BananaTrifleViolin

Thanks for sharing this; for people on atomic distributions this is important for getting things set up how you want.

I’d say though, if you’re not on an atomic distribution then I’d use native builds of Steam and Gamescope for your distro wherever possible. The overhead of flatpaks is pretty minimal in practice, but the faff of having to configure things is higher with interconnecting flatpaks. It can be difficult to problem solve errors and by default just generally requires more configuration work (like installing the Proton-GE flatpak) without much real benefit. A native install will largely involve just installing Steam and Gamescope and letting Steam configure it’s own versions of proton.

In addition there can be real faff in setting up controllers (as you have to pass udev rules through to the container) and the game data will be stored in the flatpak’s file system for the sandbox instead of ~/.steam (which can be annoying for modding but is manageable).

Flatpaks can fail without seemingly clear reason; in my experience they’re often actually working perfectly it’s just that the sandbox isn’t quite configured for what you’re trying to do. In my opinion for Steam, it’s an unnecessary added layer of complexity for little to no gain. Flatpak is great in many ways, but not ideal for this unless no other options.

How small is your smallest device? BTRFS doesn’t have a minimum size, but practically probably 50-100mb is just about doable before even just setting things up get complex. Having said that though, it’s copy-on-write and has overhead as a result, so may not function well below 1gb.

ZFS meanwhile really won’t work well below probably 8gb. It’s also copy-on-write but with a lot more overhead due to how it works. It really works best on big drives and filesystems.

If your old storage is in the mb range, then really neither will help you achieve what you want.

BTRFS and ZFS do offer the same benefits as NTFS with regard to compression and speeding up some slower devices (due to lowering the actual read/writes needed to achieve the same result as the data is compressed into a smaller space and decompressed rapidly by the PC in memory), but NTFS can go be used on much smaller disk sizes due to how it works. BTRFS and ZFS are designed and optimised with other benefits in mind. And NTFS compression isn’t well supported in Linux.

Honestly, having been shadow banned before on stupid social media platforms, I self censor now. No accountability in social media - they can censor people and don’t even tell you they’ve done it.

There are few big differences that account for the difference in effect and response so far.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the tail end of winter, and had an immediate impact on gas supplies due to sanctions. Europe, particularly Eastern Europe and Germany, was particularly dependent on Russian gas for heating. There was an immediate potential issue if we’d had a cold snap as well as an inevitability of limited gas supplies to rebuild the reserves over the summer into the next winter.

The Iran conflict started at the end of March 2026, the beginning of spring, and has impacted on oil supplies. But Europe does not get oil from the middle east via the Strait of Hormuz; instead those supplies go east to India, China and Japan for example.

At present there is not a physical shortage in Europe; supplies have already been secured and paid for before the conflict. That will change as the crisis goes on. Oil prices are at persistent high, and also there is going to be increased competition for the 80% of energy supplies not blockaded. That will impact Europe as much as the rest of the world. It is unlikely oil will run out completely, but certain users will be priced out of the market as oil contracts are renewed and prices feed through to end users. It’s likely some businesses across many countries that are not economical when oil is above $100 a barrel will suffer or even close, and fuel prices will dissuade people form using their cars and flying. So there will be shortages more in the sense of affordability which will cause inflation and probably a recession.

There isn’t much point in Europe doing much to try to intervene right now. The shortages are currently focused in countries with current contracts for oil that should have come via the strait. That will change, but until it does it is unpredictable exactly how it will impact Europe. Add to that the perhaps foolish hope (and gamble by markets) that this will be temporary and that explains why there is a reluctance to act.

I’m amazed that anyone believes a word Trump says on this. We have a stalemate in the middle east at present, and its unlikely either side will back down in the next few weeks. The general feeling seems to be that the US has lost this war, and is more likely to back down first as it cannot reopen the strait be force. Iran is certainly suffering economically from the US blockade, but no where near as badly as the US and global economy will suffer if this continues.

Sort of. You do get an increase in death rates decades later as people from a baby boom eventually die. However births tend to be in relative sync (closer together anyway) during a baby boom say over a period of a few years, while deaths are much more spread out maybe over a decade or more. That’s because other factors come into play such as individual health, and the differences in people of the same age’s health depending on economic state and lifestyle etc. In otherwords, lots of people may have been born in say 1945 but their deaths will be spread out over years because not everyone dies at the same age.

