Absoutely. It takes like 5 seconds to get a real photo.

But I have considerable downvotes on my original comment. Maybe bots. Maybe AI bros who need to see the light and that their tech is based on the death of IP law.

Exactly, makes no sense to me

Really cool article. Except this bit:

The image of Saturn was generated with ChatGPT.

Fucking why? Could have saved time and energy with traditional search. Leave the slop out, please.

I wonder how many US citizens could be given healthcare for that kind of money

Yeah this clown and like half the Dem establishment needs to go. Maybe more than half. I’m not one for the “both parties are the same” bullshit, but between the enablements and the not listening to constituents, it is clear that many of these people are incapable of performing the duties for which they were elected.

Totally. Linux is (in part) about choice. If you like Mint, use Mint.

I’ve been a Linux user for 5+ years and played with a bunch of different distros. I have Arch (btw) on a laptop that I don’t have to depend on. But my gaming rig is still running Pop. Why? Because I like it and it’s stable. A bonus that it’s now bundled with Cosmic, because I like Cosmic too.

But at the end of the day, it’s true that you can kind of do anything with any distro. The package manager is one obvious difference. I do like Pacman (from Arch) more than apt on Debian derivatives, but like, it’s just a package manager. Not worth changing a comfortable system over.

Don’t listen to people who say you can’t run a “beginner distro” until the end of time. If you like it, you like it.

I strongly dislike how the zone is getting flooded with “now it’s not X, but Y” in terms of distro recommendations.

Not knowing what a distro is and where to start is one of the main issues with people who may want to switch to Linux but don’t know how to do it. If Mint getting called out as a good place to start allows them to switch, then they should install Mint. If Ubuntu is all they have heard of, and it makes them try the switch, then they should install Ubuntu. Tbh, the only really dangerous approach is starting with something like Arch which, despite fantastic documentation, is probably more likely to turn new users away.

Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Someone who starts from either Mint or Ubuntu or whatever can distro hop later. Let’s not muddy the waters even more for our would-be Windows refugees.

This is it. This is when it actually becomes permanent.

If the “don’t tread on me” morons weren’t such pushovers, he wouldn’t think he could get away with so much.

Ffs. He’s a rich dude supporting other rich dudes. He doesn’t give a fuck about you or me and his statements about affordability are obviously and demonstrably out of touch.

There was a time when hating the rich was something that brought people together.

I’m really tired of seeing this idiot quoted.

Yeah, no argument there. But I would argue companies do that kind of thing already for various reasons (many having to do with taxes).

Overall, I don’t think it’s a good argument against regulation to say “let’s regulate less because people will cheat”. People will always cheat.

Really need to start calculating settlements like this as a function of profits. Otherwise this is just factored in as a business cost and does not actually apply as a consequence.

$135 million may seem like a lot to regular people, but it’s not for Google. If we are letting these tacit monopolies stay in place, then the kid gloves at least need to come off when they’re being dealt with. Scale up consequences so they are appropriate for the size of the corporation.

This is exactly why this shit constantly annoys me. Steam is not unique in how they handle their store. If you don’t want to pay Valve a fee as a dev, then don’t put your game on Steam. No one is forced to do that.

Now, you will lose many sales. But a service being popular does not make it a monopoly. Other stores exist, and are even discussed in the article. All of them have some similar method of getting add-ons. Steam’s happens to be very easy – again, that doesn’t make it anti-competitive.

Also: the fact that this is about “PC monopoly” and “Microsoft” is not mentioned is just… wild. And sad.

Xero is publicly traded. Generally it’s shareholders wanting endless return that pushes every company to enshittify. The specifics of the company matter less if they have public shareholders.

Valve is extremely unique in that it is absolutely giant by value but not publicly traded. For now.

I totally agree it’s just vibes. I’m sorry if I suggested otherwise, but most of my point is about audio being subjective.

If everything is subjective, then some people will like tape.

I totally agree that CD should be better.

I really wasn’t trying to make a point, except that a simple search shows that the debate about VHS vs CD exists.

I don’t think it comes down to either one being objectively better.

This is why the debate still exists:

There is no analog audio format that can rival a 32bit 96KHz PWM recording, and that’s not even the best digital recording available

Analog audio is not sampled. By definition, it includes more data than any sampled version.

Now, the benefits of the sampling in terms of reducing format noise or similar are (subjectively) up for debate.

Totally agree with things sounding better if you introduce noise. I suspect it has to do with sampling, and maybe is not well understood.

Fun fact: if you add some hisses and pops and a little bit of compression to CD audio before playing it, some people (me included) will say it sounds better.

Exactly. It is subjective. It’s not about right or wrong.

I think there are things (like above) where the measurements are misguided. But at the end of the day, even that doesn’t matter.

Agreed. Main issue is “better” is subjective and doesn’t always mean the same thing to different people.

I have dabbled in other tape formats, and one thing stands out to me about the compact cassette (not VHS): most people used them in the car, where conditions were bad for cassette storage. Car cassette players also tended to have poorer quality mechanisms and heads. As a result, many people remember the format being bad, when in fact, it was more about their use case. A quality home cassette deck with a quality cassette (e.g. type II or chrome) stored in the right conditions is capable of extremely good results.

Not sure if there is something similar with VHS audio, though. Very different format. I just know there is a debate, but it could be entirely bogus.

There’s a weird debate about the audio quality on VHS. Under the right conditions (right tape, right player, right source) it could be shockingly good – perhaps even better than CD audio, despite not being remembered terribly fondly.

If you really want to wow the ladies, be the one guy with a music collection on VHS.