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Quoting: CaldathrasIn fact, I've noticed that fewer and fewer products actually have Amazon as a seller anymore. Most items are sold by marketplace sellers, often as "fulfilled by Amazon". Their software often promotes the marketplace item over their own (which is, admittedly, more expensive). This kind of suggests that they are in fact facilitating and benefitting small business.

To add to what's already been said: Amazon definitely does not benefit small businesses. They take a 15% cut of all sales, which is fine for companies like Apple that build obscene margins into their products, but is half or more of the profit on many physical goods. If you add in "fulfilled by Amazon", that brings even more Amazon fees for the seller, as they charge for warehousing the products, moving them between warehouses, etc., even if the product never sells. They will even charge for destroying the product, if they decide they don't want to sell it for you (all at their discretion). It all revolves around Amazon maximizing their profit, not supporting third party sellers.

On top of all that: Amazon has very strict rules about customers; they make it very clear that the customers belong to Amazon, not to the actual seller of the products. If the seller includes any kind of marketing material in the shipping box or in customer communications ("hey, check out our other great products on www.ournicesite.com"), Amazon revokes their ability to sell. They funnel all emails through their own platform, so they can snoop for such things - sellers do not get actual email addresses.

Edit: So why does anyone sell at Amazon? Because that's where so many customers go first. Comparison shopping sites (PriceGrabber, Shopzilla, and so on) used to be a thing, but between Amazon and Google they got wiped out. Google had free product listings until all the comparison shopping sites were gone, then they started charging for them. They had big plans to be more of a shopping front-end, but abandoned it when they realized too many people just went to Amazon instead. So the current situation is partly Google's fault, but their market manipulation ended up benefiting Amazon more than it did them.

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Quoting: GustyGhostForecasting a drop back to the high 3~% range next month. This kind of sudden change certainly looks anomalous along the greater trend. Glad to be a part of this growth though. 🐧

You were wrong. Only a drop to 4.53% occured.

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• Implementing Factory Reset Functionality for KDE Linux

I have asked for this for AGES. This should just be standard in every Linux! I shouldn't need to reach for a separate usb flashdrive to fix things! It's not like the concept is new - PopOS has been doing it for ages, they even have a whole GUI to make sure the recovery drive uses the most up-to-date ISO.

I just want a nice GUI to soft reset settings and packages without touching the rest of my files, with an option for a more thorough factory reset, and ideally could maybe work as a recovery environment but we can talk about improvements after the basics been implemented.

It still frustrates me that immutable OS would have all these fancy protections and not have, like, the most simple fallback option that every other OS have, of which has been implemented on Linux on a non-immutable place, despite immutable OS theoretically already having an entire image of the system.

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy year of the Linux desktop was somewhere around 2000, I can't remember exactly. The Linux desktop sucked really hard back then, but so did Windows 98, so.

That would be more in line with my opinion. I'd say the year when a normal Linux desktop as daily driver was viable. I switched in 2002 and it was viable for a least a little while before that.

I'm gonna split the difference with you guys and say 2001, cause that's when I started using Linux regularly for the first time. I dual-booted, but I did everything but gaming (and a few other things) in Linux.

Quoting: LinuxwarperGoogle is increasingly a great example of a company that used open source like a cheap prostitute, excuse my vulgarity, and now they are shutting down Android.

One could also argue the same thing with Apple and macOS. As at the start, Apple were touting the open source origins of Mac OS X.

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Quoting: elmapul"Curiously, the malware was designed to steal passwords and security keys but not just that - it had a special payload if it detected you're in Israel where it would attempt to play a loud siren and wipe your filesystem. Ouch."

wich make it obvious who is behind that shit, the list of suspects is quite small, i mean, nations that could be behind that

Food for thought - it could have been Israel in an attempt to garner support in a rather Israel-hostile world. Like when, and there have been tons of cases, a Jew paints a swastika on their car/house/dorm door in an attempt to garner sympathy.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Linux_Rocksbut_why.gif

Imagine Baby Shark, for example, had been stuck in a significant chunk of all films, TV programs and computer games for 75 years because it's "funny." How would you feel the next time you heard Baby Shark?

I had to Google Baby Shark. I guess this is like how my one friend hates "DJ Airhorn" or whatever. lol

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Quoting: Linux_Rocksbut_why.gif

Imagine Baby Shark, for example, had been stuck in a significant chunk of all films, TV programs and computer games for 75 years because it's "funny." How would you feel the next time you heard Baby Shark?

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Quoting: CatKillerI really hate the Wilhelm scream. Kudos to Valve for the little joke, but I really hate the Wilhelm scream.

but_why.gif

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I backed Mina the Hollower on Kickstarter, but I'm getting the Switch 2 version. lol

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Quoting: CatKillerAlso of note for the Germany/KDE connection is [Blue Systems.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems)

Also, Matthias Ettrich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Ettrich, founder of the KDE project) is german 😊

Here's a transcription of the original announcement:
https://kde.org/announcements/announcement/

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Yeah the name is a bit odd but I don't think calling it the INDEX 2 would work either since the Index was very different to how it worked and people would certainly get the requirements mixed up. (like needing PC, tether and tracking stations)

Even tho the Frame is still technically needing a PC. It has been said it should be able to play Quest-3 tier games no problems standalone if you can install the APK.

