Grumble4681's recent activity

  1. Comment on Winter storm across the US in photos in ~enviro

    Grumble4681
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Can possibly use adguard DNS (or set up your own adblocking DNS like pihole) to adblock, it won't be nearly as good as ublock origin but it would potentially improve the experience while still...

    Can possibly use adguard DNS (or set up your own adblocking DNS like pihole) to adblock, it won't be nearly as good as ublock origin but it would potentially improve the experience while still using Chrome, at least for some sites. Could make the experience worse in other scenarios though.

    I remember when using pi-hole to block ads, I would get a decent amount of things that would just not work right. I don't remember specific situations, but I would somewhat often have to log into the interface and tell it to stop blocking some domains just to get a web page or app to load. I've not used the adguard DNS so it could be a bit different of an experience but from what I've read it still has some similar problems.

    It's personally why I don't bother setting it up for people I know because I think it introduces some technical overhead. For someone who isn't willing to switch browsers, I doubt the complications that could arise from DNS adblocking would be acceptable either.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on You are being misled about renewable energy technology in ~enviro

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    Well I don't recall that he dived too deep into the economic comparisons between solar and wind, I think his main argument is that solar paired with batteries is cheaper than anything else, which...

    Well I don't recall that he dived too deep into the economic comparisons between solar and wind, I think his main argument is that solar paired with batteries is cheaper than anything else, which I assume must mean that it's cheaper than wind-powered electric generation if that claim is to be believed. So while he acknowledged wind, he didn't really do so in a way as though it was a significant factor to complement solar. He did mention that wind can be used in different scenarios, including that it can share the land with crops in a way that solar can't necessarily at the moment, but he didn't seem to make a claim that it was essential to the grid. That is if you believe him that solar and batteries are already at a point where they can cover all grid demands then wind-powered electric generation wouldn't be needed.

    I'm sure he would acquiesce that there could be certain areas where solar is far less reliable than wind that it makes sense, but I think he was just talking more big picture generalities than saying it covers 100% of all possible scenarios ever.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on You are being misled about renewable energy technology in ~enviro

    Grumble4681
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I tried not to editorialize the points too much but in order to summarize better I did modify the order of some statements and modify phrasing or insert meanings that were stated elsewhere in the...
    • Exemplary

    I tried not to editorialize the points too much but in order to summarize better I did modify the order of some statements and modify phrasing or insert meanings that were stated elsewhere in the video to maintain similar context. Some parts were so long that I did have to purely just interpret the meaning of his remark and then come up with my own explanation to shorten it.

    Approaches this first section from a practical standpoint than a judgement or ethics based one.

    • Very few of the devices or machines we use run off petroleum products directly, we're instead converting it to produce electricity to power these devices and machines.

    • Petroleum is a finite resource and it's single-use, you burn it, it's gone, you have to keep extracting more to keep using it. Also because we have to extract more, our situations become more precarious because we become reliant on other countries to extract oil.

    • Solar power (along with battery storage) is too good of a deal to pass up, claims it's better than every other energy production option.

    • Reminds viewer to think of the cost of gasoline to operate vehicles over its life. For a 30mpg vehicle at 188k miles, that's 6,250 gallons of gas which is $19,500 based on a pricing estimate chosen for historical prices of gasoline in the US. The relevance of focusing on cost of gasoline in the car is that cars are the primary source for which people still use a machine that directly relies on petroleum for energy, since nearly everything else we use is electric.

    • Solar panels produce free electricity, and panels continue to work after producing electricity, up to multiple decades of use, very unlike single-use petroleum. Yes there is a cost of producing the solar panels, but the cost is decreasing rapidly.

    • The $19,500 spent on gasoline for the aforementioned car could be used to power a half dozen homes for decades with solar panels. If Technology Connections guy (I don't remember his name if he's ever said it) just compared powering his electric vehicle to powering the gasoline vehicle used as an example already, it would take $2,100 of solar panels to cover all costs of electricity to charge his electric vehicle.

    • Doesn't necessarily advocate for viewers to go set up their own solar farm systems, makes a case for how grid operators and energy producers working at scale are far more effective at producing energy and that even when they are making a healthy profit, the energy costs will still be less for people getting electricity off the grid than from other sources of energy the grid is currently using.

