Ukrainian teens speaking Russian to spite parents – language commissioner
Ukrainian teens speaking Russian to spite parents – language commissioner
Teenagers in Ukraine continue to speak Russian widely, a top language official saysRT
Judge dismisses two top charges against Luigi Mangione in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting
Luigi Mangione scored a major legal victory on Tuesday with a judge dismissing the two top state charges against him: first-degree murder and second-degree murder, both of which prosecutors had argued were terrorism crimes.
Mangione still faces an additional second-degree murder charge, as well as a federal murder charge, in the killing of United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson last December.
The judge overseeing Mangione’s state criminal case, Gregory Carro, said “the evidence put forth was legally insufficient” for the two terrorism-related charges, in a written decision that was posted during a 15-minute proceeding in Manhattan court on Tuesday.
“Counts 1 and 2, charging defendant with Murder in the First Degree (in furtherance of an act of terrorism) and Murder in the Second Degree as a Crime of Terrorism, are dismissed as legally insufficient,” Carro wrote. “The People presented legally sufficient evidence of all other counts, including Murder in the Second Degree (intentional).”
Judge dismisses two top charges against Luigi Mangione in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting
Man accused of killing Brian Thompson will not face state terrorism-related murder charges but others will standVictoria Bekiempis (The Guardian)
Judge dismisses two top charges against Luigi Mangione in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting
Luigi Mangione scored a major legal victory on Tuesday with a judge dismissing the two top state charges against him: first-degree murder and second-degree murder, both of which prosecutors had argued were terrorism crimes.
Mangione still faces an additional second-degree murder charge, as well as a federal murder charge, in the killing of United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson last December.
The judge overseeing Mangione’s state criminal case, Gregory Carro, said “the evidence put forth was legally insufficient” for the two terrorism-related charges, in a written decision that was posted during a 15-minute proceeding in Manhattan court on Tuesday.
“Counts 1 and 2, charging defendant with Murder in the First Degree (in furtherance of an act of terrorism) and Murder in the Second Degree as a Crime of Terrorism, are dismissed as legally insufficient,” Carro wrote. “The People presented legally sufficient evidence of all other counts, including Murder in the Second Degree (intentional).”
Judge dismisses two top charges against Luigi Mangione in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting
Man accused of killing Brian Thompson will not face state terrorism-related murder charges but others will standVictoria Bekiempis (The Guardian)
At UN, western powers push phantom 'Palestine' recognition to safeguard Israel
Rather than act to end Israel's genocide in Gaza, western leaders rally behind a French-Saudi scheme for fictive statehood that entrenches Israeli supremacy and props up the PA
How Israel is stretching its genocide far beyond its borders
In two weeks, Israel bombed five countries, expanding its military operations thousands of kilometres away from home
Israel killed 10 children from this football youth academy in Gaza
Israel killed 10 children from this football youth academy in Gaza
Ten children from a professional football academy in Gaza City have been killed in Israeli attacks.Al Jazeera
Israel’s Ben-Gvir vows 'magnificent' Gaza beach settlement for Israeli police
Israel’s Ben-Gvir vows 'magnificent' Gaza beach settlement for Israeli police
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has promised to establish a settlement for police officers in the Gaza Strip.Nadav Rapaport (Middle East Eye)
like this
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ likes this.
Charlie Kirk Assassination Sparks Social Media Crackdown
Five hours after Charlie Kirk was shot this week, an Atlanta man got a phone call from an Illinois police officer asking about a photo he shared with a couple of close friends on a private Discord chat. The Atlanta man, who asked not to be identified, says the post was merely a confirmation that he had purchased the same T-shirt that the accused killer wore (from an Illinois-based online shop).Social media companies are generally forbidden by law from divulging users’ private communications to the government without a traditional legal process (e.g., court order). But there’s an exception: in perceived emergencies, social media platforms can proactively and “voluntarily” hand over private messages in response to what’s called an “emergency disclosure request” (EDR).
Discord, I am told, did not respond to any EDR here; but when I asked them directly if they’d provided law enforcement with information to traditional legal process, they declined to respond on-record.
The FBI, or the intelligence community, evidently is monitoring Discord private messaging, even from people who have broken no law.
Full blown Orwellian world. Run for local government and stop this shit.
The largest populated areas are left leaning. If they ae controlled by democratic socialist, we can restrict this shit. Just by pure numbers.
Charlie Kirk Assassination Sparks Social Media Crackdown
How buying a T-shirt led to government monitoringKen Klippenstein
like this
Endymion_Mallorn e Maeve like this.
Sun on Privacy: 'Get Over It'
At the Monday night launch of Sun Microsystems' new Jini technology, CEO Scott McNealy calls consumer privacy a non-issue. The Federal Trade Commission has another view. By Polly Sprenger.WIRED Staff (WIRED)
De-google and open source has been my push this year. I'm not the most knowledgeable but I don't trust these companies.
I stopped using social media for almost 20 years. Only anonymous chats like this are used. Everything goes through a VPN and I always think that someone else is reading my stuff.
9-11 put us on this track with no restrictions.
If I ever get oppressed for my speech, I'm going to go do some deeds.
I'm not going to hide away for 30 years like you have.
If I ever get oppressed for my speech
You already are.
Ask yourself: can you say or post absolutely everything that falls under free speech - i.e. not calls to violence of civil disturbance? Do you feel like you can safely talk about all subjects without being cancelled or sued?
As soon as you start thinking twice about whether you can say something safely, that's censorship. Censorship isn't someone breathing over your neck saying "Be careful what you say", it's you self-censoring so you don't get into trouble.
They don't give a shit about that either. Trump has been trying to goat people into violence and he final got his wish (possibly by his own people). They are seizing on that. That is why he moved the national guard into memphis TN. He wants marshall law to hold power forever.
Edit: spelling
Edit: spelling
Since we're making corrections, the word is "goad," not "goat." You try to "goad" people into behavior or choices they wouldn't normally make.
I try not to correct people much anymore if their message is still pretty obvious. I realized that offering too many corrections could cause people to post less, and I didn't want to be the cause of that. But the fact that you were already willing to edit goaded me into suggesting another correction.
Using 'Martial' and 'Marshal' and 'Marshall'
Not to mention 'marshall'Editors of Merriam-Webster (Merriam-Webster)
Other lemmings don’t seem to love it when I jokingly ask “who’s Marsha Law?”
Martial - Etymology, Origin & Meaning
Originating from Latin Mars, the Roman god of war, "martial" means warlike or military-related, including military law and fighting arts.etymonline
This is a great point out. Just like Chomping/ Champing at the bit.
Your good. Just don't be the " it is it's vs its" person when you have nothing to add. I just want to fight those people.
With Christy Noem in charge, the dog days of democracy are over. Because she put a bullet in its head for insubordination.
But no I agree I mean I always knew we're going to get fashy here but I always thought the bad guys would have their shit together more.
Using this to try to get more people off of discord.
Also not privacy related, but fuck substack
Ken Klippenstein has done amazing work and broke multiple stories.
This is not a smear against discord but a reveal of how the government is operating. If you don't think it is a privacy issue then you don't know what privacy is. Being a fan boy doesn't change what is happening.
Use discord all you want but your point is baseless about the story.
Apologies, I wasn't criticizing the article, or you for sharing it. It's a tricky sentence, especially if English isn't your first language - the "but" changes the subject. Article is definitely privacy related.
What isn't privacy related is my opinion about subtack. I don't mean to derail, so will let anyone reading this look up why ss sucks and make their own decision.
Gotcha. SS has a troubling history. One could argue journalist have a open door policy.
How do you say one is a journalist while another isn't? Today, anyone can be a journalist and a lot of traditional journalist are doing their own thing.
Even credible outlets are changing. The New Your Times was considered top tier but now..... lord have mercy. Billionaires are buying up and interfering with the companies. And then we have private equity firms, the lice found on the flies that eat shit.
Yes, I wonder what journalists ("professional" and otherwise) are supposed to do. Everyone going their own way and splintering off into many little voices doesn't feel like the right answer, but publishers are beholden to investors and can be bought out by billionaires. I suppose there are publishers/agencies that have maintained their integrity like 404 Media, or Al Jazeera.
Maybe this is just the burden of anyone in a democracy: to constantly weigh the quality of the sources of information you're using to form opinions which spawn action.
Getting funding from South Korea might be an option. They probably want the Trump Regime to go away, so that they can carry on business without a toddler doing stupid shit.
If a civil war happens, I suspect the Blue States would get a great deal of foreign support. "Fuck that guy", would be a big part of that. The other part being "I want a reliable business partner." Kinda like how the Confederates were boned internationally when it came to trade. Plus, it would be an easy way to earn favors with whatever institution that displaces Trumpkins.
Highly prone to lock-in, enshittification, and they promote Nazis.
Just another centralized platform that can't help but want to become universal.
There are several, but the most direct alternative is Ghost (see SS to Ghost migration guide here).
I used to subscribe to several SS newsletters that switched to Ghost, which is how I found out about it. But I wouldn't have even noticed if they hadn't told me.
Migrating from Substack - Ghost Developer Docs
Migrate from Substack and import your content to Ghost with this guidedocs.ghost.org
You may as well assume that anything done on public social media is being read, searched and filtered in real-time by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Given the trajectory of this administration in persecuting people for their political affiliation, dumping commercial social media should be an imperative for everyone who isn't goose stepping.
That's been the case for 10 years. Unless it's e2ee, it's public record and can be tied to your real name with a minimal amount of paperwork.
Before I comment anything anywhere, I imagine it being read in a court room in a monotone voice. Bip bop dippity dop, the judge in this case is a swell person and I hope they have a lovely day!
Sounds like a CSAM case for a motivated partisan prosecutor.
People break the law, as it is written, way more than they think. Selective enforcement to target political rival groups is very much in the playbook here.
It is less safe to speak in public today than it was 2 years ago, and it is only getting worse. Protecting your privacy also means protecting yourself from mob justice when they decide you're the new target group.
Protecting your privacy also means protecting yourself from mob justice when they decide you're the new target group.
New flavor of the month. Let's see what Trump seen on Fox News.
It was said in a Discord chat. Discord chats are not private, you agree to that in the TOS when you sign up.
There are always people monitoring the chats, voice and video, looking for illegal activities. Something was said in that conversation that their algorithm flagged for human review and that person sent it to law enforcement.
You have zero privacy on any social media. Everything that you write is viewable by the service owner and they actively look for things to report to law enforcement.
Companies pay lip service to your privacy, but at the end of the day they’ll turn you in the instant it suits them. If you want privacy, you use encryption so that your privacy is guaranteed by mathematics.
I really do worry tools like whatever the naperville pd using here are going result in a lot of damage and upturned lives once their use becomes more casual, like god knows what's going to happen with the president declaring random political views terrorism
no real court orders were involved, the article mentions a EDR wasn't invoked, no push back from discord over what sounds like some sort of dump or access to all images uploaded to the service
Spotshooter is one of those systems that collect but doesn't work as advertised. Politicians love approving it. We also have these POS.
mobileprosystems.com/products/
Mobile Surveillance Products | Mobile Pro Systems
We engineer the highest quality mobile surveillance equipment integrated with the most advanced technology to suit your unique needs.Mobile Pro Systems
I think you missed his conclusion.
We have tools that they can't penetrate. Privacy is a right. We're not cooked.
Lol, okay. As the vast majority of people have no clue and no interest in utilizing those tools. No interest in understanding threat vectors and cryptography. Cooked was a bit glibb, but the general "we", I do not see your optimism.
"Privacy is a right"... sure, so is healthcare and shelter... I am sure those policies are going global really soon.
As the vast majority of people have no clue and no interest in utilizing those tools.
I can't agree more. A few family members got really paranoid about their communications being monitored after Trump was elected again, so I offered to show them Signal or Element. Nah, no interest, "too hard". They still text even with the fucking US government itself warning people it's a very insecure medium.
I'm hoping that disinterest changes after a few people get locked up based on social media PMs, but don't have all that much hope.
