Hmm, ok. I see. When clicking on the last button in a category tree, it chooses randomly an instance.

Tho for that specific category, I cannot access https://lemmy.sdf.org/. Why? I don’t know, maybe broken or regional block?

If regional block, that is an argument to warts looking at user location. Tho not sure if it would be useful for anything else.

It would also be interesting to categorize more instances. Maybe even put smaller ones to distribute the load. Tho sometimes the smaller ones may not be well prepared for a lot of users. And at the same time the local feed may not be the most active. Tho the all feed may be interesting for new users.

The instance where I am, compuverse.uk is a general tech/computer instance, but had issues with storage for example.

So when does the random instance is chosen? When the website is loaded? When the user clicks on a category?

Maybe currently there aren’t enough instances categorised on the website to get enough randomness.

Is there, or would there be, a weight in the randomness in order to chose closer instances based on the user’s location?

For example sh.itjust.works is an instance based in Canada. When the reddit exodus happened. That instance was slow due to the distance. While others closer to the western europe were faster because they where closer to me.

Tho rn, it’s about the same. So not sure.

There is a flatpak zoom app. I guess it can be sandboxes somehow. It would most likely not pose any privacy threat outside of zoom.

But keep in mind that zoom got into it’s privacy policy, that they can record and use for ai anything you do and say during a meeting (if you didn’t allow access to the desktop during the meeting, zoom shouldn’t be able to record it, so most likely won’t matter for that, only what you send through their servers).

Because it’s a search engine using gpt3. Nothing special/Foss about it. Or at least I don’t see any Foss sources.

You won’t get the date.

The date mentioned in the answer may also be an halucination from the bot, depending on the dataset.

And an answer to Bing chat / bard is pretty hard to do if something like this even exists, as the bot has to be able to search the Web.

Maybe something like this? https://huggingface.co/ https://huggingface.co/chat/

The model seems to be based on the Llama model (but not only, there seem to be multiple models). Tho I didn’t really look into it on how they get their database. It also has more hallucinations than chatgpt.

For me, it shows 1 subscriber, 1.4k users per month.

It seems to be entirely dependent on the instance.

The article only talks about deployment costs. What about the rest?

For you a company should just throw away it’s employees to hire inexistent Linux experts or people using Linux software or whatever?

There is the server side. There I agree that using Linux is great.

On the client side it can be more complicated. A lot of schools in various domains teach the students how to use the software on windows. Not Linux.

Furthermore, a company doesn’t pop into existence the moment where it thinks it needs to switch to Linux.

The company already exists, providing work to the employees, trained on windows. So switching on Linux may change the software if it cannot be used on Linux (not everything is a saas). And that can be a time consuming process for the employees too because they don’t know how to use it efficiently.

They can’t really do that, mostly because it’s not “just 1 person”.

There are a lot of costs going into maintaining the os, apps, custom software, and training for the employees.

Google is giant, and has a huge amount of money. They can afford to spend the costs of training, modifying software, or developing other software for their needs if it reduces their future costs.

A smaller company don’t have all those funds, they wouldn’t be able to invest as much into switching to Linux and maintaining the custom software or finding new software and training.

When people switch to another software, there is also a period of low productivity, when these same people are still discovering the software, and cannot do everything as fast as before. That is also creating additional costs.

Sure. But google does waste money if it brings them profit. It would be rather called an investment.

However the example of Google is extremely bad, because it can only be applied to very large tech companies who already have people developing for Linux.

It’s not a waste of money, it’s a bad example.

I don’t know about dual boot. Maybe windows has to be installed first. Never tried it.

Tho I know that it is possible during the drive choice, in the windows install, to select an empty space, then clic on the create partition, and there creating a sufficiently big enough partition for windows will create 3 partitions : The boot, reserved and windows. Then just select the main windows partition, and it will auto detect the boot and reserved partition.

However that is happening on an empty drive. I do not know what can happen on a drive where there is already an OS.

