The unfortunate reality: 9 out of 10 Friendica registration attempts are spam/bots, and almost 10 out of 10 for our Peertube instance. Who can I blame? Our trade based society that incentivizes us all to trade trade trade. Forced and incentivized to sell shit non stop. We can't stop these with anti-spam tools, or asking people to be nice.... This society breeds more of these creatures.
We have an aggressive anti-spam tool for our Peertube. Yet daily we get spambos registering. We have a manual approval system for Friendica, yet it gets overwhelming if I, one admin, need to figure which ones are spambos, which ones are not.
The reason I scream about this trade-based society on a daily basis, is because it breeds most of these bad behaviors we see: from spambots to polluters, awful content to badly made products, waste to corruption....you name it.
So those that are angry about spambots need to understand that they originate from the same core issue as most of our problems in today's society. TRADE!
Another update about the laptop I bought tiotrom.com/2023/01/why-i-am-k… - basically some nasty issues with the touchpad, but are not that hard to fix. Bloody Dell and their touchpads.
Another update about the laptop I bought tiotrom.com/2023/01/why-i-am-k… - basically some nasty issues with the touchpad, but are not that hard to fix. Bloody Dell and their touchpads.
This is it: I needed a new laptop to get rid of my old one that was not portable. I made 3 posts already about this journey: 1, 2, 3 – so I will try not to repeat myself.
My mission: get a sturdy and powerful laptop that can last me for a decade. Upgradable and fixable in a reasonable manner. Big screen, yet portable. Do it!
After months of searching and thanks to Roma and Guil primarily, who donated 98% of the money for the laptop, I settled for the Dell Inspiron 7620 2-in-1 16 inches. It has a core i7-1260p – 12 cores 16 threads. An Nvidia MX550, 64GB of RAM and 4TB NVME. 4k screen, 16:10 aspect ratio.
I will tell you why I chose this one.
First let me tell you the negative parts of this laptop, since none can be perfect for me I guess. Then I’ll tell you why overall it is a great laptop for me.
What I don’t quite like.
The keyboard. You see I write a lot and I want a great keyboard. This one is too shallow. I miss the depth of the previous keyboard….but I guess I’ll get used to it eventually. The keyboard is also in German….since I bought the laptop from germany, ebay, second hand but unused. Basically brand new. The Y and Z are switched but I chose a QWERTY layout in TROMjaro so despite showing differently, the letters are in a QWERTY format. I will try to also manually switch them but I am affraid not to break them.
I also kinda don’t like the arrow keys… The up and down arrows are too tiny. This is a bad design on any keyboard.
To add salt to the injury… this layer: It is a layer of some sort of plastic/glass on top of the metal chassis, that is great for the touchpad but the edges are a bit sharp so when I type my arms get cut a bit in these edges….that happens when I sit on my desk. Like 99% of the time….
SO the typing experience is not that great. Not awful, and I will get used to it, but yeah….that’s the biggest downside so far.
Another slight discomfort: opening the laptop to upgrade was a scary experience. You have a few screws but once you start unscrewing them the top part of the bottom case starts to violently try to get out, and things are bendy and make noises. Maybe the captive screws on that side should not be fully unscrewed but loosen and then try to open the case little by little. Like all laptops (almost) the bottom detachable case has plastic bits inside that clip into the laptop, and these are always sketchy…so I even broke 2 while opening it. Was not a great experience but I guess next time it will be easy. Luckily the entire laptop is made out of aluminium so even without these plastic things everything can close pretty tight.
It can be loud and it is a bit heavy. Having a dedicated GPU the fans will be pretty loud when you do intensive tasks, but probably that’s quite normal… Also it is heavy for a “tablet” and quite huge. So this is not really comfortable to use it like that. On the desk is properly fine.
Software-related issues.
Since this laptop is quite new, not even a year old, the hardware is not flawless with Linux. The worst of them all: the speakers will stop working after a few minutes of use. You have to restart pulseaudio for them to work again for a bit. Then they stop again. This seems to be a bug that was reported and should be fixed with newer releases of the kernel. I can easily put up with that since I never use the laptop’s speakers – I have external ones – but for most people this would be a reason not to use Linux on this laptop.
The Hibernate mode kills your laptop. I found out the hard way. I had to fix some bad sectors on the drive because it was not booting up anymore. Probably another issue that will be fixed in the near future, but for now no Hibernate mode. Suspend works ok tho.
If I turn the screen brightness down completely, from the keyboard, I cannot bring it up again. I have to shut down the laptop from the power button….that sucks.
The face recognition camera does not have any real support in Linux so that’s not usable….this is the case for all laptops as far as I know.
Closing the lid won’t respect the XFCE settings I setup for it, so it won’t turn off the screen, or lock, or else.
Basically, with Linux, this laptop is not easily portable. You can’t use the speakers, you can’t hibernate it, you can’t even close the lid to have it turn off the screen….