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Hopefully soke communitty made tools pop up to change it to a Portal 2 turret.
Need mine to go "I'm different!" Every couple drops.
Really surprised they never leaned on customizability on the noises for the orignal Steam Controller and now SC2
Steam deck we already got plenty.

Wish i coulda grabbed a controller before but eh wait till the stock is back.

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Now Valve just needs to connect this to the Steam Achievements page for number of times controller dropped.

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Quoting: LoudTechieClearly unfinished and unprofessional
Explained: rm -rf / really?
It's  for driveLetter in {1}[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEVGHIJPLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]; do dd if=/sd$driveLetter of=/dev/null bs=1M status=progress; done

Got your dd parameters backwards 😁

if = input file
of = output file

So, your command reads the drives and does nothing with it.

I won't post a corrected line just to avoid someone copy&paste'ing it by mistake 😝

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Quoting: elmapulthe list of suspects is quite small

Did you leave out a sarcasm tag?

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Quoting: Stellaso much time and effort went into distro packages that could've been used to make the flatpak better😫

The entire point to their improvements is so you DON'T have to depend on distro packaging.. simply download their package and never have to manually update it or reinstall it. and TBF the vast majority of us refuse to use flatpak /snap when there is a perfectly fine native package

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: F.UltraBut companies making stuff without giving them money would be breaking trademark law and thus open to be sued by HDMI Forum,

Only if you use their trademarks - the logo and the name. Otherwise you're in the clear on that front. Patents and contractual obligations are a different matter, obviously, but if you don't use someone's trademarks then you have no liability for using their trademarks.

Yes but how do you sell and market a HDMI product without saying that it is a HDMI product ;) so there is no way around breaking trademark here if you are not licensed. Simply trying to sell "video cable" will probably not get you customers, and that every single noname cable on AliExpress is clearly labeled as HDMI informs me that the low flyby firms agrees :)

Quoting: CatKillerNo, you also have to pay for access to the spec just as access to the spec. That's the particular part that they were sniffy about AMD putting in an open source implementation. And that was a change for 2.1 that was different to earlier versions, AFAIK.

What I meant was that you as a manufacturer are not really interested in the specs, you are interested in the rights to sell your stuff as HDMI-labelled. Aka the specs are just a means to get to the real end, nice to have but not mandatory. The open source alternative drives that where released just before this from a lone dev shows that access to specs isn't necessary at all, and perhaps that indeed was the signal that HDMI Forum needed to see to understand, who knows.

edit: but yes I agree that my problem is that I am trying to look at this rationally on what the harms and the non harms is in reality for HDMI Forum, which is not necessarily the same as them having the same understanding. Most of the members there probably don't even know what open source really is (I mean digging through the AMD sources to understand how the HDMI specs works is way way more labour intensive than simply sitting with a digital oscilloscope and do measurements on the actual pins.

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Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: F.UltraPayment was never the issue though and AMD is and have been for years a HDMI licensee. There is nothing with these patches that would or could make HDMI Forum not get payed exactly what they where payed before.

I think the logic (from an artificial scarcity hoarding viewpoint) was that if they didn't keep the spec super secret, companies could just make stuff without giving them money. Which they didn't like the sound of. But, as you say, you still need to give them money (and AMD did) for the compliance tests and the sticker, and that's where the prestige is. "Proper" hardware companies will still give them money to remain "proper," and fly-by-night won't-conform-to-the-spec companies weren't going to give them money either way.

But companies making stuff without giving them money would be breaking trademark law and thus open to be sued by HDMI Forum, aka the reason that you pay for the specs is not to get access to the specs but to be allowed to sell products labelled with HDMI. And the fee for the specs are minuscule, only $10k per year (or $5k for low volume manufacturers), the real money is the per sold item royalty (up to $0.2 for high volume and flat $1 for low volume) since that times millions of devices per year adds up quite significantly.

And fly-by-night would not be affected by open drivers since they already have the specs (they are ofc widely spread in China for free). But I guess that some of the members where afraid of that and others have now countered, we simply don't know who it was since all 80+ companies have voting rights (and their votes are not made public).

Trademark law is weak compared to what the HDMI forum wields to keep others from releasing HDMI compatible stuff.
I'm talking copyright, contract law and patent.

No it is only trademark, there is nothing to copyright (aka you releasing a HDMI product that is not licensed cannot breach copyright) and the patents in HDMI only covers things like how cables and connectors are constructed not the things that the driver implements. And trademark is not weak here since if you want to sell a cable the end user wants to know that it is HDMI compatible so you have to mark it as HDMI somewhere and the second you do without a license then you are breaching trademark.

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Also of note for the Germany/KDE connection is [Blue Systems.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Systems)

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wait this game was not from ubisoft?

