By the way, ignoring as much of this big tech corpo crap as you can also makes you live an easier life.

Whenever I see a story of “some guy who relies on <big tech account> working loses access to it and suddenly can’t do anything anymore” I think “this can never happen to me”. Which means there’s a whole category of problems you’re suddenly never going to see. It also means you’re less naive. So just don’t vendor-lock yourself in. Don’t put a log-in for an account which you don’t control in front of important things you need to do. Simple as that.

On top of that, you’ll also leak less private data about yourself and probably others as well. So you even make yourself less of a target when it comes to data protection laws or something. I know, these get routinely ignored. I’m just saying, if you don’t even use the problematic stuff (or almost never), you’ll also have potentially less legal troubles at hand. And you never know, legel troubles might not appear for a while but they could lurk far in the future. For example, many Nazis got into legal trouble for their participation in Nazi Germany, even decades later.

I know, the guy from the story probably only needed that account to ensure he can compare some stuff with how MS Office is behaving compared to LibreOffice, or things like that. So it’s probably not a big deal. But generally speaking, you really shouldn’t vendor-lock yourself in.

Doesn’t have to mean much at all: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#im-getting-sec_error_ocsp_server_error-what-can-i-do

Since I also get these from time to time with similar setups, I usually just switch browsers temporarily (after some time it will probably work again). Since my setup uses 3 browsers regularly, it’s no big deal for me. It also rarely occurs so it’s only very mildly annoying. As usual, with a more secure setup you will automatically get a couple of usability issues as well. Can’t change that, it’s like a law of physics. If it annoys you too much, you have to disable this security feature in the browser settings.

The “Borat” actor (forgot the name)

Meine persönliche Theorie (muss nicht alles stimmen) ist, dass sich in einer sich stark verändernden Welt (Klimawandel, Geopolitische Situationen, …) diejenigen Kräfte, die versuchen, entweder das Traditionelle/Historische oder das bisher Gelebte weiterzuführen, besonders attraktiv sind für den Durchschnittsbürger, weil es die “bequemste” Option ist wo man sich am wenigsten verändern muss für (obwohl das ins Verderben führt, weil wir dann nichts mehr fürs Klima unternehmen und weiterhin Raubbau an der Erde betreiben nur um im Hamsterrad des Kapitalismus irgendwie "weiter"zukommen… aber das ist in den Augen des Durchschnittsbürgers ja weit weg und alles nur “Panikmache”).

Menschen, die sich besser mit der Materie auskennen, inkl. so ziemlich alle Wissenschaftler weltweit, warnen dagegen vor dem “weiter so” und drängen zum Umdenken, zum Verändern hin zu mehr Klimaschutz, zu nachhaltiger Wirtschaft, zu veränderten Konsum- und Lebegewohnheiten, zu elektrischen Autos, zu Sparsamkeit bei Energie/Wasser/… das klingt aber alles total unbequem für den Durchschnittsbürger. Deshalb wählt der lieber was “Konservatives”, denn die wollen ja das Bisherige behalten und immer weiterführen, bis es kracht und die Natur literally brennt und der Durchschnittsbürger plötzlich kein günstiges Schnitzel mehr futtern kann. Dann bricht auch für ihn seine heile Welt zusammen… aber dann ist es schon viel zu spät noch irgendwas umzulenken. (Das ist es vermutlich auch jetzt schon, trotzdem sollte man natürlich versuchen, den Kollaps so weit wie möglich in die Zukunft zu drängen und so stark abzufedern wie nur möglich, denn jedes Zehntel Grad weniger Erwärmung hilft schon).

