Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th October 2025
Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Simon Willison writes a fawning blog post about the new "Claude skills" (which are basically files with additional instructions for specific tasks for the bot to use)
How does he decide to demonstrate these awesome new capabilities?
By making a completely trash, seizure inducing GIF...
He even admits it's garbage. How do you even get to the point that you think that's something you want to advertise? Even the big slop monger companies manage to cherry pick their demos.
Anthropic this morning introduced Claude Skills, a new pattern for making new abilities available to their models: Claude can now use Skills to improve how it performs specific tasks. Skills …
The ITUC has released a new report on the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on working people, with a clear call for trade unions to be fully involved in shaping how AI is deployed and regulated.
Lunedì 20 ottobre 2025 un maxi-down ha colpito numerose piattaforme globali a causa di problemi ai server di Amazon Web Services (AWS). Il disservizio, partito dal cloud di Amazon, ha generato interruzioni e rallentamenti a catena su applicazioni consumer e strumenti professionali in tutto il mondo, con oltre duemila segnalazioni registrate negli Stati Uniti e problemi di navigazione segnalati anche in Italia.
wine updated to bleeding edge
dxvk updated to latest git
vkd3d-proton updated to latest git
wine-wayland/em-10 patches updated
fixed news not loading in black desert online (revert GL/VK patch in e...
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has strongly condemned the Israeli regime's mistreatment of a rights activist who stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people, describing its actions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.”
Esmail Baghaei made the remarks in a post on X, referring to reports that Israel “tortured and sexually humiliated” Greta Thunberg.
He cited Thunberg’s recent interview with a Swedish newspaper, in which the young activist described being violently assaulted during a protest.
“They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me,” Thunberg was quoted as saying.
The spokesman said Israel’s behavior reflects a deliberate effort to instill fear and suppress dissent amid its genocide in Gaza.
Stamattina siamo passati a NodeBB 4.6.1, è una release principalmente di [em]bug fixes[/em] tra cui uno particolarmente fastidioso che metteva un carattere strano [code]'n'[/code] nell'oggetto perdendo della formattazione dai post che arrivavano da Mastod
Stamattina siamo passati a NodeBB 4.6.1, è una release principalmente di bug fixes tra cui uno particolarmente fastidioso che metteva un carattere strano 'n' nell'oggetto perdendo della formattazione dai post che arrivavano da Mastodon e da Friendica.
In realtà avevo già sistemato questo bug qualche giorno fa perché avevo aggiornato prima del rilascio della 4.6.1 e non appena avevo visto che questo bug era stato risolto ma ora ne ho approfittato per allinearci con la release stabile.
Kohler unveiled Dekoda, a $599 toilet sensor that uses a tiny camera and spectroscopy to analyze bodily waste and provide health insights12. The device clamps onto the toilet bowl rim and monitors hydration levels, bowel movements, and checks for blood in the toilet.
Users sign in with a fingerprint sensor before use, allowing multiple household members to track their individual data through the companion app. The system requires a subscription costing between $70-156 per year1.
"Kohler Health isn't just another app or product. It's a promise that your home can play a more active role in your well-being," said CEO David Kohler at the launch event2.
The company emphasizes privacy protection through end-to-end encryption. The camera uses "discreet optics" aimed only at bowl contents, not body parts1. The technology works best with light-colored toilets, as dark bowls can interfere with the sensors1.
Dekoda represents Kohler's entry into the digital health space, joining other smart toilet sensors from companies like Withings and Vivoo that appeared at CES 20232.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I can kind of see this as a positive, where tracking health is useful...
But I'd have to let go of literally every corporation who has tried to be altruistic and then burned me later. 150 a year (let's be real too, per user probably), is too much for a monitoring service like this. Not to mention, you notice blood in your stools. Unless you just ignore weird feelings and just never turn around when flushing you're gonna notice. You don't need a service for that, just go to the doc immediately.
Someone use a Smartwatch? Their all your data go to Apple, Google, Amazon and also maybe even to your Doctor. We like to surround us with Spyware to make big corporations great again.
If i feel me bad or have blood in my shit, I go to the Doctor, no need of an app which say it.
Yeah, it’s actually really valuable data for your own personal use in aggregate. Obviously you would notice a dramatic change one day. But you wouldn’t notice a slow trending change. Having the data to see that could help you identify a condition early before you have symptoms.
Collecting the data has a lot of value. Paying a subscription service for the rest of your life to not lose the data kind of ruins the deal.
Yeah that seems like the perfect sort of thing to give away as a free benefit to people, but then charge big healthcare for the overall datasets to do analysis on. Fully anonymized of course. If I, someone who actually cared about privacy, was going to do it that'd be how.
Multiple online platforms including Amazon's cloud unit AWS, Robinhood, Snapchat and Perplexity are all experiencing outages, according to the Downdetector website monitor.
Was hoping if anyone wouldbe kind enough to tell me if there was a good alternative to Google-Fonts ? I wish to use all those cool fancy HTML/CSS fonts without going to Google
Ummmmmm have you heard about the weegers? It's pretty bad you know, try reading a real newspaper like the New York Times instead of your usual russian propaganda...
Þe article reads like an ad, and setting up þe server side takes a lot of steps so þe claim þat it's "quick and easy" is silly.
Distributions nowadays come with wiþ sshd disabled by default. It's, like, þe first þing an experienced user enables, but I'll bet a ton of newbs never do it, and may not know how. I've even come across distributions which don't install OpenSSH by default! Insanity.
þe article implies configuring NFS or samba is harder... and I'd agree. Home LANs are often not enterprise-grade, wiþ nodes connected over unreliable and relatively slow WiFi, and NFS has several moving parts and is chatty. Samba/CIFS is better for reliability, but requires a fair bit of knowledge to configure. And when it does fail, you can be left wiþ zombie processes and hung network connections. Scp is better for straight for transfers.
Not all users are aware þat þere are Android clients which understand sftp, and not all newbs are aware þat you get free sftp wiþ sshd, or þat sshfs exists.
People keep inventing more LAN filesharing apps when ssh/scp/sftp already exist, so þere's a need ssh isn't filling. Maybe it just needs a custom app, alþough I'm fond of apps like Material Files + sftp remotes for Android, and sshfs for Linux.
However, by far þe easiest is þat I set up SyncThing ages ago and haven't had to manually copy a file since. Þe exception is music, because I don't want my entire library on my phone; I now use Subsonic + Tempo and a "mobile" playlist which Tempo syncs, but getting music onto þe server requires sftp, and just getting a directory listing is painfully slow. If Subsonic had a file upload API, bidirectional playlist syncing would provide iTunes-like music library maintenance, which was darn near perfect design.
Anyway, I agree: solutions like QuickDAV keep popping up probably because people don't know about better options.
Basically the advantage is that it’s ridiculously easy to set up. You just install the app and open it. The downside is that it’s ad-hoc. It’s not meant to be a long running server like smb.
"go to another machine on your LAN" So its basically syncthing? But that its not able to decide who gets whick file as there is only one option to log in in QuickDAV? But maybe more intuitive?
Syncthing (as the name implies) is meant to synchronize folders across machines. QuickDAV is meant to transfer files/folders from one machine to another. They definitely both have there uses, and there uses might overlap in a lot of cases, but they also have there own niches. Like, I wouldn’t use Syncthing to transfer a photo to my desktop once, and I wouldn’t use QuickDAV to keep my photos directory synchronized across several machines.
KDEConnect is honestly going to be better. It's runs on everything (yes, Gnome and Cinnamon), has transport and device security, and offers more than just file transfer.
GSconnect extension on GNOME, and its honestly amazing. Send files, copy clipboard, auto pause my music when a phonecalls comes in. Custom commands from the phone to lock my session if I'm away from my desk. Such a great application.
KDE Connect fucking RULES! The ability to send clipboard from phone to pc, send files, control media, remote mouse input, its low key one of the most useful software I've ever used.
