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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2025

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  • Start with building a very cheap computer with your kid.

    You can buy parts for cheap or sometimes get them for free from e-waste processing places. You can do the screws to the case, but let the kid put the parts in place while you explain what they do.

    Parts are easy to handle, just make sure to not damage the components as they look cute and are a bit malleable, but put too much pressure you can destroy it (not sure a kid will be strong enough for that).

    It is as easy as building Lego, or putting a cartridge on an old console. This will help to make the computer less scary.

    Make sure that you can do it yourself and test the parts first before involving your kid, so they do not get too frustrated if it fails.

    This will cover hardware.

    You can also help them to install the OS.

    After, make a list of the programs you want your kid to be aware of: calculator, place to write text, anything you think it will be useful. Take some time to explain them, and do some exercises with each - let’s write a letter to a friend, etc… Let them play around with it without judgment. (remove things you don’t want them to use).

    If you want to give the child some background in how software works, Logo was very popular with kids at the school.

    Logo is this little turtle that you give orders, similar to imperative programming language used in most softwares.

    Change colour to green, walk forward 50 steps.

    And the turtle would draw a green line on the screen.

    There are plenty of options for software that provides that, here is an option https://apps.kde.org/kturtle/

    And, of course, try to break these in multiple days, building a PC, installing OS and playing with programs can be overwhelming for some kids.


  • Nils@piefed.catoScience Memes@mander.xyzPants too!
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    2 months ago

    Wasn’t there an experiment of farting in a lab and contamination of petri dishes?

    Something in the lines that at least wearing one layer (underwear) is enough to prevent contamination.


    Wow, there are plenty of studies, this is the funnies one I found:

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1121900/

    “Our deduction is that the enteric zone in the second Petri dish was caused by the flatus itself, and the splatter ring around that was caused by the sheer velocity of the fart, which blew skin bacteria from the cheeks and blasted it onto the dish. It seems, therefore, that flatus can cause infection if the emitter is naked, but not if he or she is clothed. But the results of the experiment should not be considered alarming, because neither type of bacterium is harmful. In fact, they’re similar to the ‘friendly’ bacteria found in yoghurt."



  • Nils@piefed.cato196@lemmy.blahaj.zonefuck windows rule
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    2 months ago

    Back in the day I played on windows, most software companies troubleshoots and M$ MPVs recommendations were:

    • reinstall the game
    • reinstall the EA/Ubi launcher
    • reinstall windows.

    Since I had to reinstall windows a lot, I set my user folder & friends in another drive during installation. This gif is just about the steps to get it done.



  • MacBooks with intel chip are some of the best hardware to put Linux on, there are plenty of guides online on how to liberate your MacBook with Linux.

    I tested a bunch of distros based on Debian, Arch and Fedora. By far, the easiest one was EndeavourOS just because it recognized the WiFi driver from the Live USB for me. Otherwise you will need to use a mobile phone with USB tethering to share internet so you can install the broadcom driver. Maybe things changed, but this was my experience in 2023.

    Another driver you will need to install is the camera facetimehd . Everything else worked out-of-the-box for me.

    After that, all the Linux variants I tried worked great, and it was mostly about distro philosophies and deciding the desktop environments (DE) I wanted to use, and that can be a bit overwhelming at first.

    If that is your first experience, I just recommend to start with KDE or gnome. I find gnome works ok from the start, but KDE is easier to tweak. You can always test them from a Linux Live USB before committing them to your hardware. Steam Deck uses KDE for desktop mode.

    There are others that are prettier or lighter you can test too: cinnamon, XFCE, MATE. Or even windows managers, but I would leave them alone until you are a bit more comfortable with Linux.

    here are a few links in case some people need it in the future:


  • I think the ProtonDB mixed ratings are because there are plenty of old review and people do not update much VR games. I have been using Steam VR and HTC Vive with Linux for a while now, and I remember when Creed and a couple of other games would not work. I think about 5 years ago, with Proton 5.13, that changed and since then, pretty much everything works.

    My only problem is with Steam VR software that is a bit inconsistent. I used to do a bunch of stuff with it, now I just launch the games and avoid it when I can.


