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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • Yes. I started using it years ago and have been unable to exit ever since.

    But honestly related to your question, I started learning to use vim exactly because when I started to learn and use Linux I was often stuck in situations where that was the only thing available.


  • I don’t use DoorDash but occasionally order from Taco Bell. Every time I order I watch the car arrive at Taco Bell and wait about 20 minutes before actually picking up my order and then delivering it.

    Additionally I know UberEats used to (and maybe still does) offer cheaper delivery if you pick a restaurant another driver was already heading to. (I haven’t used UberEats in years because I found them less reliable.)

    Ironically if a restaurant did all the deliveries themselves they would have all the information about how best to optimize delivery. Maybe all the delivery companies can find a way to share this information to minimize travel and maximize speed of delivery.


  • You might find a symbolic link useful. For example

    ln -s /media/docs ~/docs
    

    Now you’ll have a “folder” in your home directory named “docs” that points to “/media/docs”. You can use that path with commands like mv or cp.

    These commands now both move “myfile” to the same location

    mv myfile ~/docs
    mv myfile /media/docs
    


  • Sure, but is this actually a good idea?

    The argument would be that these “short form videos” improve discoverability. I can’t speak for Netflix (since I’m not subscribed), but I am subscribed to Disney+. I completely agree that the discoverability in the Disney+ app is bad. But I’m also subscribed to Hulu, which is now owned (fully) by Disney. The discoverability in Hulu is actually pretty good.

    Everything that is “Disney+ Exclusive” is only available using Disney+. Everything that is “Hulu Exclusive” is available on both Hulu and Disney+. So Disney+ has everything I want, but the app sucks.

    The plan is by the end of 2026 to turn down the Hulu app and only use the Disney+ app. So, is Disney improving the Disney+ app? Nope, they’re adding “Verts”.

    This is what bothers me. If you have an interesting idea to improve your app, do that. If you’re just chasing the current flavor of the week, stop. Spend that time doing something useful.




  • I’m not a SQL wizard and I’m typing from my phone but couldn’t you just do something like,

    select name from sys.tables where name like 'wp%users'
    

    To get the table of WordPress users, then do whatever bad things you want to it?

    I get that that’s an extra step, and I suppose in the example even though “best practice” is to add random characters, if everyone knows that, then best practice for bad people scripts would probably be to add an extra query.

    But my real point is more about adding obfuscation for your developers and server owners. If you’re making their jobs harder for no benefit, is it a good change?

    I also wonder about adding obfuscation and it causing issues when debugging.

    I think adding obfuscation is fine, but it’s important to be careful when it comes to your developers and debugging.



  • Mint is based on testing irc.

    I thought so too, and it looks like it used to be, but LMDE is currently based on Debian Stable, specifically LMDE 7 is based on Debian 13 “Trixie”, first released Aug 2025.

    FWIW I’ve been running Debian Testing for a few years now and been plenty happy, might get worth trying that.




  • So Cohn did mention comprehensive privacy laws and the ability to leave platforms. These are absolutely things that need to happen.

    However as an individual there are still things you can do. Cohn mentions Bluesky because it has no algorithm (except the “Discovery” feed). Cohn also mentions (in the video) Mastodon. And the truth is you don’t need to switch fully, just don’t only slurp down the concentrated hate machine(s).

    Look at Lemmy. Reddit decided to be pricks and a bunch of individuals jumped over here to create what I think is a pretty good community. That doesn’t mean the problem is solved. That doesn’t mean Reddit isn’t still a problem. That doesn’t mean Lemmy is perfect. But that is a win and something individuals can do.

    Additionally, those are things you can do now. You don’t need to wait for some law to be passed to fix things. You can make the move now. (While still advocating for laws to fix things.)





  • Interesting article and I think it really highlights how toxic some parts of the Internet are. My only issue is the conclusion,

    A social media ban for under-16s might prevent young boys seeing endless content that treats women with contempt and hate. Boys at this age are very susceptible to the cool and funny framing of what is, in reality, relentless misogyny. A ban might not fix the problem, but it would help. If society can’t stop it, it can show it disapproves.

    Emphasis mine. Having grown up in a different era I can confirm that boys of a wide variety of ages, including much older “boys”, can also be scumbags. Even if we had the perfect technology to ban under-16s from social media, once they hit 16 they’d still be exposed to it, still become terrible people, and the author of this article, although a but older, would still see it. I don’t know if that really is a better world, just a slightly delayed one.

    I don’t know the solution, but I remember reading once that some online game would put all the reported and abusive players into a special category where they would be forced to play only with each other. Maybe we can do that in this case.


  • I want to highlight what I found to be an important part of the article and why this hack is important.

    The journalist wrote on their own blog,

    At this year’s South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Championship

    And they include zero sources (because it is a lie).

    But the Google Gemini response was,

    According to the reporting on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Eating Championship

    (Bolding done by Gemini)

    The “reporting” here is just some dudes blog, but the AI does not make it clear that the source is just some dudes blog.

    When you use Wikipedia, it has a link to a citation. If something sounds odd, you can read the citation. It’s far from perfect, but there is a chain of accountability.

    Ideally these AI services would outline how many sources they are pulling from, which sources, and a trust rating of those sources.


  • So a hit piece is only effective when read by humans. This is a first of its kind example, and likely was at least prompted by a human, if not written by an actual human. Additionally while social media is full of bots, it’s humans who are actually affected by such a response.

    If I say you’re “stupid”, it matters. You can ignore me sure, but at face value it matters. As far as I know I’ve never commented on a post of yours, so you could write me off as a worthless troll, but in theory it matters. But a bot calling you “stupid”? That really doesn’t matter. If you know you’re talking to a bot, as they exist today, then that really doesn’t matter.

    Society may change on this issue, but as it stands now a bot publishing a hit piece… That’s worthless.



  • As you’ve mentioned in other threads, bash is a hard requirement for the OS, so if it’s already installed, and the default on most Linux distros, bash is probably the best option.

    The dash shell isn’t designed to be user interactive. It’s a lightweight scripting shell/language.

    The ksh shell is an older standard shell. Years ago I worked for a company that ran corporate Unix systems and on those systems only ksh and tcsh were available. Ksh was the default, and as someone only familiar with bash it was a bit different but mostly the same. So there is at least one point for maybe choosing ksh.

    However my personal shell preference is zsh. When I write scripts I do so using bash. The two shells are 99% similar on a day to day basis, but I prefer zsh for a user interface. So I use one for day to day and the other for scripting.

    Other threads have also mentioned fish, which is also a great choice if you don’t know where to start.

    Are zsh or fish “heavier” or “bloated”, maybe. But remember to consider your attack surface. If your house is on fire it doesn’t matter of you fix the leaky faucet in bathroom or the kitchen.