I just install openssh server, because I need it anyways, and use an SFTP client to transfer files. Seems to be fast, secure, and easy. No new ports to open up.
I've transferred many terabytes of data this way, no complaints. Rsync is nice for syncing huge folders, and walking away, so I'll also use that when the need arises.
Banks can track each banknotes serial number when you receive them from the ATM and when they are returned from the store you spent them at. This data could then be used to create a complete profile of your spending habits.
Doesn't work very well if you buy something directly from someone. Or if your cash is given out as change. Seems like it would make a wildly inaccurate profile.
Given a large enough time frame this can be treated as random noise which is easily filtered out, and this data isn't necessarily meant to track your supermarket shopping. For example, you can use it to figure out where somebody went who has gone into hiding. They might have cleared out their bank accounts before leaving and with that data you can see where these banknotes are now showing up. Just wait at the store they apparently visit every Tuesday.
That’s completely made up. Most bills are given out to other customers once used in a store, the amount of bills that are used once and returned to the bank would be well under 5%.
Fantastic fabricated story though. Money laundering which has been done for decades would defeat this, it’s a scary story to share that has zero basis on reality.
Netzpolitik recently did an article about that. I consider them a credible source. How often bills are used before there are returned to the bank heavily depends on the denomination. Larger bills don't circulate as much and at least in my country most stores return their cash income to the bank on a daily basis. People also tend to spend their money around the area where they live, so even if you couldn't figure out which exact store a targeted person spends their money at due to circulation (which I doubt), you can still quickly find the general area in which they are staying.
Bargeld gilt als anonymes Zahlungsmittel. Dabei ist anhand der Seriennummer durchaus ersichtlich, welche Routen Geldscheine nehmen. Die Infrastruktur zum Bargeld-Tracking wird immer weiter ausgebaut.
Without some type of visual confirmation, it’s all noise.
On my way home from work, I grab $600 from the atm, $300 for my wife’s tattoo, $200 for me, and $100 for wife spending money.
After the appt the tattoos artists wife takes $200 and flys across country that night. I spend my $200 at the peelers, all those go to a dozen different girls and servers. My wife the next day goes shopping at an outlet mall and spends her $100 at 4 stores. The tattoo artist spends his $100 on beer.
We live on the same block and I pulled the money out across town. Who’s is the original takers purchases….?
It’s 95% noise, it’s useless unless you’re an investigator and have boots on the ground.
Again, it’s a fun story to share around the campfire though. Is it possible, yes, can it be done in actual practice, absolutely not. Not without some other information.
Yes that would destroy some data points but we are talking about a statistical approach here. How often do you give other people cash directly in comparison to spending it at stores. Given enough time and collected information local concentrations will show up. Its surveillance through data analysis with a new veneer.
I ONLY give other people cash, all my other purchases are debit/credit. Like MOST people and stores since Covid
The only time this works, is if it’s targeted, and that means an investigator is doing it. An automated system wouldn’t know what to do with any of the data. You’re severely overestimating how much people spend cash around them, that’s usually when it’s plastic. People use cash in “sketchier” places.
Again, zero basis on reality, it gets “destroyed” at every step without some manual intervention.
I ONLY give other people cash, all my other purchases are debit/credit.
If you always use card payments whenever it's possible, it obviously isn't necessary to analyze your cash transactions to learn where you are because you are already disclosing it 😀
Like MOST people and stores since Covid
There are close to 2 billion unbanked people in the world. In the US, it's less than 6% nationally, but over 10% in some states.
Many people who are not unbanked also often avoid electronic payments for privacy/security and other reasons.
The cash serial number tracking being described in this thread is useful for locating the neighborhoods frequented by someone who (a) avoids using electronic payments, and (b) maybe obtains cash from an ATM (or perhaps check-cashing service, in the case of an unbanked person) in places other than the neighborhoods they live in or frequent.
There are close to 2 billion unbanked people in the world. In the US, it's less than 6% nationally, but over 10% in some states.
……
If they don’t use a bank, how are they pulling money out for it to be tracked?
See, none of it makes any sense lmfao.
The cash serial number tracking being described in this thread is useful for locating the neighborhoods frequented by someone who (a) avoids using electronic payments, and (b) maybe obtains cash from an ATM (or perhaps check-cashing service, in the case of an unbanked person) in places other than the neighborhoods they live in or frequent.
Which is useful to who…? The only time that information is useful, would be for an investigator, so… again… someone, boots on the ground, and doing visual verification. And an investigator and plenty of other useful metrics with less noise.
It
Makes
Zero
Sense
In
Reality!
The person originally started talking about spending habits, and shifted to finding criminals. Those are two whole-fully different situations that need different information points, and are also gathered in significantly different methods.
Lots of stores also gives bills back out, the system makes zero sense, it can’t track anything at all. Like maybe 5% of bills are used once and then returned to the bank.
ATMs give out $20 bills. In order to get one back as change you'd have to pay with a bill larger than $20. I don't remember the last time I carried something larger than a 20.
Isn't it common knowledge? I've known about it for at least two decades...
BTW - you can easily work around it. Get someone else to buy your printer for you, or trade with someone who has the same printer... Now, they will still be able to match it to the printer, if they find it at your home, but other that that, you are free...
PS. Don't use your printer to blackmail FBI or CIA. 😉
As I said - but there could be a connection. Did you use cash or a card? Some places you have a membership, or they ask if you want the receipt on your mail...
Photos taken by digital cameras are also trackable in a similar way as prints taken from a printer. I recall reading they were trying to identify the device after a Harry Potter book was leaked by someone taking digital photographs.
Cameras generally have barely noticeable, but uniquely identifiable, defects that will consistently affect pictures. So if you post a photo on your personal Social Media, and then you post a photo from the same camera on Hexbear, those two things could be connected. Just because it can happen doesn't mean it's practical, though.
I have no idea if this is what's been used with the Harry Potter thing.
But pictures can also be traced back to a camera based on irregularities in the camera sensor scientificamerican.com/article…
Unlike with the printers, there is probably no database of the CMOS sensor irregularities of all cameras ever made. But if you upload pictures under your government name and the take pictures with the same camera and share them anonymously, this could be traced back to you in theory.
sensor pattern noise is recognizable to an extent with pros, but usually its paired with highlight rolloff and other similar qualities. For instance, when I watch a movie, I can figure, okay, this was probably one of the arri's rather than a RED, etc. Sometimes, especially with a bit of knowledge on how/where they shot this, you can get an even better idea, close to a specific model. Of course if you're watching an actual movie, this is all after color correction so its more obvious if you have the raw files.
anyway, my point is, people who work with the cameras and files can definitely have at least a good idea of what camera something was shot with, but you'd really need a huge database and computers to do the work to match it exactly. I have colleagues that will show me something they worked on, with cameras they don't own and between the group of us, someone can immediately spot what camera it was shot on. but! like you said, if you post pictures on the internet, and then more pictures/videos with the same camera elsewhere, yeah it should be theoretically possible to match them with sensor noise pattern. they could at least prove its the same model. i'm not sure how much it differentiates between same camera models, but i can recognize my camera models dnp easy peasy. i have not had any caffeine yet so this is likely a jumbled mess of a thought and i apologize.
That's the obvious one. But you can also add data to images by adding tiny values to the pixels, it'll still look the same to us (same as printer tiny dots).
I don't know if phones actually do this. Just saying it's possible.
But many uploading sites optimize the images, so it'll be gone on reshare, but they could get it on first upload.
Any image editing tool like mspaint or similar. Just copy paste the pixels into a new image file. Though, the program youre using will probably still add it's own metadata to the new file, but all the original metadata from the camera won't be there.
or just the individual characteristics and flaws of the lens/sensor/postprocessing software, some of which can be unique per device, and potentially comparable to other photos made with it.
No... But i've thought about how easy it would be to implement in ebooks and pdfs (e.g. my daily newspaper i can download as pdf). I've thought about this when sailing the high seas.