    • Claims that grid scale battery costs are low enough that the costs of solar farms and grid scale batteries are at a lower cost than any other source of electricity and still able to provide electricity to the grid 24/7.

    • Heading off a worry of solar farms that they use too much space, shows a corn farm in Illinois and how it's rather an inefficient use of space because they only harvest corn once a year and claims much of the corn coming from that field or fields like it is used for ethanol in gasoline, so replacing corn fields like that with solar farms wouldn't displace corn for food but rather corn for gasoline.

    • Showed a 120 acre 27 megawatt solar farm makes a case that a 120 acre corn farm would produce 66,000 gallons of ethanol. With generous assumptions, that can produce 2 million miles of driving in vehicles that can utilize this fuel source. Compares this to less than generous assumptions on an electric vehicle of 2 miles per kilowatt and that same solar farm produces 37,000,000 kilowatt hours which means electric vehicles could go 74 million miles on the power produced by that. So 74 million miles compared to 2 million produced by the corn field's ethanol.

    • Replacing 25 million acres of land used to produce corn, which is a rough estimate of amount of land utilized for corn that goes into ethanol production, this same amount of land replaced with solar farms instead, using assumptions from the Illinois solar farm figures he already used, could produce 84% more electricity than what is currently produced on the entire electrical grid in the US (based on figures from 2023).

    • Briefly mentions wind just to acknowledge it exists and covers that it's better than other energy sources but not quite as good as solar as there is more maintenance and ongoing costs involved.

    • Covers that making that many solar farms involves lots of materials to make the panels. Also mentions there's a lot of resources involved in gas production as well, including the gas itself, and the gas gets burned up in a single use while the materials in the solar panels are durable and last longer. Solar panels predominantly involve glass and aluminum materials which are plentiful and recyclable.

    • Covers some claims that solar panels contain toxic materials, but refutes this by saying while a small portion of toxic substances are in lesser used solar panels, the main types have very little and an example of what kind they contain, lead used for soldering the electrical connections on the panels is one he covers. And so these kinds of materials can also be contained to not cause issues if we're responsible about it.

    • Onto the batteries, yes they can contain some nasty chemicals and hard to get materials, but the chemicals are contained and can be recovered and reused. This also covers the materials used, so even though the mining process of the materials can be extensive, when the battery life is at it's end, which can be up to 15 years or more, we can recover all the materials in those to make new batteries.

    • This is just based on batteries we have now, but it is fairly reasonable to believe we will keep improving batteries.

    • Electrification of things has allowed us to be more adaptable because it doesn't matter what new things we come up with, we can just plug it into the grid that already exists to power it.

    • Goes into some meta commentary about his own assumptions of why this makes sense and why he had at some points claimed malice for others who disagreed, but then a conversation with one person where he changed their mind that solar was the future made him realize that not everyone sees things as he does in terms of looking towards the future and trying to be more efficient and that some people see things as what the landscape is right now, which is that gas production is still fairly cheap but it's only going to get more expensive in the future.

    • Talks about politics and how he believes he's also shown his politics to his viewer but not in the partisan politics way. This section is harder to summarize due to it being more to his personal thoughts so if you want to get into that I'd say to start here which starts where I ended the rest of the summary.

    Edit: I will say the title of the video is why he gets into in the politics in the last part of the video. He says Republicans and other interests are lying about renewable energy, which is why the title of the video, but I just don't want to summarize it past that because I don't think it's fair when he intentionally set up the title and the video to lead into that dialogue about his politics and it wouldn't be possible to capture everything that is important to him or the emotional weight he puts into it.

    32 votes

  4. Comment on Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles as Kevin Warsh pick eases US Federal Reserve independence fear in ~finance

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    I would say it's like having a crack in your windshield. A windshield with no crack means there's nothing to worry about, but a windshield with a crack in it means that if the crack goes...

    I would say it's like having a crack in your windshield. A windshield with no crack means there's nothing to worry about, but a windshield with a crack in it means that if the crack goes unrepaired, it will spider and get bigger. Now the analogy breaks down a little here, but a windshield with a crack in it at all in this case is suggestive of an environment where someone is being reckless/careless and not maintaining their vehicle, so the idea that the crack could be repaired anytime soon is not even remotely realistic. So the seemingly inevitable result is that the crack will grow bigger, even if it's not big enough to be a serious concern at this exact moment. Also, pretend your windshield isn't the laminated kind and it's still not tempered.

