“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: […] like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.” —Jonathan Swift

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Cake day: July 25th, 2024

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  • One of the best side effects of having gone vegan is that the cost of food has gone through the floor. Plant-based staples are dirt cheap and extremely shelf-stable, and because most times it’s easier and more interesting to cook for myself, I learned a lot of insanely cheap, yummy, and healthy foods to cook. I just bought 8 lb of Desi chickpeas and 20 lbs of basmati rice – enough to feed the fucking Artesh for a year – for about $30 (and I wasn’t trying to penny-pinch). The spices, herbs, sauces, oil, nuts, etc. that go into making that, meanwhile, barely even factor in cost-wise.

    Even with a non-plant-based diet, you’ll find cooking staples like chicken at home saves you a fuckload of money.



  • I would add that making ignorance of the law a valid excuse would be a logistical farce. Mens rea is a real thing that’s examined during a criminal trial. The defendant’s state of mind can absolutely factor into their sentence or even whether they’re convicted at all; “ignorance of the law is not an excuse”, ignorantia juris non excusat, even has some exceptions under US law. But you could not possibly for every crime burden the prosecution with proving that the defendant 1) committed the act 2) intended to commit the act, and now 3) knew the act they were committing was a crime. Mens rea, while necessary in a fair system, is hard enough; condition (3) would make it functionally impossible to convict anyone who didn’t a) explicitly refer to what they were doing as a crime, b) receive a formal education in the relevant area of law, or c) commit a crime literally everyone is expected to know like murder or armed robbery.


  • I mean use of the CLI on Linux generally. I used “terminal” vaguely because the original comment used it vaguely. “Down pat” is to say that I’m perfectly comfortable with it, namely that the course taught me:

    • How to execute programs from the shell (and interrupt execution/kill processes).
    • How to navigate and alter the filesystem, search for files and their contents, etc.
    • How to install, remove, and configure software.
    • How to set aliases.
    • How to write shell scripts.
    • How to edit files (although 99% of the time this is useless; I’ll just use something like Kate instead).
    • How to parse and interpret program output.
    • How to read man pages.
    • Generally how to do anything I couldn’t/wouldn’t prefer to do from a GUI instead.

    I use the shell vastly more than 99.99% of people and haven’t had a problem with or changed how I interact with it since that course; that to me is “down pat” for the terminal itself. I don’t care if I don’t know every application and flag ever made, because that’s not the point – like knowing how to use a GUI doesn’t mean you’ve memorized all GUI software, just that you know how to interpret the design language of and successfully use new GUI software. If I need to do something my current tools can’t, I can just search for the right program and use the man page to quickly write a command.

    Meanwhile, with something like LibreOffice Calc, which I understand is much less feature-rich than the industry standard Excel, I don’t just learn about new functions like CORREL(), akin to what I said before about learning new CLI applications; I fundamentally learn how to create and edit spreadsheets more quickly. In Impress, I still learn how to make presentations more appealing, more readable, etc. Basically things that aren’t just rote memorization of gadgets that I could look up at any time. That’s what sets it apart to me – the fact that anything I don’t already know about the Linux terminal is present in readily available reference material and better off not memorized.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldThe Terminal
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    27 days ago

    Well yeah, because I did. What else is there? I knew how to do everything I would ever need to do in the Linux command line. Anything I need to do beyond fundamental interactions, what else do I need to know besides how to 1) find a relevant CLI application and 2) read the man page to write a command? I even knew how to write basic shell scripts, which I would argue goes beyond “using the command line” and strays into “using a scripting language”. After that course, I never struggled with the Linux CLI because it taught me how to reason about it; is there a problem with that statement?

    Is the timeframe and the setting the problem? Because I’m talking about going from never having used Linux or a CLI to being fluent with both, and the class was still a blowoff.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldThe Terminal
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    27 days ago

    I know you already pointed out your sample is heavily biased, but to reiterate: macOS users you know predominantly from computer science and adjacent engineering fields are a very skewed sample. You can say that sprinkling terminal usage into a middle school computer literacy class is worthwhile, and I might even agree. But to treat it as anything more than something used by enthusiasts, programmers, IT professionals, scientists (on a very basic level that can be learned in 10 minutes), teenagers trying to look badass, and the one-in-a-million frustrated “normie” user who falls into it through some troubleshooting/game modding/etc. tutorial simply isn’t realistic.

    Regarding ping: what good is it going to do a normal user who doesn’t understand basic networking? It can rarely tell me basic useful information, like that my DNS is fucked up (can’t get to websites but can ping). For normal users it’ll just tell them the Internet isn’t working, which they probably already figured out, but how do they resolve it? Pictured: a normal user who can use ping figuring out their Internet isn’t working. To make something like ping meaningfully useful, you need to teach them basic Layer 3 concepts too, which is fine, but that’s not a terminal skill – that’s networking skills with a trivial terminal command stapled on.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldThe Terminal
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    27 days ago

    Anyone can learn to use an office suite on their own in very little time

    Okay, should I say the same about a terminal then? I took a single-semester Linux course and had the terminal down pat. Meanwhile, I grew up learning how to use an office suite day in and day out in K–12 and still find new ways to improve my workflow in one.

    so there’s no reason to teach it

    Besides the fact that it’s a cornerstore of modern society that any white-collar professional will routinely have to work with, sure. (If you want to pull the “we shouldn’t be turning our kids into workers” card for why teaching them basic job skills is bad, things like word processing and spreadsheets are/can be very useful outside of industry too.)

