Leingang (The Guardian)
RFK Jr. fires NIH vaccine whistleblower Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired a top official with the National Institutes of Health who blew the whistle on internal clashes over vaccine research in the early months of the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo received a letter from Kennedy — which CBS News reviewed — informing her that her role leading NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, had been terminated. He did not cite a cause beyond his constitutional authority to do so. Last month, in an exclusive interview with CBS News, Marrazzo said she had been silenced when she and her colleagues pushed back against NIH officials appointed by Trump who questioned the importance of childhood flu vaccines and canceled long-running clinical trials.
RFK Jr. fires NIH vaccine whistleblower Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo
RFK Jr. fired infectious disease specialist Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who told CBS News she was put on leave after questioning actions taken by Trump appointees.Michael Kaplan (CBS News)
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"Anti-ai arguments literally support eugenics"
Reminds me of this:
I think atproto is a good protocol, but god bluesky-the-company is dogshit.
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There's any way to flag and filter AI contents?
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Why?
Why did you switch to Linux? I'd like to hear your story.
Btw I switched (from win11 to arch) because I got bored and wanted a challenge. Thx :3
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Primarily, they're both gaming-focused.
I found out about Pop!_OS when doing research for gaming on Linux. It's maintained by a private company, and they invest a lot of time into keeping their drivers up-to-date. AFAIK it's still one of the best choices if you have Nvidia cards, because they have a separate ISO just for Nvidia machines.
For a short time, I used Kubuntu because I love KDE Plasma. I had been wanting to use Plasma again, and I kinda wanted to try a non-Debian/Ubuntu-based distro. That's when I stumbled upon CachyOS, and I don't think I'm switching to another distro for a while.
CachyOS is Arch-based, with a super-easy install. They have their own version of the kernel, optimized for gaming. It really is fast, too. Not only does it beat Windows in most speed tests, but it beats pretty much every other distro as well. If you like Arch, I highly recommend CachyOS to keep some of the basic stuff optimized while you tinker with your system.
Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Agree on KDE being great. Idk if it is because it has more of a windows feel, or because it isn't as flashy as GNOME.
If my current Bazzite instance doesn't work out, maybe I'll try Cachy.
I've heard great things about Bazzite, so I'm sure you'll be fine there.
I just wanted something new, and Fedora was too similar to Ubuntu under the hood. I don't know if I'm going to look back from Arch-based. Maybe when I break my install lol.
My first experience with Linux was as a kid, when the family PC that was handed down to us breathed its last. Quite a bit of malware was on that machine, and it got left to sit in the garage.
I found Ubuntu and revived the Compaq, although the experience was limited, and me as a 10 year old didn't really know what all could be done with a PC anyway.
Since then, it's been a slow burn. 2022 had me dual booting Linux and Windows, and learning how to migrate everything over.
2025 and Windows 11 recall, AI everywhere, intrusive Big Tech had me pull the trigger and nuke the Windows boot from my machine.
Now I'm here. Enjoying a peaceful time on my hardware just like it used to be when I was a kid. The internet and the computer have the capacity to be wonderful again.
Well yes, but actually no.
On a more serious note, most things are available, some things are behind on updates unless you compile everything yourself (even when using the ports collection).
I haven't used it as a desktop environment, I was just maintaining a FreeBSD server, so no idea on that end
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I have been tinkering with Linux before, but some software needed Windows.
I tried switching those apps.
* Corel to InkScape went well, I instantly liked it better.
* MS Office to LibreOffice: I just don't need Excel that much, so it's OK.
* Corel laser engraving to K40Whisperer: a breath of fresh air, simple and efficient.
Then, free from all those chains I installed EndeavourOS, and it's been great.
I’ve used it since the 90s, but windows was always my daily driver. Linux always worked, but games could be spotty and there always seemed to be to be the random breakage for no reason.
But that changed a few years ago. Games “just worked”, device support became really good, and if I’m being honest - I became a gnome guy. That interface is very very productive, especially on a laptop with a trackpad.
And then windows just, started sucking. They break machines with every single update, it’s like there’s zero qa anymore. And the little things became more and more annoying - the pop ups “upgrade to 11, try copilot, OneDrive isn’t working omfg let me help you fix that” the “where is that setting moved to now” game, the extra clicks everywhere.
My dual boot setup found a windows drive that was never being used anymore. I didn’t switch, I just stopped using. Eventually I just deleted the partition and use it for extra space and playing around with other OSs.
During this process I distro hopped quite a bit and eventually settled on fedora workstation. It’s been good to me on three PCs.
on my main laptop for whatever reason Windows 11, about twice a year or so, would insist on killing my wifi. Just out right disable it and not even uninstalling and reinstalling drivers would work. It would simply just kill it and pretend it never existed. the ONLY fix was to completely reinstall the OS. so almost like clockwork twice a year I'd have to reinstall the OS. It was also absolutely destroying the battery on my laptop. I would get MAYBE 30min out of it.
So after reading some threads I decided to give Linux a go. I went nuclear winter on it and didn't even bother dual booting, just wiped the computer completely and started with Mint. Stayed on that for a couple weeks until I completely messed up the install by trying to modify cinnemon a bit too much so then I switched to CachyOS and fell in love with it.
Since then I distro hopped a few times and I'm currently using NixOS. As far as the battery issue? I get about 4 hours out of it now instead of 30min.
My old desktop couldnt update to 11. But for my newer computer, Windows recall was a deciding factor. Fuck that shit. Also fuck their "ai" nonsense.
It's nice that it's free and doing little to nothing contrary to my interests.
About 20 years ago, I wanted to add recording studio capabilities to my gaming PC but I was a broke high schooler, so I installed Ubuntu Studio as a dual boot option alongside Windows XP.
Anyway, I installed Arch on my laptop about 3 years later in college using the Arch Book, which was essentially the same as the wiki's install guide at the time.
I had a dual boot system with Windows and Mac (it was a hackintosh) as my home recording studio Pro Tools/gaming PC for about a decade, then my Windows install had to be wiped due to an issue I had, so I decided to just wipe the whole thing and go single boot with Linux Mint, so now I use Reaper for recording and Steam + Heroic + emulators are meeting all my gaming needs. I use the Xanmod kernel and the kisak-mesa PPA, and since making the switch I've upgraded essentially all of the parts in my PC, which is good because I first built it in 2013
Probably the same reason many people use it:
Heard about it from someone/online --> tried it in a VM --> Tried it on real hardware --> Liked it enough to keep it/ditch windows partition if they dual-booted.
In my case, I started with Mint in 2023 and eventually distro-hopped to ArcoLinux (RIP) then Arch (BTW). Trying out Endeavour now as my Arch-Arco install is a mess and I'd like something similar to Arco.
Oh as for the reason why: Sick of Microsoft's shit and didn't want to downgrade from Windows 10 to 11.
Microsoft released Windows Vista, which was absolute dogshit on every PC at the time it was released.
This also just happened to be not long after Ubuntu was released, making it easier than ever to install Linux.
Installed it, quickly found out everything was easier to configure and tinker with in Linux...
