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Modified3019

3,261 karma · joined February 6, 2023

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Modified3019··on Robin Williams' daughter pleads for people to stop sending AI videos of her dad
I had never made that exact connection, but my impression of the Dune universe was that it was hopelessly dark and horrific, basically humans being relentlessly awful to each other with no way out.
Modified3019··on Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account
Best advice I can give, is every time you have to stop and solve some problem, make a .txt/.md file with your solution/links, and name the file with a bunch of keywords that let you use fsearch to look it up when you eventually need to solve that problem again. Future you will thank you.

Here’s some projects you may find useful

For playing around with dev projects, “Distrobox” is an easy way to manage mostly isolated environments, to keep your main system clean: https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox

I use Nobara as my Desktop OS, which is a fedora/KDE based distribution by GloriousEggroll that’s a desktop first and foremost (unlike a console UI oriented distro like Bazzite). It includes a bunch of nice things and cutting edge (https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom) stuff out of the box so there’s less for me to set up with. Steam, and the few games I play on it just work like normal.

For games from places Like GOG, Lutris works far more often than not. If I recall correctly, it’s literally just a matter of running the .exe

Most of my other programs are installed as flatpacks, which I would recommend.

Note that Nobara is not currently an immutable distro (like Bazzite). Like windows, you’ll likely want to reinstall it in a few years (or after some failed project) to start “fresh”.

For my NAS boxes, I use Proxmox, which I guess is mostly Debian with a Ubuntu kernel and select packages kept more up to date and a built in web UI. Proxmox is nice because its kernel (even the opt in newer kernels that can be offered on the forums) is kept in sync with ZFS which I use for my archives. I disable High Availability, among other things. Useful links:

https://free-pmx.org/guides/

https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/

Biggest gotcha with proxmox is if it seems to have lost internet access (like the webUI suddenly not working), your network device got changed/renamed due to a kernel update. You’ll need physical/KVM access to update the entry in /etc/network/interfaces with the new active network device name. Also if you install on a ZFS root, proxmox uses system-boot and silently ignores classic grub settings.

Modified3019··on Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without MS account
These days I find Linux and windows have a roughly equal amount of issues to deal with, and because I have decades of experience learning how to work through those issues, they are equally painful so I can happily choose Linux over windows.

What makes Linux especially painful to windows users is they basically need to relearn how to solve the same sort of problems they’ve forgotten they’ve been solving all the time in windows, but in Linux. Which makes the effort novel and thus especially noticeable.

Basically it takes accepting one is going to get smacked with fractal side quests of searching how to fix problems for a bit, but it does get better fairly quickly.

Modified3019··on Our stewardship: Where we are, what's changing and how we'll engage
Smoke, mirrors, and buzzwords.
Modified3019··on NixOS moderation team resigns over NixOS Steering Committee's interference
The unelected mods who resigned were refusing accountability being enforced by the elected steering committee, which tells you what you need to know about how the mods ran things.

Good riddance, and easily enough replaced.

Modified3019··on RedoxFS is the default filesystem of Redox OS, inspired by ZFS
According to this https://www.redox-os.org/faq/ Looks like snapshots are planned.
Modified3019··on South Korea's President says US investment demands would spark financial crisis
What specific illegal activity was happening? Honest question, I’ve not seen any reference to such a thing before your and the other guy’s comment.
Modified3019··on Why, as a responsible adult, SimCity 2000 hits differently
I remember being terribly confused by the lack of options for a good while, before somehow finally discovering that some buttons you had to hold for more options.

Discoverability aside, it made the UI nicely compact while being easy enough to access, so the city could fill most of the screen instead.

Modified3019··on Why, as a responsible adult, SimCity 2000 hits differently
I still have my SC2K floppy disks. Probably full of errors now, and no way to read them anyways, but a nice little keepsake from a time we kept physical “save icons”.
Modified3019··on PYREX vs. pyrex: What's the difference?
Wow, I had never even considered that the pre-heating phase could potentially get things hotter than the normal cycling, but yeah that makes sense. It’s just broiling from another direction.

I think my oven might cycle the bottom element even when pre-heating, possibly to prevent this.

Modified3019··on Denmark close to wiping out cancer-causing HPV strains after vaccine roll-out
Yes. While direct genital contact is the highest probability way to spread it, any skin-skin, skin-mucosa, skin-object-skin contact can potentially spread it. Consider how much you trust others to wash their hands after using the restroom. Low probability, but possible.

