I’d be highly surprised if Wayland actually has a protocol for applications to just type across other applications, we barely even have global shortcuts (it’s getting there but reaaaaaally slowly).

KPXC might be able to get around it by using whichever method ydotool does (by faking a device AFAIK) - probably needs root to do this though, and it would also need to implement the global shortcuts API to be able to respond to a key bind I believe.

So perhaps a bit of column A and column B.

Strange! I quite like Ventoy, but I was a bit cautious to recommend it originally - I’ve seen some distros just flat out not work with it (I just picked up an old Thinkpad and Bluefin would not work via Ventoy for example), and while I assumed Mint would probably work, I couldn’t be sure.

I’ll definitely remember that for the next time I see someone installing Mint though, so I appreciate you letting me know what fixed it!

Hmm, that’s quite an interesting one. The:

Failed to start MokManager: Not Found

Leads me to believe that this is indeed something Secure Boot related (or rather, the system looking for files related to secure boot that aren’t being found). Given that you were able to boot it initially, and then it stopped after booting back into Windows, I suspect some shenanigans here possibly from Windows. When you were freeing up disk space, did you use Windows’ partition manager (I think its just called “Disk Management”) at all and modify any partitions?

Just to confirm, is it just Mint that doesn’t boot, or does Windows also not boot? One of the nicer things about UEFI is how you can have multiple boot loaders installed, where as back in the (regular) BIOS days with MBR, only one boot loader could be installed.

That is all to say, try entering your PC’s boot menu (so the same menu you initially used to boot the Mint USB), you should have multiple boot options from your PC’s drive - though Windows’ boot loader usually identifies itself as “Windows Boot Manager”. If you choose that option (or if its not “clickable”, you should be able to switch the order so that its first - then reboot normally), does it at least boot back into Windows?

Well for one thing, playing online games (that aren’t F2P) on PC does not require me to pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of using my own internet connection that I already pay for. That is the most odd subscription to have to pay for - doubly so on Switch where most games of their FP games are ironically P2P, last I’d heard.

I also like being on an open platform where my games will generally continue to follow me as I upgrade. The only one who actually holds even somewhat of a candle to this is Microsoft with their Xbox backwards compatibility program, but there are no guarantees with that. If I had to pick up the PC I used in 2007 to play Portal, I’d be pretty upset given how hardware degrades over time (especially in the realm of handhelds - ie batteries). If I want to play the Nintendo Wii version of Animal Crossing however on an official supported Nintendo console, I’d have to buy another Wii given that when I moved out I didn’t steal the Wii from my other siblings who were still growing up. Thankfully I can emulate it on PC (such as my Steam Deck), but I wouldn’t want to gamble on emulation being possible, similar to Xbox’s BC program.

The money spent on the hardware in the PC ecosystem also go further than just playing games. I work from home, and am able to use that same hardware to do my job. Funnily enough, I thought I was going to end up having to dock my deck to do a shift due to a failing drive - meanwhile I can’t even open Spotify on a Switch to listen to some music. If I even tried that on a NS2, Nintendo wants to permanently brick the entire device, no thanks.

So no, I don’t need a “Haha! I can have this game and you can’t!” to justify a hardware purchase. There are plenty of reasons for me to justify my purchase of PC hardware that won’t just be used to harm me.

I mean, sure - but if you really don’t trust Apple to keep their word, then it wouldn’t matter if their Health app was FOSS or not. iOS itself is still (and probably forever will be) a closed source operating system. That gives them the power to do anything, including hijack the data from FOSS apps.

I have zero interest in Recall, but I thought it was already done on-device? IIRC it always was that way, which is why it’s only available on new computers containing dedicated “neural coprocessors” I believe was the term.

Now given that it’s closed source, you have to trust that they aren’t silently sending data back to themselves - which is where my problem lies, I don’t trust them in the slightest.

Of course, no worries! For the USB route, I can provide some instructions just in case you don’t already have them (it looks like a lot, but I promise it only looks like a lot! I’m known for being quite verbose). If you end up with questions on any of this, I’m happy to answer 'em:

• Download the ISO for the distribution that you want to use, for Linux Mint Cinnamon as was mentioned earlier, that can be found by selecting the mirror closest to you over at https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=319

[This next second step is skipped by a lot of people, however, it’s best to get into the habit of actually following through with this one]

• Typically, once the ISO is downloaded, most distributions will give you something called a “SHA256” hash, this is a unique long string of characters that is unique to a file and it allows you to verify that the file you’ve downloaded is exactly as they intend to provide (both as a “someone hasn’t tampered with it from the download source” and “to ensure the file downloaded correctly”) - if even a single byte of the file changes, then it causes the entire SHA256 hash to change. Since I don’t have a specific tool I use on Windows that I can vouch for, I’d point towards the PowerShell Get-FileHash command to do verification with, I’ll expand more at the end just in case you do want to do this [1].