Many western countries are going through a period of natural population decline due to low birth rates and increasing death rates as baby boomers from 1945 onwards start dying. But those deaths are spread out, and somewhat offset by immigration. So yes more people are dying but populations are overall stable or even growing as immigrants flow in.

The EU should give the UK good terms: the same terms everyone else is on. Nothing more, nothing less.

The opt outs were bad for the UK and the EU and good riddance. If we rejoin we will actually have to commit fully instead of the default position being opting out of things because the right wing don’t like them.

Sadly I think it’s still 10 years away from even being a realistic possibility. Although Trumps behaviour is doing a good job of accelerating changes in attitude so maybe it will be sooner.

No not “too woke”, don’t apologise for calling this bullsh*t out. People make lots of excuses for him but he settled one case; he was aquitted in one case but further people have made accusations - supposedly 10-15 (including a family with 5 children).

The Michael Jackson biopic is definitely a whitewash; it’s produced by the estate that has a vested interest in protecting his financial legacy. It was going to try to cast doubt on the Chandler case but settlement from that case actually agreed no movie representing the family could be made by Jackson or his estate.

It’s not woke to find this disgusting.

Windows is in no way free. Every new Windows Laptop and PC comes with a license; when you pay for the PC part of that money goes directly to Microsoft.

Microsoft made upgrading to Windows 10 and 11 “free” for those on older hardware who already had paid for a license because they wanted to move people onto the latest versions and stop supporting the old versions. At the same time they’ve been harvesting and selling users data to make even more money.

They are not trying to “kill” Windows, they are trying to change it into a cloud based system too so that you do have to pay a subscription to use it. They want new PCs and Laptops to be essentially nothing more than thin terminals, using your hardware to support their cloud based system but not actually owning any of the software at all.

But they are less bothered about the absolute revenue Windows makes now, and more bothered about making it a walled garden they control and which up-sells you to all their other subscription services under Office, and Xbox.

Leads in the polls at 35%, so he is far off a majority. People like simple narratives about someone “winning” an election as it’s easier to follow, but realistically even if he “wins” with 35% he will also struggle to form a stable government or exercise power.

We’re seeing this pattern across Europe at the moment - electorates are fragmented and split, as politicians seem incapable of offering what people actually want. In the UK for example, current opinion polls have us on a 5-way split between Labour, Conservatives, Reform, Green and Lib Dems. This is despite Labour winning a big majority in the election only 2 years ago.

There are two elements to this - the system and dollars. The systems are CHIPS (used for clearing, which is in US Dollars) and SWIFT used for interbank communication. Russia was severely cut off from both. Countries can trade in any currency they want, but the international system is standardised around the dollar and CHIPs and SWIFT make it fast and efficient.

Lets say Russia wanted to buy $50m of oil from UAE. It would involve a Russian bank and a UAE bank handling the money and both would have CHIPS accounts. A Russian bank would place an order via SWIFT for $50m to the UAE bank via its CHIPS account. The money would be transferred to the UAE banks account and out to the UAE. This seems pointless for 1 transaction, but actually there are many 1000s of different transactions happening every day in different directions, and the way clearing happens instead of moving $50m from one bank to another, it will look at all the other transactions both banks are making with everyone else across the day and just move the correct overall amount out.

So $50m does move from one bank to the other, but it’s part of all the other transactions going on making it simpler for both banks. For example maybe at the same time the UAE bank is transferring $30m to another bank in another country; so at the end of the day it’ll get $20m from CHIPs.

When Russia was cut off, there weren’t really other good routes to make that trade. Also people don’t want Roubles. So normally Russia and Russian banks buy and hold Dollars, and use that when they need to trade. Russia was locked out of this, so it now had to buy $50m of oil but using Roubles which the UAE bank didn’t want or need. This means either Russia had to find other ways to get the $50m or it paid way more in Roubles than the $ amount to buy enough Dirhem so that the UAE would accept the money.

