nerdjon

I have to wonder how much of this is people switching to Linux vs the larger trend of people not having traditional computers to begin with.

Outside of gamers, I don't know anyone that has a computer at home that is not their work laptop if they have one. At least in my circle everyone I know has moved to their general computing being on phones and tablets which is not captured here. So is a solid chunk of this the people that would have already had Linux desktops continuing to have theirs since they would likely be the same people (more technical, needing to do tasks not possible on phones and tablets) less likely to be making that switch.

Basically if the higher percent is due to less desktops overall instead of a major uptick in Linux desktops, it is not really much to celebrate.

Given these numbers are percents I would be very curious.

Now yes there is a clear uptick thanks to the Steam Deck (however with Microsoft pushing their optimized for gaming Windows it will be interesting to see if that continues or goes backwards). But I would be reluctant to call that Linux Desktop anymore than I would call Android an uptick for Linux.

I will never forget being in a code review for a upcoming release, there was a method that was... different. Like massively different with no good reason why it was changed as much as it was for such a small addition.

We asked the person why they made the change, and "silence". They had no reason. It became painfully clear that all they did was copy and paste the method into an LLM and say "add this thing" and it spit out a completely redone method.

So now we had a change that no one in the company actually knew just because the developer took a shortcut. (this change was rejected and reverted).

The scariest thing to me is no one actually knowing what code is running anymore with these models having a tendency to make change for the sake of making change (and likely not actually addressing the root thing but a shortcut like you mentioned)

I have to wonder, how long until the browsers just natively do this.

Gets around the AI blockers that CloudFlare is pushing with the added benefit of seeing information that a crawler would never see.

Just hide it behind an "AI Browser" that just sends everything your browser sees to the cloud anyways for processing...

Throw in some vague "privacy" promise for good measure.

(I realize this is being more sneaky and doing stuff in the background, but my question remains)

I get where you are going and I do agree with you, but I think there is some validity to still calling it an echo chamber.

For example, I live in Boston and very liberal. I did not grow up in this area though, and I have noticed that among some of my friends that have... they have zero idea what most of this country is actually like. Even just other more moderate liberal people that don't have the "luxury" of living in a big city that largely shields us. Something that I feel like we saw in particular during the last election.

I totally get not caring about, and not wanting to see, the alt-right hate. I don't want to be constantly reminded that people hate me just for existing.

I am not sure what an alterative word for this is, and I think it goes farther than just trying to tune out the alt-right hate.

I would say what you are describing is also not blind loyalty. But there are very much people who do have blind loyalty. I agree on not hating them just because they want to make money, but there are people that seem to act like Valve is their friend and somehow this saint for gaming as if they are a non-profit or something. I guarantee you they are not working on SteamOS out of the goodness of their hearts and it is more about their ability to retain control and fend off Microsoft more heavily pushing their store (yes I know you can run anything you want on SteamOS but that does not change that for most users the Steam store will be the easiest option for them).

We see a little bit of it on HN, but look at the comments on the Gist itself. This was also shared on /r/steam and the comments there. Or the fact that this is currently sitting at "flagged" on HN for no valid reason I can figure out.

There are a (seemingly) rather large subset of gamers that any talk of using another store is immediately scoffed at. Dare have to be critical of Valve/Steam (except for them not putting out games anymore, everyone seems to be in agreement that it sucks) and people try to pivot to all of the good things they have done as if that just makes whatever bad behavior they are doing justified.

Edit: Seriously, go look at some of the more recent comments on the gist attacking this guy and tell me there is not blind loyalty to Valve. Some of these responses are seriously unhinged.

That and the reminder emails from Apple.

It is one reason that with this switch allowing apps to send me outside of Apple's Ecosystem to subscribe, I hope that developers realize that if they make this the only option there are likely many people like myself that just won't subscribe to your app. I am far more likely to try a subscription that costs a couple dollars a month if it is through the app store instead of through some random website.

It is always interesting seeing the mostly blind loyalty that Valve seems to get for no real clear reason.

Don't get me wrong, I love their games (when they bother to make one) and my Steam Deck. But lets not pretend that Valve is our friend either and their main goal is anything but to make money.

While I think that going so far as to delete my Steam library is a fairly extreme situation, I do think supporting a diverse marketplace and actually using other stores is a good idea. I have games on Xbox App (on PC), GOG, Epic, EA, etc. It really isn't that big of a deal to have alternatives installed, and if you are worried about the software there are alternatives like Heroic Launcher.

The controller situation is an interesting one though that I will need to do my own reading on, I knew that Steam tried to manage controller settings itself (which just further encourages you to only use Steam...) and has caused me to have issues with buttons registering twice. I was not aware that sometimes games had different controller functionality on different stores. Is there some requirement of this on Steam?

