While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.

This is a very rosy eyed statement. The “soft” power is the visible part, just the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, yes and yes (I contribute money).

I came here to type that, so I’ll just upvote yours instead. Such a versatile device, the Steam Deck!

I’m A YouTube Premium subscriber, and I’ve been noticing this delay on my TV for a few days now - a very noticeable, long pause when opening the home screen until the thumbnails are loaded. I’ll explicitly check other places too now, I’m not sure if it’s also happening in Firefox for me.

Finally Windows users have a legit reason to use the command line! /s

I stick with DuckDuckGo, it stays as it is. Every time I go to Google I see they are messing with the experience, making it easier to end up on sponsored content and harder to just get what you need. Not so with DuckDuckGo.

Not novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries

Thanks, great list!

Depends on the size. Of the pics I mean.

I’m sorry to hear people having issues with FF. I remember the instability spell it had way back (6, 7 years ago?) but I’ve had zero issues with it on Mac, Linux and Android.

It is referring to that Roblox developer conference. But yeah, somewhat click baity as people might be hoping to get one for cheap.

“To a request for comment, X only sent Ars an auto-response, saying, “Busy now, please check back later.” (To be fair, in this case “check back later” is a good summary of what happened.)” 😂

I hate Roblox. Their Android game somehow goes around Google account settings and allows kids to buy “Robux” for real money without authentication for payments (and, of course, makes this easy to do by accident). Furthermore, this real money can go into a temp account without an email address, so if you delete the app without creating a proper account, your money is unrecoverable. Their “customer support” is very unhelpful. We try to be liberal yet sane when it comes to technology for kids, but Roblox is prohibited for our children.

It takes time. Twitter (or whatever it wants to be called) has an algorithm expressly aimed at keeping you “engaged”, whereas Mastodon is just a stream of toots which you see based on the time you decide to visit. Should you stick with it, eventually two things will happen:

1. You will find accounts and topic to follow which will fill your timeline with content that is relevant and interesting to you, and, perhaps more importantly
2. Your mind will give up the habit of being hooked on a social media stream (apologies if I’m implying something that isn’t true for you - it certainly was for me).

In the end, maybe you decide it’s not for you, but I’ve been using it for years (since 2017), and over time it’s completely replaced Twitter for me. I’m keeping three accounts for different interests (and one on Pixelfed), logged into all of them using Fedilab. I actually deleted my Twitter account the day the Tucker/Tate interview hit the light of day, but I stopped actively visiting it years earlier. My mental state improved a lot over time since I moved on.

Proton for gaming on Linux has come a long way. You still cannot get to 100% parity with all games and programs, and if you absolutely need something that isn’t supported on Linux, you are out of luck, but chances are that most people would actually be able to use everything they need. I understand there’s also the learning curve and not everyone has time or inclination, but for those that do, in 2023 it’s absolutely worth a try.

This… is actually true. I’ll concede that even as recently as 4, 5 years ago it might have not been entirely true, but now it is - Linux has become so accessible (look at Mint, Pop_OS) while Windows has (somehow) become even more hostile to its user base to the point that an average user would actually have an easier time switching than staying in the long term. I didn’t think I’d be able to write this with a straight face, but I honestly think this is now true.

I’ve been using Firefox for years to access Google services, and have never ever had a single issue. I hope it stays this way, with all this Web Environment Integrity shenanigans they are pushing for at the moment.

Coursera should let you take (most parts of most) courses for free but without the ability to get a certificate (which you cannot get from a ripped course either). Have you tried that?