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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 25th, 2023

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  • What I meant to say is that a lot of commercial keyboards are sold with some “customizable” they are. And it’s partly true, you have tool allowing to make some shortcut on popular OSes. It might be sufficient for some people … but it is NOT the same as putting your own firmware in it.

    I’m not advocating for a $300 keyboard over a $30 one, “just” for genuine customization. Some that doesn’t have arbitrary limitations from the manufacturer and doesn’t have support for only some OSes which in turns (well Windows and MacOS not to name them) also promote a consumer only with limited control options, as OP is saying about enshitification.



  • Buy open hardware with open source firmware.

    I’m typing this from a Corne-ish Zen and you can see my firmware (ZMK) with my keymap at https://github.com/Utopiah/zmk-config-zen-2/blob/main/config/corneish_zen.keymap#L27

    Nobody can touch this but me. No update can break it. Yet, it’s more feature rich than most keyboards.

    There are equivalents for most peripherals. It’s not cheap, usually even MORE expensive than already pricey ones like Logitech (I have an MX Vertical, still) but IMHO it’s worth it. It’s good right now, pragmatically speaking, but also morally speaking.

    I advise against swimming upstream, namely NOT buying hardware that have such enshitification practices because if they don’t do it today, they might tomorrow when there is more pressure from shareholders. Also by buying alternatives you are economically supporting people whom you believe are providing better solutions for yourself and others.

    PS: a gateway to such projects is https://crowdsupply.com which is a kind of KickStarter. I bought a dozen things there, all delivered and working.





  • I agree but I don’t watch TV so I don’t bother. Yet… I still hate product placement so I might be interested in such a solution. Anyway here is how I would do it :

    • evaluate what exists, e.g SponsorBlock, and see what’s the closest that fit my need, try it, ask in forum or repository issues if modifications are possible
    • gather videos of the typically problematic content, say few hours to start
    • annotate them by adding the time stamps then the location on the image
    • replace problematic content with gradually complex solutions, e.g black, average color of the area, denoising (quite compute intensive)
    • honestly evaluate the result
    • consider the biggest problem, e.g here on first pass fixed content so a detector based on machine learning for the type of content could help
    • iterate, sharing my result back with the closest interested community

    Honestly it’s a worthwhile endeavor but be mindful it’s an arm race. There are a LOT of smart people paid to add ads everywhere… but there are even more people, like you and I, eager to remove them. IMHO the key trick is, like SponsorBlock, to federate the efforts.



  • That’s not the real question though. The real question is rather are there any “real physical proof” that Jesus had literally anything special that is in itself being the “son of God” or anything related to religion.

    Anybody (sadly) can be crucified, especially during a period where it is trendy. Anybody can walk through part of the desert. Anybody can organize a meal, give a speech, etc.

    Even if it’s done exceptionally well, that does not make it special in the sense of being the proof of anything religious. We all have friends with unique talents, and social media helped us discovered that there are so many more of those around the entire world, but nobody in their right mind would claim that because Eminem can sing words intelligibly faster than the vast majority of people he is the son of “God”.

    I also read a book about a decade ago (unfortunately didn’t write down notes about it so can’t find the name back) on the history of religion, from polytheism to monotheism, and it was quite interesting. If I remember correctly one way to interpret it was through the lens of religions maintaining themselves over time and space, which could include growing to a sufficient size in terms of devout adepts. The point being that veracity was not part of the equation.


  • nobody is out here running a plain Linux kernel and maintaining a UI stack while AOSP exists.

    Wrong, that’s even why I bought a SteamDeck (edited to add the most famous), PineTab2, PinePhone, and a reMarkable and use them pretty much daily.

    Are there a lot of these compared to Android? No, but please do not say “nobody” when you mean “most” or “the vast majority” because by doing so you are reducing the perception of choice. Some people, like me, DO prefer plain Linux when they can. By hiding the fact that commercial solutions do exist this is helping an already dominant solution.