That part wasn’t aimed directly at you; It was more to head off the inevitable responses that always happen any time the argument gets started. Sorry if it sounded snarky.

Proton isn’t an emulator; It’s a compatibility layer. All it’s doing is taking the Linux<>Windows stuff and converting back and forth. There’s very little efficiency loss, (and some games even run better because Linux tends to be a lighter OS.)

The big issue with Linux is anticheat. Some of the largest anticheat companies have chosen not to support Linux, or the game devs have disabled Linux support on their end. But to be clear, that’s not a choice Linux has made; It’s a choice the game devs made to exclude Linux players, because they want kernel-level control which Linux won’t allow.

Gaming on Linux used to be a big hassle, as it basically required devs to write a native Linux version of the game. But nowadays Proton does that translation for them, and is so lightweight that it’s negligible. If you have any doubts, check out protondb, which is a published list of game compatibility ratings. Gold will play just fine in 90% of cases. Platinum is going to be seamless. Native means there’s a specific Linux version. And Steam Deck Verified simply means the devs have set specific controller/aspect ratio/frame rate/etc settings for when the game is booted on a Steam Deck. Even if it’s not SD Verified, the rating will tell you whether or not the game will boot and run.

SteamOS is just Arch with some tweaks. Game compatibility isn’t even determined by SteamOS; Proton is doing all of the heavy lifting. So as long as the game works with Proton, it’ll boot on Linux.

Nvidia GPUs are absolutely still a problem on Linux. It’s a problem that can be worked around, but it will require working around.

It’s honestly one of the biggest issues with Linux imo. If we want to encourage widespread adoption, it becomes really difficult to persuade people when they find out their GPU is essentially incompatible without major massaging. Especially since Nvidia is the most popular GPU seller on the market.

And the “it’s so easy, people just don’t want to learn” messaging doesn’t actually encourage long term use; If someone has been told that changing is easy but immediately encounters issues, then you’ve just made yourself an untrustworthy source of information in their eyes. They’re more likely to go “welp I guess it’s not for me” and just stop trying. If they’re at least presented with a realistic use-case and some of the most common pitfalls, they’ll be much better equipped to actually soldier on and learn. Just like teaching someone to ride a bike, going “it’s so easy, just keep peddling” does nothing to help when the person is laying in the grass with a scraped knee.

He also liked it shaken because that waters the drink down more. Meaning he’d be able to sip it without getting as drunk.

But the sad reality is that Ian Fleming was likely just an alcoholic who wrote his own vices into his characters.

My current tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory is that’s exactly what they’re banking on. They’ll draw the trial out until right before the midterm election… Then Trump will use the resulting riots to declare martial law and cancel the upcoming midterms, so he doesn’t lose control of congress. After he has cancelled the election, he’ll make a final push to clean house, and will start ousting liberal congress members by accusing them of being riot conspirators.

The Mangione Riots will be Trump’s Reichstag Fire.

This is actually why I’d be in favor of AI generators creating a hash database of their generated images. If legalized, they should be required to maintain records of the images they have produced. So that if those images appear elsewhere, they can be verified as AI generated.

It would be a monumental effort to actually get the AI companies to agree to it willingly. But that’s why legislation exists.

The fact that you don’t need to actually supply any real CSAM to the training material is the reasoning being offered for supporting AI CSAM. It’s gross, but it’s also hard to argue with.

Yeah, this is basically the crux of the issue. When you get into the weeds and start looking at more than just surface-level “but it needs CSAM to make CSAM” misconception, arguments against it basically boil down to “but it’s icky.” Which… Yeah. It is. But should something being icky automatically make it illegal, even if there are no victims?

I hate to make the comparison (for a variety of reasons) but until fairly recently homosexuality was psychologically classed as a form of destructive/dangerous kink. Largely because straight people had the same “but it’s icky” response whenever it got brought up. And we have tried to move away from that as time has passed, because we have recognized that being gay is not just a kink, it’s not just a choice, and it’s not inherently dangerous or harmful.

