I know the Manjaro team has made some questionable decisions but I don't see them as deal breakers (at least so far). I'm still using Manjaro, I absolutely love it and it's been over 6 years already. Is thanks to Manjaro that I stuck with Linux when I switched from Windows 10 years ago. Before, I hopped through Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu again, Sparky Linux, Fedora and finally Manjaro ♥️.

The stability of the system after updates has improved a ton. Several years ago it was expected that from time to time (every 3 months or so) the system could break after an update and you had to spend a couple hours digging through forums on how to fix things. I never had to reinstall the system, though; so nothing too serious. These days is at most, once every couple of years, so we're talking about a massive improvement in stability after updates, which was for me the most annoying thing about a rolling-release distro.

Anyway. I hope Manjaro sticks around and regain some popularity (and make better decisions in the future to avoid too much drama/backslash). I really love it and I would only consider abandon it for Endeavour, but so far, I'm pretty happy with Manjaro.

P.S.: Old topic, but I just wanted to give my honest opinion.

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I'm actually happy Stadia is dead... The whole concept of streaming games is inherently discriminatory to the majority of the world, which doesn't have good Internet connection. At least 2 entire continents are out of this business because of this.

Also, the idea of paying for a videogame that after some time is not going to be available... nope, not for me. That's another reason why I don't like Netflix and all these streaming services. I want to HAVE what I pay for, locally.

Hopefully, the business of truly owning what you pay for is coming back in the future.

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Hah, last night I was recomending a friend new to Linux to install the Heroic Games to be able to play Epic Store stuff and she coudln't log in... It turns out this was the problem. Funny mix of bad and good luck I guess, haha.

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I was hesitant to comment here saying that I'm not a fan of the art style, but reading the other comments, I see that it actually is a realatively common opinion. I mean, I'll definitely play it and I'm sure is going to be a good game, but yeah, the art style (and animation) is definitely not... popular.

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I started with Linux back in 2014, with Ubuntu (of course, that's what we all look for when we are young), switched from Ubuntu to Lubuntu a few times for about 2 years in an attemp to spice things up, but at the end, it didn't feel right... and then, very hesitantly, I tried Manjaro... And we've been happily together since then!... Yes, we've had some silly arguments and a couple full blown fights, but we've always have managed to solve things and I can confidently say that I can see us together for the rest of our lives.

I think the secret is to know what to expect, you gotta work with them, it's a team. Yes, you can try new things (Pipewire), but don't blame it on your distro if that new thing doesn't work... I haven't tried it because I want to wait until it's much more stable. My distro is more important than a Pipewire adventure!

In the meantime, I just cook something nice, put on my comfy clothes, relaxing music and enjoy my time with my beloved Manjaro, :)

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Oh... another couple of things to address other comments...

We can all agree that NFTs in today's incarnation are pretty useless...

But the idea is pretty good, the concept. It just need to evolve and mature for 5 - 10 more years.

Other people are mixing NFTs with the "play to earn" model of the new scammy games that are coming out... NFTs and cryptocurrencies are just the tool they are using to facilitate their activities... But there can be a "play to earn" game that uses NFTs and is not scammy... there are other "play to earn" models that don't rely on a quasi-ponzi schemes, is just a matter of time for those games to appear and hopefully the mainstream opinion will start to shift to a more positive view... It'll take time, though.

Now, for those who saw the other video and say cryptos and blockchain technology is garbage... do yourself a favor and watch this video to have "the other point of view":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1si5ZWLgy0

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Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: ertuqueque

Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: Pendragon

Quoting: ertuquequeAt the risk of being boring or even worse, making people angry, I'll try to give my take on NFTs, what they are and how they have been exploited for bad things today…

^^This... using tokens on a cryptographic block chain has a use.. .just not a scammy money-making scheme that it seems to be used as these days.

I ask this in all seriousness... what use do NFTs have that would (at minimum) offset the negatives inherent in their creation and add tangible value to those purchasing them? A piggyback question would be, for whatever answer there exists to the first question, how has that not been utilized in over a year?

Let me start with a couple of basics…

First of all, the simplest analogy I could come up to explain NFTs to a friend is: Imagine Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, but with a "skin" to make it "unique" or different from the other ones".

Now, following that same over-simplified concept, an NFT is a "coin" stored in a blockchain… So the usefulness of an NFT depends more or less on 3 things:

1.- What cryptocurrency is being used to "mint" that NFT. The more reliable and decentralized the cryptocurrency, the more reliable that NFT could (I stress the word COULD) be.
2.- Who is creating, promoting and delivering that NFT. Again, the more "serious" and reliable the entity, the more reliable the NFT.
3.- What's the purpose of that said NFT… An NFT could be as useless as a monkey avatar, or as useful as a certificate of ownership for a house!