Dazu kam auch noch 2020+2021 die Corona-Pandemie, die war auch so unbequem… soziale Kontakte beschränken, Maske tragen, mehrfach impfen lassen, … das gefiel dem Durchschnittsbürger gar nicht. Und die Rechten machen sich das zu Nutze, indem sie gezielt konservativ spielen und ihre Propaganda entsprechend verpacken als würden sie “die Normalität” verkörpern. Sie tun so als wären sie die Partei der “”“Normalen”“”, der Mitte, der Durchschnittsbürger. Dabei sind sie extrem rechts mit genau dem selben ideologischen Gedanken"gut" wie die Nazis vor 100 Jahren. Eine rechtsextreme Partei darf natürlich niemals an die Macht kommen, ganz egal wie sie sich darstellt. Denn ein heutiger Neonazi ist genau das selbe wie ein Nazi vor 100 Jahren. Wer genau hinguckt, erkennt natürlich an jeder Ecke, dass die AfD eine gesichert rechtsextreme Partei ist. Aber für den Durchschnittsbürger wirkt sie wie eine konservative Partei die erst mal primär daran interessiert ist, die Bequemlichkeit beizubehalten, die man die letzten paar Jahrzehnte vielleicht genossen hat. Die Linken und die Grünen wollen ja ständig irgendwas verändern und dem Durchschnittsbürger fehlt die Information oder die Nachvollziehbarkeit, warum das überhaupt sinnvoll sein sollte. Deshalb wirkt das total sinnlos und unbequem auf ihn. Die BILD-“Zeitung” hat dieses BILD dann noch weiter gefestigt mit ihren Propaganda-Artikeln, dass die Grünen eine “Verbotspartei” wären, und solche Dinge. Und die korrupte FDP wurde quasi eingekauft, um die Ampel-Regierung von innen zu sabotieren.

Und so erstarkt die extrem Rechte. Supported wird sie dabei von der Wirtschaft, wirtschaftsfreundlichen Parteien (insb. CDU jetzt gerade, aber natürlich auch AfD und FDP sind sehr wirtschaftsfreundlich) und von Über-Reichen (Faschismus und Kapitalismus ist extrem gut kompatibel zueinander! Quasi ein Traumpaar. Das war auch schon vor 100 Jahren so), die auch gerne bloß keine Veränderungen haben wollen, weil das kostet ja Geld! Klimaschutz kostet richtig viel Geld, Strafen aufgrund von mehr Regulierungen kosten potenziell viel Geld, das ist alles ziemlich uncool für so einen “Ewiges Wachstum”-brainwashed CEO. Fast jedes Kind kann nachvollziehen, dass Ewiges Wachstum auf einem Begrenzten Planeten gar nicht funktionieren kann. Aber diese Message kommt bei solchen Elite-BWL-Absolventen ja nicht mehr an. Die sind ja auch keine Kinder mehr. Die kümmern sich um den Ernst des Lebens, also des Geschäfts. Wenn der Rubel rollt, ist alles knorke.

Ein fieses Detail dabei ist, dass die größten sozialen Netzwerke alle proprietär sind und deren CEOs nach Belieben den Algorithmus so tweaken können dass extreme Inhalte oder zumindest konservative Inhalte besonders viel Verbreitung bekommen. Weil die meisten Menschen es verrafft haben, ihre Kommunikation zu verlagern auf neutrale Plattformen (auch das ist unbequem…). Der Durchschnittsbürger wird also dann mit besonders viel auf ihn zielgerichteter Propaganda bombardiert, und die ist mindestens konservativ, eher aber rechtsextrem. Denn diese Inhalte sind auch noch besonders lukrativ, weil sie am meisten Engagement für die Plattformen bedeuten, und wenn die User besonders engagiert sind, und lange auf der Plattform aktiv sind, dann bringt das mehr Kohle ein. Abgesehen davon soll Propaganda ja funktionieren wenn man sie nur ständig wiederholt, und genau das wirkt dann halt auf proprietären Social Media Plattformen. Das ist wahrscheinlich der Hauptgrund, warum die Jugend immer weiter nach rechts rückt und dann auch rechte Parteien wählt - weil sie so viel Propaganda ausgesetzt sind auf Tiktok, X, und Co.

Und auf diesen ganzen Haufen obendrauf kackt Putin dann noch seine russlandfreundliche Propaganda, die einzig und allein das Ziel hat, die westlichen Demokratien und die NATO zu zersetzen indem er aus den Durchschnittsbürgern solche macht, die extrem rechte Parteien wählen. Denn wenn der Westen schwach und gespalten ist (Spaltung der Gesellschaft steht übrigens als Punkt 1 im geleakten AfD-Strategiepapier), profitiert Putin davon massiv und kann seine größenwahnsinnigen Gebietsansprüche langsam vorantreiben. Mal abgesehen davon, dass Putins “Werte” auch noch gut kompatibel sind mit den “Werten” von rechtsextremen Parteien (Größenwahn, Diktatur ist geil, unbeliebte Personen gehören unterdrückt, …).