After the ICE raids started, I had a lot of people reach out to me. I've given trainings and lots of people switched to more secure systems.
There is an increased appetite in many oppressed groups for this. Don't try to force it. Be open and ready to train those who are eager.
All leftists worldwide are gun happy.
Under no pretext motherfucker.
Hitler died from suicide and Stalin from a stroke.
Kind of difficult to make that happen.
Words are sufficient only in a system that prioritizes broad wellbeing (as opposed to prioritizing the billionaires), when such a system works well, is healthy, is valued by most, etc.
We don't have it. We have a "every man for himself" and "got mine, fuck you" system.
I hate to say it, if anyone wants something in our system now, they have to take it by fiat and force. The fascists get it. They use the methods that work, it's just that their desired end state is intolerable shit for most. If their end state had freedom and human rights for everyone, most would forgive the methods.
Stop saying fascists, youve all used that word to fucking much and it now means fuck all.
People are still going on holidays, people are still buying houses, people are still getting jobs and paying rent and every thing else people have always done. Youre just spreading nonsense to play your part in the dumb as fuck culture wars. YOU and people like you, are why Trump is a thing. Yes, thats right, YOU. You, who plays the dumb games of culture wars, who calls a person who dont like star wars a fucking nazi. You created this nightmare world were extremism is everywhere.
Fucking stop it.
Hey dipshit, which lead to Kirk stopping spreading his hate?
- debating him so he can get views on YouTube
or - the little ouchie he got?
No, the spreading of hate was the talking heads who told you he said things he never said. All the grifters and influencers and main stream news outlets who cherry picked the things he said, to make him look much worse than he is.
Like when he said that people accept that people die so they can have the 2A. You think thats extremism, yet dont ever bother to repeat the rest of what he said, when talking about the shit that society puts up with to have things. Like cars, we accept that 50k people a year will die because we want to drive cars. Its the same argument, but you take it away and all of sudden hes some nutjob claiming kids dying is a good thing.
Take away the 2A and you are at the mercy of a tyrannical government. The price of that safe guard is that some people will die. Exact same thing with cars, and knives, and whatever else. Everything has a cost. EVERYTHING. That was his point. And youd be dumb to disagree with it.
You can argue that we dont need guns, theres nothing wrong with that. But the logic is there.
Look who's calling others a dopey twat.
You don't seem to understand that we are already using words, and it's getting us nowhere. These people understand that we want to use words, and they have weaponized our need for peaceful discussion against us.
Peaceful negotiations only work when both sides are operating in good faith. Not only are the MAGAs not operating in good faith, they view that as an enormous weakness to be exploited. So they tease us along, offering opportunities to negotiate, but they are just distractions, to keep their grift and oppression going longer, and deepening.
Hopefully, we will eventually negotiate our way out of this, but it is looking more and more unlikely by the day. Anyone who has read any history knows that sooner or later, it will almost certainly take some level of violence to unseat the MAGA disease that is afflicting the world.
We should start getting used to that idea now, before we need it for real.
That's what happens when you let billionaires operate unchecked. Billionaires have the ability to operate like an independent nation of one, fucking up the works for real nations who are trying to take care of their people.
Billionaires should either be prohibited, or their expenditures should be tightly regulated. Make them get permission from a regulatory panel before they can spend their money.
"No, you already have a yacht, you don't need another. Just for being shitty enough to request a SECOND yacht, that money will be earmarked to build homeless shelters instead. Anything else?"
Nothing to worry about. Schmuck Schumer has released a statement calling this situation "outrageous."
That'll fix'em.
British woman 'raped by French police officer' while drunk and handcuffed in van near Marseille
British woman 'raped by French police officer' while drunk and handcuffed in van near Marseille
The 37-year-old victim is said to have been arrested by three policemen before being subjected to a horrific ordeal in the back of a patrol vanPeter Allen (Evening Standard)
like this
aramis87, NoneOfUrBusiness e massive_bereavement like this.
He is a veteran officer who has never been involved in any trouble before.
Never been caught publicly before, I doubt this is the first time he's raped women as a police officer.
like this
NoneOfUrBusiness likes this.
But unlike the US, they arrested the cops immediately, and they are even keeping them (except the driver) in jail before trial. So some cops over there are doing thier job at least.
"CCTV footage has been misconstrued."
Don't believe your eyes or the woman! Say the rapists.
"I was doing an alcohol test with my fine tongue while my hands were looking for drugs or weapons. I was multitasking!"
I mean, their lawyer can argue all they want. If there is video, it will have to be heavy law contortionism.
Denmark Holds Massive Military Exercise in Greenland
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/46279988
Denmark did not invite the United States to take part in a large-scale international military exercise on Greenland this week, as it had previously, as tensions remain high over President Donald Trump’s intention to acquire the Danish territory.The exercise, the largest in Greenland’s modern history, comes amid increased interest in the Arctic region and its vast natural resources from other large powers, such as Russia and China.
It included contributions from the militaries of several European NATO allies, according to the Danish military. More than 550 people and soldiers took part, including more than 70 from France, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
It comes as the Arctic region is becoming more of a priority to various superpowers, friend and foe. Greenland is the world's largest island that is not a continent, and beyond its strategic potential, the island is rich in natural resources, home to 25 of the 34 minerals categorized as “critical raw materials” by the European Commission. Some of these minerals include those essential to the production of phones and computer chips.
Anderson emphasized the potential threat of Russia and China to reporters.
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security,” Trump said during an address to Congress in March, pointing to the influence of other global powers in the Arctic, specifically Russia and China. “And I think we’re going to get it one way or the other,” he added. Trump is trying to boost production of computer chips in the United States, which rely on minerals present in Greenland for production
Danish officials have made it clear that Trump’s interest in the region is not welcome.
https://time.com/7318044/trump-denmark-greenland-military-exercise-nato/
like this
Maeve, aramis87 e Atelopus-zeteki like this.
Western bids to recognise a Palestinian state put Israel first
cross-posted from: ibbit.at/post/57398
From Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera via this RSS feed
Western bids to recognise a Palestinian state put Israel first
If recognition is to matter, it must centre on Palestinian self-determination, not Israel’s security.Somdeep Sen (Al Jazeera)
Conditional recognitions centre on Israel’s security, not Palestinians’ right to self-determination, or real accountability.
like this
fif-t likes this.
First person removed to France under ‘one in, one out’ asylum deal, says UK government
First person removed to France under ‘one in, one out’ asylum deal, says UK
Agreement reached with France allows for removal of asylum seekers who arrive on small boatsDiane Taylor (The Guardian)
Introducing QUIC Obfuscation for WireGuard | Mullvad VPN
Introducing QUIC Obfuscation for WireGuard
We are excited to add QUIC obfuscation for WireGuard, aimed at helping users bypass firewalls and censorship.Mullvad VPN
As the title of the RFC implies, QUIC obfuscation works by tunneling UDP through an HTTP server acting as a proxy.
...yes, it says so in the article.
Yeah their CEO said some weird shit last year. They also just rolled out an LLM chat bot this year. Sketchy company heavily leaning into enshittification.
I switched to Proton at one point because they're one of the last few providers to offer port forwarding, but I recently cancelled it and went back to Mullvad.
Chinese economy slows amid Trump trade war and weaker consumer spending
Slowing growth in factory output and retail sales prompts calls for fresh economic stimulus
China’s economy showed further signs of weakness last month as it comes under strain from Donald Trump’s trade wars and domestic problems, with factory output and consumer spending rising at their slowest pace for about a year.
The disappointing data adds pressure on Beijing to roll out more stimulus to fend off a sharp slowdown, with a debt crisis denting the country’s once-booming property sector and exports facing stronger headwinds.
Economists were split over whether policymakers should introduce more near-term fiscal support to hit their annual 5% growth target, with manufacturers awaiting further clarity on a US trade deal and domestic demand curbed by an uncertain job market and property crisis.
Probably only considered a slowdown because China comes from enormous growth.
Industrial output grew by 5.2% year on year last month
That's exactly what I thought, after almost 5 decades of near 10% annual growth, 5.2% is obviously less, but most countries would love to have 5.2% which AFAIK is more than mostly any industrialized country, or western country or democracy.
What's called terrible news for China would be awesome almost everywhere else.
The activity data point to a further loss of momentum
Oh wow really? They can't keep growing 10% annually?
Surprised pikachu!
🤣🤣🤣
France: Strikers challenge Macron's austerity drive
Report: At this point we are just trying to figure who Canadian Parliament WON'T give a standing ovation to | satire
Report: At this point we are just trying to figure who Canadian Parliament WON'T give a standing ovation to - The Beaverton
OTTAWA - After members of the Canadian Parliament earlier today gave a standing ovation to recently deceased far-right agitator who touted white supremacist theories, Charlie Kirk, we here at The Beaverton are stuck trying to figure out if there’s li…Staff (The Beaverton)
Opposition calls for ‘regime change’ in African state – media
Opposition calls for ‘regime change’ in African state – media
South Sudan opposition SPLM-IO has called for regime change, urges citizens to mobilize after charges against Riek MacharRT International
like this
Maeve likes this.
The Soviets had promised at Yalta to enter the war in the Pacific within 3 months of the war ending in Europe. And they did launch an attack on Manchuria at 3 months to the day. Hardly feet dragging.
In fact, them being about to launch the attack, was one of the deciding factors on Truman dropping the nukes on Japan. He wanted to prevent the Soviets fron capturing territory that they would be reluctant to give up in the end. And he also knew that the USSR entering the war in the pacific would be what really pushed Japan to surrender. He didn't want to lose the opportunity to show off the new toys to scare the Soviets.
like this
FaceDeer likes this.
Um... no
"Curse those lazy Soviets for not immediately starting a two front war after losing 11 million people to the Nazis. Respecting the agreements made at the Yalta conference regarding an invasion of Japan, to the letter, was ACTUALLY mendacious."
You realize that after losing 11 million people in a enduring and cataclysmic war, it may take some time to prepare for a war on the totally opposite front?
I dont even know why I'm engaging with this whitewashing. This isn't even what the OP is about.
The fact of the matter is that Japan has not handled the outcome of WWII well at all. Namely the Nanjing Massacre.
Being a "middle" user is the most difficult
By this i mean, grandma checking her email and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.
But us in the middle who pretend we're smart...its a damn hard road. And then helping others to switch when youre not yet a pro is even harder, though a good learning experience.
Getting games to work perfectly, audio issues, Bluetooth issues, vr setups are far harder to do, running older obscure software, hooking up obscure hardware, using external drives, music production, these are some examples of things that will be extremely hard on linux vs windows for the majority of middle users.
However id say it is worth it if you like learning thousands of weird terms and phrases and putting in many hours of frustration to solve a problem. (Have you tried using floop to Docker the peeble?). It is very satisfying fixing an issue and figuring out why it happened!
Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!
I had a crisis too some years ago, when Windows 7 was the shit, I heard Windows 7 was very good (for Windows).
So I tried to dual boot Windows 7, goddam a load of crap!! I'll never believe anyone claiming Windows is good again.
The structure of security is a bloody mess, providing worse security, while taking control away from the owner of the system.
And lack of package manager makes it ask for updates at the most inopportune moments. Just a tiny program like Adobe reader was super invasive, and was a major pain in the ass.
Windows is not in any way user friendly, it's just what most people are used to.
Window XP was probably the best and last good Windows version... 10 was kinda okay without all the telemetry shit and bloatware.
Windows 11 feels like macOS with extra steps + spyware on every move, click, clipboard copylpast.... Wouldn't go near that stuff even with full protection and debloat ^^ Just remove that shit and install linux instead.
A few months ago I wrote out some recommendations around the same theme here. Extracts:
A good start is to install tldr. You use it like man, but it gives you shorter explanations – or rather, a short list of illustrative examples.Going further, check out Fish instead of Bash. I haven’t use Fish yet, but it’s said to be much better for learning Linux commands as a beginner. Later on, you may switch to Zsh. In any case, hitting Tab once or twice will often give you a list of possible completions to the command you are typing.