It's prevalent among pdfs downloaded from academic publishers (text listing the receiving IP address and/or institution running down the margins). I wouldn't be surprised if it's also done with hidden white text or in the metadata.
The worst thing about that printer tracking is that we only learned about it around 20 years after they started implementing it. It's been another 20 years, imagine what they're doing now.
At launch (in 2021) the FireTV was not on the list of Sidewalk-enabled products, but given the fact that Sidewalk was enabled without user consent on many existing devices (and has been found to re-enable itself after being disabled) combined with the fact that FireTV devices all have at least the necessary bluetooth radio (even if not the LoRA part, Sidewalk can use both/either) and thus could become sidewalk-enabled by a software update in the future... I would still say that Sidewalk is a reason (among many) to boycott FireTV along with the rest of Amazon's products.
The takeaway that Amazon built their own mesh network so that their products in neighboring homes can exfiltrate data via eachother whenever any one of them can get online is not false.
Amazon Sidewalk is a new system that is being activated today across millions of Echo smart speakers and a few Ring devices. It allows those devices to act
Social graph connections can be automatically inferred from location data. This has been done by governments (example) for a long time and is also done by private companies (sorry I can't find a link at the moment).
Most modern cars are SIM-enabled and are constantly sending data back to the mothership. But even those that aren't will still collect data locally and that data will be collected when you send the car to an "official/licenced/authorized" repair shop.
A lot of stores track your movement through the store with the WiFi or bluetooth your phone sends out, unless you have that turned off. Since it's "anonymous" not even stuff like the GDPR requires to notify anyone of this.
People sometimes dies from the trunk falling back down. This can happen if the decomposition of the tree has come far enough or the forces eventually make the tree snap.
I searched but only found references to treeworkers getting hit when cutting the stem with a chainsaw. Natural decomposition caused fatalities may be possible, but seem very unlikely compared to other risks...
No, I mean I might have ADHD, and I do sometimes fixate on very specific things. But this time I was just out in the woods and thought hey that Tree throw might be meme material.
This makes more sense than an IED. WW2 UXO is still a problem in Europe 80-ish years later. I remember a bulldozer getting blown up sometime around 2005 while building a new autobahn.
The point I was trying to make is that the IDF has dropped so much ordinance on the Gaza strip that there are going to be UXO events for at least 100 years.
The IED makes a lot of sense because Israeli bulldozers and excavators are actively destroying Palestinian homes in their yellow line area during the "ceasefire".
So if there was an IED buried there in advance then they would have tripped it for sure.
A causa del mio terribile ma solito infognamento di fine settimana, stavo per scherzare sul fatto che troppo programming, con poco gaming e soprattutto niente reading e writing, fa male alla salute… Perché si sta ore fissi davanti al PC, a fare i conti con testi bizzarri in linguaggi decisamente poco umani, per poi andare […]
tanto programming con poi il malo svegling causa la quasi gran morte dell’octt… (stavo per svenire alzandomi troppo veloce stamattina)
A causa del mio terribile ma solito infognamento di fine settimana, stavo per scherzare sul fatto che troppo programming, con poco gaming e soprattutto niente reading e writing, fa male alla salute… Perché si sta ore fissi davanti al PC, a fare i conti con testi bizzarri in linguaggi decisamente poco umani, per poi andare a dormire incazzati pensando ancora a quella roba (o meglio, quello che non si è fatto), e poi la mattina dopo, ancora prima di riprendere conoscenza (!!!), si pensa automaticamente a quello, e quindi ci si sveglia subito con un bel mal di testa, solo per poi (dopo colazione eh, ma comunque) andare ad incollarsi di nuovo davanti al PC per continuare l’effettivo programming… 😭
Tuttavia, ecco, non immaginavo affatto che il lievissimo mal di testa di 1 o 2 minuti ieri fosse solo il tutorial, mentre l’effettivo momento non epico fosse un ben più lungo (5 minuti???) calo di energia vitale (di pressione, probabilmente, dato che all’effettivo la sensazione è simile a se mi rubano il sangue…tanto sangue) che boh, non mi spiego!!! O meglio, me lo spiego nel fatto che è colpa del programming, per cui scrivere tutti quegli incantesimi così forte assorbe una quantità assurda di energia magica, e quindi succede questo… anche perché, sennò, davvero non si capisce come mai io abbia percepito questo genere di scherzetti solo in queste ultime due mattine, quando guarda caso solo in questo fine settimana ho fatto granché programming, i giorni prima no. Ho già pure dimenticato metà dei sintomi, ma è veramente una cosa assurda, ad un certo punto mi si sono pure ammosciati i 5 sensi, mentre stavo sul divano sperando di non cadere all’aldilà proprio oggi… 🤢
A parte gli scherzi, probabilmente è solo che mi sono alzata troppo di botto dal letto, senza nemmeno accorgermene, e dunque sarà accaduto appunto un calo di pressione… ma il punto è che non me lo spiego così forte, al punto che stavo quasi per cadere per terra ad ogni passo, ad un certo punto dal bagno al divano. Vero è che stanotte ho dormito solo 4 ore circa, perché come ho detto il programming fa male anche solo nella misura in cui offusca la mente di pensieri — riguardo la cosa stessa, o che portano la mente a vagare su altre cose, spesso non buone, come il dolore esistenziale di sottofondo — impedendo di addormentarsi serenamente ed efficientemente, e quando mi sono alzata è stato avendo notato che avevo ignorato la sveglia per 20 minuti e quindi ero in ritardo, però insomma… 😵💫
A me comunque pare di non essermi alzata in modo fisicamente meno calmo di altre mattine, ma a questo punto mi viene il dubbio… E se normalmente io mi alzassi con abbastanza calma, ma proprio ieri matttina il programming mind virus mi ha fatta uscire dal letto di fretta per via delle cose da continuare (e non ho avvertito gravi effetti solo perché avevo dormito 9 ore buone), mentre stamattina ci si è messo il tempo tiranno a mettermi fretta? Però, mannaggia a quel gran zio delle pere fritte…se il mio corpo è in uno stato tale che poco mi manca per svenire se mi alzo troppo velocemente, per quale cazzo di motivo le mie gambe me lo permettono??? Con lo stato mentale in cui sto la mattina presto, io certamente non mi posso ricordare di alzarmi piano piano sennò muoio, quindi preferirei che ci fosse un meccanismo di sicurezza automatico… (Anche se, qualora ci fosse, probabilmente pure me ne lamenterei, perché “come è possibile che non riesco a muovere le gambe? e se arrivano le bombe israeliane anche nella mia città e devo scappare come faccio???“… vabbuò.) 🐥 pignio.octt.eu.org/item/105934… #mattina
Our last State of the Bird was September 16th 2025 and can be found here.
This State of the Bird is a bit late due to a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that Gary kept forgetting to finish it. Also the Charts plugin in Discourse got broken so we started looking at alternatives but luckily the plugin got fixed and we now have some code to automatically gather some of the metrics.
Metrics
We have a number of metrics we keep an eye on which you can see below.
Contributors
The number of contributors continues to fluctuate a bit, but that's expected for a volunteer project.
If you're interested in contributing you can find some documentation here including ways that don't require knowing how to program.
Review requests are what we call our code reviews and is the way that all code is accepted into our code bases. This is a look at how many were open and closed each month.
This is a look at the number of issues that were opened in our issue tracker as well as how many were closed by month. We don't create issues for everything we do, this is still good to look at as it will include bugs and other issues users have brought to our attention.
This is a break down of commits to each project per month. In most cases a review request is just a single commit, but this chart helps to see what projects are being worked on.
As you can see, Pidgin 3 activity continues to dominate everything else.
Pidgin 3 is our next generation universal chat client whose goal is to give you the best experience possible when using modern chat networks.
