overview for MouldyCat

DeSantis Administration Votes to Designate Major Muslim American Group as “Terrorist” Organization in c/news@lemmy.world

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd say they're all supremacist, to a greater or lesser degree. How can they not be, when the whole point of following any religion is to win favour with the holy spooky in the sky?

Several vulnerabilities discovered in the Linux kernel in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 15 points 1 day ago

This is actually a list of resolved CVEs. The sender has an email address at debian.org so they're clearly not just some random script kiddie with an LLM subscription.

Several vulnerabilities discovered in the Linux kernel in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was curious too, so I did a quick search & replace to view them on the NIST CVE database. There are so many that I can only post about a quarter before exceeding lemmy's comment limit. I put the full list here: https://paste.page/debianalertdsa-6528-1-clickable

Iran court upholds flogging sentence for singer who performed without hijab in c/news@lemmy.world

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 5 points 3 days ago

Can you define conservative? What are they trying to conserve? The old ways, traditions, right? What even is religion if not tradition? They are the same.

It makes no sense to try to absolve religion of any responsibility for this kind of shitty behaviour, just because there are some young people who are still in its thrall.

Part 3: They said a phone can’t run without a battery. Unfortunately, Pettyl didn’t get the memo. in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 4 points 6 days ago

AFAIK it depends on the device. I believe it's simpler to have a battery management system which keeps the battery charged when power is attached, and then a second separate system which powers the phone from the battery. That does lead to more wear on the battery though, so the better solution is to have a power management system which monitors the battery and keeps it within a set charge range, and additionally can supply the voltage needed to run the phone. Only when power is not connected does the battery power the phone.

From a quick google though, it seems that's only part of the picture. High-end modern phones will often require a battery present, as they use it to smooth out the power coming from the adapter, even though most of the power for the phone when the charger is attached comes from a direct power path.

Looking for a durable and repairable Linux laptop for business use in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago

Got you, makes sense! If you took worse care of your devices, then it wouldn't be such an issue if a capacitor fails after just a few years. A company such as Apple is not going to be using bargain-bin components from random no-name manufacturers, and that should be reflected in better longevity even with heavy use.

Good luck in your search, and I hope you find the perfect beast for you!

Looking for a durable and repairable Linux laptop for business use in c/linux@lemmy.ml

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 7 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

What do you mean durable? As long as you are careful, and don't use it as a frisbee, any laptop can last for 10 years. If you travel about with it, get a proper laptop shoulder bag that fits it well and has a soft padded interior. Then keep the laptop in that when you travel, and don't squash it into a bag or suitcase.

Beyond that, simply look for the laptop that you like best. The Thinkpad is a meme laptop IMO. I had one for work, and yes it worked fine with Linux, but so did both the laptops I bought for myself, neither of which were Thinkpads. If you like the look of the Thinkpad, then go for it. Personally I don't really dig that clunky 90s aesthetic, I prefer laptops with a sleek minimalist aluminium look.

My advice is to make a checklist of everything you need and/or want in your laptop. How long do you want it to run on battery? What size screen do you want? What connectivity does it need - USB-C ports, a couple of USB-A as well? Do you want it to use a USB-C charger (this is very convenient when travelling)? What kind of touchpad, keyboard layout, how much RAM, what speed WiFi etc etc

Then simply start looking, and build a shortlist of laptops that appeal. Create a spreadsheet, with a column for each of the features you identified as being important in the last step.

Regarding Linux support, the best thing you can do is check reviews. Even if you buy elsewhere, Amazon reviews are great for this - you can search reviews for keywords, so when you see a laptop you like the look of, search for reviews that mention Linux, and check that everyone's happy and not complaining about unsupported devices. This is not the lucky dip that it used to be, but there are still problematic components like network adapters that may not work out of the box.

I have only had two laptops, the first of which I bought in 2018. It was an Asus, very midrange at £600. I prepared a live USB, booted on to it and checked everything worked OK, which it did, and then without further ado I installed Linux. The sensible thing to do would be to have left the "Windows rescue partition" intact for a couple of weeks until I was sure I was happy with the machine, but I just wanted all trace of Microshit purged from my shiny new machine, so I deleted it and set the entire disk as my single Linux partition (plus of course a small boot partition), and I never looked back.

The computer worked great, did everything I needed from it and was still going strong last year when I finally got a replacement. The laptop I have now is a Lenovo IdeaPad 5. It was also £600, and its performance is way better than expected, being way faster and more pleasant to use than my old Asus. it has an integrated Intel Arc graphics card, which is surprisingly capable. While my old laptop could only run vintage games, such as KOTOR, this new one is able to run current games on medium-low settings. I've currently got addicted to ARC Raiders, and it runs perfectly acceptably. Nothing like as smooth and pretty as it runs on my desktop PC at home, but perfectly good enough for me.

Your Computer Might Demand Your Age Soon, No Matter Where You Live in c/privacy@lemmy.ml

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

take my children out of school if they are forced to do face scans or give any ID

don't know where you live, but here in the ol' U of K, schools have been doing that sort of thing for over 20 years! I was appalled when I first heard about it, and I think it was from a friend whose kids had to give fingerprints. "Oh yes I know - big brother, but it's so convenient" was their attitude.

Half-Life: Alyx ported to ARM64 for Steam Frame - update out now in c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

the double negative tripped you up - wasn’t unexpected == was expected

Patches Ready For AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Enabled By Default With Linux 7.4 With FreeSync, VRR & ALLM in c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

So HDMI 2.1 had been blocked by the HDMI forum, despite AMD having done a lot of work to try to persuade them that it should be allowed in the open source drivers. It's not clear to me why the forum was blocking it, although a comment on Phoronix says, "Which companies are shareholders in this organization? Ah...MS. Apple, Nvidia, Broadcom etc... Hummmm !!!"

Valve is rumoured to be behind some of the recent work on AMDGPU, motivated by the Steam Machine - a different comment on Phoronix says, "When the Steam Machine benchmarks came out, showing performance inferior to the PS5, I got the impression it was limited by software rather than hardware", which sounds plausible. Getting HDMI 2.1 working on the Steam boxes is likewise probably a priority for them, as some gamers won't switch away from Windows until it's there.

It's not mentioned in the Phoronix write-up, but I presume the implication is the HDMI forum has relented and finally given their blessing to this work, rather than Valve is just YOLOing it.

Patches Ready For AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Enabled By Default With Linux 7.4 With FreeSync, VRR & ALLM in c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 19 points 3 weeks ago

is it the thumbnail that appears in Lemmy for this post? I don't see where it came from, as I can't see it on the Phoronix article though

Steam Client Beta Improves Big Picture Mode, Several Linux Enhancements in c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 5 points 3 weeks ago

Outside of Big Picture Mode, the Steam client start-up performance is improved in general, improved CPU performance at runtime for Steam Input, and many bug fixes. The Steam client beta for Linux has improved download speeds on high latency connections, the SteamOS compatibility dialogs will now show in the desktop UI when installing games not verified for that hardware, and the desktop Linux UI will also show the SteamOS unsupported dialog when installing games that are known to not work with Proton. The Steam beta also improves its Linux distribution information collection for the Steam Survey to be more accurate. The SteamRT3 experimental beta has also seen several fixes.

The ridiculously slow start-up time has been an annoyance for ages, so I just switched to the beta to see if it's noticeably improved.

I did a quick unscientific test, timing start-up first on the standard client and then switching to beta, restarting my PC and timing the start-up again.

The non-beta time from double-clicking the icon until the UI was fully rendered was 25 seconds, and with the beta 18 seconds. Fingers crossed that's enough to make the start-up delay less bothersome in real-world usage.