I say we let them hang with us. They’re a little confused, but they’re adorable enough.

Also, talesfromtechsupport effectively became talesfromtech because just tech support is to small of a niche to sustain a sub with content. Likewise, if we banned all the not-strictly-programming humour, I don’t know the community will thrive still. It might drive out both content and viewers, and while it’s arguably correct, I don’t think it’s wise.

I’d rather have it be something vaguely resembling the type of humour programmers tend to have than a little walled-off box with a big sign “NERDS ONLY”

I don’t think you trust

For me the Linux Mint developers’ hostility to snaps (which in my experience tend to be the best trade-offs for my needs) is one of the many reasons I won’t use or suggest Mint.

I mean, analogous to firefox example you supplied, you could just delete nosnap.pref and be on your way.

Also, snapd keeps a snapshot of your per-revision configuration from an app for a while after you remove it. You can run snap saved to see all the current snapshots. It doesn’t remove your $SNAP_USER_COMMON directory for that snap (which is where the Firefox snap stores its profiles), so moving from the snapped Firefox to the version from apt is just a matter of moving the .mozilla directory out of ~/snap/firefox/common to ~/

I could have sworn I checked that, but I was a lot less familiar with these things at the time, so maybe I missed it.

I don’t think snaps are a bad thing on principle, my own bad experiences with them notwithstanding. I could also live with a for-profit operating its own curated package repository as part of its service. I’d personally prefer not to use a client locked into one particular package provider, but if that’s the tradeoff for that provider’s security guarantee that your packages are all Canonical-certified safe, I’d accept that. If it were preinstalled with an OS, that’s fine. If they make it the default Software Store, we’re on par with the Microsoft Store and other App Stores and those too provide a utility and convenience, particularly for those less technically minded. The ship on “don’t bundle your browser with your OS because that’s monopoly grabbing” has sailed long ago anyway.

All of these are things I’m fine with, even if I personally would choose not to use them. If that was all, I’d still recommend Ubuntu as a beginner distro, because it was my intro to Linux too and I found it good at the time.

The thing that irks me is when they’re being dishonest about it. You no longer wanna support a deb package in your repos? Fine, let me know, offer me a one-click migration option for installing the snap instead and moving my data over, give me the whole marketing routine of telling me how much better your new solution is, but make it my choice.

Having a transition package for a name change or breaking up a larger project into modular packages is one thing. Using it to instead run an entirely different package manager pulling from a proprietary repo?

Worse still, if you had trouble with one app so you went and found a non-snap repo, you pinned it with higher priority, reinstalled it from the new source and thought you were in the clear because that worked as expected.
But you forgot or didn’t know to also put a negative priority on the snap source because pin priorities seem intuitive enough, only for unattended upgrades to look at the pins and say “That sign can’t stop me, because I can’t read” (pins from repos I don’t know) and reinstall the snap…
I get that automatic upgrades don’t pull from all repos by default for security reasons, but at least look at the priorities and realise “Ope, not gonna touch that, I’ll notify the user to do it manually if they trust the update”.

And that, for me, is the part that takes it from apathy to disdain; the part that goes beyond “each distro has its own preferences, no big deal”; the part that reeks of a profit-oriented company aiming for vendor lock-in.

To close the topic out: All of this is just explaining my stance; I’m not telling anyone what to do or not to do. You gave your point, I gave mine. By all means, if it works best for you, I’m not getting in your way. I just wish there was a better option.

Thanks for that correction then. I wasn’t conscious of that detail.

In any case, the issue remains that, if the vendor’s default repositories push for a type of package I don’t want, I either have to manually find and vet third party repositories I trust or find someone else to rely on for defaults I’m fine with.

The difference between “I want a different source for a single package, so I’ll manually select a different source for that one” and “I don’t trust Canonical to select sources I agree with anymore” is one of scale. I’m fine with manually pinning the transitional package, uninstalling it and the snap (hopefully remembering to back up my profile before realising that it also deletes user data) adding a ppa, reinstalling it and reimporting my profiles just for firefox.

But if I feel like I have to fight my distro vendor over not using their preferred package distribution system, it’s probably better to jump ship - other vendors have beautiful distros too.

(Also, “you can just use a different source” is part of the reason people prefer not to use snap, where you can’t do that)

Correct me there, but wasn’t the “select source” thing intended to be about different deb sources?

The issue is that what you expect to be a deb package manager ends up redirecting to snap anyway. It’s not a different source, it’s a different system. If I have to manually take steps to avoid using the distro vendor’s default sources because they just redirect to a system I don’t want to use, I might as well look for a different vendor.

And so I did

IIRC, the issue was that - unless you take steps to explicitly prevent it - Ubuntu would occasionally reinstall the snap version. I don’t remember the details, been a while since I had to dance that dance, but I recall it being one of the things that put me off snap in particular, Ubuntu in general and sparked my search for a different distro.

