What I don’t understand, and maybe somebody can explain. If this is the case, why wouldn’t there be torrents of every paper whose authors would be genuinely delighted to share?

Not being skeptical here. I’m really curious.

And maybe there are, and they’re just not well advertised for understandable reasons?

Good call! I already did this… wasn’t sure if there was a better way other than installing steam on the vm and logging into my steam account to see which ones were installable. I suppose this doesn’t tell me how well they’ll play though does it… 🤔

A NAS is exactly what I’m considering doing with it. Good call!

I’m building a new PC because my current one is quite old. I won’t retire it though, and have yet to figure out what I’ll do with it (probably stick another Linux distro on it too 😆). I’m hoping to take advantage of having a brand new setup as an opportunity to be done with Windows completely.

Thanks for the distrochooser link. It was helpful and pointed me to Fedora 😀

I know a guy who used to run one of these businesses. He pivoted to something else because of the expenses, and hardware wasn’t the biggest. The monthly license fees for games are outrageous when you want to provide them to the public. Which means you have to constantly bet on which game’s demand will outweigh its cost on a monthly basis.

Before COVID, his place was very busy. I went many times and it was a lot of fun. His business was profitable, but because of the cost of games still not super successful.

I agree that the expense of paying someone to run the spot would quickly outpace the cost of hardware, but in his case he was running the whole thing himself. Even with nobody to pay for their time, his margins were never great.

Then COVID came along. That really killed it. No one wants to wear a VR headset that was just worn by a sweaty stranger minutes earlier during a pandemic.

A single remote that turns on my PC and TV

I’ve been using a MacBook for my work for years now (not voluntarily). I’ve always had a Windows desktop as my main machine. Your experience is completely different from mine. I’ve found that it’s easy to use the MacBook, so long as I want to do things the way Apple dictates. With Windows, I can discover and tweak my own processes to work the way I want to. With Apple I feel entirely boxed in.

All that being said, I think the whole discussion can get ridiculous. It shouldn’t bother anyone one way or the other which product someone prefers, and most of the time, it sounds like a Pepsi vs Coke argument to me.

Visiting my Dad in Toronto. Seeing the sights with my family for the first time. Just wrapping it all up and loving the overall pride vibe. Happy Pride to everyone! Spread love… I’m sending it right now!

Are we talking about eating the rich? I’m hungry.

Thanks! I appreciate it!

I’m one of those new members of this community. I have been welcomed in and am thankful for being given the benefit of the doubt. And I can appreciate how much work it must be to maintain a safe space for everyone.

I stopped using reddit, and uninstalled RIF from my devices this last Sunday, and very quickly realized how much time I was putting into doom scrolling and reading discussions that would end up making my blood boil. Shortly after that, I began to feel a sense of freedom, and I realized how much toxicity was on reddit from a new perspective.

On Tuesday I joined lemmy.world. I was intrigued by the concept of federated software, and was hopeful I could find a community of people there. At first, everything was great (I may have been only noticing the good), and I started to look for specific communities that I might have an active interest in. I also saw a post from beehaw, explaining what they’re about. I thought, “That’s neat”, but I didn’t pursue it at the time.

On Wednesday morning, I started to notice some of the things @alaza is referring to, and it was disheartening. I tried to ignore them, but once they were noticed, they couldn’t be unnoticed. I asked to join beehaw that same afternoon, and was accepted shortly thereafter. I look forward to growing with this community. And am grateful that one with these goals exist.

I’ll bet defederating was a tough decision, and one that wasn’t taken lightly. Having moved from one network to the next, only to find the same toxicity I was running away from in such a short time, I am thankful that careful decisions like these were made when necessary to preserve the spirit of acceptance and a safe space for everyone. I hope, as this software matures, that we can begin growing more than sheltering, but I can see how both will be necessary at times for our community itself to grow and thrive.

PS: I’ll inevitably use the wrong terms (community, instance, federated…). I’ve got a sliver of a grasp when to use each one. I’ll be cheerfully learning more about it going forward.