OldFartPhil

@OldFartPhil@lemmy.world

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What are you Reading? (August 2023) (lemmy.world)

I’ve put together a collage of some books from last months What are you Reading? post. It’s mostly random, but the more discussion something gets the more it stands out to me. Going forward I’m going to make a new post every month to talk about what people are reading....

OldFartPhil,

I’m a huge fan of the Laundry Files books. Just finished Season of Skulls, the 3rd book in The New Management trilogy. It’s a little less bleak than the first two books of the trilogy and very funny.

I’m now reading War Bodies by Neal Asher.

OldFartPhil,

I don’t have an answer for you, but maybe you and your friends could get together and start your own? The beauty of the fediverse and all that.

OldFartPhil,

The web pages for Lemmy and kbin have the ability to filter by subscribed communities, as well. I think what most of us are thinking of is a way to view the “All” feed that gives more weight to the smaller communities, which would help us discover new communities to subscribe to.

OldFartPhil,

In my opinion, microblogging isn’t really a conversational platform. It’s a creator and audience platform. That format has its place, as well, but Twitter/Threads/Mastodon/etc. isn’t a replacement for forums.

OldFartPhil,

A qualified yes. I love the overview, which is, IMO, the most elegant way to launch applications and manage workspaces of any OS or DE. I also love the general look and fluidity of the environment and how it gets out out of your way when you don’t need it. But I preferred the pre-GNOME 40 vertical workflow to the new horizontal workflow.

There are also three must-have extensions that make GNOME usable for me:

  • AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support. GNOME can wish away tray icons if they want to, but the tray hasn’t gone away and is still necessary for some applications.
  • DashToDock. Makes app switching more accessible and adds right-click to close.
  • Gnome 4x UI Improvements. Increases the size of the workspace thumbnails so you can actually see what’s in them (like it was before GNOME 40).
OldFartPhil,

an app launcher. Literally every other desktop on the planet has one, how this isn’t considered basic functionality is beyond me. Give your grandparents a vanilla GNOME computer and tell them to get to Facebook and you will see how necessary this is. Default should be dash-to-dock with intelligent autohide so you only see it when you need it. This would fulfill GNOME’s hangups about it while also improving usability, so I fail to see a downside.

GNOME does have a launcher, which works just like the launcher on Mac and Android. You can even select whether to see all your apps or only the most-used ones. I do agree that a taskbar/dock with intelligent auto-hide is a must, though (at least for my usability). That’s also not to say that some folks would rather have a Windows style launcher, and there are several DEs that provide that.

Burlington Northern Combination Boxcars/Hoppers, Sept. 19 1992, M. J. Budo Photo

Today's feature is another weird entry in railroad history, the Burlington Northern Boxhopper, or bopper! BN created these prototype cars in order to maximize the use of their rolling stock fleet. Normally, cars are sent out loaded, and returned empty. The aim of these was they could handle boxcar freight one way, and hopper...

Anyone else starting to favor Flatpak over native packages?

I am currently using Linux Mint (after a long stint of using MX Linux) after learning it handles Nvidia graphics cards flawlessly, which I am grateful for. Whatever grief I have given Ubuntu in the past, I take it back because when they make something work, it is solid....

OldFartPhil,

I still favor native packages, but I don’t have a problem with Flatpaks. I’ll use them when a program isn’t available in the repo or there’s a compelling reason to have a never version of an application. I’m on Debian Stable, so I’m obviously not obsessed with having the newest, shiniest version of everything.

The update manager in Linux Mint updated libllvm15 and now Brave is completely unusable for me. Is it possible to fix this without using a system backup?

Brave is my primary web browser but every page I visit isn’t being rendered correctly at all and some pages are completely broken. I have a system backup from a few days ago but I’d prefer not to have to use it if I can. I think Brave is the only thing that was affected but I think I should try to revert the update if it’s...

OldFartPhil,

What about running the Flatpak version of Brave? Flatpaks are containerized and should contain compatible libraries.

[OC - 1620x1080] Northrop N-9M Flying Wing - Chino (California) Air Show 2005 (photos.smugmug.com)

The Northrop N-9M was an approximately one-third scale, 60-foot (18 m) span all-wing aircraft used for the development of the full size, 172-foot (52 m) wingspan Northrop XB-35 and YB-35 flying wing long-range, heavy bomber. The XB-35 program was canceled in 1949, but the knowledge gained about all-wing aircraft was put to use...

OldFartPhil,

Sure. They’d probably have different haircuts and different clothes, but great talent is timeless.

OldFartPhil,

As @flloxlbox said, it will either happen organically or users will decide to merge communities, like the Android community did. It’s the way federation works, it’s not something that can be forced on people. <a href=""></a> <a href=""></a> <a href=""></a>

Lewis and Clark Explorer Budd RDCs - June 2004 [OC] (photos.smugmug.com)

The Lewis and Clark Explorer was a tourist train that operated from Portland to Astoria, Oregon as part of the 200th anniversary celebration of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. The railroad parallels Lewis & Clark’s route along the lower Columbia River to their winter camp near Astoria.

OldFartPhil,

GNOME. Been using Linux since before GNOME Shell was a thing and when it became a thing it just clicked for me. In my opinion, it’s by far the most polished DE and provides the most elegant and intuitive launcher and workspace switcher of any DE or OS I’ve used. At least they did, until they fucked it up by moving from vertical to horizontal workspaces and made the workspace previews so small you can no longer see what’s in them.

Which is the downside of GNOME. Sometimes their developers are their own worst enemies. Fortunately, there are usually extensions to fix the most egregious “enhancements”.

Something special for 60 subscribers! A hulking monstrosity of Union Pacific Power, the DDA35

The DDA35 is a cab unit version of the DD35, built exclusively for the Union Pacific railroad. Only fifteen of these beasts were built between May and July of 1965, numbered 70 (pictured) through 84. Powered by twin 567D prime movers, these locomotives were good for 5000 horsepower each. Unfortunately, these locomotives suffered...

OldFartPhil,

Interesting locomotives. I always forget that the successful Centennials had not-so-successful predecessors. I’m sure they seemed like a good idea to UP at the time. Going back to steam days, the railroad always had a thing for stuffing the most power they could on a single frame.

OldFartPhil,

Good, let Zuck and Musk fight. If we’re lucky they’ll knock each other out.

OldFartPhil,

Yep. Being a part of the fediverse gives Meta a defensible argument that (1) they are not stealing Twitter’s intellectual property as Mastodon already exists and (2) they are not monopolizing the Twitter-like social media environment as any of their users could move to Mastodon if they wanted to.

OldFartPhil,

Very good point! I don’t think the threat from Meta is technological, they also seem to be good citizens on the the open source projects they collaborate on.

I am far more concerned about how Threads is going to change the community. Not the vapid influencer crap, but the toxicity, divisiveness, bigotry and disinformation coming out of Facebook.

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