Demgegenüber stehen die meisten Wissenschaftler und wirklich normale Leute, die gerne noch eine lebenswerte Zukunft hätten, insb. für ihre Nachkommen, und führen dafür ins Feld… naja… die Wahrheit halt. Und rationale Vorschläge wie wir objektiv aus dieser ganzen Misere rauskommen könnten. Aber die Wahrheit geht in dem ganzen Müll da oben literally unter (ja - das ist auch ein Mengenproblem, wenn 9 von 10 Dingen Bullshit oder Propaganda sind, dann kommen die richtigen und wichtigen Messages einfach nicht mehr an bei den Zuschauern) oder interessiert den Durchschnittsbürger nicht. Und reiche Konzernbosse auch nicht. Und rechtsextreme Möchtegerndiktatoren auch nicht. Deshalb: weiter mit Vollgas in den Kollaps.

That’s not so bad. The good news is that the game gets easier the farther you go. The endgame is the easiest part. The bad news is that you still need to know about a lot of the enemies, items and potential situations that can occur and how to handle them. The most important thing is to gather what’s commonly called an Ascension Kit, which is an approximate list of items you pretty much should have in order to win the game because then you can deal with literally every enemy and situation (unless you make a stupid mistake). So you need to know what those items are, how to get them, how to identify them in the game and not waste them, and things like that. You can get somewhat far just through sheer luck but you’ll never make it through if you play blindly (don’t read any tips or spoilers) or just rely on luck.

In Nethack, you can fully complete the game as a pacifist, although it’s VERY hard and the game is already hard to get into to begin with. In that case, you are only allowed to indirectly kill enemies by having your pet(s) kill them or by using spells which make enemies attack themselves. Or simply by avoiding enemies completely. Playing as a healer or wizard is the easiest option, but still very hard. The game rewards this and other conducts (= supported “challenges”) by mentioning it in the very end after you’ve ascended.

The 5090 might most of the time draw like 350W but like many top-end cards (also from AMD) power draw can spike really high and can reach double that even for very short moments. So you need a beefy power supply regardless. For a 5090 in combination with a top-end 16 core CPU I wouldn’t recommend anything under 1200W (so you still have some wiggle room. Power supplies are also at most efficient when they’re not at ~95-99% capacity but at ~80%).

Translation help from Fascist English to US English:

• “activist” = a non-politician whose free speech we don’t like
• “allow all voices to be heard” / “free speech” = extremist/unconstitutional/propaganda speech which serves the interests of the current fascist regime must be allowed, while every other speech will be labelled as being activist/communist/un-American/…
• “defend […] all Americans” = at least the part of Americans which we tolerate or haven’t jailed yet (subject to change)

Some potential optimization opportunities:

• Memory doesn’t need to have RGB lighting (unless you want it for the optics), you can get the exact same thing without RGB for a little bit cheaper. IIRC, the non-RGB model is called “Flare X” or similar, “Trident” is the RGB one. Also, CL32 seems slightly slow… not up to date on this but you can probably get CL30 or CL28 for even more performance. 6400MHz seems OK, there are faster ones but there’s also a trade-off to be made between stability and performance so I think 6400MHz is fine. It’s important to ensure good compatibility with your mainboard. Also, 64 GB is still oversized for just a gaming rig. For pure gaming, you get basically no extra value with 64GB compared to 32GB. You only might need more than 32 GB for workstation-like use cases (video editing for example) and/or when you use VMs in parallel. Unused RAM provides no value and no additional perfomance.

• A CPU with 16 cores could be slightly oversized for a pure gaming use-case as well, in most games you won’t notice a difference compared to the 12- or even 8-core variant instead. Again, higher core count is primarily useful for workstation-like use cases or VMs. Sometimes, the 12core can even be faster for games if it has slightly higher clock speeds for example. You should look at some benchmarks to see whether the 16core provides any benefit for gaming.

• Mainboard: the MSI Godlike is extremely pricey and there’s very questionable, maybe zero additional value compared to a moderately priced one. The most important specs are probably the same anyway. You should take a look at a cheaper option here, unless you don’t mind throwing out money.

• Monitor: If the player isn’t playing any fast-paced e-sports titles I think 240MHz refresh rate is overkill, but YMMV.

• SSDs: not sure if PCIe 5 is worth the extra cash, could also go with PCIe 4 still, they’re slightly slower but it’s almost not noticeable and for gaming only affects loading times anyway (slightly!), it doesn’t affect your performance in actual gameplay. Not sure if WD is a good NVMe SSD brand actually. Consider Samsung or SK Hynix maybe.