Never saw a reason to go back. Used Windows 7 for a little bit, and it was better than Vista, but it still wasn't anywhere near as easy to use as Linux
I switched because Linux is obviously way better in so many ways. No brainer.
I use Windows at work and it's a joke. It's security theater. Microsoft and similar capitalist entities are paid not for actual security but for liability protection.
About 2 years ago I started the process of moving away from big tech, slowly, starting with transitioning from gmail to Protonmail. Ramped up on Jan 20 after seeing big tech CEOs at Trump's inauguration. Windows was the last thing I switched. I had kicked it down the list because I freelance with an audio focus, and Linux is sorely less equipped for audio than Windows or Mac. Said screw it about 2 months ago and made the switch, and I'm now completely free from walled gardens and big tech.
It hasn't been an easy switch, but I've made it work, and in fact have improved my audio quality with Linux. There certainly are limitations, and some things take more effort, but I've come to realize a bit of extra work in exchange for freedom is far superior than convenience in a walled garden covered in surveillance.
I installed and ran gentoo in 2005 on a home server that hosted a file sharing repository and php forum for my friends.
In college I ran Ubuntu on my netbook for programming and internet browsing on.
Then in 2021 Windows 11 came out and refused to install on my 2017 laptop. So I threw my hands up and installed EndeavorOS in a dual boot configuration. After a few months, EndeavorOS broke my boot with an update. Threw up my hands again and installed Fedora and haven't had an issue in years.
Well, "why" is just curiosity and wanting to explore new things. I had been learning some programming on Windows, but had heard rumblings about linux. I explored Red Hat, wasn't wowed. It was fine, but not enough to lure me away.
That was 26 yrs ago.
14 yrs ago, I created a dual boot on my laptop, with Ubuntu/Gnome. After about 2 yrs, I made Ubuntu my daily. A windows auto update tried to wipe linux off my drive, so I put Windows in jail, shrunk the partition as small as I could, and removed it from the boot sequence.
I don't distro hop, I used Ubuntu until earlier this year. It was always good enough, never awesome, but i learned things and felt a whole lote more secure than on windows.
About 6 months ago, I switched to Fedora/KDE. I'm sure I could find lots of benefits to other distros, but I never felt much need to shop around.
BTW, I absolutely love Fedora /KDE in a way I never felt about Ubuntu. Maybe it's just KDE vs Gnome. It just feels so much more comfortable.
I've always gave Linux a try for a week or so over many years but then crawled back to Windows. First time I've actually found it somewhat viable and I stuck to it for over a month was with Proton release but at that point there were still too many pain points while using it.
Then when Windows started pushing Recall I went to Fedora 38 and it lasted me for almost 6 months before I went back to W11 due to many issues related to just basic use on desktop due to buggy nature of KDE 5 with which I've lost patience.
Starting with Fedora 40 and with GNOME starting supporting VRR I've been on Linux since and had no real desire to go back since. So it seems that for my use case Linux finally got to the point where Windows is not a necessary thing for me, in fact I dread going back whenever I think about it as now there are things I would miss by switching back to Windows.
Also I use Windows 11 at my job and I really hate it, multi-tasking is so much better even with just single monitor on Linux vs Dual monitor on Windows... Also I just really like GNOME, even before I've even tried GNOME I've customized my KDE to be GNOME like before even realizing it. And yes, I've tried KDE 6 but it's not for me. I plan to try Hyprland though as that seems more interesting but I dread moving on from Fedora as it works well for me so I don't really have any need to disto hop.
Similar story to a lot of others here
Around a year ago I got fed up with Microsoft forcefully pushing unwanted and privacy-invading "features" on their users. It scared me to continue using it. I wanted more control and more protection for my privacy. So I decided to install Mint.
I've dabbled with Linux in the past and use it extensively in my job, but hadn't switched significantly to it in the past. One of the biggest blockers being games. I bought a Steam Deck a couple of years ago so I was needing increasingly confident that Linux would work for gaming to some extent. It ended up working very smoothly and I haven't looked back.
I still have my dual boot, partially because I haven't bothered to remove windows fully. At this point there's very little reason for me to not into windows. I've only encountered one game I've wanted to play that didn't work in Linux and that was an old game with mods. I might be able to get it working if I really troubleshooted it, but it's not that important.
Originally? To play with image AI models when they first came out.
Then I got that taste of freedom and Windows felt icky. Haven’t touched that side of my dual boot for non-work purposes in years. Even for work it’s a last resort.
Grew up on it. My dad set up a Ubuntu 4.10 PC for my brother and I when we were 3/5 (no internet, obv), and it stuck.
Used Windows for a brief time in highschool to be able to play online with friends.
Went right back to Linux when going to university. Will never change back, both for ideological reasons and because Linux is just better.
Next step: NixOS on a phone
My desktop PC ran Windows 10 and didn’t have the magic Windows 11 chip. I tried to do some easy things to get it to recognise my PC as having that chip anyway, but it didn’t work, and I was a bit afraid it’d run like shit with 11 anyway.
So I just decided to try something different and install Linux. First on an old little laptop I had lying around. I tried Mint first, then OpenSUSE - the first because it was supposed to be easy to newcomers, the latter because it’s German (and I liked the way it felt when I tried it on my laptop).
After trying it for a bit, I just decided I’d install it on my desktop as I didn’t want to use Windows 10 without security updates anyway. I’ve now been using OpenSUSE Leap for about half a year, and I’m quite happy.
Computers were either Windows or Mac, they couldn't be anything else, that was a fact. Then I saw someone using Linux and had so many questions. How? I was given a Knoppix live CD, went home, and booted my home PC into Knoppix and it changed my perception of computers.
I didn't change over immediately but eventually Ubuntu was handing out install CDs and YouTube was full of wobbly windows and desktop cubes. It wasn't useful but it looked cool.
I still needed Windows for gaming, but for day to day it was so much easier to use Linux.
Eventually my gaming was exclusively on the Switch and then was I was looking to play certain PC games the Steam Deck was available, so I bought that.
I think Windows 8 was the last one I used and I've never had any desire to go back. Linux is just easier.
Because
- it works (pretty fundamental!),
- popular alternatives are pretty much evil.
So, I know you think the 2nd point is a hyperbole. That truly I'm exaggerating. Well, actually no, I'm not. I genuinely believe that closed source OSes are one of the biggest epistemological trauma Mankind ever experienced. It's right behind fake as an organized political tool. Sure troll farms and political advertising take the cake... but honestly a locked down OS is very very close. Why? Well because it forces people who use a computer to assume the computer is a black box. It's a thing they can use a certain way. That certain way might be good, lucky them, or bad but regardless they must find a way to make their entire life, professional and private, fit within that very small black box. They are trained, day after day, interaction after interaction, as a lifetime of servitude. The personal computer was supposed to be a "bicycle for the mind" but truly, between closed source OS and the "cloud" (someone else computer, for profit) Mankind has been trained to accept and use a computer as they have been told.
