ChaoticNeutralCzech

It’s just the regular penguin. Clickbait!!!1!!

Digital Radio Mondiale enthusiasts: First time?

Don’t be that pessimistic, most users had to install Reddit, Twitter and TikTok apps. In the 2010s, grassroots chain emails and Facebook posts with guides to setting up WhatsApp went viral among boomers in my country, touting it as “free SMS”. (Facebook camnot legally describe it as “free SMS” but they didn’t bother correcting anyone of course.) The fediverse experience is already quite OK if you have a dedicated client but the problem is that not everyone does, which is why we need browser support; people are tired of “wOrKs bEtTeR iN ThE aPp” even if it’s true this time. A dedicated URL scheme will automatically associate Fediverse links with any appropriate installed web/local apps. There are still other issues such as hit-and-miss cross-fedi-platform compatibility, no API for retrieving the list of federated instances and lack of appropriate error messages if the source and/or destination instance block each other.

They do, and I like how seamlessly mailto: links on websites work with web and local apps: your browser will give you a choice and either will work because email servers network with one another (obviously). Perhaps we could do this with linking to content across the Fediverse, with a custom URL scheme such as apub:@Blaze@reddthat.com. I explore this in my other comment at apub:post/20744080/11206632@reddthat.com.

Ironically, the thing that would allow people to use one “twitgramface” account across all the various platforms is federation. But the only way I can imagine it being seamless enough for normies is native browser integration for ActivityPub, perhaps with a new URL scheme like apub://.... Basically, save a Fediverse account in your browser, and when you open a foreign-instance link someone sends you, you’ll see a prompt:

How do you want to open this link (apub:)?

You can browse this content via your instance and interact with it with one of your saved Fediverse accounts, or choose an app you have installed:

☐ Remember my choice for feddit.nl
☐ Remember my choice across all instances

ⓘ Why am I seeing this?    ︿

This content is on feddit.nl, which is an ActivityPub instance that 3 of your saved Fediverse accounts federate with. To use your account, open this link via your instance, or select Decline to use feddit.nl’s default web interface.

So far, only browser extensions can do this, and not very well at that. Of course, all ActivityPub instances and clients would need to adopt this URL scheme whenever a link is shared between users, and the downside is that Reddit, Instagram, Twitter etc. will never recognize apub: links. Do you think something like this can ever happen?

They just transitioned to Google Wallet, which lacks some features, notably peer-to-peer transactions. The API for virtual banking cards that most banking apps use instead of including their own NFC driver, also called “Google Pay”, will keep working. At least that’s how I understand it.

Oh boy, is the A Button Challenge still ongoing. There is quite a hunt to further reduce the approx. 18 presses to get 120 stars in a full-game TAS, or to find faster and human-viable strategies to avoid these A presses.

You’ve never used function keys? The dual function is annoying even inside the OS. I have to help several people with laptops and you can’t tell what mode they’re in, the user often doesn’t know either.

On laptops, you never know if the F-key behavior is defined by the OS, BIOS or keyboard driver. I just mash F2, F8, Fn+F2, Fn+F8, Del as often as I can (these are the most common keys to do the trick). You can reduce the options with a USB keyboard with just normal F-keys.

Some laptops don’t have a key you can hold to enter BIOS settings or boot menu (maybe to start booting before the keyboard is initialized?) and there is a reset button hole for that.

The recommendations seemed favorable when I tried it. I have since switched to Mint.

Even basic things in distros are quite different, for example the frontend for settings, so tech support threads will show how to do it in the backend. Oh well, but then there’s someone who suggests

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

If you’re a noob, run this and get a “nano: command not found” error, you’ll google it and learn to resolve it using apt. However, Manjaro’s package manager is pacman but you don’t know, so you install apt using a weird guide without knowing what it even is. The next update then wreaks havoc on your system.

My first install ended in a dependency hell because of this.

The website title says “Arm Developer”, not “ARM Developer”, in a clearly non-acronym way so it’s a guide for making prosthetic hardware. Of course you want a cyborg arm to parse JS natively, why else even get one?

We still need more government apps on F-Droid. EU’s OSS strategy suggests that we’ll have them eventually. I don’t think such badge will ever exist there, though.

Wanted to customize GRUB and tried the GUI program. I wanted it to boot without delays unless a key is being held, and also add a “Shutdown” option (GRUB script halt), in case I open the laptop and didn’t want it turned on. The edits looked alright in GRUB Customizer but I should not have made them both at once, because it made “Shutdown” the default option somehow, so the OS would never boot and holding none of the special keys worked. I failed to update or reinstall GRUB using a live USB and ended up having to reinstall the entire distro.

That’s why “availability” is a core tenet of security (according to some cybersecurity course I took). It is easy to prevent unauthorized access to data if you have no requirements on authorized access.

There are lots of privacy-friendly keyboards but many only implement English and some very basic features. However, this one does it all.

Formatting

Many text parsers trim down whitespace unless it’s explicitly a code block. You see this often when people attempt to use interleaved spaces for emphasis. For example:

R E D   H A T

becomes “R E D H A T” in your Markdown interpreter.

I think WhatsApp supports code snippets with backticks.

or men who think they are a woman

Such men don’t exist. If they consistently think they’re a woman, then they are a woman. At least in terms of gender, and asking about one’s gender (or pronouns) is preferred to biological/legal sex.

Therapy actually often helps with external problems too. If you tried another therapist every time you installed a distro, you might have found one that can solve your problems.

Most common middle- and upper-tier phones, as well as any Pixel and Fairphone (thanks to being more open) will get a custom ROM with updates 8+ years after the release, and you can buy a used 5-year-old phone quite cheaply.

Typing this on my 10-year-old Sony Xperia Z with Android 13. It cost me $0 (found in e-waste) including a data plan (owner forgot SIM inside). The camera has low sensitivity and dust in it and the battery is worn, but everything else is decent. I will open it some day to fix the problems, a replacement battery cost me $10. There is even 4G and NFC, and the 1080x1920 screen is nearly “retina-density” at such small size. I decided to not use the SIM as it could be criminal, and I have my prepaid one in s dumb phone, but I use it for entertainment - the phone fits in my hand and the design is quite timeless. The CPU is a little weak, it cannot decode 1080p30 or 720p60 video in real time, and gets hot quickly on demanding websites.

The new device is called FP-GBC, not FPGA.

FPGA (field-programmable gate array) is a technology where the chip contains all kinds of circuits, which can be programmatically “rewired” in specific ways to make it into a fast device-specific circuit, such as an emulator of the Game Boy GPU that can drive a modern LCD without needing to interrupt a CPU. Its function can be exactly the same as the original but way cheaper than manufacturing a new silicon die for the small production. More complex FPGAs could also emulate the CPU, sound and everything else from a GameBoy, or even handle intensive tasks like crypto mining with relatively good power efficiency. Both the Analogue and FunnyPlaying GB replicas use FPGAs.