People are homeless not because the government lacks funding, but because the government doesn’t give a damn. Those billions being given to Ukraine were never going to be spent addressing poverty had the war not happened, and if Congress suddenly had a change of heart, they’d have zero problems finding and allocating as much money as they want to anti homeless programs Ukraine war or not
Unreal Engine royalties only start after you make $1 million from a project. Even then, it’s 5%, and waived for sales done on the Epic Store (whose 13% cut is almost a third of what Steam takes). If you are a small indie dev, you won’t be paying Epic a dime unless you start rolling in some serious dough, and even when you do, 5% of your revenue for using one of the most powerful 3D game engines is pretty fair
The 3 Gorges Dam in China slowed the Earth’s rotation by .06 microseconds per day due to the amount of water moved altering the Earth’s moment of inertia
I was going to use Fedora, but there’s no way I can ever look someone in the eye and say “yeah I use an operating system called Fedora” so I went with Debian instead. It’s pretty great
Reddit’s decision about 3rd party apps and API changes actually made business sense. Not only was their content being pilfered on Reddit’s expense, but a decent portion of their user base were using 3rd party apps that didn’t collect as much data nor serve Reddit ads like the official app. At the expense of losing a decent portion of their community, moderators, and any goodwill their userbase had towards them, Reddit now has all their mobile users on a single, add ridden app that they own and can collect as much data as they want going forward as well as ensures that they get paid for AI API usage
Developers are on the hook for potentially infinite losses without gaining revenue in a per install fee system. Expenses are entirely unpredictable for developers and bad actors can run basic install scripts to cost the company a lot, so if Unity stays their current course for a few more weeks, many of the larger developers using Unity will begin switching engines even if it means delays. It’s absolutely worth it for a developer to port their game over no matter the cost, because they are easily looking at no limits to their costs if they don’t
I pirate ebooks, especially textbooks, when I can’t get something through my library. I don’t watch enough television to bother pirating shows and movies. With video games, the circumstances that would make pirating a game worth it rarely come up for me; pirating games means losing out on updates and bug fixes, multiplayer, Steam cloud saves, and more. For new games, not getting bug fixes and updates makes my experience worse, and older games usually go on sale for cheap enough that I might as well buy it
Another interesting approach to trash management is what Taiwan does. Taiwan charges per bag of trash, and residents have to manually bring out their bags on trash day to garbage trucks that sing like ice cream trucks. This makes each person care about how much they are throwing away, as unlike in places that charge a flat fee per bin per week, you could spend or save a lot of money and effort on trash days based on how much waste you make. However, in most municipalities, recycling and composting are free, encouraging residents to choose items with the least amount of recyclable/compostable waste to save money. While such a system would not go over well with the people if it were implemented in a place like the US, the program is successful in Taiwan and has done wonders for reducing their waste and keeping their cities clean
Countries have the right to expel foreign diplomats and embassies as long as they don’t arrest them or go through their stuff when they leave. The newly couped Niger junta requested the French ambassador leave and revoked his visa, but the French are still refusing to leave, claiming that because they don’t recognize the legitimacy of the new junta, they don’t have to follow the junta’s orders to leave. Regardless of your opinion of the new junta, in how does a former colonial power be in the right when they are blatantly ignoring the legal rights and sovereignty of their independent former colony’s government that is doing things by the book? They stopped sending the ambassador food and are confining him to his embassy until he leaves, especially given the current junta that is extremely gentle treatment
The only thing better than good in the world of business is standard. Windows may be bad, but it’s the industry standard for a ton of commercial applications. A lot of software that companies use are designed for Windows, from antivirus software to Microsoft’s office suite to audio and video editing software and more. Every copy of Windows is also a lot more standard than Linux distros; the customizability of Linux makes it a lot harder to provide support compared to every single Windows user being locked into certain things. As far as the IT team being “lazy” or having “a lack of knowledge” on supporting Linux, they’re working on the company’s dollar, and unless there’s a strong, justifiable reason to increase their workload by supporting another operating system, it’s an unnecessary expense for the company. There certainly are cases where there are strong, justifiable reasons such as with Google, who maintains two Linux based operating systems and needs their staff to know how to work with them, or in situations where Linux substantially outperforms Windows for the tasks employees are doing to the point that supporting Linux is worth it, but “it can do most of what Windows can alongside features that don’t matter to the companies’ operation” isn’t the best selling point
