I recently switched from 320kbps to lossless, and there are very few moments where I can tell a difference. The biggest one is in the cover of “Tom’s Diner” by AnnenMayKantereit. There’s a section of the song at 320kbps where it goes almost silent, other than faint whispers of the band counting out the silence, but in lossless you can hear them actually singing the song quietly

Still increases footprint/grants more credibility to the Fediverse, which I think is a good thing. It just won’t really impact the daily experience here

I live in the PNW. I picked an instance in the PNW. Sometimes I see local news, and often I read comments from people within a few hour drive. It’s nice to have a small, local community here, while still having access to the rest of the world together. So I guess recommend picking the largest instance in your region if you don’t have any other preferences.

I disagree here I think, the DS was a fun iteration on an existing console (gameboy advance xp), but the Switch spawned a new classification of console. The hybrid console has pretty much taken over casual gaming, including Steam’s Steam Deck, Microsoft’s ROG Xbox Ally, and Playstation’s Portal (PS kinda phoned it in here). While I don’t think that hybrid consoles will replace normal consoles altogether, I do think the Switch has made having a handheld variation of your console a necessity moving forward.

Literally just went through getting the app built /deployed for my parents and my partner’s parents using the old method a few weeks ago. I’m super glad the app is on the app store, but it’s just bad timing for me lol

You don’t have to give them your password, and GrapheneOS has a convenient feature to turn off biometric unlock for only unlocking the phone, but still lets you use it in apps

I use arch (btw) on my personal machine because I hate myself, but on my servers and the computers of people I move off of Windows I always install Debian and KDE/Gnome, for simplicity and stability.

Nah, those two cannot be used synonymously. They mean different things, and one is predatory and problematic, the other is not.

Yup. All my IoT devices are on a network that doesn’t have access to the internet. To control remotely, I use a VPN. Even though I don’t think it’s technically necessary, I take the precaution of blocking connections to the big company’s APIs/websites for all my IoT devices, just in case.

I wish this were easier for the layman to do. Some companies like Unifi make it pretty painless, but they are expensive and it’s really hard for the non-networking-savvy folks to know exactly which devices you need from them to have a working setup.

I agree with the fact that they aren’t a great company, but anyone who’s shopped around for skins/decals knows that dbrand is a cut above the rest in terms of quality. I’ve stopped buying from them due to how they run things, though.

Yeah, I agree

While I agree, it’s a pretty lame thing to say “This doesn’t work for your use case? That’s because your use case is wrong” If the distro doesn’t support PIA, then that is an issue with the distro, not the user.

Is there a list of shows that have LGBT+ representation that don’t end in tragedy?

Only private tracker I use is MyAnonymouse, they’ve got all the books/audiobooks anyone could ever need, which I have had a really hard time finding on public trackers. Their rules are super lenient as well.

They have a mode to turn off the creatures for exactly that reason. I haven’t tried it, but other than the spooky factor the creatures don’t add a ton to the game, so it probably wouldn’t lessen the experience. (There is a small thing, but it’d spoil some story elements if I were to say them here)

Sure, people can use the presets, but on a lower end machine, those aren’t perfect for getting the most out of your specific hardware. What I meant there was that consoles, and by extension the steam deck/steam machine, have the exact setting loadout for that hardware dialed in.

Sure, he could pay someone to upgrade it for him, but at that point it loses a lot of the benefits that come with being able to upgrade in the first place.

The Fractal Terra is actually larger than all modern consoles. The Fractal Terra is 11.4 liters. The PS5 is 7.2 liters. The Xbox series X is 6.9 liters. The steam machine is 3.8 liters, 3x smaller than the Fractal Terra. When it comes to dimensions, the Xbox series X is smaller in all dimensions, and while the PS5 is longer and wider, it’s height is half that of the Fractal Terra. The steam machine is pretty similar in two of the three dimensions, but the depth is less than half that of the Terra. The Fractal Terra is a really nice, small case, but it’s only small for a PC, not a console.

As for normalizing incompetence, I doubt you have as extensive a knowledge as you do for computers for every single thing you interact with every day. Knowing “how to use one” is different from knowing how to build and upgrade one.

You come across as someone who is smart, and yet doesn’t fully understand that half the population is below the 50th percentile. The generalizations you make for yourself and those you regularly interact with cannot be made for everyone.

You really do, and you not thinking so is telling of how skewed your view of what common knowledge really is. Where does someone start when building a computer if they don’t know what goes into a computer? How do they pick parts if they don’t know what changes will make their computer better or worse? I love PC part picker, but let’s be real, it’s for people who already know what they are looking for. PC part picker makes things so easy for you and I, but drop any tech-illiterate person into PC part picker, and they won’t actually get anywhere. Plus, I’ve had it get the dimensions of a GPU wrong before, and without verifying through a different website, I would have bought a card that didn’t fit in the case I was using. Even the gold standard sources of information make mistakes.

As for the pre-built argument, to someone like my brother who knows nothing about computers, but regularly games on his PS5, the steam machine and a prebuilt are essentially the same. He wouldn’t know how to fix the computer without sending it off to the company, which is how he’d fix the steam machine as well. He also wouldn’t see the PC as something that could be upgraded. If a game wasn’t running well, he certainly wouldn’t know what part would need upgrading in his machine to make his experience better. In that sense, the pre-built is effectly non-upgradable. He might know to adjust the in-game settings, but wouldn’t know what settings to change. On a prebuilt, this would be an issue. On a device that millions of people use, all with the exact same specs, this information is readily available. Think of the steam deck, you could look up “<game name> steam deck settings” and get the best loadout for your exact hardware. Hell, a bunch of modern games have a “Steam Deck” settings loadout built in. With a prebuilt, that’s not possible. And finally, the steam machine is considerably smaller than any mini itx prebuilt I’ve seen on the market. Hell, a mini it’s motherboard couldn’t even fit in the steam machine’s case. To a lot of people, not having a big box in their living room matters. I’ve had a hard time convincing my partner to let me have a PC in a Fractal Design Terra case in the living room, and that’s a case that is small and clean looking.

Not trying to attack you or anything because you did say that you don’t see the appeal for your own case, but that’s because this product isn’t for you. If you see building a PC and putting it in your living room as an alternative, it’s not meant for you. This is for everyone else who doesn’t see those things as easy. Being someone who has been building/upgrading my own gaming PCs since I was a preteen, I understand how simple it seems to you. But not everyone has that perspective. What seems like simple step-by-step instructions to you is actually really complicated. Part compatiblity alone is difficult, and even the best sources of info can get it wrong, and that’s really demoralizing for someone who doesn’t even know what RAM is. Step-by-step guides seem easy, but there are many predatory ones out there, which suggest using a free trial of paid software to do the things FOSS software can do. You and I know how to avoid it, but if someone doesn’t even understand the concept of an .iso file, how would they know that better alternatives exist? Also, an extremely common case when following tutorials online is that they are out of date, or an unexpected error happens when following them. You and I can quickly RCA these issues and get back on track, but when you don’t even understand what the steps you are taking are actually doing, these minor hiccups leave you dead in the water.

What you are actually suggesting here is people do like, a year of introductory computer classes. It doesn’t feel like that to you because you’ve been figuring all this crap out as you go along, but having walked people through the most basic of IT problems, you are overestimating what a normal person finds intimidating when dealing with a computer.

I’ve priced it out for myself, and I couldn’t get a build that’s as good at that price, not on new hardware at least. Not sure how they worked out their numbers

My neighbors planted blackberries on their side of the property line. It takes a good few days each year for me to cut them back off my side. Please, if you want blackberries, plant them in their own little zone, and be mindful of how they can spread