Epic Games Store is coming to the Play Store as Google loses in court appeal by blindsight in c/android@lemdro.id

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 2 points 12 hours ago

Epic winning this case might just open that for them.

On the other hand, do they want to enter the mobile market? They're a privately owned company, so they don't have the same shirt sighted pressures to chase exponential growth endlessly, like cancer. They are already making money hand over fist.

Poll: Which abandoned Android phone features do you miss the most? by blindsight in c/android@lemdro.id

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 2 days ago

Bluetooth headphones do this, too. It's infuriating. Let me turn off battery saver mode, god damn it! (I assume this is on the headphones, not on Android, though?)

For some reason, TalkBack triggers this, too, so most Bluetooth headphones are useless for that purpose. Something in a recent update broke TalkBack in the Kindle app so it won't read continuously the "old way" (that worked) and instead uses "continuous reading mode" that pauses just long enough to put Bluetooth headphones to sleep every sentence. And I don't think Google cares because Amazon has implemented their own TTS system in the Kindle app that's slow as fuck for anyone used to speed reading with TTS, but it's the way everyone is recommending now for Kindle. I've switched to pirating books so I can read them in Moon+ Reader instead, since it works.

Canada should follow U.K.'s initiative to lower voting age to 16, says senator by blindsight in c/canada@lemmy.ca

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 6 days ago

A lot of those same students would vote responsibly, if given the chance.

As a former high school teacher, I was very impressed with the political engagement of Gen Z. They are aware of issues and largely feel hopeless and ignored. If students could vote, schools would be an excellent place to teach students how to make an informed vote, and then take a field trip to voting centres to show them how easy it is to vote, too.

As it is, you're partly correct that 16 y.o.s largely don't pay close attention to party platforms, despite generally good awareness about local and global issues, but it's because it seems useless to them since they can't vote.

There's also research supporting that people who vote when they are first eligible to vote are likely to become lifelong voters, and those who don't will likely not. One of the biggest issues in Canadian politics is the demographic mismatch between voters, so "old people issues" are grossly over represented on party platforms—and fair enough that they are! They're the only ones who consistently vote.

Lowering the voting age to 16 would be a statistical artifact on most election results, in how few ridings would actually change hands, but the knock-on effect of building civic engagement for life would be an amazing change for Canadian politics. You would be surprised with how mature 16 year olds can be when it matters.

21

Daily driver work-from-home on Bazzite? Or something more mainstream (Debian?) and install Steam/proton? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml

20 comments fedilink

My question is basically the title, but here are some more details.

My computer is used about 75% for work, 20% for personal use (almost entirely web), and 5% for gaming. ~2 y.o. midrange rig w/ Intel CPU, AMD graphics, 32GB DDR4 RAM.

For work, I need lots of straightforward things: video conferencing on Teams (web is fine), Zoom, Word document editing (web is fine), a bunch of other web apps, some light database stuff, etc.

Plus two things that are a bit trickier: OneDrive professional/SharePoint (so I'll need abraunegg's onedrive) and Excel 2024 desktop (web isn't good enough) for which I'll need to run Windows (10? Ameliorated, maybe?) in a VM.

But I also want to do gaming. I wouldn't install a kernel-level rootkit anyway (and I boycott Denuvo), so SteamOS-level compatibility should work great for my needs. I also have a Quest 3, so I'll want to do PCVR, which apparently works great (with Bazzite).

But I don't really grok what Bazzite being immutable means for using it as a daily driver for work/productivity. Under the hood, it's just Fedora 42, right? For immutable distros, you use flatpaks instead of apt install, and they're basically just "apps" that should "just work", right? Do I care about kernel modification?

Or, more to the point, I don't know what I don't know. After preliminary research on this all, I think my plan of going for Bazzite then adding abraunegg's onedrive and a Windows VM with Office 2024 will hit all my needs, but can anyone "sanity check" that plan, or compare the pros/cons with a non-Ubuntu-based alternative?

I'm good enough with computers that I should be able to tinker through the inevitable small challenges that will come up, but I don't really have enough time to do it twice if my initial plan is terrible. (I connect to a Debian server remotely using the terminal, so I have some background—but I needed to install a bunch of packages to get web app software running, and idk if I'll need that as a desktop user.)

Any advice much appreciated! And thanks for reading this far, even if you don't comment. :)

Edit: thanks for the input so far! I'm turning in, but I'll read everything and reply to stuff tomorrow.

2024 Presidential General Election Results | DDHQ by blindsight in c/politics@beehaw.org

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 45 points 8 months ago

I'm a cis Canadian and I'm terrified for everyone in the US. Even the ignorant masses who viewed for him. Project 2025 is going to dismantle American democracy, and with a stuffed supreme court, there are no remaining impediments to reverse this for a generation, until it's too entrenched to change. If the USA lasts that long.

