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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • In this situation I’d save a copy of the sheet to my phone in a standard format and use a non google app. The file itself can be backed up to on line storage and remain accessible from multiple devices but you remove it from googles walled garden.

    On android if you want open source then Collabra is a full office suite based on LibreOffice. Alternatively LibreOffice Viewer is the official libre app - ok for viewing files but with an experimental mode for editing (not really ready for editing yet).

    WPS Office is a free office suite with add or paid version which has a good reputation.

    Microsoft Office is also an option.

    If you want to stay with google sheets and just view the file offline then try saving a copy to your phone in a different format and view that with the Google spreadsheet app (if it can still do that). But I’d take the pop up as a sign that its time to move on from googles shitty products.




  • AI is and always has been a bullshit technology. Its no where near as capable as its proponents in tech industry have been claiming. Its all driven by greed to feed into a stock price frenzy but its the emperor’s new clothes. In the future it may be something useful but at present even the tools that exist are unreliable and broken.

    Self Drive Cars is different, very much a Tesla issue rather than generalised. Tesla has a first move advantage but then Elon Musk blew it by forcing his engineers to cut back on sensors and tech to save money because he knows best. Other self drive manufacturers are doing well and even have licenses to test their fully featured systems in multiple locations.

    AI is a generally crap technology (maybe in the future it will be something useful). Self Drive is a generally myself up technology, except at Tesla where they went for the crap unworkable version.



  • No one seems to have actually read the article, just the headline. This is the ultimate click bait title - kudos to the headline writer in 1939.

    The tl/dr: It’s saying Hitler’s authoritarian actions were galvanising other countries to step up and protect democracy after the failures after WW1.

    In the final paragraph:

    It is one of the most interesting phenomena of Hitler’s political activity that it has resulted in bringing about so soon such an overwhelming and unprecedented manifestation of defensive solidarity amongst the democratic peoples.

    And the final line of the article:

    It would be the height of paradox if Hitler, of all persons, were destined by his statesmanship finally “to make the world safe for Democracy.”

    The article is surprisingly prescient.



  • Well all we have in the article are claims from the perpetrators family and vague innuendo about what was on the victims phone.

    The only facts outlined in the article were that the victim was shot 7 times in his own home, and managed to call from help from the street before dying. The purpetrator was on the run for 2 weeks, and allegedly on drugs during that time.

    Its trash journalism and a shit article. The allegations may be substantiated or they may not, but at the moment the story as written is the family’s opinion spliced into a few details about the crime.


  • Yeah its just not a good show.

    I just watched a scene where Michael and Mol were working together, then suddenly Michael decides to attack Mol, then they have a kung fu fight and finally Michael asks Mol stop and says she needs to trust her, as if Michael hadn’t just violently assaulted her. The writing is nonsensical.

    Unfortunately that is symptomatic of the show as a whole and just one of many problems.

    Also the constant deus ex machina, with the characters having a conversations where everyone finishes each others sentences. Its tiresome to watch. I really wanted to like the show but never could.



  • English Heritage was set up by the government to protect historic sites, and then spun out as an independent charity to continue that role.

    Protecting sites includes limiting the numbers who can visit, hence enclosing them. That allows visitor numbers to be capped and managed (which reduces damage from over tourism) and also prevents illicit access and vandalisn.

    In the case of seahenge it was literally rotting away - the decision was made to excavate and preserve what was left. That was in response to press campaigns to do something to save seahenge; it was a controversial at the time and remains so now. They did this while still part of the UK government in 1999.

    Stonehenge was gifted to the nation in 1915 and had been on private land up to that ppint. A lot of expensive work has been done to preserve the site including demolishing other structures to preserve the skyline, and even recently burying a section of road.

    Visitor charges and subscriptions pay for English Heritage to continue their work and preserve our history. They’re not “robbing bastards”, they’re a non profit with an expensive role.



  • Batteries can be replaced. An EV that could run 1 million miles would still need maintenance - I think the point is that they could be designed to last.

    Planned obsolescence is so wide spread we don’t even notice it, but lots of products are designed to fail either through cheaper components or deliberately flawed design. That means we have to go and buy a replacement. It is also generally cheaper.

    So we either have cheap products that will break or seemingly expensive products but they last for a very long time. But in the long run the cheap products generally cost you more to buy than one expensive product.


  • I’ve always used Virtualbox with various linux distros without issue. My go to is usually Linux Mint using XFCE - xfce is a lightweight desktop environment including whrj it comes to graphics requirements compared to Gnome and KDE. I use the Virtualbox Guest Additions to get good integration with my host system.

    It is also important to set up the guest machine properly so it runs well. I give it the max 128mb of video ram possible, 16gb syaten ram, 2 CPU cores to use (I have 6 on my PC), and a 50gb virtual hard drive at least. When setting up the distro I always install it to the virtual drive, and the first thing I do is install guest additions. I then run the machine at full screen on one of my two monitors.

    My advice would be use a popular distro with a low overhead Desktop Environment, as graphics will be the main bottleneck. Also try to avoid using Snap and Flatpak in the system as they are more resource - so no to Ubuntu and Kubuntu. I’d go for Xfce, LXde spins of various distros - Mint is honestly fine if you want an Ubuntu related system that’s easy to use and relatively stable. Otherwise Puppy linux is very lightweight and you can add just what you need. Debian would probably also be good to use forna truly stable environment.


  • Yeah I have windows 10 on my PC, always dabbled with Linux and had it as a dual boot but was occasional. But didn’t like what I saw of windows 11 on another device and decided to take the full plunge and only use linux.

    I have no regrets - 6 months now, had been on mint before but tried a couple of distros and have been on OpenSuSe tumbleweed since December. I like KDE, I like OpenSuSe and I things like Proton with Steam mean I haven’t used my windows install in months.

    I know “year of the linux desktpp” is a meme but i have to say things do feel different now. Gnome and KDE are both slick, graphics drivers are good, Steam Proton and Wine are game changers for gamers, and the aggressive behaviour of MS with Windows (and actually Google with chrome too if you want to broaden to open source) seem to be all converging to make Linux the best option (not just an OK option).

    I don’t think most consumers will move but i do think if you have even basic tech savvy now, its never been easier to switch and switch for good.





  • It depends on use case. If you’re driving in a city or living in a small country or state, electric makes a lot of sense.

    Range anxiety only really kicks in if driving long distances. But 300 miles on a full charge is already common among electric cars. I’m in the UK - that’d easily covet the 200 mile journey from Manchester to London.

    I think the real anxiety around range is a lack of chargers either on the journey or at the destination. Without that infrastructure then it will put people off electric cars. But the infrastructure is getting better every day -at least in Europe anyway.


  • Doesn’t really matter if you see the survey or not - valve can validate their data other ways. They easily know how many clients connect from each OS and what proportions as that’s fundamental to the client itself. The survey fills in the rest of the data like which kernel, distros, and hardware.

    All this would do is maybe weight some of the answers on which flavour of Linux and which hardware is being used in the favour of proactive users. But really good survey data relies on being representative and that is bes achieved by large random samples rather than people saying “count me!”