A desktop environment is just a GUI program that your computer boots into by default. SteamOS just boots into Steam Big Screen Mode by default instead, and you can launch into the desktop afterwards. Plasma is the program that Valve chose to use for their desktop environment.
If you wanted to, you could skip all this entirely and launch your games or programs directly from the terminal without ever loading into your desktop.
I’d say the Deck isn’t stealing customers from the Switch because they are filling different market niches. The Switch is a portable console with portable Nintendo games made for it. The Deck is a portable PC that gives you access to your entire Steam library on the go.
The GabeCube, however, could absolutely pull some customers of the PS5 and Xbox depending on the pricing - especially with Microsoft’s demands that every part of the Xbox division see a 30% profit margin. The Big Three isn’t going to become the Big Four, but I think it will make some ripples. Steam running in Big Screen mode is effectively a console interface, and it plays Call of Duty just like the consoles. And with Sony finally moving away from console exclusive games, it means that Steam has almost full parity with the libraries of both of the consoles going forward while also offering access to all kinds of indie games that the consoles don’t. The GabeCube can play Call of Duty and Ghost of Tsushima, but it can also play Ultrakill and Bloodborne Nightmare Kart, and neither Xbox nor Playstation can say that.
Edit: And this doesn’t even mention old games. The Steam library has access to all kinds of old games that never get ported to new consoles when a new generation releases, meaning that its library grows in step with the consoles but you can still play your old favorites without having to keep buying them again or keep your old consoles around.
Many years ago, I worked at a fish market and one of the guys who sold us fish during the summer won a big fishing tournament one year where he got a brand new truck and a bunch of money. When they asked him what he was going to do with the money, he said, “Keep fishing until it’s all gone.”
It has been proven over and over that this is exactly what happens. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but ChatGPT was strictly limited to training data from before a certain date because the amount of AI content after that date had negative effects on the output.
This is very easy to see because an AI is simply regurgitating algorithms created based on its training data. Any biases or flaws in that data become ingrained into the AI, causing it to output more flawed data, which is then used to train more AI, which further exacerbates the issues as they become even more ingrained in those AI who then output even more flawed data, and so on until the outputs are bad enough that nobody wants to use it.
Did you ever hear that story about the researchers who had 2 LLMs talk to each other and they eventually began speaking in a language that nobody else could understand? What really happened was that their conversation started to turn more and more into gibberish until they were just passing random letters and numbers back and forth. That’s exactly what happens when you train AI on the output of AI. The “AI created their own language” thing was just marketing.
Approach Moshe Safdie’s company about building Habitat 2027, 60 years after the scaled down compromise was built:
The first thing I add after an ad blocker on a fresh Firefox install will always be Shinigami Eyes: a crowd-sourced system for marking transphobes and allies across the web.
I don’t either, I think it’s super weird and creepy, but most people that I’ve talked to about it have never even thought about it before, and the people around my parents’ age consider it “patriotic.”
This makes sense as I was in school before 2010, so my experience would’ve been from before more schools started adopting them. And my dad would’ve probably been in school in the 50s, so when he was wearing a school uniform with a tie everyday, it was absolutely a rich private school thing.
Counterpoint: Americans would say the same - “I suppose it probably seems strange to an outsider but in a country where it’s the norm for every school, it didn’t feel like that to me at all.” - about pledging their undying loyalty every morning to the flag on the wall of every single classroom starting at the age of 6.
Not to say that it’s the same thing at all, indoctrination on that scale is completely different from a freaking school uniform, but the base is the same - it doesn’t seem weird because it’s what you were told was normal.
As an adult, I can see some good arguments for uniforms in this thread, but as a kid, I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance in middle school and swore that nobody could make me wear a tie like my dad had to for school. One of the big things that bothered me about school dress codes as I got older was the inherent misogyny on display. Some rules from my high school dress code, for example:
During Spring/Summer, boys may wear t-shirts and shorts. Girls must wear pants or skirts. Skirts must be below the knee. Girls are allowed to wear t-shirts, but only if the sleeves are at least 4 inches long and must be a unisex crew neck shirt. Shirts with a v neck or that show the collarbone are too revealing and are not allowed.
Also in the US is the issue that school uniforms are universally a private school thing, and so create a divide of elitism as a clear signal of those whose parents are wealthy enough to send their kids to a private school vs kids who go to public schools. Those divides start at home, though, and I don’t know how much a school uniform does to deprogram that kind of rhetoric from your parents and their friends.
So long as they aren’t the ones getting turned into the new fountain on the campus, they couldn’t care less.