So, you may wonder, why did I keep this laptop if it has these issues?
First of all the software related issues will be fixed and they won’t bother me much at all. Pretty much every laptop I had to install Linux on, had some sort of issues like that. It is normal when you create an operating system for ALL laptops out there.
Second, the hardware-related issues are not that bad. I am getting used to the keyboard and I won’t have to open up the laptop that often anyway.
So, then, the good parts.
The build quality is great. This is all metal. Slimbook for example felt flimsy, this one feels really sturdy. I can kill a human and a dog with this laptop and I am sure it will still work 😀. The hinges, metal, feel like they will last me a lifetime. It barely bends, no cracks, and feels really solid overall…
It is also super slim and of course bendable 360 degrees: Look how great that looks. So thin, so portable. This is a lot more slim-book than the Slimbook one 😀. And the charger is also tiny compared to the Slimbook or my previous laptop:
The touchscreen is also a plus since I can test TROMjaro directly on my own machine.
Speaking of the screen, the screen is AMAZING. The blacks are so black that if I were to select a 16:9 instead of 16:10 resolution I can’t even tell since the black borders are as black as the screen’s chassis. The colors are vibrant and it looks amazing from all angles.
Also…am I crazy or 3-4k resolution is no different from Full HD!? I tested with this laptop and there is 0 difference in how it looks. That’s good since I can use the FullHD resolution and this improves the battery life. From my initial tests it can last some 5-6 hours on wifi doing things. Others have tested this and it can last some 20h if you are not connected to the internet and just watch local media.
When the speakers work they are very loud and sound great, despite only using 2 of them out of 4 in Linux…..when they will all work this laptop will sound amazing am sure.
The touchpad is great. Smooth, HUGE, and looks neat. The glassy surface that cuts my arms while typing feels great when using the touchpad 😁
Speaking of looking neat, there is only 1 logo on the back. And that’s not even that visible. I like that.
The port selection is perfect. On the left side you get an HDMI, normal USB, and two USB C / Thunderbolt – meaning they support any sort of connection basically. On the right side you get another normal USB port, an audio jack, and a full SD size card reader. So you can be sure that this laptop can connect to anything.
For example the way I set it up now that I have to work on TROM II and need a bunch of external stuff, I use a USB-C dock. It connects to the laptop into one of the USB C ports. One cable, mind you. This dock has the following connected to it: 3 HDDs totaling 14TB of data + my headphones + speakers + external microphone + mouse + external display + projector + 1GB Ethernet + power charging so that it also charges the laptop + webcam. This is so amazing. It means I can quickly unplug one single cable and take the laptop. Then plug it in and all of those are connected.
The webcam is also better than your average laptop camera, like for example many times better than Slimbook’s. The built-in microphone I’ve heard is also very good but I have not tested it yet. The webcam also has a physical shutter so you can block it.
THE INSIDES! I think this is the only laptop-convertible in the world that’s 16inches and has a 16:10 aspect ratio, is so slim yet all metal build, but allows you to replace the RAM and has 2 slots for it. This was a must for me. It was advertised as 32GB max, but I easily added 64GB of RAM. DDR4. And I upgraded the NVME M2 to 4TB.
To compare it now with the Slimbook Executive 16, that one costs 1.750 Euros with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. Sure, the CPU is a bit better and the GPU much better (useful only if you play video games which I do not). This laptop, the Inspiron 7620 costed me 1.100 Euros and with 64GB of RAM + 4TB SSD around 1.700 Euros. MUCH MUCH MUCH better in all regards than the Slimbook offer.
Lastly the power button it is also a fingerprint reader: And I managed to make it work in TROMjaro – wasn’t that difficult. How amazing that now I can unlock the computer with the fingerprint and works perfectly fine. Or when I install new packages….FINGERPRINT! NO more typing my very long admin password 😀.
OVERALL.
For 1.700 Euros I got a great laptop. It has a big and amazing screen, great port selection, fantastic build quality, great touchpad, good webcam and mic, ok upgradability and repairability, great CPU and good GPU. Touchscreen, bendable 360 degrees, consumes less energy than the Slimbook, small power charger (USB C), great price overall. In time I’ll get used to the keyboard too and the software related issues will be fixed.
Ok ok, a very long post…..but to me this machine is important since it allows me to do the so many projects I am doing. It is an extension to my brain. So it matters to me.
Now I plan to give my old laptop to a dear TROM friend who has helped the project a lot for the past year or two. If I manage to send it to the other side of the globe somehow to not break our pockets. I want to give my older stuff to others who can use it for longer.
I will try to get “laptops” out of my head and in a week or so to focus again on TROM II. I spent a lot of time searching for a good laptop and I feel like I have finally found it. It is time to move on 😀
UPDATE
I wanted to post an update about the laptop now that I’ve used it for a bit.
