I’m also on Mastodon as https://hachyderm.io/@BoydStephenSmithJr .

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 2nd, 2023

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  • I’m not going to uninstall or demand a refund, but I fully support the Indie Game Awards decision on this and will not refer to CO:E33 as a winner of any of the Indie Game Awards. I will still call it IMO the best JRPG in many years, but I thought that before it started receiving awards.

    I hope this event serves to scare game studios of all sizes from the mere appearance of using AI at ANY scale or part of the process. Hell, I hope it causes the whole damn bubble to burst, but it’s just not that important.






  • Technically my renews aren’t automated. I have a nightly cronjob that should renew certificates and restart services, but when the certificates need renewal, it always fails because it wants to open a port I’m already using in order to answer the challenge.

    I hear there’s an apache module / configuration I can use, but I never got around to setting it up. So, when the cron job fails, I get an email and go run a script that stops apache, renews certs, and restarts services (including apache). I will be a bit annoying to have to do that more often, but maybe it’ll help motivate me to configure apache (or whatever) correctly.

    Debian Stable


  • Honestly, I don’t even like using the word “cheat” to describe customizing a single-player gaming experience in a way not blessed by the developers. Terrafirmacraft (and maybe even just Gregtech) isn’t cheating at Minecraft; certainly the experience isn’t “easier”.

    So, yes, I will play the game is whatever way makes for the most fun for me, whether that’s “cheating” or not to you.

    For experiences that aren’t single-player, including (e.g.) anything with a global leaderboard (even at third-party one), I can understand why someone might choose to cheat, but I think I could deny myself those temptations. But, I’ve never been a “simple” cheat away from the top of a leaderboard or any other sort of acclaim or reward.





  • The first one does tell you how to “completely remove Gemini from your smartphone” under that heading. I do not have the Gemini app installed.

    The second one says:

    Can you fully disable Gemini on Android?

    No, and that’s by design. While you can turn off activity tracking, revoke permissions, and even uninstall the Gemini app on some devices, Google is actively replacing its Assistant app with Gemini.

    But, I’ve also disabled Google Assistant across all applications, so I don’t share data with Gemini/Assistant. I had to lose some features to do so.

    Overall, your reply serves to confirm for me that I have disabled Gemini on both of my Android devices. Still, I appreciate the links!


  • Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me either way. There IS a lot of telemetry and other BS that is definitely still on my phone, included in OS updates, and not uninstallable (I can “uninstall updates”, but that would also give me back any security issues). But, I don’t think that it is Gemini, or at least predates that naming convention.

    To get free of Google telemetry, I’d have to install a non-Google ROM, and I haven’t ever tried that.

    Telemetry certainly can be abused, and Google should be legally (by regulation) required to provide a simple opt-out. BUT, telemetry really is a fairly normal thing to include in “web-scale” deployments and is primarily used to discover issues that have escaped into production without affecting a testing environment–or, at least, that what the telemetry systems I’ve interacted with as an software developer were for. So, I’m not too worried about non-personalized data collection.

    EDIT: I confirmed that Google says I have no Gemini activity to delete, so while I’m sure my phone is reporting stuff, it’s not to Gemini.





  • I found that systemd actually simplified all the things I was doing on sysvinit. BUT, I did hold out until Debian testing stopped supporting sysvinit, and I think waiting gave me a better experience.

    With X11 -> Wayland, the main thing holding me back finding a tiling compositor that will work under Plasma and is packaged for Debian and the learning at least the basics. My XMonad configuration isn’t that special, but I’m really quite used to not having to re-arrange my own windows, and being able to move/resize/refocus all with the home row and modifier keys. So, I’m probably going to wait until Debian testing ships a Plasma that doesn’t support X11, and have to do some learning then.




  • My parents would say you just haven’t been hungry enough. Their parents lived through the great depression. I wouldn’t know, but I hear people are having to make food/medicine trade offs, which seems more dire than flavor/texture preference tradeoffs.

    That said, I don’t know a protein source that’s as available and cheap as beans, but you might try insects if cheap is the priority or poultry if availability is your priority.

    You can buy a large bag of frozen vegetable blend and steam it fairly simply. You can either steam single serving and keep the rest frozen OR steam the whole bag in bulk, and refrigerate for up to a week, reheating single servings as you need them.

    Best of luck.