This is an absolute disgrace and should never be accepted. This was bad in the 70s... but nowadays everything around you is a computer. Your computer is a computer (duh) but your phone is a computer, your console is a computer, your headphones are tiny computers, your e-bike is a computer, your doorbell is a computer, your printer is a computer, your washing machine is a computer, heck a light bulb or a button on your wall might be computers!
So... when your entire life is surrounded by small black boxes you are taught never to challenge, your life is miserable.
That's why I switched to Linux.
Why did you switch to Linux? I'd like to hear your story.
I had to do a job (translations) using MS Word 6.0, on a Win 3.11 PC . It was nearly a month of work and I and my gf urgently needed the money. But MS Word kept crashing and nearly obliterated all our work the day before our deadline. It was the most stressful day of my life.
After that, I installed LaTeX for DOS on that 386 PC, and wrote my university lab reports and later my bachelor thesis on it. It was running like a charm. We printed our own christmas cards using LaTeX's beautiful old German Schwabacher font.
At uni, at that time I was working with a software called Matlab on Windows 95, and Windows always crashed after a day or two - it later became known there was an integer overflow bug in the driver for an Ethernet card. Well shit, my computations needed to run more than three days. So, I switched to a SUNOS Unix workstation which ran much better and had lots of high quality software, including a powerful text editor program called "Emacs“. I could not buy such a SUN computer for myself because its price was, in todays money, over 50,000 EUR and we did often not know how to pay 350 EUR of monthly rent.
The other day, a friendly colleague which was already doing his PhD showed me his PC, a cheap newish Pentium machine. He had installed a system on it called Linux, which I had never heard of. I logged on and started Emacs on it and I thought it must be broken: Emacs was running within less than half a second whereas on the SUN OS workstation, it would have taken five or ten seconds to start. All the computers software was free. I realized that this computer had a value of over 50,000 EUR of software for a hardware price of 800 EUR. I got an own Linux PC as soon as possible.
Yes that was in 1998. I am now almost exclusively using Linux since 27 years.
The exact shortcomings of proprietary software have changed since, and keep changing. But what is always the same is: Proprietary software does not work on behalf of you, the user and owner of the computer. Who writes the instructions for the computers CPU, controls it, and will use this power to favour their own interests, not yours. Only if you control the software, and use software written by other users, your computer will ultimately work in favour of you.
ElementaryOS was my gateway drug cuz it was so pretty, I switched to have an OS that made me happy instead of miserable. Dual booted for a while for gaming until I got an hdr monitor and ended up stuck on my (modded for privacy and performance) windows partition more and more, but followed Wayland’s development religiously until plasma finally launched HDR in beta.
I chose arch (btw) cuz I was tired of running Debian-based distros with custom kernels and I generally just don’t like apt, and I don’t see myself ever really wanting to switch again.
(Other than compulsively reinstalling arch to try whatever new shit catches my eye, that doesn’t count)
I'd just built my first PC and had no love for Win 3.1 which was rapidly becoming the default. I wanted to keep codíng having come from from Atari STs and had no desire to learn the windows APIs. An OS that came with C compilers by default was higher level than I was used to as I'd been doing 68000 assembler on the ST, but it was still low level enough.
IIt was also similar enough to the Sun IPCs and IPXs that I was using at university.
I switched because Windows increasingly feels like it is not mine to use control and configure as I see fit. Functions and "features" are intrusive things that Microsoft wants, not me. They make it harder and harder to strip their bullshit out. Apparently I'm not the customer anymore but they still want me to pay for it.
Linux only ever does exactly what I want with total control, for free. It's damn near perfect.
Starting of with some history… I have run Microsoft operating systems since MS-DOS 3.22 and Windows 2.11 (not a typo). I was one of the first in our high school to install Windows 3.0 on one of the school lab machines off of floppy disks when it launched. I have been an early adopter on almost all the Windows OS’s and had a powerful enough PC at the time not to be too bothered about Vista even. I work with Microsoft based development (Windows Server and nowadays Azure) so Windows has always been what worked in my career. That hasn’t changed.
That being said, my computing history started off on a Apple IIc, followed by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga later on. I installed Linux the first time on my 486sx with 4MB of RAM using Slackware with a pre 1.0 kernel. Linux never stuck then as I couldn’t run the applications i needed and games I wanted. I came back to Linux every 5 or so years but it never stuck for the same reasons.
This changes about 5 or so years ago. A chain of things happened over time and it started at home.
- I installed Ubuntu 20.04 on an old laptop and it seemed to have what I needed on it. Mainly browsing and so on - no high demands. The web had moved away from client side plugins and the web just worked.
- Windows 10 nagging to install Windows 11 on my HTPC, when the hardware was too old. Ubuntu 20.04 replaced that install, and the software just worked (browser + Kodi)
- Broadcom purchasing VMWare meant moving away from ESXi in my HomeLab - Proxmox turned out to be mature for what I wanted. I now have a 3 node Proxmox cluster.
- A hard drive crash in one of my Synology NAS boxes led me down a rabbit hole resulting in adopting TrueNAS Scale and ZFS.
- Windows 11 was getting on my nerves for the last couple of years at work. Last year I did the research and took the leap to install Ubuntu 24.04 on my new work laptop. A lot of tools I use are open source - they have reached a decent level of maturity. Microsoft tech such as Dotnet, VSCode, PowerShell and Azure CLI just work for what I need. LibreOffice does a good enough job replacing MS Office. A VM with Visual Studio and MS Office fills the gap - I boot the VM a couple of times a week as needed.
- I installed Ubuntu 24.04 on a secondary desktop last year at home to see if it would fill my needs at home amid the launch of Recall. This resulted in me wiping my main gaming rig a couple of months ago, installing Ubuntu 25.04 as main and a smaller partition with Windows to mainly support flight sims (MSFS and X-Plane - an area where software and hardware support is still lacking on Linux).
- The old laptop that started off with Ubuntu back in 2020 is now distro hopping - Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE and currently running EndeavourOS. They are fun playing around with and familiarizing myself with but haven’t quite been work adopting fully so far.
The end result today is that I have one VM in Proxmox running Windows Server and a dual boot on my gaming rig running Windows 11 LTSC. Everything else is either Linux or FreeBSD.
It took a couple of months to get completely comfortable with the changes in workflow of daily driving Linux as my main OS, but it settled and it feel almost nostalgic to boot into Windows now.
After using win 11 for about a year I got tired of that shit. Every version since 98made the settings menu harder and harder to find whatever I was looking for and this is true for everything in that OS. Save a file? 5 clicks at least just to be able to pick WHERE I want it. Wtf.
It was driving me insane. Bazzite, easiest OS for what I use my computer for and not looking back.
I was a Windows user as a kid in the 80s & 90s doing pirate installs of 3.11 and later 95 for friends and family. I got into "computers" early and was pretty dedicated to the "Windows is the best!" camp from a young age. I had a friend who was a dedicated Mac user though, and she was bringing me around. The idea of a more-stable, virus-free desktop experience was pretty compelling.
