PixelProf

joined 2 years ago
[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 64 points 1 month ago (8 children)

While the data might be cherry picked, one thing that can't be displayed here is motivation. In Canada, a decent number of people have guns, but you can't carry firearms with you, you have to take highly specific routes while transporting any restricted hand guns. The role of guns is sport shooting and hunting and it's highly regulated for those.

In the USA, guns are intended to be used to kill other civilians. Owning a gun for self-defense purposes is buying with the intention that you may one day use it to kill another human. Not an enemy combatant in war, but a fellow citizen with a gun.

It's only a feeling, but I feel like that might be the biggest distinction between the USA and other (omitted) high-gun-per-capita countries. Guns in the USA aren't for mitary drafting or protection against a national invasion.

There's also the matter of training and licensing. A buddy in the USA was staunchly opposed to gun licensing. When I said that in Canada, it just helps ensure that people know how to maintain their gun and use it safely, he said, "Well the people who don't take the time to learn how to maintain it and use it safely just shouldn't get it in the first place", which I'm sure is a popular enough sentiment, but it's also the argument for licensing. The zero barrier for entry approach is also a problem.

I'd love to see more nuanced stats than this 4-panel comic is presenting.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

I mean, if you look at the picture, no? It's not about FOSS it's about changing companies and it's services that arguably most people use. It has no information baked in, so not the most useful, but it's not the standard FOSS stuff, anyways.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but the whole show is told from the perspective of his frequently envious friend, Ted, and he is regularly shown to be an unreliable narrator. The blonde character also gets long-term, deeply involved with Ted's primary romantic interest, and there are hints that maybe blonde one's exploits are overstated because Ted's still not over it or otherwise remembers it through a negative perspective.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The other side is also reserving their criticism for those people, so the net result is that the only people who aren't receiving hate are the fascists.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 45 points 8 months ago (9 children)

I 100% agree for the meme, but just warning that this isn't really a strong argument. I'm going to straw man here, but: "I'm against the Protect the Children Act", "You're literally saying you're against protecting children." "No, I just disagree that the Act is actually about protecting children and is more about government surveillance and corporate control." In their heads, they've already prepared the argument.

Basically, by them seeing it as a unified organization that stands for more than just being opposed to fascism, they see it as a crafted doublethink instead of realizing they are the victims of a different doublethink, to butcher the use of the term. It's hard to cut through that.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 16 points 8 months ago

I think it was Rami Ismail (maybe Bennet Foddy...) who described luck in the games industry as being a vital factor, but every time you make a game and put information out there about your games, you're re-rolling the dice. They played a great game, it's still a matter of getting the right rolls at the right time.

Getting lucky doesn't discount skill and hard work, but getting unlucky does, and the majority of talented people making great games have been unlucky.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago

Most Linux distributions are free (free as in beer and free as in free speech and freedom to modify). Some are backed by big corporations with questionable activities (e.g., Ubuntu owned by Canonical adding ads and data tracking by default).

Federation is a different concept (relating to the interconnecting of content platforms, such as email or Lemmy).

Linux itself is the underlying kernel code which programs talk to act as a mediator between software and hardware. Each Linux distribution is basically a software suite built on-top.

Arch is specifically notable for having a very fast software update cycle.

In contrast, Debian is a distribution with the "slow and stable" mantra. Software officially supported and distributed for it only receives updates every few years after extensive stability testing. The goal is to never have a random update break anything. This also means it is slow to receive support for new hardware unless you manually install it. It often supports running newer software but it won't be nicely managed by the OS and you'll be doing manual work to maintain it. The consequence? I have a new graphics card, and booting into Debian just gives me a black screen. I needed to use the terminal to download and install Nvidia's driver myself.

Arch isn't so concerned with stability. It's still tested, but their goal is to make sure new hardware and software advances can be used right away. Think weeks instead of years. This means it will support newer hardware and any news about Linux advancements will be on your machine before long. It also means that sometimes things slip through the cracks and one piece of software might break, or break another one. You might need to pay attention to Arch news before updating to see if there are any incompatibilities before updating.

There are different distributions building on top of these. Arch itself must be installed from scratch, a tricky process. Debian is more streamlined. Ubuntu is built on Debian, having lots of stability, but has alternative software repositories to keep things a bit more up to date. Arch has variations that make it easier to install.

Arch gives more flexibility in what you install and more control of your system. Debian has lots of flexibility as well. Ubuntu has a bit less. Mint is a popular choice, built on Ubuntu, and it removes some of the "chaff" people complain about being added into Ubuntu.

Linux distributions can run on basically anything. A smart toaster might run Linux. If it can run Windows, it will probably run a Linux distribution with a quarter of the memory usage at double the speed because Windows hogs resources with unnecessary and unkillable software in the background.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 20 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's tough as a computer science professor from a related perspective. Lots of students arbitrarily hating anything AI related because of this, including all of the traditional techniques from the 60 years prior to the rise of LLMs and diffusion models, and others misconstruing or discounting any AI class that isn't LLM or diffusion related.

I never like to say technology is inevitable, as the inevitability argument is one of the best marketing tools major companies have to justify their poor ethics and business models (see: the gig economy founders, the "Momentum" mindset). It's clear, though, that there is quite a paradigm shift occuring.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Any solutions to replace something like Virtual Desktop to wirelessly VR a Quest 3, or any word on attempts to get Steam Link VR working on Linux? It's basically the final ligament holding onto the Windows dual-boot on my non-work PC. I've been waiting for the day I can purge Windows since using Warty in elementary school.

[–] PixelProf@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for the heads up! App error it seems, tried to clean it up.

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