I have only been able to play with iOS 26 so far a little bit in the simulator, and so far it seems fine. To me it feels like after a couple months I will likely forget that a change was made (which TBH I think is a good thing, unlike when Windows has tried to make a change and never completes...).

However there is one thing that I wanted to comment on here:

> I’ve said this before, but Apple is forcing third party devs to be in service of Apple. The guidelines and rules are meant to sublimate the brands of the third party, and replace it with Apple.

Personally one of the things that drives me insane is when an app tries to be special and have its own design language (looking at you Google) on my iOS device. The OS has an established design language and really should be used for most applications.

I understand wanting to have a brand identity but too many apps take this too far that just lead to a clunky experience.

I was wondering if this was going to happen after we saw the iPad with the M chip in it.

But this does make me wonder, how much of a difference is there really between the A chips and the M chips. Clearly they are similar enough if either can run iPadOS or Mac. Or is this a case of the operating systems having shared components that make this easier?

But then it does beg the question, why have the distinction in the first place if they are going to use the chips in other hardware. Originally I thought the distinction was that the M series was meant to not give the impression that the Mac line was "underpowered" running mobile chips like on the iPhone.

I will never forget one of my earliest Apple purchases being a macbook pro. I was convinced that I needed a certain specd machine that was more expensive. The person I was working with instead of just accepting what I thought I wanted asked me about what I was doing with it and really encouraged the lower cost machine.

I ended up getting the lower cost machine and it was still great. It was still a Macbook pro. I don't remember what the spec difference was now but I do remember thinking back and realizing it was right. The higher specs really would not have added anymore life to the machine so it wasn't like I upgraded sooner than I would have otherwise.

Complete opposite of nearly any other tech purchasing process, always seem to want me to spend as much money as possible.

Not only that, but it would also raise significant concerns about how any of the recommendations, treatments, blog posts, etc are made. Like are the different people for those blog posts real people?

This is particularly concerning for a tool like this, you already took shortcuts on images why should we expect anything less for the rest of the app? Has anyone that knows anything about ADHD actually ever looked at anything this app is saying?

My favorite is trying to use it to generate an IAM policy and keys are just hallucinated based on expectations of what the keys would be called and are either wrong or they flat out don't exist if you are dealing with more advanced conditions.

This is awesome news, with a lot of the recent news I was worried this was not going to happen or we would get some stupid fear mongering (or some puritanical reason used).

Now the real question is insurance. Is this cheaper than the pills?

To my knowledge even the previous injections were hard to get insurance to pay for given how cheap you can get truvada since its generic.

It drives me insane that iOS does not do this automatically.

Those “helpful” links to addresses in my email that go to google maps in my browser instead of my Apple Maps app that I actually use drive me insane. Especially with the pop up from Google to install the app instead of just showing me the location.

Right I mean the chocolate one is illegal. The chicken one, honestly not fully sure since Purdue keeps getting exposed but idk if they actually have had legal issues? But my point with both of those is, as bad as those would be they don't have an impact on your health eating the product.

Regardless, I don't disagree that we should have some labeling on business practices behind the food that we eat as long as it is actually communicating what needs to be communicated instead of just fear mongering.

"GMO Free" (or requiring it to say it has GMO) tells the consumer absolutely nothing. Its meaningless. All it does is try to sow fear about a thing that its existence itself is not the problem.

"Forbids farmers from using last years seeds", "Uses increased herbicide" like the example the other person mentioned, or whatever that actually communicates what the business concern is to the consumer would be great.

But that is not what we are doing here with labeling GMO.

Then why require GMO labeling on food?

We don't require labeling for basically any other concerns about business practices and yet everyone seems to care about this one. When I buy chicken it doesn't have a sticker on it sayin "this chicken was probably kicked a few times". or slave labor was used on this chocolate. There are other voluntarily done labeling against both of those, but not a requirement to say it.

The problem is, the narrative is grouping them together. The general narrate is "concern over what it going into our bodies" which has nothing to do with business practices.

That is not a problem with the act of making GMO's in the first place, which again is the point that I am trying to make here.

If the product that had these modifications is perfectly safe without being sprayed with it, the science behind the creation of that GMO is still sound. The problem is what is being done to it after the fact.

Meaning, it being GMO itself is irrelevant and goes back to the business practices. Grouping that into an "Anti GMO" crusade just continues to further an anti-science narrative.

No… that is not what I said at all.

I have yet to see a single instance of any actual health concerns raised from eating GMO food.

It has turned into marketing bullshit.

Again there has to be a clear separation between the science behind GMO and the business practices. They are very different discussions that need to happen but instead we are painting all of it with a negative light.

I really really hate that the science behind GMO’s gets clouded by the business practices of some of these companies.

