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SuperSpruce

@SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip

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SuperSpruce ,

Unfortunately, XOS has already been taken by Infinix, a budget phone brand that primarily sells in Africa, for its own ad-riddled bloated Android skin.

SuperSpruce ,

Why are people downvoting you? I totally agree with you. Firefox has the upper edge (pun unintended) on the backend technology that causes them to resist Google's greedy changes, but acts just like a for-profit company when it comes to the UI.

Look how much pointless whitespace their is on the tab bar. It was so "popular" that Chrome recently came in and copied that change. But Vivaldi just goes its own way, trying to make the most competitive browser it can.

The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates (www.theguardian.com)

Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually....

SuperSpruce ,

For comparison, a single hydraulically fractured oil well uses over 100 times as much water.

SuperSpruce ,

Many large creators post on Nebula, and half my YT consumption has been replaced by Nebula

Microsoft starts bundling Windows 11 with its 'PC optimizer' app in some regions (www.neowin.net)

PC optimizers are not a new concept, and they have been around for quite a while. Nowadays, many consider them unnecessary, but having an official program made by Microsoft that is capable of (allegedly) speeding up your PC may sound quite appealing....

SuperSpruce ,

This PC optimizer app screams of the early adware PC optimizer apps.

Unfortunately, it's Microsoft to blame for it being slow in the first place.

SuperSpruce ,

The Twitter alternative created by the original creator of Twitter

SuperSpruce ,

Reminder that because the Windows 11 taskbar is slower and buggier than the Windows 10 taskbar, it uses much more power due to the extra CPU cycles.

Firefox 126: New Search Data Telemetry, Improved Copy Without Site Tracking, Security Fixes, and More (www.mozilla.org)

Telemetry was added to create an aggregate count of searches by category to broadly inform search feature development. These categories are based on 20 high-level content types, such as "sports,” "business," and "travel". This data will not be associated with specific users and will be collected using OHTTP to remove IP...

SuperSpruce ,

I'm fine with some basic telemetry about how fast the browser runs, but tracking my searches is creepy.

SuperSpruce ,

It also really depends on what "home" is. My current home is a tiny room in a cheap apartment (to save money) with a tiny kitchen, a small living room, and a joke of a dining area. I feel inclined to go to the office despite a 45 minute commute because there isn't anywhere good to spread out and focus on work at home. Plus in-person connections with colleagues is another benefit. I'm currently hybrid with WFH 1 day out of 5.

SuperSpruce ,

One long meandering 6 lane road that makes up the entire city. I'm not even kidding, that's pretty much the optimal solution in the game.

SuperSpruce ,

Three things:

  1. Governments need to regulate exclusive third party content so that the platforms compete on quality instead of just amount of content.
  2. Companies should go back to pay as you use. I hate subscribing to things.
  3. Users should push back hard on new bad things that the corporations do.

After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year (www.billboard.com)

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not...

SuperSpruce ,

I'm just gonna keep exploiting the 3 month free trial with all my accounts. I still have my own local library as well.

SuperSpruce ,

More UI customizations? A few simple settings could go a long way.

SuperSpruce ,

Weren't all the answers already trained on ChatGPT last year?

SuperSpruce ,

Glad I dropped prime 1.5 years ago. I'll never pay monthly for something with ads. If I pay monthly for software, it better treat me like royalty.

SuperSpruce ,

Simple, just buy a new Honda... Motorcycle /s

SuperSpruce ,

It's not about paying for Windows, usually it's included in the device you buy. The real reason why Linux helps broke people is because bloated Windows can't run on the budget PCs they have (and they can't just buy a faster computer)

SuperSpruce ,

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?

SuperSpruce ,

Agreed but much of this applies to 10 only.

SuperSpruce ,

On a related note, YouTube just gave me a pop-up advertising premium again, only this time the cancel button was "No, I like ads."