That all changed when I went to school and had access to a proper "Mac lab" though. Those motherfuckers crashed multiple times an hour, and took the whole OS with them when they did it. What really got to me though was the little "DAAAAAAAAAAA!" noise it would make when you had to hard reboot it. It was as if it was celebrating its inadequacy and expected you to participate... every time it fucked you over and erased your work.
So yeah, Macs were out.
I hadn't even heard of Linux in 2000 when I first discovered the GPL, which (for some reason) I conflated with GNOME. I guess I thought that GNOME was a new OS based on what I could only describe as communist licensing. I loved the idea, but was intimidated by the "ix" in the name. "Ix" meant "Unix" to me, and Unix was using Pine to check email, so not a real computer as far as I was concerned.
It wasn't until 2000 that I joined a video game company called "Moshpit Entertainment" that I tried it. You see, the CEO, CTO, and majority of tech people at Moshpit were huge Linux nerds and they indoctrinated me into their cult. I started with SuSe (their favourite), then RedHat, then used Gentoo for 10 years before switching to Arch for another 10+.
TL;DR: Anticapitalism and FOSS cultists lead me into the light.
Windows 95/98 sucked shit. I liked the games, but the kernels were terrible.
I dual booted or ran two machines Linux (RedHat 5.2 to 6.2, wtf was up with 7?), then whatever worked (usually Debian based) for a while. Mostly used Linux alone for years, but used Win7 for a bit. That one was okay, but Microsoft can't build dev tools on their own OS to save their lives.
It's been Linux Mint for a long time now on desktops and Debian/Armbian on servers.
Basically, I've been mainlining Linux since about '97 and it's doing me just fine. Works great for my kids and wife. We're a mostly Linux household. It saves me a ton of headaches. Easy to install, patch, and almost no other maintenance.
Same here, I heard about the reliability of Unix while enduring Windows 95's appalling crashes.
Last month I finally moved my wife's Windows 10 laptop to Endeavor OS. She recognizes that her unusable laptop is now snappy and stable.
My house is now officially Microsoft-free.
For me, Microsoft's original sin was removing the Start menu and the Classic and Aero themes in Windows 8. I wanted something better than questionable UxTheme patches that broke with every major update, and it was during that search that I learned there is more to the world than macOS and Windows.
But it was the invasive telemetry and bloatware that finally made me take action. I'm sure the spike in blood pressure and heart rate whenever I had to undo the asinine default settings on every new install and major update was not good for my health. All of the debloat utilities felt like I was just putting lipstick on a pig.
The ability to customize the interface to my heart's content also got me to learn about and appreciate the inner workings of Linux. I now have a couple setups on Chicago95 XFCE and a couple on AeroThemePlasma KDE. Despite how much I like the familiar UI of Windows, I wouldn't ever look back to using Windows itself.
I switched to Linux because of Linux gaming. Yes, I am completely serious!
Back in 2015 I had Lenovo laptop with only 2GB of RAM. Windows 7 consumed more than half of that and DotA 2 took over 2 minutes to load the map. The game was laggy. FPS was terrible even on low settings.
On another hand Ubuntu 14.04 consumed only ~350 MB of RAM. DotA on Linux loaded map in seconds. FPS was slightly better, but the game itself didn't feel so laggy anymore.
Linux was (and still is) my only viable solution for gaming on low spec hardware.
Why would you assume I switched?
-edit-
It appears my comment wasn’t clear… I never used anything else than Linux on my working systems…
Because you should.
It's free, it works everywhere windows does and has a tool for all your needs.
Purely to record / watch TV, films, etc.
I tried Windows Media Center (XP with some tweaks) and it was dire...
Found MythTV and decided I needed to "learn Linux" to get it done.
Now everything (except my work's laptop) is Linux (Arch btw)
Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994 was the end of the Amiga, which forced me to switch to something else.
At the time, the choice of hardware I could afford and operating systems that didn't suck was extremely limited, a PC with Linux was pretty much the only practical choice and I've stuck with that ever since.
Because Linux had a choice of desktop environments to try out. What a playground.
My first peek was with Wubi. >2008 ish? Then Knoppix had a live boot. Then all the other live boots followed. Very important easy first step.
I'm now on Plasma, tweaked to suit me.
Now I can never use anything but Linux.
I switched January this year.
- Windows 10 end of life was on the horizon
- Programing on windows was a lot of hoops to jump through and i had heard Linux would be better
- Didn't want windows 11/copilot.
Tried dual booting Ubuntu and XP back around 2006, didn't really see the point because gaming on Windows.
2020 got a Raspberry Pi and set up Retropie which gave me a good intro to Linux. Tried to get away from big tech in 2021 and was dual booting Mint and Windows 10. Ended up spending more time in 10 because gaming.
Got an old laptop from work and it was perfect to throw Mint on because no way it was going to handle gaming. Then I set up a media server, initially with the the Pi and then bought a cheap mini for it - and ran it on Mint. I'm primarily a console gamer now so gaming is far less of a concern for me on PC. Mint everything now.
I could distro hop or at least try something else, and maybe I will at some stage. But I'm too happy with Mint/Cinnamon to bother.
Back when I was a freshman in college, I had a regular laptop (Sony Vaio) and at the time netbooks were popular and my girlfriend (now wife) had got me one for Christmas.
Win 7 starter was garbage, XP was fine, but not ideal. I ended up trying out Ubuntu netbook remix since it was supposed to be lighter on resources. At the time I was a pre med student and wanted something for knocking out documents, and reading papers with enough battery to get me until I had to go to work. The iPad wasn’t out yet so that wasn’t an option.
I had a ton of fun getting it working, even the Broadcom chip was a fun challenge. Once it was working, I just really liked the look and feel. I preferred the Unix file structure to windows as well as the terminal experience, using bash vs powershell.
I ended up writing a few programs and apps for myself specifically for that netbook, and it quickly became my primary way of interacting with a computer. I eventually ported my Sony over which had the challenge of writing a couple drivers to get some things working with minimal compatibility.
Following this, I switched from pre med to software engineering and eventually graduated with a degree and I have now been working with software and using Linux ever since. Even now, I am the sole Linux system administrator in the company I work for and manage a handful of servers and deployments.
My first contact with Linux was via amateur radio. I didn't want to hook my radio up to my main PC in case I wired something wrong, so I got one of those newfangled Raspberry Pis, circa 2013. Raspbian Wheezy was my first distro.
Not long after, my old laptop died and I needed a new one. Bought a Dell, it came with WIndows 8.1. Holy shit what an unusable pile. I hated that OS a lot. And then the laptop outright died. I was going back to school, I needed a PC to do school work on, and I've had flesh wounds I was satisfied with more than Dell's warranty support. It took them pretty much an entire semester of "We'll fix it in three weeks or so, when the one guy who does field repairs in your state will look at it", "it's fixed" it breaks almost instantly, before I finally demanded they replace the entire machine. Which they did, with a different, lesser, model. I am no longer a customer of Dell.
This left me doing all of my school work on a Raspberry Pi 1B, and then a Pi 2, for about 3 months. So I got a bit of a crash course in managing a Linux system.
