I thought so too, hence my earlier cheap labour assumption. I was hoping exaggerating the opposite would bait them into correcting me (obviously still justified á la “At least they had an income”), but it doesn’t seem like they fell for it. Still, those euphemisms and weasel words didn’t quite scream “honest and forthcoming” to me.

I understand. I assume you paid them well for fair work hours under good conditions, provided for all the safety precautions, worker’s compensation, proper healthcare and all the good things a decent employer would do? Paid taxes on your income to fund the infrastructure you’re using?

In that case, yes, you’re a good samaritan and got shafted by an unfair system.

Doesn’t change the fact that scientific data suggests all those Covid measures had some impact, but I’ll take back my cheap labor comment then.

all not of legal status

Ah, you used cheap labour from undocumented workers and it came back to bite you? There goes my sympathy.

As for the science, there are studies to suggest measures like shelter-in-place had an impact, and the fact that literally every form of mask reduces risk of transmission at least slightly has been established long before the nature of viral infections was understood. You could easily find these things online or through a university library, given how scientifically versed you are. But I suspect you’d cherry-pick the ones you like anyway, so why bother?

gets shown some facts about masks and propaganda

“I am person that likes to think for myself and actually look at facts not propaganda”

That aside, the way small businesses were left hanging was definitely a political failure. I don’t know what business you have or why you had to fire people, but I’ll happily blame a lack of compensation for businesses that can’t operate.

Agreed. The more we argue about the “how” of the protests, the more we’re distracted from what they’re actually protesting about. The most effective way of stopping people complaining about something isn’t to shut them up, but to fix the thing.

If someone’s poor and can’t afford to buy food, no amount of fines or jail time will prevent them from going back to stealing food the second they get out because - guess what - they’re still fucking poor. There’s a food bank near where I lived a while ago that notoriously had long lines. Slowly shuffling forward in a queue that screams “I’m poor” must be uncomfortable, but they’re still not stealing food while they have an alternative.

If you want people to stop vandalising shit in their outrage over exploitation and greed, fucking do something about the exploitation and greed. I’m sure those people could have thought of more pleasant ways to spend their time than creating their cornflour pigment, driving out there and getting arrested to make a point without leaving lasting damage.

I made it to two. It just keeps going.

Right? “Oh look, country with huge population has more downloads than country with small population!”

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that’s one of those cases where you either add support yourself (provided you have the time, know-how - which most already don’t - and commitment) or wait until hopefully someone else does. Or - like me - you curse and go back to X11 until something gives you enouhh confidence to try Wayland again. I think I read somewhere on this platform that there will be (or was?) some Nvidia driver update that should help with Wayland support, but I haven’t looked into it.

I don’t have much experience with laptop hardware. I did have one elderly laptop running Ubuntu, though it probably would have been served better with something more lightweight (I just didn’t know much about anything at the time). But that wasn’t doing anything intensive, just some Uni exercises. I think a simple neural network was the most challenging thing it ever had to handle.

I’ve got working Nvidia drivers without any tinkering. Gaming on my 3060 without issues. Never had microphone issues either. This isn’t supposed to be “You’re wrong”, more a “I wonder what I’m doing differently”.

ASUS TUF GAMING B550 MoBo, AMD Ryzen 5600x, some Gigabyte version of the RTX 3060, running the Nvidia version of Nobara (Fedora-based gaming oriented distro).

What distro did you try?

Good on him for giving Linux a platform. Bad on google for coercing him to do so in a clickbaity manner.

I might be the minority, but I’m more inclined to click a video that says “Plasma 6.1: Release, features and my opinions” than one that proclaims it THE BEST THING (unless it’s from a creator I already know and like anyway, they get a pass as long as the content is good)

Actually, wouldn’t the repeat offender make for a great slave penal laborer?

The first problem, as with many things AI, is nailing down just what you mean with AI.

The second problem, as with many things Linux, is the question of shipping these things with the Desktop Environment / OS by default, given that not everybody wants or needs that and for those that don’t, it’s just useless bloat.

The third problem, as with many things FOSS or AI, is transparency, here particularly training. Would I have to train the models myself? If yes: How would I acquire training data that has quantity, quality and transparent control of sources? If no: What control do I have over the source material the pre-trained model I get uses?

The fourth problem is privacy. The tradeoff for a universal assistant is universal access, which requires universal trust. Even if it can only fetch information (read files, query the web), the automated web searches could expose private data to whatever search engine or websites it uses. Particularly in the wake of Recall, the idea of saying “Oh actually we want to do the same as Microsoft” would harm Linux adoption more than it would help.

The fifth problem is control. The more control you hand to machines, the more control their developers will have. This isn’t just about trusting the machines at that point, it’s about trusting the developers. To build something the caliber of full AI assistants, you’d need a ridiculous amount of volunteer efforts, particularly due to the splintering that always comes with such projects and the friction that creates. Alternatively, you’d need corporate contributions, and they always come with an expectation of profit. Hence we’re back to trust: Do you trust a corporation big enough to make a difference to contribute to such an endeavour without amy avenue of abuse? I don’t.

Linux has survived long enough despite not keeping up with every mainstream development. In fact, what drove me to Linux was precisely that it doesn’t do everything Microsoft does. The idea of volunteers (by and large unorganised) trying to match the sheer power of a megacorp (with a strict hierarchy for who calls the shots) in development power to produce such an assistant is ridiculous enough, but the suggestion that DEs should come with it already integrated? Hell no

One useful applications of “AI” (machine learning) I could see: Evaluating logs to detect recurring errors and cross-referencing them with other logs to see if there are correlations, which might help with troubleshooting.
That doesn’t need to be an integrated desktop assistant, it can just be a regular app.

Really, that applies to every possible AI tool. Make it an app, if you care enough. People can install it for themselves if they want. But for the love of the Machine God, don’t let the hype blind you to the issues.

I don’t think people were confused so much as bending the point a little to make a joke topical. It’s both “downloading Linux stuff”.

“Breaking news: Old man not entirely senile yet”

I’ve once had difficulties running some apps on Proton that used .NET features not supported by mono, which has been updated since then and is now working out of the box.

I’m playing Trackmania on wine, I’ve played Elden Ring and Monster Hunter: World on Proton, so I’m wondering which issue you’re running into.

Regardless, building precompiled Linux native binaries is a commendable goal. Others have mentioned Flatpak, which imo is a good and user-friendly way to handle that.

Don’t fucking jinx it. Just don’t.

He could take a bit of a gamble, do some Linux as a comparison and see if that draws viewers too, maybe some attention from those that are curious about Linux but not enough to actually delve into the topic themselves (or deterred by the reputation of Linux being complicated).

Choosing a suitable distribution might be a challenge, particularly because some distro elitists will inevitably come to dunk on his choice and he might not want the comment section to be clogged by distro wars (particularly if the majority of viewers, as you suggested, are Windows users and will find that off-putting).

The enemy is both weak and strong

Colleague messages me: I need your help with something, are you available?

Me: What is it? I’ll fit it in somewhere

Colleague: I’ve got choclate cookies

Me: I’ll be right over