I’m being snarky, but the Linux world isn’t fully user friendly. If you’re unwilling to roll with the punches, it may not actually be for you.

I guess you’re an Arch user, but this is exactly the wrong thinking. Yes, stuff sometimes break for pretty much every distro, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss people who want stuff to “just work” (which OP went above and beyond). We should absolutely strive to not break stuff, and if it does be humble and polite. Unless you literally want Linux to never become mainstream…

And btw I’ve been using Fedora for ages now, don’t have to follow anything, and when stuff breaks they are generally apologetic about it and try to fix stuff.

I don’t think that’s really a criticism, more like the reality of modern “journalism”…

They can get fucked. A while ago O was like you know what let’s give them money, seems only fair. So I finally subscribed, and then like a month later they sent me an email they’re raising the prices effective immediately - basically changing the deal on me without any delay.

So I unsubscribed, because fuck that.

More recently I looked into sharing the family plan with …my family, but it turna out they consider family only in a single household, and I’m not gonna try to give them money while also potentially having to prove how much of a family we are, so yeah…

Fuck them, either take my money when I’m actually trying, or I guess they didn’t need it that bad. I’m over YouTube, and would probably ditch it earlier than ever watching an ad there.

Form and input elements are a very standard thing, and while you can certainly do crazy stuff with it, even a simple check if you typed into an input/textarea, or changed a select without submitting the form element, should be sufficient.

I guess the problem might be detecting the submission (because oftentimes there’s custom logic for that) but maybe better just display the warning than lose data. Worst case you’ll just ignore it, best case the devs fix it so that it doesn’t show up when it shouldn’t.

The better UX could have been making this a regular option, and (by default) showing a warning dialogue if using backspace to navigate would clear out a form.

No, it’s not “Windows-like” in anything but some basic appearance (and that would be Windows from the previous decade). It’s not similar in anything else, and from my experience the similarity in appearance only confuses users.

I really wish people stopped recommending Mint as if it was some proper Windows replacement because it’s overall a very mediocre distro that’s IMO more likely to detract users from using Linux than anything else.

Protecting innovative stuff is literally the point of patents and why the system exists. Anything “new” is by definition innovation, except the bar is really low currently, with very little research being done into prior art.

Patented stuff should be non-obvious, and not a simple derivative of existing stuff (i.e. when there are square buttons and circle buttons you shouldn’t be able to patent a button that has 2 corners square and 2 circle just because it’s “novel” because it’s just a very simple and logical step).

So basically, make the bar for a patent much higher, and require some proof into the research of prior art and explaining why/how your patent is different.

Also, patents should expire early/not be renewable if you don’t actually use them (so move a certain number of units / generate some amount of revenue using your patents). So you couldn’t patent random BS in the hopes someone else will break your patent by accident.

Or even better, just outright punish patent trolls.

Patents would be fine if the bar for “innovation” would be much higher, software patents weren’t a thing, there was way more research done into prior art, and there would be different (shorter) lengths for patents depending on what industry they target.

Like, if it’s manufacturing or something like drugs where it takes years before you can start making profit, sure, make them 10-20 years. If it’ something you make money off of immediately, it should be shorter.

The fact that Bluesky is almost a 1:1 copy (which includes the dumb stuff like post character limit) is precisely why I don’t like it.

Wouldn’t be surprised if it also did automatic scans for CSAM or some other BS like that. The article’s conclusion is really funny, too:

In any case, it’s nice to see Google delivering some new safety features in its Messages app. Hopefully the company publishes documentation on how Android System SafetyCore works so other messaging apps can implement their own version of Sensitive Content Warnings. Google Messages is popular, but there are certainly other messaging platforms that could benefit from this tool.

They are quite the optimitsts. Oh and yes please, put the spyware in more apps! We aren’t tracked enough!

That’s just the reality of doing business on the Internet.

That’s just not true. You can absolutely get by on the internet remaining pretty much anonymous, as it is. Very few services need (and verify) your personal data; when they do it’s basically always when it’s government-mandated, and it’s for things that have a “physical” equivalent.

i.e. creating a bank account online requires your actual ID, but so it would if you tried to do it “offline” in a physical bank (and you largely have a choice on whether or not you do it online).

Then you have stuff like online shopping and such where most people probably use their actual personal information but you don’t have to and it’s generally not checked.

This is an unprecedented change, where suddenly for access to a free service someone needs to ask for and validate some very private details. And it fucking sucks.

While Australia’s new legislation is ham-fisted and poorly thought out, the intent isn’t wrong and there’s broad consensus for it (77% approval in Australia). We need to do something about the uncontrolled exploitation, manipulation and endangerment of minors by social media services.

That’s the issue though; I agree that something needs to be done, but you need to do it more or less correctly on the first try or you’ll probably make it even worse.

Someone still needs to create that digital token from your ID, which means someone’s still using and storing your data, and potentially selling it or having it leaked.

…and that’s how it still works.

The startup is absolutely more stressful for the motor. It’s a period of high current that also creates hotspots in the windings and such. It’s certainly not great for the motor.

Regular Fedora is more than stable enough for day to day use. I’d start there and then with use see if it’s a good fit.

I may understand “opinionated” differently from you, but the main issue is that when you do want to change something, you can’t. Or it’s some unsupported hack, or (best case) you flip some hidden configuration variable (that will probably break with the next release).

KDE is well configured from the get go as well, you don’t have to change anything and it will work well. But if you do decide that you don’t like some of their defaults, you can tweak many aspects of it.

It wouldn’t really be an issue if you didn’t need an extension for every single basic functionality…

Because of how stupidly opinionated Gnome is I switched to KDE a year or so ago and have been extremely happy with it. And what do you know I don’t even need any extensions, because sane stuff like tray icons are builtin.

I do use an extension for distributing windows in custom areas though, and it didn’t even break throughout the (I believe) 2 large updates there were since I started using it.

That’s what PieFed changes though. You can still track how someone votes, but you can’t tie it to a specific profile (without doing some extra analysis and even then you can’t be completely sure).

Or, with my suggestion, you could track how that specific account votes, but it would be easy to obfuscate who exactly it is and (hopefully) impossible to track to the user’s other identities.

I think this approach kinda fixes that issue though, no? You can use it the way it is now, and others can be anonymous.

I mean it would be also nice if you could log into multiple accounts and easily switch between them for each vote and comment, but this is also good, IMO.

Looks like it’s kinda hard to spin up a piefed bot. Not impossible, but it’s a bitch without an API.

What you would actually want to do if you want to bot is take one of the existing apps and modify it to make spamming easy.

Either way, I want to be able to point to their behavior - without the extra step of having to de-anonymize their activity - and tell them to chill the fuck out or get the fuck out. Out means out. Totally and forever.

I can see why you would want that, but my question is is that such a big deal compared to people being harassed for their voting? I don’t think user privacy should be violated - especially en masse / by default just because of some (in my opinion fairly minor) moderation concerns.

And if they are a dick overall, then you will figure it out anyway, ban their “main” account and that will prevent them from voting, too (unless the instance is malicious, but then a malicious instance can do much more harm in general).