laughs in home lab

Not that I’d buy it but, if I did, that power button might get used twice a year. Likely less since I wouldn’t be able to upgrade or maintenance its hardware.

That’s a problem. Absolutely. It’s not the problem though. I’m not sure the problem can be summarized so succinctly. This is the way I’ve been putting it:

These are the top reasons humanity needs successful, decentralized, open social media platforms:

1. Collecting and selling user’s private data is dangerous and unethical.
2. Using that data to intentionally and directly manipulate user’s thinking is even worse.
3. All of the major centralized social media companies have been proven to either allow these illicit information campaigns or coordinate them directly. TikTok is the focus right now but Sophie Zhang exposed Facebook for doing exactly what TikTok has been exposed for recently. Can you recall any meaningful consequences for Facebook? Do you think Facebook is now safe to use?
4. It’s clear that most political leaders are either too ignorant, too corrupt, or too inept to meaningfully legislate against these problems.
5. The concerned public can’t shut Pandora’s box. No one is coming to save us from big tech or the monied interests and nation-states that wield it.
6. The concerned public can’t easily and legally audit the platforms big tech builds because they are closed and proprietary.
7. Personal choice is not enough. Not using centralized social media increases personal safety but does little to curb its influence otherwise.

These are listed by order of intuitive acceptance rather than importance. I find it aids the conversation.

The best reasonable answer to these problems I’ve seen proposed is for the public to create an open and decentralized alternative that’s easier to use and provides a better user experience.

Will that kind of alternative be a force for pure good? I’m not sure. To your point: I’m not convinced social media of any kind can be more than self-medication to cope with modernity. Then again I’ve had incredible and meaningful conversations with close friends after passing the bong around and spent time on Facebook/Reddit, and now Mastodon/Lemmy/etc, doing the same. Those interactions were uplifting and humanizing in ways that unified and encouraged all involved.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We need to take care of each other, refuse pure hedonism, and protect the vulnerable (and we’re all varying degrees of vulnerable). At the same time: humans aren’t happy in sterile viceless productivity prisons. Creating spaces for leisure which do no harm in the course of their use isn’t just a nice idea… It’s necessary for a functional and happy society.

That’s a fair take. Silver Blue is great and, in the spirit of the thread, if I were helping an interested but hesitant lifelong Windows/Intel/Nvidia user migrate to Linux today I would:

1. Buy them a new SSD or m.2 (a decent 1tb is ~$50 & a good one only ~$100).
2. Have them write down what applications, tools, games, sites, etc they use most often.
3. Swap their current Windows OS drive with the new drive and, if needed, show them how and why that works or provide an illustrated how-to (so this choice is not a one-way street paved with anxiety. If they want to swap back, or transfer files, or whatever else; they can. Easily). Storage drives are just diaries for computers. The user should know there’s nothing scary or mystical about them.
4. Install Fedora Kinoite on that new drive.
5. Swap them from Fedora’s custom Flatpak repository to Flathub proper. A decision that should be given to the user on install IMO but I digress.
6. Install their catalogue of goodies from step 2 so they’re not starting from scratch.
7. Install pika and configure a sane home directory backup cadence.
8. Ask them to kick the tires and test drive that Linux install for at least a month.

Kinoite is going to feel the most like Windows and, once configured, stay out of the way while being a safe, familiar, transparent gateway to the things the user wants to use.

My personal OS choices are driven by ideals, familiarity, design preferences, and a bank of good will / public trust.

I disagree with some of Red Hat’s business model. I fully support the approach SUSE takes. I’m also used to the OpenSUSE ecosystem, agree with most of their project’s design philosophies, and trust their intentions. I’m not a “fan” though and will happily recommend and install Silver Blue or any other FOSS system on someone’s computer if that’s what they want and it makes sense for them! Opinionated discussion can be productive and healthy. Zealotry facilitates neither.

That said: Aeon has been out of beta for a while. The latest release is Release Candidate 3 and they’re closing in on the first full release. Nvidia drivers work after a bit of fiddling. 🙂

I’m going to edit my previous post to add the Kinoite suggestion for posterity’s sake.

Check out Aeon and Fedora Silverblue. I’m installing Aeon on Desktops and MicroOS on Servers. My computer needs to be a reliable tool. Immutable distros make it exactly that.

The last thing I want to do in my free time or during my work day is be forced to fiddle with some poorly documented and/or implemented idiocy on my personal computer because I forgot to cast the correct incantation prior to updating something. I’m not a masochist.

EDIT To the hesitant but hopeful Windows+Nvidia user: give Fedora Kinoite a try. Check my reply to @[email protected] below for details.

I was taught something different growing up and had to check myself with a quick read. Holy shit. You’re right. Thanks for sharing.

Your closing sentence hints at the root of the misunderstanding here. It also fails to strengthen your initial claim at all. This study’s Lay summary sets it out perfectly.

Many autistic individuals report feelings of excessive empathy, yet their experience is not reflected by most of the current literature, typically suggesting that autism is characterized by intact emotional and reduced cognitive empathy. To fill this gap, we looked at both ends of the imbalance between these components, termed empathic disequilibrium. We show that, like empathy, empathic disequilibrium is related to autism diagnosis and traits, and thus may provide a more nuanced understanding of empathy and its link with autism.

