I hope there’s pushback on this. They mention prices can change as often as 10 seconds. Meaning you can add something to your cart and by the time you check out the price has gone up. That seems like false advertising. Will the store associates have a way to override the cost if we make a fuss and ask them to price match the items to the cost when we added them to our carts?

It feels like this is another area where technology is advancing faster than our consumer protection laws. I suppose another thing to write your local representatives about. I’d hope legislation protecting a family grocery shopping would be an easy win for politicians and bipartisan.

Good

To your point, when you look at both crypto and AI I see a common theme. They both need a lot of computation, call it super computing. Nvidia makes products that provide a lot of compute. Until Nvidia’s competitors catch up I think they’ll do fine as more applications that require a lot of computation are found.

Basically, I think of Nvidia as a super computer company. When I think of them this way their position makes more sense.

I don’t think you really do anymore. I’d consider myself an experienced Linux user. I’ve been using it as a my desktop OS for over 20 years. I’ve also used Linux heavily through my career and am completely comfortable with the command line.

With recent installs of Fedora the only thing I use the command line for is the initial setup of the multimedia codecs. After that I haven’t been required to touch it.

I used to consider a terminal required to keep your desktop Linux system running. Now I look at is as an optional install for programmers.

I buy those canisters of pizza dough at the grocery store. Make a simple sauce by warning canned tomato sauce, adding a little olive oil, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and just a pinch of red pepper flakes. I spread the dough thin, add some olive oil and bake. After the doughs baked on its own for 5-6 minutes I add the sauce, spread spinach around and depending on the time of year some basil leaves from my herb garden, then top with mozzarella cheese. Continue baking until the cheese is melted.

Simple and refreshing.

That was a good read. I’d not really been sure of the differences between libadawaita and GTK were. It sounds like this frees up GTK to focus on being a cross platform GUI library, perhaps competing more directly with Qt. Meanwhile, libadawaita allows GNOME developers to keep leveraging GTK and tune it to their design guidelines.

I’ve only seen positive things come out of recent GNOME apps, but I wonder if the downside of GTK no longer embedding GNOME’s design language would be apps choosing to use GTK directly instead of libadawaita for better cross platform support. Will we end up with a less cohesive GNOME environment in the future?

Using Napster was one of those defining childhood memories for me. I was in junior high when it came out and I remember hearing about it through rumors at school. It was one of my early memories, realizing that computers could be used for interesting things and not just office work.

Those were the days, spending 20 minutes downloading a 3 minute song over dialup.

I wonder if all these companies rolling out AI before it’s ready will have a widespread impact on how people perceive AI. If you learn early on that AI answers can’t be trusted will people be less likely to use it, even if it improves to a useful point?

I’d also be interested in learning about IRC servers that were more social and less technology driven.

When you’re in school you’re often stuck with the software they require. No harm in that. Once you’re finished with school you can reevaluate. If you want to be more privacy focused you could make sure you’re only using Gmail for in a Firefox container tab for instance or look into sandboxing it other ways.

For the same reasons don’t worry about keeping Windows on your computer for classes. It’ll get easier when you’re out of college, any job will give you work equipment with the software and tools they make you use and you can keep all personal information out of those. You’ll be able to use what you want on your personal items.

Privacy is important, but not important as passing your classes.

You’re doing great!

I’m curious where you’re having issues. I’ve been able to use the little GNOME widget for setting up wireless connections for years.

Do you have an edge usecase that makes you drop back to using nmcli or is there a missing feature forcing you back to the ip/ifconfig commands?

No sarcasm, I’d just be interested in understanding your frustration a little better.

I recently purchased a laptop from System76. I’ve been very happy with it. You can get many of their models with coreboot used as the system firmware which is unique. I have been disappointed that they usually recommend installing open source, but not in-tree modules for getting things like keyboard backlight working. It feels a bit like they’re not a Linux laptop company but instead that they’re a Pop!_ OS laptop company.