Also, I hugely recommend reading at least one book about Linux. I'm now almost through with the O’Reilly book “Classic Shell Scripting” by Robbins and Beebe (ISBN 9780596005955). Despite the fact that it's 20 years old, it helped me hugely – primarily with the shell and its commands, but also with understanding things like file structure.
It presupposes some familiarity with Unix-like systems and with the shell, so if one’s just starting out, the book “Learning the Unix Operating System” may be better.
External drives? Usually on most distros and file managers, it’s just one click.
I have had a bit of a horrid time with Bluetooth, though, especially when it comes to audio. However, I will say Linux allows you to do some nuts things with Bluetooth like emulate a Nintendo Switch controller with NXBT, allowing you to use a PlayStation controller on a Switch with a spare laptop.
As for audio, I feel like life has gotten much better for the layman since Pipewire.
I don’t think VR setups are that common, and the Venn diagram of VR owners and Linux users has to be even smaller. I’ve probably only known 2 people who actually own a headset, and both of them were standalone Oculus affairs.
Overall, I feel like it’s possible to conceptually understand Linux and which config file is while, while Windows registry is an incomprehensible beast. Also, it feels like Linux tends to have better errors that correlate to a specific problem, whereas the same Windows error could be caused by many different things and lead you on a wild goose chase through forum posts filled with generic advice and dead ends.
Not to say you are wrong in general, just a personal anecdote: i run Debian, everytime i need to upgrade from one major Version to the next I work for a day, dont get it done, cry, and then setup all my 3 PCs from scratch. (And NO a rolling release like arch or tumbleweed is not the solution, as I am not smart enough to manage different versions of dependencies and everything breaks at somepoint, Debian is at least stable between the major releases)
My vive wireless will not work under Linux so I need to keep a dual boot windows on the workhorse which is difficult to maintain itself sometimes.
And on my low spec PC audio is never synched with video and no matter what I do I don't get it fixed
I love Linux for its philosophy and hate Microsoft for theirs, I will go back under no circumstances and agree that Linux gives better error messages and docs to fix things, but I never needed to do that with Microsoft. I never needed to open the registry apart from escaping out of box setup...
User experience for someone with high technical expectations for what should be possible (vr, games, hi-fi cinema, CAD, DAW) but only moderate technical skills (I can navigate GUIs and make basic use of the terminal (grep, nano, apt) but if I try to understand English primary source docs I don't get it as after ~7 years of Linux I still only know about 30% of the necessary concepts and vocabulary just isn't that good....
Like, Damm, its hard for someone without any technical training who only has a few hours a month to work on his PC (meaning having time to fix and learn stuff, not just using the PC) to get the stuff done which is a no brainer on win
May I ask how your Debian upgrades go wrong?
I mostly say so because I recently upgraded from 12 to 13 with almost no issues; the only issue was something with Apache that ended up being a quick fix. I followed the official Debian guide and temporarily remove third party repos and packages.
Havent brought myself to upgrade to 13 yet,
but from 11 to 12 i followed to official guidlines, and when trying to reinstall my packages after kernel upgrade stuff got messed up. Packages didnt recognize their own config files anymore, wine completley behaved random, apt was flooded with error messages, the blzrry glassy Theme in I had in KDE plasma didn't reinstall properly leaving my desktop looking horrible, half programs not working and some weird driver(?) behavior ( hanging Indefinitly when trying to shut down the system and stuff like that)
Maybe all would have been fixable for someone smart enough, for me it was easier to start again from scratch.
Did you restart the computer after the upgrade and before reinstalling third party repo packages?
The “half the programs not working” kind of sounds like you had packages compiled for a newer libc and the like but the newer libc wasn’t in memory yet because you hadn’t restarted.
Was a while ago, i think i did.
All I know is I worked trough the whole doc to upgrade start to finish because I didn't know which sections apply to me and which don't, it was like ten hours of work trying t o understand everything which, holly shit, wasn't easy and when I finally got completely through it didn't work as expected.
Not that I think the docs were wrong, I am aware that I was the problem there, but it sometimes bothers me when people act like Linux is super easy and even grandma can understand and use it while I, the most techy persons in my peer group, give it my all and still dont even manage a simple upgrade, which would be absolutely no problem on the corporate OSs
Huh. I guess 3 years of Debian usage has just gotten me used to stuff like that.
I can see where one might go wrong; there’s a lot of sections in that guide with contingencies only meant for specific situations, like upgrading from a USB or optical disc.
It's 100% nvidia's fault. AMD has been doing a great job maintaining linux drivers. I recommend it if you are pro-linux.
Can't compare rocm to cuda though.
Gonna be real, I haven't had to bother with my OS for the past two months, so I disagree with a lot of this post. The take I disagree with the most is that things that would be difficult regardless of OS are somehow "harder" in Linux though. Getting old games to run on Windows is also a massive PITA, and oftentimes can be easier on Linux since you can always just run a WINE instance using whatever version of Windows the game was originally intended for. Same for old obscure software, anything from like the XP era does not play nice with Windows 11 in my experience. It sounds like the bigger issue is that you have learned a lot about Windows, and haven't learned a lot about Linux, so your knowledge base for Windows is better.
The actual issue I think is huge for your hypothetical "middle user" is hardware based. Some hardware is just better for running high performance applications on Linux than others. In my fancy, shiny, top of the line rig, my experience in getting games to work is I download them and run them with Proton. I've done no troubleshooting, barely use any applications other than Steam for gaming, and so far have not found a game I wanna play that doesn't work. On my old Nvidia-based rig that I replaced, however, it was the exact opposite story. Nothing ever worked, I was constantly looking through error logs and trying to troubleshoot, and most of the time the answer was hardware that wasn't properly supported.
Thats not what i experienced....
Trying to run sketchup with wine, 3 days trial and error, doesn't work even though winehq says its possible
Using vive wireless? Not possible at all!
or playing league, hard before vanguard, impossible after...
Updating between major versions? Always breaks my setup and makes me start from scratch
Using zoom for work with sharing desktop? Huge pita and u need to deepdive in Wayland to get I running (I didn't so I switched back to x)!
Install a non native daw like ableton and get it running without crashes and usable latency? Impossible!
Using your rack audio interface? Not possible as there is no Linux driver and pipewire only recognizes half of the functions
I have a ryzen 5 12 core and a Vega 64, so hardware is decent and clearly not the problem here.
I am aware that those problems often stem from programs not being designed for Linux, not Linux itself being bad, but the effect is sadly the same: using halfbacked freeware or study IT to get it running, nothing apart from Mozilla "just works"
Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!
That's the right attitude. A lot of the comfort of Windows comes down to habit and mere exposure. Every Windows user who dives beyond the surface also spends a lot of time learning, but with the added burden of having to sift through every forum post suggesting sFc /ScAnNoW. And if you keep the same hardware for a few years, the Linux experience ages like a fine wine as drivers improve and features get some subtle polish.
Sometimes I wonder if my health takes a toll each time I help someone set up Windows. I can literally feel my heart rate increase as I go through the privacy-related settings.
I had that very experience somewhat recently. I had to set up Windows 10 on a laptop for a friend. I had been using Linux on my main PC for probably five years at that point, so I was “un-used to” Windows. Oh boy that was a dreadful experience. It was a lot like “no, no, no, no, don’t want that, stop it, turn that off, be quiet”, and then logging in and getting the final pieces finished? Headache-inducing. “Try this!”, “try that!”, “did you know you could do THIS?”, “subscribe to this product you should use!”
And then the preloaded “suggested software”, the search bar with “suggested/trending” garbage I did NOT want to see? Yeah it was not pleasant. I think unless I’m doing it professionally? I’m not going to accept that task again. I’m glad I do not have to use that software on my main PC anymore. It seemed to have gotten worse since I stopped using it five years ago.
But us in the middle who pretend we're smart
The trick you'll learn is that everyone is just pretending. The more your learn the more you realize you don't know.
You've used Windows for so long that you don't remember how it was when you first started using it.
This isn't different than what you are doing with Linux. The flow gets better and better and you will acquire the experience needed to navigate the issues. It takes time, that's all.
True, but there's a lot of stuff in the free software ecosystem that is just jank.
I expect things not to work at this point and don't get surprised when they don't. It's part of how we pour way more resources into abusive technologies over ethical ones. We can continue to be part of the problem (like a useful idiot), or pick our heads up and work towards the solution.
If you stick to popular free software, the jank is limited.
The Linux userspaces have a lot of enthusiastic people that create their own software and share it, and thus it seems like there is lot of janky stuff (because there is).
It feels like Windows has been captured by corporations and so the market is competitive. There isn't much space for enthusiast developpers to tackle a different vision of a popular software.
So yeah, I agree with you, lots of janky software in Linux, but that's the beauty of it IMO. If you stick to popular softwares, the jank is somewhat equivalent to Windows.
True, but there’s a lot of stuff in the free software ecosystem that is just jank.
A lot of free software is built to scratch the authors itch. If you choose to use it as well, that's on you. There's nothing stopping you from forking it and making it work how you want it... except time.
Yeah, my linux experience usually seems like its hanging on a thin thread at all times. If stuff is actually working, im super grateful and hope it doesn't break itself on the next reboot.
Im not sure why everyone else seems to have a perfect error free experience except for me xD or they are just lying. And I dont use Intel or Nvidia so I should have it easy!
This is very true. Linux is great if you just want to check email, or if you want to compile your kernel or dig into incredibly esoteric config files. But if you want to do something between those 2 extremes, the learning curve is extremely steep. My Windows box and Mac Mini both do all the things I want them to, but my Linux box keeps breaking and I don't trust it with anything important. I usually try to do things on Linux first, but when it inevitably breaks I switch over to Mac and get it done in a tenth of the time.
I'm sure I could get my Linux box to do everything I want. I'm busy and I don't want to fight with it and spend all my time learning about its eccentricities. I want to point and click and occasionally modify a text file.
and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.
Well I'm closer to that. I'm an "IT pro" (I pay my bills by writing software) and I did learn CS at uni... and yet it's STILL damn hard!
I think that might be the part that "grandma" (bit sexist and ageist there but going with the example) finds it hard is a given but that professionals are struggling daily is somehow hidden away.
I can give you examples from just yesterday :
- my deGoogled Android phone rejected my SIM card yesterday "SIM 1 not allowed"
- my home IoT server stopped working
and few others smaller problems. So... I had to find ways to fix that which lead me to learn that :
- some bug into HomeAssistant (my IoT server gateway) led me to
restartits container, without having to restart the device itself - my Android ROM has a "Reset Network Settings" within the "Reset Options" menu
The irony is that some people who are not professional might even know about the later one but I didn't. So... my whole point :
TL;DR: IT is hard for everyone because it's complex (lots of moving parts) and always changing ("updates" are not just "better" but different) so we ALL must keep on learning.
I was moving plex from my NAS to a dedicated box this weekend and spend 3 hours going crazy on why my movie library wasn't showing up. After a break and looking through fstab, I realized "novie" wasn't a share....
Remember kids, always work from the simplest solution up
It seems only natural…
- the “grandma”/casual users never try anything complicated or different so nothing goes wrong.
- the “pro” users either know what they are doing well enough to not make a mistake or to fix it when it goes wrong.
- the middle users will always have it harder, they are trying things beyond the margins of “easy” so of course things go wrong and they don’t know how to fix it.
Anecdotal example: just yesterday I found out that I broke my file picker function in five out of six web browsers, by loading an Xcompose file with some definitions that GTK apparently doesn’t like. It took me about 5 hours of poking at things to figure out that a change I did a week ago, broke a function I hardly ever use. So I did fix it eventually but I it took me a week to notice and then hours to track down what was going on.
Is there any chance at all that the casual users would be using a compose key, let alone loading a custom definition file for it? Hell no!
But here’s the secret: there is nobody out there who is the perfect expert who never makes a mistake and knows all things. We’re all out here pushing boundaries; the only difference is where those boundaries are.
me getting games to work:
install cachyos
install steam
download game
pick proton in compatibility options
what else are you all doing ? you can also add a non steam game and pick proton to launch it
I also use a 4070 (Nvidia) and haven't had any issues
my audio works with an usb interface with 0 tweaking
Yeah well, no problem with steam proton games.