AI has some use but it always needs human oversight and the final decision must also be made by a human professional. If you use AI to speed up tasks and you know whether the output of the AI is valid or not, and you have the final decision, then you can safely use it. But if you let AI decide on and execute important tasks basically autonomously, then you have a recipe for disaster. Fully autonomous and mistake-free AI is a naive pipe dream which I don’t see on the horizon at all.

Generally yes but it’s not nearly always so clear cut that one is 100% the offender and the other one 0%. Which is why attention to details, context, sophistication, listening to both sides before coming to a conclusion, etc. Is so important. But guess what kind of things get lost when taking part in such a one-sided blame game on the semi-anonymous internet.

Apps like this but also social media more generally allow for one-sided public naming and shaming of Individuals who probably don’t even know about it. It’s problematic because it can be deeply unfair.

I get that there is also value in women protecting themselves against predators but more than likely most content within the app/service is probably one-sided public blaming and gossiping.

And as we all know from right-wing propaganda, being the first to make a bold claim public and generate headlines with it is very powerful and spreads the message far and wide, whether true or false, and many will just believe it’s true without further investigation.

As an ancient Quake 3 player, it makes me happy to see that Xonotic seems like a really great and even open source adaption of this type of fast-paced arena shooter game. Looks much better than I would have expected. Also, at least Kyle and Spike seemed really high skilled (at least as far as I can guess based on zero game knowledge), comparable to the best Q3/QL/QC players I’ve seen. Didn’t watch everything though, just skimmed through it.

Free: Battle for Wesnoth is really great, I haven’t played it in a long time but it was already great like 10-15 years ago so it’s probably even better today, Nethack (if you don’t mind the starting difficulty and the “graphics”) is also great, VERY complex gameplay but very rewarding if you know it fairly well. Also saw a video of Xonotic today, looks also really good if you’re into fast multiplayer arena shooters (Quake-like). Heard positive things about 0 AD as well (Age of Empires-like). All of these are open source and in the extra repository on Arch.

Non-free but really cheap: Stardew Valley is probably great, I’ve never played it and it doesn’t look like my cup of tea but I’ve only heard positive things plus it’s like #1 or #2 rated on Steam, so it must be really good.

Non-free: Stellaris (got into it recently, great game and well-maintained Linux client (not at all common), much better than I expected, VERY complex and content-rich, quite expensive when you want all DLCs. It’s like a live service game, you’ll pay quite a bit if you want everything, but you also get tons of content). Also, Alien Isolation is one of my favorite single player horror games of all time and it also has a Linux client (which was a surprise for me) but that one is probably outdated and not maintained anymore by now I’d guess (but didn’t look it up) so it might be better to play the Windows client via Proton. I’m not up to date on that though - look it up. Oh, and POOLS also has a Linux client, that’s a great small walking simulator, “Backrooms”-like, very atmospheric and great visual design.

Vegan seit ca. 2021.

While this is “nice”, I guess, I also can’t fathom how naive this generally seems.

X is a proprietary black box and X or L.Ron Musk can change the algorithm literally at will, what they show which persons and when and when not. There is NO time ever where users have have any control over it, and to perform a statistical analysis on an online service blackbox is also kind of pointless because the blackbox can change randomly, at any point in time, possibly right after the analysis has concluded, or right before. I mean it’s not like the blackbox is in your hands so that you can actually study inputs/outputs and get consistent results. Every time you visit any X URL, there’s potentially a fresh blackbox version deployed to you (you don’t know and you can’t know). That makes it rather pointless IMHO. And it’s just as pointless to believe what X claims about these issues. Of course they’ll always claim that they don’t manipulate. And you can never prove or disprove it, because of a complete lack of control over it from the user’s end. So they can do what they want, as long as they do it sneakily enough that no one notices.

For example if this study comes to the conclusion that there was no manipulation during the time of the study, that’s meaningless because it could have happened before and it could happen afterwards. If it comes to the conclusion that there was manipulation at a certain time, then X can always claim that they’ve already “fixed” the issue and then it’s again a new black box and no one knows when the next manipulation is being activated.

The ONLY solution to this is to ONLY use open source platforms where not a single company or host is able to do what they want with the complete service. Or in other words, the only solution is to avoid X and other proprietary social media platforms like the plague that they are. Because communication should not be controlled by any big company.

The only “wins” for this current US regime are negative records: most cruel, most degenerate, most stupid, most racist, and so on. And the “grand prize” for these wins will be war (civil or conventional) plus a spot in history among the worst people ever to destabilize and rule a country.

