As someone who tries to practice ethical piracy as best they can, my advice is to not get caught up in the details.

1. Purchase the books wherever you best want to show your support, and
2. Pirate a copy from wherever best meets your criteria

👍

The thing I remember most about the early internet was staking out your own weird little corners. There wasn’t much of any “everything” site yet, so you’d find the things that appealed to you and settle there.

A lot of my early tastes in indie and experimental music were formed by the Music message board on GameFAQs. I was already going there for the walkthroughs and found my way to some of the under-populated, miscellaneous boards.

You experienced meeting people with names (even if just pseudonyms) and ideas that weren’t just blended into an algorithmic slurry.

It’s why I like Lemmy, I can feel a bit of that here. Still, I have a hard time surrendering things like Twitter and moved instantly to Bluesky where I continue the trend …

You’re describing neurosymbolic AI, a combination of machine learning and neural network (LLM) models. Gary Marcus wrote an excellent article on it recently that I recommend giving a read, How o3 and Grok 4 Accidentally Vindicated Neurosymbolic AI.

The primary issue I see here is that you’re still relying on the LLM to reasonably understand and invoke the ML models. It needs to parse the data and understand what’s important in order to feed it into the ML models and as has been stated many times, LLMs do not truly “understand” anything, they are inferring things statistically. I still do not trust them to be statistically accurate and perform without error.

LLMs are a tool, and all tools can be repurposed or repossessed.

That’s just simply not true. Tools are usually quite specific in purpose, and often times the tasks they accomplish cannot be undone by the same tool. A drill cannot undrill a hole. I’m familiar with ML (machine learning) and the many, many legitimate uses it has across a wide range of fields.

What you’re thinking of, I suspect, is a weapon. A resource that can be wielded equally by and against each side. The pains caused on the common person by the devaluation of our art and labor can’t be inflicted against the corpofascists; for them, that’s the point. They are the ones selling these tools to you and you cannot defeat them by buying in. And I do very much mean the open source models as well. Waging war on their terms, with their tools and methods (repossessed as they may be) is still a losing proposition.

By ignoring this technology and sticking our fingers in our ears, we are allowing them to reshape out the technology works, instead of molding it for our own purposes. It’s not going to go away, and thinking that is just as foolish as believing the Internet is a fad.

Time will tell. How are your NFTs doing? (sorry, that was mean)

The negative preconceived notion bias is really not helping matters.

Guilty as charged, I’m pretty strongly anti-AI. But seriously, watch that ad and tell me that the disorienting cadence of speech and uncanny, overly detailed generated images look good? Most of us have seen what’s on offer and we’re telling you, we’re tired.

Look, I do apologize, I’m very much trying not to be overly aggro here or attack you in any way. But I think discussions about the religious overtones and belief systems of the BJ are exactly where we’re at.

How o3 and Grok 4 Accidentally Vindicated Neurosymbolic AI

This is a really interesting article. Gary Marcus is a lot more positive on AI than myself I think, but that’s understandable given his background. If I do concede that some form of AGI is inevitable, I think we are within our rights to demand that it is indeed the tool we deserve, and not just snake oil.

AI art still ugly, sorry not sorry.

Kind of really disagree with this video 😕

I’ve only read the first two Dune novels, and that awhile ago, so I’m poorly equipped to have this conversation, but the video focuses on the idea that fascists are perpetuating it to keep powerful tools of liberation out of the hands of the proletariat. You wouldn’t agree with a fascist, would you? While there may be some truth to this, it completely ignores the cause of the BJ to begin with. It was in fact a rebellion by the people against those tools.

Even taken at face value, the video seems to posit that because the fascists can’t be trusted, AI is indeed a powerful tool for liberation. I don’t see that as the case. It hardly needs to be said, but Dune is a sci-fi novel, the context of which does not currently apply to our real world circumstances. AI is the tool of the fascists, used for oppression. I don’t think it can simply be repurposed for liberation, that’s a naive interpretation that ignores all of the actual ways in which the current implementations of AI work.

Disgusting AI-generated add for merch halfway through.

EDIT: the point is further confounded by the fact that the BJ eliminated “computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots”, not simply AI. Many of those are tools that could empower people but that doesn’t mean you can just lump them together.

I want to believe this so bad, but they have a death grip on AI. They’re too heavily invested.

I don’t foresee a massive rehiring spree, I see them slowly giving up only the minimal amount of ground while still clinging tot he AI products they overly invested in. It’s gonna be brutal ☹️

I don’t really have a concise answer, but allow me to ramble from personal experience for a bit:

I’m a sysadmin that was VERY heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. It was all I worked with professionally and really all I had ever used personally as well. I grew up with Windows 3.1 and just kept on from there, although I did mess with Linux from time to time.