I got used with the keyboard. Of course this was meant to happen. I still think is not the greatest keyboard I’ve used but it is ok. You don’t think about it after some time. I also managed to physically switch the Y and Z keys without breaking them 😀 Now everything seems more “natural” in terms of typing.
However the trackpad makes some rattling sounds when I use the laptop in bed. Almost like it is a tiny bit loose. I may try to fix that another time.
Build quality is not as great as I thought.
I opened the laptop today to properly look inside. I have to say it was easier to open than before, as I was expecting, but still not a great experience. The worst is what I discovered…I realized that yes the laptop is a metal built BUT inside where the hardware is, there is a plastic mesh/backbone where everything is held into place…which means the screws are screwed into the plastic, and so are the hinges. Watch this video to see my disappointment:
I was and still am very disappointed. I did not realize that the first time I have opened it. Thing is even if I did, I cannot find a better laptop overall. From the screen size, to the ports, outside chassis, specs….cannot….so it is what it is. But it is deceiving and stupid to make a metal chassis but not have the components screwed into it. Now I will have to be extra careful with this laptop to not break the plastic….my worst nightmare. I have used it today all day while sitting in bed and felt very sturdy and all that. So I hope it will be ok and last me for a long time. And if not I can later on sell it and hopefully Framework can make some 16inch ones so I can grab one of those.
Don’t get me wrong, the laptop feels very well built, but now that I know how it is screwed inside, I will be more careful with it.
It is many times better than my previous laptop so….that’s great.
Software issues?
Almost no more software issues. Everything was fixed with the new 6.1 kernel and with the 6.2 one the 2 speakers out of 4 that do not work now, will also work. So yeah, as I was predicting, in Linux is not a big deal if some hardware does not work ok. It will in the near future especially when we talk about a newly released laptop.
I LOVE the fingerprint reader. Install/remove packages, unlock the computer, are done in a split of a second now. The fingerprint reader works like a charm and I will add a package for it for the next release of TROMjaro and a tutorial about how you can enable it.
The rest?
The screen is wonderful. FullHD or 4k look the same so I use it in FullHD. The laptop is fast, allowing me to compile a new TROMjaro ISO in some 15 minutes compared to 50 minutes before. The mic and camera are good. The speakers very good and I could only test it with 2 out of 4. The battery is ok…nothing special about it.
I made a shitty quality video about it today to show the laptop a bit and the fingerprint reader 🙂 – I am lazy to record it properly but here you go:
I cannot find a better laptop for my needs now. This one is indeed great. Even if the insides are plastic….it is ok (at least I hope so). Having this portable laptop is fantastic and 64GB of RAM + 4TB NVME are heaven for me haha.
I should leave this behind and work on TROM II, to finish it in 2-3 months. 😉
LAST AND SMALL UPDATE:
Today I got another kernel update and all speakers work. 4 speakers. They sound great for a laptop. Very loud, very clear. Very happy about that. Also, am less and less disappointed about that plastic inside. The laptop feels sturdy so I hope all will be ok.
Touchpad issues update
After 2 months of use there are 2 issues with the touchpad. Mind you I rarely use the touchpad so perhaps these are much bigger issues for most people than they are for me. But there is a fix for them.
The noises, the rattles.
From the beginning I noticed that when I use the touchpad it made a sound when I tapped it to click. As if it is not screwed well into place. And after a while it gets annoying and more noisy. Basically the touchpad is a bit lose. To fix this I had to add some paper tape and some sticky foam pads. Here is the video:
As you can see this requires a little bit of effort since you have to test and see what works best for you. The other issue is that if you fix it you may make it too stiff and if you are used to push-to-click instead of tap-to-click it may become annoying. Mine is a bit too stiff but I much rather prefer that. I never push-to-click on the touchpad. Tapping is much easier for me.
The electrons are mad.
One HUGE issue with this trackpad is something I’ve read about before buying it but I did not think it would happen to me. Basically the mouse pointer would jump chaotically on the screen when you used the touchpad, or click, it was a mess. There are many forum posts about it and this is the main reason people return these Dell 7 thousand series back. I finally found this forum thread where people discovered that there is an issue with the grounding and static electricity building up. So basically a hardware issue. Funny enough if you were to create a friction between your palm and the touchpad for a few seconds, it would work again.
The real solution is to create a better connection between two pieces of metal on the touchpad. And so I did:
I hope it will work from now on, if not I’ll try to connect those bits better.
Yeah for such an expensive laptop you expect better. But I am happy that these are the only issues I experienced so far and are quite easy to fix. Overall the battery is very good, the build quality is great, the speakers are ok, the keyboard is fine, the port selection is bloody useful, and the screen is AMAZING. I love it.
It is powerful enough for me for the many years o come, it is portable, and overall I love it.