Now get the ones with kernel level anti cheat running (league for example)
As a more advanced user, I have to say, the problems don't stop. Computers will never be "solved". They just keep making new puzzles forever. That's whats fun.
The more advanced you get, well you can solve the easy problems off the top of your head, but now you have new problems and there are zero search results for your error message. If you can't figure it out from the docs or irc you just have to read source code.
I try to document stuff as I find it, even if it means resurrecting an ancient thread. I often search for things and get one result, and it's me answering my own question a few years ago.
This is strictly my personal experience and is not meant to negate someone else's experience.
I disagree, as a middle user myself, I've had much less problems since the switch to Linux. I don't own a VR setup, so can't speak to that, but I have used basically everything else you've mentioned since switching without issues. Older software seems to work better on Linux than windows 11 in my experience. The rare stumble I've had was easily remedied by searching forums and wikis.
Most windows problems I've had to search for solutions in the last several years led to either blind registry changes, following some useless wizard that rarely fixes the problem, or a nothing-burger circle where the OP ended up either giving up entirely or re-installing windows to avoid the problem. I've very much had better luck actually fixing a problem in Linux than just avoiding it.
Sonetimes i feel like its a lot of work to stick with linux
Then im forced to use windows at work and get locked into a 45 minute forced update.
Not to mention how horribly slow win11 is even on 64 gb ram and an i7.
And the bloatware. Never seen so much bloat (and ai slop shit) ever before. And start menu ads. Yay.
How do people use this trash!
like this
Endymion_Mallorn, themadcodger e Infrapink like this.
I’ve found Linux easier and a much better user experience than windows 10 or 11.
If you use a straightforward distro that doesn’t let you do stupid stuff (like Bazzite or Fedora Kinoite or any other atomic distro), Linux becomes easy.
like this
themadcodger likes this.
like this
themadcodger likes this.
This is so true. It's been good enough for me for so many years at this point, and yet it just keeps getting better. The whole experience is so much nicer now than it was years ago, which was better than years before that, etc.
(That said, better hardware also helps a lot.)
It sometimes is, but then sometimes Linux is not to blame.
Yesterday I was installing CachyOS on my son's laptop, because that's what he chose to use instead of Windows 10. The desktop came up fine, but no wifi adaptor was detected. I could try another more mainstream distro, but I wanted my kid to have what he chose. So we went troubleshooting. Googled the laptop model, found the adaptor, found the matching kernel module, checked the logs... and there it was, a cryptic error -110. Googled that and there was an answer: disable Windows Fast Boot.
It turns out that Windows locks the wifi adaptor when shutting down in Fast Boot mode. So after disabling it and a couple of reboots later, CachyOS was installing flawlessly.
It served as a lesson for me and an example for my kid to persevere and learn more.
like this
themadcodger likes this.
That love of tinkering is why I've landed on not using an immutable distro for my first time installing Linux since the 00s. CachyOS is what I landed on; now I just need to catch up on work so I can take a day to tinker with my setup.
For context, I semi-broke my current Windows 11 install by trying to manually edit the registry to remove all traces of a piece of invasive, uninstallable bloatware (that comes direct from ASRock... the bastards) I accidentally installed. Turns out my sound drivers are from the same company, so when I deleted all entries with that company in the search terms, I FUBARed my Bluetooth audio and 3.5mm microphone. And didn't backup the registry.
I like to tinker, and if I need to reinstall my OS anyway, so now is the time to finally switch!
like this
themadcodger likes this.
I never understood why windows updates take so long.
I can format and reinstall a linux distro in 10 minutes. I can update everything after that reinstall in 5 minutes.
On the same machine a windows update takes almost an hour. A format and reinstall can take several hours.
What is windows doing that takes so much longer?
Ive been having a good time with PopOS/Linux made for a specific machine. Its my daily driver.
I know its cheating a bit, but having something completely supported is so nice when I just want to sit down and compute. Ive had the same system76 machine for 6 years now and its still VERY fast. No issues with drivers (cause they fully support it) and made of generic parts.
like this
Infrapink likes this.
Your Windows install breaks because Microsoft fucked it up.
My Linux install breaks because I fucked it up.
We are not the same.
I was troubleshooting some audio hardware and decided that I should try it on windows, to make sure it was hardware and not software. So I tried to download an install disc image that I could put on my thumb drive and it was surprisingly hard, then I got driver failures, then I lost count of all the boxes I had to uncheck, then finally after like 2 hours I was greeted by ads on my desktop. Just a really bad experience overall. I cannot fathom why anyone uses that piece of crap.
Anyway so I figured out it was a Linux problem because of course it was just plug-and-play on Windows, and I found my misconfiguration and fixed it in 10 seconds, and I thought about the tech literacy of the average person, and realized that is why people use windows. They don't care about shit except least resistance. That was the first time I've booted windows since 2020 though, so here's hoping it was the last time.
I fathom they use it because its what they have always used and it comes with there device. Often people find its linux which takes the extra work.
If you want to use windows for testing, I would recommend something like Atlas OS for debloating: github.com/Atlas-OS/Atlas
edit: for testing
GitHub - Atlas-OS/Atlas: 🚀 An open and lightweight modification to Windows, designed to optimize performance, privacy and usability.
🚀 An open and lightweight modification to Windows, designed to optimize performance, privacy and usability. - Atlas-OS/AtlasGitHub
I grew up with DOS and used Windows 1 (barely, DOS was better), 3.1, 95, 98, etc... But curiosity made me try a bunch of OS in the beginning of the 2000s, like BeOS, QNX, and Linux (Kheops, Mandrake, SuSE). I dual booted for many years, keeping Linux as my main OS but having to boot Windows for games. I preferred Linux but I was pretty much OS agnostic for a while. I even worked as level 1 tech support for many years, helping people with Windows and Office products.
But then came Windows 8, 10, and now 11, + Office 365 + OneDrive. It's very difficult to stand any of those new versions, with the ads, the constant peddling for Microsoft products, the "forced" login with a Microsoft account, the updates whenever they feel like it if you don't pay enough for Windows, if the updates are not breaking something. A few years ago I was helping a friend and discovered a version of Windows 7 where you can't even change the wallpaper.
TBF, I knew it was coming. Anyone in IT knew for years that Microsoft planned of having everything subscription based. To me, every new versions of Windows or Office, or Teams, is now more intolerable than the previous one.
Anyway, at some point I stopped gaming/dual booting and pretty much kept exclusively on Linux. My workplace used Windows, and I use Linux at home. I've been using Debian for 15 years now and despite minor issues with sound recently, since pipewire, every time I use Windows, I'm reminded of how much worse it could be.
Recently I quit my job as a level 1 tech. I can't help people with Microsoft products anymore. Having calls from people telling me they cannot delete files from their OneDrive when it tells them it's full, then discover it's a bug and users with their drives full cannot delete anything, is just disconcerting. Before all that, I could at least see/understand the reason why things were working like they did; I could help and explain it to the users. Now, I'm as frustrated as they are when I use Microsoft products.
I have to use a windows machine at work and without fail I have to restart it by early afternoon because it has nearly ground to a halt. Usually right when a client turns up and wants to see their work.
It's an absolute embarrassment.
But it's still Windows.
Doesn't matter how much hot sauce and cinnamon you dunno on to a turd, it's still a turd.
I build cross platform desktop software professionally.
Because of this I have to use and pretty deeply understand the inner workings of every OS.
I can state as absolute fact that every major operating system including Linux is an absolute pile of hot garbage.
The difference is that macOS and windows are garbage on purpose. There were deliberate decisions to enshitify them for profit. They spent time and money making the OS worse on purpose.
On Linux most of the shitty parts were designed with good intentions but just kinda suck (Wayland for example).
What parts of Wayland do you not like?
There is a good chance that it was also designed this way on purpose. Almost everything I have heard people complain about on Wayland boils down to “it does not do that on purpose for security reasons”. In order to get around the purposeful constraints, you need to design extension protocols to create desired functionality and not all of those have been built. It is still on purpose though.
You may simply disagree with the priorities. Which is what enshitification for profit is as well of course.
IDK I think Wayland will be great some day. But right now we're between x11 and Wayland an both options suck.
I'm just over here trying to record my desktop and take screenshots haha.
“it does not do that on purpose for security reasons”.
I understand the motivations here but my priorities do not align with this. Not once in my life has someone recorded my desktop without my permission. I support the idea of having a secure environment but its just a pretty bad UX in the meantime.
Dont take this the wrong way. I think Wayland is a good idea in general. I just wish there was something else to hold us over in the meantime and x11 isnt really that.
It is a LOT of work indeed! In fact I even commented on that hours ago in lemmy.ml/post/36231170/2112411…
... but as you mention the alternative is ALSO a lot of work PLUS frustrations.
So between learned helplessness and tiring empowerment the choice remains obvious.
FWIW whenever it feels like it's "too much" I reminder myself how I browse through obscure man pages decades ago... to still find them useful today! It's crazy that so long after learning about tools like more or grep is useful on :
- a desktop
- a console (SteamDeck)
- a mobile phone (which basically didn't exist back then)
- a VR headset (yes, via
termux) - the "cloud" (as in fine it's just a server)
depends what you do, tbh. If you try to get a 3D program (that works well in Windows) to work on Linux, or try to get a game running as smooth as it is on Windows, then you are in for a lot of work.
But if your usage involves: simple web browser / email, codes, file operations. Then Linux is just plug and play, even much simpler than Windows. No ads, no constant updates nagging.
Linux just leaves you alone, if you mess some thing up it is you fault. On my Win 11 laptop, I got logged off by the damn OS just for it to display a popup with something bullshit like "Sign in to OneDrive to protect your PC"
You’re wrong about the games part. Most of us have no issues with that because of proton. As long as the game doesn’t require kernel level anti-cheat malware.
And yeah, 3D program written for windows is not going to run on Linux natively without issues. That’s common sense. It’s up to the developers to support more platforms, and that will happen with market share.
I use Garuda, which is an Arch-based distribution. Regressions are inevitable, though in my experience any actual issues arising from updates are quite infrequent. I’ve only once ever had to use Snapper to restore my system after a borked update in the some three and a half years I’ve used it. Keep in mind that this is a rolling release distribution, so new code isn’t always thoroughly tested before it’s sent out. I generally prefer new software, because I like playing games so new features and enhancements are important to me (on my main PC. I often install Arch for fun on other computers, but I thought for my ThinkPad? It’s older, maybe I’d like it to run Debian).
But any time I have a minor hiccup (that usually gets resolved after an update or reboot), I remember how much worse it could be. I’d much prefer the rare slight complication to the ads, telemetry, nags, intrusive updates, excessive bloat, and lack of control.
I’ve said before, that after using Linux on my main PC and not touching Windows? Windows really does feel like I’m not using my PC, something I never really noticed before I made the switch five years ago. I used to have no problems with modern Windows, but now it’s hard for me to tolerate. Old Windows is generally okay. I collect old computers, so versions like Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP are fun.
Strategic Thinking and Planning Training with Unichrone Certification: Achieve Business Excellence
Organizations that succeed in today’s dynamic environment share one common trait: the ability to think strategically and execute effectively. Success is no longer about short-term gains alone but about building sustainable systems that endure changes in the marketplace. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification is designed to cultivate these skills, enabling professionals to achieve business excellence by aligning vision, strategy, and performance.
The Importance of Strategic Thinking
Strategic thinking is the ability to analyze complex issues, anticipate future scenarios, and craft innovative solutions. It requires professionals to step beyond operational concerns and focus on the bigger picture. Strategic planning complements this by translating ideas into structured actions that deliver measurable results. Together, these capabilities empower leaders to guide organizations toward long-term goals while addressing immediate challenges effectively. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification provides the foundation for developing this critical skillset.
