Skip Navigation

User banner

audaxdreik

@ audaxdreik @pawb.social

Posts
6
Comments
303
Joined
3 yr. ago

⭒˚｡⋆ 𓆑 ⋆｡𖦹

  • Prediction: Microsoft Is Going to Do the Funniest Thing Imaginable

    Jump

  • It's a bit of a long shot, but I do see it as a very real possibility at least. Just look at what happened with Edge switching to Chromium.

    We've known for some time now how little a share of their revenue the desktop space generates, but that ignores how valuable the control over that space is. They'll let Windows become a loss leader to maintain that control.

    That said, as they continue to cut to the bone in order to drive profits, I can see them sacrificing the OS development even further. Branding familiarity is all that's required, Microsoft can just as easily implement their telemetry and DRM (through exposed TPM) in Linux as they could their own operating system. I've theorized this myself, I think a first step would be releasing some honest to god, official Linux binaries for Microsoft Office (excuse me, Copilot) in order to get that telemetry and TPM/DRM enabled on your system.

    I'm not willing to conjecture on the exact probability of it coming to pass, but I think it would be foolish to not start taking up at least somewhat of a defensive position in allowing these corporations into the Linux space were they're just gonna do what they do again. Even if Linux adoption begins to plateau, capitalism assures us once they've run their markets dry they'll expand however they possibly can to make line go up and that needs to be considered as a serious threat to FOSS.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • I used to work in the financial industry where it was mandated for compliance reasons that we take 2 (TWO) solid weeks of vacation. Reason being that if you were doing anything funny like cooking the systems, either people would catch it when they took over your duties or your absence would cause a discrepancy when you were unable to keep up your shenanigans.

    I only had 2 (TWO) weeks of vacation. So in an act of mercy the company decided to bend compliance so that I only needed to take one solid week off and the other week was mine to take at another time or split up as needed. You know, rather than give me any more vacation time.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

    Jump

  • Just for context I'm asexual and that probably colors my answer in some interesting ways, but I say ... just a little?

    Less is more when it comes to sex and violence. That might be my most old person opinion yet, but it doesn't come from a place of prudishness or judgment. I just think once the taboo on that stuff was largely broken it became overwhelming. It's a flashy hook to draw you in with no substance and they just hammer that dopamine switch so hard that it loses any impact after awhile.

    Additionally, especially when it comes to sex, I feel like a lot of times it's hard to appeal to everyone in satisfying ways. Sex and our relationship with it is deeply personal, the things that appeal to one person might not appeal to another. We're often left disappointed when the net is cast too wide and feels impersonal, or it tries to appeal in ways we're not interested, or (IMHO worst of all) comes off as a flimsily disguised exposure to the creator's unique fetishes. Fine if you're into that, but very offputting if you're not.

    I was just reminiscing the other day on the experience of growing up as a teen in the 90's finding some fan translated PC-98 visual novels. You'd play for hours just on the hopes of glancing a single, pixelated boob and end up enraptured in some cyber punk story.

    I'm not saying there's a right or wrong here, I don't expect everyone to cater to my toned-down sensibilities, but I do think there has to be a happier medium where the sex and violence have real meaning and impact again and aren't just manipulative marketing. I think that's a lot of what worked well for (at least early seasons of) Game of Thrones. The possibility lurked around every corner, tension in every scene, and when it hit it landed with titillating impact instead of just drowning you in it.

  • Make Microsoft's CEO cry by installing Chrome's 'Microslop' extension

    Jump

  • I have this working theory that the cloud to butt extension was the beginning of the downfall.

    It was the point where the techies began to see the absurdity of the "just jam X into it" trend of technology development and got so frustrated at it they developed a childish (affectionate) extension to vent their disgust. Came out around 2013ish or so?

    And over the past ~decade and a half, have we not seen that born out to the extreme? It's around the time I felt myself start to get cynical and stop following tech news.