    6 votes

  5. Comment on Resist and Unsubscribe in ~society

    Grumble4681
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    I'll see if I can help with what most people already here probably know, but just in case they don't, here's a few I'm aware of. My idea is that some people won't stop if it's too much of an...

    I'll see if I can help with what most people already here probably know, but just in case they don't, here's a few I'm aware of. My idea is that some people won't stop if it's too much of an inconvenience or burden, so this is a half measure on how to keep using these services to get similar experiences without paying them, for those not aware. Yes, it's not necessarily the most ethical way to unsubscribe, but if some can't quit cold turkey then a half measure is better than nothing at all.

    Want to cancel Youtube Premium, still use Youtube but not watch ads?

    • Sideload SmartTube on Android TV, myriad of Android TV hardware options if you don't already have them, including ONN 4k plus TV device for $30 from Walmart. I checked the list and Walmart isn't on it, which doesn't necessarily mean Walmart isn't part of the problem, but for this specific movement anyhow it isn't in conflict. Yes, Google probably makes money off this device for data collection at the least since it's using their software as the OS, but they also likely make some money from data collecting of using Youtube for free as well. Furthermore, you can get Projectivy Launcher and hide the Google Launcher to get rid of much of the home screen advertising.

    • Sideload ReVanced Manager and patch Youtube Music app on your Android phone. Most of Youtube Music features without the ads.

    • Sideload Tubular or PipePipe on Android as an alternative Youtube player without ads. Some functionality is broken so it's not a perfect replacement.

    Avoid Microsoft Office somewhat by using CryptPad
    https://cryptpad.fr
    (There's a few online office options if you want to dig around, LibreOffice is still kicking around for a local install I believe, I haven't followed closely for feature parity etc. comparisons).

    I realize that some of these suggestions don't support the artists which many would not be in favor of, but the goal of this is stated to be temporary and to send a message to the big corps that supporting authoritarian regimes isn't without potential consequence.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on Apple says Patreon creators must switch to subscription billing in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    One of the difficulties I find in having discussions around 'choice' in many current markets is the amount of vertical integrations happening. It's one thing to say, "Well they chose Apple, so...

    One of the difficulties I find in having discussions around 'choice' in many current markets is the amount of vertical integrations happening. It's one thing to say, "Well they chose Apple, so they chose that system where Apple decides everything for them", even if you ignore that Google is the only real alternative, it still wouldn't be that valid of an argument even if there were 3 alternatives. The greater the vertical integrations, the more alternatives are needed to be able to 'choose' on any specific level what type of business you want to engage with.

    You can choose Apple over Google if you value privacy, but then you can't choose a more open choice platform to install apps because Apple doesn't let you do this. Prior to RCS, and still now to some extent due to lack of widespread compatibility and encryption, you could choose a platform with superior messaging experience in the US, or you can prioritize something else, but you can't just choose on a bunch of different levels. Even if there were 4 mobile OS platforms, with the level of vertical integration happening, you still couldn't really make very specific choices except over maybe one or two additional differentiators. You're forced to compromise on so much you don't want because of this. The dimensions of the products and services are so vast that you can't exert but a minuscule degree of choice over a small sliver of what encompasses the whole product or service.

    I don't like Google at all, I would prefer Apple on many different fronts, yet one choice in particular is so heavily weighted for me, the ability to install apps that aren't corporate approved, I have no choice but to stick with Google even though I'd be more aligned on a wider scale with what Apple is doing than what Google is doing. And don't get me wrong, for me there's still a lot to dislike about Apple as well, just Google is worse.

    5 votes

  7. Comment on Gold tops $4,900/oz; silver and platinum extend record‑setting rally in ~finance

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    Your definition of rich seems to be that any amount of money spent on 'investments' qualifies someone as rich because it's money spent that doesn't immediately contribute to their life in any way,...

    But if you can spare money to turn into gold, you're rich. Not just on a global scale either. Over three quarters of Americans live paycheque to paycheque. A majority don't have emergency savings, let alone have money spare to invest in stuff.

    Your definition of rich seems to be that any amount of money spent on 'investments' qualifies someone as rich because it's money spent that doesn't immediately contribute to their life in any way, while broke is simply not having money to spend on investments.

