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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Not sure if you’re exaggerating the low resolution, but I haven’t noticed quality issues on Amazon. I doubt the stream I’m getting is 4k, but it’s certainly better than 720p.

    I’m using the flatpak firefox from the fedora install instructions that comes with more codecs, though. It plays a bunch of video that VLC won’t render with my current setup and I haven’t yet put the effort into getting full codecs outside of Firefox yet, but maybe your system has a similar codec situation and prime video defaults to some old or neglected format that caps out at the res you see.

    Or it could be what you think and for some reason my system isn’t triggering it. Argh, this future is annoying.


  • Seems like this is possible, but the method (and maybe ability) depends on your window manager.

    If you’re using x11, you can interact with the window manager via the command line (so could set up the whole thing in a script). An example command line tool: xdotool (search for “interacting with x11 via command line” for more info).

    If you’re on Wayland, one of the design principles was to avoid programmatically interacting with window size or position; the user will set up their composer to behave as they want, not how the programmer of that program wants, and especially not how programmers of other arbitrary programs want (it was a security issue at the extremes, or could be annoying for more common cases). But you, the user, do have control, though it depends on your DE and what Wayland compositor it is using. On fedora KDE, you can use KWin scripts (which supports several languages).

    There’s also some other window managers that can offer better control, and perhaps it’s enough for the window manager to simply remember the position of windows when they are closed (which I think Wayland does or can be configured to do easier than writing a script, then you just need a launch script for the programs in your shortcuts).



  • Though, on the other hand, having the video saved offsite is useful because then anyone with physical access to your home can’t get rid of the video showing they’re there.

    This is not an argument in favour of using cloud services, because that gives access to your video to anyone the company deems should have access (or sometimes individual workers who either have access as part of their job or gain access because businesses suck at security). It’s in response to you saying isolate the cameras from the internet entirely; there is a good reason to have them connected (though you could have a PC handle that with a connection to two networks and no physical or software bridge between the two, just take video from one, upload (encrypted) to server on other).


  • Funny story, though I do question the study they referred to, because there’s different flavours of counter-culture that look pretty different from each other. Hipster is one, but there’s also goth, emo, trench coat aesthetic, people who chase outdated trends, punk, metal, those who don’t dress up any differently if they are going out or staying in, otaku (like the ones that wear clothes with hentai on them, I wouldn’t call cosplaying a counter culture so much as a costume hobby unless cosplay wear is their default)…

    All of those looks are very different from each other while not wanting to follow the main culture’s trends and flaunting its definition of beauty.

    And tbh, I’m not sure I’d even call hipsters a counter-culture. There was a desire to rebel, but looking at the aesthetic, I can’t tell what they were really trying to rebel against. Looking sloppy? Business casual? Maybe it’s because the aesthetic has been absorbed into the culture itself or maybe it was an advertiser-led “rebellion” in the first place? Or trying to be ahead of the curve means eventually the mainstream “catches up” and the look just looks normal now?

    Also, thinking about it more, I wonder if the hilariously apt story was genuine or if someone there realized how they could really push their story by inventing an angry reader to prove their point.


  • I think the windows connection help wizard might have actually fixed a connection issue I had once. Out of more chances than I probably should have given it, considering how often it did dick all, despite my phone’s connection being fine.

    I think there’s a rare race condition or something in the windows network stack because I’ve had four different machines suddenly lose the ability to connect to working networks, where sometimes toggling airplane mode would fix it, sometimes even that wouldn’t do anything and it needed a restart. It happened more often with wireless connections, but I’ve seen it affect wired ones, too.


  • It feels like a bunch of moderation decisions are made by people just trying to satisfy some arbitrary OCD-like requirements. Like “you can’t reply to an old conversation” or “you can’t talk about a problem someone has already talked about”. That stuff is worse than the people who reply useless shit like RTFM (aka “I go to helo forums not to provide help but to gloat about the things I know that you don’t and act like every single comment is addressed to me personally and needs my input”) because at least those useless comments don’t kill the rest of the conversation.


  • My experience when I switched about a year ago was to wonder why I had put it off for so long because from day 1, it was more comfortable to use.

    Ans this is despite me using a DE I’d never used before (cinnamon) and ended up not really liking and getting “pushed” to another one (KDE) like windows pushed me to another OS (and even that was another “why didn’t I do this sooner?”).

    So a DE that was bad enough that I was happy to find a better alternative was still such a better experience than windows that I didn’t miss any of the comfort of familiarity at all from the start.

    And the longest part of the process was a) fighting windows to write the install iso properly (iirc it wanted to add the stupid windows meta folder files or something like that, causing the iso to fail the hash check, and I have a feeling that that side effect might be a reason they do it that way), and b) reading up on the various options in case I wanted something other than the default or common options (I didn’t but it was good to learn).






  • I hate speakers with open bluetooth. I’d rather have to press a button than let anyone in range potentially have control, partially for shit like this, partially just because someone looking to connect to their own device might pick mine on the list if theirs isn’t showing up.

    My soundbar is very good at always showing up on that bluetooth device list and I have had neighbours randomly connect to it. I’ll usually turn the bt off at that point, but it’s usually on because I use it sometimes. Just wish it had some sort of security instead of being designed for people who might have enough trouble getting the power on.




  • Funny thing about “AI skills” that I’ve noticed so far is that they are actually just skills in the thing you’re trying to get AI to help with. If you’re good at that, you can often (though not always) get an effective result. Mostly because you can talk about it at a deeper level and catch mistakes the AI makes.

    If you have no idea about the thing, it might look competent to you, but you just won’t be catching the mistakes.

    In that context, I would call them thought amplifiers and pretty effective at the whole “talking about something can help debug the problem, even if the other person doesn’t contribute anything of value because you have to look at the problem differently to explain it and that different perspective might make the solution more visible”, while also being able to contribute some valueable pieces.




  • Unless you have pockets with zippers, fanny packs are great for riding roller coasters if you’re only carrying a fanny pack’s worth of things. Especially one that can sit unnoticed under your shirt, since staff will sometimes make you take it off if it’s obvious.


  • I think the problem with that is that the distros are each essentially personal projects. Some individual or team has their vision of what they think Linux should be and make their own effort to make it. There isn’t just 3 big distros because there’s more than 3 teams that want to make their own. And since no one has control over what distro anyone else can make, each person’s only options are to start their own distro, work on someone else’s, both (and more, since there’s no limit on how many distros you can contribute to), or neither.

    Though personally, I think more options is good. Just like with the lemmyverse, if admins for one distro make choices you don’t like, you’re not stuck with them because you can either switch distros or start your own fork if you think it was on the right path before that bad choice.

    All I can say for sure is that, from my experience, Fedora is ready for the masses (at least the technically competent who are willing to learn, the others are just as lost on windows, outside of their usual activities).

    The downvotes might be because it’s not something anyone can do.