lapislazuli

Is this a good setup for the price? This is somewhere in Europe. A tech shop that allows you to choose your hardware and they assemble it for you.

I mainly want to play older and indie games on it. Some video editing as well, possibly. Current rig is a crappy pre-built which overheats like crazy, practically impossible to do any gaming on it. TIA for any answers.

Hello folks. I want to hear your opinions about the advances in AI and how it makes you feel. This is a community about privacy, so I already kind of know that you're against it, at least when AI is implemented in such a way that it violates peoples' privacy.

I recently attended a work-related event and the conclusion was that AI will come and change everything in our field. A field which has been generally been dominated by human work, although various software has been used for it. Without revealing too much, the event was for people who with texts. I'm a student, but the event was for people working in the field I plan to work in in the future. The speakers did not talk about privacy concerns (not in detail, at least) or things such as micro work (people who get paid very little to clean illegal content in AI training data, for example).

You probably can guess that that I care about privacy: I'm writing this on Lemmy, for a privacy community. I'm a Linux user (the first distro I used was Ubuntu 10.04) and I transitioned to Linux as my daily driver in November last year. I care about the Open Source community (most of the programs I used on Windows were FOSS). I donate to the programs I use. I use a privacy-respecting search engine, use uBlock and Privacy Badger on Firefox. I use a secure instant messenger and detest Facebook. But that's where it ends, because I use a stock Android phone. But at least I care about these things and I'm eager to learn more. When it comes to privacy, I'm pretty woke, for the lack of a better word.

But AI is coming, or rather, it's already here. Granted, people who talked at that event were somewhat biased, as they worked in the AI industry, so even if they weren't marketing ChatGPT, they were trying to hype up the industry. But apparently, AI can already help so called knowledge workers. It can help in brainstorming and generating ideas. It can produce translations, it can summarize texts, it can give tips...

The bottom line seems to be that I need to start using AI, because either I will use it and keep my job in the future, or I will not use it and risk being made redundant by AI at some point in time.

But I want to get other perspectives. What are your views on AI, and has it affected your job, and if so, how? I know some people have said here that AI is just a bunch of algorithms and that it's just hype and that the bubble will burst eventually. But until it does, it seems it'll have a pretty big impact on how things work. Can we choose to ignore it?

TLDR; I spent nearly two hours troubleshooting my broken system, because I installed a Windows spell checker for my LibreOffice.

1. Install the .oxt file for your Linux LibreOffice installation
2. Don't realize it was for Windows only because it installed fine on Linux
3. Freeze your system completely for 15 seconds, after which it's business as normal
4. LibreOffice works okay, so don't notice anything else
5. Install additional spellers from Synaptic because the first one didn't work
6. Realize Linux Mint Software Center GUI is broken and most of the flatpacks aren't displayed
7. Perform two system resets using Timeshift, nothing changed
8. Realize the speller you installed was Windows-only, purge all LibreOffice components, problem solved, reinstall LO
9. Also realize you had to install a system package version of LibreOffice (instead of Flatpack) for the speller from Synaptic to work
10. Feel like a noob

🫣

EDIT: It happened again. I think this time I figured it out for good. I installed the spell checker through Synaptic, but either it was the wrong version or it didn't install all the necessary packages. I found the right package in Software Center itself and installed it. Everything has been working okay, the Software Center hasn't bugged out yet.

EDIT 2: Okay, now I've got it. It was a icon theme that I installed from Cinnamon Looks called FairyWren which hid half of my installed apps, and created all sorts of GUI bugs and made Software Center hang and freeze. I'm going to write to the author of the theme.

I have a Oneplus phone which has a beta version of Android installed. I side-loaded it a couple of years ago from the official source (Oneplus website). I don't remember if it received any further updates, I think it didn't. I don't know how to revert back to a stable release. It has been working without any problems. I now want to give the phone away, so I need to factory reset it. Are there any risks to resetting a phone that runs a beta version of Android? Can resetting brick it?

Thanks for any and all advice!

Are there any FOSS phone apps/ private alternatives for Google Translate for translating text from images? Or maybe a privacy-friendly alternative front-end for GT? The ability to translate from images (such as product labels in a store) is the main feature I'm looking for. TIA for any and all tips.

I hope this is not considered a low-effort post, but I wanted to ask if using stock Android without signing in to your Google account/ using Play Store is worth it. It should be more private, right? I'm planning on buying the cheapest Samsung phone there is (probably the A14). I currently have a stock Android Oneplus phone. I bought it before I had my "privacy epiphany". I knew that you shouldn't use Huawei phones as those "definitely" were spying on you; I read that Oneplus phones are safe because they use Western hardware, but they can still gather your data via the software, right? But I digress.

The reason I'm planning on buying a cheap (Samsung) phone is because I realized I don't need a fancy phone (for me "fancy" is a 400 local currency mid-ranger). I considered getting a dumb phone as they are definitely private, but the utter lack of features is depressing. The main reason is I can't give up the camera. So I'm willing to go with the cheapest smartphone, because it's still miles better than the best dumb phone.

As I understand it, most cheap phones are not supported by GrapheneOS and besides I'm worried I might brick the phone. I'm willing to use APKs (from official sources and I only need a few apps). To return to my question, is stock Android without a Google account/ Play Store better than using an account/ Play Store?

EDIT: Thanks all for the useful replies. I'm still not sure what I'll end up doing or what my current financial situation will allow me to do, but I'm pretty sure I'll be moving away from Google anyway. Thanks again!