Get “live DVDs” for a distro that offers both GNOME and KDE (Fedora is a great one), and see which one you like best. “live” means it’s usable without installing anything, so it’s easy to try out. Get a spare USB stick, install Ventoy on it, copy both ISOs across (a KDE one and a GNOME one), and boot your computer from it to try them out.

Great article! This helped me understand a lot more about D-Bus.

Some apps have weird names and I forget what they’re called. Showing a “new” badge, even if it’s just for the first few times I open the app, makes it more likely that I’ll remember the app’s name.

Thanks. I looked into it a bit more and it looks like they actually want to increase what can be done in userland, to reduce the reliance on kernel mode. That’s still a good solution, if things the anti-cheat code needs to do can be moved into userland.

AFAIK Microsoft have plans to block kernel level anti-cheat on Windows. After the CrowdSec issues last year, they’re rethinking which types of programs should even be allowed to run in kernel space.

Edit: I was wrong. They actually want to increase what can be done in user mode, to reduce reliance on kernel mode code.

They’re developers rather than managers, but many are senior or staff level.

As far as I know, most of the major streaming services use Widevine L1. Some (like Netflix) use L3 for resolutions up to 720p and L1 for higher resolutions.

I know plenty of people in big tech that don’t like this AI stuff either.

A lot of video streaming sites (maybe most of them?) used a chunked video format like HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) or DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP), where the video is split into a large number of ~5 second clips, rather than having a single video file. All video streaming services that change video quality based on bandwidth uses technologies like these.

The videos are likely also encrypted with a DRM scheme like Widevine. yt-dlp can take a HLS or DASH stream and stick all the small video files back together, but I don’t think it can deal with DRM. Videos with DRM also can’t be captured using screen recording software, unless you do something like using a HDMI cable that strips HDCP.

See if yt-dlp supports the site. If you have an Android phone or tablet, you could try the YTDLnis app.

Thanks for the reply!

Somehow it’s the only old-school P2P network that’s not only survived, but still thrives even today. So many rare songs on there. It turned 24 years old last month. All the others from the same era (like Napster, Kazaa, Limewire, etc) are long gone. ed2k is still around but mostly dead.

The chat rooms are also old-school unmoderated chat rooms, so expect the worst of humanity to be in there.

If you have a home server, slskd is great. It’s an alternate Soulseek app that’s a server with a web UI.

preliminary NOVA driver code merged for the future Rust-written open-source NVIDIA kernel driver.

Is this based on the existing open-source driver (https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules) or will it be entirely new?

I don’t know anything about this company, but fiber is almost always better than cable. Lower latency, more reliable, and it’s usually symmetric (upload speed is the same as download speed).

must be doing some construction on my street because they made survey marks on my property and painted where the gas line and water lines are. Could this be because they are putting in the fiber cables?

It’s possible! Those marks means that some sort of digging/excavation is happening nearby. The company that wants to do the work calls a “dial before you dig” service (811 in the USA) and all the utility companies come out and mark their lines.

If it’s not decentralized then it’s vulnerable to takedowns. Why not decentralize it?

For your sake, I’d strongly recommend not monetizing the site at all. Publishers will come after you if you make any sort of profit from the site especially if you’re located in a western country.

That’s one of the main reasons Nintendo took action against Yuzu - they were making a lot of money from Patreon.

Hosting in Singapore is definitely more expensive than the USA or Germany, but cheaper than Australia or New Zealand. It’s often a good compromise for web hosting companies since you get good connectivity not just to Australia but to the rest of Asia too (compared to hosting in Australia where you only really get good connectivity to people in Australia).

GPUs are expensive everywhere. I’m an Aussie living in the USA and would offer to buy stuff here and ship it to you, but it’s getting to the point where some stuff here is actually more expensive than Australia now, thanks to significantly worse inflation compared to Australia, and the Trump tariffs.

Renting a dedicated server or VDS with a decent GPU would be pretty expensive too. A lot of people are using them for AI, which has caused a lot of price increases as plenty of people are willing to pay a lot for a server with powerful AI capabilities.

I know this is a piracy community, but if you really do want to do online game streaming, a service like GeForce Now would end up quite a bit cheaper even after factoring in the cost of games. Their highest tier (which comes with a GTX4080 and 16 vCPUs) is $20/month which is significantly cheaper than what it’d cost to rent a similarly specced system.

To the point where light speed limitations means rtts of like 200-300 ms

Consider testing servers that are located in Singapore, especially if you use Optus or if your ISP uses Optus as one of their upstreams.

If you’re lucky, your ISP will route from Australia directly to Singapore and you’ll get around 100-120ms ping, about half what you’d get compared to a US-based server. If you’re unlucky, it’ll be 400+ms, routing to the USA then from the USA to Singapore.

Web is a bit easier than native since the browsers handle all the platform-specific details across all common platforms, and you mostly just have to follow some guidelines that aren’t overly technical or arcane. Some examples:

• Use ARIA roles where appropriate
• Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background colours. Should at least meet the WCAG level AA which is a 4.5:1 contrast ratio, but ideally meet AAA which is a 7:1 ratio for body text and a 4.5:1 ratio for headings.
• Ensure you use <label> tags to label for all your <input>s, alt attributes on all images, title attributes where appropriate (e.g. on <table>s to describe the data contained inside the table), etc.

If you use Firefox, its developer tools have an “Accessibility” tab that can audit for common issues - things like missing labels on checkboxes and radio buttons, colours that don’t meet WCAG contrast ratio requirements, etc.

It’s a good time to learn more about building accessible sites and apps given it’s becoming a legal requirement in some jurisdictions. For example, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) goes into effect later this year, and it mandates that sites and mobile apps for various industries (like ecommerce, airlines and other transport, media streaming, social media, banks, and some others) meet accessibility guidelines.

I’m on an all Linux machine and the only accessibility software I know of is Orca and it’s so and so last time I tried it.

It’s probably worth spinning up a Windows VM to test in NVDA. It’s one of the most popular screen readers and probably the most popular open-source one, but only works on Windows since it deeply hooks into the Microsoft Speech API, accessibility APIs, and and other Windows APIs.

This is a really well written article. It’s unfortunate that this person has to deal with all these issues.

I suspect the reason that both MATE and the Debian installer have good accessibility support is because their codebases are quite old. In general, it seems like older software is more likely to have better accessibility support than newer software.

Accessibility should be something that’s built into software from the very beginning, but I totally understand that not all developers have time for it or properly understand it. It’s unfortunate.

Edit: I forgot to mention that accessibility is going to be mandated for some types of sites and apps in the EU thanks to the European Accessibility Act (EAA) coming into effect later this year, which should help somewhat. Won’t really help with Linux itself though.