Thanks! I went and followed the discussion link the other guy posted. I saw one concern — the handling of voting. But someone/some people are going behind a lot of those comments and saying they fixed it based on user feedback. So that’s good. I also feel I understand the two (Lemmy and Piefed) and their relationship a bit more.

If it sounds like I’m a bit eager to learn, it’s because I like to help others, but to do that I have to understand things first.

So let me see if I understand you correctly. The “one I’m on now” you refer to in the third paragraph, meaning dbzer0, is an instance of Lemmy (along with others) that are federated (loosely united) together in the same feed.

You’re on piefed.social, so you’re federated with dbzer0 and the other Lemmy feeds. So it’s not like you’re on a whole other federated social network like Bluesky (which is more like Twitter whereas Lemmy is more like Reddit). But it has different programming, so you can access more/different features from your end than I can on mine, but we still have access to the same communities?

Still kinda struggling to understand how fediverse stuff works.

Thank you! Subscribed to both and found a few things to sub to in the second one.

Thank you! I’m mostly treating it like “Reddit but for left leaning people” and enjoying learning the differences.

I’m doing my part! Just joined a couple days ago. Thought I could stick with Reddit but it got too far to the right for me. They crossed a line I can’t ignore, but I like the format, so I’m here. I knew Reddit was going to be winding down soon so I didn’t put as much effort in. I’d like to start a couple communities here, whereas I wouldn’t have tried over there. I just hope the toxic people who run the communities there don’t see what I’m doing and try to invade. I mean we could use the numbers but not the toxicity — though I feel that that comes with any influx of new users.

Thanks I guess? Surely Mac and Linux users can be friends or at least allies against Windows. Linux comes from UNIX which macOS is based on so they’re very similar, only one is FOSS — which I suppose is the point — and the other is not. But another commonality — Macs and PCs can both run Linux.

Yep. The kids born in the late 80s/early 90s were my little buddies, kids, who kids my age, would look after. Just like the kids born in the late 60s/early 70s would look after us. But now, I work with people that age, and we’re all just old. Like you’re still young in your 20s, you hit 30 it starts to be over for you as far as doing young people stuff. I have friends in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and I identify with all of them age-wise. 60-65 and up I respect but I think of them as “older and wiser.” Younger people (20s) seem like they’re too young to relate to. We’re cool, but they’re a generation apart.

As far as generations go, I’m technically GenX, but I identify with most of GenX and older Millennials. I feel like we had a lot of the same experiences. I don’t really buy into generational divides anyway. They’re fine if you’re in the middle. When you get closer to the edge and start mashing the names together, I feel like you’re admitting the groups are not that distinct after all.

I switched to Mac after my old Asus laptop went out. I figure why bother with a PC laptop, it’s not gonna game and let’s see what the fuss is about. Love my MacBook Air. So then our desktop dies and I give my wife 3 options. A Mac, a cheaper PC, and a more expensive PC. She’s Android, figured she’d want to stick with Windows, but she picked the Mac! So happy. I mostly game on Switch and Xbox these days so that’s fine.

I keep feeling like I left Windows at the right time.

A little, but none of us are young anymore. ‘79 here. Love being able to claim the 70s though I don’t remember them.

I’d have to ask how old this system is. Ours was black, made by Kenwood, and had a wooden cabinet. Tinted glass door. Tape player was a dual front loader. That looks like a CD cartridge loader. We had that too. Our cartridges held six discs and they swiveled out.

Wasn’t mine, it was my mother’s, and she still has it. It still works. The doors on the tape deck have snapped off (we were rough with them) but you can still snap tapes into it and they play.

I remember when my mother got it. She’d just gotten divorced, had a bit of money, walked into a Circuit City (this woulda been like 1989?) and asked for the best stereo they had. And I think either she or I asked about Sony, because I remember the guy saying Sony was for people who want people to think they have an expensive stereo. Kenwood was for people who wanted a good stereo. I don’t know how true it was. Maybe he just wanted to make a commission. I think she paid a couple grand for it. I don’t recall. I didn’t pay for it. I bought my Super NES from that same Circuit City though, and I paid for that out of my allowance. $150. I didn’t bring the tax though. My mother did cover the tax. But anyway.

But while it wasn’t mine, I was the one who put it together, because back then you didn’t have Geek Squad (which is Best Buy, but you get the idea). I think they might have had “professional home installation” but that has never been cheap or affordable. Plus, my mother’s oldest son (me) was a computer guy. She figured, if he could put together a computer (that is, connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to a computer and turn it on — I wouldn’t start building them for another 15 years — I could assemble a stereo. Which just meant stacking them on the shelves, and connecting them via the wires in the back. Two wires — one red, one white — connected to each component and plugged into the… switcher? Whatever it was called. Pretty easy. Did it again when we moved. And then again when it came from the garage, which was like a family room, to the living room when we turned the garage into a granny unit for family who would move in. And then, when I did that, I was able to connect the TV to it, which greatly improved our sound.

Oh yeah, OP doesn’t show the speakers. Did that Sony kit include them? I’m sure it must have. My mother’s Kenwood came with speakers as tall as the cabinets! Two of them. The speakers only lasted maybe 20, 30 years though? My brother, then grown, found her better, more modern speakers to hook up to it.

Facts

Disco Elysium is the kind of game I’d love to sit down with the developers/producers and try to play it, and ask them questions about it.