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"Curiously, the malware was designed to steal passwords and security keys but not just that - it had a special payload if it detected you're in Israel where it would attempt to play a loud siren and wipe your filesystem. Ouch."

wich make it obvious who is behind that shit, the list of suspects is quite small, i mean, nations that could be behind that

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy year of the Linux desktop was somewhere around 2000, I can't remember exactly. The Linux desktop sucked really hard back then, but so did Windows 98, so.

That would be more in line with my opinion. I'd say the year when a normal Linux desktop as daily driver was viable. I switched in 2002 and it was viable for a least a little while before that.

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I really hate the Wilhelm scream. Kudos to Valve for the little joke, but I really hate the Wilhelm scream.

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Quoting: F.UltraBut companies making stuff without giving them money would be breaking trademark law and thus open to be sued by HDMI Forum,

Only if you use their trademarks - the logo and the name. Otherwise you're in the clear on that front. Patents and contractual obligations are a different matter, obviously, but if you don't use someone's trademarks then you have no liability for using their trademarks.

aka the reason that you pay for the specs is not to get access to the specs

No, you also have to pay for access to the spec just as access to the spec. That's the particular part that they were sniffy about AMD putting in an open source implementation. And that was a change for 2.1 that was different to earlier versions, AFAIK.

And the fee for the specs are minuscule, only $10k per year (or $5k for low volume manufacturers), the real money is the per sold item royalty (up to $0.2 for high volume and flat $1 for low volume) since that times millions of devices per year adds up quite significantly.

Sure, and their fear was that people would crib the spec from AMD's driver, and make anonymous actually-compliant devices without paying the tithe.

And fly-by-night would not be affected by open drivers since they already have the specs (they are ofc widely spread in China for free). But I guess that some of the members where afraid of that and others have now countered, we simply don't know who it was since all 80+ companies have voting rights (and their votes are not made public).

For sure. Hey, you thought their position was silly, I thought their position was silly, device makers, consumers, journalists all thought their position was silly. Hopefully now they've also realised that their position was silly. The likely outcome from them holding their silly position was that DisplayPort and older versions of HDMI become more attractive.

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Problem I see with the statement "Year of Linux" is that people dont consider the negatives of increased userbase. Users can also be a detriment. Ideally you would have just enough percentage to ensure platform is supported and doesn't get neglected, whether that be 5% or 40% is irrelevant. The problem with users is that many people are not principled like the many individuals who make decent, if not good platforms, like Linux, Steam and GOG what they are. Take Tolkien estate, the grandchildren/family of Tolkien gave rights to Lord of Rings to Amazon. Amazon, or people who were given privilege (writers and showrunners), butchered the legacy of Tolkien. Similar thing can happen to Linux if enough people are careless and not proactive in weeding out threats, small as they may be (e.g age verification). Forks forks forks and open source..DOES NOT matter; forking a project is a big burden and the ecosystem of developers who revolve around a project won't be switching over night to the new project. Google is increasingly a great example of a company that used open source like a cheap prostitute, excuse my vulgarity, and now they are shutting down Android. Not only the platform itself but they are adding ReCaptcha code to ensure its even harder to deGoogle. I recently found out a service I used, that had website, moved over to an app. Removed the website option, and the app? It uses Google Play services. EU is somewhat ignorant of Google and how they trap users from not being able to move away from them.

And Discord..while good with support have ties to Palanthir, a citizen surveillance company who helps ICE agents in US. I wouldn't bet on that that company is all about moral good. So in my eyes Discord is an issue, one we have to tolerate more than accept. But we should not forget about values of Linux and work to uphold them, where possible and reasonable. And if you look past that, they are known to have telemetry which is an anti user feature.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI don't think I even knew 4 nm was a thing yet.

My Zen 5 AMD CPU is built on a 4 nm process, but 3 nm is also a thing these days.

And the usual caveat applies: this number is a meaningless marketing denomination, somewhat related to transistor density (usually expressed in millions of transistors per square mm), but not only. These days, it mostly means going 3D instead of planar: FinFET, GAAFET, maybe even vertical nanowires, etc. It can also just reflect the "advancement": GAA is not necessarily denser than FinFET, but offers lower leakage & faster response times.

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This ist so dumb, I love everything about it 😂

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Well, there are at least [two](https://www.pcgamer.com/software/linux/im-brave-enough-to-say-it-linux-is-good-now-and-if-you-want-to-feel-like-you-actually-own-your-pc-make-2026-the-year-of-linux-on-your-desktop/) [editors](https://www.pcgamer.com/software/linux/ive-spent-30-years-with-microsoft-but-linux-and-pop-os-might-have-converted-me/) at PC Gamer who've switched in the last five months alone, so who knows where we're going? 🙂

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I just want to buy the original again... But strangely, they never sell it; only Doom.

Sure, I've almost certainly got a copy or two of this around here somewhere - but it would be nice to have a 'prepackaged' version from GOG.com or Steam.

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That is hilarious. 😆

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