Retrospective
Lots of work on Pidgin 3 this month including a new application icon! Feel free to discuss it at discourse.imfreedom.org/t/new-….
The big work this month that we were trying to get into the release was that we're completely overhauling the account setting and user splits APIs. However, this had some dependencies we didn't expect related to the credential providers using the account username to keep track of accounts. Needless to say, this wasn't finished for the 2.93.0 release, but we're going to keep chipping away at it.
Another huge thing we finished this month is the start of the migration guide for developers. This was a huge undertaking and still needs to have all the user interface stuff added to it, but it's still a huge milestone. It can be viewed here. We need to finish the architecture documentation too which will help fill in some of the finer points that aren't covered in the migration guide.
Also as previously mentioned in the Experimental 4 release announcement, we now have a setting for toggling light/dark mode!
Highlights
Add a Pidgin.Badges widget to contacts in the contact list
Import our new application icon from the one and only Hylke Bons
Create Purple.AccountSetting
Add Purple.AccountSettings
Add Purple.Protocol.get_default_account_settings
Create Purple.AccountSettingStringList
Update the default account settings handler to include user splits
Port IRCv3 to the new account settings
Add Purple.Account:disconnected to complement Purple.Account:connected
Fix settings initialization in network prefs
Fix parenting of Account Manager window on initial startup
A first pass at documenting how to migrate from purple 2
macOS: fix some issues with the macOS native files
macOS: hide duplicate menu items
Stop setting XDG_RUNTIME_DIR in devenv
Add a dark/light color scheme setting
Add remove all and update methods to Purple.AccountSettings
Make sure accounts have names when saving and loading
Add the account name to the account editor
Update Pidgin.AccountDisplay to use the Purple.Account:name property
Update libpurple to use Purple.Account:name when referring to accounts
Update pidgin to use Purple.Account:name when referring to accounts
A few cleanups in the account api
Create Purple.ConversationManagerBackend
Update Purple.ConversationManager to use a Purple.ConversationManagerBackend
Pidgin 2 is our stable "production" release of a universal chat client. Meaning that you can use it as a single interface to many chat networks!
Retrospective
We're still planning on doing a 2.15.0 release, but we haven't moved forward on this at all this month.
Highlights
Cleaned up the app data file.
Removed the auto package spec file.
Retrospective
We still need to finish up the build environment packages so we can upgrade GTK on windows and get that all into the installer. We also need to remember to update the spell checking dictionaries as we haven't done that in awhile.
As announced in the last State of the Bird, we've started an additional user interface to keep the look and feel of Pidgin 2 and Gaim before it in GTK4 and we've chosen to name it Gaim.
Retrospective
No new work this month. We've put things on pause until the account settings rewrite is finished. We need to be able to create accounts to move forward and don't want to write a bunch of code just to rewrite it very soon afterwards.
Highlights
None
Releases
None
Future Plans
Once the account settings API is finished up we're going to start moving pretty quickly here.
Birb is a library of GLib utilities that we use across all of our projects.
Retrospective
We created Birb.LocalizedString to be used with the new Account Settings in purple as well as a few maintenance things. After the release we pull in the check license header script from the pidgin repo so that other projects can use it.
Highlights
Create Birb.LocalizedString
Fix some issues with the queued output stream error
Add the check license header script and make it installable
Xeme is our XMPP integration library. It is the basis for both the Link Local Messaging (Bonjour) and XMPP protocols in Pidgin 3. It is still early in development and has not yet had a release.
Retrospective
No activity this month.
Highlights
None
Releases
None
Future Plans
Everything! Seriously though, we're looking to get back to this in the near future.
Ibis
#ircv3-library is our IRCv3 integration library. It has seen a lot of active development as it is used in the IRCv3 protocol plugin in Pidgin 3.
We are nearing known feature completion on it and expect to do a 1.0 release in the near future.
Retrospective
Fixed some issues with the unit tests on windows by using stroul instead of atoi. We also renamed the nick projects by renaming nick to primary-nick, alt-nick to secondary-nick and added tertiary-nick. The old properties are still there but have been deprecated.
Highlights
Use strtoul instead of atoi when parsing hosts
Rework the nick properties
Releases
None
Future Plans
Continue working through the open issues and watching new IRCv3 specifications for things we should be including.
Hiya is a new client abstraction library for mDNS. It was created to help make implementation of the Link Local Messaging protocol easier as we would have to abstract out the different platform implementations and by putting it in a library that abstraction can be used by other projects.
Seagull is a new library we created to make working with SQLite feel more like a GLIB/GNOME library and force usage of prepared statements with named parameters and other similar things.
Retrospective
Just some minor maintenance this month, but we've got some more stuff coming as we're using Seagull to serialize more stuff in Purple 3.
Highlights
None
Releases
None
Future Plans
We have a few features to fill out yet and a few ideas that need a bit more time in the oven.
More specific details can be found in our open issues.
Traversity is a new library for traversing NATs. There are many different ways to traverse a NAT and the goal of Traversity is to hide that from developers who just need to traverse a NAT.
It is still early in development and has not yet had an official release.
retro-prpl is a new repository we've created on GitHub. This repository contains all of the abandoned protocols that have ever lived in our code base and is meant to make them easier to study and for people to use with services like Retro AIM Server, escargot, and NINA.
Retrospective
Nothing to report on this month.
Highlights
None
Releases
None
Future Plans
Right now we didn't add any support for protocol specific emojis because we completely forgot about them. Anyways we're looking at creating a custom emoji theme that will include everything for these retro protocols.
We're also trying to make sure that you can actually use this to connect to the self hosted clones, but we haven't gotten through verifying that and fixing what doesn't work.
Closing
We have a lot to do going forward but we're still striving hoping that the Experimental 5 release which is due 2025-12-31 will actually be Alpha 1. The distinction is whether not not we think the protocol specific APIs are stable enough for third party protocol developers.
We don't have this well defined yet, and it's more of a feel than anything, but we've had a few people tinkering with third party protocols with moderate success which is absolutely amazing!! So as they continue working on their protocols we're getting good feedback on basically everything which is extremely helpful!
We hope you all are enjoying the new format and if you have any questions of comments please leave them below!
I spend a lot of time on the computer, using a lot of software. This makes me acutely aware when things don’t quite work right. A button that renders incorrectly. Inconsistent padding. Unthemed dialogs.
Thanks for sharing your thought process going through this. Theming is important, perhaps more important than we think of regularly, it's actually one of the main things I enjoy about linux. I believe it's also a reason why people are leaving Windows as it has become way too corporate and soulless.
I have found the gtk theming to be extremely confusing. It's too complicated IMHO, or I'm missing something. I wanted to make the titlebar/window manager bar darker (with white text maybe) on this theme mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/1… and I couldn't figure out how to ONLY change the titlebar. I want the various elements (e.g. window bar, menu bar, icon bar etc) to have slightly different colors you see, so I can differentiate what's what. I can't use dark themes because I can't see where the boundaries are of each window/thing. My eyes just can't differentiate dark theme elements. It's a mystery to me how people can use these themes. :o)
I wiped both #Ubuntu and #CachyOS on this #DELL 16" 5640, that I had trouble with its fingerprint reader software getting its settings lost at random times, and installed Linux Mint.
And it works perfectly.
There's a reason why Mint is the go-to distro. Some say that "start with Mint, and then move to something else". And I ask you: WHY? Why move to something else that never works as well as Mint? Who's got time for tinkering?
Honestly Gtk theming has extremely poor documentation and you need to look closely at existing themes to figure out all the CSS selectors you need to define. It is definitely possible, but can require some trial and error.
Not all themes are created equal, but the titlebar is actually one of the easier things to theme.
That being said, it really depends on your DE, and if the apps you are using are Qt or Gtk 3/4.
I really wish they had better guides online, but that was the main reason I spent time working on Celestial. To finally have the consistency i wanted, and untangle the theming mess.