You’ve got a low probability of getting polio, but there’s no reason not to be vaccinated if you can.

Even if you already have a strain, there are multiple types. In fact, people who got a vaccine early on, should consider an updated shot for more complete protection.

Modified3019··on Grapevine canes can be converted into plastic-like material that will decompose
Here in Oregon, vineyards and especially hop yards are being taken out, demand for alcohol overall is down, and same goes for the related tourism.
Modified3019··on Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency
I moved to Fastmail a few years ago. No real complaints, and I’d definitely do it all over again.

That said, because I’ve not experienced any failure, I’ve not experienced how well Fastmail handles failure, which is the real measure of a company.

Modified3019··on Charlie Kirk killed at event in Utah
The following sums up my thoughts far better than I could have: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/no-i-wont-be-shedding-an...

The only thing to mourn about this guy, is the life he should have lived, not the one he did.

Modified3019··on E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens
In the DIY electronics scene, I’ve occasionally come across posts about small cheap e-ink displays essentially burning in and how to try and avoid it (shifting things around like on OLED)

https://github.com/esphome/feature-requests/issues/1109#issu...

This could be actual burn in, or it could be a failure in how they are refreshing (with some potential fix if refreshed properly). I’m not familiar enough to be certain myself, but I personally suspect they are likely being driven too hard and are truly damaged.

In normal e-reader use I’ve never seen this as a practical issue.

Modified3019··on Immich – High performance self-hosted photo and video management
Is there a way to export things like notes to a sidecar file? Basically need to have photo123.jpg and photo123.jpg_notes.txt available.

I’m trying to archive, document and make accessible family photos, but fear any work I do organizing information in immich may as well be throwing it into black hole.

Modified3019··on Clankers Die on Christmas
Completely off topic, but related to your post, I came across this recently, which does a good job describing how ineffective criticism/satire is at stopping people who don’t care.

“During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. (laughs)”

-Kurt Vonnegut (https://www.alternet.org/2003/01/vonnegut_at_80)

The whole article is unfortunately very topical.

Modified3019··on Glow-in-the-dark houseplants shine in rainbow of colours
I’m on mobile so trying to dig up the link is a pain, but the company is against commercial propagation/breeding, not personal propagation/breeding. Basically, be reasonable.

Note for others that it’s actually very difficult to accurately take a photo of the glow. They are overall quite “dim”, requiring near total darkness and eyes adapted to darkness for a bit to see. Unfortunately, if you expect what you see in the marketing materials, you’ll be disappointed. Cameras tend to either be unable to see the glow, or blow it way out of proportion. They are quite a bit above your typical glowing fungus though.

They can also be kinda finicky to grow until you learn what they need. Basically:

-Full sun. Internode length directly correlates with light received. I can make them “leggy” or ultra dense with my adjustable lights.

-Prefer cooler temperatures. They don’t seem to like high 80’s to 90’s. Seem to prefer 60-70 degrees F

-They happily survive the winter while inside, and can survive multiple years. Temps below 40F will cause them to start shutting down, with freezing/frost having a good chance to kill them.

-Need well drained soil. Straight potting soil will hold too much moisture for too long, causing root rot.

-Prefer bigger and deeper pots, like 10+”. I’d consider 6” the minimum

-Like being spoon fed fertilizer with waterings. Jack’s petunia feed is perfect.

-May be slightly sensitive to chlorine/chloramine in tap water. I suspect it contributes to some curious yellowing on the leaves. A bit of API stress coat takes care of that. This is good for other house plants as well.

-Sometimes the leaves will have curious yellowing (yellow veins, leaf tips) no matter what you do. It may just be how it is.

-Can be prone to fasciation (mutant flowers or stalks)

-When outside, can get bud worms that chew the flowers, leaves, or developing seed pods

-Fungus gnats can be an issue, especially when propagating cuttings.

-Susceptible to downy mildew (seen mostly in late summer/fall)

-They respond well to being chopped back every so often. I’ll occasionally remove 1/3rd to 2/3rds of their top mass. This also has the benefit of removing weight from the initially thin and weak stems (which thicken over time).

-Can be crossed with other petunias, and sometimes even tobacco. Note that pigments in the flowers from other petunia varieties block the glow, so they’ll be dimmer.

-Wild petunias (or whatever the ancestor plants are) rely on moths for pollination. You can get lots of seeds by manually pollinating the flowers.

