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Cake day: December 6th, 2024

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  • In my own personal experience, as a gamer and having switched my main machine at home to Pop!OS some months ago, it’s more like “need Windows to run nearly 5% of games” thanks to Wine and Proton which work as adaption layers to let Windows programs (not just games) run in Linux.

    (Curiously I use a lot more Wine with Lutris than Proton and Steam, so my success rate is even down to how far the main Wine project got, rather than any special juice that Steam might have added on their Proton branch of Wine - you don’t really need Steam or Proton to run most games in Linux and the success rate for just running games from GoG or even pirated ones is just as good and from some games it’s even the case that the Steam version won’t run but a pirated version runs just fine, probably because it was the DRM that the pirates cracked that caused the problems).

    Mind you, at least in my games collection only maybe 1 in 20 have native Linux versions (which is still better than 99% of games being Windows only), but because of adaption layers like Wine and Proton, for most games you can run the Windows version of it in Linux.

    Absolutelly, in the old days it definitelly was the case that Windows was needed for nearly 99% of games (I should know: I’ve been trying to switch my gaming to Linux since the late 90s), but that’s not at all the case anymore.

    Your idea of how hard it is to game on Linux is at least 1 decade out of date.


  • Yeah, there is profound love of Fascism on both sides of the aisle in the US at the moment.

    Which is why, IMHO (and FYI, I’m not American hence have no emotional stake on it) the only option for American voters who don’t want Fascist-lovers running their country to make things better (rather than merely slow the worsening of things) was to send a message to the leadership of the party that can more easily move away from the whole Fascism-loving business, so that in the next elections they field a candidate which is not a Fascist lover.

    The US is so ridiculous undemocratic that the only possible way to chose improvement with one’s vote is for traditional Democrat voters to refuse to vote so that the Fascist-loving Democrat candidate barely wins or even loses - which means enduring 4 years of Trump - to try and scare the DNC to field a less Fascist candidate next time around. All this is a stupidly long shot because there are so many ways the DNC can react to it that don’t really move the party leftwards.

    That’s it. That’s the only way one’s presidential vote in the US can be used to improve things. A ridiculous long shot with 4 years of pain until things might get better. The useful idiots getting the DNC of the hook for its electoral defeat by blaming “lefties” sure aren’t helping the DNC get the message from the electorate and fielding a candidate who is not a Fascist-lover.

    By the way, all this is entirely consistent with the view that Democrats are closer to not being Fascists than Republicans are. I’m not at all disputing that Trump is worse, I’m saying that if the Democrats aren’t turned around from the current trend in the “evolution” of their politics, it’s pretty much guaranteed that there will be US Presidents in the future who are even worse than Trump and hence that it is logic (though risky) to use one’s vote now to punish the Democrat leadership in order to change the type of candidate they field in future elections.

    PS: I dispute that Israel has only sped up their genocide after Trump won the election - it seems to me the speeding up predates that, having happened still well in the period of the Biden Presidency and before the next president was known. It’s hard to pinpoint it, but might even have happened when Kamala Harris made clear her unwavering support for Israel, hence the Zionists knew that no matter who ended up as POTOS they were unwaveringly suppported by future POTOS. Then again, maybe it happened when enough hospitals were destroyed by Israel that the dead in Gaza stopped getting counted properly hence the numbers published in the International Press stopped going up significantly. That said, all that is irrelevant for the point I’m making as I accept that Republicans are slightly more Fascist-loving than Democrats.



  • The NAZIs themselves didn’t start with what we say today that “the NAZIs did” - the Holocaust - they started with extreme racism, claiming to represent an entire ethnicity, claiming that said ethnicity was racially superior and a “normal” Genocide along ethnic lines of people from an etnicity they deemed subhuman, just like the Zionists.

    You’re making the disgusting argument that even when an ethno-Fascist group is displaying massive similarities to the NAZIs at the mid/later point of that ideology, in terms of behavior, discourse and doing a violent mass genocide of people from an ethnicity they deem “human animals”, it’s improper to compare them to the NAZIs until these newer ethno-Fascists have committed their very own Holocaust.

    By your logic we have to wait for the newest version of the same variant of Fascist as NAZIs to take their current Genocide all the way to a Holocaust just like the NAZIs before we can compare them to NAZIs.

    PS: What’s happening in Gaza was tantamount to what the NAZIs did in the Warsaw Ghetto. I say “was” because the size and nature of the killing and destruction in Gaza has already go far beyond what the NAZIs did in the Warsaw Ghetto.



  • I’m not American and don’t get to vote in US Presidential elections.

    On the other hand I easily find the detachment to analyze US Politics because I have no emotional stake on that race.

    Frankly, you guys are fucked no mater what you do because the voting system in the US is undemocratic, but at least have the decency of not being willful bitches to one set of Fascist-supporting assholes with the lame excuse that doing otherwise would be being a bitch to a different set of Fascist assholes.

    As I see it, in the absence of any choice who was not as Fascist-lover, the vote in these last US Elections wasn’t about choosing somebody who is not a Fascist, it was about sending a message to the party which can move away from Fascism more easily to do so for the next elections.