Unironically this is the one area where Epic Games is absolutely in the right. They have a 12% royalty on games sold on their platform and a 5% royalty on sales over $1 million for games made with Unreal Engine, with the UE royalty being waived entirely if it’s sold on the Epic Games store. They get a reasonable cut for maintaining one of the most powerful game engines and charge nearly a third of what Valve does for their storefront. If the Epic Store wasn’t so dog shit, they’d be an actual competitor to Valve
A pretty important point is that Linux doesn’t come installed on many devices. For most people, they buy a computer with Windows or Mac already installed and they’re satisfied with their experience. They don’t feel the need to find a distro, mount a USB stick, navigate through the BIOS, run an installer that wipes their hard drive, and relearn another operating system when Windows and Mac does everything that they want. When Linux comes pre installed on devices such as the Steam Deck or Chromebooks, Linux usage soars, though these devices have to use Linux because they need a heavily customized OS for their specific purpose. Laptops and desktops intended for casual use that come pre installed with Linux are far less common, so for the overwhelming majority of users, Windows or Mac is what they get and what they end up using. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft switches from charging for Windows to paying manufacturers to put Windows on their computers to get users into the Microsoft eco system if Linux became an actual competitor one day
They’ve beefed with a few other instances they tried federating with too such as Lemmy.ee and lemmy.blahaj.zone. Their user base tends to be a bit more abrasive than most Lemmy instances, making federation controversial even among similarly minded instances such as lemmy.blahaj.zone
Make sure the file system is ext4 and make sure the drive is mounted when you go to add the library on the external drive. A lot of games won’t launch on Linux if the file system isn’t ext4
We have quite a lot of employee protections (not as much as Europe but a lot more than people realize), it’s the enforcement that is the issue. While you can be fired without notice for any legal reason, if you are fired for an illegal reason or an illegal reason played a role in their decision to fire you, you can get quite a nice settlement from that. However, if you are fired without a good reason, the employer has to pay for your unemployment, so the majority of employers will only fire an employee if it falls under a reason that makes you ineligible for unemployment like poor performance or attendance (and labor attorneys can often sniff out when an employer is lying about it to screw you out of unemployment). Contrary to several other countries, employees can just quit without notice or even informing their employer, as at will employment goes both ways
If you buy a brand new computer, virtually all of them come with Windows or Mac pre installed. For the overwhelming majority of users, they are satisfied with either of these options, and can do everything that they want to do with a computer on these operating systems. The overwhelming majority of users aren’t willing to go through the effort of mounting a Linux distro onto a USB, navigating through the BIOS to launch the OS’ installer, partitioning their drive to avoid deleting all of their data accidentally, reinstalling and setting up all of their programs again, and learning how to use an entirely new operating system just because “Linux is free, FOSS, and gives you more freedom”. The only times Linux has seen widespread adoption is when it comes bundled with specific hardware already, such as with the Steam Deck or Chromebooks
You can filter them out with ublock origin on desktop and Sync for mobile. It’s the easiest way to get rid of Hexbear for you outside of migrating to a new instance, and it’s a lot easier than trying to get your instance admins to defederate
Noise cancelling headphones don’t work against babies. They are designed for cancelling ambient sound by playing frequencies to cancel out the noise, but can’t predict sudden noises like children crying very well. Earplugs or earbuds do a better job at drowning those out by plugging your ears from outside noises
They’re volunteers running the instance personally, not a corporation with a legal team who can advise them how to best handle piracy related communities without being sued. Especially since their instance has to cache content from instances they federate with, it’s hard to blame them for being overly cautious with piracy communities on instances out of their control to avoid being sued by litigation happy media corporations
Without any crime to suspect you of, they might detain you and question you. It’s not uncommon for people to turn themselves in for crimes, and there are legitimate reasons to do so especially with a lawyer, namely to get out on bail easier, avoid having the police raid your home or place of work, and perhaps used to sway the prosecution for a more favorable sentencing, but if the police have no clue what to even charge you for and they can’t figure one out, they’ll just be confused and frustrated, which is a dangerous combination for police