Literally wondering if an American civil war, or breaking apart into smaller countries, will be coming.

Longer term, terrified what this will mean for anthropogenic climate change and the world my children will inherit. (A climate-science denier is going to be the PM of Canada this time next year, too, and many are already provincial premiers.)

I didn't think this was possible, tbh. I don't understand how 51% of Americans can think the "grab-her-by-the-pussy" con artist is the best choice for president. He's literally told them, repeatedly, what he's going to do and they don't care, don't pay attention, or don't believe him. I can't even.

I'm going to go bury my head in the sand. No more news for me for the next long while. This isn't good for my health.

Trump now bleeding support in GOP-dominated state as more women voters gravitate to Biden by blindsight in c/politics@beehaw.org

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 48 points 1 year ago

The most interesting insight from this article, imho, is that abortion rights in Florida are on the ballot in 2024, abortion rights have passed in every referendum on the topic since the recent Supreme Court fuckery, and that women coming to the polls to vote for their reproductive rights might skew the numbers more in favour of Democrats, independent of polling.

So Democrat victories in Florida (including a senator seat) are looking like a real possibility.

‘Save the Children Convoy’ Finally Ends, Leaving Farmer With Piles of Garbage, Rancid Food and Unpaid Bills by blindsight in c/canada@lemmy.ca

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 42 points 1 year ago

I'm having a hard time having sympathy for someone who was supporting anti-trans bigots, who were accusing teachers of being pedophiles, and (I suppose) attempting a coup. (Hard to take the last one seriously.)

Like... Of course this ended poorly. I'm surprised they paid any of the hydro bill from their camp, tbh.

degree in bamf by blindsight in c/science_memes@mander.xyz

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 41 points 1 year ago

Did you drop a /s? This is a funny meme, so I'm assuming I just missed a joke.

Right?

(Speaking as a white male, white male entitlement, and privilege for that matter, are incredibly relevant to white men being sexist/racist.)

(You can trust me on this because I'm a white male. Also, I'm used to my opinion being listened to, so I expect you to as well. Just FYI.)

fixed rule by blindsight in c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

idk, Allman is very readable. Easy to scan vertically to find the matching open brace. Not quite as vertically-space efficient as the best way, but it's not offensive.

31

Did anyone get the Limited Edition OLED Steam Deck (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

10 comments fedilink

I'm just curious if anyone else tried to get one of the Limited Edition Steam Decks before they sold out. I tried for it (on 3 devices) but kept getting error messages until it sold out. I just ordered the 1 TB edition instead.

This will be my first portable gaming device since the DSi, so I'm really excited for it. Getting the clear LE one would have been cool, but I'm probably better off not spending the extra $40 CAD, lol.

So, what's your Steam Deck situation? Did you try for/get the LE? Do you already have one? Getting one? Don't want one?

40

Backpack Battles: business model i haven't seen since Minecraft, and it seems to be working? (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org

9 comments fedilink

All over Twitch, about half the streamers I usually watch playing turn-based strategy games are all suddenly playing the same new game. I watched a few streams, and it looked interesting. Normally, I never buy games when they just come out because I have such a backlog and can wait for a sale, but I figured if everyone (figuratively) is playing it, it must be amazing.

Turns out, they're giving the full game away for free during their "early access" phase as a "demo". But it's the full game, just with only 2 class choices.

I had a blast! And now I'm probably going to buy it on release.

The last time I remember doing this was for Minecraft. I see lots of games doing free weekends on Steam, which is very similar; doesn't work well for me since I only have a few hours for gaming each week, but I imagine that must be successful for a lot of games, too.

What do you think of that business model? And/or, what do you think of Backpack Battles, if you've played it?

Godot Engine hits over 50K euros per month in funding by blindsight in c/gaming@beehaw.org

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 97 points 2 years ago

This is really exciting to see. Enshittification is generating increasing backlash against incumbent monopolies, and encouraging more movement toward sustainable open source software.

See Blender, too.

Phil Spencer Insists Games Launch Across Xbox Series X and S Despite Baldur's Gate 3 No-Show - IGN by blindsight in c/gaming@beehaw.org

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 41 points 2 years ago

Do they have any other option than to stick to their guns on this one? That's sold the XBox Series S as having feature parity with the Series X. If they go against that now, then they've engaged in false advertising and will immediately get slapped with a huge lawsuit and/or fine, plus all the negative PR that comes from it.

They're stuck until the next console generation, which is a long way out. And I wonder if PS5 will continue to gain ground against XBox for the rest of the generation as a result.

It will be interesting to see if they continue with their two-model tiering next gen, but I'm guessing they won't.

Help back up the Great 78 Collections before the Record Companies force The Internet Archive to take them down! by blindsight in c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 103 points 2 years ago

Copyright has completely jumped the shark. There's absolutely no balance between the public benefit of the public domain.