To contrast that, pedophilia has remained stigmatized. Because even if it passed the first two “it’s not just a kink/choice” tests, it still failed the “it’s not harmful” test. Consuming CSAM was inherently harmful, and always had a victim. There was no ethical way to view CSAM. But now with AI, it can actually begin passing that third test as well.

I don’t know how I feel about it, myself. The idea of “ethically-sourced” CSAM doesn’t exactly sit right with me, but if it’s possible to make it in a truly victimless manner, then I find it hard to argue outright banning something just because I don’t like it.

This is really the biggest hurdle. To be clear, I’m not arguing that being an active pedo should be decriminalized. But it is worth examining whether we’re basing criminality purely off of the instinctual “but it’s icky” response that the public has when it gets discussed. And is that response enough of a justification for making/keeping it illegal? And if your answer to that was “yes”, what if it could help pedos avoid consuming real CSAM, and therefore reduce the number of future victims? If it could legitimately help reduce the number of victims but you still want to criminalize it, then you are not actually focused on reducing harm; You’re focused on feeling righteous instead. The biggest issue right now is that harm reduction is very hard to study, because it is such a taboo topic. Even finding subjects to self-report is difficult or impossible. So we’ll have no idea what kinds of impacts on CSAM consumption (positive or negative) AI will realistically have until after it is widely available.

The latter is essentially how they did it.

Basically, the TV station didn’t run the high powered broadcast towers directly. They simply beamed the signal over to the tower (using directional antennas) to get amplified. All the hacker did was overpower that (relatively low power) directional antenna signal. It would require being in closer proximity to the tower, but it would at least allow you to get the signal amplified using existing infrastructure, instead of building your own amplifier.

My guess is that they died before the statute of limitations expired. This happened in the 80’s, and there’s plenty of time between then and now for something to have happened to them.

Do yourself a favor and soak them in some vinegar water after you get them home. About a 1:4 mixture of white vinegar to water. The acidity will kill the mold spores that cause the berries to go bad, and it won’t be strong enough to affect the taste after you rinse them.

I usually just dump about a cup of vinegar into a mixing bowl and top it off with water when I’m getting groceries in. First thing I do is drop the berries in to soak. Then I put away all of my groceries, which gives the berries a few minutes to soak. Finally, I dump the bowl and give the berries a quick rinse with the sink sprayer.

I haven’t had strawberries go moldy since I started doing it. If I forget about them in the fridge for a week or two, they’ll simply dry out instead.

Discord is not a good replacement for support forums. Discord isn’t searchable by search engines.

Historically, if I had an issue with a product and I googled “[product] [issue]” I’d be met with a support forum post, with someone describing the same issue. I could read the thread to find how they resolved it. I don’t actually have to interact with the post at all, and I don’t need to ask the same question again. For most (decent) forums I don’t even need to make an account just to read the post.

Discord throws that all out the window. Now I’m met with a “JoiN OUr dIScoRd SerVEr to GEt suPPorT” page. Nothing is searchable via a search engine. And Discord’s server searchability (even in the app) has always been, at best, absolute dogshit. You already need to know exactly which text thread things were posted in, (because you can’t search the entire server at once), and you need to know exactly what was said, (because there’s no fuzzed search terms).

So 99% of the time, you just end up asking the same question that has already been asked a hundred times in the past, and now you need to wait for someone to respond. It also puts a lot more strain on the support staff, because they’re answering the same question a hundred times instead of just the once in a forum.

And don’t come at me with the “but Discord recently added a support forum feature where people can start threads and save the conversation for later” bullshit. That’s a band-aid, at best. It still isn’t searchable via search engines, so it means the above issues with Discord’s search function still apply, and the forum function is essentially useless as support forums.

Lastly, why the fuck should I be forced to join another server just to get support? What if I don’t have a discord account? What if I live in a region that Discord doesn’t support? What if I just plain don’t want to clog up my server sidebar with dozens of servers that I have only visited once? What if I just really hate the fact that your server has been configured to push notifications for every single message by default? What if I just fucking want to google my issue, and get an answer without any further effort?