As far as i understand it (never made one, only modified), it's like creating a global usercss for the web (that i did), except with imports and symlinks. You have some generally used class names that fit most of the apps, except that one tool and then some. Then there's gtk 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1/4⁴, 4.0 and the window theme, which is (luckily still) separate.
It only makes gtk theming slightly less of a pain in the ass, but you can use gtk’s inspector (enabled thru a gsettings terminal command and then ctrl+shift+d in the app or thru an environment variable) to find the classes, names, and object types for whatever you’re trying to theme.
For anime I am watching via Animekai thanks to its front page putting focus on current show schedule and an easy to use book mark system.
I am wondering is there any Stream site for Westren Movies and shows? So far most I can find seem to use a front page that focuses on what’s supposedly trending rather then current showings
Over the past several days, I have been trying to install Linux on my surface pro 2 because Windows is having issues with hogging memory, which is preventing me from finishing a drawing.
First I tried Linux Mint. After several freezes of the Bluetooth program, I was able to get my 8bitdo controller to connect, however i learned that neither using it as a wireless keyboard nor as dinput works. Mint was not detecting input from either mode, but it could detect xinput. Krita, however did not recognize the inputs because they were not keyboard keys, so i had to install a program to convert xinput signals to key presses.
Additionally, the on-screen keyboard on Mint has two options: always on when enabled, or on when a text box prompts. The former sucks to use because you have to toggle the keyboard in accessibility settings every time you want to turn it off or on, and the latter never detected a single text box in my experience. So the on-screen keyboard simply doesn't work on Mint.
I tried installing Kubuntu. I installed the Linux surface drivers recommended on r/SurfaceLinux. This resolved an issue where the pen and eraser were seen as the same. My controller also worked Flawlessly in keyboard mode right out of the gate. The Bluetooth program didn't freeze once. The on-screen keyboard is also acceptable. By all accounts the experience was a significant improvement.
Then I tried calibrating my pen. This did not work. The cursor was consistently 2-3 mm up and to the left of where i was holding my pen. KDE with wayland also does not support non-linear digitizer calibration. This is a problem because the errors in my tablet's digitizer are non linear. On windows I had created a script to add extra calibration points to rectify this. I can't do this in KDE with wayland. I could switch to X11, but then all the QoL improvements for touch screen/tablet use would be gone.
So I've been fiddling for hours trying to make a script in krita that will allow me to correct my pen inputs with an error matrix. Krita is refusing to even recognize the script is even there. Probably a Krita problem, not Linux, but blegh. I wouldn't have to do this if the system pen calibration worked.
But of course, my 5 year old experience with how troublesome Linux was is invalid today, and Linux has gotten so much better and Just Works™ now /s
I understand the frustration, but Linux only works because the community works on it together. You sound like someone who has some technical knowledge, maybe you can help the kubuntu team make the calibration a feature?
I get it, it's frustrating and it doesn't feel like your needs are being met.
It's just important to see the larger picture. Windows and iOS suck more every day. Linux gains more and more traction, more and more users as the competition becomes less and less attractive.
I hope that the next time you try, that it just works.
I have some sewing patterns that I would like to share (and hopefully swap) but all of the PDFs have a
"This was purchased by John Doe john.doe@email.com #ordernumber - if you are not John Doe, please dob in the person you got this from to company@example.com so we can sick our lawyers on them"
sorta footer on every single page.
Obviously for privacy reasons (and because I don't actually want lawyers sicked onto me), I need to remove this footer.
These are often complex PDFs with more than a hundred pages and multiple layers.
I managed to successfully remove the editing password (not user/viewing password, just can't edit without password) with qpdf --decrypt. But removing that footer has left me at a dead end. I have even tried manually removing every single instance of those footers using Master PDF Editor but saving the file flattened it and you are no longer able to show/hide layers which is essential for correct printing. (Please don't ask me how many different PDF editors I have tried because it has been so so SO many I have lost count).
Not that I really want to have to manually edit this out on what could amount to over a thousand pages but searching for a command to remove a certain phrase has come up empty. Even Master PDF Editor doesn't seem to have a bulk remove or search and replace function (just search).
Two replies there that came to my attention, while I'm unable to get back to sleep at 5am. An old one mentioning github.com/kanzure/pdfparanoia which seems to be an old tool that removes watermarks, hasn't been updated in 5 years, but neither has the PDF spec?
The other is this paste of text:
if it helps anyone, here's what I do to prepare a pattern for uploading to make sure it is 'clean':
Check over the PDF files for any reference to my name/email address (usually this is in a footer on each page, and not every pattern company does this)
If my personal details are present, I unlock the files using a site like ILovePDF - There are other sites but this one has no daily limits
Open the unlocked PDF in Adobe Professional or another PDF editor of your choice and delete the footer box. You can just delete the box on the first page it appears, or the first page it is a standalone box, then save the pdf, close and reopen it - usually it will now be gone from all pages.
Repeat for any other PDF files (obviously)
Run PDF and jpeg files through an exif cleaner
Double check and upload.
I was already able to remove the edit password with qpdf --decrypt. Most of the PDF editors I used, changed the PDF too much (e.g. added margins/padding) which ruined the very specific layout needed for the patterns to work. There has to be no changes to the PDFs apart from removing the 'footer' text :/
I tried doing print to PDF but it flattened the resultant PDF so the layers were lost. Almost all of the software I used to try converting altered the PDF layout in some way and patterns must not change at all, otherwise they get messed up :/
Maybe you could just search and replace the text with an equal amount on whitespaces? Edit oh sorry I only now understood the issue is finding a tool that replaces and keeps the layers. I have never worked with layers in a PDF so I have no idea on that, sorry
My best answer at this point would be that you need to make your own program to find and remove by content. Because no other manual pdf editor would reasonably have such a feature since it's so niche.
Also vibe coding with AI tends to be very good for singular tasks like this.
I wouldn't recommend converting the pdf to anything else since that would remove the layer info unless it's to more complicated formats like EPS, illustrator, etc.
You might be able to do a find and replace with github.com/pymupdf/PyMuPDF . I'm not an expert on PDFs, so I'm not sure if it can be done in a way that preserves all the important formatting, but if you feel comfortable DMing me the PDF (or one of similar complexity) I could try to write a script that replaces all instances of the target text in a way that preserves the rest of the document.
Iirc, tested it out quite a few years ago, and I had to use a software that would both decompile and recompile the PDF, and while it was decompiled, I had to remove the repeating pattern I didn't want with something like Notepad++. File got recompiled a bit over 50% bigger iirc, maybe different compression methods, but the pages themselves didn't seem affected.
Sadly can't remember the name of the program I used for compiling and recompiling, only that it'd do both and that I looked for how to remove watermarks from PDFs. Also the program was certainly offline.
Found a few candidate tools though can test neither now, mutool (part of the mupdf tools), PDFtk, qpdf, pdf2txt (name sounds familiar though it might be memory playing tricks).
If any of those could be found as a single portable exe around 2020, chances are it is the tool I used for it.
Perhaps just blocking it with a white box and then converting it into an image-only pdf. This makes the file much bigger but will keep the exact same layout while also removing the text blocked by the white box.
Or does it have any interactive elements? What do you mean by "layers"?
Just because the visible footer gets removed doesn't mean there isn't other unique tracking information hidden deep in the PDF that could still get the lawyers sicced on you. Depending on how valuable this information is to the company, and how litigious they are, you have to judge how far they might've gone and might yet go to protect it.
Unfortunately, that's why this kind of copy protection can an actually be an effective tactic to prevent individuals from sharing their copies. While there might be ways to strip this kind of hidden data on simpler PDFs... even resorting to methods like screenshotting or printing and scanning, still cannot give you absolute confidence that there isn't some subtle unique identifier invisibly hidden in the layout or through subtle inconspicuous variations, especially if you're doing this regularly and they start targeting you and your account for identification. And on complex PDFs there are so many more ways they could hide this information digitally if they know where to look for it and you don't. 99% of the time it's going to be pretty obvious to strip out, but are you willing to take that risk even if you do find a technical method of removing the visible footers? If it's a one-off, maybe you can get away with it, but in the long term this strategy is not viable and is a trap for rookies.