  • Epic fined €1.1M over manipulating children through in app purchases

    Jump

  • Oh no, €1.1M?! That'll take a whole 90 minutes to earn back!

  • Let's end Anti-Circumvention. We should own the things we buy!

    Jump

  • I agree. The problem is complex and layered, I don't claim to fully understand it myself, but the problem is that innovation came to mean "innovation on creating capital" and not "innovation on serving the customer". If you haven't read Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shosana Zuboff, I highly recommend it. It lays a lot of the groundwork for what Cory Doctorow would go on to call enshittification.

    On top of that, or maybe underneath it, is the idea of disruption. It has long been joked as "ignoring regulations" which has very much become true. When you can't exploit the current systems you create parallel systems where you are in control of the playing field. Disruption to innovation, innovation to disruption. To the consumer it's just disruption.

    What we've ended up with as a result over the past decade and a half or so is a market that is not beholden to the consumer at all. We've long known that boycotts are fairly ineffective aside from some occasional groundswell on "culture war" issues, but it doesn't feel like we're the market anymore. Look at Nvidia's recent presentation at the CES which wasn't even about consumers at all, it was about AI and datacenters mostly. They fully dictate the market at us now and we're just along for the ride.

    BUT to my hopefulness above, there are still a few ways to break free of this, I don't believe things are so bad as that yet. There does seem to be a real choking point for the consumer, Microsoft is another good example. They continue to leverage their market position but people are rapidly exploring options away from them wherever possible. I don't think we'll ever truly see a "year of the Linux desktop" the way some people expect, but the slow erosion is real. Another article I think about a lot is the breaching the trust thermocline which theorizes that customer trust is not a linear system. Executives like to believe that once things begin to sour they can simply make a change to correct course when the course was already lost some time ago.

  • Let's end Anti-Circumvention. We should own the things we buy!

    Jump

  • Call me optimistic, but I truly believe there's going to be such a tech boom once the market outside the US is insightful enough to look backwards and point their finger at the things that worked well and that people actually wanted and iterate off that instead of this failed path, dead end.

  • GB and GBC

    Jump

  • I used to have a little notebook when I was younger where I tried out every option for every game and wrote down my top 3 favorite choices for what looked best on each one.

  • Estonian volunteers struggling to protect Wikipedia from Russian propaganda

    Jump

  • Nevertheless, the information is accurate (that was the place and the state of the country when she was born). And if you click on Estonian SSR (currently live on Wikipedia), you will immediately see on the top of the page:

    (From the article) "Estonia was occupied twice by the Soviet Union between 1940-1941 and 1944-1991. When the country regained independence in 1991, it restored the republic founded in 1918. Estonia's official position is that the Republic of Estonia was illegally and de facto occupied by the Soviet Union but never ceased to exist during that time."

    I understand your points, but the surface level of reading here is important because it is how most people will consume this information. Arguing over stuff like this is the exact justification that could be used in an attempt to subsume them back into Russia, a thing the Baltics are quite touchy about, and understandably so, especially in light of all that's happened in Ukraine.

  • Microsoft CEO Looking Ahead to 2026

    Jump

  • I expected nothing and I'm still disappointed,

    We now have a clearer sense of where the tech is headed

    Do we?

    capability is outpacing our current ability

    JFC you are so high on your own supply.

    A new concept that evolves “bicycles for the mind” such that we always think of AI as a scaffolding for human potential vs a substitute

    So you want your shitty tech to be the scaffolding that underlies all human thought?

    Fucking tech industry has come to assume that all disruption is innovation and it's not. It's just disruption. Go stuff yourselves.

  • Bill to Eliminate H-1B Visa Program Introduced in Congress

    Jump

  • How do you really solve the H-1B problem, though? I do agree that they exploit everyone and that there should be better protections for the workers and ideally a path to citizenship, but the whole corporate appeal of them is how easily exploitable they are. I feel like any effort to "fix" H-1B's is just going to end with the same result.

    Which is not me implying that we shouldn't still try, but just ... how?