I was gonna sit back and watch an hour of YT (with ads) but that pop-up rubbed me the wrong way and I didn't watch anything so that I might skew the A/B test in favor of no dark patterns.

SuperSpruce ,

And even on hardware that does theoretically support Windows 11, budget hardware will make the most basic of tasks take forever and lower midrange hardware will feel slow. On most Linux distros and ChromeOS, budget hardware will feel slow (mostly due to bloated websites), and lower midrange hardware will feel quite snappy for the most part.

SuperSpruce ,

Time to short the stock then, if they are not gonna invest in their own future.

SuperSpruce ,

Nailed it. This round of layoffs is not just "trimming a bloated labor force," it's cutting off investment into the future of Tesla as a company, which is a really bad business move when you had an advantage in the past but are now losing it. Turns out not only Musk is a filthy rich a-hole, he's also terrible at keeping businesses competitive. He absolutely needs to resign if Tesla wants to not fail.

SuperSpruce ,

I'm not so sure about Chromebooks not being a threat, at least for people who just want to browse the web. A crappy laptop that Windows 11 will bring to its knees will run ChromeOS well. If people compare the performance of both OS's on an equivalently priced laptop, they'll notice ChromeOS is way faster and buy it. To get the equivalent OS performance of a $300 Chromebook, you need a $1000 Windows laptop.

SuperSpruce ,

Hey, Alphabet!

Want to know how to make a lot more money while being seen as the good guy at the same time, while not even lowering prices or adding costs?

Allow third party apps for premium users that can disable the BS

You will still earn the same amount of money from both free and premium users, while not being a dick. In fact, third party developers would be doing the work for you!

Additionally, having apps that can lower the engagement BS reduces your bandwidth costs!

You'll get a crap ton more paying customers at the same time. I'd even become one.

Tech brands are forcing AI into your gadgets—whether you asked for it or not (arstechnica.com)

Earlier this year, Microsoft added a new key to Windows keyboards for the first time since 1994. Before the news dropped, your mind might’ve raced with the possibilities and potential usefulness of a new addition. However, the button ended up being a Copilot launcher button that doesn’t even work in an innovative way....

SuperSpruce ,

"AI" motorcycles are apparently also somehow hot in trade shows. But the entire purpose of getting on a motorcycle is to get out and ride and enjoy the ride yourself.

SuperSpruce ,

There's a key difference: One is based on just your financial history, only on the numbers. The other is based on everything you do all the time, which is way way way more privacy invasive.

SuperSpruce ,

But does the corporate data collection factor into your FICO score? Unless there's some new scary development I'm not aware of, the FICO score is only based on the following: length and number of accounts, revolving utilization, if payments are on time, and the loans you have made (based on the size and frequency of them).

SuperSpruce ,

If that holds true, then it really is no better than China's social credit system. Somebody needs to regulate this monster before it eats us all.

What are some concepts/mechanics you wish you saw more in incremental games?

This thread is dedicated to sharing mechanics or concepts you’ve found in incremental games that you think deserve more use or exploration. I’d prefer if you limited discussions to mechanics you’ve found in only 1 or 2 games, though I have no moderator powers to actually enforce this so if you really feel like sharing...

SuperSpruce ,

I think the reason why we don't see much multiplayer in incremental games is because incremental games are very much indie projects, and implementing multiplayer is way harder than implementing most incremental mechanics, in both technical and balancing terms.

SuperSpruce ,

Not just paying for the server, but even having the technical know-how to integrate the server seamlessly is very difficult and different from most indie incremental game development, which is mostly just JavaScript number crunching and some basic UI stuff.

SuperSpruce ,

Foongus Amoonguss

(This is an actual pokemon evolution line)

(used for a mushroom-like pokemon that looks like a poke ball to fool trainers into grabbing it)

SuperSpruce ,

Even Apple is falling. Their ad business (yes, they have one) makes billions and is the fastest growing part of the company. The app store is already quite ad-riddled, and the other parts of iOS are geared to get you to subscribe to all the Apple services.

