erpicht

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[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

I can understand giving up on FreeBSD--OpenBSD at least offers to install & configure a graphical environment with a graphical login screen during the installation process, which makes it much easier to get up and running for desktop or laptop use (on supported hardware).

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
 

This article offers a quick overview of Linux Mint, answering a few questions a potential (or new) user may have that are not covered by the official FAQ, such as how the scheme used for each release's code name works.

 

Linux Mint 21.2 and LMDE 6 releases are slated for release in the coming months! Additionally, the tooltips are being redesigned to achieve a consistent look, now using the accent color whenever possible.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

If one has an e-reader, standardebooks.org is an excellent place for English language texts.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

Android strives to be a lightweight OS so it can run on a variety of hardware. The first version of the OS had to squeeze into the T-Mobile G1, with only a measly 256MB of internal storage for Android and all your apps, and ever since then, the idea has been to use as few resources as possible.

Emphasis mine. Now, I know graphics improvements and support for various versions of Android take up a lot of the space used, but gee willikers! It's amazing to think it began with storage requirements far under a single gigabyte.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

Oftentimes, for words especially of Latin origin, German will adopt the English term, perhaps slightly fitting it to the language. This type of term (in my experience) has tended to become the favored variant, such as Compiler for the English compiler. However, there is typically a more German-like variant of the English (or, ultimately Latin), as evidenced by Kompilierer, or a straight translation of the term into something more easily understandable, whereby compiler becomes Übersetzer.

The internet age, international communication needs, and the prevalence of the latest documentation being available first (or only) in English is likely to blame for this trend. Books especially use either a German-like Latin derivation or (preferably) a native term.

This is cursory illustration of the situation on the more technical side of things. No one would think to use a term like user interface over the well-established Benutzeroberfläche, or memory over Arbeitsspeicher.

Ultimately, both English and German, as West Germanic languages, operate similarly enough that the friction due to terminology is minimal.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

This is sadly a less informative re-write of the Linux Mint blog post by Clem, which includes pictures of its previewed features.

 

The work on release 21.2, codename "Victoria", has begun! A preview of some of the planned features has been detailed, alongside some bugfixes to Cinnamon, and an upgrade of the new bluetooth manager, Blueman.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago

I would fully agree that other internet protocols are much better suited to information not meant to be broadcast publicly.

Civility is great, and should be highly encouraged. That's largely why I like Lemmy. Each instance can guide its community in line with its values, whatever those may be, block offenders, and generally forge the space it wishes.

However, I think Besse's comments on setting the correct expectations in the public sphere are worth considering.

For a different internet example: all the messages I send in any chatroom on an IRC server will inevitably be logged by someone, especially in popular rooms. Any assumption to the contrary would be naïve, and demanding that people not keep a log any of my publicly broadcast messages would be laughed at by the operators. It's a public space, and sending anything to that space necessarily means I forgo my ability to control who sees, aggregates, archives, or shares that information. My choice to put the information into that space is the opt-in mechanism, just how books or interviews do the same offline in print.

It's not so much the protocol as it is how making things public fundamentally works.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I think Besse makes a great point here:

I think blurring the lines between public and private spaces is the opposite of informing consent. Cultivating unrealistic expectations of "privacy" and control in what are ultimately public spaces is actually bad.

I tried to single out the world wide web, as opposed to the internet at large, because the two are not synonymous. It's rather absurd to publicly serve webpages to any querying IP address and maintain that the receiving computer is not to save said pages to disk.

All this to say: I find it difficult to argue that web publications should or could be exempt from aggregation and archival (or scraping, to put it another way). I understand that the ease with which bots do this can be disconcerting, however.

If we stay with the cafe bulletin board, getting a detailed overview of all the postings on the board is akin to scraping the whole thing. If we extend our analogy instead to a somewhat more significant example, library catalogs do the same with books, magazines, and movies.

This is the cost of publishing, be that in print or online. It must be expected that some person has a copy of every- and anything one has ever written or posted publicly, and perhaps even catalogued it. A way around this might be to move away from the web to another part of the internet, like Matrix, as alma suggested.

