if you’re looking for a nice ultraportable, System76 has you covered

it’s in the name: generative pre-trained transformer. the one thing ChatGPT and GPT-3/3.5/4 are truly good at is transforming data. it can restructure paragraphs to have a different flow, take class notes and make flashcards out of them (that’s how i use ChatGPT), or even take non-textual data and potentially present it in textual format if trained right

what?

shit just went from 0 to 100 real fucking quick

for real though, if you ask an LLM how to make a bomb, it’s not the LLM that’s the problem

as others in this thread have mentioned, Linux Mint or Pop OS are the best for someone coming from Windows. both work really well out of the box. Linux Mint has a very Windows-like desktop, so it’s often recommended to people coming from Windows; but if you want a more unique experience Pop OS is the way to go

it redirects you to BreezeWiki, a no-bloat frontend for Fandom (example)

ugh yeah. especially the SEO war thing, the new website doesn’t even register on DuckDuckGo yet. at least there’s this extension called Indie Wiki Buddy which will hide Fandom results from search engines and redirect you to an independent wiki if you end up on Fandom anyway

answering your questions as best I can (I’m a straight male too) in order:

1. if he/him seems right to you, then your pronouns are he/him. if other pronouns seem right to you, then your pronouns are those pronouns. pronouns don’t have to match up with your gender or presentation, go with whatever you vibe with
2. when meeting new people, I give my name and pronouns. “hi, my name is salarua and my pronouns are he/him.” of course, it’s nice to give your pronouns when asked, but other than that it’s up to you
3. just including your pronouns in your profile is good. some people put them in their nicks, some in their bio or about me. if you have a Mastodon, Akkoma, Misskey, or Firefish account you can put your pronouns in your custom fields
4. you can try and figure out other people’s pronouns from how other people refer to them. many people will also give their pronouns if you introduce yourself with your pronouns. it’s not a faux pas to not know someone’s pronouns beforehand, although I admit I don’t know a non-awkward way to ask someone their pronouns
5. a good bet is to refer to people whose pronouns you don’t know as they/them. if you mispronoun someone by mistake, quietly correct yourself and continue with whatever you’re saying. “so after arriving at the office, he- sorry, they went to go see their supervisor about the presentation…” as long as it’s not done out of malice, people don’t mind being mispronouned if you acknowledge the slip-up and move on
6. I haven’t met anyone irl with neopronouns either. presumably people with neopronouns would go by them if they were among people they felt safe with. unfortunately most of the world isn’t safe :(

is there any listing of those I can check somewhere?

i’ll have to look more into that. the obvious answer is “keep it off site”, but that only applies if you’re doing backups. if it’s a NAS with several different purposes like the one i want, i’m not actually sure. i’ll keep reading about it

my dream is to build my own NAS. it would handle everything i need: it would be a Nextcloud, media server, website host, Matrix server, Minecraft server, and when i’m not doing anything with it at the moment i’ll have it donate its time to seeding and relaying

i don’t have one on hand, but it’s a physical letter sent through the mail which basically says “delete the copyrighted data we think you downloaded or we’re shutting off your internet”

i live in the US. seeding and torrenting in general is relatively safe here, although sometimes you’ll get a nastygram from your ISP because a copyright industry plant on one of the torrents told on you. the easiest way by far to prevent that is by getting a VPN. go with something paid (free ones do shady stuff) and with a no-logging policy. i use NordVPN because i know someone who pays for it and is letting me use it, but another great option is Mullvad

for every person who leeches on mobile data and can’t afford to seed, there’s someone who has a freakishly powerful rig that seeds like 17 different torrents 24 hours a day. if you can’t afford to seed, don’t worry about it, because people who can afford to seed often do. things balance out in the end

there’s a GNOME extension called Bedtime Mode that adds a quick setting to turn the screen grayscale: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4012/gnome-bedtime/

believe it or not, that wasn’t the original purpose of copyright. copyright was invented as a form of censorship. in 1556, the Charter of the Stationers’ Company was given the exclusive right to control the operation of printing presses in England, up to and including the ability to seize offending books and burn the printing presses that made them (L. Ray Patterson, Copyright and “the Exclusive Right” of Authors, p. 9)

non-spoilery version: what do you do when you crawl out of your shelter? die, die again!

hi, anti-Meta person here: it’s not about how many users we have. it’s about Meta’s long track record of insufficient moderation and harvesting of personal data. thanks to their almost nonexistent moderation, they’ve facilitated genocides, let deadly disinformation spread unchecked, and contributed to the rise of fascism. and they harvest enough data from their platforms to create digital duplicates of us, and if they join the Fediverse, of course they’re going to harvest data from anyone federating with them too.

would you trust them to play nice in the Fediverse after all they’ve done?

Blindsight by Peter Watts. it’s a really unique take on first contact, but wow is it dark

how so?