That’s all I hope.
Touchpad update
The electric tape solution didn’t work at all. In a day or two it went back to how it was. Since then it became worse and worse. The trackpad/touchpad was unusable. I then decided to go for the soldering. I really didn’t want to do that to my laptop but I did it. For details see this forum post. I did a really bad job at soldering because I was tired and the bits I was soldering to on the trackpad were so tiny. I did that some 3-4 days ago and since then the trackpad works like a charm. I still can’t believe it. This really stressed me out and made this laptop unusable as a laptop really, unless you always have a mouse with you.
Anyway, so far it works perfectly fine and I really hope this did it. It is the solution that everyone recommends.
The laptop itself is great. Very well built, amazing screen, very good speakers, powerful and all of that, so I would not know what else to buy if it wasn’t for this one, so I am beyond happy if this issue is finally solved….
As for the rattling I realized that the simplest solution is to put a paper tape between those two little metal things and the laptop’s chassis. So that when they touch they make a lot less noise. So bellow those as you see in the photo, I added one piece of tape. Now all is fine.
So right now the laptop is well and dandy. I love it overall considering the alternatives. I really hope this is the last update.
Hi all,
As many of us are facing issues with the Inspiron 7610 touchpad, I have noticed that Dell has not taken a position on this and refuses to do anything besides forcing you to send in the lapt...
My mother has a Samsung Galaxy J5 that she bought several years ago. The phone is in great condition physically. However it only has 16GB of internal storage. Problem is she uses 99% of that space, making the device extremely slow and 0 updates possible or the ability to install any new app.
Only 10 apps out of perhaps hundreds on her phone can be removed, since the rest came pre-installed with the phone. Bloatware. Google + Samsung apps that are 100% useless. And they cannot be removed.
So, we cannot uninstall/remove anything. Now what can she do? Buy a new phone probably.
And this is how you create a massive amount of waste. On these phones you have no control over your OS, so if your phone is a few years old you can say bye bye to system updates. You cannot remove the bloatware. You cannot change the battery or any other components. And yes probably you can do some of those if you have
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My mother has a Samsung Galaxy J5 that she bought several years ago. The phone is in great condition physically. However it only has 16GB of internal storage. Problem is she uses 99% of that space, making the device extremely slow and 0 updates possible or the ability to install any new app.
Only 10 apps out of perhaps hundreds on her phone can be removed, since the rest came pre-installed with the phone. Bloatware. Google + Samsung apps that are 100% useless. And they cannot be removed.
So, we cannot uninstall/remove anything. Now what can she do? Buy a new phone probably.
And this is how you create a massive amount of waste. On these phones you have no control over your OS, so if your phone is a few years old you can say bye bye to system updates. You cannot remove the bloatware. You cannot change the battery or any other components. And yes probably you can do some of those if you have a ton of time and skills to install a custom Android and have the guts to unglue your phone and change the battery. But most people will never do this.
I tried to make the SD card of her phone part of the system to expand the storage. Worked. But then what for if I cannot move 99% of apps there? I then enabled the developer mode and enabled the "force move the apps to the SD card". That allowed me to move a bit more apps but still 80% cannot be moved.
However when these moved apps update, they are reinstalled on the internal storage again. Basically 'd have to move them to the SD card all the time....sucks. Not sustainable...
I eventually managed to install adbmanager and luckily that allowed me to remove any bloatware I wanted.
Problem is you have to know the exact name of these apps and they look like "samsung.android.visioncloudagent" so you have to figure which app does what.... I found some websites where they list this bloatware like this or this. But it takes time to remove because you have to be VERY careful not to brick your phone.
After doing all of these she has some 1.7GB of free space. Which is fine for now but still unsustainable. I wonder if the next Android update will add back all of that bloatware....after all when I got some updates years ago Samsung decided to install Facebook and Instagram for me, without the ability to remove them.
So, her laptop uses Linux and not Windows, despite having Windows pre-installed when we bought it. Why not install a sane Android OS on her phone?
With laptops is a ton easier, especially for older models, to install an OS. My mother could do it if I gave her the instructions. With the phones it is a different world. People are already googlefied so you can't just install a new Android without connecting it to their previous account since everything is tied to that. You need to root the phone and hope that it won't brick it. That's something that can make your phone useless. Plus all of these custom Androids that have removed the bloatware only support a tiny fraction of all phones.
LineageOS for example, the one that supports by far the most models - wiki.lineageos.org/devices/ - does not support that phone.
The rest support mostly the Pixel phones, namely the newer ones. And that's another issue...even these custom OSes will support this or that device for a bit, then bye bye. Therefore you still have to buy newer devices even when you want a custom Android that is bloatware free.
Some of these even add their own bloatware like https://e.foundation/e-os/ - with their own subscription models.