I own it on Steam, but I can’t remember if I bought it because it was on Mac, or if I bought it before I switched. Either way, I’ve tried to start it a few times and I just don’t get anywhere. It’s the kind of game I should like, but I don’t have the patience to learn it.

Some people say you can use a de-Googled Chromium browser to enjoy the fruits of Chrome without supporting Google’s ad business. I say just use Firefox.

By the same token, when some people say to buy an Android phone and deal with CFW, I say just get an iPhone.

I mean either way, Google gets your money and you contribute to Google’s market share by buying one. Not using Google Play Services as an individual does not hurt them nearly as much as their efforts to keep you from doing so implies it does.

Of course, switching phones can be costly, but if you’re in the market for a new one, I would say if you’re going to pay roughly the same price, let it be the more private one, albeit the one that is further from open source. I mean it runs iOS, which is a stripped down version of macOS, which is UNIX certified, but you can’t run a few apps that Apple doesn’t approve of. Fortnite is back and emulators are back though, so a lot of bases are covered.

That said… the keyboard sucks. Sometimes if I’m gonna be typing (e.g. using Lemmy), I’ll actually turn on my old Galaxy S10, just to use Gboard (which is on iOS but sucks there). I like my 16PM for a lot of things, but typing isn’t one of them.

So yes. You can stop rewarding Google’s bad behavior by not buying their phones. Draw a hard line between your personal data and their servers. But in doing so, consider getting in bed with a different monster rather than “the devil you know.” It’s not an easy decision. And, as a guy who’s been mainly on iPhone for almost 10 years… I kinda want a Pixel. Maybe not the newest one, but I mean, I’m using a 6-year-old Galaxy phone and it’s fine. I like both platforms. Both have their strengths. But I personally trust Apple more than Google. To each their own though.

I just replaced my dying Windows machines (a laptop and later, a desktop) with Macs. Still closed source, but they’re UNIX certified. I know FOSS folks love to hate on macOS, but even being smart enough to use Linux, and having used it off and on for 20-25 years, I just didn’t want to. I did get away from Microsoft stuff, at least at home, except for Xbox. That was my wife’s choice and we have a bunch of games for it. I’m more of a PlayStation guy, but I kinda got outvoted on that one. These days I mostly just game on the Switch anyway. And the cool thing about new Macs? They can basically run Switch games, with a bit of help (but same-ish architecture). And a lot of games going to Switch(/2) can also go to Mac (e.g. Cyberpunk).

It’s a great time to get away from Microsoft. Their browser hasn’t been good enough in decades. Their office suite is probably their biggest strength, followed by Xbox. Their cloud would be third, I’d say — OneDrive is underrated. I use iWork on my Macs and it’s fine. And it can read/write the docx formats. For cloud I guess iCloud is fine on the Mac side, I just wish the pricing were more competitive. Don’t really have a good answer for cloud. And for gaming… if you were starting from zero, I’d say look at the Steam Deck, Steam sales are unbeatable, the thing runs Linux, it emulates PC games pretty well (there’s a whole certification thing), and you can do GeForce Now as well if you’re near their CDN. Microsoft is arguably the easiest of the big three (vs Apple and Google) to drop.

I don’t even need to know why people are going against Microsoft all of a sudden. I have my reasons. I don’t hate them, and I would have stuck with Office + OneDrive (MS 365) if they didn’t double the price to add AI to Office with no way to stick with the old product. They were getting $60 a year from me, now they’re not getting anything.

Here’s why it’s okay to block ads in pretty simple terms:

Ads can contain ransomware; that is to say, a seemingly innocent ad can deliver a payload which will run on your computer, lock your files, and demand you pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars anonymously.

Now if you go to the website that served the ad and tell them, “I allowed ads on your site because I support your right to monetise your content, and now I have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars, will you help me pay that” or “will you pay that for me since your site served the ransomware,” you know what they will tell you, every single time, without fail? Whether they actually answer you, or more likely, just delete your email. They’re telling you that it’s your problem. That you should have secured your computer better.

So secure your computer better now. Block all the ads.

Getting a little more technical, use Firefox or a fork of it. Use Linux if you can. Use a Mac if you can’t. If you really must use Windows, know how to secure it. I use Windows 11 at work, I’d never use it at home, but I had a talk with the IT guy, and he let me do a few things to it. I know more than he does, but he’s the one with the job, so I told him what I’d do before I did it, I did exactly what I said I was going to do, nothing more nothing less, and I still think my home computer is more secure, but I’m a lot less worried about using the work machine. I think it’s wild that so many companies just use Windows. I’m not trying to hate on Windows. It’s good for gaming and it’s accessible. I’d love to see more companies roll their own *nix or just use Macs (which run macOS which is UNIX certified).

I feel like more people should know what’s going on. Facebook has done some scummy stuff in the past. Now Zuck is openly defending his AI grooming children. In and of itself it doesn’t make a lot of sense — what’s the upshot for Meta here? But outside the bubble of logic, it sets kids up to be groomed by real predators. It’s unacceptable.

People say the problem is that all the people they know are on Facebook. Two issues: most of those people would forget you exist if you leave Facebook. Also, you’re the reason they’re there. The second reason is that you are literally the product. You being on Facebook is part of the reason those people are, too, so be the change you want to see in the world.