thehatfox

The internet used to be more decentralised. There were lots of smaller websites, blogs, forums etc, which people discovered via word of mouth, search engines, and forgotten things like webrings. It's only recently that big monolithic social media platforms took hold.

Tech is often cyclical, we could now be swinging back to a more decentralised web, but with the benefit of newer technologies. Right now it's almost a new "wild west" as new platforms appear and new ideas like federation are experimented with. Some will rise, some will fall, some will go off in the corner and do their own thing. While all that happens it's going to be a bit messy, much like it was in the 90s with the initial rise of the web.

I’ve noticed a lot of German language fediverse content too. Does anyone know why German speakers are so keen on the fediverse?

My Steam Deck experience has been very positive, it’s a great way to play games away from the desk. For me the controls are great, and game compatibility continues to surprise me.

I would say the only problem with the Deck is the size - it’s big. When I got mine it seemed a lot bigger than I realised, and that was after watching/reading a lot of reviews. Depending on your hands the size might be an issue. If you know anyone else with a Steam Deck I would recommend trying it out for size before buying.

Yes, it’s a sad state of affairs that Apple’s restrictions on iOS and iPadOS browsers are the only thing stopping an effective Google monopoly over web browsers. Ideally Firefox would still keep things in balance, but Mozilla doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing these days in terms of building market share - and I say that as a long time Firefox user.

I still remember the IE 6 era, and I hope we never see a single browser dominate the web again. To those wishing Apple would be forced to open up, be careful what you wish for.

Some older people in the UK still prefer Fahrenheit, Celsius is still the official/default unit however.

A politician here recently tried to promote returning the UK to Imperial units, it has gone nowhere so far.

I've had this happen with a few times while looking for communities. Does kbin not fully federate with Lemmy yet, or is there a delay in the federation syncing up?

The most recent time this happened was with the retrocomputers@lemmy.world community. Search magazines for "retro computers" did not show it. Going directly to kbin.social/m/retrocomputers@lemmy.world URL returned a 404. I then searched for retrocomputers@lemmy.world and the community appears in kbin at the same URL, and I can subscribe but no posts/threads are visible.

What's happening here - does someone have to manually search for a Lemmy community address before it will start appearing in kbin?

I think the same happened a few days ago with gameboy@lemmy.world but now that does seem to work normally.

I've also seen a few kbin magazines not appear in Lemmy either.

I've been a longtime fan of CheapShow, a comedy podcast loosely based around unusual items found in cheap shops and charity shops (thrift stores). Episodes include deep dives in vintage/retro media, taste tests of weird foodstuffs, various games and challenges, plus a lot of complete chaos and toilet humour.

Maybe not for everyone, but if any of the above catches your interest it's worth a try.

I prefer non swappable phone batteries. If I need to charge my phone while out I use USB power bank, which is infinitely more useful than a naked phone battery that can only be used in the phone. Non swappable batteries also allow for phone casing to be much more resilient to impacts and the elements, and can help reduce the phones size.

A phone battery is not to going to reach end of life for 2-3 years in normal use, so it doesn’t seem too much of hardship to get the toolbox out or go to a service centre when it does eventually need replacing.

Maybe require manufactures to not use such incredibly strong glues that some use to secure the batteries, but mandating they be swappable seems the wrong approach to me.

Computers and tech in general often feels like magic. The first computer I ever used was a ZX Spectrum, now I have something vastly more computationally powerful, and constantly connected to a worldwide communication network and knowledge repository in my pocket!

It's amazing any of it actually works, especially as we don't always seem to know how it works.

It's annoying fragmentation when even for a stable distributable package there's flatpak as a standard, and I've never seen why Ubuntu needs their own with a proprietary store.

It's the Canonical way, just as with Mir, Upstart, Unity, and a bunch of other NIH Canonical projects.

I miss the old Ubuntu sometimes, the Ubuntu that wanted to be an up to date Debian with sensible defaults, easy installation, and commercial support. It seems that wasn't profitable or visionary enough for somebody though, and we've ended up here instead.

I'm not sure I would accept Reddit paying me to go back, let alone me paying to use Reddit. The API debacle has laid bare the problem with centralised, proprietary social media - the users who create the value of the platform ultimately have no control over the platform. If it wasn't APIs and third party apps it could by anything else.

Why invest time (and money) contributing to something that could be pulled out from our feet at any point, with no recourse?

As a Pokemon fan I understand your pain. It's not like it's an obscure series, or from a small company. Why is it so hard to stream such a popular anime? I'm surprised The Pokemon Company hasn't rolled out their own streaming platform yet.

Before diving in to Plex I would highly recommend looking at Jellyfin first also. It's offers much the same features as Plex but is fully free and open source.

For my own media server I use an old HP Microserer G8 purchased second hand, and upgraded with a Xeon e3-1260L, also sourced cheaply used. It's small, easy to service and happily runs my Linux disro of choice. I know other people using various SFF PCs, or even repurposed old desktops. For best performance look for a CPU (or GPU) with hardware video encoding support. Otherwise, the rule of thumb for Plex used to be a CPU with at least 2000 Passmark score on cpubenchmark.net per concurrent 1080p stream.