    So if two people each make $50k and live in the same area with same cost of living, and one person spends their $50k on goods and services and has nothing left over and they live paycheck to paycheck, they're broke, but if someone else takes their 50k and doesn't spend all of it and instead spends it on gold 'investments', they're rich. That doesn't make sense to me considering they make the same amount of money.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I don't have two GPUs but I thought about that, if I had an integrated GPU even that I could possibly pass the discrete gpu through to a Windows VM. I recall reading in the unraid subreddit that...

    Also if you have two GPUs on hand you can run Windows in a VM with GPU pass through. Although it’s possible some anti cheats won’t like running in a VM.

    I don't have two GPUs but I thought about that, if I had an integrated GPU even that I could possibly pass the discrete gpu through to a Windows VM. I recall reading in the unraid subreddit that some people said they had done this with their systems and played games that way, I just don't have two GPUs to try it out. I may not even have one GPU at this point but it's too early for me to tell what is currently wrong with my system now that I'm realizing it's a hardware issue and not a software issue. I couldn't even really boot my system on at all yesterday because I had no display output and then when I got a display output the output was so borked that it wasn't usable and sometimes unstable enough that the display output would crash out again. Then today it somehow is working fine, so I need to troubleshoot it some before I make any decisions of how to set up my system.

    From what I've been reading here, I have become less concerned with the boot times. My primary concern before is that I felt like I would have to switch OSes a lot if I dual booted, as in multiple times a day. But it sounds like if I had a proper setup, I would probably be able to do so much on Linux that switching to Windows would be such a rarity that the boot time wouldn't be as impactful to my experience.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    Yeah I was jumping to conclusions, I didn't have any hard evidence that it would work and it was mostly just assumptions. I don't have a great grasp on the technical understanding of how the...

    The only thing I can see in the post you linked is lou not wanting to set up Lutris for pirated games since they aren't Steam games, but iirc this amounts to selecting Proton from a dropdown and clicking "okay" for most games.

    Yeah I was jumping to conclusions, I didn't have any hard evidence that it would work and it was mostly just assumptions. I don't have a great grasp on the technical understanding of how the compatibility layer works on getting Windows games to run on Linux, but I assumed that whoever is contributing to developing those compatibility layers has no interest in making sure cracks work too, so the conclusion I jumped to is that that cracks wouldn't work or that it would require greater knowledge than I possess to make them work.

    Otherwise I agree, just purely on the game library alone, I think most of what I would play would probably work from what I've seen. My basis for thinking it wouldn't was primarily driven by the fact that many games I try out are using some kind of crack software or such.

  10. Comment on Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    Link
    Well I was going to respond to a few other comments here but it seems my early display issues after pulling my PC out of storage were not software related but are hardware issues and today it...

    Well I was going to respond to a few other comments here but it seems my early display issues after pulling my PC out of storage were not software related but are hardware issues and today it decided to definitively prove that to the point of making my PC unusable now. Probably about the worst time to be in the market for buying a new GPU or PC hardware in general. Guess I'll reconsider my options when/if I get a functioning PC again. Thanks for all the feedback.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    Well with my current GPU, I probably won't be able to play many, if any, new flagship titles, I think the only flagship title coming up that I may be willing to try even though I'm guessing it...

    Well with my current GPU, I probably won't be able to play many, if any, new flagship titles, I think the only flagship title coming up that I may be willing to try even though I'm guessing it won't work so well is GTA 6, and I probably won't play multiplayer on that if that is an option anyhow. As for titles already out, I haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 all the way through, I started it and then my living situation became unstable so I didn't get to complete it so I intend to play that, and then probably just go through a library of various single player games. That part I would have thought would be fine with Linux possibly, but I assumed that various cracks and what not to make those games work without DRM would be problematic when also running through a compatibility layer on an OS those cracks weren't designed to run on.

    I had read this post by lou and they seemed to mention running these types of games obtained from less than than legal places not being a smooth process to run on Linux.

    For multiplayer games, I don't play much but Rocket League is the main one I do play, and it seems that one is playable on Linux from what I had searched. Occasionally I play coop games with a friend, like Master Chief Collection, Dead Island and so on, just kind of depends on what we both feel like playing and what we have access to.

