One time a very large, very important word file had a phantom page break that couldn’t be selected, and didn’t go away with backspace/delete.

I ended up opening the raw content of the docs to rip out the offender. Docx files are zip files with lots of XML data inside; I was eventually able to find the bit between the two paragraphs where the break was happening, and deleted it in notepad.

Pretty much done doing that type of task in Word now. Heck, I’ll do large documents in Markdown editors.

I feel I should make a video about this. Online social media has made it very easy to find the 500 people across the whole world who think our frog picture is funny. It’s a lot harder to find 3 people in your town to have a drink with.

One simple idea; something I joined instead of initiating, is to make a WhatsApp group, put its QR code on a page (print at the library if you don’t have one) then put up the link anywhere you think people tend to walk. Explain it’s a social group for your given age demographic, but suggest it’s open to anyone. From there, suggest outings, get to know people, ask or offer small favors, etc.

If I understand right, the usefulness of basic questions like “Hey ChatGPT, how long do I boil pasta” is offset by the vast resources needed to answer that question. We just see it as simple and convenient as it tries to invest in its “build up interest” phase and runs at a loss. If the effort to sell the product that way fails, it’s going to fund itself by harvesting data.

For anyone looking for new alternatives, I’m sure most Lemmy users can suggest more open-source pubfed options, but for anyone trying to generate a bit more presence (not that there’s much) I did find a YouTube video highlighting some “indie social media” sites, mostly focusing on nostalgia of simpler versions of the historically popular ones.

Having the whole world operate off of publically-owned shared systems is probably an ideal, but having them at least in tight competition, with easy destinations to abandon off to, is still quite a bit better.

Le tits, now!

Car gets buried

NOO, that’s not what I said!!

No, that’s the PlayStation -1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLx2VEx0LmA

I guess this isn’t really even “news” to Linux gamers now, but once in a while it’s nice to make an article about what constant progress has happened in a certain sphere. Certainly many people staying on Windows out of inertia blinked and missed it.

My fervent hope is that, someday in the future, people can build a gaming PC and just forego Windows to save $100.

I’m not really qualified to answer, we might need a deep-sublayer geologist.

The one I’m on has a very functional “search and install” app, but I still find myself habitually opening up terminal for installation out of “fastness”. Maybe it’s a poor impulse I should correct.

Probably the biggest thing driving terminal use is opening and configuring system files. You can do that with the file explorer and an elevated text editor, but a lot of guides aiming for conciseness will give you some command to wget a long file online, then insert content into a text file by path in one line.

I kinda get there’s some common meme about Nvidia being Linux’s kryptonite, but everything’s been okay for me on CachyOS. This after some issues earlier in the year on Mint and even Bazzite.

(Yes, I get the joke)

What the hell causes people to believe there’s a large political faction that wants people in media to be unattractive? At worst, some people just get taken out of a fantasy world if the women are wearing straight bikinis for no reason, but there’s many ways to make them look sexy without attire being totally impractical.

I’m a little half and half on it. A lot of people like myself are fed up with the obsessive way AI is pushed into everything, but I can see it having uses.

For instance, sifting through 20,000 “This user didn’t accept my argument evidence” reports to find some that have merit; that can be worthwhile, even if all it does is alert a human to take a look and make a full judgment. Besides, the bar for quality moderators on sites like Reddit is low.

I can give my historical experience. Early 2025, I saw horrific articles on Copilot and decided to switch early. I had a bad distro hopping experience. First tried Linux Mint, might have been a slightly old install, but even my wifi didn’t work. Tried a later install, and it was much better, but game performance wasn’t great. Hitman WOA didn’t even load levels. Helldivers 2 had an annoying white border (I eventually fixed this a year later using an odd hack)

I then tried Bazzite. I didn’t quite like the layout, but it functioned. I had a hard time installing apps; it tried to simplify this with various virtualization/containerized solutions, but it meant so many tutorials for basic native-Linux apps didn’t work.

When W10 EOL came around, I tried another distro well touted: CachyOS. It was very smooth. I learned it’s Arch, same as the Steam Deck, and does have some “technical complexities” which I felt I wanted to avoid, but I guess in the end it’s been nothing I’m not a little used to from my work as a programmer. It mostly uses okay UIs for system settings, and some programs require you to use another package installer rather than their default “Octopi”. Some of my early issues came from installing Flatpaks rather than Arch User Repository items.

Games have been fantastic. Rarely when something uses video I need ProtonGE, which is an easy toggle; I should probably just make it default. Helldivers 2 and Division 2 seem to run better than on Windows.

The biggest decider has been: Changing to Linux was NOT annoyance free. There was transition, there was fiddly configuration, and I replaced some apps I use. A key thing is, Windows was quickly moving away from being annoyance free - stuffing Copilot and OneDrive ads into EVERYTHING. So, even accepting a few Linux struggles ended up being an overall lesser frustration.

The main thing I think is a valid fear is losing things necessary to reinstall Windows in case of emergency.

With 11, they tie it to MS account which makes a reinstall easier. Some devices, I think it’s tied to the hardware though? That’s actually something I’d like to learn more about so people doing Linux tryouts have a safety net.

The silliest ones I’ve seen now are ads for mobile games that put censor stickers over the “parts” of fully clothed women. (Yes, even in the game, they’re fully clothed)

Oh…sorry, I thought it was “bread”. I just love baguettes.

I have a particular term for certain kinds of edginess I just call “Shadow the Hedgehog writing”, where it’s more likely to come from a teenager trying to seem grown up/cool than an actual adult.

Plenty of anime/VNs have fallen in this category, giving early content warnings that the content will be dark; and then just having non sequitor turnouts like “And then the heroine stepped in a trap that severed her spine. She screamed for hours, praying for help, but none came.”

There’s a particular game whose name rhymes with “Tomato” that did this for me once. You bring some children to safety, and then go fight the attackers sending tanks after them. I came back to the kids, joking to myself “Sorry, hero, it’s too late; we already drowned in our own fear and sadness…!” And then I laughed out loud when my joke turned out right.

Worst part is, there is some grim and depressing stuff in the world, and yet so many grimdark writers don’t see any nuance in it.

My iPhone is up to 5 years, and has no issues. If it had battery problems, I could just replace it.

If your phone contractor says they can give you a free phone with lock in, question how they’re paying for it. I pay my provider $240/yr ($20/mo). They have some less favorable phone-buying plans but work fine. To avoid being an advertising shill, I won’t name them; just make sure you include yearly prepaid options in your price comparison.

Introducing Microsoft Sepukku.