-They tend to emit more fragrance at night (for attracting moths)

-The newest growth is the brightest, in particular the recently developed flowers that haven’t opened yet which truly look “glowing”. Normally the glow of most of the plant, is comparable to taking it outside into moonlight. The brightness will shift from day to day as well. Sometimes it’ll be much dimmer or brighter than normal.

reddit.com/r/FireflyPetunia/

If you want “cool glowing thing” but something less intensive, and momentarily much brighter, you may look into getting a glowing algae kit, like pyrofarms.com/

Modified3019··on Imgur's community was in revolt
Years ago, someone on r/datahoarder made a toy website that showed a “waterfall” of the newest images being posted to Imgur.

Initial comments of “oh neat!” quickly turned into “oh no!” and the toy site didn’t last long as it was. I think Imgur had some kind of detection (possibly automatic+manual) of illegal material going on, but it (the manual side of it?) would occur some time after posting.

Modified3019··on Why are anime catgirls blocking my access to the Linux kernel?
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.miwd.11...

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.miwd.11...

“The future is now, old man”

Modified3019··on How to Draw a Space Invader
The image/animation that sticks to the top, showing visually what is being talked about as we scroll is really nice work, and I typically hate fancy pages changes during scrolling.
Modified3019··on White House in Talks with Intel for 10% U.S. Government Stake
2 decades of increasingly refined 24/7 propaganda designed to radicalize.
Modified3019··on Court records reveal Sig Sauer knew of pistol risks for years
Wow that’s asinine. Like, russian-tier levels of lying straight to your face.

I should really know to expect less, but they yet again managed to slide under even my low expectations of sense.

Pistols are the least important weapon in a war. Their capabilities are essential identical, and you can replace every sig with a Glock and the only thing that’ll change is whose pockets the money fills.

The idea of an enemy trying to plan a battle based on the flaws of a particular pistol is exceedingly silly. Even Blackadder has gags more grounded in reality.

Modified3019··on Court records reveal Sig Sauer knew of pistol risks for years
I believe you may be confusing the type of safeties that block even intentional firings with safeties that try to block unintended firings (such as from drops or other mechanical stress). Pistols have multiple levels of safeties involved.

A trigger safety is meant to ensure that the trigger must be intentionally pulled (as opposed to moving during an impact) for the firing pin to be able to release and hit cartridge primer.

The 1911 famously has a grip safety, which needs to be depressed for the trigger to move. This is to try to ensure someone has to be gripping it with intent to fire, for it to be able to do so. While much safer than other pistols at the time, 100+ years later the design is relatively flawed, and isn’t truly drop safe, as the firing pin can still move.

Modified3019··on Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
We used to be able to afford traveling.
Modified3019··on We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness
That’s an interesting point. I would also add that having a pretext can be important as well.

I’ve had 24 hour instant access via phone/text to my siblings for almost 2 decades, but we really didn’t talk much until we started doing gaming stuff with voice chat on weekends. I think part of it is it really helps if there’s something, anything, that can fill the gaps in conversation and provide a pretext to getting together (even just virtually). We’ve since talked about so much that we likely would have never otherwise brought up or picked up a phone to talk about.

Hell, one of my favorite games as a kid (wyvern: https://web.archive.org/web/20040102095422/http://www.caboch...) was basically just a chat box with an adequate mmorpg attached. Sometimes I even just skipped the game and connected via telnet, since that was an option, so I’d be available when someone I knew popped on.

Modified3019··on We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness
Or more likely, their kids are still going to be renting and living paycheck to paycheck at 50, so they aren’t going to have time, space, energy, or money to take care of the parents when they are barely treading water.

I encounter a lot of people my age and younger whose own retirement plant is basically:

Plan A: Miraculously get rich

Plan S: When severe disability or pain hits, find the exit.

Maby it’s the lifelong depression, the disappointment at what the future’s become, or the hopelessness that society can escape neo-feudalism to something better, but there’s a noticeable decrease in the desire to keep living at any cost. Who knows whether we’ll actually see this start to see this express in the next few decades.

Modified3019··on We may not like what we become if A.I. solves loneliness
Probably like: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kaelon

Just need to re-evaluate things once we hit post-scarcity.

Modified3019··on When Flatpak's Sandbox Cracks
I believe this is part of what [Spectrum OS](https://spectrum-os.org/) is ultimately trying to do. That said, while it’s being actively developed, it’s not a trivial effort and is nowhere near “download the iso and daily drive it”.
Modified3019··on Replacing tmux in my dev workflow
What is “terminal crush”? I’ve not heard of this before.
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