  12. Comment on Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    Yes I did initially. It's been a little cleaner after getting over the initial hurdles. To be fair, I think I approached it with a better mindset this time than I have in the past. I just did it...

    You're having to do a lot of tinkering with the VM already it sounds like.

    Yes I did initially. It's been a little cleaner after getting over the initial hurdles. To be fair, I think I approached it with a better mindset this time than I have in the past. I just did it because I wanted to try it and didn't expect anything from it. I know people have kept saying this is the year of Linux for the past couple decades and I just didn't let the hype cloud my judgement of what I was getting into. I anticipated having to tinker with it, though ironically perhaps I only had to do most of the tinkering I have because of trying it in a VM rather than bare metal.

    I find that a key issue is the way that applications share libraries, and when you update a key library for one application it can sometimes break another application.

    Yeah I could find that being frustrating for me because I find dependencies and libraries to be very opaque. It's not obvious to me what applications needs what libraries, what libraries I have or where to get them etc.

    Other than this, I didn't think I've found a game yet that didn't just work out of the box, and mind you, DCS is notoriously flakey, not to mention Opentrack and SRS being mods/plugins for it.

    The one issue I'd anticipate is that some of the games I'm running I haven't purchased. I assume these are not as simple to run on Linux given the other aspects of what it takes to run these games. I'm not expecting anyone to solve that problem or anything as I understand there are legal and ethical issues behind it, just saying, I expect that it wouldn't work as well if at all, and accept that for what it is, which means I'd still be reliant on Windows to run them.

    Overall I think I won't know until I try it as far how much it will cover, but it seems like with the feedback I've got so far, dual booting is the way to go for now.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup in ~tech

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    I can see that. I'm trying to be cognizant not to hold the VM performance against it. I'm more so evaluating it on its ease of use and ability to functionally do things I would do on Windows, and...

    Because of the existing display pipelines, and the lack of proper hardware acceleration, running Linux in a VM is not a good performance comparison to running it on bare metal for video playback or gaming.

    I can see that. I'm trying to be cognizant not to hold the VM performance against it. I'm more so evaluating it on its ease of use and ability to functionally do things I would do on Windows, and while the latter part can be impacted by VM performance I'm trying to be lenient in my judgement of it in that respect. But definitely if performance is bad enough I'll be inclined to stop using it which could inhibit my ability to switch to Linux full time. But currently I was looking at setting up Kodi or something and accessing all my NAS media that way, as Kodi also has flawless video playback like VLC even inside this VM.

    The vivaldi .deb file adds the proper .list file to /etc/apt/sources.list.d, so it'll update itself. You can also get a Snap in Kubuntu maintained by Vivaldi, or add Flatpak and use it there (I use the Flatpak on Debian). It should work more or less the same across all three options.

    Hmm, I guess I see the Snap version now, for some reason it didn't seem to come up when I searched it before. The flatpak version still doesn't show up. I am mostly using Vivaldi as a browser that supports PWA for certain web apps since Firefox doesn't currently support it. It's also been a little glitchy in this role (but I'm willing to crack that up to running in a VM as well).

    Yes and no, but don't use it on non-Valve hardware. SteamOS is intended for a limited hardware subset. You can use a Steam Deck as your daily driver device, but not SteamOS on anything else with an expectation of a fully working system. It might work well enough for most things, but is not official.

    I figured since I'm running all AMD it might be less of a problem especially as they're expanding SteamOS to more than the Steam Deck but since it's not official yet it's probably not a good idea for someone like me to be messing with it until it is officially supported.

    Aurora and Bazzite both look interesting. If I switch to a bare metal dual boot setup perhaps I will try one of those.

    1 vote

  14. Lifetime Windows user seeking feedback for improvements on my Linux setup

    ~tech Ask (advice)
    I'm currently running Kubuntu in VMware on a Windows 11 host. I was on Windows 10 but was getting lots of display/graphical issues after pulling my desktop out of storage and I didn't qualify for...

    I'm currently running Kubuntu in VMware on a Windows 11 host. I was on Windows 10 but was getting lots of display/graphical issues after pulling my desktop out of storage and I didn't qualify for extended support updates and just felt like I needed to eliminate all driver and software issues by reinstalling OS clean. At that point I figured I might as well go to Win 11, so I used rufus and did a clean install without a Microsoft account.

