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Could linux breathe new life into a busted toaster laptop like mine?
  • No. Linux doesn't make your CPU go faster.

    The main thing where Linux helps on old hardware is that you can run it on less RAM, meaning you have more RAM for applications. And running out of RAM is very bad and slows everything down massively. If low memory is not your problem, it won't be faster, or at least not significantly.

    The Linux GPU drivers for AMD and Intel are completely different from the Windows ones, and that can in theory make some difference (not necessarily for the better), but not a massive one unless there's something fucked going on.

    There's a bunch of other specific or minor stuff, for example file operations can be faster on Linux, but you'd only notice that if you're doing some specific workload involving lots of small files, like switching branches on git or something like that.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from May 27th to June 2nd, 2024 - The Virgin France vs the Chad Sahel - COTW: Chad
  • idk I'm not seeing it (the photoshop I mean, I see the white people)

  • Major breakthrough
  • I, as tiny little shit, was only trained up to like 7-digit addition (with far fewer examples given I suspect) and I also generalize near perfectly to 100+ digits.

  • What are your favorite Indie Games from the last 5 or so years?
  • 20th century food court from last call bbs was really good

  • Bought "Baba is You" on sale on steam and I like it so far
  • Well that's fun/intimidating! I've only seen a fraction but some levels took me half an hour already. I did figure each one out by my own so far though.

  • Bought "Baba is You" on sale on steam and I like it so far

    Very clever puzzle game. Combines Sokoban-like block pushing with predicate logic. So for example, if you create a rule like "Walls is you", you now control the walls, or you can undo an existing "Walls is stop"-rule and the walls are now non-colliding. The rules themselves are created/destroyed by pushing three blocks together: object IS property.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
  • Today I vetoed a Russian law. This law is Russian in its essence and spirit.

    It is the quintessential Russianness of it that is Russian. Russia is in it. Russian Russia is Russian and Russia Russia Russia Russia Russia (vikings start singing in the background).

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from May 13th to May 19th, 2024 - The Blazing Furnace - COTW: Vietnam
  • Assuming the Russians continue with their attrition strategy, it would make sense they just widen the front and move slowly so as not to expose themselves too much. I expect they will only move quickly if/when the Ukrainians abandon their positions.

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    Got downvoted on lemmy.world for pointing out that if you murderer people indiscriminately you're going to end up killing trans people.
  • There was some western report/claim recently about 500000 Russian losses (forgot where it's from exactly), which people/propagandist just assume/wish/spin means dead (it doesn't). This is after the Russians, a few weeks ago, officially claimed half a million losses on the Ukrainian side, so I imagine that's just "no u" propaganda.

  • What descriptors instantly kill your desire to play a game?
  • Story-rich, narrative, role-playing etc. Except if it's comedy. I can do comedy. Sometimes.

    Also Obra Dinn I like and that has "story-rich" (I just checked), so whatever, I'm a hypocrite.

  • Finish this sentence: "I'm as leftist as they come, but-
  • ...landlords provide an important service.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from April 22nd to April 28th, 2024 - The Scramble For Africa: Green Edition - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • I made a post about this. The guy wrote an article in 2017 called "The Case for Colonialism", where wants to "reclaim" colonialism, recolonize and make new colonies. He also thinks that the slave revolt is "the worst thing that happened in Haiti."

    Oh and he got the idea that colonialism is good (actually) from working as a journalist in Hong Kong.

  • Zionazi academic claims Malaysia "unsafe" after getting cancelled there
    www.malaymail.com Pro-Israel American academic cries of 'Islamo-fascist mob', claims Malaysia 'unsafe' for travellers despite spending days here

    KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 — Pro-Israel academic Bruce Gilley whose events were cancelled by the Ministry of Higher Education has now accused Malaysia of being an “unsafe”...

    Pro-Israel American academic cries of 'Islamo-fascist mob', claims Malaysia 'unsafe' for travellers despite spending days here

    Pro-Israel American academic cries of 'Islamo-fascist mob', claims Malaysia 'unsafe' for travellers despite spending days here

    > KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 — Pro-Israel academic Bruce Gilley whose events were cancelled by the Ministry of Higher Education has now accused Malaysia of being an “unsafe” country to travel to, despite spending several days here. > > Gilley also accused Putrajaya of stirring an “Islamo-fascist mob” after receiving backlash for his remark claiming Malaysian leaders of advocating a “second Holocaust” for Jews. > > “I have safely departed from Malaysia, one step ahead of the Islamo-fascist mob whipped up by the government there. > > “This is not a safe country to travel to now. Updates to follow,” he wrote on his X account. > > Despite his claim, there was no such mob protesting or physically harassing him in the country.