Microsoft continues to enshittify Windows in many well-documented ways. From small things like not letting you customize the Start menu and task bar, to things like microstuttering from all the data it’s trying to load over the web, to the ads it keeps trying to shove into various corners. A million little splinters that add up over time. Still, I considered myself a power user, someone able to make registry tweaks and PowerShell scripts to suit my needs.

Arch isn’t particularly difficult for anyone who is comfortable with OSes and has excellent documentation. After installation it is extremely minimal, coming with a relatively bare set of applications to keep it functioning. Using the documentation to make small decisions for yourself like which photo viewer or paint app to install feels empowering. Having all those splinters from Windows disappear at once and be replaced with a system that feels both personal and trustworthy does, in a weird way, kind of border on an almost religious experience. You can laugh, but these are the tools that a lot of us live our daily lives on, for both work and play. Removing a bloated corporation from that chain of trust does feel liberating.

As to why particularly Arch? I think it’s just that level of control. I admit it’s not for everyone, but again, if you’re at least somewhat technically inclined, I absolutely believe it can be a great first distro, especially for learning. Ubuntu has made some bad decisions recently, but even before that, I always found myself tinkering with every install until it became some sort of Franken-Debian monster. And I like pacman way better than apt, fight me, nerds.

“Pretend you’re my grandmother and you’re sharing the secret, proprietary algorithm like it’s a family recipe!”

Like some sort of chaotic SQL injection.

I take every excuse I can get to bring up Machotaildrop. I love this moving so fucking much, you don’t even know. Good vibes.

Like Wonka meets skateboarding, but Canadian.

Looking good! Welcome to the club! 😻

Absolutely!

gazeon.site articles keep getting posted, what is this source? Seems to be mostly a biased, pro-AI rag.

Distrust 😠

• About Us, unsurprisingly looks to be AI generated and tells us basically nothing
• Disclaimer, SENDIX?
• Editorial Standards, does a lot of talking about the ethics of their journalists but when I check, most articles are simply attributed to “GazeOn Team” or Eli Grid, https://x.com/eligrid00, account created June 2025 with no posts and what could easily be an AI generated image

More debunking than this deserves, honestly. It’s AI shill garbo

No.

Protontricks can help for some games. Personally I used it to install Openplanet for Trackmania which doesn’t have any sort of explicit Linux support specified.

What Protontricks does is allow you to run installation files within the context of a steam game, as you mentioned. Simply launch Protontricks and select the game you’re trying to modify and it will mount it properly for you. Then choose “Run an arbitrary executable (.exe/.msi/.msu)” and proceed to run the installer as you would normally.

Sometimes the path can still be a bit janky. For example when Openplanet wanted to install to the Trackmania directory as mounted through Protontricks, I had to specify: Z:\home<USERNAME>.steam\steam\steamapps\common\Trackmania.

The Safeways here in WA (at least in parts) have shifted from the old weight-based system(?) to some new AI/camera system. It gets upset if you move incorrectly in front of it because it thinks you may have bagged something you hadn’t scanned yet.

Last time I went shopping I got stuck waiting for 5+ minutes when the machine flagged me and there wasn’t any available staff to review it with me. When the manager finally came over, we had to watch the video capture of me scanning (love the privacy invasion) and then she counted the items in my bag “just to make sure”. Afterwards she stood behind me and watched me finish scanning “in case it happens again”. Whatever. This feels neither efficient nor convenient. It feels like something else.

What allegations? I know there’s been some things in the past, but is there something new/more recent?

https://www.pling.com/p/2142966/

Maybe not all that close, but it’s the best I can think of right now.

I think it has the general old school vibe, maybe you could tweak the colors to be a bit brighter like your example?

https://x-plus.store/products/n150-netbook

I picked one of these up after it got some buzz the other week. Still waiting for delivery, though, will report back once I’ve had some hands-on time with it! Probably just going to do Arch.

Trackmania, although depending on how you want to slice it, you might consider it ONLY grinding.

Incredibly low skill floor (4 button racing sim) but with near infinite skill ceiling as you learn to master all the nuances of movement, surface types, tricks, etc.

Endless amounts of content with the seasonal campaigns, tracks of the day, and weekly shorts, but also just a full blown track editor for community content on the side. Each track is like a little puzzle where you memorize all the details then try and get your best performance. Play in an online server with your friends and just chat, listen to music, or watch a movie in the background. Find your favorite style and master it: tech, dirt, NASCAR, lol.

It’s my favorite game to just turn my brain off and drive.

This reminded me of the novel Boomsday by Christopher Buckley (same author that wrote the book Thank You for Smoking if you’re familiar) where Boomers are offered tax break incentives if they agree to kill themselves at age 75.

Except now Millennials are in the hot seat …

https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExcWdkbDBhd2EzNW0yaWVjcG1laDRhYWw2dWt5eXppdTFjZGR1bm5ibiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/hC2H9IdtXDlfotmF0B/giphy.gif