So… this AI company gets gaming teens to “donate” their computing power, rather than pay for render farms / GPU clouds?
And then oblivious parents pay the power bills, effectively covering the computing costs of the AI porn company?
Sounds completely ethical to me /s.
I love the “Let’s finish setting up your device” popup that prevents me from using my VMs regularly.
Like some condescending peddler trying to slam-dunk your agreement as a foregone conclusion.
Come on, buddy, let’s do those remaining tasks, let’s have Microsoft scan your face, tell Microsoft about your phone, let’s go and install those Microsoft apps missing from your phone, and your laptop, too, and then we go buy that Office subscription and have you store your important files on Microsoft’s servers and we really need to get around to switching to Microsoft’s web browser now.
And the only option you get is “Yes” or “Remind me later.”
If you turn it off (and it needs to be turned off in two places), it’ll be back on as soon as Microsoft publishes the tiniest update to any of its unwanted services. Harrghrrr! (artery popping noises)
I have a Windows VM that runs Visual Studio and a small number of developer tools so I can test my code on Windows. And another windows VM that runs Daz3D, Clip Studio Paint and the Epic Launcher (to download stuff from the Unreal Engine Marketplace).
Sometimes I misuse either VM by creating a snapshot and installing Garmin Connect so I can update the music library on my watch :)
I’m a little put off by the inconvenient command line and the mandatory bells and whistles (flathub is nice and all, but must it be baked into the main executable rather than having the package manager as an optional thing on top?).
So far, AppImage just looks superior to me. Works without installing a runtime into my system, no need to become root and integrate an app into a system-wide managed package repository, I can just run it.
I’m running a few on my NAS:
Taiga to manage projects. It’s as easy and pleasant to use as Trello, but with velocity/burndown charts and the whole “agile” thing, but you can also turn parts of it on and off per project.
Trilium completely cured me of messy note-taking habits, simply by winning on the convenience side. I was firmly in the “folder tree of markdown documents” camp and “my Sublime Text tabs of random notes have no number” camp before.
I’m considering Habitica which lets you set up rewards and achievements for your real life (i.e. apply addictive reward/progress loop from video games to motivate your real self to do things) and Wger, but I’m not sure the former is the right thing for ticket/tracking-averse self and the latter competes against the convenience of the proprietary Garmin Connect website. I wish there was something that covered the whole MyFitnessPal/FitDay and the whole Polar Personal Trainer/Garmin Connect side, but FOSS and self-hosted.
For leisure, I also run Stash (it bills itself as an organizer for your porn library, but it’s really good for any kind of clips), Jellyfin for my music and movies and currently both Mango and Kavita for books and comics.
…and, hear me out, that will be perfect for keeping messages untraceable by the government. Every single of those 200,000 computers will have full copies of all the messages ever transmitted, unencrypted, but they’ll never be able to tell who wrote them and who they were for.
I’m always hopeful, but at this point, I seriously doubt Russia’s sincerity. Past ceasefire agreements, for example, were broken by Russian attacks, usually within hours of the agreement taking effect.