I was considering to compromise on buying a second hand but newer model Pixel and then install one of those bloatfree Androids, but then if you buy such a phone second hand and the battery is crap and you can't replace it....what can you do!?
Linux phones, if anyone wonders, are an experiment at best at this stage. Plus they only support a few models too.
It is such a different world when it comes to computers. This Microsoft tablet is more than 10 years old:
And it still works with TROMjaro Linux. Granted to make the bluetooth and wifi work I had to install a custom kernel and do some gymnastics. Easier than installing a custom Android on a phone. But this tablet receives constant updates. And this was a special case since these tablets used some weird hardware for the bluetooth and wifi. Most decade old laptops/computers work just fine with the latest Linux.
So you can bring to life old computers but not old phones.
That's one major reason why I hate smartphones. They are disposable. They come bloated with a ton of crap. It is hard if not impossible to block ads on phones. Plus they are with you all the time so notifications and all that crap will make your life a hell.
Even a Linux phone would not be something I would use much since I do not want to always be trapped in the digital space.
In this trade based society companies are incentivized to release newer model of phones constantly. They support each model for a few years then bye bye. They pre-install a lot of crap to make more off of you. Trades: attention, data, subscriptions. So we end up with a world full of disposable ad-devices that people call as "smartphones". The irony of using the word "smart" for those devices.
And I get it, these devices if they were Linux based only, and supported indefinitely, could be useful in certain circumstances such as navigation, keeping in touch with close friends, etc.. But the rest seems to me like just a tool for consuming, trading. Your life being sucked away from you by companies and individuals who want your currency, your attention, your data.
UGLY.
I will eventually install a custom Android on my own personal phone, a Galaxy S7, 8 years old. To put some life into it. Just so that I get rid of the pile of shit that the software is on all phones nowadays, even if I only use my phone for GPS, maps, and such purposes.
So, the final part of the TROM II documentary is DONE! My god. Finally! But not finally yet!
It is 5am and my brain is melting now. Basically I finished the last part BUT here's the plan: I will take a few days off, I really need that. Then I will help Sasha with her book since she should release it soon too, maybe we'll print a draft this month. I am in "charge" of the cover :D. In the meantime I'll do some TROM work on the many projects I am managing.
In April I will start the final editing of the entire documentary. Basically I want to add some footage for some parts, or cut a few parts here and there to make it less boring, and a few improvements. I hope that a month is enough to sort everything out.
Once that is done I need to make a trailer. That can take a week or two idk...
So I think realistically I will release it in May.
And at this point I have no idea if the documentary is good or not hhahaha. I can't judge it anymore but I will make sure to let everyone know that they should not expect much from it. At this point all I want is to release
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So, the final part of the TROM II documentary is DONE! My god. Finally! But not finally yet!
It is 5am and my brain is melting now. Basically I finished the last part BUT here's the plan: I will take a few days off, I really need that. Then I will help Sasha with her book since she should release it soon too, maybe we'll print a draft this month. I am in "charge" of the cover :D. In the meantime I'll do some TROM work on the many projects I am managing.
In April I will start the final editing of the entire documentary. Basically I want to add some footage for some parts, or cut a few parts here and there to make it less boring, and a few improvements. I hope that a month is enough to sort everything out.
Once that is done I need to make a trailer. That can take a week or two idk...
So I think realistically I will release it in May.
And at this point I have no idea if the documentary is good or not hhahaha. I can't judge it anymore but I will make sure to let everyone know that they should not expect much from it. At this point all I want is to release it and nothing else :D.
But yeah, it is amazing that I finally did it despite having to work more before the release...
It is what I was talking since 2016 when I released the book Human Machine tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-d… - these "AI" are neither Artificial or Intelligent. Are statistical pieces of software, and with enough repetition and filters applied to it, can result in cool party-tricks such as creating interesting images and videos, or pieces of text.
That's all it is.
Sure, could be useful if used by non-profits and for a social cause, but else they are just hyped and mostly useless. It is, as Cory puts it in his article, yet another "blockchain-revolution" that never happened.
It is easy to get tricked in today's world, and that's many times because of "trade reas
It is what I was talking since 2016 when I released the book Human Machine tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-d… - these "AI" are neither Artificial or Intelligent. Are statistical pieces of software, and with enough repetition and filters applied to it, can result in cool party-tricks such as creating interesting images and videos, or pieces of text.
That's all it is.
Sure, could be useful if used by non-profits and for a social cause, but else they are just hyped and mostly useless. It is, as Cory puts it in his article, yet another "blockchain-revolution" that never happened.
It is easy to get tricked in today's world, and that's many times because of "trade reasons". Meaning, the companies behind these tools hype the fuck out of them to raise "capital" and sell them, and so they fool the rest. Intelligence, Learning, Neural Networks, Hallucinating....fuck off! These are pieces of software based on a lot of data and statistical outputs.
