Shurimal

As much as I like Firefox/Librewolf, Vivaldi still has the upper hand in UI/UX. Workspaces, more feature-rich sidebar, one-click access to recently closed tabs right there in the tab bar, speed dial, tab stacks and other QoL stuff that makes just enough difference for me that I can’t really daily-drive any other browsers. Until FF reaches feature parity (it’s getting close, but still isn’t quite there yet) I don’t see myself migrating anytime soon. Quess I’ll just need to rely more on AdGuard DNS and Vivaldi’s built-in adblocker if uBlock becomes neutered on Chromium…

Windows 11 is easier on the eyes and easier to use. We took the best elements of Windows 10 and refined them to create a soothing place to work and play.

Nah, no, hiding basic stuff behind bazillion clicks in nested menus deeper than hell is not “easier to use”.

Wake on approach. Lock on leave.

Windows 11 can automatically wake up when you approach and lock when you leave.

Why would I want that on a desktop that needs to do work even when I’m AFK? My PC doesn’t even have a password on it—because if a stranger gets access to it, something has already gone horribly wrong and a burglar seeing my furry pics is the least of my problems🤪

3D spatial sound

This technology makes it possible for you to perceive the sources of sound in games. 3 It requires compatible headphones and is available on both Windows 10 and 11.

I don’t use headphones and I already have a bangin’ good surround sound setup with 18" sub and tactile transducers.

Smart App Control

Exclusive to Windows 11 is Smart App Control. It provides a layer of security by only permitting apps with good reputations to be installed. Only available on the latest version of Windows 11.

Why the fuck would I want that? I and only I get to decide what programs have the priviledge of getting installed and what don’t. I bet M$ will deny “good reputation” to harmless code injection mods for games (SKSE/OBSE et al, ENB) because these are basically hacking while allowing data-stealing privacy nightmares like Discord app.

KDE Connect is awesome. And completely cross-platform, and FOSS.

Child holding a teddybear.
ED-209: “Put down your weapon! You have 40 seconds to comply!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFvqDaFpXeM

Oh, who am I kidding, human cops do exactly the same shit…

DeaDBeeF sort of is similar but doesn’t seem to have the plugins I need to do a proper full-screen 10ft GUI, Facets-like library browsing, surround upmix, DLNA streaming to other rooms etc.

I have to give Krita another try and see if it can import/export .dds, but my impression from playing with it for a few hours is that it seems to focus more on digital painting instead of photo manipulation (which modding textures essentially boils down to). I also have my GIMP workflow down to muscle memory, it only takes me minutes to do eg a recolor or upscale+fake details via sharpening and noise.

At this point there’s just a few pieces of software that keep me on Microshitty’s teat. Foobar2000 being the biggest one—there simply ain’t no good alternative for Linux, and I’ve tried them all. Freesurround, actual dB scale volume control via Jscript, waveform seekbar, precision spectrum analyzers, modtracker player are just some of the essential plugins, as is ASIO (in addition of bypassing all OS audio stack shenanigans it has the accidental benefit of not only auto-muting , but also auto-stopping auto-playing videos on websites that might slip through uBlock).

Also, Paint.net is so good for converting .dds files. Never got .dds to work properly with Gimp.

Especially with movies, the people who made the thing are already paid by the time it is released. As little as possible. VFX houses are often fucked royally and don’t even break even. Even big-name actors are usally screwed over by Hollywood accounting.

By paying you only feed the leeches who then use their resources to fuck over everyone else.

That’s a very silly morals indeed.

Nice! Too bad they got caught, though.

No sympathy for cryptobros and trading bots.

They’re not jets. They’re ducted fans. Different things. “Electric jet” makes as much sense as “electric V8 engine”.

Downvotes shall list better headphones.

Moondrop, Truthear, 7Hz.

And from the old guard Shure, Ultimate Ears, Westone.

Every female character in The Expanse. There simply were no non-badasses in that show🙃

Named aptly in game files as “Gonarch”.

It also squirted white corrosive liquid on you.

The mini-headcrabs were kinda cute, though.

start using alternatives like lbry and/or peertube

Sure. But actively using YT without paying for Premium and blocking all the ads will affect them more, and if enough people do it, might actually catalyze it to go Twixxer levels of enshittification, which would be just as beneficial for growing the userbase of those alternatives with the side benefit of getting rid of one of the gatekeepers. Fediverse saw a huge growth in popularity following the recent enshittification of Reddit, after all. “Build it and they will come” has a corollary that goes “Destroy it and they’ll go elsewhere” :)

Dude just watch the ads so people get paid…

I don’t care. Hypothetical incomes of other people are not my problem or obligation. Next you’ll be saying I must eat at restaurants at least three days a week and attend all concerts and drama plays in my town because otherwise people don’t get paid.

You’re not automatically entitled to free content

Correct. First I need to manually set up my tools, and then these tools get me free content automatically. But I don’t care about entitlement; it’s a spook. It’s all down to risk-benefit. The risk of blocking youtube ads is basically nil, but I benefit by wasting less time and not having loud, imbecile and completely irrelevant audio-visual crap annoying me. I also pirate all my music, movies and shows. Because I don’t care. I like free stuff. Copyright is a spook, anyway.

Vivaldi with uBlock Origin here. A simple refresh of the page makes the popup go away, often for the rest of the session. For me, it’s YT without ads as usual. I might need to clear uBlock cache and refresh filter lists to make it work even better. There’s also a Tampermonkey script for blocking the popup, but I haven’t tried it yet.

As a side note, I’ve seen a lot of talk about boycotting Youtube. There are 3 things to consider with this:

1. Boycotting YT will give Google exactly what they want, getting rid of the “freeloaders” who don’t pay for Premium and block ads.
2. Boycotting YT will hurt small creators who don’t see much ad revenue (if any) anyway. Views and likes are what make small creators visible to the algorithm, if these drop off, their reach will diminish.
3. Boycotting YT won’t affect big creators with sponsorships, healthy Patreon community, millions of subscribers and views.
   Best way of defiance here is not stopping to use YT, but on the contrary, generating as much traffick to YT as possible while blocking the ads.

->relativistic kill vehicle.

You see it coming, omae wa mou shindeiru.

Only thing more scary would be triggering a vacuum decay event. But these tend to backfire quite spectacularly.

Perfection.

Didn’t have time to go into details in my last post. I think the most important traits of technofeudalism are regulatory capture of the government and ubiquitous rent-seeking—“you’ll own nothing” (I highly doubt in the “…and be happy” part).

The big corpos have realised that extracting value is easier and more profitable than creating value. Hence subscription everything including heated seats and better acceleration in cars, platform economy (Uber, Air BnB et al.). The latest Unity fiasco is also an example of a company trying to extract as much value from the game developers as possible, and it will not be the last attempt at this.

What makes technofeudalism possible is the IT infrastructure of the world (hence “techno”). Uber-like platforms and subscription services for hardware were not practical half a century ago, but ubiquitous Internet access, smartphones and DRM makes it easy today.

In short, just like the peasants in the old feudal ages had to pay to the lord to have a place to live and make a living off the land (and realistically had nowhere to go to where this was not the case), in technofeudalism you have to pay for your techno-lord corporate middlemen to have a place to live and be able to use the tools (software or hardware) you need to make a living with no realistic alternatives due to regulatory capture.

Technofeudalism is the logical evolution (I’d say end stage, but I’m not sure it can’t get even worse) of capitalism. That’s what happens when the 0.1% own 90% and decide to turn it up to eleven.