And he had superpowers too, and was about to bring peace to the middle east.

I’m really hopeful that Steam Boxes and Steam Decks etc. mean that peripheral manufacturers start making sure their stuff works well on Linux.

Honestly, a lot of the time all they’d need to do is document the protocol and publish it and probably someone else would build and maintain a driver for them. I think it could undo a whole chicken and egg situation. Right now, manufacturers don’t build their stuff with Linux support because not enough gamers run Linux. As a result, not many gamers run Linux, which means it’s reasonable for manufacturers not to build in Linux support.

As for the unknowns, there are unknowns in Windows too. I’ve had to go into the registry many times to tweak something so it worked the way I wanted. The only difference is that my Windows install was the result of months or years worth of tweaking and customizing. Well, not the only difference. Linux is much more tweakable, and it’s something where you go in expecting to have to spend more time adjusting things. But, Windows didn’t have its unknowns too. It’s just that most of them were already behind me. With Linux, I knew I’d have to start from nearly square one. I’m glad I did in the end, but it was still frustrating at times.

I’ve heard of them, but I don’t know much about them.

As for IVPN:

IVPN previously supported port forwarding, but removed the option in June 2023. Missing this feature could negatively impact certain applications, especially peer-to-peer applications like torrent clients

I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.

What’s the problem with Gail Slater?

What is it about them that’s especially bad?

Anybody know of a VPN service that

• Allows port forwarding (i.e. you can run a bittorrent client and accept incoming connections)
• Allows connections using the Wireguard protocol
• Doesn’t have Israeli ownership
• Isn’t owned by fascists
• Has exit nodes around the world, with a decent number of options and good speeds

So far, the ones with major problems are:

• Mullvad is out because of pro-Fascist ownership.
• CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, ZenMate, ExpressVPN, and Intego are owned by Kape Technologies which is Israeli

its

Do they do port forwarding (i.e. can you run a bittorrent client behind the VPN and accept incoming connections)?

Man, after his death Aaron Swartz has gone from an early employee of Reddit, to a founder of Reddit to now the creator of Reddit. Give it a few years and he’ll have provided the VC money for it too.

I daily-drive Bazzite on multiple machines. It’s excellent, even on machines I rarely use for games.

If you use the console version of Bazzite (which I use on a HTPC), it runs Steam in console mode on boot. I assume that’s what SteamOS does, it seems like they designed that mode to feel identical to using SteamOS on a SteamDeck. That makes it easy to launch games etc. without needing a keyboard and mouse. Then you can go to desktop mode when you need it.

The desktop version of Bazzite is just a Linux desktop that starts Steam on boot so that it’s running in the background. It has some gaming-related things installed but if you want to use it as a machine to write software it’s basically ready to go.

The part that takes energy and effort is making the switch.

I’m really familiar with Linux. I’ve been using it on and off since the days of Slackware. My work computer was Linux-only for several years.

But, even with that, it took weird driver issues with my GPU, combined with the impending death of Windows 10, combined with the ridiculous heavy handed Copilot BS on Windows to finally convince me to switch my main desktop PC to Linux.

It was just the momentum that was so hard to overcome. I knew what worked in Windows, and I knew what didn’t. I had already found and installed all the programs I needed. My settings were all how I liked them. I knew the keyboard shortcuts. With Linux I didn’t know what would work or what wouldn’t. With Linux, there were a lot of things I’d need to install and set up, and I knew that was going to take some effort. But, worst were the unknown unknowns. I didn’t know what was going to cause me problems, and didn’t know if they were things I could resolve in a couple of hours or if they’d take weeks.

I’m glad I made the switch, and the overall maintenance load is much lower than it was in Windows. The frustration factor is 10x better. But, I did have to make a real effort to make the switch. There were a few weeks where it was pretty frustrating.

Copyright infringement is never theft.

And, arguably, what they’re doing with LLMs isn’t even infringing copyright. If I look at a copyrighted picture, learn from it, then paint my own impression of it, my painting shouldn’t be infringing the copyright. Do that with an LLM instead of a brain and it’s a similar argument.

The dual standard is really the issue. Meta downloaded terabytes of books from LibGen and loaded them into its model. If that’s not infringing copyright, then anybody should be able to download a book from LibGen and read it without worrying about copyright infringement because they’re just loading them into their brains. But, I have a feeling that Meta will get away with it as fair use, but individual people will still be nailed for “copyright infringement” for loading media into their brains in exactly the same way.

I think the argument is that it acts as a sort of “passive horn”. That merely by being near a car you’ll be noticed if you have a motorcycle with loud pipes.

It’s somewhat true of all ICE motorcycles. They’re not silent. But, are they loud enough to wake a driver up out of a daze and cause them to notice the bike?

An electric motorcycle won’t be noticed at all through the noise it makes. It might not be that different from a properly silenced ICE bike.

In any case, it’s sad that we’re in a situation where a driver whose brain isn’t engaged with what’s going on around him can kill a motorcyclist through inattention.

There’s a saying in the motorcycle community: “loud pipes save lives”. In other words, cars only notice motorcycles when they can hear them.

Personally, I think that was often used as an excuse for having an obnoxiously loud motorcycle. But, I’ve also seen first-hand how oblivious drivers are. I think Harleys are stupid. They’re a way to get middle-aged dentists to part with their money and to make them feel bad-ass. But, I think that annoying sound does mean that they get noticed, which probably helps keep them alive. I’m convinced that there are riders who have died on electric motorcycles because a car turned into them because the driver never looked to see if there was anything there.

I could hear the flyback whine of old TVs

Man, I hated that sound. A lot of computer monitors had it too before they switched to LED/LCD displays.

I hate how I have to put eletrical tape over all my device lights so I can get some peace at night.

This was at its worst when blue LEDs were new. Everybody wanted to show how cool they were and used a blue LED, but they were the brightest lights imaginable.

Like, just a hint, if your indicator light actually casts shadows on my wall at night, it’s too bright.

It’s more and more clear that the Wikipedia editors made the right choice in deciding that the US lost the war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war

THE ART OF THE DEAL!

(written by a ghostwriter)

Zen is a reskinned Firefox. Firefox depends on Google’s funding to stay afloat.

Everything else, other than Safari on Mac is either chrome-based or firefox-based.