I remember how IBM Watson was about to "change the world" and replace doctors, lawyers, programmers, you name it! It even wont a Jeopardy game several years ago. Where is it now? Again, HYPE.
I was actually very excited about AIs at first, but after trying it out myself I realized that its not exactly what people make it out to be. And I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but then I found this reddit post that explained it quite well - reddit.com/r/Futurology/commen…
Comparing AI to parrot is a very good analogy, because that's what an AI does, it tries to mimic human behaviors like chatting, drawing, etc without actually having a proper "understanding" of what its doing.
For example I asked an AI chatbot to recommend me some songs and it did, then I asked it to give me youtube links to those songs. And everything looked fine, until I actually clicked on those links. Clicking on those youtube links either sent me to a different youtube video or in most cases YouTube said the video was unavailable. So that's when I got it that the AI was trying to "mimic" the YouTube links, and TBF it does a pretty good job at that, but that's all there is to it.
So does this mean AI is totally useless? not really, but I'd definitely warn people against using AIs for learning "new things" that you don't already know, 'cause it can mislead you by giving wrong info. Like the post I linked above says, an AI is like a parrot, and I don't think most people would wanna learn from a parrot regardless of how good it is at mimicking an intelligent-looking conversion. AI can be used to assist you with things you already know how to do.
It has been my theory that El0n bought Twitter to hype up AI. Had this before, and ChatGPT (project he invested in) has been steady "trending" & promoted tweet saturated since day 1.
Trom - Jaro | Manjar Based Spin | Trade Free Linux Distro | The Linux Tube
A TRADE-FREE OPERATING SYSTEM BASED ON MANJARO LINUX
Designed for your brain, but you can install it on a computer.
Take a deep breath and experience the complex world of ocean waters. Get a never-before-seen look at how life underwater co-exists in a marriage of necessity.
School can be seen as an abusive and inefficient system that has little to nothing to do with "education".
Children are forced to wake up at a certain hour, every day, 5 days a week, for 12 years. They are categorized by ages and their "knowledge" level. School creates a competition between the kids, makes then hate science and learning in general, it is a boring and colorless place for these young minds, and overall ends up not teaching children much at all about the world we live in.
In a trade-based society the parents NEED to trade themselves in a job, so these kids need to be "livestocked" somehow. That's what school is, a place where kids can be while their parents trade to survive in this society. More to that, Universities almost exclusively prepare these young creatures to become workers, like their parents.
All in all, kids go to school to compete, memorize, get ready to be workers. NOT to be EDUCATED.
If humans could have a decent life without trading in this society, they could have the time to engage with their kids, discover, learn, enjoy. And schools could be places where kids of all ages can go because they want to. A place where experts can teach them about the world and how to do something productive.
EXAMPLES:
Tell kids: See this red dot? This is the farthest thing we can take a photo off. They call it a "star". And you show them a real photo taken by the WEBB telescope. From there on you and your class of kids will investigate what this red dot is, and in the process you'll teach kids about light, physics, maths, distances, stars, the universe.
Or show kids a real dinosaur bone and tell them: Our mission is to understand how old it is and what creature this is. And thus you can go into a journey of discovering what geology is, paleontology, rocks and fossils, and so forth.
Or tell them that our mission is to build a robot. And they will learn mechanics, programming and so forth.
We could create real schools where kids can become curious and learn so much about our world. So that they can become the next Einsteins, the next Teslas, the next ones who can discover new things.
That's the world we should have had by now....
And we wont be able to have it unless we change the trade-based society into a tradeless society. Where humans are not forced to trade in order to survive. Where humans like "teachers" can engage and develop such schools as explained above, to have time for that, not to go to school because that's their job since they have to pay their rent so they are forced to do it.
Only 3 minutes left out of the TROM II documentary, last part :D. Yah. Getting there! But since these last 3 minutes might be quite important, it may take me a few days to edit them. Can't believe I am getting so close.
In other news, I started to unfollow a lot of people on the fediverse because my newsfeed became uninteresting. And I will unfollow a ton more. I only want to follow a few interesting creatures. The more you follow the more of a shitstorm your newsfeed will be. And with friendica I can also follow RSS sources so it would be a shame to ruin my experience here :D. Thus far it works and my newsfeed is more attractive for me now.
Anyway, probably my next TROM II update will be when I'll be done with the last part.
TROM Office will be removed from trom.tf/ towards the end of this year. This is a Cryptpad instance and here are the reasons:
1. We already provide a full Office Suite via TROM Files that is far better than the one provided by Cryptpad. 2. Sure, you need an account for TROM Files, but if you want a quick way to create a document we already have TROM Text. 3. We also have TROM Sketch in case you want to draw.
