Allow me to share, Federated Wiki. I don’t think it uses ActivityPub, but otherwise I think it’s close to what you described. Instead of letting anyone edit articles it uses more of a fork & pull request model.

Debian unstable is not really unstable, but it’s also not as stable as Ubuntu. I’m told that when bugs appear they are fixed fast.

I ran Debian testing for years. That is a rolling release where package updates are a few weeks behind unstable. The delay gives unstable users time to hit bugs before they get into testing.

When I wanted certain packages to be really up-to-date I would pin those select packages to unstable or to experimental. But I never tried running full unstable myself so I didn’t get the experience to know whether that would be less trouble overall.

I want to make a small correction - this is not true:

iirc I had to reboot every time for it to be applied while with Arch you can just install something and run it immediately.

nixos-rebuild behaves like most package managers: it makes new packages available immediately, and restarts relevant systemd services. Like other distros you have to reboot to run a new kernel.

And cleaning up Steam games is as issue with most distros too. But I kinda see your point.

Btw Nix (both NixOS and the Nix package manager running in other distros) has this feature where you can run packages without “installing” them if you just want to run them once:

$ nix shell nixpkgs#package-name

That puts you in a shell with one or more packages temporarily installed. The packages are downloaded to /nix/store/ as usual, but will get garbage-collected sometime after you close the shell.

Thank you for including a workaround with this terrible news!

As a Nix fanboy I would write a Nix expression that downloads the AppImage, and also writes the desktop file with the appropriate path written into it via string interpolation. That can be done either through a NixOS configuration, or in any Linux distro using Home Manager.

I was curious if this was real, and it is! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7966641.stm

I use that r function regularly to go to the git project root. But I call it gtop. I mostly use that and zoxide to get around.

This comment really speaks to how I feel.

In addition to flattening the wealth curve on the high end, I think the first change I would want is to increase the federal minimum wage. For decades wages have been stagnant while cost-of-living has grown which has led to mass economic insecurity. I think a lot of current political tension is a direct result. That makes it difficult to cooperate to implement policies that would help people.

Try sudo apt update before running the install command. The ISO might not be preloaded with a full package index, or it might be out of date.

If that doesn’t work take a look at /etc/apt/sources.list to see if maybe the ISO uses some minimal repo that doesn’t have the full set of packages.

I think NixOS is awesome, but it certainly doesn’t offer “access to (basically) all Linux-capable software, no matter from what repo.” - at least not natively.

I don’t quite agree with this. In NixOS you can write custom expressions that fetch software from any source, and stitch them into your configuration as first-class packages. So you do get access to all Linux-capable software natively, but not necessarily easily. (There is a learning curve to packaging stuff yourself.)

I use this process to bring nightly releases of neovim and nushell into my reproducible config. Ok, I do use flakes that other people published for building those projects, which is a bit like installing from a community PPA. But when I wanted to install Niri, a very new window manager I wrote the package and NixOS module expressions all by myself!

Power tells you how large of a gap in grid capacity-vs-demand storage can cover while renewables are below peak production. That’s the important number, as long as the energy stored is sufficient to last until renewable output goes back up.

Giving an energy storage number by itself could be misleading because it seems the batteries that have been built take longer than an hour to discharge. So for example 26 GWh storage does not equal 26 GW grid capacity.

But this article, like many others does seem to be loose with the power-vs-energy metrics:

If 6,600 MW doesn’t sound like that much, consider it is enough to supply electricity to about 6.6 million homes in California for 4 hours

Maybe the implication is that the total energy storage is 26,400 MWh?

I recommend Borg with a CLI frontend like Borgmatic. It’s efficient for running frequent backups, storing only changes since the last backup. It gives you snapshots of each backup. You can mount any snapshot using a virtual filesystem without having to copy everything over.

This points to an interesting feature that appears in English: phrasal verbs. This is where a verb is made up of a verb word used in combination with one or more prepositions or “particles”. For example in the phrase “put cheese on the pizza” the verb word “put” combines with the preposition “on”. (There is no particle in this example.) Even though the words “put” and “on” are not consecutive, and even though “on” has its own function as a preposition, “put on” together form a verb that is lexically distinct (has different meaning and rules) from “put” used with a different preposition or particle.

IIUC you even get a different meaning if you use the same words with a different function. With “on” as a preposition you get, “put cheese on the pizza”. But with the particle form of “on” you get a different verb with a different meaning: “put on a coat”.

The use you posted, “put cheese”, looks like a transitive form of “put” which would be distinct from both of the phrasal verbs I described. My guess is that this is dialect-specific: maybe some English speakers perceive transitive “put” as valid, while others only use “put” as part of a phrasal verb.

Language is messy, and there is no authoritative set of rules for English so you’ll find lots of cases where people disagree about correct grammar. One of the classics is whether “where” substitutes for a prepositional or a noun phrase. Lots of people feel it is correct to say, “Where is that at?” while others think that sounds wrong, like saying, “It’s at by the corner.” (I think this might be the basis for the made-up rule, “don’t end sentences with a preposition”.)

Maybe a better case study would be figs since people actually eat those. From what I’m seeing in search results there is some difference of opinion, but maybe the prevailing opinion is that figs are fine for vegans because they are not intentionally exploitative or cruel to animals.

Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants.

I bring this up too. What my kid asks, “what is vegan?”, and my wife says, “someone who eats plants”, then I shout from across the room, “and fungi!” Tbh no one is amused but me.

There’s nothing hypocritical about eating fungi! I just want recognition for the fungal contribution.

There are specs for that!

For system-wide installation the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard essentially says:

• put it in /usr/local/bin/ if you want to drop a script somewhere
• or put it in /usr/bin/

Both should be in the default $PATH for most systems.

For single-user installs the XDG Base Directory Specification says,

User-specific executable files may be stored in $HOME/.local/bin. Distributions should ensure this directory shows up in the UNIX $PATH environment variable, at an appropriate place.

Those locations will work in 99% of cases.

Nothing will work for every case because Linux systems are many and varied. For example I’m on NixOS which doesn’t adhere to that particular provision of XDG, and doesn’t adhere to any of FHS.

There are a few history channels I enjoy:

• History Buffs
• History Matters
• Extra History

For the rise and fall of modern empires: AntsCanada

If you’re interested in history, but specifically in relation to painted works of art, I very much enjoy: Art Deco

For in-depth social justice analysis: ContraPoints

For gamers: TierZoo

I think the takeaway from that episode is that many carbon offsets are scams, not necessarily all. So don’t take corporate claims that they offset their emissions at face value, and consider carefully before you buy offsets.

Take a look at my other comment about Wren and Wendover Productions. (This John Oliver episode happens to include an excerpt from the Wendover piece I mentioned.)

Yes, I use Wren. The best endorsement I have is from Wendover Productions - after doing a piece on how many carbon offset programs are scams they later said that Wren seems to be better. But that statement did come in a message sponsored by Wren. My hope is that Wendover would not have accepted Wren as a sponsor if they thought it was garbage.

Here is the carbon offsets piece: https://youtu.be/AW3gaelBypY

Here is a comment from Wendover on their ads for Wren: https://www.reddit.com/r/WendoverProductions/comments/11ubsfu/is_wren_as_good_as_wendover_says/jcnlunq/

Edited to add links

Yeah, with those options it’s easier to back up your whole home directory, and then daily backups only take a minute or so and a small amount of additional space to back up what’s changed since the day before.