So literally just now I opened the Google photos app and it came up with a nag screen to turn on auto-backup which I had already explicitly turned off. The message was worded to make it sound like they were doing me a favour and it was difficult to close the banner (I just exited the app because what I needed to do was possible with a less invasive version).
I would not go so far as GP as to say that this dark pattern is better or worse than what Microsoft is doing, but I think it is a fair point that a Google/Microsoft account is needed on the biggest mobile/desktop platforms respectively and their attitude to privacy and user agency is somewhere between laissez-faire and contemptuous.
With Android there does at least feel like with F-Droid, different OEMs, alternative apps, the web and even Other android spins that these aren't quite the lockdown that Windows is, although it's fair to say that in either case you shouldn't really be constantly on your guard for the next way that your operating system is going to try to trick you into giving away more of your stuff to them.
Sure, it's not convenient for normies but you can just download the apk from somewhere and then install it, just like you can do with an .exe or installer on windows.
I agree, the dialogs are getting increasingly frequent and harder to "click" away.
I'm open for suggestions for an open-source Android image gallery app.
Some would say, if you already have a legal, paid-for license to run Windows on a given PC, and you merely want a slightly different version which is older and doesn't add any extra features, that's a lesser form of piracy.
It's using a legit copy of windows and performing a legit activation, no exploits or anything. To call it piracy is the same as me telling you my pin and calling you a hacker when you login to my account, no? Microsoft could fix it, but they don't.
I genuinely wonder why they haven't. Those activation githubs have been around for what feels like forever at this point, and you just activate copies of Windows acquired from Microsoft for free, and they just... don't seem to care?
I have no direct knowledge, but my best guess is that they have significant legit customers using these as an alternative to Microsoft's own Key Management Services. Historically, some stuff like this has even turned out to be used by the company themselves (e.g. a few Steam/GOG releases have been found to use old warez scene cracks, official arcade emulators using bootleg sets from MAME, etc.).
Well, that activation was entirely offline, wasn't it? With the tech at the time, would it really be possible to stop multiple activations? Windows 11 now requires you to log in using email and that you have internet, so they could easily pull the plug on the MAS scripts. Yet they don't.
Proton DB says that 89% of the top 1000 games, 89% of the top 100 and 6 of the top 10 games on steam are rated Silver or above (a 7th is rated Bronze and 3 are broken).
AreWeAntiCheat yet says:
161 games are Supported (42%)
46 games are Running (12%)
3 are planning to support Linux (1%)
147 are currently Broken (38%)
28 (only) are explicitly Denied (7%)
So, many don't but, also, many do. Not everything, not nothing.
To be perfectly honest, anyone approaching Linux from Windows needs caveats so that they can make their mind up for themselves and pick what's best for them. Every distro (and Linux as a whole) has trade offs and things that will need to be considered.
I have yet to have any issues with it and I switched full time to LTSC on multiple devices for about 2 years now, the only minor trade off is if something you rely on is not installed automatically like the Microsoft store.
So when you first launch the Xbox app it will tell you that there are things that need to be installed, but it gives a button to do exactly that.
You also don't get new features that Microsoft roles out, but I don't consider that a trade off and is instead a positive. Bonus I was able to un-install copilot completely from control panel on Windows 11 LTSC.
Proton has massively changed the game. I'd say the time since 2018 has had more advances in usability than the 25 years before it (for "normal" people), effectively making any "you've been saying this for X years" argument moot.
It is only a moot point for those "I feel good to use Linux kernel to run Windows on top" kind of feeling.
While ignoring it is still Windows games that are being written, by game studios targeting regular Windows deployments, and those same studios might even have Android games written in OpenGL ES/Vulkan, that they won't bother porting to GNU/Linux.
But hang on, your original comment was slating Linux for people saying that it was an escape for the past 30 years. It is now an escape for an ever increasing audience and set of use cases, and you're saying that these new people who have to this point not had any issues with running Windows games won't be able to "escape" because they'd have to play Windows games?
I love how you leapt on 'audience' there and didn't want to refute use cases. Also leaning on that '30 year' figure. Funny.
The Steam Deck has sold millions of units (increase in audience) and now supports 89% of the top 1000 games at Silver and above (increase in use case). 2% is indeed an increase from where it started in 2018, but it goes to show how many Windows machines are out there that the % isn't higher.
I don't really understand your position. You're vehemently against any Windows code or games running at all and want to belittle, minimise or dismiss any progress that has been made. It feels like you're arguing in bad faith.
I mean sure it's not using native APIs, but many developers are specifically targeting Steam Deck to get a Steam Deck Verified label and show up prominently on the Steam Store. So despite developing for Windows, they are doing QA on Linux.
Proton is the only stable and maintained runtime you can target for Linux and it comes with no performance penalty.
