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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • Linux is really a superfamily of loosely-related OS’s (called distributions). Arch and Debian are 2 of the more common ones. Arch in particular has a reputation of being really beginner un-friendly, particularly in that, to my understanding, you have to build the OS yourself.

    There’s also the caveat that many Linux distributions end up sharing/copying code from each other, so you end up with a kind of “OS lineage.” The most common distribution, Ubuntu, is copied from Debian. And then the most beginner-friendly distribution, Linux Mint, is copied from Ubuntu. Arch, to my knowledge, doesn’t copy code from elsewhere, so much of the advice given from users of other distributions won’t apply to Arch (hence the meme, “I use Arch btw”)

    Anyways, the real advice for a Linux beginner is to stick with a beginner-friendly distribution: either Ubuntu or Linux Mint or Pop!_OS. Most or all distributions have various “flavors,” which are basically like how the OS looks. I think the real difficulty is picking a flavor that you like. I personally like the look of KDE Plasma (IMO resembles Windows 10 the most), so my personal recommendation is Kubuntu, which is the KDE Plasma flavor of Ubuntu




  • I’m personally not a fan of Mint - tried it for a month or so. My impression is that if it works with your muscle memory, it works well. If not… then even Windows ends up more user-friendly.

    I’m particularly not a fan of the “start menu” because you don’t really get a lot of space for pinned apps, and there’s no way to really modify that. I ended up liking KDE quite a lot more. It takes a bit longer to set it up to what you like, but its customization means that while there’s a bigger upfront cost to setup, it’s much smoother once it is set up.

    I’m using KDE Neon (Ubuntu + KDE), which I’m pretty happy with. But I’m also debating whether to switch to Kubuntu (also Ubuntu + KDE for some reason)


  • The screen size matters significantly. More specifically, what humans care about is pixel density. A 24 inch 1080p screen does not look the same as a 27 inch 1080p, which does not look the same as a 32 inch 1080p.

    A 24 inch 1080p screen is perfectly fine. A 27 inch 1080p, you can start to see the pixels more clearly. A 32 inch 1080p IMO is unacceptably bad.

    I would say the standard should be 1080p for 24 inch or under, 1440p for 24-27 inch, 4K for 27 inch or above

    I personally run a 24 inch 1440p screen because I’m pretty picky with pixel density, and the monitor was relatively good deal.










  • Pretty good setup, decently balanced and good cost-effectiveness.

    I do want to ask though - why water cooling? Based on my understanding, your setup does not produce enough heat to really require watercooling (unless you really want sub-50C under load). My understanding is that a decent tower cooler is much more reliable and nearly as effective as a 240mm AIO.

    Regardless, I don’t necessarily even think you need a tower cooler - I have an R5 5600 and RX 6800 combo in a sub-10 L case (Geeek A50 Plus), and I’m cooling it just fine with a small-form-factor cooler (ID-Cooling IS-55). Actually, I got by just fine with my stock cooler (Wraith Stealth), I just upgraded because there was a good deal on the IS-55 cooler.

    I think the 5700G comes with the same Wraith Stealth stock cooler, so I think it could be worth trying out the stock cooler first before you pull the plug and buy a 3rd-party cooler. Even if you’re not satisfied with it, at least it’ll give you a frame of reference for how much better you want your cooler to be. After all, you could always just replace the cooler any time if you’re not happy with it





  • Asking ChatGPT for advice about anything is generally a bad idea, even though it might feel like a good idea at the time. ChatGPT responds with what it thinks you want to hear, just phrased in a way that sounds like actual advice. And especially since ChatGPT only knows as much information as you are willing to tell it, its input data is often biased. It’s like an r/relationshipadvice or r/AITA thread, but on steroids.

    You think it’s good advice because it’s what you wanted to do to begin with, and it’s phrased in a way that makes your decision seem like the wise choice. Really, though, sometimes you just need to hear the ugly truth that you’re making a bad choice, and that’s not something that ChatGPT is able to do.

    Anyways, I’m not saying that bosses are good at giving advice, but I think ChatGPT is definitely not better at giving advice than bosses are.



  • The trick here is to realize that being human isn’t the same as being a person. Your fingernail is human, but that doesn’t mean that your fingernail clippings deserve voting rights. It’s a tricky concept, because we usually consider human and person to be synonymous. But in ethics, a person is defined as an entity that has moral and ethical agency, and therefore has rights.

    As an example, imagine if an alien comes to visit Earth. They come in peace, and they just want to see what human culture is like. The alien is a person (because they are capable of making conscious decisions), but they are decidedly not human.

    So what does that mean for an embryo? Well, they’re human. They’ve been human since conception. But just like your fingernails, an embryo isn’t capable of making conscious decisions, and therefore cannot be considered a person.

    The big debate in ethics is really about when a fetus develops enough that they might start to become conscious (and therefore be considered a person). And there’s no easy answer for that yet. But it’s definitely amusing to think that an embryo, which has no brain or heart (in fact, no neurons or muscular cells at all) only begins to form structures even close to resembling a brain/heart at the end of the embryonic stage could in any way be capable of being conscious.

    To put it bluntly: saying that an embryo deserves rights is extreme overreach, on par with claiming your fingernail clippings as dependents on your tax filings

    Edit: for scientific accuracy. Embryos do have neurons and muscular tissues, but they only appear and organize near the end of the embryonic stage