Spyke

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Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

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For years Google downgraded people's experience on search, maps, and youtube on mobile if they didn't use Chrome for Android. As a Firefox mobile user, it was very frustrating. I don't use many Google services anymore, but they, seemingly intentionally, were making other browsers feel worse. I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing it in different ways on desktop.

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Gabe Newell was an enthusiastic supporter of OpenAI in 2018, donating $20 million and even acting as the sole member of an 'informal advisory board'

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OpenAI, back then, was also a very different organization. They were mostly a non-profit, claiming to be a research organization who's goals were to ensure AI benefited all of humanity. Hell, I'd say Whisper, which that OpenAI did release, was very positive for humanity. It was when Sam Altman saw big dollar signs in GPT2+ that things started changing fast.

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Euro-Office, Europe's open-source alternative to Microsoft Office and Google Docs, launches June 9

If governments across the world gave a quarter of what they give to Microsoft to open source projects that compete, not only would they get to stop paying Microsoft all that money, they'd have a better product to boot. Add to that the side benefit to people and companies using it, and it's pretty obvious why Microsoft will do everything in its power (except make a better product for a better price) to prevent that.

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Valve Responds To Steam Machine's HDMI 2.1 Display Support Controversy [HW support is there, but "The HDMI forum" doesn’t allow with OpenSource drivers]

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We don't flock to it, they are forced upon us. Finding TVs that support DP is almost impossible.

One of the biggest problems is that shitty standards use the money they get from licensing the standard to push the standard. Good open standards often don't have a marketing budget to play with. On top of that, shitty standards can make unrealistic promises to gain an advantage. Like HDMI does with DRM. "If every device uses this standard, piracy will be a thing of the past!"

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Virgin Framework vs Chad ThinkPad

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Not the one you were replying to, but I'm answering you from a Framework 13. It's the best laptop I've owned. It's solid, runs well, is theoretically repairable without having to buy used equipment off ebay, and runs Linux quite well. I've put a few distros on it, and they've all just worked, even the finger print reader.

It's certainly not the best price for performance, but I like the build quality, and it let me bring my own RAM and NVME, which really helped close the price gap.

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The Avatar: The Last Airbender AAA RPG, Which Was Supposed to Be 'The Biggest Video Game in Franchise History,' Is Dead

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I struggle with Avatar right now. It's great story telling, world building, compassion, and just a cool world. Unfortunately, it's owned by Paramount, which I'm unwilling to give a dime to. I have the same problem with Star Trek. There are, of course, ways around giving them money. I just wish these crappy companies would stop being so crappy. I don't expect giant media companies to be good, but like not comically evil would be a good start.

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Your guide to a new File Storage service! (NEW)

I'm a big fan of syncthing. It doesn't rely on cloud services for storage, and can work 100% locally if you want it to.

It isn't perfect. It has a model of running a web server for managing the service which is a little strange. Because it is not backed by any cloud storage it means you are on your own to make sure you keep your copies safe.

With those two issues understood, it is simple, fast, free, and and supported almost everywhere. I have it on my phone, laptop, desktop, and as a docker container on my NAS. Everything stays synced and the NAS does backups of the data.

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Cuteness

I've been watching The Owl House on Netflix. Its a cartoon targeted at preteens but is woke as hell and I highly recommend it. In it, Witch is a genderless term. Its a race of magical people.