    In that sense, all the useful idiots here now trying to dilute that message by blaming lefties for the outcome of that vote, rather than the DNC, are just making sure the DNC doesn’t move away from it’s current trend of “ever more love for violent Fascists”, hence keep on offering a smooth-talking-Fascism-lover candidate to face the opposition’s loudmouth-Fascist one and hence things keep on getting worse in the US because both “options” keep getting worse.

    It’s funny all the criticism I see here of Republican voters for being stupid all the while many if not most of members of the Democrat tribe doing and upvoting those very memes repeatedly display the strategical-thinking ability of a goldfish.




  • Whilst I agree with you in everthing but the first 2 words of your post, I think this is yet another “look at this cool gadget” post that overhypes something, and that is a kind of spam we get a bit of around here, even if nowhere near the levels of the Elon crap or even just US politics.

    This is especially frustratingfor people who, like me, looked at the diagram they link from their article and found out it’s pretty much the same as a run of the mill breadboard power adaptor with a USB-C connector and a slightly better design than the cheap chinese ones, rather than something trully supporting USB-PD (this thing doesn’t even support the basic USB 1.0 negotiation needed to get more than 150mA when connecting to a proper USB host).

    That the article then mentions a “crowdfunding campaign” for something that a junior EE can design with a bit of datasheet digging, carries a bit of a stink of a cash-grab, so seeing it as spam is understandable.


  • If you look at the circuit diagram in their documentation linked from that article, that thing doesn’t even support USB-PD or even just the USB 1.0 device side of the negotiation to increase the current limit from the default (150mA in USB 3) to high (900mA in USB 3). It will look like it works fine if you connect it to a dumb USB power supply (because those thing don’t really do any USB protocol stuff, just dumbly supply power over USB connectors up to the power source’s limit) but if you connect it to, say, a PC USB port (which does implement the USB host side of the USB protocol), your circuit on the breadboard that worked fine when using a dumb USB power supply with that breadboard adaptor might not work because the current it needs exceeds that default 150mA limit for devices that haven’t done USB negotiation (worse if it’s a USB 2.0 port, as the limit is lower for those)

    This thing is basically the same as the chinese power breadboard adaptors you can get in places like Aliexpress, but with a USB-C connector instead of a Type-A, micro-USB or mini-USB one, plus its better designed (it has a proper Buck Converter instead of a cheap Votage Regulator, plus better power supply filtering and a polyfuse to protect it and the host from current overdraws).

    The headline and the article seriously exagerate this “achievement”.


  • TL;DR - It’s a nice and pretty run of the mill breadboard power adaptor which happens to support USB-C connectors, but the article and its title insanely oversell the thing.

    This is not exact as amazing an achievement as the headline implies since the necessary stuff to talk the to the USB PD host upstream is already integrated so you just need to get a chip that does it (and even without it, you’ll get 150mA @ 5V by default out of the USB 3 host upstream and up to 900mA with some pretty basic USB negotiation in a protocol that dates from USB 1.0 and for which there have long been integrated solutions for both the device and the host sides).

    Further, the converting of those 5V to 3.3V just requires a buck converter or even just a voltage regulator (though this latter option is less efficient), for which there are already lots of integrated solutions available for peanuts and where the entire circuit block needed to support them is detailed in the datasheet for that converter.

    Looking at the circuit diagram for this (linked to from the article), they’re not even doing the USB PD negotiation or any kind of USB 1.0 negotiation, so this thing will be limited to 150mA for a USB 3 host or whatever current your traditional USB power source can supply (as those power sources really just do power supply of whatever amperage they support over a cable which happen to have USB connectors, rather than including a genuine implementation of an USB host with current limiting depending on negotiation with the USB device, so such power sources don’t require the device to do any USB negotiation to increase the current limit above 150mA).

    This is really “yet another run of the mill USB power breadboard adaptor” only the USB plug is USB-C rather than mini-USB or micro-USB (so, a different plug plus a handfull of minor components as per the standard of the circuitry to properly support it), so pretty much the same as the cheap chinese ones you can get from Aliexpress, though this one uses a Buck Converter rather than the $0.1 Voltage Regulator in most of the chinese boards, and actually does proper filtering of power supply noise and proper protection against over current, so it is a quality design for such things, though it’s not really a major advancement.

    Without the USB PD stuff I wouldn’t really say that it brings USB-C Power to the breadboard (in the sense of, as many would expect, being able to draw a proper amount of power from a modern USB 3.0 power brick that supports USB-C), more something with a USB-C connector that brings power to the motherboard, as that connector is really the total sum of what it supports from the modern USB spec.

