This looks like a very classical and well-known case of executives copying each other.

That other company is doing layoffs and seems fine? Reports the line going up? Let’s do it, too!

The guys across the street are already implementing AI? Investors love it? Let do it, too! We may have taken a risk with blockchain, but this one is just sure to work better for us!

The big name is going for the money, predator-style, and they’re still afloat? Finally, we can cash out, too!

The suits did. You know, so the line goes up. Because we’re all gonna die otherwise or something.

i3 isn’t a proper DE, though, but I definitely would go with that with that little RAM.

For strictly DEs, I’d pick XFCE - it’s just lovely for what it demands.

Who says the Linux community is crappy to newbies?

Don’t worry, we have that, too. ;) It’s a whole package!

Jokes aside, glad to help. Feel free to drop me a private message here or in Matrix if you have any more questions or something. Happy Linux’ing!

Not to mention Valve’s effort with Proton, allowing non-Windows gamers enjoy what they pay for on multiple platforms with great ease; their efforts have been massive for gaming on Linux, and without it, I wouldn’t have paid for a lot of games, earning their developers a whole lot of absolutely nothing.

Also the community hub, the workshop, the review system, the cloud saving, the functional wishlist, the gifting system, the shopping cart, the anti-cheat (you’re better of with it than without it), the discovery queue, the sales dedicated to specific types of games that actually help people discover games and drive the revenue up for the developers, the (I think) complete transaction history, the refunds system, the friends and the chat and profiles - and probably many more things that I’m either not aware of or couldn’t list off the tip of my tongue, combined with internal works that, again, do help the devs in the end.

Steam is much more than a place where one pays for a game to then simply download and play it. It’s much greater and more functional than that. None of the developers have to put their games on Steam - nobody forces Epic Games Store or GOG to be this subpar in comparison. Same way nobody forces gamers to use Steam. People use Steam because they love it - or because there’s no good-enough alternative, but that’s hardly Valve’s fault.

Steam charging 30% is not just worth it, but also surprising, given what putting your game on Steam gets you as the developer, and what it gets us, the players.

You can always dual-boot, i.e. have both Windows and Linux… or multiple Linux installations, if you please.

Start with Linux Mint for greater stability and familiarity. Soon enough you’ll learn that distributions are basically fancy pre-packaged collections and configurations of mostly the same applications (they’re also called packaged), which should make choosing your distribution a bit easier. There are differences, of course, but you’ll need a deeper knowledge and more of a nuanced list of requirements before it starts to matter much, so don’t stress about comparing them and choosing “the best” for you - you’ll always be able to switch the entire distribution or reconfigure your own to fit your specific needs surprisingly easily.

As a Russian who’s been thinking about what could’ve been done about Putin’s many moves towards authoritarianism, I say this: I don’t know. I dint think anyone knows either.

indsight is 20/20, so good luck trying to convince people to act now, before the far and distant future is here; it’s probably part of our nature to not be that much concerned with the long-term, as it’s the short- to mid-term that keeps us alive, i.e. fed, sheltered, hopefully healthy etc.

At this point, it feels like history is indeed very cyclical, at least society is, and now anyone left of outright fascism seems to be in minority, with many others either failing or refusing to recognise what’s likely coming. I don’t think it’s new, either - I’m sure people of our ages had things to compare their situation to during the Nazis’ rise to power and subsequent events, just like we look back to their times and wonder how in the world could we possibly let that happen.

It’s probably best to vote and to protest and to be politically active and all that, before the right-wing or some other authoritarian group manages to manipulate its way into your government, local or higher, and start doing all it can to make you not even think of voting or protesting or being politically active. The caveat is you just don’t have any guarantees that any of that is going to work.

What’s even more important to remember is the fact that we cannot come up with some universal solution that’s going to always work the best way possible in every political and economical and social circumstance. This is what makes recording history and experience so important - it will allow us and those that will be after us to analyse the multitudes of factors and tendencies that lead to things and hopefully figure out reliable and effective and predictable mechanisms for society to function and prosper in mutual respect, egalitarianism, support, etc.

My last take is probably a little controversial: I think we shouldn’t ostracise people we see as fascist or right-wing or authoritarian, etc., but rather be welcoming and supporting, giving them respect, community and opportunity to speak and be listened to with kindness and understanding; many turn to violent and inhumane ideologies because, well, they don’t value themselves, feel threatened, humiliated, afraid, or something along these lines. It doesn’t have to be true, because it’s about how people feel, and we must work with how people feel and influence that on emotional level so they feel like they being in a group that’s based on being “anti-woke” or just “anti-” something - that’s a dead end; they should feel like they belong to groups that envision future and prosperity, where people know they can be trusted and can trust, where they can respect and be respected. You may not like it, but you have to understand that the human psyche can be very flexible and eventually turn a person you could easily turn into a human-loving ally into a bloodthirsty fascist just because they couldn’t find their place anywhere else, so instead they’re easily picked up by a group that manipulates confused and lost people into a sense of community and belonging.

