Can you please elaborate on the security layer that flatpak adds? Some commentators here suggest Flathub is not secure.

I actually upvoted the comment because I agree that silencing voices (which aren’t harassing or abusive) is a bad thing, regardless of what opinion they are expressing. But downvotes aren’t the same as admins banning you based purely on difference of opinion, let’s not conflate the two. This thread is about the latter, while downvotes are just another form of free speech.

Congrats! Java is a good language to learn, and it’s gotten a lot better over the years. The tooling and the ecosystem are very mature. Enjoy your newly found super powers!

Amen, exactly.

While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.

This is a very rosy eyed statement. The “soft” power is the visible part, just the tip of the iceberg.

Agreeing about Firefox, Linux and Twitter. Like, seriously agreeing, without sarcasm.

Finally Windows users have a legit reason to use the command line! /s

Blockchain mathematically guarantees trust… for info stored on the blockchain. What guarantee do you have that this info matches things that happen in reality?

If you say: we need a social contract to ensure people update the blockchain, then I say: that defeats the purpose of the heavy lifting you need to mathematically guarantee info on the blockchain is genuine. Let’s just have a social contact to pay the artist when appropriate.

I don’t see what other way could exist to keep the blockchain and reality in sync.

Ok, ok, hold on - what’s being sold here? A link to a digital asset or something else? If it’s a link, I still don’t get the point. Does that link (or whatever it is) confer some kind of license? What’s the use case for faking this data and why are we defending from this?

If you are referring to scam artists, you are 100% right! Also, some actual artists might have got some money out of it, but I suspect the majority of dough that exchanged hands went to the former kind.

Awesomely described - you have a way with words… mindbleach.

Kali Linux introduced a script to reskin the DE to look as closely as possible like Windows a few years ago.

Thanks, great list!

Yes, that’s what I meant. I take courses using Firefox in desktop mode. The Unity course was one of them.

Yep. I listened to a course on Coursera about Unity game development (alas, Unity), and installed Unity Hub and the engine, and made actual (simple) games on the Deck it self using a keyboard and TV. Then I was able to test play the said games on the Deck right there. Here are the links to the games if you care to check them out:

• https://moormaan.itch.io/solar-system-project-for-the-coursera-unity-course
• https://moormaan.itch.io/2d-shooter-for-coursera

I was on a decade-and-a-half gaming hiatus (job, kids, the usual) until we got the Nintendo Switch early in the pandemic (and it was a saviour for the whole family). When the Steam Deck was announced, I hesitated a day or two (this probably pushed me three to four months in the delivery queue), but eventually realized that this is the device I’ve been waiting for my whole life (a Linux-based gaming hand held which can also be used as a general purpose computer) and ordered it. I had a dormant Steam account with only Civilization V in it (my wife got it for me on DVD when it came out, and that’s when I made the account). Since then, I bought >200 games and >100 DLCs (I started playing some of the lighter ones on my under-powered Linux laptop before the Deck arrived and continued on the Deck using cloud saves), finished multiple games, and felt sleep depraved for months.

Currently, me and my wife are playing Divinity 2 in split screen mode on the big TV. I also use the Deck for online courses, responding to emails, writing documents, surfing, etc. I created a desktop controls binding for handheld desktop mode usage which allows me to change zoom and brightness, bring up the keyboard easily, copy and paste, open the start menu, alt-tab between windows and go in and out of full screen mode etc. all with one or two motions of the controls. For example, I mapped swiping up and down on the left touchpad to mouse wheel up and down, and swiping left and right on it to SHIFT+mouse wheel up and down, allowing me to scroll in all directions using my left thumb. This allows me to use it for reading illustrated books where I need to zoom in and out and scroll across the page.

Steam Deck is a game changer in so many ways.

I’m sorry to hear people having issues with FF. I remember the instability spell it had way back (6, 7 years ago?) but I’ve had zero issues with it on Mac, Linux and Android.

If your wife likes gaming, you can play co-op on the said TV! The dock is somewhat expensive, but any USB C hub with power in and HDMI out will do. We have a thin keyboard with the mouse pad built in and two blue tooth controllers - voila! For optimal play on large screens, you should run it in Desktop mode. For gaming, I still use the Big Picture mode for Steam to be able to navigate to games with the controller, but with the keyboard and mouse, you can use it for anything really. I’ve responded to school emails, done online courses, even built small games in Unity (did a course on it), all from the comfort of my armchair and big TV screen.

Steam Deck is so versatile, you’ll love it!

We should. Yes please.

I’m a long time Mastodon user, and I’ve observed multiple cycles of user influxes (usually caused by some unpopular decision at Twitter) followed by slow but steady decline as these new users got frustrated, disappointed, attacked or something similar. Each wave however did leave a portion that stuck around. I can’t tell you whether Mastodon or Lemmy will “succeed”, but it’s clear by now that both their respective user bases couldn’t even agree on the definition of success.

This might sound like a negative, but if you look at corporate social media which has a pretty clear vision of what its own success looks like (is this fair?), it might also be partly positive. Also, while success might be hard to define and agree on in the Fediverse, I think that these networks are more resilient to total failure than traditional social media (though again, this statement hides some implicit assumptions).

Ultimately, I’ve learned to stop worrying about this. People will talk about what they want to talk about, and this will continue to change and evolve. Lemmy needs better moderation tools (as demonstrated by the recent CSAM attack), but I believe it will get them in time. If you want to talk about something different on Lemmy: do! Just post it, or create a community. It might not explode over night, but it might catch on.

Mastodon and now Lemmy are the only social media I actively use now (permanently deleted my Twitter account on the day the Tate interview was published “exclusively”, but was less active there for years) , and I feel the better for it. I’ve observed tremendous progress in the Fediverse during the past six years and it’s very encouraging in the long term.