    What would really be nice would be something that does talk USB-PD to the upstream host AND can convert down from the 20V at which it supplies peak power, so that you can take advantage of the juicy, juicy (oh so juicy!) capability of USB-PD to supply power (up to 100W right now, which will be up to 250W with USB 4), though if you’re pulling 100W (which at 5V means 20A, which is a stupidly high current that will melt most components in a typical digital circuit) from you breadboard power adaptor, then I’m pretty sure magic smoke is being released from at least one of the components on that breadboard and, by the way, you’re probably damaging the power rail of that breadboard (aah, the sweet smell of burnt plastic when you turn the power on for your half-arsed experimental circuit!!!)



  • Well, it’s their community, ain’t it?!

    If you go into somebody’s club, no matter how insane you think it is - say, a Flat Earthers Association, Pizza Is Best With Pineapple Club or some Church or other - and start hanging post-its all over the place criticizing their mad as shit beliefs, they’re absolutely entitled to tear them down and kick you out and they’ll even have the Moral High Ground doing it since your “right” to loudly be a whiny insulting bitch about somebody else’s beliefs doesn’t trumpt their right not to have loud whiny bitches insulting them in their space.

    Now, if they went after you for your opinions outside of their space, then that’s a whole different mater and you would be in the right, but that’s not what you’re complaining about: you’re going into a forum called Late Stage Capitalism to indulge in some “tankie-baiting” and then turn around and whine to the rest of Lemmy about how moderators are such nasty people and shouldn’t be allowed to take down your tankie-baiting posts in an anticapitalist forum.

    The simplest solution to this specific “problem” is for you to stop going into their space and act like a cunt there because you don’t like them. You can even block that forum if it makes you feel bad seeing a post from there in All.

    Sorry mate but you just sound like a total wanker trying to find support from the crowd to get away with being a total wanker whenever and wherever you see fit.



  • Whilst that is indeed true for the population in general, politicians are a bunch of people self-selected on being the kind who wants power.

    That kind of personality is generally less trustworthy (and more on the sociopath side of the spectrum) than the general population.

    There’s actually a study published ages ago in the Harvard Business review about corporate CEOs (so, not politicians but in many ways similar) which found that the ones who got the job not because they sought it but because of other reasons (for example, the CEO died and they were the next in line) actually performed better (as measured by the performance of the companies they led compared to the rest of their industry) than CEOs who had sought that position and, even more interestingly, the most self-celebrating showoff CEOs were the worst performing of all (from my own participation with politics I would say those would be the closest in personality to top politicians).

    Further, there are various pretty old sayings (back from the time of the Ancient Greeks and the Romans) about the best person to get a leadership position being the one who doesn’t want a leadership position.

    So I would say that most politicians in parties with higher chances of getting power (so, in most countries, the two largest parties) are crooked (not specifically corruption - such as getting money to pass certain laws of using certain companies for government contracts - but more generally using power, privileged information, influence and connections to benefit themselves even to the detriment of those who voted for them: a good example of crookedness but not corruption is how some US Congressmen use insider information they get in some Congressional Committees to profit in stock market trading).


  • It’s “mieren neuken”.

    A dutch person responding to my post already mentioned it.

    Also, as somebody who has moved there first and then learned Dutch whilst living there, I do recommend just learning it over there since it’s a much faster way to learn a language when you’re there surrounded by native speakers, with lots of things written in Dutch around you and with Dutch TV and Radio whilst actually using it, than it is as just learning from the outside with little in the way of useful practice with the actual experts of the actual language.

    Also you can easily get away with using English in The Netherlands whilst you’re learning Dutch - in fact if you have a recognizable accent from an English-speaking country it’s actually hard to get the Dutch to speak Dutch to you in the early and mid stage of learning their language since they tend to switch to English as most Dutch speak that very well.


  • That word isn’t originally from Portuguese from Portugal (though it is recognized thanks to the prevalence of Brazilian soap operas in Portugal) so it carries no broader “social” meaning and isn’t even commonly used there, so people wouldn’t care if you used it in Portugal as it just sounds odd there.

    If I understand the broader meaning subtleties of how it’s used in Brazilian Portuguese correctly, using “garota” for a woman is a bit like using “chick” for a woman in British English, which whilst not an outright insult carries a bit of a demeaning vibe (not as bad as the used of “bitch” - as in “my bitch” - in American English, but the same kind of treating women as inferior).

    This is probably because the original meaning of the word when not used for an adult woman (again, only in Brazilian Portuguese since it didn’t exist in Portuguese from Portugal) is “young girl”.




  • I’ve lived in a couple of European countries and speak 7 different European languages (though my German is kinda crap and my Italian not much better) and regularly take the piss by playing the “ignorant foreigner” with the expressions in other people’s languages and acting as if, by translating them literally, I totally misunderstood them.

    This works great because there are so many expressions in pretty much all languages which are have entirelly different meanings when interpreted literally but the natives don’t really think about it like that because they just learned that stuff as a whole block of meaning rather than having reached it by climb the language-learning ladder from “understanding the words first” as foreigners do.

    For example the English expression “I want to pick your brains” which has quite a different and more gruesome meaning if read literally or one the dutch expressions for “you’re wasting time in small details” which translates quite literally to “you’re fucking ants” and is my all time favorite in all languages I speak well enough to know lots of expressions in.