To say that social media is just people socializing through media is rather like saying that newspapers are just news on paper.

In both cases it ignores the deliberate, pervasive, and frequently toxic efforts of the platform curators to maximize “engagement” with their audience in pursuit of ad revenue.

When I socialize with people offline, it looks almost nothing like modern social media “services”.

As the owner of a relatively new Android phone, who wanted to disable a software update nag, this is no longer always true.

In my research I built a history of instructions for disabling these nag screens/notifications on phones from this manufacturer. At first, there were things you could do on the phone itself. Then you had to change a setting with ADB. Then you had to disable a system app with ADB. Then you had to get root access to uninstall the app with ADB. And now, for my phone and other recent models, there’s literally nothing you can do, even with root access in ADB, short of flashing custom firmware.

I know it’s a really picky take, but I resent the implication that I should want to keep my personal files mixed in at the same level of the file hierarchy as all my applications’ random settings, cached data, and temporary garbage. Documents, Music, Videos, Projects, .config, .cache, SelfishAppName, OtherSelfishAppName…

It bothered me when Microsoft started doing it in Win95, and it still bothers me in Linux. Especially when software acts surprised (or occasionally indignant) that I don’t keep all my files in those directories. I have lost small bits of my own work over the years by forgetting to back up things that recalcitrant software refused to store anywhere else.

But I am amused that this is the same name that I use at the top of my own storage hierarchy for self-made things.

I used one of the i5 CPUs with HD2500 integrated graphics in my main gaming PC for several years, up until only about 3-4 years ago. The performance was OK for me, but I paired it with a much newer, discrete GPU. Those integrated graphics are really going to hold you back. In games from 2012-2014 (around when those CPUs came out), they average 20-40 fps on lowest settings.

You don’t have to use Steam, but it is a very painless way to play games that you own on Steam. I use Lutris for my non-Steam Windows games. It works well on my main gaming PC, but I often have issues with it on my laptops which have older integrated graphics, due to lack of Vulkan support, which Lutris seems to insist upon even when the software can use OpenGL.

Years ago I used to have Lakka on a bootable USB drive to turn an old, low-powered laptop into a dedicated emulation machine.

The specs are hard to read, but I believe the main processor is an AMD A6-1450 APU, designed for tablets and released some time in or after 2013. Not a powerful chip by modern standards, but IMO still useable depending on your expectations. It’s definitely capable of emulating SNES without breaking a sweat. Even PS1 shouldn’t be a problem at native resolution. N64, Saturn, and Dreamcast are probably where you’ll start seeing slowdown in some games, and anything more, like PS2 or GCN, is unlikely to be playable.

Man pages are the only reference material I know that has more information-free circular definition chains than Wikipedia. And I imagine that it’s for much the same reason; they’re primarily written and fought over by experts who only need terse reminder notes for themselves, and who can’t remember what it was like not spending every day up to their elbows in the subject.

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I use Linux on hardware older and less capable than yours, and usually the only real show-stopper I find is a lack of Vulkan support. I don’t use any nVidia hardware, but my understanding is that older chips are supported decently by current Linux drivers. So I’d say you’ll probably be fine.

As for ten years from now, it’s uncommon for Linux software to remove features, and even if it happens, there’s virtually always a way for you stay on an old version if you really need to, because there are no forced updates. If you’re careful you can sometimes even keep the old versions of things for old software that needs it, while still having the latest version for software that can use it.

I have a stupid question: Are you sure you’re not confusing “line out” and “headphone out”? They’re different, and pretty much every desktop supports both these days. But standard PC speakers usually connect to the “headphone” socket.

Private members aren’t actively blocked from external access; they’re passively marked “Access prohibited”.

That means that rather than being unable to find the members of a class, C programmers simply can’t pick up on the signals telling them that they’re not wanted.

(Fellow C programmers: I’m joking. :D)

I’m sorry if you’ve already checked this, but I had a similar problem with a Windows laptop recently that just would NOT stay in standby. It wasn’t a question of if, but how long.

Eventually I found that some "Wake on IP’ settings were set to “Wake on any/all IP traffic”. I switched those off and now the thing stays in standby/screen blanked.

Mitchell and Webb.

“Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?”

I think it depends a lot on context.

Wiping the dust off an old, low-spec ex-office PC, getting it barely functional, throwing a couple of RGB lights in it and trying to pass it off as a competent gaming rig for a high price would be completely unethical, I agree. But salvaging an old PC, actually refurbishing it into something useful for light day-to-day use, and selling it as such with a small markup to cover parts and labour seems completely fine to me.

You and I may have the skills needed to take a worn-out old PC and breathe new life into it easily, but not everyone who’d be happy with a modest secondhand system can do that.

As it happens, until just a few years ago I was running my high-end games on what started as a secondhand commodity PC with an i5-3470, without complaint.

Sure. Almost 40 years ago I started learning to program as a kid, and the only reason I knew the word “syntax” at all was because the default error message in my computer’s BASIC interpreter was “SYNTAX ERROR”. I didn’t learn what it actually meant until many years later, in English class.

I taught myself with the excellent Usborne books, which are now all downloadable for free from their website. You won’t be able to use them as-is (unless you get your kids to use an emulator for an old 8-bit home computer), but I’m sure you can still get some useful ideas, and maybe even copy small sections here and there.

As others have mentioned, my school also taught us a little LOGO, which was a bit of fun for me but rather simple. I remember that most of my classmates enjoyed it, though.

Nah, you’re cool. I know my system’s old, but as you say there’s still plenty of life in it, so I’ll keep it for now. Especially since I stick entirely to indie games these days.

But actually, I’m keeping an eye on auctions for something just a few years newer. Games that require AVX2 extensions are finally starting to come out, and my CPU doesn’t support them. Even with indie games, most of them use third-party engines, so it might not be too much longer before it’s an issue even for me.

Heh, TFW someone describes “resurrecting” a “low-spec” machine, and others talk about how old and out of date it is, and it’s roughly equivalent to your main gaming PC.

I’m guessing it’s because “SyncThing” is a proper noun.

There was a recent discussion about controllers that may help you, here: https://lemmy.world/post/35100527

To add to my recommendation in that thread of the Logitech F310, for your question specifically:

• The wires on both it and the F510 are built-in, not socketed. In my experience usually only wireless controllers have socketed cables.
• I’ve never had the buttons on it get swapped around on any OS.
• I’ve never had any of them develop drift, and they’re all 8-12 years old at this point.
• They don’t support the WiiU.

Reading the FAQs, the whole situation smacks of changing for the sake of change. It seems like some important functionality of the old system isn’t available in the new system, but they’re pushing it through regardless. Combined with this downplaying of Linux support, perhaps some political representatives with low technical skills have been talking to some lobbyists. And unless the Finnish school system has bought into Chromebooks in a big way, they seem unusually eager to support ChromeOS.

I wonder if the whole Secure Boot/Microsoft shim key issue is a part of this.

This is another good point. I’d try turning off Fast Startup first, and if that alone doesn’t clear the issue, try this (leaving Fast Startup off).