Linux distributions have definitely standardized over the years. You get a kernel, systemd, network manager, Firefox, etc from basically every distro targeting desktops. Most will have different spins for the popular desktop environments as well.

From a purely technical perspective the main difference of distributions today is the package manager. Are you using pacman, apt, dnf, or something else? We know as users that while some of these different package managers have advantages and disadvantages they are all doing the same thing. You can get basically all the equivalent packages on each major distribution. I sometimes feel sad thinking about all the volunteer effort working in parallel, but not together to package the same software using different package managers. In many ways it’s duplicate effort that I wish could be spent in better ways.

Even package managers are beginning to converge. Flatpack is becoming extremely popular and is my current preferred way to add software to my system.

Leaving technicals behind the only major difference I see between distro today is their philosophy on how frequently to update and what to exclude. Does every package get a new update immediately when it’s rolled out upstream like Arch? Are we going to stick to older packages and only apply security/bug fix updates like Debian, or do something in between? Do we want to bend over backwards to make it easy to install Nvidia drivers or tell users we don’t support closed source software? Do we want to make it as easy as possible to install codecs or leave it to the wider community to figure that out on their own?

I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer. Use what you enjoy!

I’m glad to see open source video editors are still evolving. I know Davinci Resolve has become popular with Linux YouTubers for serious work.

I’d be curious to know a video editors opinion of what’s missing. Is it stability, GPU acceleration, UI or a combination of all of the above? What would be needed for you to switch to Kdenlive for example?

I use Hexchat. It’s a fine GUI a client, simple and reliable. I use a ZNC bouncer so no need to keep a CLI client running 24/7.

I’ve found for the last 3-4 years I haven’t had to fall back to Google. DDG results have been good enough I can use it full time.

AI for me as well. I’ve played with it a little and it’s kinda fun. Every company is pushing AI now including in areas where it doesn’t make any sense or is many years away from being useful. I’m also seeing a lot of developers being assigned to use AI without any directions on what to use it for.

I’m far enough along in my career I don’t need to worry about being replaced by AI. If it’s ever good enough to take my job I’ll be happily retired writing software for fun and living my life without AI. I just don’t have any interest.

After decades of using different window managers, fixing broken configs with major updates, fretting about multi monitor config etc I started using GNOME. It might not look as sleek but I’m a lot more productive now.

In the end I’m just glad we have so many choices.

Anything is possible, but I’d be surprised if it’s a driver issue. Many server vendors use tg3 based NICs as the onboard NIC integrated into the motherboard. The install base for that driver is huge.

I’ve used both. I switched from Fastmail to Proton then back to Fastmail. If you’re just starting on your privacy journey I’d still recommend Proton.

When I switched to Proton they only did email and that’s what I wanted. Instead of focusing on email Proton expanded into other areas like VPNs, Proton Drive, and password managers. I already had good privacy focused solutions for all of those problems, so for me personally I didn’t like where they were spending their development time.

As a Linux desktop user and an iOS mobile user I was often one of the last to have new features available for Protons applications which got to be really annoying.

To use desktop email I had to install Proton bridge which required a GUI to run. It was always having issues. Super frustrating.

I really disliked that Proton didn’t give me a way to use SMTP without going through their bridge. I have three home servers configured with Fastmail app passwords limited to only SMTP to send me notifications for updates and other alerts. This would have been really flaky to make work with Proton.

With Fastmail everything uses open standards, IMAP, SMTP, CalDav, CardDav, and WebDav. It all integrates really well with my laptop and phone without any special tools. I end up using those services much more now. The downside to these open standards is you don’t get end to end encryption that Proton offers.

I also feel as if Fastmail is giving me more for my money. I remember having pain points with Proton and wildcard emails with custom domains and trying to use their hidden email service. All of that is much easier with Fastmail. I also had a few sites not allow Protons masked emails but Fastmail worked fine.

I’d say, if privacy is your main thing and you don’t already have some of the services offered by Proton go with them. If what you’re looking for is as much privacy as email will let you have without using non standard software, and you just really want reliable solid email, Fastmail is the right choice.