    I feel like I need Windows for gaming, even with Proton compatibility on Linux I still expect I'd have some issues with some games and my desktop is my primary gaming system so I just want something that works. But like many others I don't like the direction Microsoft has gone with Windows so I'd really like to adapt to using Linux otherwise. I considered dual booting but I did have an issue with my system where the motherboard had 30+ second long boot times. Like it had nothing to do with my SSD or OS install, the Asus AM4 TUF x570-Plus motherboard boot time was just excessively long and seems other people reported that as well and there was no UEFI/bios update that fixed it. So I really didn't want to dual boot and wait 30+ seconds switching between OSes, that's just not fluid enough for how I wanted to use them. I really want the Windows install to just be gaming only basically or anything I can't get working in Linux.

    So that's how I arrived to running Kubuntu in VMware Workstation Pro. I tried Hyper-V first but had issues and bailed on it. Initially I had audio issues with it in VMware but I found a reddit post that linked to the fix, prior to that, ChatGPT was happy to lead me down rabbit holes to nowhere. I do have a few browser issues with video playback, tried in Vivaldi and Firefox, video and audio are in sync but video is choppy and can't keep up with fast motion. It's otherwise acceptable for basic video playback so it's not really a huge issue for me. I tried playing videos in VLC and did not experience any issues so it is capable of smooth video playback in some circumstances on this setup. I have my own Plex server installed on another system but the Plex Linux application just won't work for me, at best it would produce choppy video if I installed from snap but the flatpak install just won't play anything back properly.

    The other thing I couldn't quite resolve but mostly resolved is that in my Win 11 host, I have resolution set at 2560x1440 but I can't get that option in my Kubuntu VM. I currently have it as 2048x1152 which is as close as I can get while keeping 16:9 ratio. It will offer resolution options above my host system but not 16:9. I then stretch this to fill screen and run it in exclusive mode so it's basically like my primary desktop interface, but it would be nice if the resolution was better as I can tell it's slightly stretched, text isn't as crisp as it should be.

    I will say, I'm quite impressed with how far Linux has come from when I last tried it as a daily driver 10-15 years ago. I added flathub as part of the app discovery repository so I can get many applications through that. I've had a few that I couldn't, scrcpy was outdated there so I had to follow some command line copy/paste script to install that and Vivaldi wasn't available either. Vivaldi did have a .deb file which I guess works like an .exe in Windows, because I just had to click to install, so that's nice. I still think I had to run something to add Vivaldi to app repository so it would keep it updated if I understand how that worked anyhow.

    The Kubuntu VM does seem to destabilize quite a bit over time, it's already locked up on me a couple times, but I think it could be a RAM issue, so I've dedicated 12GB of RAM to it right now (it was at 8GB before). If it continues to happen then I guess that reinforces I'm doing something wrong or need to go in a different direction.

    I've noticed my boot times have improved, I don't know when this happened, but now the boot times are about 15-20 seconds (I check the BIOS boot time in Startup tab on Windows task manager, but I've timed it and it matches actual time). Still seems kinda long to me but maybe it's fast enough to dual boot now, not sure.

    I guess before I commit to anything too heavily, I was curious if what I'm doing now is not very wise or if there's something better I should try. With my bios boot time where it is now, I'd possibly consider dual booting as then I could probably just set up games that work in Linux. At that point, I wonder if I could/should use SteamOS or stick with Kubuntu or something else? Is SteamOS capable of being used as a daily driver OS or is it better just to use for gaming machines?

    Also my PC specs are
    Asus AM4 TUF x570-Plus motherboard
    AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor
    32GB RAM
    AMD RX-580 8GB

    27 votes

  15. Comment on San Francisco parents are letting teens ride in Waymos without an adult in ~transport

    Grumble4681
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I've had more close calls on a bicycle than I have in a vehicle, and I've been in a vehicle WAY more times than I was riding a bike. Say it's nonsense all you want, but unless you have figures to...

    I've had more close calls on a bicycle than I have in a vehicle, and I've been in a vehicle WAY more times than I was riding a bike. Say it's nonsense all you want, but unless you have figures to back it up, it's no more valid than my personal experience which says it's lots of sense rather than nonsense.