Once I finally got a working laptop, Windows 8.1 felt more alien to me than Linux Mint did. It would actually have been more work to learn Windows 8.1 than Mint Cinnamon. So I became a full time Linux user.
- fun, I like trying out new software
- I love the philosophy of free software.
- fuck Microsoft and windows.
- It's actually just better
(I switched last year)
I started dabbling in around 2000, getting sick of the instability of Windows, and it seeming like the next logical step of geekdom.
I tried a LOT of distros. Mandrake, Connectiva, Red Hat to Fedora Core, Slackware, Debian Woody, Crux, etc etc. I drifted in a Debian-centric circle until I finally landed on Arch. Lost my way for a bit during my IT career, supporting Windows I ended up just using that. But I'm back to Arch now as my daily, Debian for some networking projects, and a bit of Fedora from time to time when I need to spin something up quick.
- I'm a lifelong contrarian.
- I refuse to overpay into the locked-down Apple ecosystem.
- Windows has become worse with every release.
- I use Arch btw.
"Home"
Kerala Actually. I use ubuntu in schools and universities
I heard two talks around 2001 or so. one by Wolfram, after which I swore never to use mathematica again. and one by stallman after which I switched completely to Linux and never went back to windows.
still on Linux 25y later. went from days when getting sound working was a challenge , to today when even obscure tablets work out of the box.
started with red hat. used Gentoo for about 5y. then debian for 10, and now arch.
went from the old "crux" and metacity, to openbox to fvwm to gnome to kde plasma
i remember the old days I was envious of Mac users for transparency and the present windows features, and I ran this utility called Skippy that would screenshot windows and present them... all these features are now built in to the wm now, so no tweaking needed
Same as most people. OSs have just evolved to become systems made to serve their creators rather than their "customers".
Windows wants to steal all your data and then use it to shove ads in your face.
Apple also constantly tries to push their own products and services through the OS, not to mention continually pushing the boundaries of irrepairability and locking you in an ecosystem. And just being extremely expensive.
During early high school years I heard about this thing called linux and there's something that's ubuntu, and said, why not? downloaded the ISO, installed on my USB with rufus, had panic attacks installing the dual boot myself for the first time, and done. After 2 months I switched to Arch (best thing I did) and ever since I'm deep diving in this Programming-Linux-Cybersecurity rabbit hole that I'm quite enjoying.
Fast forward to now, I'm using LFS and compiling my own kernel. My main desktop is a T440p with 4 OSes installed (maybe adding Plan9 to the mix if it supports my system)
I'm planing to mess more with "my own" distro thing maybe installing a Linux system without GNU: Linux + sinit + sbase + ubase + musl
When Microsoft announced the sunset of Windows 10.
I was still in uni at that time. Started with Ubuntu, disliked snaps and moved to Pop. Stayed there for last 5-ish (?) years. It does what I want it to do, I don't care about switching distros now.
Post subject:
Why?
Post content:
Why did you switch to Linux? I’d like to hear your story.
I feel like I've been click-baited.
I used Linux for a good while 20 something years ago. Mostly for recording music and some gaming (you can say what you want, cube/sauerbraten/openarena/… I had a great time that I look back to fondly).
Then got back on windows around vista all the way to w11
7/8/10 all “ok” OS experiences imo.
11… man, this thing frustrates me so much. Everything you try to do is like getting gaslighted. Updates/reboots whenever it feels like, regardless of what you have going on. (My setup requires a few keystrokes at boot, if not the fan goes nuts)
Coming back to Linux feels like a breath of fresh air. Especially now that installing/using it has become a breeze compared to back then. It does what you ask. Why doesn’t big tech corp get that through its thick skull?
Also, my data is mine.
When I first tried it out in a VM, it was just a pinch of curiosity. Some people argue for Linux, so, maybe there's some merit to that? And, unlike MacOS, you can install it anywhere without all the hackery.
When I actually tried it (my first one was Manjaro KDE, and that's what I stuck with for my first 1,5 years later when I decided to go for a real install), I was amazed at how smooth and frictionless everything is.
The system is blazing fast, even on a limited VM, there's no bloat anywhere, no ads, no design choices to trick you into doing something you don't want to. The interface is way more ergonomic and out of the way at the same time. Seriously, Microsoft, do learn from KDE, pretty please.
So, when I moved to a new home, I decided that my virtual home needs an upgrade as well. I installed Linux alongside Windows (on two different physical drives), and ran it as dual-boot ever since. Not that I address Windows that much (normally about once in two to three months), but it's handy to keep around.
Later, I went into some distro-hopping and also got a laptop, which has become my testing grounds. After trying various options, namely Mint, Arch/EndeavourOS, Debian, Fedora, and OpenSUSE, I gravitated towards the latter, and I use it as my regular daily driver on both my desktop (Tumbleweed) and laptop (Slowroll). I love how it manages to keep the system both up-to-date and extremely stable, and has everything set up just right (except KDE defaults, what the hell is wrong with SUSE folks on that end? Luckily, it takes 5 minutes to change). So, there it is!
I heard that the Playstation 3 would be able to run something called Linux and I wanted to become some kind of Neo😅
Then I went on and off between Windows and Ubuntu until fully switching to Linux around 2020.
Running Fedora with Gnome these last few years.
I don’t remember how I did it but I guess it wasb’t so difficult since I had no previous experience.
But I think I only used it once and then moced to something else.
I've used Windows since version 95. I even learned how to use version 3.1 back in the day (people actually used to take classes for using the PC!). Every new version after 98 was a pain in the ass, they'd get rid of a lot of functionality, change menus, and add crap no one asked for. XP might be a nostalgic memory now, but I thought the UI was horrible at first. Same with 7 and 10.
I first learned about Linux through forums, and then I found out about Canonical sending CDs with Ubuntu for free. So I gave it a try and I liked it. There was a lot of tinkering to do unfortunately. Stuff like the cheap ADSL modem I was given by my ISP weren't recognized, so I had to dual boot. Eventually I found some file from one dude who had the exact same modem and knew what to do, and so I was able to go online in Ubuntu. (All of that ended up being very useful knowledge, though. If something happens on my computer, I don't panic anymore, I roll up my sleeves and try to figure out how to fix it.)
I've been alternating between Windows and Ubuntu ever since. I switched permanently to Windows 10 a few years ago for some reason I don't remember. And last year I switched to Pop! OS after finding out about Recall. I was pleasantly surprised by how far gaming has come in Linux, so the switch is permanent this time. I will switch distros, however, once I switch my hardware to AMD.
22.04 currently uses X11, yeah. But the COSMIC DE, as far as I'm aware is Wayland-only. I think they use XWayland or something for some stuff... but I'm not 100% sure about it. All I know is that Wayland kills stuff like xprop and xdotool, and there are no real alternatives. Now it's up to each DE to figure it out, I think. Supposedly KDE was going to work on mouse gestures, but it's one of those sponsored works people say they'll take and then they go AWOL.