So unfortunately websites routinely and carelessly lie about basically everything related to data protection stuff. This already begins with the term “technically necessary cookies”. No cookie is truly technically necessary. What they usually mean by that is “we really really want to put this tracking cookie from our ad partners like Google into your browser, and we don’t care whether you want that or not so we just claim it’s technically necessary”. But even if you refuse a cookie prompt, often your choice isn’t respected at all and cookies are created regardless. In fact, many cookies are already created at the very beginning before you make any choice in any sort of cookie banner. Basically this whole ad/tracking industry is a complete mess and no one really cares and it’s just best to completely ignore what sites claim and use technical means to protect yourself at least a little bit because you cannot trust ANY site’s claims regarding that. Most of the time, even the phrase “we value your privacy” is already the very first and biggest lie. Don’t trust what websites claim. It’s pointless, and nothing happens when they violate their own rules or data protection laws anyway. Which they do almost all of the time anyway. This illegality is routine and almost omni-present. Cookies are also far from the only thing that sites can use to track you. They’re just the most well-known method, which is probably why we have these near-pointless laws requiring sites to put up near-pointless banners to annoy visitors with.

So as a user, you should just ignore any of that and completely rely on technical means to protect yourself from any or most kinds of shenanigans websites can do to you. Most privacy-respecting browsers have features that limit what sites are able to do with you, such as cookie isolation which prevents other sites from being able to read the contents of cookies belonging to other sites. Or more general, isolation of any website data, not just limited to cookies. But not every browser has these types of protection. If you use very common browsers like Chrome, Edge or Opera, then it’s likely that you have none of that because the developers of those browsers are companies which profit from the user being more easily trackable through the web.

So the easiest solution as a user is to use a privacy-respecting, well-pre-configured browser like Librewolf or Mullvad Browser, and use uBlock Origin as the only extension with several enabled filter lists. This alone makes you a much harder tracking target. And of course you can safely ignore or block any cookie notices, it doesn’t really matter what you select in them most of the time anyway. Although your IP address is still always a liability with ANY browser, because it can be fairly easily linked to your person and you will expose your IP address with any regular browser, so if you want to browse anonymously you should use the Tor Browser (with mostly default settings and no additional extensions). That means that you won’t have ad blocking protection, but at the same time the site and any ad servers don’t know who you are anyway (you’re just some random person from a random country for them), unless you make a mistake and log into a personally-identifiable account or so. The Tor Browser also contains the most amount of anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting techniques possible. For casual anonymous browsing you should absolutely use the Tor Browser, because with it it’s highly unlikely that a website is able to identify you. Its main disadvantages are that it’s slower, some sites block that kind of browser, and since you shouldn’t add any other extensions you will see ads with it, but your identity still remains protected unless you make a mistake. Still, it should be your go-to browser for anonymous browsing. Switch to your regular browser for when you want to log in to an account with personal details.

There are also 2 types of penis, not sure what they’re called in English exactly but we call them blood penis or flesh penis. Blood penis is quite small unerect but can grow up to multiple times its size and also gets thicker when erected. The majority of men actually have this type of penis. The other type is the flesh penis, where the erect penis is almost the same size than the unerect one. It doesn’t grow much when erect. Both types of course get hard when erect. Since I sometimes see those jokes about small penises in unerect state I assume that quite a few people don’t know of these 2 types and their differences, and if you don’t know this kind of important detail then a flesh penis might look more promising when you’ve only seen it unerect. But, of course, there can still be size differences between different ones. Independent of the type. Anyway, the main point is if you really want to compare penis sizes you always have to do it in erect state, otherwise it’s completely meaningless.

Maybe it works as an excuse when you claim you just wanted to train your own AI model with all those pirated books and videos. But who am I kidding. The reality is that copyright violation, as well as quite a few other things, is only really a crime if you’re poor. This current “endgame capitalism” era we’re in is becoming extra-legal quite fast. Maybe we should start making interactive law books where you can view whether a particular law actually applies to your person or your company, or not. Just to keep up with the times.

This kind of problem will continue to get worse as time goes by. The increasing and more frequent effects from the climate desaster will empty all funds dedicated to it and bankrupt any insurance company. Which means no one will pay for natural disaster damages anymore soon, which means everyone will just sit on the damages without any support and everyone will basically just hope that it’s not their own property that gets destroyed. For common people hit by this it will be devastating, the only ones who don’t have to mind that much are rich people who can instantly relocate to a new property somewhere else.