Quoting: GuestEnterprise A selling your private data is not going to join Enterprise B selling your private data. I do not understand where the good news is here.

Who do Discord currently sell your data to?

Also, I was not of the impression that Discord track all that much, which is the exact opposite of Microsoft, who infamously track virtually everything you do on "your" computer... Am I wrong?

Quoting: scaineFor me, MS and Apple are a hard no. Amazon is an avoid if possible (which is hard) and Google is an air of resignation - I'm too invested in their infrastructure now, so I accept it for convenience sake. If they ever cross a line, I'll reconsider, but it would difficult to give up... well, nearly everything - Gmail, Calendar, Android, Youtube mainly, but a host of other services too, like Calendar, some light Drive use, even DNS on my router. Google are everywhere.

Apple is a hard "no", but Google is okay?

You do realize that Google infamously harvests waaaaaaaaay more data than what Apple has ever harvested, right? And pretty much all of their (Google's) stuff can be replaced with privacy-friendly alternatives that are just as good - if not better - than what Google currently offer...

Quoting: GuestYes, that’s me

Outside of a couple small scale forums and IRC channels, most of my communication means are self-hosted. On a server that is physically under my full control.

I'd do this if I had the money and infrastructure to do so... But I'm in Australia and we use the NBN, which is slow and unreliable at the best of times, not to mention the cost involved in such a goal.

Like you though, I have taken steps to gain more control over my stuff... Most of my online stuff is run via my own domains on shared hosting, I don't have social media accounts (I have a Discord account, but don't really use it) and there's not a whole lot of forums I use.

Someday, I'd like to move to fully self-hosting everything, though I probably wouldn't have said server located in Australia, because we're basically China of the Western World (i.e. a "surveillance state").

Quoting: GuestI think YouTube is the only Google service I use. And since it is only to follow a couple low-activity channels, I do not go there every day.

But you don't even need an account for this... I mostly use Odysee - which is fantastic, by the way - but I do use YouTube for a few channels (mostly when watching something on GamingonLinux or on the TV whilst eating dinner), without a Google account.

There's a whole lotta people making the jump to Odysee these days, too... Mostly people that cross-post (i.e. post their content to both Odysee and YouTube), but still, it's a step in the right direction.

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Do the NVIDIA drivers support ray-tracing yet?

I nearly bought a version of my existing laptop with a ray-tracing graphics card, but the price-jump was pretty big over what I have now, so I put it off until I upgrade next... I haven't looked into ray-tracing too much, in part because I'm lazy and do most of my gaming on my Sony PlayStation 4 Pro / Nintendo Switch, but from what I understand, it makes quite a big difference.

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Quoting: CatKillerI'm not sure what you mean by this. Kubuntu and KDE Neon are both prominent Ubuntu-based distros that use KDE. Kubuntu is one of the Ubuntu flavours, so it follows Ubuntu's release model, and KDE Neon is from the KDE project, putting the latest KDE release on an LTS Ubuntu base. It's easy enough to fire up a live USB of either to see if it's the kind of thing you might be interested in.

I forgot about Kubuntu and with regards to the latter, I was confusing it with Plasma... #ThatGuy

I probably wouldn't make the jump on my "daily driver" until the next LTS release if I was impressed by it, but I'll definitely consider putting it on my Surface GO, because the video I watched reckons KDE is pretty customizable and despite what most people seem to think, GNOME is garbage on a touchscreen (at least in my opinion).

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Quoting: DorritYeah, what Linux needs is yet another desktop environment.

At least they're supposedly listening to the feedback from their users... Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what both the GNOME Project and Canonical have done, ever.

And have you used Pop!_OS?

I haven't used it since the very first (stable) version and having just installed it on my Microsoft Surface GO the other day, I was pleasantly surprised... Next to "vanilla" Ubuntu (which I use on my "daily driver"), Pop!_OS is prettier, it seems to have slightly better performance and just seems to be a more "refined" Ubuntu in all the right ways.

The only reason I gave away Pop!_OS before was because it was basically just a "reskinned" Ubuntu - that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, and there's a good chance I'll make the change on my "daily driver" with the next LTS release... I plan to take it for a "proper" spin on a "spare computer tomorrow (my Surface GO is mostly for reading eBooks, eComics and eMagazines).

Quoting: KohlyKohlThey should just switch to KDE and provide their own theme...

It's funny you say this, because I just watched a video on LBRY / Odysee about KDE, and the content producer spoke pretty highly of KDE... I haven't used KDE since back when Red Hat Linux was still a thing (outside of the corporate world) and I'd be willing to give it a whirl - but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of "mainstream" distros using it (particularly in the Debian / Ubuntu-based world), and I'm too lazy to muck around with it too much.

I hate GNOME, but it "just works"... So I'll stick with it, for now. lol

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Quoting: slaapliedjeIRC will always be around! Though it doesn't exactly have voice / video.

Yeah, but like the few "old" chat / IM services still around, it's a pretty niche thing these days...

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...

I'm not sure this is actually correct, or at least, entirely correct. I mean, sure, lots of people do use Discord for gaming voice chat, don't get me wrong, but it's also much more than that: it's basically a place for lots of communities to hang out and asynchronously communicate.

Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat...

If Discord were just voice chat then yes, it'd be relatively simple to replace with any of the other alternatives out there (other than the whole "network effect" and getting everyone to settle on an alternative), but it's really a lot more than that for some people and I don't know, off the top of my head, of a replacement that exactly covers all its use cases. That's the real issue for people looking for alternatives.

Well that's the thing - those of us that have been around (online) for a while will remember the days of ICQ / AIM / IRC / MSN Chat / Yahoo! Chat / whatever, when everyone used such services heavily... Then almost overnight, they died (largely the big companies got all worried about their legal liabilities, due to idiots hitting-up kids in chat).

Granted some of these services are still around, but they're ghost towns and the few users they still have are almost always bots, scammers or people who simply refuse to give in to changing trends. The same can be said of the "alternatives" to these early chat services, that have popped-up over the years.

I always thought that closing all these chat services en-masse was a dumb idea and I think a great big void was left... In my opinion, Discord has gone some way to filling that void for many people.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeHere's something I find hilarious about this... everyone uses Discord for gaming voice chat... Steam actually has built in voice chat... Is there any reason why people don't use it? (Granted I know not everyone here uses Steam, but it's a good chance that if you are a gamer, you have Steam installed).

Doesn't Steam hold the biggest marketshare for PC gaming? That makes the fact that it's so under-used even more ludicrous...

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Quoting: tomaszgWell, time to look for alternatives.

I'll be doing the same, though I will wait until any such takeover has been confirmed through an official source... Admitedly, I don't use Discord all that much; but I'm still not about to continue using it under Microsoft's stewardship - I value my privacy.

Quoting: tomaszgBTW. I'm surprised so few projects decided to move away from Github...

This.

Microsoft shamelessly makes no secret of the fact that it places absolutely no value on privacy whatsoever... Yet all of these Open Source projects - many of which claim to value privacy - continue to indirectly support Microsoft and its culture.

Quoting: Whitewolfe80Why microsoft didnt change it they just pumped funding into the backend and increased bandwidth. So far they havent changed anything really its still github

That may be so... Except that it is now owned by one of the biggest anti-privacy (tech) companies in the world.

Some people - disappointingly, a (very small) minority in the world - place value on privacy.

Quoting: GuestAnother account to delete... What's next? Will they buy my country too?

Well they basically "bought" mine (Australia)... Open Source is a dirty word in my country, and everybody - from the smallest business you can find, right up to just about every educational and Government body - is obsessed with Microsoft products; in many cases, they even go as far as officially prohibiting the use of Open Source software (in policy, not legislation / law).

Even in the midst of all this "hoo ha" over Google "pulling out of Australia" just recently... The default answer was automatically "Microsoft"; "Open Source" didn't even enter the conversation, despite the fact that such a change would (rather obviously!) be trading one dictatorship for another.

Quoting: RoosterFortunately there are more than enough good alternatives for Discord, in case they screw it up.

Any particular suggestions?

Admittedly, I don't use Discord very much - but it does have quite a following, and it seems to be pretty polished.

Quoting: The_AquabatI bet this will come with a new EULA, "all your rights belong to us".

☝ Don't forget your first-born, too!

Quoting: Loftyit's capitalism 101. Be the shark that eats / hoards (acquires) all the growing smaller fish until there is no other fish left in the ocean but just one giant shark, eventually and inevitably a crisis occurs, there is not enough food for the rest of the fish to eat. The shark gets to swim to the government boat and ask for a free food bail out. whilst all the everyday mino fish get nothing when they have nothing left to eat because the big shark consolidated and consumed it all and there is nowhere else to find food (work)

the little fish are told to pull themselves up by their boot straps but they don't even wear shoes.

So basically... A "typical" day in Australia, then?

Quoting: Guestits amazing that their love for linux so far has been one sided. sided to microsofts best interest of course. everything has been centered around making linux things run smoother, and better on windows. to attract linux developers, to windows, to develop their linux things, on windows. none of it has actually benefited linux at all.

if microsoft truly loved linux like they claim, they would start opening up some important stuff. like directx. contribute to wine, etc. if they actively contributed to wine, i would feel far more comfortable with their work on WSL for example.

This says it all... Sure, Microsoft have contributed things "here and there" - but it's only ever been the bare minimum, so they or their supporters can dust their hands and say "See? Microsoft contributes back to the Open Source Community!"

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Quoting: Philadelphus

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyFYI, the "In-Dome Buildings Pack" is already available (the article above implies it's coming soon)

I believe it wasn't available at the time the article was written (I looked), but released a scant day or two later.

I figured that, but I posed the links in hope they would update the article with the direct links, now that it is actually available...

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FYI, the "In-Dome Buildings Pack" is already available (the article above implies it's coming soon), and you can get it over here:
https://www.gog.com/game/surviving_mars_indome_buildings_pack

Or if you're more of a "Steam" kinda guy / girl:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1497160/Surviving_Mars_InDome_Buildings_Pack/

If you're a "First Colony Edition" owner, you will need to pay extra for this one (all the DLC is usually free for "First Colony Edition" owners), though... At least on GOG.com you do; I'm assuming it's the same for Steam.

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