Eventually I'll have to rethink how to place my keyboard and mouse, so I can be comfortable without mouse gestures. I have some physical limitations, so easystroke was helping me a lot, but it's one of those things most people don't care about, especially in the Linux community which tends to be more reliant on keyboard. 🤷🏻♂️
I'd dabbled with Linux and multiple distros in the past and while I liked what I saw I had my frustrations. Various distros had their pros and cons and I wasn't as technically capable back then.
After Windows 11's unnecessary launch I gave Windows 10 LTSC a try. I don't think it was LTSC specific but my experience was buggy as hell and would BSOD every other day. So I thought I'd force myself to use Linux and have used Arch or other flavors of Arch ever since. No sink or swim, I was just going to live with it and not deal with Microsoft's bullshit anymore.
I had a not-very-computer-savvy friend with Windows 7 who didn't want to upgrade to 11 but Steam and some other programs stopped working for him, so I tried out Mint as a dual boot option and told myself that I'd switch back to Windows when I needed to.
I ended up never booting to Windows again; everything I needed to run worked just fine in Linux, either natively, or with Wine, or with alternatives that were actually better than what I was using in Windows.
I bought my son a cheap little computer, basically a windows version of a Chromebook. When windows needed an update there wasn't enough memory to perform it, and the computer would no longer connect to WiFi. I thought this was very dumb so I figured out how to remove windows and install Mint. Was impressed by how well it worked.
When I needed a new computer I bought a $150 thinkpad and installed Fedora. Been a fedora main ever since
I was not about to put up with windows co-pilot or recall and had already put up with enough ads and bugs.
I had been running Debian on my laptop for a year without a problem and then finally Windows 11 started doing this when I was trying to update:
Click check for updates? Same result. Wait a week and try again? Same result.
I could no longer trust that the OS was secure from even 3rd parties, so I pulled the trigger and installed Debian 12 - later upgrading to Debian 13 when it released.
There just is never any going back now - Linux is just waaaaaaay too good.
Now I just need something similar to happen with phones.
Had a 6-year old Macbook Pro that was increasingly difficult to use due to the small SSD-drive (I think only 128GB?). Coudn't really update the OS without uninstalling most stuff due to this. In addition, I had started to get the urge to tinker with stuff again, but ran into roadblocks often (often following a guide to do something in the terminal only to get stuck at inatalling something from apt). Same time I got more and more fed up with Big Tech, so when I was buying a new laptop to replace it, the choice to avoid Apple and Microsoft was obvious. Having used a terminal on macOS, doing work on HPC-clusters (which obviously ran Linux) and moving an increasing amount of my workflow to Got Bash on Windows on my work machine (all three of which reinforced my level of comfortability with the terminal and desire to use it), the prospects of the terminal was more enticing than frightening.
Now I have been a full-time Linux user for three years, my partner, brother and mother have since switched, I manage some bare metal Linux servers for work and IT has finally agreed to allow me to ditch Windows for Linux (although they are taking their sweet time setting it up, so I am still waiting to actually get it).
I saw fvwm in a magazine and it had a really cool 3D look to it and I wanted that. I had never seen anything like that. We were very poor and I only had an old computer, a 486, so it was either pirate software (and there was no version of Windows in our language) or use Linux.
I ended up on Red Hat from a magazine and then later Slackware. I liked Window Maker so I stayed on that for two decades. Learning Linux gave me a constructive hobby, introduced me to free software philosophy, and gave me technology skills. We moved to the United States. When I was 15 or 16, I helped a college math professor install hardware on Linux. When he found out that I was dropping out of a very racist high school, he provided support and I ended up graduating from their college. Those Linux skills came in handy and helped start a career.
I have only ever used Windows to upgrade firmware on a laptop or to download an ISO so I could replace Windows. Like everyone else, I was enamoured with macOS back in the 2000's but couldn't afford one and when I finally could, it couldn't do sloppy focus and that was a pet peeve of mine so I just returned it and got a used ThinkPad.
I moved back to Asia. Now I use sway on Debian and get to ride my bicycle to work and my kids grow up better than I did, so life is good.
It was a challenge I wanted to conquer too but also I increasingly felt like I didn't own my computer. The software was increasingly cutting me out of the ability to modify and use it the way I wanted.
I spent a lot of time in Gentoo early on where patching software was an overlay and recompile away and it was great testing early amd64 bugs and pushing the limits with gaim and reverse engineering chat protocols.
I was doing some dual booting then but as i built a career in web development, it became more and more my solo driver. Running the same platform you're developing for is incredibly convenient and Linux runs the web.
Now I can't imagine running windows. Using it and helping people on it is just a miserable experience for me.
seriously hate modern implementations of AI and am willing to make concessions in my life to avoid using it
Props for standing on business and actually taking the steps to make a change
I got a job writing software for Linux servers.
After spending my workday on a mature stable operating system, going home to Windows or Mac became frustrating, to me.
Various challenges required paid-but-still-kind-of-buggy software on Windows or Mac, that I had mature stable solutions for on Linux.
I spent many years installing free software recompiled for Windows (in cases where it was available) so that I would have the same quality of tools at home as I had at work.
Eventually Ubuntu and Linux Mint hit an ease of use that made me feel silly last time I went through the effort that comes with activating Windows.
When Commodore went bankrupt and my Amiga started to fade away I was forced to buy a PC. And because I didn’t want to have Windows 95, I bought S.uS.E. Linux and that’s the way I am now. And I’m happy to be Linux user all these years.
Switch implies I only have one computer .... I have many, including several servers.
Ever since I have memory I've been a tinkerer and linux being OS enables you to do amazing things ... along with open source software.
I (dont) use arch BTW ... Windows on my gaming PC (because of antichieat amongst other compatibility foes) Mint on my personal tablet and Proxmox on my servers
Homework.
College used linux because I did computer science.
Topic: concurrency.
College then gave us a programming assignment that required adding a code library, which I had never done before or even heard of, and thus did not understand.
Since this was a library that was platform-specific, they had made one library for linux and one for windows.
Way too late I got the gist of it but still couldn't install the library.
Since the question contained the linux directory structure I was convinced that the windows library was broken and every other college student finished this task in Linux.
Thus I installed Linux.
Ten years later I understood and finished the assignment.
My heat was out and I needed a way to warm my apartment so installed Gentoo on my Dell XPS. /s
That was around the time Windows 2000 was coming out and I couldn't afford a copy. I'd been dabbling for a year or two before. That was my first and last dual boot computer. MythTV really sold me on linux.
I was tired of Windows 95.
Plus I was in grad school and was trying to avoid studying.
gcc hello.c. And since then I've fallen in love
Tired of the constant pop ups in windows 10. The constant upselling of their product.
An OS shouldn't get in the way of what you are doing and Windows was always popping up some bullshit.
Simple. Windows caused a lot of Problems I simply could Not solve.
Besides that Microsoft became Something I do Not want to Support much longer or willing to giveaway my privacy.
And yeah. Linux Runs better.
I learned to use linux decently in school. Used it for servers, etc at home.
