Yep. GOG is good. I’ve been getting a bit more into itch.io as well though. itch is packed with small simple experimental indie stuff. I’ve got no interest in most of it; but there’s a surprising amount of good stuff there too. (At least, it was surprising to me when I started visiting it more frequently.)

Seems like the person wants to learn something, but with zero effort. (i.e. won’t read the article; and certainly won’t look for additional context or information.) So maybe it would be better to post the question into an AI chatbot. You can just ask whatever question, and get some plausible but possibly-bullshit answer; then feel good for satisfying your curiosity.

For sure. I’ve been looking for a solid OneNote replacement for a few years now. Inking is the only major barrier.

I really like OneNote, and I’ve been using it for more than 10 years. But in recent years, my dislike for Microsoft has grown to the point where I feel I need to stop using all their products.

Right now I’m using xournal++ a lot. It has really excellent drawing functionality; but zero organisational functions. (I’m organising my xournal notes using just file names and folder structure.)

What I really want is integrated xournal support with Obsidian, or Joplin. In Joplin, I’ve tried inserting a pdf into my notes, and telling Joplin to open the pdf by launching xournal++. That sort of works; but the viewing of the pdf in Joplin shows a window-within-a-window; and the creating of new notes is fiddly; so I decided it wasn’t quite good enough.

Right, but in the context of social media feeds, “algorithm” always refers to an algorithm for personalised content.

Apparently it doesn’t use a personalised algorithm. So I’d say the first one.

which is less than bsky, but more than lemmy.

I think a lot of people get sucked into the idea that more is better. But that isn’t necessarily the case. I don’t think any of us really want to talk to a million different people anyway. We just want to talk to a suitable subset.

Deleting data from them might not be feasible, but there are other tactics.

[…] trapping AI crawlers and sending them down an “infinite maze” of static files with no exit links, where they “get stuck” and “thrash around” for months, he tells users. Once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data, aka Markov babble, which is designed to poison AI models.

I think we’re past the point of humour on that one.

I use RSS for sites where I want to read every update. That typically means serial comics; dev-blogs of indie games; other infrequent blogs; and some infrequent youTube channels (I don’t visit youTube other than via my RSS feeds);

Whereas I use Lemmy and other sites for skimming and browsing, and discovering new things.

I assume the primary reason for Valve supporting Linux is to protect themselves against possible hostility from Microsoft. So yeah, it’s a business decision to protect Valve’s profits; but frankly - it’s also beneficial to everyone who isn’t Microsoft.

Overall, I’m not a great fan of Steam. (And generally it’s me talking down Steam; recommending itch.io and GOG; and sometimes even defending Epic against what I think are unfair attacks.) But here I’m just saying that I don’t really see the negative of Valve creating Steam OS. Although I don’t intend to use Steam OS, I think I’m already benefiting from the support Valve has given Linux to create Steam OS.

I’m not sure that Valve working to making Linux gaming a smoother experience is a strong example of them being money grubbing and anti-consumer.

Do you think Eugen has been personally moderating all Mastodon instances up until now?

He hasn’t. Obviously the moderation system has nothing to do with what is being discussed here.

bluesky has more funding for self-promotion.

Back when I was on Twitter (a couple of years ago now), all links to Mastodon were explicitly marked as “unsafe”, and posts containing such links were demoted. So it’s apparently kind of normal for these social media companies to attempt to choke new competition as early as possible.

One advantage of Pixelfed is that it not a commercial company. So unlike Instagram, they do not have financial motivation to addict and exploit. So for people who are interested in seeing and sharing picture galleries, that seems like a good option to me.

(Personally I don’t use Instagram or Pixelfed, or any other similar service.)

Thanks. I do remember this now. I don’t remember it costing a lot of money, but I do remember people generally disagreeing with the idea of it - and then being amused by how it was to be implemented. And yes, to get around this filter I changed my DNS server from the ISP’s default to instead use Google’s. (This was far enough in the past that I wasn’t yet anti-google!)

I’m an Australian, and I don’t remember the ‘firewall’ that you’re talking about. Do you have a link or something to remind me?

I feel some sadness in seeing Microsoft’s slow sludge of enshitification oozing forward and gradually engulfing github. There’s still a way to go before it become totally crap, but it is definitely getting worse and will continue to get worse as Microsoft does their best to mine whatever value they can from everyone passing by.

Knowing this, I think it is wise to start looking at alternatives.

I’ve stopped using github because I hate advertising and nags. Probably most people don’t care much about it, but for me github nagging and ‘reminding’ me about copilot is just so off-putting that I immediately want to leave the site. I don’t want my attention stolen like that.

I’ve found Mojeek to be a bit hit and miss; but one thing I really appreciate is that they actually do the indexing and searching themselves (whereas pretty much every other search site uses Bing or Google behind the scenes). So although Mojeek may not be ideal, they are at least making an effort to be independent.