Of course his favorite book is animal farm lol

I did not expect to see CS2 news on lemmy… I’m all here for it!

Annihilation is great! Easily one of the best horror-type novels I’ve read in a while. I didn’t quite like the sequel as much though (it’s also literally twice the size, which I feel like is a bad sign; maybe the author was rushed?).

Of course that’s up for debate; we’re not even sure what consciousness really is. That is a whole philosophical debate on it’s own.

I genuinely think there should be a legal limit to when children are allowed independent access to JavaScript & Internet enabled technology. I would suggest twelve years.

Having it be law would remove probably the biggest reason children are drawn to technology initially today: social pressure and anxiety.

I didn’t grow up with anything like this (and I’m pretty young… or I was at some point) and thank fucking God I didn’t. I barely read today as it is, instead wasting time with screens and YouTube and shit like that; I’m happy I had the opportunity to consume hours and hours of time with reading as a child. Not just reading: I learned basically every knot that exists (I still have my copy of Ashley’s Book of Knots), learned an absurd amount of physics (with textbooks! for fun! I wouldn’t, couldn’t, do that today), learned to program and use Minix (ok, that was highschool, so a little later), and even got into Marxism.

These are all opportunities I don’t think I could replicate today, because I don’t get bored in the same way today. Now, if I’m bored, I automatically look at my phone (…lemmy…), or open YouTube, or do something else equally stupid. I didn’t have that option when I was young. We didn’t even own a TV. I was forced to do interesting things, and I’m really happy I was, because I’d be an exceedingly illiterate boring moron if I hadn’t read those novels and learned how the universe worked and understood why capitalism sucks.

Maybe I’m yelling at clouds and people will become interesting through other means, but it really frightens me how much dumber I’ve become. I don’t want to imagine how much harder it will be for masses of gen Z and Alpha.

Ok, I feel like I got a little off topic there. Rant over…

Sounds like you’d love a tiling window manager (if you aren’t already using one). What you describe is a big part of the philosophy of tiling WMs. I like Sway, might be worth checking out, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already tried tiling WMs. I only suggest it, as I’m convinced all tiling WM users compulsively mention it…

I use hyprland btw.

No one is going to agree with me, but here I go:

• Counter Strike (all versions): the perfect shooter.
• Terraria: the progression is amazing, but what never ceases to amaze me is how, despite the game’s huge content, it is never overwhelming or intimidating. Just a lot of fun.
• Transport Fever 2: by far my favorite world-builder type game, and it still gets updates!

Thank you for the correction! I have updated the comment.

The 7Hz x Crinacle Zero 2 and the Truthear Gate or Hola (worse but a little cheaper) are both pretty good and around $20. Might be worth considering for a good replacement.

People also like the Moondrop Chu II, but they have bad QC and I don’t like the frequency response (too V-shaped), so I wouldn’t recommend them.

Also, from Ben Jordan: https://youtu.be/MXudOLStaXA

I really like Bandcamps suggestions and weekly newsletter for music suggestions, might be worth checking out. I always felt like Spotify was pushing me towards the mainstream, whereas Bandcamp almost does the opposite. Ultimately, I greatly prefer it.

For those using spofity connect: tidal has “tidal connect” as well, which is identical and exactly as supported. Qobuz unfortunately lacks this feature, to my knowledge. Correction: Qobuz has released “Qobuz connect”! I don’t know how widely supported it is vs. Tidal connect, though; iFi and Cambridge audio most notably seem to be missing, according to this list.

I personally also prefer the tidal algo to Spotify and qobuz, but that is a matter of preference.

It’s quite easy to download Tidal content on any device w/o the app as well—for educational purposes, of course.

For some, Tidal may be a better alternative. I’ve been quite happy with it. Others may prefer Qobuz.

I’ve had a pretty intense widows peak since teenagerdom and have also gotten regular compliments on my hair since teenagerdom. Coincidence? I think not!

For a long time I used a super customized zsh setup. It was, unfortunately, crazy slow and regularly broke on updates. It had precisely all the features and behavior I wanted though. Like you say, zsh is very customizable.

Then I switched to tiling window managers and with that to the alacritty terminal. This made me value start up times and performance, as I was constantly opening and closing terminals. So I spent a ridiculous amount of time optimizing my zsh config to be as fast as possible. This is also what I used for a long time before correcting my ways.

When that device, my work laptop, failed, I had to set up my desktop for work. This involved setting up zsh, which I quickly realized was a lot of work. So, on a whim, I installed fish.

Oh my god. Not only did fish have nearly all the features I wanted out of the box, but it was easy to add plugins (customizations) in a performant way. Fish even had default behavior I didn’t know I needed. And most importantly: it was crazy fast!

Since then I have never left fish. It is so much better than anything I had imagined. At this point I use way more default features as well, so I pretty much only add the tide prompt and zoxide. I also have a functions and abbreviations folder which is essentially my zsh alias collection.

The crazy part is really how much faster it is though. I really, really love it. And now they’re rewriting it in Rust as well!

Ah, a fellow Melinda’s enjoyer! I love they’re Ghost Pepper sauce in particular (though it’s fairly mild for a Ghost Pepper sauce). My only complaint with Melinda’s, is that they consistently use too much carrot in their sauces. But otherwise they’re really great!

Edit: my bad, seems like I misunderstood. PopOS used/is still using GNOME and has a Auto-Tiling plugin that behaves like i3wm (?). I guess this is what OP is talking about!

Not entirely sure what you mean. PopOS, developed by System76, uses the Cosmic DE, which is itself also developed by System76.

River is a dynamic tiling WM which is known for it’s customizability among Wayland WMs, as it doesn’t distinguish itself with it’s “layout generator” (though it does come with a very basic one), but instead let’s the user write their own or use an existing, third-party one. This way you can achieve essentially any dynamic tiling behavior with River.

How does PopOS use a system like that? Or do you mean that Cosmic is DWM-style, i.e., dynamic and with tags?

I do agree that River is wonderful though!

I’ve had good experiences with Acer with previous laptops, so that was probably a good choice. Best of luck to your kid!

I’m really happy with my ASUS Zenbook 14 (16GB memory, 512GB SSD, Intel Core Ultra 7 255H), which I got for $700, in case you’re still looking for a recommendation. Absolutely worth it IMO, though I’m running Linux, so the Copilot key is mapped to the compose key.

Out of curiosity, could you link a source vis-a-vis AI’s water consumption?

On that note also:

• Alacritty: a minimalist Wayland GPU-accelerated terminal. Claims to be the fast currently available terminal. Also the coolest name ever. This is what I personally use, in combination with tmux.
• Kitty: a more feature rich alternative, also Wayland, GPU-accelerated, and on par with alacritty for speed. Actually starts up a little faster but uses up more resources and sacrifices in other performance metrics (in my experience).
• Foot: another minimalist Wayland alternative, but this time CPU driven. Despite this, the performance is still on par with the others. I think this is especially good for laptops and such that run on integrated graphics.