Useful to be reminded how many people don’t vote. The polls are always about likely voters; they don’t include those who won’t vote. So the 50:50 split is a nonsense; neither party likely has more than 1/3 of the electorate behind them, with a whole 1/3 disengaged from the whole thing.
I’d recommend video streams from BBC, Sky News and Channel 4 all in the UK. Channel 4 is partnering with CNN for data and shared stories, and their UK election coverage earlier this year was well regarded. TV news in the UK has to be impartial by law so they will not take a side in the election. They will however voice opinions from both sides.
Having said that though all coverage will endlessly speculate all night on what ever result means because that’s the nature of elections and filling air time.
Regarding the Guardian, that is not regulated but it is a good quality broadsheet. It is left leaning and effectively supports Harris but it’s coverage will still be good quality and not as partisan in the style of US media. But expect it to be biased somehwta in Harris’ favour.
This is not open source? There is no license just a statement saying free to use for personal and commercial projects, but don’t redistribute or resell.
This freeware at best but if you contribute to this project it’s not clear who owns the work.
It’s a thought experiment, not an observation. The idea is that if you have infinity and it’s truly random than eventually all possibilities emerge somewhere within that.
The idea of infinite monkeys typing randomly on infinite typewriters is that eventually one of them would accidentally type out all the works of Shakespeare. Many more would type out parts of the works of Shakespeare. And many many many more would type random garbage.
If we then take that forwadd imagine for a moment the multiverse is also infinite and random, then every possible universe would exist somewhere in that multiverse.
It can be taken in other directions too. It’s a way of cocneptualising the implications of infinity and true randomness.
Meanwhile actual Shakespeare had intelligence and wrote and created his works. Him being a monkey writing Shakespeare is just a sly humerous observation, but it has nothing to do with the actual meaning of the thought experiment and the idea it is trying to convey.
This is why “AI” should be avoided at all cost. It’s all bullshit. Any tool that “hallucinates” - I. E. Is error strewn - is not fit for purpose. Gaming the AI is just the latest example of the crap being spewed by these systems.
The underlying technology has its uses but its niche and focused applications, nowhere near as capable or as ready as the hype.
We don’t use Wikipedia as a primary source because it has to be fact checked. AI isn’t anywhere as near accurate as Wikipedia.so why use it?
A prediction for the 2024 US election
Trash “research” and trash journalism covering it. First they find that monkeys would write Shakespeare, it would just take on average longer than the entire existence of the universe. They then try to infer that how long it takes is relevant. It is not. The calculation is vaguely interesting as a curio but the shoehorned “discussion” and interpretation to get attention is crap and another example of bad science misleading people.
It’s pointless and stupid - the thought experiment itself is that infinite monkeys typing would eventually type the whole of Shakespeare. Not how long it would take. The whole point of it is that in a truly random system all known patterns should eventually emerge somewhere within it. The length of time it takes for the pattern to emerge is irrelevant as the idea is based in infinity. So for example if there is a truly random infinite multiverse then in theory all imaginable possibilities would exist somewhere within it at some point.
The metaverse a resounding failure, Facebook has latched on to the AI hype train in hopes of making the company relevant. They’re basically put of ideas on how to feed the beast of “forever growth” the markets demand.
I don’t have specific experience with the tools you list, however on googling it looks like Ableton Live does work under wine. Wine is what underpins playing windows games on Linux too; it’s very powerful and effective.
You can install Mint into a VM environment on your current PC (such as Virtual Box) and see how you get on with software you really can’t live without. It won’t run as fast as real life in a VM but you should get an idea whether any tools you can’t live without can work.
As for OneDrive there are unofficial clients to get it working with Linux if you want to sync to your local filesystem. However Microsoft doesn’t officially support it beyond Web browsers, so if you want something slick and supported you probably would be better migrating to other solutions. You’d certainly be able to migrate with the unofficial clients but I’m not sure I’d want to rely on them long term as things xna break if Microsoft unilaterally changes something.
There are PPAs with different builds of ffmpeg for Ubuntu. It also depends what codecs are needed as to whether this is even relevant?
Bearing in mind some (many) encoding codec libraries are not installed by default as most people don’t need them but can readily be added from the official repos via apt or synaotic. Each codec is usually provided as a library of its own; ffmpeg is more than just one set of binaries. There is a big difference between an incomplete build and incomplete default install of all available libraries/codecs. Most people don’t need or want every possible encoding codec installed by default.
However some codecs are more strictly licensed and may need to be installed or acquired via different routes - that is the nature or proprietary software (as on Windows).
Which codes are you saying are not available in Ubuntu official repos?
One significant difference that has been missed here is that Laptops can and often do run on the power supply, while phones usually use the power purely to charge the battery.
It’s a significant difference as the laptop needs a stable electricity supply to supply all it’s components or the laptop would crash. That means not only does the brick need to dissipate heat, but it also needs to be able to deliver a stable continuous DC current. So as well as a transformer and rectifier (that together convert AC to the correct DC needed) there are smoothers and potentially capacitors to ensure a smooth continuous output even if the wall supply is janky.
If you turn off the power at the wall / unplug you often see any light on the power brick stay on - that is because of the capacitors and there is still a small amount of energy available to the laptop as it discharges.