Windows had its auto updatee, and eventually drove me mad enough to dual boot. When the updates started crash boot loops and I literally couldn't use it anymore... I finally swore off Windows.
Its not all sunshine and rainbows, but i have had a much better time woth Lonux, and feel much better about it.
Looking at all the sheisty things theyve talked about and/or attempted, such as screen recording everything for AI, contemplating ads in file explorer, forced one drive integration slowing basic operations down... I have no desire whatsoever to return.
Because Windows XP was a hot pile of garbage.
One day, my network driver broke. None of the discs worked. None of those incoherent "wizards" Windows loves to use worked. Reinstalling Windows broke more things. I couldn't get online for about 2 months.
One day I was at the bookstore and saw a Fedora Core book with an OS disc. I thought it was cool so I convinced mom to get it. Went home, blundered my way through the install and everything just worked.
I cannot for the life of me understand how XP is routinely loved by everyone. It looked like a muddy fisher-price toybox.
I had used 95, 98, and 2000 at that point. All of which I mostly enjoyed. Me I used in my grandmothers computer and yeah...it was rubbish.
However I'd say it was less of a "Big leap" and more of a "Quick give us something that's almost as good as 9x!"
We had a fundamental disagreement regarding the role of technology in business operations. In my view, technological change in an enterprise exists in tension between the business desiring a solution that perfectly fits their process and the flexibility of a technology package to approximate the business requirements in a cost-effective way. Ideally, technology should fade into the background so that you don't even notice or think about it as it facilitates your work.
Microsoft seemingly disagrees.
My specialty is telephony, a space that Microsoft has only recently ventured into with a competitive and cost-effective, if feature-poor, offering in Teams. Telephony is a complex topic and the way telephones are used in business today is varied from people who barely use their phone (but want it when they need it), to people who depend on specific telephony functionality to do their work.
The meeting I had was in a beta-user group for new tech in that space, it was me and about 40 other admins from a variety of large businesses and a team-lead in Microsoft product house. Basically, it was a group of customers becoming increasingly exasperated at the arrogant ignorance of someone in charge of developing telephone technology at Microsoft who didn't only have limited experience with enterprise-level telephony, but insisted that business units conform their processes to fit what Microsoft was willing to develop, and I want to emphasize here, that the audience was more than willing to meet the vendor halfway here, it was Microsoft insisting that people didn't really need basic things like busy-indicators.
I spent about an hour getting more and more angry to the point where I just wanted to get rid of everything Microsoft, but I couldn't torpedo Teams at work, so I went home and installed Mint on all my PCs (and later switched to Garuda).
Back in 2002 it was eye candy.
Compiz compositor. The 3D cube and wobly windows.
And still Linux can be the most beautiful UI of all OSes out there.
Always tinkered with Linux, since eeeearly Red Hat days, but took the first full move when I set up my home lab and needed to host some docker containers with hardware pass-through.
Turned out my hardware was a bit too new for the kernel I had to install so ended up teaching myself a lot in terms trying to get everything to work.
Because of that I got quite comfortable on the terminal and from then, the UI suddenly made sense, because I understood better the concepts underneath.
Run three boxes with various versions of Linux now, a couple more if you count dual booting, a couple more if you count Mac as some kind of Frankenstein UNIX.
I tried many times before, mostly pushed by friends nerdier than me. Always failed.
Now I am on Mint since a few months pushed just by myself not accepting AI slop force fed to me by my computer and having become very protective of my privacy since GDPR (I am the DPO at my company).
I must say it has become incredibly user-friendly (at least on Mint CE) and as a gamer, I am very satisfied with both performance and variety (I would have said GabeN be praised one month ago, but I am slowly moving my library to GOG/Heroic, for similar reasons, so the praise has to be shared).
Went to Linux when I was a teenager, went back to Windows.
My return however is a lot more bittersweet. One of my cats died. The other cat went into mourning. Wanted to keep him company while doing my shit, so I took my old laptop and installed Xubuntu on it. While I was using it I realised that Linux had come a long, long way since I last used it and I could use it as a daily driver. Got a new laptop soon after and installed Mint on it.
Then Windows on my main PC started demanding I update. Realised I couldn't afford to, both software and hardware wise, so I decided to go full Linux. Never looked back. Typing this on my Laptop running Fedora while I try kill time before an interview.
TL;DR: I came back to Linux because I wanted to hang out with my cat while he mourned.
My dad was a software developer so growing up, there were Linux textbooks in the bookcases. Sorry if was inspired by my dad to try Linux in and off in my teens. Was fun a kid failing and then succeeding to install Linux and distrohop through the various flavors of Ubuntu and what not.
Then in university my cheap laptop was running poorly on Windows 10 say I started experimenting again with Arch, Mankato since I didn't really need any fancy proprietary software.
Finally, now in 2025, just pissed off with Windows and decided I'd go all in with Linux on my desktop gaming PC. It worked well enough or my laptop and my home server, and really considered that it was not games that required anti cheat that I really loved, so I just dove in with Bazzite.
Because open source, like the right to privacy and the diversity it can offer, always has something for everyone.
In the end, W*'s recent choices, such as ReCall, and the intrusions into our privacy, finally convinced me to begin my transition.
Until now, I had been observing opinions for the past five years.
The fact is that I am not a programmer or a specialist in these subjects, just a very small amateur, and Linux has long been off-putting.
Having the time and a computer to experiment is not that easy. But with an old computer, I finally have the opportunity to test Linux Mint... Others will undoubtedly follow.
I always say that to change operating systems, you first have to figure out how to replace proprietary software or applications with open source ones, because most of them are also available on Linux.
That's what I did on my mobile, and now the next step is to choose a custom ROM such as Lineage or /e/OS, etc.
I don't like corprofascism.
Mint rules so far. Been enjoying it for several months now!
I woke up one day, and copilot had been installed on my PC overnight. I didn't like that lack of control. This was, coincidentally, a weekend that my wife, kid, and dog were all gone. Since I knew Win10 only had a year left, and I had the time, I figured it was as good a time as any.
I downloaded Fedora and Kubuntu. Spent a bit of time with each, and went with Kubuntu. For a few days. It had issues waking from sleep, and I had to do some kind of tweaking with every one of my games to get them to work.
I don't mind tinkering with stuff, but i just don't have the time to make my computer my hobby. So, I switched to Mint. Everything just works. So, I put it on everything else. I guess the one time I really had to dig into terminal stuff was getting a wifi driver for my living room PC off git. Other than that, super easy.
Now, I'm coming up on a year of Mint. Couldn't be happier.
Réunion d'accueil des nouvelles et nouveaux à Paris par XR Paris-Nord
À propos de cet événement
Tu souhaites découvrir le mouvement et savoir comment t’engager ? Nous organisons une réunion d’accueil des nouveaux et nouvelles en présentiel. Le RDV sera à l'adresse suivante : La ressourcerie Le Poulpe - 4B Rue d'Oran, 75018 Paris. La salle est accessible via l'escalier en entrant à gauche, monter les escaliers et juste à la sortie des escaliers à droite il y a la porte de la salle.
