[rant]
If you trust anything Google in '25 you’re a muppet. Or at least uninformed. Either way you’re part of the problem, and deserve to be treated as such.

I get it’s impossible for some to completely de-googlefy their lives. Myself still use YouTube, either directly or through Piped. But there’s always that bloody risk Google will fuck with you and your digital belongings, that you need to take into account.

So I don’t blame those two for publishing their videos in YouTube. I do blame them however for doing so exclusively. Just publish the same video across multiple platforms dammit — YouTube and PeerTube and Vimeo and Odysee and Dailymotion and everything else you find.

inb4 “AcKsHyUaLlY Rick Beato uploaded it to Instagram too!” — it doesn’t count because:

1. Meta is as trustable as Google; as in, may both die in a fire.
2. Instagram is mostly focused on photos and brainrot videos (akin to TikTok). Not really a good place to share anything with more depth than a puddle.
3. This is just a guess from my part, but odds are Rick Beato only shared the video there after realising something was off with the YouTube version of it.

So my point still remains - they’re still putting all their eggs into the same basket.

Someone might say “But that’s too hard! And the platforms have almost no user!”. Well… then don’t complain when Google goes like “A content creator is a user, not a human being. It’s fine to butcher its videos automatically, no need to ask its permission”. Just like it did.

“AcKsHyUaLlY Ritchie was talking about user trust over the creator” - the same point still stands. Once you have multiple copies online you can reliably say “no, my content is genuine, it’s YouSlop doing this shit. If you want a more faithful version of the video hop into [insert alternative]”.

Some days I really hate human short-sightedness.
[/rant]

HN comments are almost as bad as YouTube ones.

“Two plus two equals five!”
“No, it’s four.”
“WAAH, THIS IS CENSURRSHIP!”

It would be hilarious if not sad.

I am so bloody glad I upgraded my computer last year.

nyaa.si has a bunch. Just be careful to not download the manga instead. (Both are under the same section, “Literature”.)

Yes, and that’s what I’m using. Or trying to - people flat out refuse ditching WA because everyone else is using it. That’s why I’m hoping the barrier won’t be lifted just for Europeans.

Further info on the compound. Wikipedia claims it to be as toxic as chlorine. That was also used in WW1, under the name “bertholite”.

Question: will this interoperability only apply to Europeans? As in, will WhatsApp keep some artificial barrier elsewhere?

I’m asking this because I’m in Brazil. And I desperately want to ditch WhatsApp, but here this would be social suicide, given almost everybody here assumes you have WhatsApp.

Can I send anyone the excess vitamin D I’m getting?

Bloody Spring. (Southern Hemisphere.)

Even then, I think “check nearby people for what they use” shouldn’t be underestimated. Of course you wouldn’t tell them to use Neon itself, but if they’re using Kubuntu you’d probably be abler to help them than if they were to use, say, Mint, right?

My point is, that people underestimate the power of offline help, and having acquaintances who know the system well enough to help you out. And that matters a lot when picking your starting distro.

When “the right thing to do” enters in conflict with “what maximises profits”, businesses almost always pick the later.

What makes this decision particularly stark is the response from other tech giants. The same censorship notice was sent to Apple and Google, as the game has been available on their Russian mobile stores since 2020. Both companies reportedly ignored the request, leaving Flick Solitaire available for download.

It’s a matter of relative power.

Do you know anyone in real life that has some experience with Linux, and is willing to help you out with it? If yes, use the same distribution (distro, or “OS”) as they do.

If not, as others said, Mint is a good start.

TL;DW: an extremely convoluted explanation of the optimal strategy for Guess Who.

Let’s call

• “pool” - the number of characters a player did not rule out as not being the right character. For example, if there are 20 chars and you ruled 8 out, then your pool is 12. Your pool is “a”, your opponent’s pool is “b”.
• “bid” - the number of characters in the pool that a question applies to. For example, if your pool is 12, you ask “do they have a beard?”, and there are 4 bearded characters there, then the bid is 4. And if your opponent asks “does he look like a bitch?”, whatever you do, do not include Marsellus Wallace into the bid.

So. If I got this right, your bid should be either a/2 or b-1, whichever is the smallest. That’s it.

I did because my older computer was a potato, so it was kind of obvious the game took a bit too long to install.

From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don’t think it’s just the Linux version.

Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl’s site, found EU5 instead, and she’s complaining about the exact same thing:

Installation takes 5-12 minutes (depending on your system, mostly on your drive speed – the game has more than 49000 small files, Paradox never learn from their mistakes)

Yup, pretty much.

Bingo. And this means they’re effectively choosing who their games are for. And then complaining the ones they didn’t choose decided to pirate it.

So you’re saying that all games should install like this?

Given other people addressed the same point, but unlike you they aren’t disingenuously assuming words into my mouth, I think it’s pretty safe to block you as dead weight.

I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.

Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:

• to 10 GiB, and it takes 2min to unpack it in a certain machine
• to 3 GiB, and it takes 8min to unpack it in a certain machine

FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.

And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)

Tagging @[email protected], as it addresses what they said too.

And it’s culture-dependent so it might backfire - it might convey the person is a moron, or that they’re someone you should suspect.