30 years ought to be enough time for anyone to extract any reasonable value from an IP. If you haven't made your profit in 30 years, then let the public benefit from it.

Or at least let preservationists (data hoarders, let's be honest) keep our cultural history alive and accessible for future generations.

12

Sask. (Canada) high court upholds decision to not pay insurance to estate of man who died of drug overdose - CBC (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 2 years ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

0 comments fedilink

Saskatchewan is fairly conservative leaning, from a Canadian perspective, so perhaps this isn't surprising, but it's a shame that drug use continues to be viewed through a criminal lens instead of a healthcare and mental health crisis.

My understanding is that even suicide is generally covered by life insurance policies after a two-year vetting period; I would have thought that drug overdoses would at least get the same treatment. It doesn't say in the article how long this policy existed, but the context implies it was longer than two years and I would have thought it would have been a relevant detail to include in the article if it was a newly opened policy, so the omission of that detail further supports it being an older policy.

I have great sympathy for his family, especially because of the long legal battle that I'm sure has retraumatized them over the intervening years.

Reddit starts removing moderators behind the latest protests by blindsight in c/technology@beehaw.org

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 45 points 2 years ago

It sounds like this was done without any warning, too. Subs can, and have, changed their rules many times. Users voting to allow NSFW content is already precedented.

Unilaterally removing mods who are in direct compliance with your order to reopen the sub isn't a good look, particularly since one of the biggest drivers of this protest is the lack of communication with mods.

2

[Informal review] ALLDOCUBE iPlay 50 Pro 10.4" tablet – Surprising quality from a cheap AliExpress tablet (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago by blindsight@beehaw.org to c/android@lemmy.world

0 comments fedilink

My context / use case

I got Fire 7 tablets for my kiddos a few years ago and they're dreadfully slow and can't really run many apps at all. With my daughter needing some educational support at home, I was looking for a cheap replacement that actually had enough power to manage recent education apps, and hopefully be future proof for a while.

Alternatives

The cheapest tablet at Costco.ca, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, is $500 CAD, has a weak processor, only 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage.

I'll never touch Apple products for a zillion reasons, but cost was completely prohibitive for a device my child could drop any day. Even used ones are insanely priced. And the app ecosystem for education on iOS is almost entirely paid apps, increasingly using a subscription model. (Or so it seems.)

Newer Amazon Fire "HD" tablets suck, too, but at least they're cheap. And they might be powerful enough to run some things? idk. I wasn't enthused.

Then, I thought to check AliExpress and found an 8GB tablet with 128GB storage, a processor better than the S6, and a 2K (1440p) display. After reading reviews to check if it's legit, I ordered one.

Informal Review

The great:

Price/value for the specs. I paid ~$240CAD for a bundle that includes a nice case, screen protector, charging block and cable, and a child-size Bluetooth keyboard. (It doesn't have a digitizer, so I skipped the stylus.)

The good:

The tablet is snappy. The battery lasts a long time. The screen has plenty enough resolution to render everything crisply on a 10.4" display.

It's a perfect tablet for my kids use as an educational tablet. It's great for PDF ebook reading (mostly picture books and early reader chapter books to date, lol!) and has handled all the education/edutainment apps without any slowdowns.

3.5mm jack. 18W fast charging. Build quality feels solid. Well positioned hardware buttons and 3.5mm jack make it easy to use in either orientation. The included case works as an angled stand. SD card slot for expansion. SIM compatible for phone/data.

The bad:

The viewing angle is pretty terrible. It's completely fine for solo use or for applications where colour accuracy isn't important, but it's very noticeable.

The speakers suck. I'm not a sound geek, so I don't know the correct terms, but the sound is muddy and distorted. They also have a fairly low maximum volume, and become increasingly distorted at higher volume. They work well enough, but it's not enjoyable for music. I would definitely use headphones for music/video/games.

I haven't tried the camera at all, but I've heard it's not great. Can't comment on that.

The purchase

The vendor I ordered from (ALLDOCUBE Direct Store) swapped the EU plug for a US plug at no extra cost. It arrived quickly (3 weeks?) from China.

The package arrived with the retail box crushed, so the included screen protector broke. After using it for a day, I decided to buy a second one for my other child, and asked them to include a replacement. Not only did they include a replacement, but they pre-installed the screen protector on tablet #2 so it couldn't break, without my asking them to.

I would recommend the seller, but ask them to pre-install the screen protector (if you plan to use one) so there's less risk of damage in transit.

Discussion

Anyway, not sure if this is the kind of content people want here, but I thought I'd do my part to add something!

Has anyone else experimented with cheap AliExpress/Chinese Android devices?

Based on my success with these, I'm considering getting a phone for my wife there. I'm a bit more worried about data vulnerabilities and software support longevity on a daily driver phone, but it's really hard to find a small quality phone for a reasonable price. Also, it needs to have a good camera or it's a nonstarter.

Do you have any experience or thoughts on this?