    This guy is something else. He wrote an article called "The Case for Colonialism" (archive):

    > There are three ways to reclaim colonialism. One is for governments and peoples in developing countries to replicate as far as possible the colonial governance of their pasts—as successful countries like Singapore, Belize, and Botswana did. The “good governance” agenda, which contains too many assumptions about the self-governing capacity of poor countries, should be replaced with the “colonial governance” agenda. A second way is to recolonize some regions. Western countries should be encouraged to hold power in specific governance areas (public finances, say, or criminal justice) in order to jump-start enduring reforms in weak states. Rather than speak in euphemisms about “shared sovereignty” or “neo-trusteeship,” such actions should be called “colonialism” because it would embrace rather than evade the historical record. Thirdly, in some instances, it may be possible to build new Western colonies from scratch.

    He wants to "reclaim" colonialism and make new colonies. Guess where he got this idea?

    > His views about the good side of colonialism were strongly influenced by his years as a journalist. We has worked in Hong Kong for the Far Eastern Economic Review, an English language weekly with a good audience among the political and economic elite, and a typical product of the British colonial empire, now defunct. It stood for the values which Gilley defends in his essay: Free government, free press, free market. > > In Hong Kong he got to know the last British governor, Chris Patten, and he saw how this man had the guts to defend ‘the fundamental values of British colonialism’ in the face of a powerful Chinese neighbour. (source | archive)

    Also in there is this hot take:

    > "Academics keep writing about the glorious slave revolt of Haiti (1791-1804). As if it still is the best thing that could have happened to Haiti. But it is the worst thing that happened to Haiti."

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from April 22nd to April 28th, 2024 - The Scramble For Africa: Green Edition - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • They're pulling some bullshit alright, but that's probably just some insane cyber"security" or child-protection service being overly zealous. I guess it is possible that it's someone's job at Logitech to report their competitors as NSFW to internetmatters, but I doubt it.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from April 22nd to April 28th, 2024 - The Scramble For Africa: Green Edition - COTW: Democratic Republic of the Congo
  • Maybe you're going to a different server from different locations, and the one near you happens to not work right.

    When I traceroute that, it goes to a server (calling itself myshopify.com) that seems directly connected to my local ISP's network and must be quite close to me, same city probably.

    Also looks like wlmouse.com is made with and hosted by Shopify, which is a Canadian company.

  • I know there is no cure for the common cold, but if y'all have any home remedies that have worked for you, let me know
  • Some edutainment-acquired knowledge: Cold lasts about a week on average, if you take vitamin C and zinc that time supposedly is cut short by about half a day.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star
  • IDK about untenable, this one especially looked like it should have held. This is a long and thin Russian salient, there was a fortification (and there are more around), and I remember the Russians got a bloody nose or two in that direction before the fall of Avdiivka. Just yesterday or two days ago, I thought there's no way Russia is going to push forward there, they'll want to secure their flanks first and be able to attack from multiple directions, but here we are.

  • "Ukraine needs one more year to win, and Congress can make that happen now" - Generals hate him, one trick to win every war!
  • War is a crucible of progress, and Ukraine needs the support necessary to give it the time to innovate.

    That guy is doing some ai drone business/grift. Of course he wants the war to go on. He gets attention, funding, human test subjects. Writing these articles is like a free advertising for him.

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star
  • Indirectly? Yes. Directly, as in people get checks from US govt? No.

    There is/was this talking point, particularly around the time of the US government shutdown threat, that the US would be paying Ukrainian salaries (while US govt employees don't get a paycheck), but I'm pretty sure they just mean that some US taxpayer money goes to the Ukrainian govt, and Ukraine pays out salaries at the same time, so you could sort of say that some of the money ends up as paychecks for Ukrainian officials. They'd be paid in local currency and not US dollars though (except maybe foreigners?).

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    Bulletins and News Discussion from April 15th to April 21st, 2024 - Between The Darkness And The Dawn, There Rises A Red Star
  • It slows Russia's advance insofar as Ukraine cannot pay anyone's salaries without inducing hyperinflation if they don't get a steady flow of dollars. It would be real difficult for the government in Kiev to order people around without paying them.

  • Protip: Bufferbloat and how to deal with it in OpenWrt

    So... you've probably noticed that when downloading a game or doing serious p2p piracy, your internet latency suffers: websites take longer to load, video chats stutter, online games glitch.

    Well, good news! You can do something about that if you have a router capable of running the free OpenWrt firmware.

    The problem of downloads (or uploads) clogging up the pipes is called bufferbloat. Basically, there's a traffic jam somewhere, usually where your ISP throttles your internet speed. This means data packets have to queue up behind whatever data is clogging up the pipes, and so they get delivered with a noticeable latency.

    Some boffins have looked at that and identified ways to improve the situation:

    1. Have shorter buffers, so stuff cannot queue up as much.
    2. Create express lanes where other traffic can skip the queue of Final Fantasy asset deliveries.
    3. Tell the Final Fantasy asset delivery service to slow the fuck down.

    Unfortunately, the queuing policy and the size of the buffers coming into your home is controlled by the ISP, so you can't really do much about that, but you can actually do #3.