• Then it needs to get “burned” onto a USB drive, which is a bit different from just dragging the ISO file onto the drive. There’s a lot of utilities that can do this for you, my favorite is balena etcher because it is compatible with the three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, macOS) and its incredibly simple to use. Plug in your flash drive, open balena etcher, it will ask you for the ISO file, then the flash drive, and finally a “Start” button. Keep in mind, all data on the USB drive will be wiped after starting this - back up anything important you have on the USB drive!

• With the drive plugged into the computer, reboot/start the computer and usually there will be an onscreen help text at the very start indicating a few keys that have different operations, generally one will be called “Boot Menu” (or along those lines - unfortunately its different for each mobo manufacturer, so I cannot be more specific than that - its usually either F2, F12, or DELETE/DEL), press that button a few times quickly and you should get to a screen that gives you some options, and one of them will have your USB drive in there (so long as you had it plugged in when the PC was booting - if you just plugged it in at this point, it usually won’t appear, so in that case just do this again)

From here on, it should just boot up [2], and most distributions, including Linux Mint will just have an install option on the desktop - so long as you don’t enter that and walk through it, it won’t actually make any changes to your PC’s drive, allowing you to test drive the distro. Just be aware that some things might be a bit slower, since it is not a full install.

[1]: I just installed PowerShell on Linux to test the Get-FileHash command so that I can make sure I explain it correctly here, definitely not something I expected to do today ha! You’ll need to open PowerShell, Windows 11 I believe uses this by default in Windows Terminal - Windows 10 you might need to search “PowerShell” in the start menu. Then at the prompt, type Get-FileHash (there is a space at the end of that), and drag the ISO file onto the Terminal window so that it automatically types out the full path to the file, then hit enter. You should get some output that looks like this:

The Hash bit is the important part, and you’d compare that against the SHA256 hash text file that Linux Mint (or your chosen distro, most of them do have it somewhere next to the downloads) and make sure that it matches up. You can copy the hash from the windows terminal to your clipboard (highlight then right click does a copy, IIRC), then in the notepad that opens from the sha256sum.txt use Ctrl+F and paste the terminal’s hash into the find dialog, it should come up with an exact match and that saves you from having to look at each character individually (now in theory you really only have to compare the first 4 or so characters and the last 4 as its extremely rare to have those line-up while the other characters don’t, buuut just for the sake of being proper - this is how you’d do it proper). An exact match means you’re all good to go, but if it doesn’t match then that generally means that the file didn’t correctly download (or isn’t the file that you’re intended to have by the developers).

[2]: If it doesn’t boot, its possible “Secure Boot” is getting you. You can disable (Note: warning up ahead) this in your PC’s “Setup” utility, which is another key at boot-up, though again due to each motherboard’s BIOS being different, it’s hard to provide you the exact instructions as to where its at. Linux Mint supports Secure Boot from what I’m aware of, but if you’re trying a different distribution that doesn’t support it (and are on a relatively newish computer that has it enabled) then this can stop it from booting. As a warning: Verify whether your PC is using BitLocker first before disabling Secure Boot, if it is, make sure you have the recovery key - as BitLocker might be tripped by toggling Secure Boot, and not having the recovery key if this occurs could result in having to do a complete reinstall of Windows, and losing the data within it.

To add on to this, if you don’t have an old PC/laptop around, you can also try out practically any Linux distribution in a VM! Tools like virtual box are quite easy to setup.

You can also run most distributions on a live USB without it actually modifying your system, and can give you a better idea about hardware compatibility.

Kind of. You could only open the menus IIRC when you were not in a game, can’t recall the exact key bind though. At least, this was the case when I tried replicating the gaming mode session on my PC (I haven’t actually used a keyboard on my deck either). It was quite strange.

Jesus christ, that is absolutely disgusting. Texas has plenty of issues they should actually be working on.

I’m glad I managed to get out of there years ago.

As far as I’d heard, Apple’s licensing only permitted GPTK to be used to evaluate games and their porting potential, and that they prohibited actually shipping games with it (whether this is just applying to the MAS or whether it was actually a licensing term within GPT I’m unsure).

Of course, I can’t find a concrete source on this, and perhaps it changed. The download, which I assume has the license with it, is locked behind having an Apple Developer account it seems.

I can’t say that I’ve heard of them, no. I don’t have any need (or desire) to do any sort of identity verification within any of my own personal projects (and I have not been involved with anything of the sorts at my workplace). Because of this, I don’t have any insight or thoughts I can provide on them unfortunately.

In the context of Fediverse administration (or any service that you run yourself), even with a service that “handles it for you” I still personally wouldn’t want to step into any of it.

I highly doubt it, one that required PII to sign up would be very unlikely to have many users (especially in the current climate, so to speak).

And from the admin side, that sounds like a nightmare to deal with.

As long as it is done properly and honest, I have nothing against a “Pro” and a “Contra” article.