The only truly safe way to share digitally watermarked content like this is to buy it with a burner account and full opsec in the first place. Nobody to sic lawyers on if it's a hacked paypal or a stolen/prepaid credit card or an untraceable email and IP, or in a jurisdiction with no enforcement. Smash and grab, get the data anonymously and get out. Don't share stuff from your personal account that's literally got your name and banking information attached to it unless you can confirm it's bit-for-bit indistinguishable from other innocent copies with something like a checksum.
the search communities page, with local/other as 1 filter, & subscribed/not-subscribed as the other filter ( other options, don’t remember ‘em )..
IF one searches for other/remote sites, & not-subscribed, e.g. & goes through that page..
then at the bo
the search communities page, with local/other as 1 filter, & subscribed/not-subscribed as the other filter ( other options, don't remember 'em )..
IF one searches for other/remote sites, & not-subscribed, e.g. & goes through that page..
then at the bottom of the page is a Next Page button, .. which gives one a page of bullshit, because it discarded the filtering.
( it certainly discards the subscribed/unsubscribed filtering, it may have kept the local-vs-remote sites status ).
Also, if one searches for local + unsubscribed, the 2nd page isn't filtered.
This renders the 2nd-page & all other pages .. garbage.
I'm only identifying this, not complaining: the fact that PieFed exists is awesome, & work is work, so I'm grateful for what there is, that works properly, so this is only a heads-up.
Perhaps a special-page checklist for the programmers would prevent oversights ( Atul Gawande's book "The Checklist Manifesto" identified that there are 2 categories of checklists: these-people-need-to-connect, & this-task-need-get-done.
Perhaps checklists should be considered as foundational in programming as code-review, pair-programming ( near-view/in-the-trench & far-view/how-does-this-fit-in-with-everything-else ), continuous-integration-testing, etc..
Salut, Namaste, Kaizen, & Gratitude for the wonderful contribution to our world..
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.
A Palestinian government office says Israeli forces have carried out 80 ceasefire violations since October 10, killing 97 people and wounding 230 more.
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.
A North Korean soldier defected to South Korea across the rivals' heavily fortified border on Sunday, South Korea's military said.
The military took custody of the soldier who crossed the central portion of the land border, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said the soldier expressed a desire to resettle in South Korea.
It was the first reported defection by a North Korean soldier since a North Korean staff sergeant fled to South Korea via the border's eastern section in August 2024.
Earlier in his speech, Hasan extended an olive branch to members of the Republican Party who may feel disillusioned with the current administration. “And you know, they say we don’t reach out to the other side, we don’t reach out to conservatives or Republicans, that we’re in an echo chamber,” he said. “Well, let me say to every Republican and conservative watching, aren’t you the ones who said no more big government, no tyranny in America? So if you believe that, what are you doing defending masked federal agents in unmarked cars, bundling people off of the streets, including American citizens, and disappearing them? How are you okay with that? And if you’re not okay with it, then come over to our side.”
Hasan clarified that “our side” is “the small-d Democrats, not the big D Democrats, not the Democratic Party, those of us who are from all parties and none, but those of us who care about saving America so that we can get to our 250th birthday and still be free when we reach 250 years.”
. . . In a rousing speech, Nye evoked the very history that birthed the United States. “Our government is based on ideas embodied in a constitution among other remarkable features that guarantees our freedom to speak as we’re doing here today,” Nye said. “Rather than doing one monarch’s bidding, we have agreed to form a democracy, to work together, and to follow the laws that derive from it. No thrones, no crowns, no kings.”
Nye returned to that history later in his deliverance. “In 1776, our ancestors had had enough. They declared independence from a king by means of a document stored safely right over there on Constitution Avenue in the National Archives. Although it was conceived 249 years ago, the Declaration of Independence describes a train of abuses connected with an absolute authority, a king with absolute power. No thrones. No crowns. No kings,” he said.
“Their king had refused to honor the law. Their king had refused to let lawmakers be elected. The king had made court judges dependent on his will. They cited the king sending quote swarms of officers to harass our people. Their language referred to quote cruelty and faithlessness scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous of ages. Their king was trying to quote render the military independent and superior to civil power. Our founders even censured King George for cutting off trade with all parts of the world. Did these actions sound familiar?”
. . . Sanders later lashed out against Trump allies Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg “and the other multi-billionaires who were sitting right behind Trump when he was inaugurated.”
“Yes, I am talking about the insanity of one person, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households. I am talking about the incredible injustice of the top 1% in America, now owning more wealth than the bottom 93%,” Sanders said. “I am talking about the richest people in America becoming much, much richer, while 60% of our people live paycheck to paycheck, struggling every day to pay their rented mortgages, pay for childcare and education, pay for their healthcare, and pay for their health care.”
More than 2,500 No Kings protests against the Trump administration kicked off across the United States (and in several European capitals) on Saturday, with millions of people expected to march at rallies attended by politicians, celebrities, media fi…
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Hello everyone, lately I got really into Linux. I installed it in every machine I have, but I still had to try Arch. From what people were saying online I thought that it was going to be a hard and impossible task. So I bought a Thinkpad for a hundred euros (x260 if you're wondering) and I followed a guide on how to install Arch. I thought I was going to be using the terminal all the time, and had to type everything. No black screen of death, no prompt saying "Are you awake?" Matrix style, the pc didn't breack, reality didn't bend and just following simply the guide I had Arch running in fifhteen-twenty minutes no problem. Only the Network Manager wasn't on were I rebooted after installation but it took five minutes to search online how to fix it. Everything works: bluetooth, internet, apps and so on. I could leave it as it is and I could just use it as any other pc. So all I'm saying is that I'm having a great time with Linux distros, the pain to learn how install repository and other things is really worth it. Every time I learn something more about my computer puts me more in control. So thank you Linux and its community.
Welcome 😀 The myth that “Arch isn’t user-friendly” will probably never die — and neither will “Arch is unstable.” I’m honestly relieved you didn’t dare push the door to join us 😏 If you ever switch machines, you can check how Arch is supported on tons of laptops here.
My impression was always that the biggest issue is needing to pay attention to, and sometimes intervene in updates, is that not a thing with arch anymore?
It does still happen occasionally that updates need some intervention, it is still policy that you should check the blog in case, but it's only happened once in the last two years for me.
Yeah, exactly, when you want to do a full upgrade it's technically best practice to check if there's anything which requires intervention. But I never bother honestly, and the one time there was an issue it was resolved by just uninstalling one package for another.
Debian 13 is out, and it will stay exactly the same Debian 13 that it was when it released, even 5 years from now. The only changes are bugfixes, security patches, etc. No new features. This means you can basically do unattended sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade with no problems. By the time Debian 14 comes out, there will have been a ton of changes to upstream software, Updating from 13 to 14 might be a one-click fix, or it might take effort fixing configs and ensuring the new software works.
Arch Linux is rolling release, it does not have version numbers, and does not hold back a major package update just "because it changes things". This means basically every update might change things, and that can require intervention. If the Arch Linux team is aware of required intervention, it will be put on the Arch News. This is often just one or two commands. The possibility of intervention being required means unattended upgrades are a no-go on Arch, but that's pretty much it.
If you don't update your system for say, a year, everything that's changed in that time will change all at once. This is often still a few commands to fix, but could be more depending on what updated exactly. Updating regularly is reccomended, because it's easier to tell what exactly changed between updates, and thus easier to track down where a problem originates from.
For general users, updates changing things is pretty much never an issue, which is why typical end users always use the word "stable" to convey it's more colloquial meaning of "not going to break on me", rather than the technical definition sys admins use it to describe.