I assume the non-consensual collection of various (meta-)data is what you refer to when talking about intrusion and money making. Lemmy, like many projects, seeks to offer an alternative to corporate, data-gobbling social media sites, but doesn't eliminate the ability to search through its webpages.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (6 children)

And here's the point at which we go off the rails (towards the end of the thread; the earlier section is quite well expressed):

Most people in tech do not want to hear this, because it invalidates the vast majority of their business models, AI/ML training data, business intel operations, and so forth. Anything that's based on gathering data that is 'public' suddenly becomes suspect, if the above is applied.

And yes, that includes internet darlings like the Internet Archive, which also operates on a non-consensual, opt-out model.

It's the Western Acquisition, claiming ownership without permission.

It's so ingrained in white, Western internet culture that there are now whole generations who consider anything that can be read by the crawler they wrote in a weekend to be fair game, regardless or what the user's original intent was.

Republishing, reformatting, archiving, aggregating, all without the user being fully aware, because if they were, they would object.

It's dishonest as fuck, and no different from colonial attitudes towards natural resources.

"It's there, so we can take it."

We then have some reasonable responses from others in the thread:

Rich Felker @dalias@hachyderm.io

Re: Internet Archive, I think many of us don't believe/accept that businesses, organizations, genuine public figure politicians, etc. have a right to control how their publications of public relevance are archived & shared. The problem is that IA isn't able to mechanically distinguish between those cases and teenagers' personal diary-like blogs (chosen as example at opposite end of spectrum).

Arne Babenhauserheide @ArneBab@rollenspiel.social

*snip*

This is the difference between the internet archive and an ML model: the archive does not claim ownership.

Finally, a thought of mine own:

Sindarina seems to fundamentally miss the central idea of the world wide web, that is, publically sharing information. This does not mean the work may be used for any purpose whatsoever, as the content of many websites is either copyrighted or CC-BY-SA. But publishing anything on the www or in print, opens it by necessity to aggregation and archival. I routinely save webpages to disk.

To run with the cafe analogy that has been brought up, one cannot post a note to the cafe's bulletin board and at the same time expect that no one else may take a photo of it, then perhaps share it with some acquaintances.

This is a far cry from the data harvesting done by Google, Microsoft, Apple & co., or the dubiously collected data used to train "automated plagiarism engine[s]," as Arthur Besse put it not too long ago.

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Oh, my! What a treat it is to behold such wonders! Many thanks for sharing! :D

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

I am a great fan of this series! I couldn't get any of my family to watch it with me, however...

[–] erpicht@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

This is awesome! Who wouldn't want a radio hat like this one?

 

While many on the related blog post for the 21.1 BETA release announcement page laud the new look of several applications, I cannot help but feel such changes rob Linux Mint of its distinctive look and charm, taking Mint from its instantly recognizable desktop to something decidedly more generic and bland. I cannot fathom the reason for new sounds, either. I'm not certain the goals of making Mint more trendy and beautiful were achieved. Unless these refer to making it look more akin to Windows 11, which nemo's new manila folders with blue highlighting echoes. The new, more vibrant colors of Windows 11 icons were also rightfully criticized as being poor choices, but Mint seems determined to follow in its footsteps. Good defaults matter, and I believe these UI changes are not.

That notwithstanding, the non-UI improvements everywhere are well justified and should make Linux Mint more comfortable for all to use. Flatpaks were rather inconvenient to use, and much work has gone into making those easier to manage. Especially exciting is the new ISO Verification Tool!

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by erpicht@lemmy.ml to c/music@lemmy.ml
 

The artwork is what caught my eye at first! It's gorgeous. I highly recommend watching the music video. Below are links to English and German covers (or versions?) as well. The German one is shortened, apparently due to laziness.

Melty Land Nightmare - English Cover by rachie

Melty Land Nightmare (german version) by Mimi

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by erpicht@lemmy.ml to c/programming@lemmy.ml
 

As someone who has encountered unsupported peripherals, this quick look into how drivers work was fascinating to see.

 

"The north-German state of Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch to open source software, including LibreOffice, in its administration and schools.

In doing so, the state wants to reduce its dependence on proprietary software, and eventually end it altogether. By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux."

This article by Mike Saunders shows several photos from the Open Source conference, also linking to an interview with the Digital Minister Jan Philipp Albrecht and a PDF of the Parliment's Planning. (both in German)

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