Autistic folks don’t always exhibit the socially defined traits of autism. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, right? So while your [claim] [double-down] [pre-emptive concession] [claim] ends with a claim that’s reasonable it is also fundamentally disconnected from the initial claim (which is, at best, half-true). Social and non-social traits are additional dimensions on a complex spectrum. Defining autism only by it’s more visible / stigmatized traits perpetuates the false equivocations of abnormal with disordered and disordered with diseased.

Sent with love ❤️

This is admittedly a bit pedantic but it’s not that the risk doesn’t exist (there may be quite a lot to gain from having your info). It’s because the risk is quite low and the benefit is worth the favorable gamble. Not dissimilar to discussing deeply personal health details with medical professionals. Help begins with trust.

There’s an implicit trust (and often an explicit and enforceable legal agreement in professional contexts (trust, but verify)) between sys admins and troubleshooters. Good admins want quiet happy systems and good devs want to squash bugs. If the dev also dons a black hat occasionally they’d be idiotic to shit where they eat. Not many idiots are part of teams that build things lots of people use.

edit: ope replied to the wrong comment

deleted by creator

A speaker’s public record provides context for their current commentary. Trump’s tells us he is a bigot. Specifically a white supremacist. His recent rhetoric leans in to this. When pressed to clarify, justify, or recant these statements he either deflects or doubles down.

There is no reason to think he is suddenly well intentioned, operating in good faith, or otherwise deserving of some deference of judgement.

That used to be true. Speaking strictly constitutionally “invisible” is still a bit of an overstatement but not unfair. Regardless modern US VPs have some standardized additional roles (National Security Council member being the biggest one) and others assigned per administration which can and reportedly have impacted the administrations they’re party to.

I’m not sure I take your point about Harris’ invisibility in particular. She’s set a new record in her capacity as President of the Senate by casting the most tie-breaker votes in US history. On the flip side she’s drawn a lot of flak while working on the Central America Forward initiative (justified or not is a separate discussion). Her perceived invisibility isn’t because she hasn’t been getting publicly visible work done.

1. Her father is Jamaican.
2. Ultimately we all descend from African-born people. That doesn’t mean all humans are Black.
3. Charlize Theron is African. She’s not Black.
4. Black, as a label, is as much a shared cultural and countercultural identity as it is a familial heritage and racial identity.
5. Your position is misinformed at best, reads worse, and is a weird hill to die on either way.

How?

Because the only things the other side of the aisle wants to deliver are stillborn.

I’m excited to see they’re going fully open source. Looks like the last steps to making the sync server self-hostable are in the works. Do you use their paid service? If so: any complaints or caveats?

Start here: https://nesslabs.com/how-to-think-better This isn’t an endorsement (though I do like ness labs). That article offers practical evidence-based starting points and additional resources at the end.

There are many people/systems/schools that will offer strategies and solutions. Some are practical and effective. None of them are a replacement for learning what it means to think well, learning how to think well, or actually thinking well.

The next step is learning the jargon of philosophy so you can ask meaningful questions and parse the answers (this is true for any new discipline). I recommend reading anything on the topics of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, which resonate with you. Then find others to discuss what you’ve read. You do not have to be right or knowledgeable to earn a voice in the conversation: only an interest in discovering how you might be wrong and helping others discern the same for themselves.

If you haven’t read any classical philosophy but are interested I recommend Euthyphro. It’s brief, poignant, and entertaining.

I hope this helps! Happy to discuss further as well.

I don’t immediately disagree with this. Reactionary decisions breed instability and progress requires a foundation. Though with the Nation’s already flawed fundaments being actively bulldozed I am compelled to ask: what calculated tactics may we reasonably trust are in play?

Biden has played politics well enough. I’ll grant that. Especially while navigating the obscenely successful obstructionist Republican strategies which strangle the Legislature. The fact he’s accomplished anything of note in this climate could reasonably be spun as impressive.

Is the bar for America’s “left-wing” set so low, and the expectation they’ll cow to corporate interest so common (and rightly so), that this spin, these accomplishments, are honestly lauded as the laurels on which the Biden administration may ride to a second term? Forgiving student debt. Ensuring fairer access to home loans. Expanding healthcare coverage for veterans. All good things! No doubt. Is it fair to expect the American people to think this is enough? While higher education, homes, and healthcare become increasingly inaccessible?

Addressing symptoms in this way placates the agitated while maintaining the status quo and setting precedent to, ostensibly, address root cause at a later time. It assumes that the wheel of progress turns slowly. That progress will win out if it is patient and persistent and noble.

The past twelve years have proven this is not so.

The religious right-wing has worked diligently over the last ~70 years to create the current theocratic zeitgeist on which the MAGA parasite is parading to victory. It is not a sudden and surprising uncoordinated incidental movement preying on the Bible belt’s misguided moral anxieties. Haphazardly funneling the reactionary rhetoric of today into a Four Years Hate to seize power and further the ideology of Paul Weyrich. No. It is a dedicated effort. A calculated tactic. Others are replicating it and fascism is on the rise world 'round.

Successful opposition to the oligarchy-backed, well organized, long-planned, and now popular out and proud American fascist hate campaign will not be found in treating symptoms or placating concerned citizens or maintaining the status quo. What, then, is the Progressive answer? What tactic is the Biden Administration, or the Democratic Party, or anyone anywhere deploying that we should “grow the fuck up” and wait to see the impact of? Why should I, or any concerned citizen, trust that this is so?