Pour t'inscrire ne clique pas sur Participer mais clique sur ce lien !
Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets
Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets
We are excited to announce a significant advancement in the security of the Signal Protocol: the introduction of the Sparse Post Quantum Ratchet (SPQR).Signal Messenger
Asking Lemmy for a concise write up about why Corporate Social Media can't work ?
What makes a social network “work”?
Typically, we say that a social networking service works when it achieves some of these:
- Community – gives users the ability to create communities they can feel a sense of belonging to.
- Freedom of expression – expands people's ability to speak their mind in a .. umm... meaningful way ? (looking at 4chan's /pol/).
- Rich expression – actually offers tools to express yourself (presence of features like markup, formatting, embeds).
- Constructive culture – becomes an environment where people learn and participate in constructive and fun activities — like university clubs. (Sorry for the example, but Reddit’s r/anime comes to mind.)
- Privacy & safety – respects users’ privacy and safety.
- Developer support – provides good developer tools.
- Example: In Numbers: The Best Anime of the Decade from MyAnimeList — a huge data-driven article made possible by open tools and APIs. (also a huge web page, might take forever to load all figures)
Feel free to add more points, or challenge the ones I’ve listed.
It seems like a general consensus here on Lemmy that — no matter how many times you try — Reddit will always slip from Aaron Swartz to u/spez.
Why do you think that is?
Disclaimer: I wrote the post by myself, but used AI to refine my bad English and markdown,
In Numbers: The Best Anime of the Decade
What's the #1 anime of the 2010s? Which year was the best? What studio had the most hits? We have the answers to all these questions and more!MyAnimeList.net
Public forums should be publicly owned. These are essential social tools that allow us to have discussions with each other and shape our views and opinions. These forums must be operated in an open and transparent manner in a way that’s accountable to the public.
Privately owned platforms are neither neutral or unbiased. The content on these sites is carefully curated. Views and opinions that are unpalatable to the owners of these platforms are often suppressed, and sometimes outright banned. When the content that a user produces does not fit with the interests of the platform it gets removed and communities end up being destroyed.
Another problem is that user data constitutes a significant source of revenue for corporate social media platforms. The information collected about the users can reveal a lot more about the individual than most people realize. It’s possible for the owners of the platforms to identify users based on the address of the device they’re using, see their location, who they interact with, and so on. This creates a comprehensive profile of the person along with the network of individuals whom they interact with.
This information is shared with the affiliates of the platform as well as government entities. It’s clear that commercial platforms do not respect user privacy, nor are the users in control of their content. While it can be useful to participate on such platforms in order to agitate, educate, and recruit comrades, they should not be seen as open forums.
Open source platforms provide a viable alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.
From that perspective I think that open and federated platforms. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, federated platforms have many servers that all talk to each other to create the network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.
One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Reddit and BlueSky. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions.
Open platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. It's also more difficult for third parties to collect data since it doesn't all conveniently live on the same server that some company owns. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and tracker bloat.
Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook or Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.
On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network. More users joining Mastodon is a net positive for Lemmy because we get more content and more people to have discussions with.
Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens.
Marxist theory states that in order to be free, the workers must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.
It’s time for us to get serious about owning our tools and start using communication platforms built by the people and for the people.
But after reading, Seems like your answer argues that open source federated alternatives are better than corporate social media. While I personally agree, the main subject of this thread is why the phenomena: "privately owned social media that seems to embrace us at first turns against us eventually", actually more like "stops working eventually". the subject is why this is inevitable, this paragraph is the main subject:
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
You mentioned Marxist theory. From what I understand, Marx or some other commie argued that the good capitalist who plays with the rules is left behind in the race ("If I don't lobby someone else lobbies") and the winners use all kinds of ways to create monopoly and destroy the ones slacking. Thus Capitalism leads to monopoly and kills competition and fairness inevitably.
I kinda get the impression that corporate social media turning against its' users is inevitable in the same fashion for some similar argument. That's what Lemmy seems to think like.
But, I don't see it happening when I'm using Telegram, or when observing Valve's behavior.
Enshittification
*** Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025 ***Misogyny, conspiratorialism, surveillance, manipulation, fraud, and AI slop are drowning the internet.Verso
Domenica In, Corinne Cléry e Kekko dei Modà tra gli ospiti. Nel talk su Ballando arrivano Rosa Chemical e Fialdini: anticipazioni del 5 ottobre 2025
Mara Venier torna domenica 5 ottobre 2025, alle 14.00 su Rai 1, con il terzo appuntamento stagionale di Domenica In. In scaletta interviste, musica, talk di attualità e un focus sul mondo di Ballando con le Stelle.
OSPITI E ANTICIPAZIONI: Domenica In, Corinne Cléry e Kekko dei Modà tra gli ospiti. Nel talk su Ballando arrivano Rosa Chemical e Fialdini: anticipazioni del 5 ottobre 2025
Domenica In, 5 ottobre 2025: ospiti e anticipazioni
Domenica In, anticipazioni del 5 ottobre su Rai 1: Corinne Cléry, Kekko dei Mod, Rosa Chemical e Francesca Fialdini. C’è anche Aldo Cazzullo.Redazione (Atom Heart Magazine)
La Verità Scomoda: Dalla Scienza alla Sanità, Tutti Ci Vogliono Malati?
Il punto non è solo l'immunità dei produttori di vaccini o le ombre su figure come Anthony Fauci; il dramma è che ogni livello del sistema guadagna se restiamo malati. Le carriere degli scienziati sono legate alle aziende, le riviste sono diventate "contenitori di propaganda" e i bonus dei medici dipendono dai profitti.
Non è forse questa la vera pandemia? Quella di un sistema finanziario che, in nome del profitto, mette a rischio la nostra salute? Dobbiamo esercitare il nostro obbligo di cittadinanza: fare le nostre ricerche e resistere al pensiero unico imposto.
La Scienza, la Democrazia e gli Incentivi Perversi: Le Riflessioni di Kennedy JR che Fanno Tremare il Sistema
Oggi voglio parlarvi di un'intervista che mi ha profondamente colpito, quella a Robert F. Kennedy JR. È una voce che che non ha paura ...Giuliano (Blogger)
How the US got left behind in the global electric car race
How the US got left behind in the global electric car race
Despite a recent surge in demand, the US is a laggard in EV sales compared to much of the rest of the world.Natalie Sherman (BBC News)
like this
Rozaŭtuno e adhocfungus like this.
eldavi
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to eldavi • • •eldavi
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •i've learned from interacting with military brats in college and their parents that the american military prides itself on the high levels of kool-aid drinking; even the people who are critical of or disillusioned by the imperialist nature of it all still make a show of being a drinker to their colleagues while insisting that it's bs to everyone else and that includes carrying out orders no matter how fucked up they are.
they only try to fight back once they leave/retire from the service so; yes; they'll dance to whatever tune trump plays and i'm wonder what, if anything, goes through the minds of the ones who know that it's fucked up, but will do it anyways.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to eldavi • • •