If arch didn't have breaking changes I don't think users would ever really mind it being rolling release, which is how you get the term "stable rolling release" for rolling distros that hold updates for long enough to generally prevent breakage, like void or tumbleweed
To the original commenter's point, as a more design and ux person I think being able to do unattended upgrades and not get any errors or stuff you have to fix is kinda important. Which is why I find it a tad irksome when technical folks act like everyone and their grandma should run arch cause it's never given them issues. It is awesome that it sounds like it's improved so much though!
Maybe I'll try arch some time and see if I've progressed enough to not find managing my system a bit more bothersome
when technical folks act like everyone and their grandma should run arch
As an Arch user, man I hate when people are like that. Arch certainly has a specific target audience. If you (the individual) are comfortable with a distro, and it works well for you, it's a good option. If Arch isn't that, then it's not a good option for you. Some people don't understand that even the "once a year single command" maintenance is too technical for most.
Having run Arch only the last few years, I don't know how much it's improved compared to say 10 years ago. I do know on most of my systems I don't spend that much time updating or maintaining my Arch installations, usually just a yay, select which AUR packages not to update (the ones I have can have issues updating sometimes), wait for 15-ish minutes (depends how much I have to compile from AUR), and that's it. From server to desktop, some weekly, others once every couple months. Although I would say it's more than average, as I have a custom repository with some nightly compiled packages, which has its own issues.
I 100% agree with this comment. Also, if that “once-a-year single command” bit was about my comment, I’d have appreciated the shout-out 😄 If not, all good — I was literally talking about copy-pasting a line from the Arch or package page. It’s nothing technical; it’s basically similar as running a pacman command.
Arch has certainly a specific target audience. That's true for every distros. The magic of GNU/Linux — you get to pick exactly how much chaos you want in your life. From super-polished plug-and-play distros to full DIY mode, there’s something for everyone. Nobody should ever be forced to use a distro. Again, it's a personal choice and the one that will make you enjoy using your system. Arch is meant for people who have time and desire to build their system and write a bunch of config files. In that sense, yeah, it’s a technical distro, and that certainly not make its users anything special. I'm still and will forever be a Linux noob compared to a lots of people.
it's funny because once you start using other distros you quickly realize how easy Arch actually is. I find Arch more straight forward and easier to use that Ubuntu. Ubuntu makes me want to rip what remaining hair I have out.
The reason people say that Arch is unstable is that you are expected to read the news on the website before every update or else your system is liable to be broken -- and sometimes it will break in spite of that. Oh, and the expectation is that you'll be updating multiple times per week, and if you don't, you will soon be in a situation where to install any package you must update your entire system.
Most other distros place no such expectations on the user.
One time I did not update an arch system for something like 6 months... You can't immagine the troubles I needed to go through to get it into a working state.
Interesting. I once didn’t update the arch system on my laptop for several years, while it was sitting in a drawer. Had to manually update the keychain but besides that the update just worked
I’ve been using Arch for over 15 years, and honestly, I never check the news before updating. Once in a while, I’ll get an error — maybe once a year — and the fix is always just running a quick command I find on the Arch site or the package page. Takes seconds, no drama.
I’ve only managed to break my system twice, and both times were 100% my fault. Even then, recovery was easy: just chroot in and run one command.
As for updates, doing them regularly (daily, weekly, or monthly) is recommended. No need to go crazy with updates. Too frequent updates are actually discouraged. Arch is a rolling release, so your packages and dependencies get updated together — meaning things don’t randomly break. Skipping updates won’t nuke your system either, and if something ever goes sideways, you can just downgrade and be back up in no time.
This has been my exact experience as well. I run updates whenever I log into the machine. Sometimes daily other times monthly depending on the computer, and very rarely have I run into errors.
To be fair, you don't need to update your system to install a package, all you need to do is run the update command just to sync up the database, then cancel out when prompted.
I've gone multiple weeks/months without updating and everything was fine.
I would also add that it heavily depends on the setup a user is running. I had been running Arch with XFCE and dwm for years on a machine with a Nvidia card and I can count the number of issues I had which were not induced by my wrong-doing with three fingers. When I switched to Plasma Wayland on my new machine I faced more issues in one and a half years than with my old setup. Also, none of these issues were mentioned on the news section but were due to Plasma updates. There are just too many moving parts under heavy development with such a big DE and Wayland is also not quite 100% there yet, so for some people it can seem like Arch is rather unstable although it still is a heavy generalisation.
I have played with Arch in a VM - I learnt a lot about how Linux works setting it up. But the tutorials and guides are good, and you end up with a lean system with just what you want in it, and pretty much all configured directly by you.
I can see why Arch is a popular distro and base for other distros (like Manjero and currently rapidly growing CachyOS).
But I'm not at the point I'd want to main it. My issue is the concern that because everything is set up by me, it's a much more unique system so if something breaks it could be a whole myriad of my own choices that are the cause. I'm nervous about having to problem solve things when they break and solutions not working because of how my particular system is configured. It's probably a bit irrational but I do quite like being on an distro that lots of other people have the exact same configuration as me, so when things break there is lots of generic help out there.
That said I would consider arch based distros like Manjaro or CachyOS as they are in that vain of mostly standardised distro.
Installing arch is not difficult. Difficult is to keep track on innovation in the linux space. You are responsible to install and maintain everything. You have to decide if you want something like selinux, at what time it is mature enough to use it, install and use it. You have to evaluate if selinux is better than it's "competitors". You have to decide which firewall you use today and as soon as a new system pops up, you have to read up on it. You decide at what time flatpak is mature enough to use it. All this and much more is done and decided by distro maintainers. They keep up with new stuff and guide you. By using arch, you decide that you want to take care of it and that is ok, but no "normal" pc user who uses her PC once a week shall be expected to read upon all the computer maintenance stuff that is just of secondary importance to her.
I installed Cachyos in June this year after years of Mint (Cinnamon).
It was a zero problem install and everything works with my hardware. I chose KDE and it runs with Wayland perfectly. it's the best distro I've used since i started with Linux in 1995. So my experience with Arch is excellence so far. pacman is already my favourite package manager.
Oh, preface: congratulations! I don't want to sound like I'm underplaying your achievement. Only: don't be lulled by an easy install: Arch still has more maintenance gotchas þan e.g. Debian. And welcome to þe community. Arch is a great distro, and gets better every year. When you want to up þe challenge, try Artix - it's like Arch was a few years ago.
Arch has good installers þese days. It used to be much more manual, and maybe a lot of þe perception of difficulty comes from þat.
However, Arch does need to be updated more frequently, and lots of little þings can bite you if you don't read all þe warnings up front. Þe more time between updates, þe greater a chance of dependency-related issues. You must pay attention to .pacnew changes - you won't be warned about þem, and services can easily break if you don't stay in top of þem. You must read archnews, because about once a year some major breaking change is rolled out (most recently, firmware packaging changes broke a lot of people's boots) and you need to take action. You must learn to not -Sy <pkg>, but only -Syu or -S - because þe first will often break þings. Þere's just a bunch of little þings þat, e.g., Mint users generally don't have to worry about, or encounter far less frequently.
Wiþ Arch, it's not þe install, but þe maintenance which is more work.
Þat said, it is possible to run Arch like a ~~rolling~~ point release distro, and only update once a year. I do þis on my little home self-hosting LAN servers. But I'm really comfortable wiþ Arch, and Linux, and I have rescue USB sticks; and it's not a disaster if one of þose is down for a couple of days.
Arch has a worse reputation þan it deserves - or maybe Arch users like to imagine þemselves as more leet þan þey are. You want to be leet, run LFS or Gentoo; Arch isn't really þat complex þese days.
Thanks for the comment! I like to write and I'm really scared and angry that everything we write will be used to train AI without our consent. So I kmow that learning to maintain Arch Is a long way but I want to create an enviroment on my machines isolated from big tech. I kmow that everything can be hacked but I want to try at least.
