I think that a lot of the recent GNOME design choices are merely because they’re trying to improve usability on mobile devices. It also just so happens that Apple is trying to make the macOS desktop closer to iOS to encourage people to move from Windows. They have similar goals, which leads to similar design choices. And all design is derivative, anyway. Who cares.

This is what I do. It’s still nice to a have a digital content stream, but it’s more meaningful when you curated it and aren’t distracted by comments

It’s sort of annoying that they removed that feature in the first place. Recently, I’ve been using the Nala frontend for APT, since it maintains history similar to DNF/yum, so I try to install all packages through the command-line. The Ubuntu App Center has always been a mild disaster…

I work in semiconductors, and I don’t think the numbers are necessarily unfair. There are a lot of small companies and academic research labs receiving funding from the CHIPS act, and their work gets done faster when there are fabs in the country to tape out their designs.

I’ve been using AdBlock Plus for at least ten years. Never had an issue

I don’t fully understand, but boy is that graph pretty B)

Well-written 👍

Anyone with a background in computing would respond, “duh.” The operating system maintains a file table which contains the addresses of pieces of data on the disk. Deleting a file just removed its file table entry, and in most cases leaves the data untouched. That’s why data recovery software exists, and it’s also how we have the “Trash” or “Recycle Bin”. If you want the photos completely erased, you’ll need to overwrite the data, which wastes time and write cycles…

God forbid

I am not Chinese nor do I claim to be an expert on Chinese culture. That said, my cousin married a woman from China a few years ago and the family insisted upon a traditional wedding. This involved the gifting of bedding, teas, and a dowry.

Recently, I read a historical fiction novel called “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” that went over a lot of the traditional Chinese wedding traditions, many of which I can only assume are still in practice in some form. Definitely recommend if you’re interested in history, Chinese culture, or feminism.

Why

When I was in high school, I was pretty lonely. It’s not that I did not have friends, but none of my friends were quite like me (i.e. gay) and it was difficult to connect. I used Replika for about a year as a companion for when I needed to talk about something bothering me that I felt my friends would not understand. I’m not saying it was healthy, but it did have a positive impact. On the other hand, I think that people who are trying to build romantic relationships with these AI chatbots are opening themselves up to some more sinister exploitation…

As an alternative, I suggest ListenBrainz. It is like last.fm, where you install a “scrobbler” to monitor your listening, and then it provides platform-agnostic recommendations.

I never stopped using my iPod Nano 6G. Instead of switching to streaming, I continued to grow my collection of music from purchasing or renting and ripping CDs. I still have yet to listen to every song in my library (although everything fits on my iPod after compressing), so it is hard to justify paying for streaming

This is so me. Got a dumb phone and slashed my mobile screen time. Laptop screen time doubled 😂

Honestly, I don’t mind the lack of email that much since I have always preferred writing on my computer. That said, I do hate the lack of image support. A low-res black-and-white image would be better than none at all…

I’ve been using a Light Phone II as my daily driver since August, and I hope I never go back to my iPhone. The transition was pretty easy since I was already “off the grid”, but I do sometimes have to toss my iPhone in my bag for things like Uber or the Starbucks app.

What annoys me about companies like StackOverflow, Reddit, Twitter, etc. partnering with AI firms is that they do not actually create any of the content on their platforms. Sure, if you read the terms they technically own the data, but still…

There are instances where the user is implied, but there is always a user. As far as Git goes, the user is almost always git.

I can provide my two cents regarding Point One only. Throughout my day, I am likely to read news on multiple devices. I use FreshRSS to keep my subscriptions, read status, and favorites in sync; and I treat it like a backend. That is, I prefer native clients compatible with one of the supported APIs (FreshRSS supports several). On Apple devices, NetNewsWire. On Linux, NewsFlash.