    Being able to use the command line is a valuable skill that makes you a way better computer user no matter what you’re doing

    Okay, like… kind of? It gives you a better mindset, but in terms of a specific application, unless you’re in a niche part of industry or have niche interests, you will never in your life need to touch the terminal at this point. You will be just fine. Even as a power user, there are few problems normal users would face where I look at the terminal and see a shortcut to something that would be tedious in the GUI – and fuck knows most people use their desktop OS less than I do if they even have one anymore.

    and it’s one that a lot of people are missing these days.

    Because as noted, no major OS except desktop Linux makes you interact with the terminal in any meaningful way – and even desktop Linux is changing that because designers understand that, while the terminal is a godsend for power users, everyday users have no compelling reason to deal with it.

    I don’t think you can really say you know how to use a computer if you can only use it in the very specific ways someone happens to have made a gui for

    This is elitist bullshit that isn’t reflected in the real world. It’s not 1992 anymore. If people can efficiently complete the workflows they need via a GUI and never touch the terminal, then good for them; they know how to use a computer. This comment is so profoundly out-of-touch with how most actual humans live their lives that I feel like I’ve tripped and fallen into another reality.


  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldtolinuxmemes@lemmy.worldThe Terminal
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    27 days ago

    Okay, but, like… No? How delusional do you have to be to think something you never have to touch in Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android (and probably less and less going forward in desktop Linux, an already extremely niche OS) is more important than learning how to use a word processor, make presentations, or work with spreadsheets? (Microsoft Office specifically is used because it’s the industry standard as part of a vicious cycle, but not the school’s fault or problem). Do you, like, exist in the real world outside a very specific industry/set of interests?






  • No average user would be able to look up what commands to run? Because newsflash: unlike Windows, searching for a common problem on Linux normally turns up a solution written by a human who knows what they’re talking about.

    “Windows doesn’t even have basic package management like every Unix-like OS does so you don’t have to individually update applications and go find them on the Internet, but this one edge case on Linux requires like two terminal commands (the sudo -i is totally superfluous if you just put sudo in front of commands) instead of installing an entire separate tool you’ll ever use one time like on Windows and which an average user wouldn’t even know exists. Therefore Linux is more complicated.”

    Incidentally, here’s what Microsoft officially recommends for the “average user” regarding PowerToys:

    It’s insane how nose-blind Windows users are to how user-unfriendly their OS is.




  • I didn’t “think I got you”; I was leading into something: what was it about Photopea prior to this that made them fundamentally different from Digikam, Slackware, and discuss.tchncs? I’ve donated to Lemmy too and various other FOSS projects, so I authentically appreciate that your donations strengthened that interconnected ecosystem.

    You clearly got plenty of use out of them, indicating how integral this apparently was to your workflow. You don’t show any indication you had problems with the Photopea maintainer’s actions or attitude before this. Was it the fact that Photopea isn’t FOSS? I’d agree it’s a huge difference, but at the same time, they’re basically free as in beer, and you weren’t just idly not paying them; you were actively, recurrently using their finite resources. Wouldn’t you agree that, even if you don’t want to give money to proprietary software (assuming again that’s the reason), they at least deserve to break even? If so, you could’ve just whitelisted them on uBO. But I also resent digital advertising for ethical reasons and because it’s a vector for malware, so I’d understand not wanting to turn off uBO and not wanting to give €5/month in compensation. But then it looks like, despite being plenty familiar with the FOSS ecosystem, you never gave it a fair shake. You just called GIMP icky and didn’t do the bare minimum level of searching that’d tell you ImageMagick exists for batch edits. So you weren’t willing to pay for the ad-free subscription (fair in isolation), you weren’t willing to turn off ads (fair in isolation), and you weren’t willing to try something else (fair in isolation), and thus you were just draining their money to your own ends (not fair).

    So realistically, it sounds like you were never going to support the Photopea maintainer regardless of what they did or how they acted, and now that they’ve cut you off from using their service for free, you’re acting like this is some kind of principled stance rather than being a lazy, entitled cheapskate.


  • I am not financially supporting developers who act like this.

    Are you financially supporting literally any developers at all? You made it clear you were not paying for a Photopea subscription and were using uBO, so there’s not a carrot or a stick here for the maintainer of Photopea (I guess there’s a very tiny carrot for losing you as a user in that you’re not using their resources). I mean that as a genuine question, by the way:

    • What software that you use have you paid for and/or donated to?
    • Was it because you had to, or because you felt strongly that they deserved compensation for their work?
    • Did you ever at any point stop giving said software maintainer money when you felt they were no longer acting in a way that comports with your standards?

  • I don’t really understand why you’re using ad-supported proprietary software that you’ve never paid a dime for (or given a dime to, since you use uBO), claiming that you don’t use GIMP or Krita instead because the former “is terrible” and the latter isn’t meant for cropping (a trivial, fundamental feature of the software), and then acting entitled to use the Photopea author’s own personal work with zero compensation. So you have free alternatives (as in beer and as in freedom), refuse to do even the bare minimum to learn how to use them, and then go full “you took my only food; now I’m gonna starve” when Photopea’s author stops you from using their own site/web app for free that they run and maintain at their own expense.

    If anything, you seem entitled and willfully ignorant, and I say that from the perspective of someone who resents digital advertising and proprietary software.