  • Agree to Disagree

    Jump

  • This is exactly why I'm an abuser of parentheses when left to my own devices.

    For example when writing code, it doesn't matter that the compiler acts as a strict system underlying it that may or may not conform to my expectations. I want the human reading the code to understand my intentions so I'm going to group things until it's logically clear at a glance.

  • Removed Locked

    Trump announces annexation of Venezuela

    Jump

  • FIFA's reputation really in shambles here =/

  • ublock Origin can get rid of Cookie Banners

    Jump

  • My favorite new dark pattern is the one where the website forces you to either accept the cookies or pay/subscribe.

    There seems to be some argument around whether this is technically legal or not, it seems to worm its way around the written guidelines just enough but certainly goes against the spirit of it.

    The fact that "Reject All" is an option, has always been an option, gives the game away entirely.

  • Prompting People

    Jump

  • The more surprising part is the unusual reactions of the other people getting a better picture and context of what I’m explaining without the usual back and forth - which has landed me my fair share of complaints of having to hear mini lectures, but not more than people appreciative of the fuller picture.

    It made me realize that while we’re training AI to be more human, the conversations might be training us to be more structured and honestly I’m not sure if this makes me a better communicator or just a better prompt engineer, but it’s a hard habit to break.

    (Emphasis mine).

    AI psychosis. Absolutely delusional. Yes sir, please lecture me, I know it looks like I'm about to strangle you but I am in fact quite appreciative for the clarity.

  • Tech Support

    Jump

  • As someone who formerly worked phone support, let me assure you we love the dumb, easy ones. Everyone wants an easy win and bonus when it kicks you to the back of the call queue.

  • The GPU, not the TPM, is the root of hardware DRM

    Jump

  • I still have a lot of mistrust for the TPM, but that's OK, my paranoia has room to accommodate everyone.

  • what do you guys think about ai

    Jump

  • And that's a good thing.

    It's not just that that's what the average person thinks, but that's really the only kind of AI they're likely to come in direct contact with or is the kind being applied to systems that are directly undermining their lives.

    ML has been used for over a decade now in things like cyber security for behavioral analysis and EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) systems. I've helped a friend use SLEAP, which analyzes specifically formatted videos of animals to catalog interactions over dozens of hours of footage instead of needing to manually scrub it. In these ways, the serious scientist/engineer does not care what the average person thinks of AI, it has no bearing on the functioning of these systems or the work they perform. The only people that care about the sentiment of the average person are the people that need to keep the hype train going for their product valuations to which I have nothing to say but a full-throated, "Fuck 'em"

  • what do you guys think about ai

    Jump

  • This is a very good point and to take it further, it almost legitimizes the AI as well. By using the slurs against the AI in an effort to dehumanize it, it in turn places it in more anthropomorphized position of needing to be dehumanized, if that makes sense.

    And yeah, I just find slurs crude and distasteful in any form.

  • StarTropics Walkthrough | 100% Guide | Video Games 101

    Jump

  • I used to love this game but I always got stuck in the graveyard. I realize the secret now it to just never take the obvious path and look for something secret, but that shit is mean when you're 12 years old. I never got into the village of women or upgraded to the Shooting Star T_T

    Just as well, I watched a friend beat it years later and the end game looks absolutely brutal!

  • Furry @pawb.social
    audaxdreik @pawb.social

    All Dressed Up

  • Games @lemmy.world
    audaxdreik @pawb.social

    High Score on DoDonPachi DaiFukkatsu

  • Linux Gaming @lemmy.world
    audaxdreik @pawb.social

    Solution: Videos Don't Play in Unity Games

  • Linux Gaming @lemmy.world
    audaxdreik @pawb.social
    SOLVED

    EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) crashing after brief use, video previews laggy and stuttering

  • Linux Gaming @lemmy.world
    audaxdreik @pawb.social

    Build old RetroArch MAME cores for ARM64?

  • Linux Gaming @lemmy.world
    audaxdreik @pawb.social

    Streaming on Linux