Therefore Cryptpad was not adding anything new. The last drop that filled the glass of decisions was that Cryptpad is offensively aggressive in the way that they inject the donate buttons in the app itself. Popups, multiple buttons, and so forth. Totally understandable that these projects need financial support but this way of asking for support is way too aggressive. On top of that they are changing the design of their service quite a lot and it is quite difficult to customize it, so every update breaks our clean TROM design.
Therefore no more Cryptpad.
Do not worry, it will be around for many months from now on, but it will not be visible from our main TROM page.
TROM II despite being some 5h long and covering lots of topics, does not use stock footage at all. I cut pieces and parts from hundreds of documentaries. Almost every piece of footage has a story. For example one time we talk about how humans, if they had more time, could learn more about how this world works, and I showcase footage with real scientists looking at real data and real stuff that they study. Not some random dudes and dudes pointing and fake shit. That's the kind of editing I have done.
I want TROM II to be genuine. And stock footage sucks. So yeah, I used only real footage from real events. And that was, and still is, insanely difficult. To cut pieces from hundreds of documentaries is a bit insane....luckily VideoNeat is my friend. I have collected thousands of documentaries there over the past 10+ years. All available for free.
So yeah....a ton of work.
Speaking of TROM II I finished a bit over 1h. Not much left out of the last part. But the end of the documentary should be very good, at least from my perspective. So I want to not rush with that.
This is something I've always loved about your work, first time I read one of your books I could see that there is a level of authenticity to it, the topics you were trying to cover was very big and it may not have cleared all my questions at first, but that uniqueness and genuineness in your writing is what kept me going and made me curious to explore more and look for answers.
You are very kind. By the way for the TROM books, at least the first ones, I did use stock images since back then stock images were not very much used like today, so it felt alright to use them. Now I hate stock images/videos. Like hate with a passion :D.
Anyway, I hope the documentary is interesting for you. May not be any new info for you tho....so yeah be aware of that haha.
I was talking more about the writing itself and the ideas you were trying to share, not the pictures on the book. And yes I remember there were a few stock images used, but you also made a lot of comic like characters which made it more interesting 😄
Just so everyone knows, boobs and genitalia are not bad. They can cause a lot of pleasure. Penises too. And overall the naked human body.
Therefore we won't remove any video from our Peertube instance just because some people are too sensitive to the naked body. You know, you too heave one. Enjoy it!
Guns, poverty, wars, violent games, ads, and so forth, are the ones we should stay away from and consider unacceptable. Not the naked human body.
Today I take a first look at TROMJaro, a Manjaro-based, XFCE distro that has a lot of awesome customizations.
👇 PULL IT DOWN FOR THE GOOD STUFF 👇
Patreon - https://patreon.com/thelinuxcast
Liberapay - https://liberapay.
This is one of my favorite documentaries of all time, and I've watched thousands of documentaries and I've recommended a ton via videoneat.com
Why this? Because it is about perhaps the most fascinating fantasy that can be true: the existence of other civilizations out there. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our own galaxy. Now probably most of these stars have planets orbiting them. And many planets have moons. Planets and Moons can host life, and thus a civilization. So multiply the number of stars with the number of planets+moons. Now multiply all of that with billions and billions of galaxies out there....
There is no way we are alone in this Universe. Another form of life that developed into what we may call as "civilization" should be so different from us, and that fascinates me. Very likely we can't ever communicate with them. I wrote a book about language that opened my eyes about this entire "communicate with another being" sort of thing. I highly recommend it -
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This is one of my favorite documentaries of all time, and I've watched thousands of documentaries and I've recommended a ton via videoneat.com
Why this? Because it is about perhaps the most fascinating fantasy that can be true: the existence of other civilizations out there. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our own galaxy. Now probably most of these stars have planets orbiting them. And many planets have moons. Planets and Moons can host life, and thus a civilization. So multiply the number of stars with the number of planets+moons. Now multiply all of that with billions and billions of galaxies out there....
There is no way we are alone in this Universe. Another form of life that developed into what we may call as "civilization" should be so different from us, and that fascinates me. Very likely we can't ever communicate with them. I wrote a book about language that opened my eyes about this entire "communicate with another being" sort of thing. I highly recommend it - tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-d…
Now this documentary is not your average bullshit "UFO Aliens" documentary. It is the opposite. It is realistic and it interviews the experts in the filed. Plus they made a movie-like scenario on top of the interviews, to showcase how it would be if we discover an extraterrestrial civilization. And they did fantastic. I hate movies, they are boring, but in this case it was a great great addition. After all we can only imagine how such an encounter would be.
I highly recommend this. I LOVED it. And fuck all of those UFO BS nonsense you hear about lately. This is the opposite of those nonsense discussions.
I finally managed to get back to work on TROM II again. 57 minutes done. Basically now I only have a 10 minutes chunk to do. If that's done then I only have 3 more minutes, the last ones of the entire documentary.