Why Business Excellence Requires Strategy
Business excellence is not achieved by chance; it is the result of deliberate planning and thoughtful execution. Leaders who undergo strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification gain tools to evaluate opportunities, manage risks, and align teams around a common purpose. These capabilities ensure that businesses not only respond to market changes but also proactively shape their future. In this way, strategy becomes the driving force behind innovation, efficiency, and sustained growth.
Core Focus Areas of the Training
Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification covers a comprehensive range of topics designed to make participants proficient in both theory and practice. Key areas include environmental scanning, goal-setting, resource allocation, and performance measurement. Learners also explore frameworks such as SWOT analysis, balanced scorecards, and scenario planning. By mastering these tools, professionals develop the ability to design strategies that are flexible, forward-looking, and adaptable to diverse organizational contexts.
Professional and Organizational Benefits
Completing strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification enhances individual careers by improving decision-making confidence and leadership credibility. Professionals become better equipped to contribute to organizational discussions, propose data-driven solutions, and guide teams toward shared objectives. For organizations, the benefits include improved alignment of strategies with business goals, stronger collaboration across departments, and greater resilience in times of uncertainty. The training helps create a culture where clarity and direction replace ambiguity and inefficiency.
Application Beyond the Classroom
The training emphasizes practical application through case studies, workshops, and real-world exercises. Participants practice designing strategies that address issues such as expanding into new markets, managing resource constraints, or responding to technological disruptions. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification ensures that learning does not remain theoretical but becomes directly applicable to workplace challenges. This approach allows professionals to immediately implement concepts that drive measurable impact within their organizations.
Testimonials
“Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification gave me the tools to lead with confidence. I can now align my team’s efforts with organizational goals more effectively.” – Program Manager, Banking Industry
“The training helped me understand how to move from abstract ideas to actionable strategies. It was a game-changer for how I approach leadership challenges.” – Senior Consultant, IT Sector
Frequently Asked Questions
Who should consider this training?
The program is suitable for managers, executives, and professionals seeking to strengthen their strategic leadership and planning skills.
What makes the certification valuable?
Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification is globally recognized, offering professionals credentials that add credibility across industries.
Does the training include practical learning?
Yes, participants engage with real-world examples, case studies, and interactive sessions to ensure immediate workplace application.
Is prior knowledge in strategy required?
No, the program is designed for professionals at all levels. Beginners gain foundational insights, while experienced individuals refine advanced strategic skills.
How does this training improve business outcomes?
The training equips leaders to align resources, improve collaboration, and implement strategies that achieve both short-term results and long-term excellence.
Conclusion
Business excellence is achieved when organizations combine vision with action, strategy with execution, and foresight with adaptability. Strategic thinking and planning training with Unichrone certification equips professionals with the mindset and tools required to achieve these outcomes. By fostering leaders who can anticipate challenges, design effective strategies, and guide their teams toward success, the training creates a foundation for organizations to thrive in competitive environments. Investing in these skills is not just about personal growth but about ensuring the long-term success of the business as a whole.
Why the EU won't hit China with the 100% tariffs that Trump wants
Why the European Union won't hit China with the 100% tariffs that Trump wants
Donald Trump's request for 100% tariffs on China is unlikely to gather the necessary support among European Union countries.Jorge Liboreiro (Euronews.com)
like this
Maeve likes this.
Investors Cut Dollar Exposure at Record Pace, Deutsche Bank Says
Investors Cut Dollar Exposure at Record Pace, Deutsche Bank Says
Overseas investors are slashing their dollar exposure at “an unprecedented pace” as they put on currency hedges when buying US stocks and bonds, according to a Deutsche Bank AG analysis of exchange-traded funds.Ye Xie (Bloomberg)
Good point, they only oppose genocide opportunistically, whereas the US / NATO countries support genocide, but in a good wholesome way.
/s
I mean... both would be opportunistically, but that wasn't my point. I support a free Palestine, I'm on your guys' side (despite the downvotes)! I was just trying to say that Russia's condemnation of one genocide doesn't really mean shit in my opinion, especially while enacting their own genocide barely 1000 miles away.
tl;dr I was shit-talking Russia, not Palestine
‘the deliberate or systematic destruction, in part or in whole, of a national, racial, ethnic, or religious group’
Which Russia is not attempting to do.
And Russia has been trying very hard for a while now to erase Ukrainians from eastern Ukraine and replace them with Russians.
See what I mean? Western liberals will make up any old bullshit to accuse their enemies of genocide; which is a big part of why an actual genocide gets so little push back: because people like you have run the term into the ground.
Okay Botski
And there it is: people like you have normalized every other war crime so much that someone like me, who thinks Russia is a fascist gangster state committing a brutal war of aggression but not a genocide, is completely indistinguishable from a literal Russian agent. That's why you need it to be a genocide: because you want to condemn it, but you've already normalized every other atrocity so much that you don't even see them as bad anymore. And you're rabidly trying to do the same for genocide as well
Maybe, but I consider them good assumptions.
why are we arguing the semantics when we’re both in agreement that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide of Palestine are both atrocities that need to be stopped as soon as possible
Because the abuse of semantics and the reduction of terms like genocide to rhetorical snarl words to be recklessly thrown at any enemies has enabled Russia and Israel to do what they're doing with so little push back.
It's nice to know that a generation of Germans saying they had a "special understanding" of genocide because of their history were right. They had a special understanding of how to get away with enacting and supporting genocides.
Like, I'm not German. But literally everything they teach about their history and being "accepting" of their peoples crimes. Like, do they just throw that in a trashbin now and go back to full fascist again?
With the way they treat Muslims it seems so. Thousands of Holocaust scholars and historians just completely useless to that society.
You're not "special" Germans. Your brain rot is rivaling that of America.
The crimes of the second world war are still taught a lot in school. The unfiltered history is still on display in museum etc. (i don't know of any country that does that, most countries with a dark history just push it under a rug and never mention it.)
That being said our current government is right-wing piece of shit flirting with the new popular fascist party and taking legitimacing their ideas. Its bad and people seem more brain damaged than ever atm.
The divide and conquer tactic is working, extremely well on the population.
Very interesting take. Are you German? I hadn't heard those stats and I'd guess they are recent. Seems like a shift like many other western nations people not agreeing with their ruling class. My worry is that it is fueled by the same shift the US is seeing with anti Israel "America first" fascist movements. But would like to hear your take.
I've been saying for years that the normalization of Muslim hatred in the west will inevitably become xenophobic in general and Israel is the first target for that. But unfortunately, I think that comes to power under right wing movements that hypocritically use Israels actions to paint Jewish populations as the next target.
Using the genocide of a Zionist state to first support it to fuel anti Muslim hatred. Then shift into a full xenophobic campaign. Using the west newfound hatred for Israel to target Jews and other minorities in the war. While at the same time STILL supporting Israels Ethnostate project bt exporting Jews and exploited immigrants to its fascist project in West Asia.
Sorry. A bit of a rant. The jump to "deporting Jews" is probably my own take. But if we shift from the crypto fascism of Trump to the Neo-Nazi movements that support him I don't think it's far off.
I would say that's possible if Vance takes power. Or, we have 4 years of a liberal president failing to provide material improvements for the working class again. And we get an even worse outcome after that as the right wing takes power.
Ironically, I think Trump is the crypto fascist standing in the way of what most of his supporters and cabinet really want. And we see it in parts of his administration he hands of entirely to them (ICE being the most obvious).
And they are shockingly unprepared for authoritarianism.
American here. Want free Palestine.
Edit: Wait, Argentina is fucked too? What's wrong with them? Didn't expect that.
like this
geneva_convenience likes this.
UK public has paid £200 billion to shareholders since privatisation of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services
UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of key industries since privatisation
Analysis reveals ‘privatisation premium’ of £250 per household per year paid to owners of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services since 2010Matthew Taylor (The Guardian)
like this
Oofnik likes this.
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, says UN commission of inquiry
UN commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and accused senior Israeli officials including Benjamin Netanyahu of inciting it.
The United Nations independent international commission of inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the UN and has been criticised strongly by Israel, cited the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic in the territory to support its genocide finding.
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, says UN commission of inquiry
Report cites scale of killings and aid blockages, and calls on member countries to punish those responsibleJon Henley (The Guardian)
like this
Maeve likes this.
Ubuntu 25.10's Rust Coreutils Transition Has Uncovered Performance Shortcomings
like this
Badabinski likes this.
like this
Sickday likes this.
like this
Sickday likes this.
unsafe. It is often faster if you write naive code (because the Rust compiler can optimize more aggressively due to those same limitations), but an experienced developer with a lot of time for optimization will probably be able to squeeze more performance out of C than they would out of Rust - as you can see in this example. Rust is still better because those limitations all but guarantee that the resulting code will be safer, and the performance differences would be negligible all things considered.
Language isn't everything. While Rust provides some features and safety that C doesn't while being roughly equivalent in performance, the algorithms that developers choose will dominate the performance impact on the program.
GNU core utils has decades of accumulated knowledge and optimisation that results in the speed it has. The Rust core utils should in theory be able to achieve equivalent performance, but differences in the implementation choices between one and another, or even something as simple as the developers not having prioritised speed yet and still focusing on correctness could explain the differences that are being reported.
like this
Sickday likes this.
Well the entire point of the project is that they used algorithms/features of Rust that make it easier to write fast code. This article basically reports on a "bug". Uutils are in many ways already faster than Coreutils.
Correctness is really more of a byproduct of using Rust. Coreutils have had only a few CVEs in their lifetime so it would be sort of redundant to rewrite them in Rust for "correctness".
This should be avoided like the plague because of the choice to use MIT over GPL.
Any work dedicated to this can and will be stolen by corporations without giving back if they find it useful. This is what happened with Sony and Apple and their respective operating systems. They chose to base them on BSD so they could steal work and not give back to the public.
Do not be fooled.
They chose to base them on BSD so they could steal work and not give back to the public.
"Here you can use this as you like, no questions asked"
"Hey! Why did you use that in a way that I told you you could!?!?"
They chose to base them on BSD so they could steal work and not give back to the public.
Emphasis mine.
The intent of the BSD licences is to allow you to do what you want without reciprocating though. It's not an accident, it's explicitly stated. It is, in fact, your right. You profiting from the work of others is an intended result.
I prefer GPL myself for this reason. But you can't blame companies for obeying the terms of the licence.
It's not like improper use of "steal" is unheard of, I see all the time people use "I'm gonna steal that" and similar even when it applies to things openly given for free. And considering that it's quite clear that the MIT allows others to take without sharing back (it's the main difference with GPL) I'm quite sure the commenter was aware that it wasn't really theft, yet chose that word probably with the intention to insult the practice, rather than as a fair descriptor.
So yes, you're right, it isn't theft... but I don't think that was the point of the comment.
The reason Ubuntu switched was Rust's "safety". Which is sort of a dumb reason because Coreutils have had very few CVEs in the past. A less dumb reason is performance. Uutils are faster than Coreutils, this was an edge-case.
MIT license is the schizo reason. Making a closed source version of Unix utilities would not be beneficial for Canonical in any way, but that does not stop the schizos from schizoing.
Not only that but if you edit the MIT licensed files (Read: They have the MIT notice, which you have to preserve, in them.), they will still be MIT licensed. Only new files and the entire project will become GPL.
I am not a lawer.
Author: "I consent to my code being used for proprietary programs!"
Compant: "I consent to using this FOSS code in my proprietary program!"
You for some reason: "I don't!"
They articulated the reason and gave examples of precedence.
And you're dismissing their voice as irrelevant, but as the consumer of the product, their voice is most critical, and more people should be aware of how corporations use their massive wealth to choke and starve open source competition out of existence despite building their products on open source work in the first place.
I continue to fail to see the issue with the author, the person whose actual labour goes into the software, not your labour, deciding that they are fine with their source code being used in any way the general public sees fit provided they simply credit the author and provide a copy of the MIT licence. If I give you something, you're not stealing by accepting my gift. They're choosing voluntarily to make their source code available under such a licence. If they weren't okay with that, they would've chosen a copyleft licence.