While phones are mini computers they are usually designed to always run on the battery. Even when charging, the phone draws it’s power from the battery and it’s in built circuits to smooth the current; there isn’t usually the redundancy in a phone to switch between different supplies in the same way as a laptop. There isn’t also the expectation that they need to run off the wall continuously by users (even if users might plug their phone in and expect to continue to use it, they will find their phone shuts down if its at 0% and they push it beyond what the recharging battery can supply; a laptop would be expected to run solely on the wall not shut off).
Things are blurring now with USB C power supplies for laptops - but you will find the plug itself has more of the electronics built in or some of the functions of the power brick have moved into the laptop to reduce charger bulkiness. Look at how bulky a USB c charger plug is for a Mac - they’re not simple USB chargers you’d use for a phone or tablet, they’re bulky because they are also doing the smoothing and stabilisation people expect for their laptops.
Tl:Dr they’re different sizes because they’re doing different things. Basic chargers purely charges a battery, while laptop chargers both charge a battery and provide good quality supply to keep a laptop running optimally.
Quick FYI - Exa is no longer fully maintained; there is a fork called Eza which is maintained. They couldn’t take over the original Exa repo as the original creator is unreachable. Eza is in many distros; I’ve installed it on OpenSuSe Tumbleweed with ease from the factory-oss.
For the Flatpak apt upgrade how about “flapt”.
I use Proton mail. I like the suite of products (mail, calendar and storage), and it’s been reliable. They also seem to be secure.
You can use your own domain with them which is pretty standard but a good idea if you want long term email independence/remoce vendor lockin.
I also like that Proton mail are going down a non-profit route and have open sourced their apps. I’m not suggesting they’re perfect, but these moves and the scale of their set up makes me feel happier to use them.
K9 isn’t an email provider? It’s an email app. A good one but still.
That’s rather simplifying history and not the main reason Netscape failed.
Netscape lost because Microsoft used it’s dominant monopoly position to bundle Internet Explorer with windows. By 1999 the writing was already on the wall - IE had already overtaken Netscape market share and was growing rapidly.
The Mozilla project and code base change was a gamble to try and fix the problems. When Microsoft released IE6 2001 they didn’t bother releasing another major version for 6 years as they were so dominant.
So while the code base change was arguably mishandled, at worst it accelerated the decline. Instead the whole story is a poster child for how monopoloes can be used to destroy competition. The anti trust actions in the US and EU came too late for Netscape.
Ironically Microsoft was the receiving end of the same treatment when Google started pushing Chrome via it’s own monopoly in search. They made a better product than the incumbent but they pushed it hard via their website that everyone uses.
Genuinely, nothing so far.
I’ve tinkered with it but I basically don’t trust it. For example I don’t trust it to summarise documents or articles accurately, every time I don’t trust it to perform a full and comprehensive search and I don’t trust it not to provide me false or inaccurate information.
LLMs have potential to be useful tools, but what’s been released is half baked and rushed to market as part of the current bubble.
Why would I use tools that inherently “hallucinate” - I. E. are error strewn? I don’t want to fact check the output of an LLM.
This is in many ways the same as not relying on Wikipedia for information. It’s a good quick summary but you have to take everything with a pinch of salt and go to primary sources. I’ve seen Wikipedia be wildly inaccurate about topics I know in depth, and I’ve seen AI do the same.
So pass until the quality goes up. I don’t see that happening in the near future as the focus seems to be monetisation, not fixing the broken products. Sure, I’ll tinker occasionally and see how it’s getting on but this stuff is basically not fit for purpose yet.
As the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. AI is superficially impressive but once you scratch the surface and have to actually rely on it then it’s just not fit for purpose beyond a curio for me.
Flatpak is supposed to be a sandbox, so if there is a vulnerable dependency then in theory any attack would be limited to the sandbox.
However, it depends on the software - some Flatpak need quite low level access to use, and in that case an attack or mlaware could get into the main system. And unfortunately Flatpak itself has vulnerabilities which cna negate the whole idea of a sandbox.
Flatpaks should be using up to date secure dependencies, but the reality is many do not. I would not rely on Flatpak for security. Even fully up to date Flatpaks can be insecure, and Flatpak itself have vulnerabilities that have needed fixing. And for many Flatpaks it’s not even clear who is maintaining them.
Flatpaks are useful for deploying software that’s just not available in your distros repos. But when deploying any software outside your repos - including App Image, build from source or 3rd party repos - you are opening your system up to security vulnerabilities. That’s the nature of installing 3rd party software. Flatpak offers some reassurance compared to some methods but it’s far from perfect.
If security is your prime concern, then Virtual Machines may be more secure route to sandboxing software (if done properly). Building from source would be the other option, as it means you take ont he responsibility for security by using the latest code including for dependencies. But there is no perfect option, it’s always about balancing risk vs convenience.
It’s also worth noting that software repos are also not perfect. But good distros invest a lot of time and effort in keeping them as up to date and secure as possible, usually via the hard work of volunteers.
It’s the “call me hand” emoji.
Badly written headline - what was covered in poop? Thailand? The balcony?
This would be clearer: “Naked British tourist, covered in poop, falls from balcony in Thailand”