• 0 Posts
  • 146 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle
  • I’m not the person who brought git up. I was just stating that work is work. Sure, git is doing something useful with it. This is arguably useful without the work itself being important. Work is the thing you’re complaining about, not the proof.

    This solution is designed to cost scrapers money; it does this by causing them to burn extra electricity. Unless it’s at scale, unless it costs them, unless it has an impact, it’s not going to deter them.

    Yeah, but the effect it has on legitimate usage is trivial. It’s a cost to illegitimate scrapers. Them not paying this cost also has an impact on the environment. In fact, this theoretically doesn’t. They’ll spend the same time scraping either way. This way they get delayed and don’t gather anything useful for more time.

    To use your salesman analogy, it’s similar to that, except their car is going to be running regardless. It just prevents them from reaching as many houses. They’re going to go to as many as possible. If you can stall them then they use the same amount of gas, they just reach fewer houses.

    Compare this to endlessh. It also wastes hacker’s time, but only because it just responds very slowly with and endless stream of header characters. It’s making them wait, only they’re not running their car while they’re waiting.

    This is probably wrong, because you’re using the salesman idea. Computers have threads. If they’re waiting for something then they can switch tasks to something else. It protects a site, but it doesn’t slow them down. It doesn’t actually really waste their time because they’re performing other tasks while they wait.

    Let me make sure I understand you: AI is bad because it uses energy, so the solution is to make them use even more energy? And this benefits the environment how?

    If they’re going to use the energy anyway, we might as well make them get less value. Eventually the cost may be more than the benefit. If it isn’t, they spend all the energy they have access to anyway. That part isn’t going to change.


  • Proof of work is just that, proof that it did work. What work it’s doing isn’t defined by that definition. Git doesn’t ask for proof, but it does do work. Presumably the proof part isn’t the thing you have an issue with. I agree it sucks that this isn’t being used to do something constructive, but as long as it’s kept to a minimum in user time scales, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

    Crypto currencies are an issue because they do the work continuously, 24/7. This is a one-time operation per view (I assume per view and not once ever), which with human input times isn’t going to be much. AI garbage does consume massive amounts of power though, so damaging those is beneficial.









  • Just lying again. You’d have to go and search what words to type in first.

    Lol. No. If I know the name of the package/application, then for me it’s just "sudo packman -S [name]

    I don’t know what you aren’t understanding about this. All 3 OSs have package managers that function similarly. What I’m talking about is when the software is not available in the package manager

    There is a package manager for Windows (WinGet I believe), it just isn’t commonly used, and definitely not by casual users.


  • It is neither of those things. Objectively.

    Objectively, huh? This is beside the point that was being made, but you’re just trying to be obstinate. I can have a package installed by the terminal before Discover (the GUI for installing packages) even opens because it takes so long. Objectively it is faster. Subjectivity it’s easier for me.

    The phrase you’re looking for is “can’t be arsed”…

    You may be right, but it appears that both are common and people aren’t sure of the origin, and “can’t be asked” is potentially the original.

    The problem is not that we “can’t be arsed”, the problem is that it’s an unnecessarily convoluted and unintuitive process.

    And going to a website to download an executable to install a specific piece of software, which you need to give permission when executing to get through the firewall because (to your system) it’s just some random executable, isn’t? Then having that executable check for updates when launched and sending you to the website to download a new installer. Are you serious? Do you have Stockholm syndrome? Is Microsoft paying you?


  • It does a lot more than it’s told and you know that. Do you think it’s not running anything you didn’t exicitly tell it to? Did you tell it to install the drivers for your hardware? I doubt it. The job of an OS is to keep your system operating. It handles scheduling and all kinds of stuff. Executing the executable you click on is a small part of it.

    And Linux can’t? Isn’t that the whole thing about Linux and open software is that it can be made to do whatever you want?

    Ideally, yes. Whatever you want. Not whatever bad actors want.

    Here’s a question for you to consider. What is an .exe on Windows? Does that file extension do anything or is it just a string of character tacked on the end that the system assumes is safe to execute? Can it execute other file types? (The answer is the file extension doesn’t do anything. The file is data, and any file could be an executable regardless of the extension.)


  • That’s not how you install stuff on Linux normally. For users like you who refuse to learn new methods, you should use you app store. That might be called Discover on your distro or maybe something else, but it’s probably there. You then search for the application and you’re done. It’s the same concept as Android (because they’re both Linux and sensible and are using a package manager).

    Alternatively you can use the terminal to search using the package manager and have it install it from there. I find that faster and easier than using a GUI, but the GUI option is there and dead simple and easy for people who can’t be asked to learn how to use the most basic tools on their computer.






  • From their FAQ: “Do you have a desktop version? A desktop version is actively in the works, and already in internal testing phases.”

    It looks like you can download the pre-built applications for all of them though, including Linux. You probably just need to use chmod to let your system know it’s allowed to execute it.

    …why wouldn’t it be the “real one” on their website?

    I meant the website.

    …no, they update themselves? Have you just never used anything other than Linux? It’s hard to imagine how you would not know this unless you hadn’t.

    No they don’t… They tell you if there’s an update and then you have to do it.

    Other than the pop-ups telling you you need to update every 5 minutes?

    Mine doesn’t. I’m on Garuda. It just has an icon on the task bar.


  • It looks like GrayJay only has an android application, with a desktop one in testing. I’m assuming you have to compile that yourself because it’s in testing. You aren’t supposed to be using it if you can’t compile it from source. Just run the android one in an emulator if you need it on desktop. That’s the same thing you’ll need to do on Windows.

    You know how to install programs on windows? You download the .exe, double click the file and it installs itself, every time.

    Yeah… You have to go to their website, hope it’s the real one, download the .exe and install it. Then to update it you have to do the same thing. On Linux you just tell your package manager to install it and then you’re done forever. It’ll keep it updated and you never have to think about it. The fact Windows apps are required to check online for updates and then you have to open it in a browser and download and install it yourself is the most garbage experience. You’re just used to it.


  • You keep implying Windows has ease-of-use on its side. That is just blatantly not true. I don’t know a Windows user that hasn’t had to edit registries, for example, and that’s a pain in the ass. Windows is just a piece of shit that people stepped in so long ago they stopped smelling it. They don’t pay attention to how bad it is to work with because “that’s just the way it is.” The one benefit is the software mentioned above (with just a vague notion of “some software” when the vast majority is fine), though again most work with a VM if Wine isn’t enough. Support is an issue of getting users there though. If people keep assuming that what you’re saying is true they’ll believe you and not try it. If they switch the software developers will start targeting Linux.

    Playing old games is also often really painful on Windows, and requires a lot of hacks. On Linux I’ve had a very good time with that honestly. Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky, but Wine with Proton has made the experience with old games pretty easy.