Fascism has to be the unappealing option for them, and that requires a mind healthy from trauma and loneliness, the lack of that feeling like you’ve been played and robbed of something you own - like some great historical period the mouthpieces promise to get you back into if you yell at teenage girls for wearing bright-colored hair and rainbow pins.

Ranting is just a detail here, focus on the point - it’s a place of discussion. Like a tavern back in some older days. People talk here, come up with ideas, act on some of them, and it’s through this ranting, too, that some people may eventually pursue political or otherwise influential careers, try and bring changes they want to see, exerice their rights.

You can’t just get up and go to vote without having discussion either. This is all part of the process.

Lemmy, too, has algorithms that determine what you see - how many upvotes a post has, how many comments, how recent, etc. The communities you subscribe to may have some high-quality, niche posts that you’re very likely to miss because they’re overshadowed by bigger, more active communities where posts simply gain more traction - RSS lets you circumvent that.

Catered feeds, for example.

You can create a feed that only includes Lemmy communities dedicated to a specific topic - like only those related to video games in some broad sense. Or a news-only feed.

It’s much more convenient that just subscribing to everything you’re interested in and then trying to filter out on our own (good luck not forgetting stuff), as you’re basically on the algorithm’s mercy as well.

People aren’t rational beings - we mostly operate on emotions, fueled by chemical reactions to certain events and sensations and experiences.

Most flat-earthers probably don’t care about any of the “facts” or “explanations” they hear or spread or study or come up with - first and foremost, it’s a community to them, a place where they feel like they belong and such. For their own reasons, they allow the obviously positive emotions they experience there to outweigh any of the absurd they may honestly recognize internally, but never admit or voice out or truly give in to.

I think I’ve seen several somewhat lengthy videos on YouTube on the matter, explaining how and why that happens. It’s a mechanism similar to other conspiracy theories and communities around them, as well as various cults - vulnerable, susceptible people are the ones to usually to end up in these because they’re reeled in one way or the other.

I’m not saying the theory isn’t nonsense, of course; only that the theory itself is probably only a facade for a way for some people to experience connection with others, a sense of belonging, some shared activities, something along these lines. That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised that their numbers grow or that they can easily ignore facts and science - it simply isn’t about facts or science, but emotions and feelings.

I had a friend doing mobile gamedev, making near unheard-of money for their then city of residence, had everything going well for them… except the job was soul-crushing and draining, eventually giving them severe depression.

When I was getting my first dev job, they said I’d be really sorry about doing outsource, and I just thought that out of us two, I’d be the really happy one, even making much less than them.

Might be a Linux thing, though.

It’s a team-building exercise that the management came up with. They might let some people go if it goes well, too!

Did he mention that a lot of the real estate that people own in most post-Soviet countries is inherited when (grand)parents die, this being first if not the only step towards the market for most people?

None of the people I know from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus bought their first apartments on their own through hard work or anything: it’s mostly apartments where your grandma died, apartments that you’re either massively helped with or outright gifted by parents when yuu have a significant other to move in with (so both families join funds, most coming from selling some dead relative’s apartment) or on a wedding day (a rarer occasion), or some mix of that.

Without any help or gifts, you’re lucky to be able to get a mortgage that you can pay off before you’re 60 (at least).

The real estate prices outside the US and the EU may seem nicer, but salaries and expenses sure don’t.

Everybody is screwed, everywhere.

Valve time; the phenomenon is often observed in software development, with some calling it the software development time.

Jokes aside, reading this thread makes me appreciate the old junk for the washing machine I have around here much more - at least it’s accurate with time!

Jeffrey Epstein.

I didn’t grow up in the western world, so I knew next to nothing about the guy, but one thing I know is that his death has spawned a lot of speculation and conspiracy. Not really sure what of it is a meme and what is really something that people believe.

Email is still functional and necessary so have to stick with that.

I what way? Are you talking about email lists or something like that? Please share some wisdom so I can think of email as of something more than just annoying spambox that corportations and governments use to spy on me.

Would you happen to know how that compares to saying “Fuck it” and going with a Java career for the relative predictability? I’m not asking for any particular reasons, just curious.

The small business doing the hauling, because the truck owner won’t risk scratching the bed of their lovely pickup.