You can separate the 2. Being anti gmo is being anti science. Decrying all GMO as bad, unhealthy, or whatever is as illogical as trying to make any blanket statement about any food. It just so happens that this one gets headlines.

We should be concerned about the businesses like Monsanto. But that is completely different.

Personally I have been trying to avoid any product that goes out of its way to claim “non gmo” because it just signals to me that they don’t care about sustainability and science.

It’s almost as bad (and sometimes worse) than the “organic” crap.

Frustratingly though, it’s going to get hard and harder to avoid.

Even looking at building my own machine today, “AI PC” is all over much of this.

I think it is really important to take societal pressure on woman into account here. Which you kinda touch on, but not fully.

If a woman is a slut, they are shamed. If a man is a slut, they are cheered on.

Or put another way, a woman has to play "hard to get" and can't be "easy". When was the last time you heard a man called "easy"?

There is a lot more shame put on woman for having a healthy sexuality that often leads to not exploring their desires.

Yes, 100%.

Made worse by maybe afraid to speak up because of how might be judged ("Oh this person was asking for it because they do porn").

Feeling like you have no power.

It is for sure a complicated issue and societal norms and expectations play into that.

> Never once have I found a single story that ended well.

That seems like a very strong blanket statement. Are you specifically referring to a porn addiction or just consuming porn at all?

If the later... not everyone has negative stories about porn.

I should be very clear here that I am a gay man, so I don't really have exposure to much of what is talked about here even if I have heard about it.

What I find interesting is that it seems to equate critiquing porn with critiquing the treatment of the people in porn. Those are 2 very distinct things, you can have issues with treatment within the industry without going down a prudish anti-porn route.

Personally I feel like much of the issues with Porn, particularly in the US, stem from being uncomfortable talking about sex. Instead of feeling like we need to hide and be ashamed that we watch porn, it should be talked about so from a younger age we know its fantasy. We know that these positions, angles, noises, the perfection, isn't normal.

Sex is messy.

This shame about sex, our bodies, leads to many of these problems with how we view porn.

I strongly believe that there is nothing wrong with consuming porn, casually, with your partner(s), regularly, whatever. It is just another way to explore your sexuality and we should not demonize that. We should however address the problems with the industry, but without demonizing its existence.

It seems like all of the browsers now import data from other browsers when you install them. So, is that really much of the case?

Beyond the old stereotype "grandparent thinks the E is the internet", there is not much of a difference in how each browser behaves. The UI's are shockingly similar.

If it was, I would not think that Google would be as successful as they are to push Chrome heavily. Users would not transition over.

I will admit that I do sometimes have a different view of technology than many people, I mean as it is I have multiple browsers running right now. And generally when I step back I can see, oh yeah this really may be a bigger deal for most people.

I am struggling to see it in this case, especially with every browser trying very hard to make it as easy as possible.

What company takes it over is an important question, and I honestly don't have a good answer for that. Nearly every company I can think of would have some problem.

But my question is, do we need Chrome to actually continue in its current state?

Chromium could continue as open source with multiple companies contributing to it (and maybe it falls under the linux foundation to oversee it) then with companies like Microsoft making their own forks.

We have Safari, Edge, Firefox (which its future is also in question, but that's a separate topic). I guess Oprah is still kicking around.

When not under Google's control, what value does Chrome really serve beyond its existing install base (which not discounting, but that can change)

While true, that assumes that the engineering effort is worth whatever extra market they are getting from it.

I just can't imagine there is that many people that would bother with a "private cloud" that may not already have a use case for a NAS at home for general data storage.

How much of a market is there really for those apps? They are competing against most consumers accepting the ease (and significantly cheaper) of cloud based storage.

We (in the tech space) can scream privacy and risks of the cloud all day long but most consumers seem to just not care.

I have 2 Synology NAS and the only app that I actually use is Synology Drive thanks to the sync app, but there are open source alternatives that would work better and not require a client on the NAS side to work.

I can't imagine any enterprise would be using these features.

Been in the market for a new NAS myself and I am going to be looking into truenas or keep an eye on what Ubiquity is doing in this space (but its a no go until they add the ability to communicate with a UPS).

All medication is choosing between the effects of what you are treating the the side effects of the medication.

For a lot of people it isn't that easy. There is a reason weight loss surgery has been a thing for a long time. I could easily see using this as a jumping off point along with making choices about what you eat and increased exercise.

There is a psychological aspect to this, you start making those changes along with something like this so you start seeing the changes you are hoping for and feeling better so you keep with it.

I can't read the article so I don't know if this is answered, but my real question is the price. Is it reasonable for the average person or is this for the rich only.

More options are great, but not if most people that need it can't afford it.

It is fascinating how quickly this space has evolved. Seems incredibly quick for medicine. That isn't a criticism, just things seem to generally move very slow.