Just a nerd who migrated from kbin(dot)social.

  • 3 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 1 month ago
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Cake day: November 17th, 2024

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  • My worry is that without a lawsuit or other action, we’ll keep seeing LLM slop companies taking down smaller websites for bogus reasons. This needs to be codified somehow that there were damages done to Itch’s earnings (and more importantly the earnings of the independent creators on the platform who should start a class-action suit), and that what Funko’s contracted LLM company did was wrong.

    There’s financial damages, loss of profit, emotional distress, reputation loss, and more. We need to take action against these companies for their wrongdoing. So either they need to willingly pay up and have that payment be known and public, or they need to be made to pay by the courts.






  • I’m not going to be tolerant of the watermark, and I don’t feel like using PowerShell to get rid of it - plus there’s drivers to consider. It’s just faster and easier for me to grab an activated OEM version for the computer I have.

    Key bindings can be changed, but I’ve never found the place to do it easily in the GUI in Mint. I touch the Linux command line for curl and ping, and that’s about it.

    I already play Wesnoth, and I haven’t touched 0 AD in years. I prefer OpenTTD, Oolite, Endless Sky, and Minetest, along with occasionally poking at WarZone 2100. But that doesn’t replace the DOS and Win9x games from my childhood. I don’t use Valve’s DRM platform (nor the one from Epic Megagames), and it’s rare for me to pay for anything on GOG. But there’s no other game that exactly hits the fun for me of Sid Meier’s Covert Action, Shadow President, SimCity 2000 & 3000, Starfleet Command II: Orion Pirates, or a couple dozen others. Yes, it’s nostalgia. But it harms no one.

    As for the tax thing, I’ll look into it, but I don’t expect it will do what we need. We need to pay for the more expensive software because of our tax situation (don’t want to get into detail for obvious reasons).


  • Found the prompt this time! Admittedly, that’s because I edited it from a ChatGPT response to the prompt:

    Describe a cyborg version of the Egyptian God Sekhmet as a Power Rangers villain.

    Sekhmet is depicted as a towering, fearsome figure, her body a menacing blend of advanced cybernetic technology and the primal power of a lioness. Her head is an imposing mix of a lioness and a robotic entity, with sharp, metallic features and glowing, fiery red eyes that burn with an intense, unrelenting rage. Her mane is made of flowing, molten-like metal tendrils that pulse with a fiery glow, giving her an almost volcanic appearance. Sekhmet’s body is covered in sleek, dark armor that glows with lines of molten orange, resembling lava flowing through cracks in the earth. Her armor is reinforced with layered, overlapping plates that resemble the scales of a serpent, providing her with both protection and flexibility. Her chest plate is adorned with a glowing, red energy core, shaped like a sun disk, symbolizing her destructive, solar power. Her arms are muscular and heavily armored, ending in massive, clawed hands that can extend into deadly, energy-infused blades. These claws glow with a fiery intensity, capable of slicing through even the toughest materials. Her legs are powerful and digitigrade, resembling the hind legs of a lion, allowing her to move with terrifying speed and agility. Each step she takes leaves scorch marks on the ground, a testament to her overwhelming heat and power.

    I’d say the generator hit the brief.





  • Sometimes the impetus to change OS is not UX related.

    In my current case, it’s got nothing whatsoever to do with liking or not liking Windows. I actually like Windows 9x, XP, 7, and 10. I bought a computer and wanted to install a clean OS on it (it came with Ubuntu, which I loathe visually and general UX-wise, because it feels like a Mac and seems like no matter what I do, something breaks). I had a choice: go through the effort on my other machine of pirating Win10, or just install Linux. I decided to go with Mint, because it supports the software I want and there’s a feeling of familiarity, so muscle memory still works. I had to learn things like using Alt+F2 rather than Win+R, but I feel like I’m in a safer environment to learn than just “here’s a new OS, good luck”, because I can access those things in the GUI until I learn to do otherwise. Having Wine and DOSBox-X are because I have software that’s for Windows or DOS that I like. I still haven’t found a solid replacement for Notepad++, for example; and that’s not including games.

    There’s also the “use Linux to make old machines work better and safer” use-case, especially for older people. My mom, for instance, is almost 80. She knew DOS, and she’s been acclimated to Windows over 30-odd years. If I want to make her older machine safer and more efficient, I’d install Mint on it compared to something else (I actually can’t, because her tax software is Windows-only and does not work correctly in Wine), because again, she’ll feel that she’s in a safer environment. She already uses OpenOffice (specifically not LibreOffice, because of the print layout differences - seemingly small things like kerning and the like can have a significant effect), and Firefox. She was using Thunderbird for a while but switched to webmail, just for simplicity. I’d have to walk her through PySol, AisleRiot, or another solitaire program, but I’m pretty confident that I could do that. So it should work like Windows for her, except for all the things she won’t use.



  • Um, what’s the difference between this and Zorin OS?

    It’s Linux with Wine, that has a theme that looks like Windows. I’ll be honest, I’m running Mint with Cinnamon, and since I was already heavily in the FOSS world for gaming, etc., when people see my current PC at a glance, they can’t tell the difference between it and my Win10 PC (except for the LM logo on the start menu). I have Wine and DOSBox-X installed too, so I don’t need VMWare or another VM set up.

    Some people absolutely do want this. Some people even want it in a ‘push-the-button’ style solution. We call those people ‘users’.