Few games actually get more fps than on Windows. What alternative runtime would you suggest and more to the point what problem would it actually solve.
If the game studio actually so much as tests on Proton (or more realistically Steam Deck) that’s great gold medal and as much targeting Linux as you can get.
Demanding anything more is not realistic given current market share, but also again what would you even gain.
The actual threat to gaming on Linux is any form of DRM.
With the increasing efforts from Asus, MSI, Lenovo, and the potential XBox Handheld that keeps being hyped about, let's see how long SteamDeck keeps its relevance.
The Deck is tied into the most popular PC games store, and one with followers so loyal they'll refuse to buy a game until it comes to Steam because they don't want another launcher.
It'll do fine. People don't want to re-buy their gaming libraries for an Xbox handheld and the OS integration for the other devices is pretty poor.
I keep reading this on the internet and I’m fully convinced that this is written by people with powerful machines.
Whenever I try to play a game that barely runs at 60 fps on windows in my basic system it invariably runs in the range of 45-55 fps on Linux.
This would be perfectly acceptable except that it eventually leads to stutters that I never experienced on windows..
Ps. Yeah I tried to troubleshoot this with everything google and ChatGPT had to offer: disable composers, different proton versions, different distros and different desktops environments. The matter of the fact is that there’s an overhead and if your system is barely running it on windows you will probably have performance headaches on Linux.
> Whenever I try to play a game that barely runs at 60 fps on windows in my basic system it invariably runs in the range of 45-55 fps on Linux.
This is not a valid test. You need to compare Linux native vs. Proton rather than (Proton+Linux) vs. Windows. Otherwise you’re comparing at least three things at once.
Yeah I mean if you look at windows vs linux gaming benchmarks on phoronix it's clear there's about a 10% performance penalty. On the other hand there's a 10% penalty using bitlocker on windows vs almost none on linux, so it evens out if you care about privacy. Also you know for certain MS isn't keylogging everything you type to some godforsaken MS service, and the developer experience on linux is miles better.
What useful things could a smartphone do during school hours.
You have a literal internet connected computer with any function you could care to name, interactive touch screen display, full sound with headphones being provided by the student.
The situation we have now is that there are few apps that are suitable for a classrooms, even fewer which teachers would be allowed to use and none which are endorsed or included in the curriculum[1].
Meanwhile students phones have no central management unless by parents using a specialist app, are not automatically locked down to appropriate use during school hours, meaning they just get used for messaging and inappropriate stuff.
There is no reason that a students phone couldn't become the world's most amazing educational tool the moment they walk onto school premises - the world just hasn't caught up yet and probably won't for a while.
[1] I don't know this, but I'm sure they're providing iPads or something if they're actually doing anything around this.
with [1], you already said it. iPads serve that function. Have these really improved classroom education, or is it just a more convoluted, fidgety way to get through the materials?
> There is no reason that a students phone couldn't become the world's most amazing educational too
Or, some new, advanced technology exists, therefore, because it is new and advanced, it needs to be applied. This is an affliction.
I think my broader point is that whatever technology has been adopted hasn't had a noticeable effect and that's due to the usage, attitude and hence supporting infrastructure to adopt them.
GP asked what use a smartphone would have, implying that it could only ever be bad. I'm just arguing that this isn't necessarily the case, not that we should adopt it or even that adoption is likely.
Fair enough, I follow. but we've had about 20 years now, and it doesn't seem like any improvements have materialized, if anything, there's only negatives with kids being on their phones during school time. it's ok to axe to put this one on the loss pile, and move on.
That comic lost some meaning in recent years, you could put out some decently accurate bird detection model by following a 30 mins YouTube video, it was even one of the first exercice in some ML youtube courses (can't remember the channel).
But it still retains some meaning. Using a glob pattern to wildcard files with the same name vs. running an image entity classifier across 1 to n images in potentially recursive directories. In a command line utility for displaying files.
Maybe more in the sense of the Unix philosophy: The detection should happen in a separate tool of which the output filenames can then be piped into lsix.
well sure. But if you were building this for actual usage, you'd have a separate cron-style tool that would monitor your picture folder (and its subdirectories) for new images. Feed aforementioned image into Llava or any number of image classifier APIs, embed classification information as IPTC data into the image file. Then give the CLI flag for the search tool the ability to do partial word search on metadata within images.
I would not go so far as GP as to say that this dark pattern is better or worse than what Microsoft is doing, but I think it is a fair point that a Google/Microsoft account is needed on the biggest mobile/desktop platforms respectively and their attitude to privacy and user agency is somewhere between laissez-faire and contemptuous.
With Android there does at least feel like with F-Droid, different OEMs, alternative apps, the web and even Other android spins that these aren't quite the lockdown that Windows is, although it's fair to say that in either case you shouldn't really be constantly on your guard for the next way that your operating system is going to try to trick you into giving away more of your stuff to them.