God bless the uBlock devs.

Alternative front end to medium, with no JS. Read the same article on scribe.

Yeah, it’s still worrisome. This makes Firefox a lynchpin for whether ad blocking works for the foreseeable future on the whole web.

God bless you, Chad 3rd Party Web Scraper! 🫡

Honestly my first olkb was the Planck from DROP. A 40% keyboard where the numbers and symbols are each on their own separate layer. The defaults on the Voyager were very clunky IMHO, so I simply switched them to the defaults of the Planck, including moving the home row up one whole row. This left a few spare keys as the Voyager is a 55 key, so I simply added two Super keys instead of one as well as a few other duplicates.

I’ve also heard of some interesting workarounds for using Vim with Colemack/Dvorak. It is funny, when I first discovered OLKBs, I kept encouraging people to use them, and I still do. Same with Vim. But ultimately I get why people don’t. I’m so used to this workflow now, going back to a standard keyboard feels clunky and slow, and I’d imagine my setup feels awkward and alien to most if not all other people.

But it’s uniquely mine and I can type 100wpm if I am on a roll with his setup.

The clamps are a hilarious accident that happened to work for me. I was experimenting with different ways to get that near 90° angle shoulder width apart, and this was the3 soluuon I haphazardly stumbled on.

Glad you like it/find it entertaining! I wish you well in finding what works for you! ✌️

Lol, yeah I know it’s definitely not for everybody.

Nah, didn’t go that far (yet), just heavily edited a qmk_firmware configuration. So yeah, I’ll admit I didn’t exactly write my own keyboard firmware.

I have the soldering tools ready for when I have time to learn. Sadly I only have time for software lately, and hardware/firmware has had to take a back seat.

Customizing your workflow around the keyboard is a helluva drug though! If it weren’t for Vim being configured for QWERTY out of the box, I’d probably configure a COLEMAK or DVORAK setup as well.

I’d encourage you to go as far down the rabbit hole as you’re comfortable, the learning curve can slow you down initially, but the dividends pay off in the long run imho.

Here’s a pic of my current setup. The keyboard is prebuilt (Voyager ZSA), just with custom firmware. Couple clamps keep it vertical for ergonomics.

I’ve been on BSPWM for nearly 2 years now. Custom scripts and keybindings all over the place. My workflow is so customized and keyboard centric with this TWM. Vim bindings in the terminal, Vimium in the browser, and a heavily customized Neovim Text Editor with Espanso Text expander global keybindings every where… Not to mention a 55 key split Ortholinear Keyboard with custom firmware…yeah… My hands almost never touch my mouse except to game.

Truthfully, the way I cut out most of the noise everywhere is to search using duckduckgo lite on Librewolf/Mull browsers. That with ublock origin (and block cookie banners), noscript, and redirection extensions to nojs alternatives like libreddit, scribe, invidious, along with putting various bypass paywall scripts into ublock’s filter list. It all just adds up to an overall better experience with fast, to the point results.

Yeah, Fedora has the closest I’ve seen to this, as they do a rolling release distribution cycle, but with a major update every year. It’s still too hands on for the average Windows user from what I’ve seen.

That said, in the particular case of the Fedora upgrade, I’ll admit I get lazy in the other direction. If I can accomplish a task from the terminal, 99.9% of the time, I’ll do it simply because it’s exponentially faster.

Yeah, I generally agree with all sentiments. TS is handy at times, but working with poorly written .d.ts types from 3rd party libs is Hell.

The MS acquisition of Github is sad imho. Using alternatives is nice. I’ll eventually get around to self hosting a Gitea or cgit instance.

Ubuntu, Mint, and PopOS are probably the closest to a mainstream Linux Desktop from what I’ve seen, and perhaps one day one of those really will take the mantle and push the Linux Desktop forward into the mainstream, but I just don’t see it. I do hope I’m wrong though.

Ah BSD, the OS that probably doesn’t have an NSA backdoor in it because it’s just not worth their time, lol.

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On X11, Nvidia is pretty close to plug n’play (unless you install multiple kernels, but even then it isn’t so bad). Wayland has been a stuttery mess for Nvidia for a while now and there’s a long standing issue up that hopefully will be resolved in 550 release.

That said, linux desktop environment developers will likely have to adjust a large amount of environment variables (more than they probably have already) that thus far have had to be set by the User by hand. One has only to look at the Hyprland docs on setting up Nvidia to see the extent to which the bulk of the configuration is set on the User as it stands right now.

Like Dupli-Kate in Invincible (hive mind/can merge back together)? Or like Robert Angier in The Prestige (separate clone/entity)?

If the former, I’d probably use it to sow chaos amongst my political opponents (fascists) for as long as they exist.