    This works by setting a speed limit on the OpenWrt router in your home, which tells anyone sending too much shit your way to slow down, which means the buffer on the ISPs side never get full, and therefore no traffic jam! You won't even notice you're downloading Final Fantasy. The web browsing and video chatting will feel like there's no download going on at all. You got to set the bandwidth limit 10-20% below your actual internet speed though, which I think is well worth it.

    https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/traffic-shaping/sqm

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    Habeck being patriotic

    Robert Habeck (German economy minister, Greens) about the DFB (German Football Association) ditching Adidas and signing a sponsorship deal with Nike:

    > I can barely imagine the German football jersey without the three stripes. For me, Adidas and black-red-gold have always belonged together. A piece of German identity. I would have hoped for a bit more economic patriotism.

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    Some discrepancies I found in a recent Xinjiang story

    So there is a report going around (originally by Der Spiegel and ZDF), based on "research" by Adrian Zenz, about German companies' involvement in Uyghur oppression. I couldn't find the document that Zenz is basing this on.

    In this article, though not directly related to the allegations against BASF and VW, they put a face to Uyghur oppression: Gulpiya Qazybek, a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang (left for Almaty in 2019), confesses her involvement in spying on people and even helping detain them. She says her own mother was also imprisoned.

    I read through a bunch of articles based on interviews with her, the first one I could find is from 2021 (see sources at the end).

    I found some discrepancies:

    • None of the pre-2024 articles mention her being complicit. The older articles are just about her mother being in prison.

    • According to Der Spiegel, her mother was 65 in 2017, but according to Eurasianet, she was 78 in 2022.

    • According to Der Spiegel (Feb 2024), the mother was released and put under house arrest in autumn of 2023. The Telegraph article (Jan 2024) does not mention this, but says "Gulpyia campaigns relentlessly for the Chinese government to free her elderly mother", implying she is still imprisoned.

    • According to Der Spiegel, two of them were responsible for monitoring 12 families. The Telegraph article, however, says "she was ordered to monitor 60 families".

    • According to Der Spiegel, the mother was sentenced to 15 years. All the other articles say 12.

    • In 2021 New East Archive article, the timeline is: The mother gets detained more than 5 years ago, turns up in the hospital several months later. They get told that she was sentenced by a court 8 months after that. In the 2024 Telegraph story, the mother gets detained by the end of 2017, then, 8 months later, she is in the hospital, and then, the following year, they are told of her sentencing. So this "8 months" figure is after the hospital in story one, but before the hospital in story two. And the detention in story one cannot possibly take place by the end of 2017 (as in story two), because it is supposedly more than 5 years before Dec 2021, i.e. 2016 or earlier.

    • In the 2021 New East Archive article, she says she "know[s] of people who sleep in their clothes in case they are detained in the night." In the 2022 Meduza story, the people sleeping in their clothes are her relatives. In the 2024 Der Spiegel article, the people doing this are farmers, but she ("we") eventually did that also. This anecdote goes from basically hearsay to something that happened to her personally.

    • In the New East Archive story, her mother tells her she is in the hospital because she was kicked in the chest during interrogation, and there is no mention of any other health condition. In the Telegraph article, her mother "had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and her health was failing". Though the mother does does also tell her "they beat me."

    Sources

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    Munich is brown

    The anti-racist libs of "Munich is colorful" are calling for a protest against an event by a Jewish-Palestinian peace group.

    !germany-cool !cure-for-fascism

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    arte schmarte

    Radlibs love this cursed French-German propaganda channel

    arte ultras :stalin-gun-1: :stalin-gun-2:

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    No, Windows 95 was not the pinnacle of UI design

    On tech forums like r/linux or hackernews, you'll frequently see posts by (presumably) old guys reminiscing about how great the user interface of their youth was.

    "Oh how tasteful were these pixel art icons!"

    "How utilitarian and consistent were the 3D effects!"

    "How very intuitive are these menus!"

    "It's all gone downhill since $PRODUCT. It's all flat and empty and useless now!"

    Bollocks. These user interfaces sucked. The menus were a mess, because trying to shove 50 random items into 6 hierarchical categories, two of which are preordained to be "File" and "Edit", cannot be done in any way that isn't arbitrary and confusing. Thus you looked through all the little menus with your terrible mouse hoping to find something that sounded like it might be what you need, trying not to make a sudden move that made the submenu disappear.

    Under the menu bar were between 30 and 200 tiny pixel art icons. They were just as incomprehensible as today's minimalist ones, only there were more of them and most of them looked like ass.

    Oh and so many popup windows. Everything you did created a popup window. Why does the settings popup only use one third of the screen while having three tabs? Why can I see my document underneath it, half-obscured, but I can't actually click on anything there? Why do half the operations create an "OK" popup for me to click on?

    Nothing about this was "functional" and yet it also looked grey and cramped and ugly. Like it was designed by C++ programmers (who by their choice of programming language have already proven that their opinion cannot be trusted, especially not in matters involving good taste), which of course it was.

    ***

    Fucking brain worms, all of them.

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