And you’re dismissing their voice as irrelevant, but as the consumer of the product, their voice is most critical
That seems insanely entitled, but you're allowed to not use non-copyleft software if you really care that much. The authors of permissively licensed software aren't forcing you to use their software.
There are plenty of valid reasons to license a work as MIT or BSD or similar. Firstly, libraries are almost always going to be permissively licensed, not just because it allows proprietary software to use those libraries, but also because it allows permissively licensed FOSS to use those libraries. If I want to use a GPL library, it's not just that I have to make my software FOSS, it's that I have to make my software GPL specifically. If I want to make a FOSS MIT program, I can't use any GPL libraries.
Secondly, sometimes it's because, well, as the licence text provides, I don't give a shit what you do with the code. I write lots of little tools that are just for myself and I share them in case they're of use to someone else. If some big corpo uses it in their proprietary money-making machine it's no shit off my back. It was just a little tool I wrote for myself and it doesn't affect me if other people use it to make money.
I think GPL is reasonable if a lot of labour goes into a project, and you'd be discouraged from working on it if someone was leeching off of it for their proprietary software. But my MIT/BSD code requires 0 maintenance labour from me, and I don't care to control how other people use it. That's the whole point of MIT/BSD/Apache/etc. It's the "don't give a shit" licence.
I continue to fail to see the issue with the author, the person whose actual labour goes into the software, not your labour, deciding that they are fine with their source code being used in any way
You're arguing with a strawman you created, no one made any statements about the author. They simply said no one should use the software.
The author can choose to use the MIT license, and we can choose not to use their software.
That seems insanely entitled, but you're allowed to not use non-copyleft software if you really care that much. The authors of permissively licensed software aren't forcing you to use their software.
What do you think we're saying here? We're saying we're choosing not to use the author's software, what are you taking issue with exactly?
There are plenty of valid reasons to license a work as MIT or BSD or similar. Firstly, libraries are almost always going to be permissively licensed, not just because it allows proprietary software to use those libraries, but also because it allows permissively licensed FOSS to use those libraries. If I want to use a GPL library, it's not just that I have to make my software FOSS, it's that I have to make my software GPL specifically. If I want to make a FOSS MIT program, I can't use any GPL libraries
And we've articulated valid reasons not to replace GPL core libraries with MIT ones...
Secondly, sometimes it's because, well, as the licence text provides, I don't give a shit what you do with the code
Good for you? This isn't about you (the author)... It's about us not wanting to use your work, which you seem to take offense to, as if you did us a favor. Talk about entitlement.
But my MIT/BSD code requires 0 maintenance labour from me, and I don't care to control how other people use it. That's the whole point of MIT/BSD/Apache/etc. It's the "don't give a shit" licence.
Solid justification for using it for coreutils you got there...
You're arguing with a strawman you created, no one made any statements about the author.
The original comment called it stealing. There's nothing morally wrong with stealing, but regardless it's not even stealing. It's a stupid argument.
Solid justification for using it for coreutils you got there...
I'm obviously talking about not giving a shit about how people use it. Which makes sense for coreutils. Loads of people use it for loads of different purposes. The author shouldn't care how people use it.
We're obviously talking about corporations intentionally using open source software with the intention of eliminating it as competition, we aren't talking about the literal definition of the word "stealing", which you seem smart enough to be able to recognize, but you're insisting on being pedantic.
You twisted that into an argument about what the author of the code has the right to do... No one gives a shit, and we aren't obligated to support it.
We’re obviously talking about corporations intentionally using open source software with the intention of eliminating it as competition
That's not what corporations do when they use MIT/BSD code. They rely on that code; it's not their "competition". Unless you are talking about stuff like WhatsApp using libsignal, where they do use code from a direct competitor, but that's far less common, and also not going to have a negative effect on Signal. I can't speak for Signal of course but they are probably quite happy with WhatsApp using libsignal, as it both spreads Signal's beliefs about communication being E2EE, and it makes WhatsApp reliant upon Signal. FOSS projects like ffmpeg, curl, etc, are (reasonably!) happy that the entire industry depends on the tool they wrote. And they are kept alive because they are so widely depended upon. Corporations donate to FOSS projects because they need them.
we aren’t talking about the literal definition of the word “stealing”
wtf is a non-literal definition of "stealing"? The idea of stealing is stupid enough already, I can't play your games to figure out how you extrapolate something sillier from it. I'm a communist. I don't believe in private property and I don't give a shit about stealing.
They steal labor. You would think someone with the username communism would instinctively understand that.
And no, it isn't "far less common", and you have already been provided with examples of what we mean, so I'm not playing your games of providing examples (that don't even use the MIT license, but now I'm the one being pedantic).
If you replace your uses of the words stolen and steal with "kept" and "keep'", then your statements make sense.
Also it's coreutils - they intentionally have a very focused scope and features. An Apple LLM bundled into awk is desired by no one
They don't need to use semantic versioning. I doubt coreutils itself uses it, though I admit I haven't checked. Actually I think semantic versioning is less popular in practice than it looks like.
For a set of tools to that completely replaces another one, announcing a 1.0 version would be a message that the developers think the project has actually reached its initial goals. "0.2" does not.
The author simply listened to the word of 0-Based Versioning. It says more about your maturity than of the projects. Much to learn you still have.
AOMedia To Release AV2 Video Codec At Year's End
"Set for a year-end release, AV2 is not only an upgrade to the widely adopted AV1 but also a foundational piece of AOMedia’s future tech stack.
AV2, a generation leap in open video coding and the answer to the world’s growing streaming demands, delivers significantly better compression performance than AV1. AV2 provides enhanced support for AR/VR applications, split-screen delivery of multiple programs, improved handling of screen content, and an ability to operate over a wider visual quality range. AV2 marks a milestone on the path to an open, innovative future of media experiences."
AOMedia To Release AV2 Video Codec At Year's End
The Alliance for Open Media announced today that they will be launching the next-generation AV2 video codec at the end of 2025.www.phoronix.com
like this
melroy likes this.
And which will be so resource intensive to encode with compared to existing standards that it'll probably take 14 years before home media collectors (or yar har types) are able and willing to use it over HEVC and AV1. :\
As an example AV1 encodes to this day are extremely rare in the p2p scene. Most groups still work with h264 or h265 even those focusing specifically on reducing sizes while maintaining quality. By contrast HEVC had significant uptake within 3-4 years of its release in the p2p scene (we're on year 7 for AV1).
These greedy, race to the bottom device-makers are still fighting AV1. With people keeping devices longer and not upgrading as much as well as tons of people relying on under-powered smart-TVs for watching (forcing streaming services to maintain older codecs like h264/h265 to keep those customers) means it's going to take a depressingly long time to be anything but a web streaming phenomenon I fear.
To be fair, it's also basically impossible to have extremely high quality AV1 video, which is what a lot of P2P groups strive for. A lot of effort has gone into trying to do so and results weren't good enough compared to x264, so it's been ignored. AV1 is great at compression efficiency, but it can't make fully transparent encodes (i.e., indistinguishable from the source). It might be different with AV2, though again even if it's possible it may be ignored because of compatibility instead; groups still use DTS-HD MA over the objectively superior FLAC codec for surround sound because of hardware compatibility to this day. (1.0/2.0 channels they use FLAC because players support that usually)
As for HEVC/x265, it too is not as good as x264 at very high quality encoding, so it's also ignored when possible. Basically the breakdown is that 4k encoding uses x265 in order to store HDR and because the big block efficiency of x265 is good enough to compress further than the source material. x264 wouldn't be used for 4k encoding even if it could store HDR because its compression efficiency is so bad at higher resolutions that to have any sort of quality encode it would end up bigger than the source material. Many people don't even bother with 4k x265 encodes and just collect the full disc/remuxes instead, because they dislike x265's encoder quality and don't deem the size efficiency worth its picture quality impact (pretty picky people here, and I'm not really in that camp).
For 1080p, x265 is only used when you want to have HDR in a 1080p package, because again x265's picture quality can't match x264, but most people deem HDR a bigger advantage. x264 is still the tool of choice for non-HDR 1080p encodes, and that's not a culture thing, that's just a quality thing. When you get down into public P2P or random encoding groups it's anything goes, and x265 1080p encodes get a lot more common because x265 efficiency is pretty great compared to x264, but the very top-end quality just can't match x264 in the hands of an experienced encoder, so those encoding groups only use x265 when they have to.
Edit: All that to say, we can't entirely blame old-head culture or hardware compatibility for the unpopularity of newer formats. I think the home media collector usecase is actually a complete outlier in terms of what these formats are actually being developed for. WEB-DL content favors HEVC and AV1 because it's very efficient and displays a "good enough" quality picture for their viewers. Physical Blu-Rays don't have to worry about HDD space or bandwidth and just pump the bitrate insane on HEVC so that the picture quality looks great. For the record, VVC/x266 is already on the shortlist for being junk for the usecases described above (x266 is too new to fully judge), so I wouldn't hold my breath for AV2 either. If you're okay with non-transparency, I'd just stick with HEVC WEB-DLs or try to find good encoding groups that target a more opinionated quality:size ratio (some do actually use AV1!). Rules of thumb for WEB-DL quality are here, though it will always vary on a title-by-title basis.
WEB Source Tier List
WEB Source Tier List. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.Gist
I think the home media collector usecase is actually a complete outlier in terms of what these formats are actually being developed for.
Well yeah given who makes it but it's what I care about. I couldn't care less about obscure and academic efforts (or the profits of some evil tech companies) except as vague curiosities. HEVC wasn't designed with people like me in mind either yet it means I can have oh 30% more stuff for the same space usage and the enccoders are mature enough that the difference in encode time between it and AVC is negligible on a decently powered server.
Transparency (or great visual fidelity period) also isn't likely the top concern here because development is driven by companies that want to save money on bandwidth and perhaps on CDN storage.
Which I think is a shame. Lower bitrates for transparency -should- be the goal. The goal should be to get streaming content to consumers at a very high quality, ideally close to or equivalent to UHD BluRay for 4k. Instead we get companies that bit-starve and hop onto these new encoders because they can use fewer bits as long as they use plenty of tricks to maintain a certain baseline of perceptual visual image quality that passes the sniff test for your average viewer so instead of getting quality bumps we just get them using less bits and passing the savings onto themselves with little meaningful upgrade in visual fidelity for the viewer. Which is why it's hard to care at all really about a lot of this stuff if it doesn't benefit the user in any way really.
Looking ahead, 53% of AOMedia members surveyed plan to adopt AV2 within 12 months upon its finalization later this year, with 88% expecting to implement it within the next two years.
From AOMedia website. So the plan is for it to have AV1 levels of adoption by 2028.
So... a lot more people now have :
- 4G/5G on the go and proper broadband at home and office and even in unique location (sadly via MuskSat for now...) other ways to get data
- very capable devices in mobile phones, (mostly Android) clients e.g. video projector or dongles, of course computers
- human eyes... that can't really appreciate 4K on average
... so obviously we should NOT stop looking for more efficient ways and new usages but I'm also betting that we are basically reaching diminishing return already. I don't think a lot of people care anymore about much high screen resolution or frequency for typical video streaming. Because that's the most popular usage I imagine everything else, e.g XR, becomes relative to it niche and thus has a hard time benefiting as much from the growth in performances we had until now.
TL;DR: OK cool but aren't we already flattening the curve on the most popular need anyway?
On the upside, the end user needs to use up less data for the same content. This is particularly interesting under 4G/5G and restrictive data plans, or when accessing places / servers with weak connection. It helps avoid having to wait for the "buffering" of the video content mid-playback.
But yes, I agree each iteration has diminishing returns, with a higher bump in requirements. I feel that's a pattern we see often.
If we're lucky some firmware upgrade or driver can make AV1 hardware decoding capable cards able to do AV2 as well, but I seriously doubt it - GPU manufacturers want to sell new cards all the time after all.
maybe, maybe not.
when h264 was introduced (Aug 2004), even intel had HW encoding for it with sandybridge in 2011.
nvidia had at 2012
so less than 7 years.
av1 was first introduced 7 years ago and for at least two years android TVs require HW decoding for it.