If the latter…meh, maybe the same, but far more sparingly, as the creation of a new consciousness rather than just an extension of my own implies a far more unpredictable outcome of my/our actions.

There’s more than a few reasons why Linux can’t make the jump to holding a dominant position in the desktop market.

One is simply preinstallation. For companies (and therefore the general public) to adopt the Desktop Linux, they’d need it simply to be installed for them, with a Desktop Environment like Gnome or KDE.

Secondly is updates. As much as Linux users tout the control they have over when and how updates take place, and how much Windows users will always complain about having to update their systems, until system updates on Linux are made automatic (or at least given the option to be made automatic), there cannot be a mainstream Linux Desktop. This means updates that happen very much like Windows, no administrator/sudo password, just happens on reboot regularly.

The reason for this is mainly that the average user would never update unless forced, and then when something inevitably breaks, they are left, as always, frustrated that their computer just didn’t work as expected forever without any upkeep, understanding, or updates.

Lastly is support. And this is multifaceted. By support I mean software support by companies like Adobe. I also mean a much farther reaching swath of random devices that literally plug and play like on Windows.

As an aside, I’ll also say that since there is a move towards Wayland, there also needs to be a No Configuration Necessary way of running Nvidia on Wayland. This is less a Linux issue, and more a Nvidia one, but until pretty much any and all hardware works on Linux the way it just works on Windows, this sadly affects Linux Desktop adoption as more and more of the Linux Desktop ecosystem moves towards forcing Wayland adoption.

Finally I’ll say that the Microsoft corporation at large obviously relies mainly on Corporate Adoption of its products and services, and that the Windows Desktop is simply one part of that greater whole. Their approach to competing with Apple and their walled garden ecosystem has been to slowly but surely create their own, its just so much larger you forget there are walls. They have done this by absorbing more and more of the tech ecosystem either by acquisition, invention, or otherwise. Examples ot this include Bing and All Search Engines that Use it, the pushing of TypeScript into JavaScript Development, the predominance and proliferation of VSStudio/VSCode in modern software development, their heavy involvement with OpenAI and aggressive pushing of AI products/services, their acquisition of Github and subsequent further expansion of influence over software development and distribution, and much much more.

Despite the privacy invasion, enshittefication of the user experience, and their various other ways they have mistreated their users specifically via the direction they’ve taken Windows, Microsoft has established itself as THE Desktop, as THE Workstation, and as THE company that comes to mind when the average person mentions “computer”, and the majority of people associate computer related productivity and play with Windows.

For all the advances made to Desktop Linux, especially in recent years, it is unlikely that Linux Desktop adoption will ever proliferate to the kinds of mainstream adoption that its accolades desire. Until Linux (or at least a Linux distribution) can demonstrate what I’ve mentioned above (preinstallation, automatic/automated updates, and wide spread software/hardware support from various 3rd party vendors) along with demonstrating a work flow/user experience that is somehow both familiar to the user and also better than the experience on Windows, then the day of the Linux Desktop will never come.

This aforementioned demonstration, btw, would have to become obscenely apparent to the average every day computer user who just wants to get their work done, play a Video Game, and watch Netflix, all without having to ever even know what a terminal emulator is.

I love Linux, and I think the Linux Desktop is not only a superior user experience, but is just better in general than Windows. But the average user I’ve encountered generally hates their Computer if it doesn’t work as expected 110% of the time. Linux, and honestly computers, will never be able to do that, but the closer the Desktop (and user facing GUIs more broadly) get to creating that illusion of “it all just works all the time”, the more adoption you’ll see.

If that’s the case, why not use searx? I could only see myself using a paid search engine if

1. It demonstrably returned results relevant to my search more accurately than their competitors

2. It was well documented that they respected my privacy and how

3. It showed me no advertisements

4. It doesn’t utilize SEO marketing tactics to adjust its search results

5. It supported !bangs for very fast searching of specific websites and/or other search engines

The glue eating child me sees no problem with this! 😂 Let them eat Elmer’s I say!

I’ll let you know when AI art can evoke an emotion I haven’t experienced before, because that’s what quality art is defined by.

Yeah I’ve got quite a few actually. The hotel I worked at was in the heart of Los Angeles, about a mile north of Skid Row. Additionally, our hotel was also a Private Club, with our clientele including some of the most influential politicians, businessmen, etc. of Los Angeles. On top of all of that, I was one of the few employees who simply worked throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 Pandemic until a few years ago when I finally left to pursue another career. So yeah…plent of stories, in all honesty it’s hard to choose one to tell.