So let's assume all 3 points are good:
1.- The NFT is based on something like the Ethereum blockchain (Bitcoin still doesn't support the creation of NFTs, not yet).
2.- The entity creating those NFTs is a well known real estate company that is fully compliant with all legal duties in the jurisdictions it operates.
3.- Those NFTs are digital certificates that are legally bonded to a real life property (let's say a house in Beverly Hills!).

As you can imagine, for NFTs to be really useful in real life, there needs to be a legal framework supporting them, which is something that as far as I know, doesn't exists anywhere yet… but I'm sure we'll get there; with NFTs, another iteration of the concept or something different, but still based in an open, decentralized, borderless and censorship resistant blockchain.

Today's iteration of NFTs are just attempts of using a really cool technology… in the most idiotic and incompetent way.

The technology just need to mature and evolve for another 5 to 10 years, hopefully people will come around and accept that is the future.

Yes... but you are still basing NFTs usefulness to crypto currency. Crypto currency, itself, still has not gained any true functionality and that has existed for over a decade of time. The oldest crypto, (to my knowledge, Bitcoin) hasn't even established itself as a truly legitimate currency. Those few businesses that even attempted to utilize Bitcoin for it's supposed purpose have stopped leaving, for the most part, shady dealers and investors. ~Functionally~, Bitcoin is dead (and I say this as someone who has capital in the crypto)

So, I come back to the original question I posed...
what use do NFTs have that would (at minimum) offset the negatives inherent in their creation and add tangible value to those purchasing them?

From what I've been able to gather, you cannot buy NFTs without crypto (a method of obtaining an item, I may add, that's not unlike the shady practice in video games of requiring players to purchase "premium currency" to obtain a skin, booster, or other game item that developers of such games have come out and said these items "have no inherent value"). For the "average" user, this would make the process of even obtaining an NFT not worth the hassle. If as person cannot see an item and make a simple transaction to obtain it, most won't. This leaves the majority of buyers as those who already owns crypto currency to begin with, or is technologically savvy enough and willing enough to deal with the conversion process. In short, this would be like telling someone in the US looking to purchase an item from, say, Aliexpress, that they first have to go to the bank and exchange their USD to Renminbi (I hope that's right. I had to look up the name of the money in China), and only THEN can they make a purchase on Aliexpress... most people wouldn't bother.

Hypothetically, NFTs *do* allow for the purchase of some form of unique digital asset that can be transferred between (as an example I'd been given before) digital worlds such as Meta's worlds, or online games, however, this would only work if all such developers collaborated developed their games to BE inter-compatible with such content, but, seeing as that would require all participating developers to share a marketplace, I seriously doubt multiple game/world development companies will collaborate in such a manner. Instead they'd keep to their own islands, making the digital NFT useless outside of said island (much like cosmetics and boosters are already, without the need of NFTs)

Furthermore, the NFTs do not prevent digital content from being copied, or deleted. All of the digital artwork, for example, can easily be duplicated with a simple "Save Image As", for the most part... one of the biggest black eyes to NFTs, in fact, it the "minting" of such tokens against artwork not owned or copyrighted by the NFT minter and without the knowledge of such owner. This damaging much, if any legitimacy of NFTs to most.

I do not understand using NFTs as receipts for owning land, or concert tickets, given the current mechanisms do that, more or less, work just fine without the power consumptive overhead of NFT generation or their comparatively long transaction times.

So, once again... I totally understand you believe in NFTs (or, it seems you do). What use does an NFT give that has tangible value that is either not possible at present, or that NFTs do better than current systems?

Ok, to answer some of your questions or comments, I'd have to give my personal opinions on cryptocurrencies or NFTs and that's something I don't do on public spaces, but I'll try to give a couple of points nonetheless...

First of all, cryptocurrencies are not (yet) mainstream because most 1st world countries don't have any significant problem with their money (yet) and 1st world countries' opinion are the ones that matter between themselves... You don't have to explain the usefulness of cryptocurrencies to an Argentinian, Venezuelan or a Greek, they very well know that cryptocurrencies are far better than their FIAT money and their government cannot seize it as they can do with USD and other FIAT money.

Now, on NFTs... NFTs are even more garbage if they don't rely in cryptocurrencies, that's what gives them at least the potential of credibility... If tomorrow someone like Ubisoft comes with their own "NFT" thing, which is not based in a true decentralized cryptocurrency, I wouldn't come close to those things even with a 10-foot long stick. There's A LOT of nuances in this statement, but it would be a rather long explanation, and as usual, it ends boiling down to personal opinions, experiences and the country/government where you've lived.