SuperSpruce ,

Okay, then in exchange can I get a UI that doesn't suck?

SuperSpruce ,

Even more importantly, no junk "fOr YoU" or "tReNdInG" in the search.

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    SuperSpruce ,

    More like my #1 reason lol. If Linux wasn't more performant than Windows there would be no way I would become a Linux nerd.

    SuperSpruce ,

    This is what I've been saying for years. Windows 11 is a big step backwards for performance.

    I have a beefy laptop with W11 and a Ryzen 9 5900HX and 32GB RAM and a high end SSD, but the start menu takes up to a full second to open, the File manager takes 2-3 seconds to open and 1 second to "work on" the directory I entered, task manager takes like 5 seconds now, and sometimes my CPU randomly spikes to 80+ degrees C while the desktop is idle.

    On Ubuntu (not known for being lightweight, quite the contrary in the Linux world), there is extremely minimal lag and basic system functions are near instant. I'd use it more if the WiFi was more reliable (my average packet loss is 39% in some frequently visited areas where Windows doesn't struggle at all)

    Also, for work I used a W10 desktop with a i7-8700K CPU and random SSD, and nothing in the OS lagged or was unresponsive. File manager was nearly instant, even when the system was hit with significant load elsewhere.

    SuperSpruce ,

    I found out that if you download PowerToys one of the toys is a better start menu that runs 4x faster and without the web crap. I use it more than the actual start menu now.

    SuperSpruce ,

    Ubuntu is heavy for a Linux distro, because it uses the heaviest DE (GNOME), uses the less optimized Snap packages, and perhaps has other Canonical telemetry or something.

    If you want better performance, try something with a lightweight DE. I have a laptop running Lubuntu (essentially Ubuntu with LXQt instead of GNOME), and it's actually quite responsive, at least for basic system functions.

    Because if you run anything on the web with a 10 year old CPU, it's gonna suck due to the huge web browsers accompanying the bloated websites. Even on a well optimized website, the browser overhead is significant on bad hardware, especially regarding the launch time of the browser.

    SuperSpruce ,

    My battery drains by a negligible amount while my Windows laptop is hibernating. The same laptop battery drains by 2% per hour while on sleep mode running Linux.

    SuperSpruce ,

    There are multiple tiers of lightweight.

    "Middleweight": Something like Kubuntu, Xubuntu, or anything with KDE or XFCE, or MATE

    More lightweight: Lubuntu, anything with LXQt

    Super lightweight: AntiX, something with Trinity Desktop Environment or just a window manager instead of a full desktop environment

    Most lightweight: Just a command line with no GUI (barebones Arch maybe?)

    SuperSpruce ,

    For 30 usages though. Good backup if ChatGPT fails to give you a good answer.

    SuperSpruce ,

    I think AI is cool, but I hate seeing it forced on everyone. I also hate programs trying to run on startup without me explicitly saying so (cough Discord Teams Spotify Steam Teams MuseHub Teams Slack cough)

    SuperSpruce ,

    Teams is so garbage that it's actually like 5 programs all called Teams trying to launch on startup. I have no idea which one is the real Teams.

    SuperSpruce ,

    It turns out most people want to socialize with their friends, not some corporate AI constantly trying to sell you stuff. It's way closer to a stuffy car salesman than a friend.

    SuperSpruce ,

    Yep, I've seen screenshots of it. It actually inserts ads into the conversations, hence why Snapchat is trying to push it on you.

    Edit: Here's a source: https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/02/snap-announces-tests-of-sponsored-links-in-my-ai-new-ad-products-for-spotlight-and-stories/

    SuperSpruce ,

    I am currently a happy user of Notebloc Scanner (proprietary, one time $5 fee to remove ads), but I'll go give this a look.

    SuperSpruce ,

    Thanks, I'll look into that! I also recently found an easy way to run local LLMs on my computer, so I can mix and match.

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