Like I said, the job itself wasn’t all that bad, but I don’t think my experience is exactly the norm for a Night Auditor at a hotel given the aforementioned circumstances I found myself in there. That said, most nightst were quiet and uneventful. I was able to pursue teaching myself how to Code and Program during this time thanks to the sheer amount of freedom and quietude I was afforded at that job, so I am forever grateful I was able to land that position, which I wanted for a very long while, and was lucky enough to finally get it in part because the long term Night Auditor at the hotel retired because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That said, the social dynamics of watching the rich and powerful wine and dine each other, and drunkedly stumble back to their hotel rooms in the early morning, while also having homeless people knock on our locked glass doors every few hours, well… let’s just say witnessing that kind of dichotomy up close and personal changes you. Were it not for me being good friends with the Security Guard and Engineer, I think I would have eventually gone insane or worse, and thank God I eventually left that particular job. I’d still go back to being a Night Auditor if I could get decent pay and have it NOT be at that particular hotel. The job itself usually does not entail the particulars of that specific hotel.

One night, a young nondescript woman came knocking on our glass doors after we had locked up for the evening. Usually the hotel guests know to ring a small doorbell next to the door to be let in, and others (usually the homeless), knock on the doors. This woman didn’t appear homeless (her clothes were not in tatters, she wasn’t disheveled), so I thought perhaps she was a hotel guest that simply didn’t know about the doorbell. She revealed that she was recently homeless and that she was looking for a room. As per company policy, we didn’t take walk ins, and I informed her as much. She then proceeded to tell me that her parents were members of The Club and was there anything I could do to possibly make an exception. Normally I would simply shrug this off as being a grift as desperate people will claim a lot of things to try and make their way through our doors and “get lost” somewhere in our building, but she looked rather scared and, perhaps against my better judgement, I decided to indulge my curiosity. I asked her what her parental figure’s name was so I could reach out and see if they might be able to cover the room charges for her. She gave me her father’s name.

Now, keep in mind, this occurred at around 2AM, and when I typed in the father’s name, he indeed was a long lasting member of The Club. Again, against my better judgement, I called the father to see if I could help this girl out. I got her name and tried to confirm that everything was legit, but of course, that early in the morning, I got no answer.

In the meanwhile, The Security Guard, who I was good friends with, had told me he would keep an eye on the girl as, to put it simply, was a young attractive girl on the side streets of Los Angeles in the middle of the night with no other company, and yeah… they sadly get harrassed rather aggressively in that situation by passerbys. By the time I got done with my phone call and leaving a message for the father, The Security Guard had had to tell 5 passerbys to beat it when they tried to harrass this young girl waiting to hear if she could get a room. I made another judgement call (again, perhaps against my better judgement) and said that while we waited to hear back from her father, she could remain right outside our doorsteps where the Security Guard and I could keep an eye on her and avoid potential future harrassment. I would have honestly done her one better and let her sleep on one of the couches in the lobby, but the security cameras at that point would have documented me blatantly refusing company policy, as oppossed to simply “making the wrong decision” of letting her remain right outside our doorsteps…

Anyways, a couple hours later the father calls me back and confirms that indeed, that is his daughter who he hasn’t seen in years. I ask him what he’d like me to do, and he tells me that they are estranged due to a drug addiction problem she has and he simply has had to cut her off. He told me to do what I thought was best…and I… well I kept my cool while on the phone and thanked him for getting back to me at that early hour and that I’d take it from there…but when the phone call was over I asked The Engineer to relieve me while I could use the bathroom and I went to the back and I honestly wept for a little bit…

Once I had composed myself, I returned to tell the young woman that her father indeed did call but that he was unwilling to help her. I then told her she could stay until one hour before we opened our doors, at which time other staff members would have come in and had they seen her would have told me to tell The Security Guard to have her leave as technically it was loitering… The woman was thankful and did briefly acknowledge that she thought that her father might not help her but she had nowhere else to turn.

The Security Guard kept an eye on her throughout the evening while he did his usual patrols throughout the Hotel, and because she was right by our doorway, I also kept an eye out. The rest of the night was not as eventful, and an hour before our doors open, I went out and gave her a small bag of food and wished her well. I was relieved at the very least that she wasn’t heading towards Skid Row when I saw her head out, but it was still a chilling experience I’ll never forget.

Normally something like this wouldn’t have affected me so emotionally, but it was just the way each of the bits of this poor woman’s story unfolded that I just… empathized… or at least sympathized. I, at least on a cognitive level, got where the father was coming from, not letting her “take advantage” of him again, but it nevertheless felt so wrong. She’s his daughter… and she needed help.

Anyways. I know you probably wanted a story that was more interesting than depressing, but that’s just one that really stuck with me from that point in my life there. I don’t think that’s a normal experience for a Night Auditor to have, so I wouldn’t take my experience as a reason to dissuade anyone from taking the position, but you asked for a story, and so you got one.