However, as you rightly point out - why would countries be so reliant on the $ and the US like this? Up until now, people trusted the Dollar and the US to keep the system open and functioning. But first the Ukraine war sanctions and now certainly the Iran war have shown to the world that the Dollar and current systems are entirely under US control. Even though the EU was against Russia in the Ukraine war, they have also been moving to put in new systems so they’re not over reliant on the US systems after seeing what happened with the CHIPS/SWIFT sanctions. Those sanctions were really seen as the “nuclear” option when it happened, and people never thought anyone would actually do that.

Now the Trump is again emphasising how reliant the world was on US stability, and US stability is seemingly gone. Tarrifs, threats to invade Greenland, disparaging allies, and Iran - all have shown that the US is unreliable and unstable. So now the EU and many other countries (including China) are accelerating the process to move away from being so reliant on the US Dollar and the USA. It will have huge consequences for the USA and the world, and even if the Iran war ends tomorrow and a decent president is elected in 2028, the damage is done. No one trusts the US political system any more - it has been shown to be unstable and capricious, and entirely dependent on the whims of the US president. The supposed “checks and balances” are non-existent: the courts and congress have done nothing to stop this mess. So everyone is reducing their “exposure” to the risk of being too reliant on the USA and it’s financial systems.

It really doesn’t matter any more if the Democrats win congress and the white house. It will just be seen as a period of calm before the next Trump comes along. We’ve already had that once with Biden coming in after Trumps first term, and Trumps second is even worse. And it’s not about Trump specifically - he’ll be gone in a few years, but the world has been shown that any nutter in the white house can do what they want, plus the Republicans are clearly bat-shit crazy. And whats to say the Democrats don’t also put someone bat shit crazy into the white house in the future? All trust in the US is gone and it can’t be rebuilt.

I wonder if the world will ever standardise to one or the other?

The . for decimal separator is used in English, as well as China and India but apparently that is only 35-40% of the global population. The , is used for 60-65%. Although the figures may not be accurate as a lot of countries seem to use both, with . used for international business, and internationally published science tends to be published in English?

Probably never be standardised as it’s probably too difficult to switch now? 1,000,000.00 and 1.000.000,00 are clear because of the use of three 0s for thousands etc, and two 0s for decimals. But 1.001 and 1,001 are much more ambiguous and would definitely need context as to which system is being used - is it 1 thousand and 1 or 1 and one thousandth?

A few reasons. One is there isn’t much flat land; most of it is hilly and even mountainous and covered in thick forests. The flat areas are occupied with farms and towns but the space is small and not enough for big cities to grow. The hills and mountains are heavily forested and there has never been a big enough population to need to encroach on them. It’s also not great for building and farming, unless grazing animals.

The other big reason is there are no natural deep sea ports in that region. It’s either marshy or the estuary of the river Colombia. Small fishing towns would be fine, but not big industrial ports that drive city growth (or did in the past). Meanwhile, Portland sits further back up the river with plenty of flat land and access to the water, so makes a natural port. And Seattle sits on the bay further north and is coastal, and a good port.

The dynamic got set up of big cities further back, and those areas never really grew. Once the land became part of state forests, then that restricts growth even more.

EDIT: Here is a topographical map showing in blue the flat land: https://en-gb.topographic-map.com/world/?center=38.54817%2C-119.79492&zoom=6

Tortoises are Turtles, but not all Turtles are Tortoises.

This isn’t an English thing, this is a taxonomy thing. It should be the same in any language, just with different words used.

“I can’t open the strait of hormuz, so I’ll pretend I’m the one who wanted it closed”. Moron.

And we were right.

In all honesty at this stage it’s not that exciting. They’re hyping up people going further from the earth than ever before, which is technically true, but astronauts have orbited the moon before just not quite as far in absolute distance.

So this is mostly doing something done before in the 70s. Rocket launches, grainy images of the moon from close up, photos of earth from near the moon and astronauts floating in zero G isn’t new.

I don’t blame you for not getting excited to watch long videos where not a lot happens very slowly, or reading press coverage which is brutally honest largely fluff.

The ultimate goal is exciting, but that doesn’t mean every step on the way is exciting. I suspect the first moon landing will be of more interest, then the next one will not be, even though the landings are a stepping stone to Mars.