I've been running ministral on CPU on a home-server: works pretty nicely, not very performant for everyday tasks and the savings were not sufficient for it to make sense. It still was cheaper and faster to just use Mistral API and get better models.

I know the feeling!

Though, I started recently to have less of it. I started reading for things I need to read on my standing desk, which makes it much easier to actually move in process of reading, which my brain happier, apparently. Also, I can just jump on and off reading in progress (and walk around room), with same result. Definitely recommend using a standing desk in such a way, if you have trouble focusing on reading that you have to do.

So although I understand those defending the right to keep their media, the publishers have the right to release it however they want.

I've been thinking about this exact thing for quite a while, and I think there is a gem hidden in this paragraph: the publishers have right to sell their product how they see it fit. At the same time, I as a consumer have a right to consume the product the way I like.

The availability of options 20-25 years ago made media truly free, where everyone could watch things however they liked: either it is a home projector, or have movie nights with friends on home TV, or is it watching on the go on crappy MP4 screen. Nowadays, though, it is moving back towards "we control how you watch it — period". And that is infuriating: to get some freedom, and then get stripped of it just because there was a minor group called "pirate", who started stealing it (taking into account that in most cases, those pirates had limited availability of the products: either financial, or governmental, ahoy from post-ussr country). I think, those corps are playing a blame game of moving responsibility for the harm to the consumers (similarly as it goes with plastics recycling). They basically are blaming people for making them to enforce those rules, while most of those malicious customers turned out more frequent buyers than regular paying customers, and provide invaluable intelligence on popularity of things[1], and made their products widely available at places they were not.

The problem is not about having bluray, it is about not having it available in any they cannot take away, because of "reasons". That is exactly what happened to Office 2019, and that product was not released that long ago: 2019 is only 7 years ago. At the same time, people nowadays resurrect old games and software to make it work on modern hardware, take a look at GOG Preservation Program[2] as an example. They even had a conflict with Blizzard for selling WarCraft 1 and WarCraft 2 in original state and form, while Blizz decided to get more money on cheap remake[3].

I see that the Office 2019 story reminded us that the rights of buyer of digital media are inherently assymetrical to what publisher have. 'Cause when I buy a car, I can do with it whatever I want: I can tweak it, I can get it into various shops for service, etc. What happens with the software/media is "well, you paid us, but you still have to do things the way we want you to do them": feels like a crappy leasing to me, for paying a full price.

That brings me to my personal rule: if I can buy it, I better buy it. If I cannot buy it without strings attached, then the piracy is somewhat justified. Exceptions can be small authors, but then I just try to find a way to finance them: either via patreon, or whatever else. People deserve to be paid for work, though people also deserve to be treated as entities of agency, not blind obedience.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmOPM1cSrY4, disclaimer: I couldn't verify sources, take that into account too 2: https://www.gog.com/en/gog-preservation-program 3: https://www.gog.com/en/news/warcraft_12_will_be_delisted_from_gogwhat_does_this_mean_in_regard_to_the_gog_preservation_program

There is a disclaimer though, which kind of brings hope:

This is an initial version of the software, developed solely for the purpose of demonstrating the business flow of the solution. It is not intended for production use, and does not yet include the full set of functional, security, or integration features required for a live deployment.

This makes me to thinkgof this solition as of a risk for now (high one, though, with modern approach of shipping PoCs)

There are folks form KDE who are trying to implement the Plasma Bigscreen solution: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/. Seems promising to me :)

Though, I'd still recommend to use an external device to avoid breaking the TV OS up ;)

Sad it works that way. Though, I clearly remember why it happens this way with me: each time I told "I forgot", I was punished, so I became a perfect liar: I can come up with a realistic story in so short time nobody ever notices.

I did not know that puma and adidas are German. I was sure they are all US, but no, they are not.

If only she new how Maria Skłodowska-Curie died, she wouldn't be as happy for the resemblance...

If you haven’t set a password before, then it should be the default one: empty. Then, to use sudo you will need to set one by using passwd command.

In case if the password was set in the past: the only way would be to run factory reset, or restore from image.

RCS is a really nice thing in principle, because SMS/MMS infrastructure is just awfully outdated from security standpoint.

Though, replacing SMS/MMS infrastructure which is internetless yet cross-carrier by making it a internet-first and tied to a single meta-carrier under the hood kind of defeats the purpose overall. There was an attempt to build an independent carrier-deployable implementation of RCS, yet it turned out to be bought off by Google :(

I've been following the software forge federation some time ago, and didn't feel to pick up even when it was discusssed initially. It is a neat idea on high-level, though it requires forges to implement it, which has a risk of not picking up (just look at how much iterations of social media federation protocols was there, until ActivityPub arose).

On the other hand, all of the forges are based on a distributed technology out of the box: git. Most of the "modern days" comforts there are, are just built on top, and there are different ways to approach it.

As an example, you can send patches directly to the author in email. Is heavily implemented and suggested by https://sr.ht/ (1) — a software forge, which focuses on building a federated workflow by using email for communication (which is federated by design). This way, you can create "Pull Requests" without having account on the forge — all you need to do is just submit a patch. Author is very vocal about supporting it (2), and provides quite useful guides to learn (3), (4)

Generally, I'd say that e-mail is the only federative implementation you can get so far :)

Each time I see anything like that, I just disengage with the content

TBH, when I visited Athens, it felt like the most car-centric capital I've ever visited in my life (haven't been to US though). Fascinating comparison to be :)

My take: Steam Deck is much better, just taking a terrible experience I've been having with ASUS laptop build, and how actually well-built the Steam Deck is.

My story is: I bought an LCD with 64 GB storage and upgraded it to 1TB, and made a few fixes already to the buttons (too hard of a player xD). And during disassembly, I was extremely happy with how it was built, because it is really simple to maintain, disassemble/assemble. Like it was actually built to last ;)

Question of curiosity: why not consider RaspberryPi for the task? It is definitely going to be cheaper and more power efficient when comparing to mini computer (even if you take new one), because has so much more computing ability per Watt. I've been running HomeAssistant + cups server + small file server on RaspberryPi 3b+ without any issues for few years, and it was pretty actively used.

Additional point, RaspberryPi is publically traded company on London Exchange, and was founded in Britain, which mostly matches the "Buy European" motto ;)

There is also Vinted, which operates across EU.

Asides, in Poland Allegro Lokalne exists, which is making an attempt in the same market.

It also is usually cheaper to do it that way. I’ve noticed quite a while ago the difference in subscription prices on website vs Apple Pay.

I love Hohner brand guitars. Made in German, simply great sound and experience overall.

The saddest thing for me is that it is 90% impossible to drink gin-tonic without paying to Coca-Cola in Poland. For other 10%, the price of tonic is almost same as the price for gin :/

Interestingly, I do not see quite a bit of European countries, including Poland, Czechia, etc

Feels like either an attempt of manipulation, or lack of research