Notices by Professor_Stevens (professor_stevens@mastodon.gamedev.place)

@aral

No, we shouldn't. But democracy means you can do any shitheaded thing more than half the voters want you to do. (We used to have a document here that put limits on that, but it looks different now.)

@aral

We need an example that proves the viability of alternatives. Who has got the best system today?

@aral

There is a subtlety to this that I hope is noted: The point is not that the reporter must report whether or not it is raining, nor that the reporter cannot avoid the question of whether or not it is raining by reporting that one side says it is and the other says it is not.

The point is that the reporter must report what both sides have said AND report whether or not it is raining.

That way, we don't just know the truth. We also know who we can trust, and who we can't.

@aral

According to Google, this is the only page where your name and the phrase "The Web We Deserve" appear together.

Now, you have an ethical dilemma here. Since you are getting free advertising out of this dumb AI, if you wrote some quickie books with those titles, they'd probably sell.

If only there were some kind of software that could write a book for you in a hurry...

https://notes.baldurbjarnason.com/archive/

@aral

You got a little typo there, brother.

@aral @jan

Got room for another user on yours?

@aral

If Windows were a watch...

@aral

Is that the pub at the end of the video you posted a few weeks back? If it is, we may be having a drink together there sooner than I had originally expected. It looks quite restful and, for some reason, I'm lately feeling a need to get the hell out of this place.

@mmiasma

Whenever I look at a policy question of that magnitude, I look for existing institutions that are advocating for the consumer. No need for you to fight a battle like this on your own. This will ultimately be a political question, answered with regulatory language.

Alas, since the big corps can pay lobbyists, the big corps actually draft a lot of that language themselves. To counter that, you need to be part of something just as big.

Don't start a fight. Join one.

@mmiasma

Don't know if you two are acquainted, but our Mastodon peer @aral clearly knows a lot about this kind of stuff.

@aral

So how does one interpret this little glyph at the lower-right of a Microsoft web page?

@aral

Think of them as your most reliable advisors.

When I served in local government, we had public input sessions twice each month. Whenever a contentious issue was pending, the Republicans would always turn out in fairly large numbers to express their opinion. Quite honestly, I admired them for it. The Democrats never came, but Republicans are more motivated.

Anyway, the Republicans were always wrong. So, whatever they asked for, I just voted the other way.

Worked every time.

@aral @sonny

Cool.

Now, I realize FOSS is all someone's passion project, so I don't want to be a pest. But I was kind of stunned to see that GNOME only supports two zoom sizes, 100% and 200% (which might as well be labeled "much too small" and "way too big").

A workaround is to use the "large type" setting in Accessibility. But people are telling me I can get more zoom levels if I turn on some "experimental" flag.

Seriously? Zooming is experimental for GNOME in 2024?

@aral This worth anything? This is on my Asus with a touchscreen.

@aral

I'm using GNOME on a Manjaro install I did over the weekend. Can you tell me how to reproduce the bug? I'll let you know what happens on my setup.

@aral

Sweet.

Which distro did you choose?

@aral

Huh. You're right. It sure does. But what's the point of using the digit "6" here? Is it a play on words? Does "six geek" mean anything? Is "six" supposed to be homonymic with "sex?" Or "sicks," maybe?

I think there's more to this.

I feel dumb. Usually, these geek-shirt jokes are pretty obvious. I'm sure this one will be too.

As soon as someone here explains it to me.

@aral

Awesome! I like it partly because it does seem pretty solid, with all the basics working most reliably. But another reason is that it doesn't try to do everything. It does stick to the basics, which keeps the (re)learning curve reasonably flat.

@aral

Please let us know how that works out for you.