  • PS5 works great on Linux, everything works: from gyroscope to touchpad. But the stick drift and battery life are the two main downsides. One of mine started drifting after 2 years, the other is still ok, but I have been using a GameSir with Hall-Effect for a while now as my main controller.

    Not sure where you are buying it from, get it from a place with easy return policy as the quality may vary. Amazon was rigorous with their products, ebay only gave me headaches with refurbished stuff.

    It is easy and cheap to find replacement parts but fixing it is very time-consuming task and require the right tools https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/DualSense+Joystick+Replacement/142488
    Sadly, when I did mine, there were not many hall-effect sticks replacement for PS5, and the ones around had terrible calibration. I will probably update with hall-effects when they die again.

    There are plenty of budget controllers with Hall Effect or TMR sticks, that might be worth looking into GameSir, 8bitdo, gulikit…
    Just make sure you can do everything with hardware for a smooth Linux experience (some controllers require a Windows only app for basic setup or update firmware). It is also worth to search for the “model you are interested and Linux” to find problems related to the device.




  • I always look forward to Sunshine’s posts. But this is just an AD. :(

    If you are looking for VPN for accessing content, Proton is fine, so are many others, just make sure they are open-source, don’t save logs and are audited. You will probably be looking more into bandwidth than other technical aspects.
    Country is important, but if the VPN endpoint you are accessing is in any of the “several”-eyes country, or some other surveillance state, there are some risks involved.

    If you need more privacy, Mullvad is the best option, you can also pay with cash. You can send them with no personal information.

    There used to be a spreadsheet with significant details of many providers, but it haven’t been updated in a long while. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1UV8RozvFDOMnCcfwryEnyGp5GKYY4XJQHXJUG2gN8hU/htmlview

    This one is more recent, but it is missing a bunch of important information. https://vpndatatracker.com/features.html

    If your life depends on it (in case you are a whistleblower), you will need many more things in addition to Mullvad.



  • I recently started learning rust, and one of the things I liked was the quick build times after small changes. I did not know how bad it can get until I read this article, but I haven’t tried anything besides terminal applications so far.

    While I used some workarounds from my baggage using C/C++ it is nice to know other techniques people use with Rust, and it is nice to learn about Rust profiling tools as well.

    Thanks for sharing, it is a very insightful article.


  • I remember the first comment I got on online was “you suck”. But it was soon drowned by encouragement words and constructive feedback.


    About Hollow Knight, by the time this got posted on reddit, the game was already funded through kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/11662585/hollow-knight

    What this image does not show is the amount of support this post received, more than 20k upvotes and plenty of endearing messages on reddit only.

    u/YoDudeguy Nov 20 '15
    Damn, that looks amazing! Thanks for bringing it to our attention. Will buy.

    u/Eliza_Douchecanoe Nov 20 '15
    I like the dark feel of it, but with light-hearted game play and sound effects. Good shit.

    If I sort by votes, I had to scroll a bit to get to that 756 votes message.

    It is important to filter and properly process the messages you receive. There are some mean and unnecessary messages on that image (and on the reddit thread), but they do not show the full picture and at that time could easily be ignored.






  • I think anything with *-punk is some sort of Sci-fi with the best people could predict of the future at the time.

    My go to for finding new books and authors is to check the Sci-fi awards nominees: Nebula, Hugo, Locus, … There are also two small book-stores nearby where workers put their reviews on the shelves of books they like and recommend.

    Also, science fiction is not trademarked. =p

    The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells https://marthawells.com/murderbot.htm
    Easily my favourite contemporary author.

    It is a Sci-fi, but fits the Cyberpunk high-tech low-life aspects you seek, like megacorporations dystopias, slave labour, surveillance state, robot conscience, augmented humans, etc…

    I also read Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman recently. A recommendation from one of those book-stores.

    Some alien corporation is going to mine Earth’s rare resources and the surviving humans participate in a dungeon crawl reality show. Kind of Running Man meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

    It is LitRPG - which I am not a big fan but the writing of the first 2 books are good.
    I am not a big fan of the last released couple of books of the series, as it feels more like extended power-trips that permeates the LitRPG genre.