Ironically, one of the things that I’m moving to Linux for is the gaming performance boost that I’ve heard some people report due to the lack of Windows bloat and telemetry running in the background all the time.
Bazzite, the Linux version I keep seeing people recommend for gaming and people new to Linux has had a big boost in users in the past 6 weeks or so, apparently, that people are completely attributing to Microsoft.
As another LGBT person who grew up during the advent of the internet and learned that there were words for things I had felt for years thanks to the internet (despite living in a very liberal area), I completely agree with both of you.
However, I want to make one counterpoint that reframes these movements to where I think these people are coming from: People like us here on Lemmy, who are aware of FOSS projects and the like are a minority group.
I see these groups as a reaction based on the belief that you either have to deal with the corporations or give it up entirely because nobody else can offer what they do, and the corporations need us a lot more than we need them. They’re effectively a general strike against the nightmare of corporate walled gardens that the internet at large has become in order to force a correction in the ecosystem, and I think if these groups were made aware of the alternatives out there, we’d probably see a large swing in adoption.
If I’m working, I don’t have the energy to do more than a toasted bagel with cream cheese. On the weekend, especially if I manage to sleep in, I might do something like an omelette or egg sandwich of some kind. If I have the time, I might go big and break out a can of corned beef hash, cook that up and poach an egg in the middle of it, then have that with some toast.
If it was easier to get and keep fruit without it spoiling before I can eat it, I’d probably throw in a mandarin orange or something as an easy to eat side to my usual bagel, but American supermarkets make it hard to buy small batches of food more frequently rather than making a trip twice a month to stock up on groceries.
I think a lot of Americans simply are too sleep deprived to either have the time or energy to ingest anything other than caffeine in the morning.
If you wanna try something different but really good, a lot of breakfast places near me have a variant of Eggs Benedict usually called something like Irish Eggs Benedict, which replaces the ham with corn beef hash. Add a side of home fries, and you’ve got something that’ll really stick to your ribs and keep you full and happy for half the day.
makes me wonder if people will go with whatever works well enough and for the least amount of effort.
This has always been the case. People want something that just works right out of the box, and familiarity will keep a lot of people from considering anything else.
I’ve been talking for a long time now with a friend of mine about how sick we are of Windows, and more recently about how I’m planning on installing Linux on a spare HDD I have before making the commitment to getting rid of Windows entirely, and he’s decided to go to 11 despite hating it because he’s afraid of trying something new and having to learn a new system.
And it’s not just a computer thing. People can and will hurt themselves by repeating the same mistakes because it’s the familiar habit and doing something new - even if it’s for your own good - is scarier. Been there, done that, plenty of times.
The public records request filed by Mikkelsen and his lawyer also alleged that Mikkelsen was detained for 18 hours, during which his repeated requests to contact the Norwegian consulate were denied in violation of diplomatic conventions. Mikkelsen also claimed he was threatened with imprisonment and fines if he did not turn over passwords to his device or sign certain documents.
Mikkelsen had planned a months-long trip to the US to visit friends and tour national parks with his mother, he told Hyperallergic in an interview after he returned to Norway in June. However, while passing through passport control at Newark, he was summoned into a room where he said ICE agents asked him if he planned to commit terrorism, belonged to any extremist groups, or was smuggling narcotics.
CBP officers then inspected Mikkelsen’s phone, according to his account of the events, where they found the viral meme of a bald JD Vance and photos of a pipe he said he made in trade school. Publicly, the DHS has stated that Mikkelsen was denied entry because he admitted to using marijuana, which he acknowledges having done twice in places where the substance is legal.
However, DHS’s public narrative does not match what Mikkelsen claims officers told him in the interrogation room, nor does it match documents from CBP reviewed by Hyperallergic.
Officers handed Mikkelsen a document known as an I-877, which is an official sworn report provided by DHS in instances where an individual is denied entry into the US. Mikkelsen’s I-877 states that he was denied entry because he appeared to be seeking illegal employment, which he denies.
Mikkelsen told Hyperallergic that during his interview, however, he remembers that he was told the JD Vance meme was “illegal” and “dangerous.”
Mikkelsen requested a copy of his I-877 in his FOIA request, which the agency claimed it had no record of.
“I’m disappointed in CBP and ICE for not being able to give me the documents that I have a copy of,” Mikkelsen told Hyperallergic. “If anything, it just looks like they are trying to hide something.”
You mean Diesel Knights?
But at least the calculator is designed to combine numbers in the right order. LLMs, on the other hand, could come up with a different answer every time and different models would come up with wildly different answers based on their training data.