I’m now on Nobara, a Fedora-based gaming-oriented distro maintained by GloriousEgroll (who also maintains the popular Proton-GE)

“Nobody” probably isn’t literal here, but I imagine some manager scheduling a meeting where they want a report on the game’s performance and feedback during the beta. Some higher up is going to sit in for the first few minutes for the KPI summary.

The sweating analyst jokes about the heat in the room, the higher up dryly remarks that the AC seems to be working just fine. The presentation starts, the analyst grasping for some more weasel words and void sentences to stall with before finally switching to the second slide, captioned “Player count”. It’s a big, fat 0.

They stammer their way through half a sentence of trying to describe this zero, then fall silent, staring at their shoes. The game dev lead has a thousand yard stare. The product owner is trying to maintain composure.

The uncomfortable silence is finally broken by the manager, getting up to leave: “I think we’re done here.” There is an odd sense of foreboding, that “here” might not just mean the meeting. The analyst silently proceeds to the next slide, showing the current player count over time in a line chart.

Devs be applying like “Hi! I’d like to join your development team! My professional qualifications are that I’ve spent eight years working on a failed game!”

Of course, it won’t be the individual devs’ fault but I don’t have any difficulties imagining that some of them have a harder time finding new jobs than people who were let go after the launch of more popular games.

I mean, there may also be plenty of non-citizens there at any given time.

There’s a bunch of staff there too. Wikipedia cites an estimate of 764 people.

I’ll plug an interesting blog post on the topic of using chemical weapons. The post concerns itself mostly with lethal weapons, but I feel like some of the points apply here as well.

The essence is that for modern military systems, mobility and the relative cost of manufacturing, storing and employing (lethal) chemical weapons compared to protective equipment render them much less valuable than conventional explosive munitions. They see usage mostly between weaker static armies, which lack the equipment, training or command doctrines for modern warfare.

The banning of chemical weapons was done because they weren’t generally very useful for the modern systems of the superpowers at the time. Russia cracking them out again suggests they no longer have all the capabilities of a modern superpower. Which probably isn’t super new for most people, but might be worth spelling out anyway.

I believe Mango is saying that the Trump staffer is lying when he claims that the cemetery staffer had a mental health issue.

The cemetery staffer was doing his duty, but if the Trump campaign admitted that, they would admit that assaulting him was wrong. So instead, the Trump staffer deflects that criticism by claiming that the cemetery staffer was having a mental health episode.

So rather than blaming issues caused by service, the Trump staffer completely made up issues to justify their behaviour.

It’s highly disrespectful to veterans either way, of course.

From someone growing up religious:

FUCK
YOU

(Directed at Vance, not OP)

Because they assumed that the moral high ground would net them more voters than joining in the mud-slinging. “They go low, we go high” is a quite noble sentiment that should appeal to decent people to vote for them, if for no other reason than to keep the rude man-child out of office. They hoped that even the apathetic non-voters would be moved to cast a vote against the Temper-Tantrump.

It didn’t work, as we know now, but I can’t fault them for remembering the times when class and dignity mattered and hoping to extend those times.

Harris’ team seems to have learned that lesson. Here’s to hoping this actually works better.

I got out-pedanted? Impossibile!

Bene factum

“The demented felon rapist backed by christofascist authoritarians seeking to abolish democracy is just as bad as the lawyer that promises tax credits to the lower and middle class, banning price gouging and has sued Big Oil in the past, whose running mate publicly endorses RCV which would make additional parties viable”

💀

You’re repeating yourself.

Supporting third-party candidates isn’t about splitting the vote

…but that’s the practical effect

—it’s about pushing for the reforms necessary to break the two-party monopoly that limits our democracy

…which you expect to happen, if Trump wins?

And no, I’m not a “republican muppet” just because I am not voting for your candidate. If I wanted to vote republican, then I’d vote republican.

I don’t think you want to vote Republican. I don’t think you want a Republican government. I think you consider it an acceptable alternative to sacrificing principles. And therein lies the issue.

The question at the heart of it all - and try to answer just yes or no - is this:

Do you think Trump is preferable to Harris?

That’s a yes then.

The point is that this isn’t just about conscientious voting. There is a strategic element to it. That’s the unfortunate reality, and standing on principles alone won’t change it.

Support efforts to abolish the FPTP system to replace it with something like RCV, where you could then in good conscience vote Green first and Dem second. Support efforts at proportional representation to have Green members in the Houses. Support anything thay breaks up the two-party monopoly so that voting for a candidate who truly represents your values no longer becomes a political gamble.

But if you’re saying “I’d rather split the left-wing votes and risk a Trump victory than vote for Harris”, people will rightly call you a Republican muppet, because you’d essentially prefer Trump over Harris.

So you’d rather have a Republican victory than a mediocre Democrat?

Okay Imma pick a fight here. Your suggestion is the opposite of pedantic. It advocates for a “vulgarisation” of Latin loanwords (in the sense of “making them more like common words”).

I want to go back to pluralising more words in line with their Greek or Latin roots. I want to reverse the perfectly natural and reasonable linguistic shift you’re proposing and instead restore or retain that piece of linguistic anachronism as long as possible.