And AMD rdna2 had the same 4 years ago.
so from introduction to hardware decoding it took 3 years.
I have no idea why 10 years is thrown around.
and av1 had to compete with h264 and h265 both. ( they had to decide if it was worth implementing it)
AV1 was mid. Extremely slow encoding and minor performance gains over H265. And no good encoders on release.
H266 was miles ahead but that is propriatary like 265. So win some lose some.
Compression and efficiency is often a trade-off. H266 is also much slower than AV1, under same conditions. Hopefully there will come more AV1 hw encoders to speed things up.. but at least the AV1 decoders are already relatively common.
Also, the gap between h265 and AV1 is higher than between AV1 and h266. So I'd argue it's the other way around. AV1 is reported to be capable of ~30-50% bitrate savings over h.265 at the cost of speed. H266 differences with AV1 are minor, it's reported to get a similar range, but more balanced towards the 50% side and at the cost of even lower speed. I'd say once AV1 encoding hardware is more common and the higher presets for AV1 become viable it'd be a good balance for most cases.
The thing is that h26x has a consortium of corporations behind with connections and an interest to ensure they can cash in on their investment, so they get a lot of traction to get hw out.
Note that high-quality + low-bitrate AV1 setup often requires using parameters that rise the time and processing power beyond what's typically sensible in an average setup without hw encoder. And compared with h265 this would be even higher since not only is h265 less complex and faster to begin with, but it also is often hw accelerated.
Here there's a 2020 paper comparing various encoders for high quality on fullHD:
researchgate.net/publication/3…
"First place in the quality competition goes to aom [AOMedia's AV1 encoder], second place goes to SVT-AV1, and third place to x265"
And av1 codecs are younger, so I wouldn't be surprised if they have improved over the h265 ones since the article.
Here's the settings they used in aom, for reference:
aomenc.exe --width=%WIDTH% --height=%HEIGHT%
--fps=%FPS_NUM%/%FPS_DENOM% --bit-depth=8 --end-usage=vbr
--cpu-used=0 --target-bitrate=%BITRATE_KBPS% --ivf --threads=32
--tune=ssim -o %TARGET_FILE% %SOURCE_FILE%
I can try it again, but what I did was compare h265 to SVT-AV1 in ffmpeg, using a couple different clips of different styles (including a video from my phone and some ripped blu-ray movies). I used “constant quality / variable bitrate settings, and ran each file with a variety of settings for both encoders. I judged the videos with a quality comparison tool ffmpeg has, and I also took subjective notes when I could tell the difference.
I found AV1 did better at very low quality (when it was firmly into the region where it was visibly different, AV1 did have better quality per bitrate).
But when trying to produce high-quality clips, AV1 was never able to produce a clip that matched the quality score of h265, even when the bitrate of the AV1 file was higher.
you didn't do the wrong thing.
what many people don't notice is that support for a codec in gpu(in hardware) is two part.
one is decoding and one is encoding.
for quality video nobody does hardware encoding (at least not on consumer systems linux this 3050 nvidia)
for most users the important this is hardware support for decoding so that they can watch their 4k movie with no issue.
so you are in the clear.
you can watch av1 right now and when av2 becomes popular enough to be used in at least 4 years from now.
Very cool! I've only just recently gotten to experience the joys of AV1 for my own game recordings (Linux is way ahead of Windows here), and dang is it nice. 10 minute flashback recordings of 4K HDR@60 for only 2.5GB, and the results look fantastic. Can just drag and drop it over to YouTube as well, it's fully supported over there.
Glad to see things moving, I'll be eager to check this out in a few years once it has wider support!
The main thing I want is small file size for the quality. Netflix, YouTube, and me agree on that.
Most of my stuff is AV1 today even though the two TVs I typically watch it on do not support it. Most of the time, what I am watching is high-bitrate H.264 that was transcoded from the low-bitrate AV1.
I will probably move to AV2 shortly after it is available. At least, I will be an early adopter. The smaller the files the better. And, in the future when quality has gone up everywhere, my originals will play native and look great.
I want to agree with you and I do to a large extend.
I like new codecs and having more opensourcy coded is better than using a codec that has many patents.
long term patents(current situation) slows technological progress.
what I don't agree with you is some details.
first,
Netflix youtube and so on need low bitrate and they (specially google/youtube) don't care that much about quality. google youtube video are really bit starved for their resolutions. netflix is a bit better.
second,
many people when they discuss codecs they are referring to a different use case for them.
they are talking about archiving.
as in, the best quality codec at a same size.
so they compare original (raw video, no lossy codec used) with encoded ones.
their conclusion is that av1 is great for size reduction, but cant beat h264 for fidelity at any size.
I think that h264 has a placebo or transparent profile but av1 doesn't.
so when I download a fi...I mean a linux ISO from torrents, I usually go for newest codec.
but recently I don't go for the smallest size because it takes away from details in the picture.
but if I want to archive a movie (that I like a lot, which is rare) I get the bigger h264 (or if uhd blueray h265).
third:
a lot of people's idea of codec quality is formed based on downloading or streaming other people's encoded videos and they themself don't compare the quality (as they don't have time or a good raw video to compare).
4th:
I have heard av1 has issues with film grain, as in it removes them.
film grain is an artifact of physical films (non-digital) that unfortunately many directors try (or used to) to duplicate because they grew up watching movies on films and think that movies should be like so they add them in in post production.
even though it is literally a defect and even human eyes doesn't duplicate it so it is not even natural.
but this still is a bug of av1 (if I read correctly) because codec should go for high fidelity and not high smoothness.
AV1 has issues with film grain. There are things you can do. Let me admit however that one movie that I have not encoded as AV1 is a restored version of the original Star Wars. And film grain is a contributor to that.
Another thing about film grain though is that it is often artificially added after as you say. With AV1, you can often get amazing compression that removes the grain as a side-effect and then just add it back yourself. To each their own how they feel about this approach.
I also agree that H.264 can be more transparent. However, that is at massive file sizes. Others may have the space for that but I do not.. Perhaps I do mot have the eyes for it either. I am not extracting and comparing single frames. To me, the AV1 files that I have look better at the size that I am archiving than they would using any other codec.
I use the fact that massive bit rate H.264 looks great to my advantage as that is what my AV1 is being transcoded into when I watch it most of the time.
Some content compresses better than others. Sometimes I get massive size reductions with AV1 at what looks like great quality to me. Other times, it struggles to beat H.265 or even H.264 at similar quality. It is pretty rare that I do not choose AV1 though.
I often use Netflix VMAF to get an idea of target compression. It is not perfect though. You have to verify visually. Saves time trialing different parameters though.
I should say that the audio codec is another big factor. I typically pair AV1 with Opus audio and the size reductions there are amazing even at quality levels that are transparent to me.
If AV2 offers better quality at the same size, or similar quality at smaller sizes, I will likely switch to it long before having hardware that can play it natively.
oh dont get me wrong.
as I said I agree with most of your original (and now second post).
my gripe with grain was not about av1 per se.
it was with movie makers that add it just because they think it is how movies should be
this is retarded to me:
"Reasons to Keep Film Grain On: Artistic Effect: Film grain can add a nostalgic or artistic quality to video and photography, evoking a classic film look"
because the reason is just "nostalgic" that the director has, as in if he was born after digital era, he would have an issue with it and not add it (usually).
about h264 and transparency, the issue is not that h264 can get that but at high bitrate, the issue is that av1 (as I read) can't get it at any bitrate.
but overall I agree with you.
I even recently was shocked to see how much faster av1 encoding has gotten.
I would have thought it was still orders of magnitude, but with some setting (like x265 slow setting) av1 is has the same encoding speed.
sistemazioni contro il malore in HTMLy per scrivere decente (nuova funzione per editor Markdown a schermo intero)
Ogni tanto, per risolvere problemi pratici merdosi, mi invento soluzioni tecniche complesse e cursate… del tipo di reimplementare la API di WordPress dentro HTMLy per poter gestire il blog basato su quello con la app di WordPress… ma, questo è uno spoiler che non dovrei fare, almeno fintanto che non finisco di lavorarci, cazzarolina. Tuttavia, […]
octospacc.altervista.org/2025/…
sistemazioni contro il malore in HTMLy per scrivere decente (nuova funzione per editor Markdown a schermo intero)
Ogni tanto, per risolvere problemi pratici merdosi, mi invento soluzioni tecniche complesse e cursate… del tipo di reimplementare la API di WordPress dentro HTMLy per poter gestire il blog basato su quello con la app di WordPress… ma, questo è uno spoiler che non dovrei fare, almeno fintanto che non finisco di lavorarci, cazzarolina. Tuttavia, qualche altra volta, se il caso vuole, mi escono piuttosto soluzioni tecniche semplici ed eleganti… come, in questo caso, aggiustare l’editor di post già presente in HTMLy, senza sostituirlo, per risolvere i problemi pratici merdosi in un modo banalissimo: aggiungere una modalità fullscreen. 🤯L’editor Markdown base dentro quel coso, fatto di una semplice
<textarea>con una barra degli strumenti bonus (e scorciatoie da tastiera) per la formattazione, con un’anteprima a parte (che, tra l’altro, non è accurata rispetto a come il Markdown viene poi renderizzato dal frontend del sito, ma questa è un’altra rogna), per qualche motivo infatti non mi ha mai completamente convinto, ma non mi sono mai messa a riflettere abbastanza da capire come mai ciò fosse il caso… Almeno fino a prima di adesso (cioè, di qualche giorno fa), quando ho capito che il problema è il layout assoluto della pagina admin; non l’editor intrinsecamente, insomma, ma il contesto in cui questo è inserito. 👌In breve, pensandoci, tutti gli editor di testo normali e i programmi di videoscrittura, e le interfacce di blogging di conseguenza, non hanno ‘sta cosa dove la pagina è un form classico con tremila campi, che scrolla pure verticalmente perché ovviamente è bella grande, e il contenuto sta in una delle tante scatoline… bensì è circa tutto il contrario, cioè che il contenuto è al primo posto e tutto il resto sta attorno. In qualcosa come il Blocco note di Windows, questo “attorno” è solo barra dei menu + barra di stato, mentre in WordPress è una serie di tasti importanti sopra e campi misti di lato (o in un menu a parte nella app Android), su Word è la barra gigante in alto, e così via… 🎐
Ma quindi, la soluzione a questo apparentemente insignificante dettaglio di UI/UX, che però mi causa (e penso a molti causerebbe) dei mal di testa (o, almeno, uno stato di controvoglianza nell’uso), — come sempre, perché le interfacce fatte per bene sono invisibili, mentre quelle che non lo sono causano sempre dolore — potrebbe sintetizzarsi in, semplicemente, aggiungere una funzione per cui il campo di testo dell’editor possa andare a finestra intera, prendendo precisamente tutto lo spazio, e non di più o di meno (più la barra degli strumenti fissata). ⚗️
Ora, ovviamente l’ideale massimo sarebbe in ogni caso solo rifare da capo l’intera pagina per farle avere alla base una struttura decente, ma significherebbe appunto ricostruire tutto; e sicuramente con JavaScript potrei riuscirci senza dover rompere ogni cosa, ma per ora chiaramente non c’ho voglia. Già questa piccola modifica tanto basterà per alleviare tantissimo il mal di capa causato da quello che spesso è un doppio scrolling (specialmente su mobile, dove la sofferenza viene credo triplicata), della pagina + l’area di testo (che non si ridimensiona mai automaticamente), o in alternativa il dover scrollare troppo la pagina per raggiungere altri campi se l’area fosse alta quanto il contenuto… e le controindicazioni sono assolutamente zero, quindi ho fatto subito una pull request al capo del progetto, fiduciosa che verrà accettata (quando si sveglia domani, che lui è indonesiano, quindi ora starà nel lettino). 🔧
Pure a livello di codice, ribadisco, non è stato difficile; è bastato un po’ di puro CSS per dichiarare il layout, e del JavaScript integrato nell’editor già esistente per attivare e disattivare l’ambaradan a necessità, col bottoncino o con la combinazione da tastiera che ho registrato (CTRL+P). Per mobile ho in realtà aggiunto anche una proprietà del meta viewport che ho scoperto letteralmente stasera, cioè
interactive-widget=resizes-content, per indicare al browser (almeno, per Chromium e Safari si, su Firefox chi lo sa) di ridurre il l’area della pagina quando la tastiera virtuale è aperta, così da evitare un altro doppio scrolling che altrimenti ci sarebbe… e ora si che è comodo lì, pare nativo! 👄Va detto comunque che l’idea di base non l’ho inventata io, anche se mi è dovuta comunque arrivare come intuizione personale perché io potessi considerarla (poiché non arriva mai nessuno da me a suggerirmi le cose in anticipo e semplificarmi così le missioni, mannaggia alla polvere). Infatti, pensandoci lo fa anche un plugin di cui non ricordo il nome che ho sulla mia DokuWiki, che aggiunge un tasto al campo di editing anch’esso semplice vecchio stile da
<textarea>buttata in una pagina alla bene e meglio, per mandare a schermo intero… ma quell’implementazione è mezza rotta e meno elegante di cosa ho fatto io qui, che ho riutilizzato gli elementi già presenti nel DOM, senza duplicare il campo di testo o fare strane scemenze. Detto questo, però, è proprio strano che questa idea non solo non sia mai venuta al grande capo di HTMLy, ma nemmeno ad altri contributori… non esistono issue o pull request al riguardo, a parte qualcuno che vorrebbe sostituire l’intero editor Markdown con altri più avanzati (che no, non risolverebbe direttamente questo specifico mal di cervello, e lo so perché sulla mia installazione ci ho provato; non è la mancanza di WYSIWYG che mi uccide, è il layout che scrolla e fa cose che bleh… ma ora grazie al cielo non più). 🙌#blogging #CMS #HTMLy #improvement #Markdown #OpenSource #webdev
Add fullscreen feature to Markdown editor by andrigamerita · Pull Request #967 · danpros/htmly
Since I started to use HTMLy, the Markdown editor has always felt kind of strange to me for long posts. After a bit of reflecting, I noticed that this is because any other normal text or blog edito...GitHub
Israel threatens national film awards after Palestinian story wins top prize
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48951540
Israel's culture minister has threatened to axe funding for the country's national film awards after The Sea, a story about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won its top award.
