patchwork

joined 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

I tried to find the video on PeerTube, from the end users perspective I think we should encourage others to choose community over corporate and use platforms like PeerTube to post these videos instead of YouTube (Alphabet).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I didn’t know it was a Cloudflare site, but I was happy to see it’s not running Google’s hardware fingerprinting Ajax scripts that I dislike more than Cloudflare services.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The flatpak has been working for me on Linux Mint, although the flatpak didn’t work on Ubuntu proper. From what I understand the Mint devs do some extra tinkering to support flatpaks better than vanilla Ubuntu. Have you tried downloading the binary and running it from a terminal?

The Appimage also works well for me on my Ubuntu XFCE box.

https://www.openra.net/download/#linux

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Unless we want Google to complete the “Death Star” and totally control the Internet, I think using services based on their products still perpetuates Alphabet dominance of the web. I use Firefox based browsers and search engines like DDG and Brave that don’t depend on Google’s code base to exist.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I don’t blindly stand behind any of these companies, but I believe DuckDuckGo is privately held, so it doesn’t have shareholders clamoring for the greediest and most deceptive business practices like Alphabet and Microsoft. I know Brave is controversial, but lately their search engine has been working well as backup for DDG, so I can avoid Google all together.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Wow, I didn’t think of that. Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Companies don’t desire to be treated as people under the law, the 1886 Supreme Court decision that interpreted the 14th Amendment as corporate personhood was the most racist decision we still live with today. The amendment was written to grant freed slaves citizenship, but the same greedy capitalists that benefited from slavery used it to begin the neofeudaism that still enriches the few while causing suffering for the masses today and it’s only getting worse. Don’t “love” any corporation, they’re literally born out of the greatest evil in US history.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

OpenRA, MineTest, Veloren

 

Hi, I need a video upscaling solution to enhance some old family videos. As much as I’d love to use a FOSS program, I can’t find anything that comes close to Topaz Video AI.

I purchased the license and I’ve been battling with the application for a week trying to get it running on Linux. I’ve tried Wine, Bottles, Lutris, ProtonGE and tinkering with prefixes.

I’ve read on the Topaz community forums that people have got it working previously on Linux, but I’ve been unable to replicate their setup.

On the forums they said it takes a performance hit on Linux, but I’m willing to deal with that to avoid Windows. In the end I may have to purchase a copy of Windows for the first time in over decade to run this app, but I’m not going to give up without a good effort.

Does anyone have any experience with this application or know of a similar application working on Linux? I’m also willing to run older versions of the client just to use it, anything but a Windows install please!

Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

I think the automotive analogy is relevant, some think using technology means they understand it. I’m a pretty good driver, but it would be unwise to ask me to repair your car’s transmission. My grandmother spends more time on her computer glued to Facebook than I spend using my computer on a given day, but I’m not asking her to build my next gaming rig.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It’s easier to build a PC in 2023 than it was in 1993. Modern motherboard’s typically don’t require separate cards for sound, network and video (unless you’re gaming). It’s mostly integrated now and you don’t need hours manually manipulating jumpers and trying to affix terribly designed IDE cables now replaced with SATA. I’d much rather work on repairing my modern PC vs trying to troubleshoot a Compaq 486 20+ years ago.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I highly recommend Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States” to gain a better understanding of how and why such deplorable things took place in the US.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (8 children)

In the 1990s if you wanted to play a PC game you had install it manually with a CD, typically configure ini files in a text editor and fix irq requests for your peripherals just to play. In the contemporary world a zoomer only needs to tap the install icon on the screen, Gen Z may have more experience usually technology than any previous generation, but the days of asking grandma to fix your computer seem a certainty on the horizon.

 

Please don't flame me too bad, I understand that although privacy and libre software are important to many in the Linux community, my opinions may be outside the scope of consideration for some and I respect that.

Personally, conscientious consumerism and privacy are some of the primary reasons I use Linux. I prefer community>private business>corporate when I am choosing products and services.

-System76

About 8 years ago I purchased a laptop from System76, the customer service was incredible and the machine exceeded my expectations in build quality and performance.

Recently I've been in the market for a smaller machine, like a Thinkpad X1, StarBook 14 or System76 Lemur.

Last week, when I visited the System76 website they used Plausible's open source analytics on the home page (which is a great alternative to Google's proprietary hardware fingerprinting algorithm), but once I added the laptop to my cart to checkout, I noticed the third-party trackers, apis.google and ajax.googleapis load on the webpage. Google's reCAPTCHA was also required to complete the purchase. Hell, even Discord has switched to hCaptcha at this point citing their laughable "Gamer Privacy First" policy.

IMHO, I find it hypocritical that System76 does so much great work disabling Intel's IME and contributing to coreboot, but chooses to embed proprietary tracking software on their website when open source alternatives are readily available.

  • Reaching out to System 76

After completing 14 reCAPTCHA's I was finally able to get a dialogue with Stetson at System 76. He said that "System 76 takes user data privacy and security extremely seriously, but they would continue to use Google services." His recommended solution was placing the order over the phone if I wasn't comfortable having third-party tracking during checkout.

This is not a solution for me because I don't want to do business with a company that monetizes user data for profit. In my experience, companies that monetize data (Alphabet, Meta, etc..) offer web services cheaper than competitors that don't, in exchange for access to user data. So, if you're getting a commercial service cheaper from a company that sells your user's data, you're also profiting from the sale by paying a lower premium for those services.

Personally, I do not think you're taking user privacy "extremely" seriously if you're running third party trackers and choosing reCAPTCHA (not a privacy respecting service) over hCaptcha on your website.

I really like System 76 and I want to support them with my next purchase, but presently I feel like they are saying one thing and doing another and choosing privacy respecting libre software some of the time when it suits their marketing, but proprietary anti-consumer tracking services when it's more profitable.

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