    When I was riding my bike a few times a week, I always rode with my head on a swivel. I never crossed a single driveway or street without looking. One time I stopped at a mid-block crossing (a trail path intersecting a street with no traffic lights) and this type of crossing was garnering a lot of attention in my area because people were getting hit and in some cases dying because some drivers would preemptively stop, thinking they were doing pedestrians and trail users a favor by 'letting' them cross, due to the aforementioned lack of traffic signaling at these spots. Other drivers weren't expecting someone to just seemingly randomly stop in the middle of the road so they would go around the car and then plow into the trail user. Nearly happened to me except I refused to cross when drivers preemptively stop.

    Another time I was riding my bicycle on the sidewalk, which you can get conflicting perspectives on what is safer or even whether it's legal depending on the area, and a car running from the cops comes barrelling down a busy road that this sidewalk is next to. Chances were decently high that if I was in the roadway, the car would not have hesitated to hit me to evade hitting cars which would have drastically ruined their chances of evading cops while hitting me would have been barely a speed bump.

    12 votes

  16. Comment on Fable | Gameplay reveal in ~games

    Grumble4681
    Link
    There's not a lot of in depth details here but if we go off what they promise, as is Fable tradition, it sounds good. The idea that morality is more subjective and not just a black and white...

    There's not a lot of in depth details here but if we go off what they promise, as is Fable tradition, it sounds good. The idea that morality is more subjective and not just a black and white system could be interesting, though I suspect that it's more simplistic than they would have me believe. They also seem to recognize some of the fun side-game aspects of the original games, in particular the 1st/TLC/anniversary where I suspect some things weren't fully intended, like buying all the properties, since some of those you had to get villagers to follow you out of town and then leave them. I'm sure the killing of the villagers and buying their property probably was more anticipated however. In any case, if they manage to include some fun side things to do but aren't necessary it could be fun. It's been awhile since I've played Fable 3, and even longer since Fable 2 because those games have become so inaccessible over time, so I don't really remember them as well.

    7 votes

  17. Comment on Inside the conservative campus revolution in ~society

    Grumble4681
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I don't buy the economic incentive, primarily because from what I've read, younger people going to the right are predominantly men, not women, and if it were primarily economic reasons then I...

    I am not defending or supporting their point of view at all, but at the end of the day there are reasons driving young people to the right. I tend to think it all boils down to economics, and that people that are comfortable in their lives tend to not to have to perform "othering" to get ahead, but as it is, in this country and maybe across the "developed" world, middle class people are losing out economically. There are examples of this far right attitude taking hold in a lot of places.

    I don't buy the economic incentive, primarily because from what I've read, younger people going to the right are predominantly men, not women, and if it were primarily economic reasons then I don't see why the divide among sex/gender would be as great as it is. The right hasn't shown they have any ability to produce economic success, and while evidence means very little anymore and it's more so about what lies you can convince people are true, I still don't believe that anyone who seriously is motivated by economic reasons can look to the right wing and think they have an answer if they are at all listening to these morons talk.

    The rhetoric of the right speaks loudly, but much of it has little to do with economics, this tells me that it's culture that is primarily driving some of those people to the right. The most Trump has to say about economics is to tell people things are cheaper while not actually substantiating it in any way. Hell even at times he's said that things will get more expensive before they get cheaper, that other countries will pay for the tariffs, that companies will eat the cost, he never forms any coherent spine to these statements. It's just an amorphous blob of catchphrases that sound good to someone who is barely listening. Many of these statements are in conflict with the others and they can't all be true.

    There's this quote in the linked article from Charlie Kirk

    “Trump voters, young men, they want family, children, and legacy,” he said on Fox News two days before his death. “Young women who voted for Kamala Harris, they want careerism, consumerism, and loneliness.”

    This is the type of messaging they're using frequently, with Kirk being the arm of the right that was perhaps more so targeting younger people than the more news dominating right wing politicians and such were. It makes far more sense to me that there's a divide in support in younger people along sex/gender lines if you think the messaging above is actually what is driving it.

    This is where I'm rather curious what people who support the right think the path is to that ideal world they are promoting. How do they think men are going to get their family, children and legacy back? What do they think that entails to achieve that? Clearly, banning abortion and restricting contraception etc. seems to be part of the ploy if you can baby trap women into relationships I guess, but beyond that, I think it becomes a thing where people want it, but the reality is that there's no simple solution to achieving it so it's more of a rallying cry than a solidified plan. I don't think most men, at least younger ones, would realistically be happy with rolling back independence for women if they really thought about it and how it impacts women they personally know, but I do think they could allow cognitive dissonance to thrive in their minds if it gives them some kind of hope for children and family.