Israel threatens national film awards after Palestinian story wins top prize
The Sea follows a boy from the occupied West Bank who wants to visit Tel Aviv to see the sea for the first time.James Chater (BBC News)
like this
dflemstr, meekah, aramis87, massive_bereavement e Oofnik like this.
To be clear, it's an Israeli film.
As winner of the best film category at the Ophir awards, The Sea now becomes Israel's entry to the international film category at next year's Oscars.
This is what their Culture Minister looks like btw:
Not very cultured if you ask me.
like this
aramis87 likes this.
Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan sign mutual defence pact
Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan sign mutual defence pact
Israel’s attack on Qatar last week heightened those concerns. Read more at straitstimes.com.ST
Mass protests erupt in Buenos Aires over Milei's austerity cuts
Tens of thousands of Argentines filled the streets of downtown Buenos Aires on Wednesday to demand increased funding for universities and pediatric care, which have suffered cuts under libertarian President Javier Milei's austerity measures.Milei's popularity has declined following his deep budget cuts, and he is dealing with the fallout from a corruption scandal and a legislative defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections earlier this month.
Milei faces high-stakes midterm elections in October, in which his party aims to secure enough seats to keep the opposition-controlled Congress from overriding his vetoes.
Mass protests erupt in Buenos Aires over Milei's austerity cuts
Tens of thousands of Argentines flooded the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, demanding increased funding for public universities and pediatric hospitals, sectors hit hard by President Javier Milei’s sweeping austerity measures.FRANCE 24
Yes, in the sense that printing less money reduces inflation. This isn't exactly a shock.
The big issue is what he has sacrificed to get there. Poverty rates initially spiked, causing a lot of people to burn through their savings. Now the poverty rate has fallen, but people below the poverty line report having even less to spend than before.
And of course he slashed the budgets of a lot of services, so people are feeling that too.
They are, if your definition of working is that inflation is down. No question inflation is way down. Unfortunately employment rates are also way down, and poverty is way up.
So are they working? Depends on the metric you look at. Reducing inflation is, in a vacuum, a significant success; though taken in combination with the secondary harms of austerity, it’s probably a net negative for many people, if not most people.
I'm going to use the same phrase I use for Americans.
Have the day you voted for.
AI note taker for Linux?
I've been trying to find an AI note taker for when I have calls for work so I don't miss anything because my boss likes to ramble through a bunch of tasks at once. I'm looking for one of those background note takers that will be triggered whenever I get a slack or Google meets call, and I don't have to add it to the call for it to work. I'd prefer something open source but not a deal breaker there. The ones I've found when I search for a Linux note taker never seem to have a Linux version for downloading.
Has anyone had any luck finding a good Linux one or had success with a Windows one with wine?
like this
Endymion_Mallorn likes this.
ffmpeg to record audio from your desktop (which will include the meeting) then pass it to whisper.cpp or other text-to-speech FLOSS solutions. No need for "AI" or Windows software for that kind of tasks.
GitHub - ggml-org/whisper.cpp: Port of OpenAI's Whisper model in C/C++
Port of OpenAI's Whisper model in C/C++. Contribute to ggml-org/whisper.cpp development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
like this
Endymion_Mallorn likes this.
GitHub - lxe/yapyap: fast and simple push to talk dictation
fast and simple push to talk dictation. Contribute to lxe/yapyap development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
like this
Endymion_Mallorn likes this.
I just use regular ol' ed for jotting my thoughts on the AI-related news I see each day. After all, it is the standard text editor.
...was that not the question?
/s
Man claims council bid to remove 'therapy' roosters is contrary to human rights conventions
cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/27655836
On the one hand he is taking the piss, on the other hand he might not be taking the piss
ABC News
ABC News provides the latest news and headlines in Australia and around the world.ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
- YouTube
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.m.youtube.com
China steel exports poised for record high, risking further tariff backlash
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/48946777
China's steel exports are set to hit an all-time high this year, defying predictions that unprecedented trade barriers would drive down shipmentsExports will grow 4% to 9% this year to hit between 115 million and 120 million metric tons, according to forecasts from 11 analysts
Rising exports of semi-finished products are also drawing opposition from the Chinese government. Beijing wants steelmakers to add value and is weighing higher export taxes to discourage shipments of lower-value steel.
‘I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops
‘I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops
The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brainsDazed Digital
like this
Maeve, themadcodger, joshg253, PokyDokie, massive_bereavement e Benign like this.
like this
Maeve likes this.
"He goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt"
- He doesn't seem very opposed to technology if he just goes straight home and doomscrolls
- Are laptops really new technology to this kid if they've existed for his entire life?
like this
lystopad likes this.
$5 says it's the "what's a computer" kid from like a decade ago
"'laptop'? it's like a foldable but with half a screen??? and why is this keyboard broken, all the keys move?? how do I get an overwatch skin for it?? this is awful"
What a pedantic (and incorrect) take. Luddite can absolutely mean a person who purposefully avoids technology.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but words can have multiple meanings and take on new meanings over time. Luddite is one of them. This article used it properly.
And anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my linguistics-degree-holding ass.
In your defense, the statement specifies "modern-day Luddite" which compares it to the historical Luddite bands and excludes the first meaning of the Oxford dictionary.
Also, avoiding is not the same as opposing.
As “someone who gets distracted very easily,” he made the change to reclaim his attention span. Ditching his laptop gave him an environment where “YouTube isn’t around the corner” and he can focus on his reading.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
Reminds me a lot of fellow classmates at my college who I discovered hate online classes because they say they can't stay focused. So I don't know how these "luddite" students plan to not get distracted when their job will most likely involve sitting in front of a computer.
like this
Maeve, onewithoutaname e yessikg like this.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
I used to be easily distracted during online lectures yet had little difficulty following live lectures. It's a fundamentally different experience, for whatever reason.
Also, the attention span has to be trained. And training it by working without a distracting computer sounds like a good idea.
like this
riot, Maeve, themadcodger, bryndos, NoneOfUrBusiness e Benign like this.
Doodle. I always doodled in my notes. Repeating patterns worked for me, because I am no artist.
I am still unmedicated, and method helped me a lot with lectures using pencil snd paper for notes.
Everyones different, I failed my online college courses. In person, I do alright. You may like online better.
But if you're forced to sit in lecture, fuckin doodle.
Nah, that shit woulda never helped me and I wouldn't even know where to start and I never have, we had laptops open on lectures so I just wrote small programs about whatever concepts the lecturer talked about but to sit in the same place for 2 hours it was borderline impossible.
After entering the workforce it was just pure torture sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day, I went through like a full character arc from arrogant to humble to desperate to hate at others to hate at self to finally worldly and gradually radicalized against the onslaught of alienation.
I came back for my masters in 2020 and it was fairly sweet all online.
Thankfully now many years later I WFH. Uni is far behind. Haven't handwritten anything in years, I'm almost curious to try it
sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day
That is exactly why I absolutely thrived in manufacturing. Well, the right type of manufacturing. I'd rather die than work in an office. I lasted exactly one month at my one and only desk job before I had to quit and find something different.
I don't write often anymore either, but recently tried to write a letter to someone, wow after a few sentences could I notice how out of practice I was. I 'jot things down' all the time, but a letter, paragraphs, whew.
I think it's tough, because many degree jobs are all desk jobs, so it's like, you want the degree and good money, but the work, doesn't sound fun. Im glad wfh has helped though, thats great
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
And how do you improve your attention span? By not having distractions available to you.
like this
Benign likes this.
like this
yessikg likes this.
like this
NoneOfUrBusiness, Benign e yessikg like this.
I absolutely love doing everything on the computer and can’t stand writing things by hand anymore. I’ve always learned simply by listening — instructors that force students to take notes were the worst because I would be too busy scrambling to write things down than actually listening and learning.
All of this goes out the window when it comes to foreign language though. I have to do everything old school: textbooks, pencil and paper, and if it’s a non-Latin character set I have to write the same characters over and over for hours.
like this
riot, Maeve, NoneOfUrBusiness, PokyDokie, Benign, onewithoutaname e lystopad like this.
For me I always wrote as i listened, still do often.
I rarely read the notes back.
'Revision' was just writing a whole new set of notes either from memory or from sources.
Then, never reading that set of notes.
Massive waste of paper and ink, but it's part of how i pay attention.
Most of my lecturers did provide printouts of all the slides, but I'd scribble all over them anyway.
Typing doesn't do the same thing at all for me.
like this
NoneOfUrBusiness e PokyDokie like this.
I got myself a remarkable after seeing a colleague use one and thinking they were cool. An astonishing price for what is essentially a kindle that you can write on, but that is essentially the entirety of its functionality right there. No web browser, no ebook integration, no keyboard, just a thing for scribbling notes with a big battery life. No distractions.
As such, it's completely ideal for my work diary, meeting notes, D'n'D notes, maps for games that I've been playing, random scribbles, all sorts. Quite a lot lighter than the thousands of sheets of paper that would be required otherwise. Also not as rude as popping open a laptop when you're meeting someone - they can see you're just making notes and writing to-dos.
like this
onewithoutaname likes this.
like this
lystopad likes this.
Title is misleading:
Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand.
The second sentence contradicts the first:
stopped using his laptop for university work
then
He still types his essays
So basically he's not taking a laptop in to the lecture hall to take notes etc but is still using a computer to complete his work. Which makes sense as pen & paper in that environment is way more practical anyway.
Laptops are extremely useful. It really doesn't make sense to avoid them.
I pretty much treat mine as my second brain.
like this
yessikg likes this.
Just remember to back that shit up.
Nothing like forgetting your brain on public transport and getting instant amnesia for the past five years.
baduhai
in reply to bubblybubbles • • •bubblybubbles
in reply to baduhai • • •