Depends on the GUI. I love having GUIs for things, but I might have a hard time deciding between using CLI to launch everything and using GNOME.

Luge is confusing enough. This is just moreso.

I mean, given the problems the world currently faces, both are fairly optimistic. 50 years is a long time now. Nuclear treaties are expiring and the people in charge of the nuclear powers don’t seem the kind to decrease their nuclear armament, or make rational decisions regarding their use. A shifting climate could (not necessarily definitely will but certainly could) destroy our ability to feed ourselves at scale, creating a world where people are too concerned about food to worry about building robots or self-actualization. Clean water sources are becoming rarer and harder to access, so people might be too focused on fighting over water to worry too much about anything else. And the fun part is none of these are mutually exclusive. We could have a future where part of the world is a glowing crater, the equator is a sun blasted hell, and the Canadians and Siberians are the only survivors, fighting each other over what’s left of the bioaccumulating-poison-laden arctic fish as they shout their battlecries, words with a meaning no one remembers anymore; ‘SORRY!’ ‘BLYAT!’

There are ads on Lemmy? I’ve never seen one.

But, like so many things in this world, if you ask ‘why is this a thing?’ the answer is almost always ‘idiots exist.’ A handful of idiots DO click on ads and buy the products, download the malware, etc. It’s not much but the 30 real people lend legitimacy to the 970 ‘totally real people’ who ‘totally clicked on the ad but just didn’t buy anything’ according to the metrics, and it’s seemingly impossible to sell anything without paying rent to the marketers because it’s essentially analogous to nuclear arms; if no one had it, everyone would be happier, healthier, and safer, but if they have it and you don’t, you lose.

Ads need to be banned. They are inherently harmful, inherently deceptive, and only valuable in competition with other advertising. There is a direct line between the advertising model and the malignant politics that are destroying our world. Ban them all.

Antisemites don’t actually care about his religion. It’s racism. Jewish heritage means Jew, which to them means evil. No Jewish heritage but in their way means secret Jew, which to them means secretly evil.

Most assuredly not.

No. No fun. Fun-seeking got us into this horseshit. Learn to be satisfied with pleasant.

The penultimate niche: evol Linux. If you make your own distro, you will step up into the heady world of customized Linux. From there, the only way up is to customise the kernel and maybe the hardware.

Hold on, it’s not as bad as you’re imagining. Let me just pull something up to show you.

There is no 9 because 7 8 9.

‘I just need to make the numbers look good until I can quit this company and level up. Apre moi, le deluge.’ - capitalists without capital

‘I just need to keep things flowing toward me until I can quit this world and level up. Apre moi, le deluge.’ - capitalists with capital

Anyone with a scintilla of awareness knows it has limits, but you can’t ‘level up’ in capitalist games by accepting them.

The point was not that empire is not villainous, simply that the ‘history will not be kind to’ sentiment is mostly pointless ressentiment. All it does is mollify the slave with the pretense they will get their reward after death and the oppressor will get their punishment. The empire does not care. The ones that care about history will write the history they want the world to remember after their death and live the life of the wealthy conqueror until they do.

A certain subset of people do. There are still lots of Brits who not only don’t hate the idea of empire but think it should come back. There are even people in the former British colonies that romanticise that history. There are people now, and will continue to be, who look at the history of empires, conquerors, and tyrants, and cheer for the ‘great men of history.’ Maybe one day that might change, but it’s going to be a while, if ever.

Sure. Just like how we all villainise Rome, the British empire, the Khanates, and other violent militaristic cultures of conquest… and, of course, no one would look back fondly on governments that enacted policies of hate and murdered their citizens and others… Oh, wait… /s

That’s the sneaky thing about IP based projects. Even if it was a small indie team, even if they were in love with the original book, even if they had incredible respect for the original author and their work, a book and a game, or a movie, or an episodic show, are so inherently different as to make any IP deal simply a lie. They use different techniques, methodologies, and structures such that they can’t produce anything like the same experience, even with the same plotline. It’s a mask to trick people into buying the product, and the wildest part is that the mask can work so well that even the makers don’t realise it’s a mask.

Never, ever buy anything based on IP. That is pure familiarity bias, a trick to make you think it will be good. In the particularly susceptible, it can even create self-delusion and confusion. (X is good, therefore this other thing that licensed the name ‘X’ must be good. It doesn’t feel good, though. No, clearly it is my feelings that are wrong. X is good so ‘X’ must be good. It uses the same mouth sounds. How could it not be?)

A change in medium is inherently a different product and can never be the same as the original. As anyone who has seen a movie based on a book can tell you, there is zero guarantee the movie will have anything more than a passing resemblance to the book *coughEarthseacough* and maybe not even that. *coughWorldWarZcough* Oof, pardon my coughing. The bullshit fumes coming out of the marketing and licensing departments are making it hard to see.

Another little reminder:

• if you play games, do not buy microtransaction items or, if possible, games that try to sell them.
• If you are a parent, do not let your kids buy microtransaction items or games that try to sell them.
• If you know a parent who is not a gamer, share these concepts with them. They won’t have these sorts of things piped into their bubble under any normal circumstances.

Or a Barry.