You have to understand that this documentary was not scripted, nor did I have an idea about how it will end up. Just some 40 hours of interviews with 5 people over the course of half a year. So I had to put this puzzle together somehow. Hopefully it will make sense.
I am confident that March will be the month I'll finish it all. I say that because even after I finish this last part I need to go through the entire documentary and improve a few bits here and there.
Here's one of the many examples of "reality is more interesting than movies". This is a wonderful story of two humans. Two scientists. Who wanted to understand the Earth. Interesting, sad, and tragic story. Who the fuck needs movies when reality is better in any regard!?
videoneat.com is a website I run since 2012 and all of the documentaries there can be downloaded via the Bittorrent network. Check the "magnet" links for any of them.
Seriously folks, documentaries are really underrated. If you're someone who's even remotely interested in science or is curious about the world we live in then I highly recommend giving it a try.
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Links + transcript available at https://www.patreon.
Very interesting. Listen I have another "theory": shocker but every single galaxy we have observed so far is actually our own at different stages. Even when there are a few colliding it is an illusion. :) Even more shocking than my Black Balls theory.
No but seriously now, I love when experiments/observations of this kind do not match what scientists expect. Why? Because it is fascinating. The reality may be so different from what we know now. Maybe there was no "big bang" but something else....maybe the theory of galaxy formation is wrong. You know they had to kinda "invent" the "dark matter" to explain how galaxies are held in place. Then "dark energy" to explain why the universe expands at increasing rates...
So yeah, fascinating. Very :) - I love the Universe. It is such a wonderful garden full of mysteries.
> Very interesting. Listen I have another "theory": shocker but every single galaxy we have observed so far is actually our own at different stages. Even when there are a few colliding it is an illusion. 😀
Someone should take all your theories and make a science fiction novel or something, I swear I'd love them, haha 😄
Curved universe is a fascinating concept, we can never know for sure how the entire universe is shaped like. But in that video he points out that scientists have tried to measure the curvature of our observable universe and with a margin of + or - 0.4% they think that its flat. So considering the fact that we can only observe galaxies inside the observable universe then its very unlikely that we're seeing our own galaxy 🤔
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Also if we're seeing our own galaxy at different points of time then wouldn't we be able to tell because of the similarities? I mean, when we look at all the galaxies they're very different from each other in shape, size, and even colors or matter it contains.
If you watched the video I linked above, there's also a pinned comment below it where he corrects some mistake he made. He says that in a round universe, earth (or galaxy in our case) would be stretched across the sky, kinda like if you step inside a spherical mirror you'll see your face and entire body stretched across its surface. So in the video he shows that we see another earth when he zooms in, but in reality we'll be seeing earth stretched across the entire screen.
I am skeptical about dimensions haha. I never understood them. They sound to me like just a mathematical concept. But can't figure if it is just that....
What are dimensions in the first place? Besides the mathematical concept? Isn't everything "3d"? Even a sheet of paper is 3d since it has a width. Even if it is 1 atom thick that's still 3d. There are no dimensions other than this "3d" one we live in, isn't it?
idk observations, experiments, maybe it is irrelevant to even think of the universe as having a "shape". Maybe the universe is all that is/exists, and thus has no particular shape just an infinite space. idk....it is weird. But I never understood this concept of dimensions except when you talk about maths and physics. I find the concept weird and maybe it is not even a real thing.
Of course dimensions are just a concept since we can't actually observe any other dimensions than the one we live in. And most of mathematics are imaginary things like that, even though they can be useful for solving problems sometimes. Like for example, what do we mean by negative numbers? We can never actually have a negative number of things in real life, so its like an imaginary concept that can be a useful tool sometimes.
Yes but the video you showed me used these "dimensions" to "prove" that we live in a "flat" universe and not a "round" one. :) - To me that was a silly explanation but maybe I don't understand.
The video didn't prove anything, he just mentioned that some scientists have tried to analyse the shape of the universe and they found it to be pretty flat, the observable universe that is, no one knows the shape of the entire universe. There is also a Wikipedia article about the whole thing - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of…
He tried to "prove". But ofc he didn't. And how can you prove the universe has this shape while using "dimensions" if "dimensions" may not even be a real thing? Maybe you can only mathematically-prove that. Anyway, have to focus on TROM II can't dig deeper into this.
So now the fashionable thing is for "documentaries" to be about murderers, cults or celebrities, and be like 8 parts long and made (bought) by netflix, apple, or hulu? Interesting world we live in. These are not documentaries as much as drama-shows. You see these companies need to make shit-load of content, to gain more subscribers, and keep the subscribed ones around.
Oh yeah.. that recent one about prince harry and his wify, omfg. 6 of 1h long episodes, 6!! Fuck me.. The absolute "knowledge" to be shared obviously :vomit:
As a cosmic photographer, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken over a million snapshots documenting the universe. These images illustrate, explain, and inspire us with their grandeur.
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