Windows 11 can be used, however a oobe command needs to be input at install, without Internet, to not have to use an online account. Tho windows may ask later to connect with an online account.

For an alternative, windows may also be used in a VM. There may also be a way to pass through all the main gpu if needed, and switch between Linux / windows. But I didn’t really use it. So I don’t know where it is or what are the steps.

If the Linux os needs to be used, but the gpu also has to be in the vm, there is a way to split it. Tho the last time I checked (4+ months ago) the project was incompatible with amd due to some kernel/driver stuff. I sadly lost the link to it…

You do not need to purchase windows 10/11 to use it.

And maybe if you really want to purchase windows, you may find very cheap keys online.

In France I can find win11 keys for 20-30 cents on Cdiscount. Most of the time, you just need to input the key after installing windows.

Do you know how much money Google has? It’s enough to do whatever with that, even just keep the people away from competition.

Why Google did that or if it’s even true? Not sure.

However Google is a big tech which develops software for a multitude of platforms, even Linux. They work on their own Linux mod : Android.

So they have all the people already in the company to do whatever they want on Linux.

They also have specific needs which may not need windows.

We however use excel and the advanced feature Power query and power Bi. So as long as a Foss alternative doesn’t get to the level of the current insanely powerful excel and power bi, we’ll be stuck on windows.

Do you know how much cost is involved in developing a peace of software?

Get what you need > a lot of time and good view of the company is needed.

Then either get a company to do it > expensive + no control on the software.

Or/

Make it yourself > extremely expensive + control on the software.

Get the right people > hiring campaign > expensive

Then these hired people represent more people to pay each month > expensive.

If there aren’t right people, you need to teach the devs how to work on it > expensive formations and it’s done on the working time, so double expensive.

Then time invested in creating the Linux distro adapted to the company > time, testing, mistakes, redo, undo… expensive.

(let’s not forget about taxes and obligations towards the new workers).

Wtf are you talking about. Linux isn’t a distro.

And the example isn’t a “only noobs use it”.

It’s an example of an exploit existing since many years. And which could have appeared in a random package, while staying invisible.

On Linux -> https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/password-stealing-linux-malware-served-for-3-years-and-no-one-noticed/

(not a virus directly from a package manager or distro tho).

However nothing prevents someone from hosting malware on github, or fake “safe” distros.

There can also be a slip and people not seeing a project turned into malware.

Amazon is as you said extremely efficient on their warehouse and shipping because of their centralization and size. They can build extremely expensive warehouse to keep being efficient and surpass the competition.

There would maybe be possible to get an “enhanced” activity pub in order to protect privacy and financial informations. There is already something similar but without activity pub : a multitude of website where it is possible to buy things.

But there still needs to be some centralization, either through the postal service for small companies, or through centralised warehouse companies, with spzcialized equipments. And both of these things are already in place.

However if the OP wants a decentralized Amazon like efficiency, it won’t happen. The costs will increase and it will take more time, because the way the shipment will work will heavily depend on the seller.

There are malls, markets, things like that. These are just the front end for the customers to buy things, the retailer.

As you said there are centralisation behind. Either through the same company managing all those different malls, or through Wholesalers working in the background selling to a lot of retailers.

I don’t know about the privacy in UK, but privacy on Lemmy is… Pretty much inexistent.

Tho maybe the email Adresses could maybe be stored privately somehow.

My instance compuverse.uk runs most of the time. Tho the servers are not giant, and there was already an issue where the storage filled up completely before an upgrade had to be made.

Tho now it would be running on a separate storage dedicated server which may allow for more storage.

Also the rules on this instance makes it pretty much compatible with every other instance and so would avoid the defederation by other instances. (please just don’t put porn or gore in the all).

Outside of steam, there are community scripts with Lutris and other alternatives.

But sometimes they don’t work well.

There are also ways to play epic games and gog games easily through the Heroic games Launcher and Wine-GE.

(wine and winetricks and 2 other wine components need to be installed).