QuoteIn short, this would be like telling someone in the US looking to purchase an item from, say, Aliexpress, that they first have to go to the bank and exchange their USD to Renminbi (I hope that's right. I had to look up the name of the money in China), and only THEN can they make a purchase on Aliexpress... most people wouldn't bother.

Cryptocurrencies are not useful for EEUU citizens, nor UK folks or Canadian champs... They all have all the comfort in the world to transact money, buy goods and everything as long as it's between themselves (again, 1st world countries)... but if one day they need to send money to a Venezuelan, Argentinian, Philippine or Nigerian, by far the easiest way of doing so is with cryptocurrencies... For them, exchanging their FIAT money to other currencies is a daily thing, a necessary thing. With cryptocurrencies they can send money to their family from abroad with fees that can be just a couple of cents (an important thing if you can only afford to send 10 or 20 bucks), with just minutes or a few hours of delay and 24/7... So I repeat, cryptocurrencies are not for the 1st world... yet.

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Quoting: ObsidianBlk

Quoting: Pendragon

Quoting: ertuquequeAt the risk of being boring or even worse, making people angry, I'll try to give my take on NFTs, what they are and how they have been exploited for bad things today…

^^This... using tokens on a cryptographic block chain has a use.. .just not a scammy money-making scheme that it seems to be used as these days.

I ask this in all seriousness... what use do NFTs have that would (at minimum) offset the negatives inherent in their creation and add tangible value to those purchasing them? A piggyback question would be, for whatever answer there exists to the first question, how has that not been utilized in over a year?

Let me start with a couple of basics…

First of all, the simplest analogy I could come up to explain NFTs to a friend is: Imagine Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, but with a "skin" to make it "unique" or different from the other ones".

Now, following that same over-simplified concept, an NFT is a "coin" stored in a blockchain… So the usefulness of an NFT depends more or less on 3 things:

1.- What cryptocurrency is being used to "mint" that NFT. The more reliable and decentralized the cryptocurrency, the more reliable that NFT could (I stress the word COULD) be.
2.- Who is creating, promoting and delivering that NFT. Again, the more "serious" and reliable the entity, the more reliable the NFT.
3.- What's the purpose of that said NFT… An NFT could be as useless as a monkey avatar, or as useful as a certificate of ownership for a house!

So let's assume all 3 points are good:
1.- The NFT is based on something like the Ethereum blockchain (Bitcoin still doesn't support the creation of NFTs, not yet).
2.- The entity creating those NFTs is a well known real estate company that is fully compliant with all legal duties in the jurisdictions it operates.
3.- Those NFTs are digital certificates that are legally bonded to a real life property (let's say a house in Beverly Hills!).

As you can imagine, for NFTs to be really useful in real life, there needs to be a legal framework supporting them, which is something that as far as I know, doesn't exists anywhere yet… but I'm sure we'll get there; with NFTs, another iteration of the concept or something different, but still based in an open, decentralized, borderless and censorship resistant blockchain.

Today's iteration of NFTs are just attempts of using a really cool technology… in the most idiotic and incompetent way.

The technology just need to mature and evolve for another 5 to 10 years, hopefully people will come around and accept that is the future.

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At the risk of being boring or even worse, making people angry, I'll try to give my take on NFTs, what they are and how they have been exploited for bad things today…

I see NFTs as kitchen knifes, they can be pretty useful and a necessity in the kitchen, but they can be used as weapons and murder tools… Today's use of the NFT concept is being used only for bad and scammy things, but just like with cryptocurrencies, there are legitimate and useful things NTFs can serve for. I see it mainly as a "certificate of ownership", but this NFT must be in a reliable and secure blockchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin...). Creating videogame characters as NFTs is next to useless and is just a cash grab and scammy tactic under today's NFTs incarnation.

Just like when Bitcoin came out, a few years later, hundreds of scammy cryptocurrencies came out and very few were honest attempts to improve upon Bitcoin, over time, most of those scams died and the ecosystem evolved to weed out the bad apples… Of course, every few years a new trend becomes popular and a new wave of scams take advantage of it and we have to wait for those scams to die and led the ecosystem evolve (and the mainstream media and people get more familiar with how these things really work)… In 5 or 10 years, we'll have real and useful cases for NFTs just like today we have real and useful cases for cryptocurrencies (despite the misguided opinion of some people who get carried away by the compelling but wrong idea that cryptocurrencies are "scorching the planet".

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Wow, really kind gesture from that reader!... I would love to participate in that giveaway. Please, count me in!

My Steam id is in my profile

Thanks!

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