    I do believe there is a problem culturally with respect to relationships people are forming or not forming, both platonic and romantic relationships, but the solution isn't as simple as pretending that our history has the solution for it when we can look back at our history and see how fucked up it was in some cases, and in other cases, the technology of today that plays a part in those cultural problems didn't exist back then.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Jon Stewart is our only hope in ~society

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    The focus on individual actions is not really specific to even one individual, but to the source of the behaviors that are being compared. The source can be multiple people or an entity, but you...

    The focus on individual actions is not really specific to even one individual, but to the source of the behaviors that are being compared. The source can be multiple people or an entity, but you cannot shift the source and then claim there's a double standard, it just doesn't make sense. No one has yet explained how you can compare behaviors from different sources and somehow that makes a double standard.

    I'm focusing on what the original claim was, you may be talking about societal level issues but that isn't connecting to the original claim.

    To be quite honest, it's quite frustrating the level of disconnect in the comments here so I'm just not going to engage any further, my mind is nearly melting at something that seems so apparently obvious to me that either I cannot convey in a way that is understandable to others or they cannot convey in a way that is understandable to me, and I suspect others are apt to be frustrated by me as well, so I just don't see this going anywhere.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Jon Stewart is our only hope in ~society

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    Are the same people making these claims? I could see it for politically biased media, for example, Fox could call Crockett 'uppity' while praising Trump for the same actions, but I doubt Fox is...

    I like @DefinitelyNotAFae's example of Crockett, because Crockett does get pretty constantly talked about for being "uppity" on social media (I have chosen a charged term) whereas Newsom (and Trump) both are generally lauded for their social media presences. Similarly, AOC is often called "brash" and "unlikeable" whereas a man would be called "bold".

    Are the same people making these claims? I could see it for politically biased media, for example, Fox could call Crockett 'uppity' while praising Trump for the same actions, but I doubt Fox is praising Newsom for those same behaviors as they would Trump. They may not call Newsom 'uppity', so there would could still be a double standard there and some element of sexism at play in that specific word choice, but its still quite clear their double standards are primarily political bias in that case.

    Are the same people claiming AOC is 'brash' and 'unlikeable' also calling men 'bold'? One media outlet describing AOC one way and another outlet calling JD Vance something else isn't proving the original claim you made to me. Again, I can go on X or any social media for that matter and find 100 different opinions about any given person, or find 100 different media outlets with 100 different opinions on any given person, the appearance of conflict in comparing those would not inherently reveal a double standard.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Jon Stewart is our only hope in ~society

    Grumble4681
    Link Parent
    This is what I'm disagreeing with, because it's not proving the point. It would be proving the point if you said that about Crockett, but then you also praised a man for doing the same thing, but...

    And I don't think the previous poster was intending to make this point, but IMO they demonstrated it exactly. For comparison if I said "I don't like how Crockett talks shit on social media" that would be my opinion but it's something that Newsom and Trump are praised for (by different people). My opinion is still valid* but its proving the point made by aphoenix.

    This is what I'm disagreeing with, because it's not proving the point. It would be proving the point if you said that about Crockett, but then you also praised a man for doing the same thing, but it's not if you say that about Crockett and also say it about Newsom or someone else.

    The way I see it, there are two ways to interpret that comment by aphoenix but only one way actually makes sense.

    Every single thing I've seen people say they don't like about one of these women is something that is excused or admired in men.

    In one interpretation, it is saying that they can find conflicting opinions about people, which is so meaningless as to not be worth saying. I can say that I've seen criticisms about anything that others get praised for, because I can find an opinion about anything or anyone that goes in any direction. There are contrasting opinions about everything. So if this is what the statement intended, I disregarded it because it's utterly meaningless.

    The other interpretation is that they can find people who criticize women for something and then those same people excuse men for the same things. This is the interpretation that makes the most sense to me because it is highlighting a double standard. It's not inherently a double standard to be able to find conflicting opinions if you source them from anyone anywhere, it's a double standard if we are comparing the same people holding different standards for different people.

    4 votes