Neither do I, personally. Though I am certainly less than inclined enjoy an article where the author is oddly preachy/“holier-than-thou”, sayings things such as you’re not a “real” programmer unless you sacrifice your health debugging segfaults at 3AM or have done the handmade hero challenge (certainly an interesting series to watch, but one that I have zero interest in replicating). Yet the author accuses copilot of having a superiority complex. I cannot say for sure, however I would assume if the article was in favor of AI rather than against, then there would definitely be comments about exactly this.

The overarching tone of the article seems like if it were written as a direct comment toward a user instead, it would run afoul of beehaw’s (and surely other instances’) rules, or at the least come really close to skirting the line - and I don’t mean the parts where the author is speaking of/to copilot.

No, because since it’s only a third party app implementation, tags wouldn’t follow if I go from my phone to my desktop or any other device. It also just seems kinda… Strange?

Do you keep a journal of those you meet in-person? No judgement if you do, but if your reaction to that question was “Eww, no!” but also do user tagging I would be very curious as to what the difference is for you.

Anyways, for problematic people they either get blocked or banned (the egregious ones) which by nature of it being a first-party feature is already synced.

According to another user in here, blocking on Mastodon actually works. So seems like it is possible to do in the Fediverse.

I was not aware of this, but their implementation of how they do this does bring up the limitation I mentioned. The other user cannot see your posts only if you are on the same server:

If you and the blocked user are on the same server, the blocked user will not be able to view your posts on your profile while logged in.

I actually thought blocks were public already.

They’re not, well - the operator of your instance could go into the database and view it that way in the same way that they can see your email address. But aside from someone who has database access to your instance, blocks are not public. What is public is the list of defederated (“blocked” so to speak) instances for an entire instance (this can be viewed by going to /instances of any instance), which might be what you were thinking of?

And personally I don’t see how it would be an issue if people that I haven’t blocked can see who I’ve blocked.

How exactly would you enforce that, though? If your blocks were public, all the person who you’ve blocked would need to do is open a private browsing window and look at your profile to see that they’ve been blocked.

If we’re looking at blocks as being a safety feature, I would think that having your blocks broadcasted to every single instance would be classified as harmful and a breach of your privacy. This is why although an instance that you register with has to have your email address that you signed up with, they don’t broadcast it to all other instances (same with the encrypted value of your password) - because otherwise it would effectively be public.

Perhaps I’ve just got the wrong stance, but considering that you can never block someone from viewing your content with an absolute guarantee (if the blocks were broadcasted, you still couldn’t prevent someone from just simply logging out, or standing up their own instance and collecting the data anyways) I would not consider that tradeoff to be worthwhile. Not that my stance has any weight since I’m not a maintainer for Lemmy (or any of the Fediverse software), but I wouldn’t be surprised if that has at least come up to those who are developing the various Fediverse software.

Aside from the rest of the discussion that has already occurred here, I’m not actually sure how this would work from a technical perspective.

You and I are on two completely different instances, if I were to block you, how is your instance supposed to know this in order to stop you from reading my comment?

The only way I could see that working is if the list of users you blocked were federated too, and effectively made public (like votes currently are) - which seems counterproductive to the problem at hand.

Then what happens if you post in a community where someone you’ve blocked is a moderator? Or if you block the admin of another instance? If you can “cloak” yourself from being moderated by just blocking them, that seems like an exploit waiting to happen. As far as I’m aware, on Reddit blocking a user doesn’t hide your comments from them - but they can no longer reply to them, and I assume this is why that is the case. Unless that has very recently changed.

The biggest difference between Lemmy (and all software within the Fediverse - for example, I’m pretty sure Mastodon is this way as well), is that there is not one singular authoritative server. Actions like this need to be handled on all instances, and that’s impossible to guarantee. A bad actor running an instance could just rip out the function that handles this, and then it’s moot. I mean, they wouldn’t even need to do that - they’d have the data anyways.

You could enforce it if both users are on the same instance I suppose, but this just seems like it would only land with the blocking feature being even more inconsistent.

I’ve been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks, so gaming has been very sparse… But, the other day I picked up “The Slormancer” which is an ARPG created by a team of two indie developers.

I absolutely love it so far! Plays fantastic on the Steam Deck too (and really almost feels like it was made for the OLED Deck). I only have three and a half hours so far in it, but it’s very much giving me “Just one last round” vibes, which are my favorite kinds of games.

How is that the case? I’ve got pretty much zero experience with decompiling software, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone who does say that before. I genuinely can’t imagine that it’s easier to work with say, decompiling a game to make changes to it rather than just having the source available for it.

I suppose unless the context is just regarding running software then of course it’s easier to just run a binary that’s already a binary - but then I’m not sure I see where decompiling comes into relevance.

I don’t see how that’s going to work out well. That’s asking to end up with a mess that you’re just going to have to rewrite anyways.

I do not even have a complete hatred for AI like a lot of folks do, but I don’t trust it that much (nor should anyone).

You’d be better off with an actual deterministic transpiler for that (think TypeScript -> JS but the other way around I suppose), not something with a ton of random variables like an AI.