Depends on the price point. Obviously, it’s not going to be competitive with a $2K gaming rig. But if the price is right, I might get GabeCubes for my kiddos as their first “desktop” computers. They should run CachyOS flawlessly, since it’s also Arch based, so it will work great as a desktop computer and a gaming rig.

My midrange computer from 3 years ago should outperform it, I would hope. If not, then it’ll be priced out from what I’d consider buying.

You mean the person who posted 3 hours after me?

But, clearly, a Google Home or Amazon Alexa needs cloud connectivity to function. And short of Stop Killing Games regulations forcing companies to release software to keep purchases functional after server shutdowns, there’s going to be no alternative when they shut down the servers.

But where do we draw the line?

A smart fridge should obviously keep working without cloud connectivity, since cloud features aren’t relevant to its core functionality.

A spyware house-scanning vacuum robot, on the other hand, that stores video of your entire house on web servers “to map your home” may not have the processing power to model the home based on its surveillance video recordings. So, is it reasonable, then, that these break when servers go offline?

Without any regulations, the answer is just “consumers can go fuck themselves”, which clearly isn’t a good answer.

Good point. I remember seeing one about a monitor that can give edge-of-screen glow to indicate proximity of enemies in LoL or DOTA2 based on minimap information.

Exactly. There are two methods that bypass kernel-level anticheat fairly easily, and there isn’t really any way around them.

You can run the game in a virtual machine, with cheats running at the hypervisor level. This level is more privileged than the virtual machine’s kernel, and can thus read or modify the active program without detection.

The other way is to load the hack into the bootloader, so the cheat loads before the kernel and, again, can thus be in a more privileged permissions state.

The only effective solution is to detect cheating server side, or change the game engine so cheats don’t work (like loading all models with no line of sight behind the player, so wall hacks and modified game models don’t matter.

You’re joking, but the reverse of that is essentially how early retirement works. Funding a 30-year retirement costs almost the same as an infinite retirement, due to the effects of compound interest. So, if you can increase your income while keeping your spending low, you can afford to retire very early and live off investment income forever.

Yeah; the response should be that a “reject all” button must be displayed next to the accept all button with equal prominence, and define prominence to mean the same size, with similar contrast to the accept all button and clearly labelled.

Exactly. The American 2-party system is between right and alt-right.

That would be amaze balls, but hard to see happening in reality.

How cool would it be if Steam split* into a non-profit, giving rebates back to developers for platform fees collected in excess of costs (including generous salaries for their employees, of course) with directives to make the platform as good for gamers and developers as possible?

One can dream.

• I’m assuming a split because game development and sales don’t really mesh with a non-profit in the same way. Hard to make competitive multiplayer-only live-service games (let alone The International for DOTA 2) and loot crates your business model that way, at any rate.

How does someone beating a game on “story” mode reduce your enjoyment of beating it on “nightmare”? I don’t get it. We can have both in the same game; isn’t that just better?

(Assuming we’re talking about single player, obv.)

Eh… Even better to tax wealth or increase income taxes at higher tax brackets.

It’s a shame that the Liberals backed off increasing capital gains inclusion above $10K (iirc?) to ⅔ instead of ½. That would have made a big difference on its own, and the cost to implement that change would be very low, presumably—people are already responsible for calculating their capital gains; this would just make it a 3-step calculation instead of a 2-step calculation.

Sorry, I thought the context of that quote was clear:

I was referring to raising a contrasting political opinion in defense of Albertans, as that’s the context for this entire discussion.

Nah bruv. There’s a world of difference.

4. Upvote and Downvote Responsibly

Upvote: Content you find useful, interesting, or entertaining.
Downvote: Content that is off-topic, unhelpful, or violates community guidelines—not just because you disagree with it.
Why it matters: Misusing the voting system can lead to valuable posts being buried.

What’s the fucking point of comments at all if anyone who raises a contrasting opinion is downvoted into invisibility?

I haven’t been keeping score, but everything OP said matches what I’ve noticed. I used to come here on my Beehaw account and literally couldn’t see the downvotes since Beehaw ignores them, but since I switched, the mass downvoting anytime anyone from Alberta posts is very noticeable. More broadly, people seem to largely be doing one of the shitty things I left Reddit and moved to Beehaw for: using the downvote button as “disagree” instead of what it should be: “not contributing to the conversation”.

I wish more instances removed downvoting; it just accelerates the move to an echo chamber, furthering polarization. I honestly don’t understand what they add.

If it’s hateful/prejudiced, then report it for removal. If it’s incorrect, then ratio them in the comments with your thoughtful response.

There’s no contradiction there. This broke over the summer: Microsoft Admits: US Law Supersedes Canadian Sovereignty — Microsoft representative says US CLOUD Act comes before other country’s sovereignty.

CachyOS is what I installed a couple of months ago and it’s been great. The only major challenge I’ve had so far have been with my Windows 11 VM which I need for work. For anyone who doesn’t need Windows-exclusive software to work (Excel 2024, in my case), Linux is easier to use than Windows… But it does have a bit of a learning curve if you need to install specific things.

Another example: Omada Controller is needed for my wifi mesh network. Took me a while to figure out that I need to use Podman or Docker for it (after several failed attempts at installing different versions from AUR.) But once I figured that out, it was easier to get running than the official software was on Windows. I think 1 app to install from Cachy Hello (Podman) and 2 commands in the terminal to get and run the container in Podman. (I even ignored the instructions to use Docker and it worked 100% smoothly on Podman on the first try.)

All my hardware just works without manually installing drivers. Updating almost everything on the system took 1 GUI command a few minutes to run, then less than a minute to reboot. It mounts my old Windows drive no problem.

And it’s so fast. No random slowdowns for Windows search indexing, antimalware executable, “System”. No hours spent needing to debloat and reconfigure Windows 11 to hide all the bullshit… It took me longer to configure Windows 11 in my VM than it did to set up everything in CachyOS.

That said, I’d only suggest CachyOS to someone who can tinker and wants/needs cutting edge (gaming stability/performance improvements, in my case). I’m leaning towards an immutable distro for my wife’s laptop—old hardware, and won’t be used for gaming. Maybe Fedora Kinoite? Windows 10 runs like shit on it, now, even though it used to be plenty fast.

Re: your last paragraph:

I think the future is likely going to be more task-specific, targeted models. I don’t have the research handy, but small, targeted LLMs can outperform massive LLMs at a tiny fraction of the compute costs to both train and run the model, and can be run on much more modest hardware to boot.

Like, an LLM that is targeted only at:

• teaching writing and reading skills
• teaching English writing to English Language Learners
• writing business emails and documents
• writing/editing only resumes and cover letters
• summarizing text
• summarizing fiction texts
• writing & analyzing poetry
• analyzing poetry only (not even writing poetry)
• a counselor
• an ADHD counselor
• a depression counselor

The more specific the model, the smaller the LLM can be that can do the targeted task (s) “well”.

There are, of course, open source licenses that don’t allow for commercial use without a license.

Also, there are lots of industries that need guarantees about the software, and even CC0 open source software doesn’t come with those guarantees; those come from a commercial use and support contract.

It’s appropriate to say that.

Absolutely, unequivocally not. No. By doing so, you are trivializing their experience.

You’re doing it again, mate. What is being heard by your audience is that your sound sensitivity is as important as (or more important than) this woman being fired at and grabbed by secret police in front of her children.

There are orders of magnitude separation between those levels of trauma. Those children will never be the same, nor will the mother.

Frankly, fuck your sound sensitivity. Contextually wildly inappropriate to complain about, compared to the severity of the situation.