It annoys me how much crap people still give Arch because it did honestly deter me from trying it myself when all this time it was exactly the distro for me. A lot of it is the nature of the rolling releases and pacman just feeling more clean and simple then apt and the inevitable Franken-Debian installs I end up with.
The archinstall script makes installation much easier. After that, choosing all my own apps and having to read the wiki and perform minor configurations on them could be seen as tedious when something like Mint is just more out-of-the-box, but it both helped teach me more about Linux so I have a better understanding of how my own system works when things do rarely go astray and it helps me feel like my system is very personalized and my own. Sometimes I still go, "Wait, why don't I have this very basic thing or why isn't it working?" And I find out it's because I didn't install a necessary package, but then I learn and build
As far as rolling releases, I update daily because I'm a geeky maniac and I have had better stability doing that the past 2 1/2 years than I ever did in Windows. Truly, no lie. Part of that is Microsoft setting a low bar, but also my system is a simpler build. That's not to say there have been no issues whatsoever, but I wonder at the people making these claims how much they've really used Arch.
My point generally being: don't let the opinion of some Linux snobs deter you. Try Arch, it may very well be your thing, too.
I used arch extensively. I still have it in a laptop I switch on from time to time. I stopped running it mostly because it is rolling release. I didn't get many problems, but sometimes you do and sometimes you have to spend an hour figuring out what the problem is and how to fix it. I don't want to wake up in the morning with an important video call set up and be unable to participate because the pipe wire config file has been corrupted during update.
Other than that, arch is a good system. But I'd rather keep it on hardware I know I can be without for a day or two if the case comes up.
Oof, I feel you on the video call thing. I use a semi-complicated setup of switching between (7.1 surround) speakers and headphones, plugged into two separate sound cards, too... And a Zoom recorder connected with USB for sound, and Droidcam for a webcam. So many possible points of failure. I had it all working during COVID, but when I have to video call now, I just install the needed app and use my phone 🙈
Ahaha, yes video call Is always a pain in the butt for some reason. I now run fedora (but still only do major upgrades on a Saturday morning).
I don't know, at work we use Microsoft teams, often I get called into meet, zoom and others. The best working one to me is jitsy, that's not to say it works flawlessly.
I don't know, sometimes they work on Firefox, sometimes they work on Chrome. Sometimes they do not work and I have to use the phone. Sometimes headphones microphone does not work. Sometimes headphones microphone works but audio goes through speaker and not headphones.
I don't know, I gave up attempting to fix all these things. Most of the times it's more than one person in the call and we end up just joining together at the computer that works first. To be fair, my colleagues using windows are not free from these problems.
I think people just dont know how good it is. The apt system with fixed versions is super annoying compared to arch. I have never felt that i need to stay on some old version of software ever. Sure there has been a few times when some version is bugged and then I just stayed on a old version for a few weeks, which is very easy to do with pacman.
If you installed it using the archinstall installation script, I believe you. If you did a manual installation of Arch for the first time, I don't believe you installed the system in 15-20 minutes.
I recommend giving the manual install a whirl... it might take you a couple tries, but it will help with your overall understanding of your system--this will be useful if anything ever goes sideways. It really isn't that hard. What you learn during install (how to read the wiki effectively, partitioning layouts, how to set up a boot loader, what filesystems are available and how they're different, what you need to install for firmware or build tools etc etc) will help demystify the system, and put the power to manage your system in your hands. Also if you ever run into an issue like your /boot or / partition being full and you want to resize your partitions, or your compositor won't launch/is freezing and you need to use a TTY--you'll be better equipped... even if that means you're just a bit better at reading/searching the wiki.
Yes, if you use Arch, a DIY system where the user decides which services to activate and how to configure them. Archinstall decides for you how to partition the disks and which services need to be configured based on the options you choose. In other words, Archinstall offers the same thing as an installer like Calamares, but in a CLI script. However, once the base system is installed, you must manage the security tools, backup, etc., not the distribution developer.
I have arch on a few different systems. A couple of them, I used the script as I wanted to get them up and running quickly. It was very good for that, and I still had options in the script to make many of the choices and set things up manually instead of letting the script decide.
If you use the archinstall script to save time on manual installation, I think that's reasonable as long as you've adapted that script to your needs and decisions about the system. I repeat, archinstall makes its own default configurations in tools that the user must configure in the post-installation, such as security and system recovery. Archinstall does not configure selinux, snapper in grub, etc., and for this you have to partition the disk in a specific way, not as archinstall does by default.
That's essentially what I do. I'm an old user and was running arch before it had archinstall so I'm fully capable of doing a manual install, but I also don't have a particularly unusual computer setup so the script is like 95% fine for what I need. I do a few post-install tweaks but that's pretty much it.
Im almost envious of you.. I did that like 15 years ago and there is so many fun things to run and learn. So many desktop environments, tiling window managers, programming languages, ricing attempts...
I used arch almost all the time, with just a few times trying other distros to see what they are about. But nothing is as good as arch, mostly because of the AUR and its excellent docs.
Now bazzite is the new hot thing so could be fun to try that I guess, but dont want to remove my lovely arch.
Hi, I installed Bazzite on my gaming PC and let me tell you it works so well. Fast and reliable, strong as a bull. You install games, update and just play. Even the games that I borrow from a friend that goes a lot to the gym work using Lutris no problem. Only some games have anti cheat problems, otherwise it's works almost like a console, obviously much better.
Thats great but im not sure its very specific to bazzite. Ive been gaming on arch for many years and all games work, pretty much. 😀
Have you tried to install apps from the arch AUR? Im curious if they follow the system theme and if they are found by the system launcher as ordinary apps. They are running in a container so i wonder if that makes them behave differently. Flatpaks can have the same issues.
I stopped using arch because you can't change your user name without breaking the entire system for some reason. Probably not an issue if you build yourself but I was using pinephone and steam deck images. I prefer Debian and fedora.
Unfortunately, the technology of the future demands a high price. On top of the exorbitant energy cost fueling a return to industrial-era levels of pollution, AI is also propped up by a massive global sweatshop operation, where low-wage workers in underdeveloped countries are tasked with doing the hidden intellectual labor that makes the tech useful.
As reported by Agence France-Presse, workers in long-exploited countries like Kenya, Colombia, and India are becoming increasingly outraged over the miserable labor of AI training. For example, as the wire service notes, for an AI chatbot to generate an autopsy report, contract workers have to sift through thousands of gruesome crime scene images, a gig known as “data labeling.”
Though the work is often done remotely — thus saving on the overhead costs of leasing an office — data labeling isn’t exactly a cushy laptop job. Workers involved in this industrial operation describe grueling hours, few if any workplace protections, and frequent tasks involving violent or grisly content. In theory, it’s not unlike social media content moderation, another digital practice built on exploitative labor in the developing world.
“You have to spend your whole day looking at dead bodies and crime scenes,” Ephantus Kanyugi, a Kenyan data label, told AFP. “Mental health support was not provided.”
DOWNTOWN — With their city caught in the country’s largest immigration enforcement operation, as many as 250,000 Chicagoans flooded Downtown on Saturday to condemn Donald Trump’s administration as part of the second nationwide No Kings protest.
“We will never surrender!” Illinois governor JB Pritzker said. “Throughout history we have learned that tyranny doesn’t arrive with dramatic proclamations. We learned that it comes wrapped in ‘law and order’ … The reality here in Chicago is this: Black and Brown people are being targeted for the color of their skin. Children are being zip-tied and separated from their families … These people are not abstractions. They pay taxes on their businesses. They work hard — these people are the fabric of our society.”
“They want a rematch of the Civil War,” Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson said to the crowd. “But we are here to stand firm, to stand committed — that we will not bend. We will not cower. The attempt to divide and conquer this nation will not prevail, because when the people are united, justice always prevails.”
Johnson closed out his remarks by calling for a general strike.
pignio.octt.eu.org/item/105934…
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