It’s not a safety issue. At least not a physical one. Depending on the game it could cause emotional problems. Rage, depression, addiction are all possible. You should consult a qualified mental health professional if you are, or become, concerned.

Oh. You meant safe for the computer…

The types of games you like to play shouldn’t be an issue even with truly ancient hardware (over 20 years old) so long as it was written for your OS/hardware combination. Compatibility layers (VMs, emulators and the like) can enable you to run software that is not compatible with your hardware or primary OS. As far as the hardware goes, depending on the game it may just not run, but worst case, the game may have bad frame rates rendering it effectively unplayable. Possibly leading to the above mental health issues.

In short, you’re unlikely to damage the computer.

Inside lemmy, yes. Pops up as a message.

Phone notifications would depend on your client. Voyager provides notifications for replies, but I’m not sure about others.

Depending on your instance, you may be able to get email notifications as well.

Throwing money at a problem works, when you are actually throwing money at the problem and not at a symptom.

For me currently, my car is a good example.

Problem: I need reliable transportation.

My car is almost old enough to vote here in the US and while it has been a reliable ride now things are starting to fail left and right. I could spend money replacing the parts that break as they break. Or I could simply replace the car.

My solution: Just replace the car. More expensive short term, but it’ll be cheaper and far less headache long term.

I won’t speak for anyone else, but Google has a 20 year track record of quietly breaking a fair chunk of promises they’ve made. Especially anything that gets in the way of them making a profit.

I remember back when their core tenet was “Don’t be evil”.

After a certain point, continuing to trust them, continuing to do business with them is consenting to be in an abusive relationship.

Not my jam, sorry.

Considering how bipolar we are as a nation, it could range anywhere from “eh, no one got hurt” to wiping everyone off the face of the planet.

“Hi, my name is…”

Admittedly, most of my friends are made at work, however it’s not impossible to meet people in other places. It really just boils down to going places other people are, smiling, and saying “Hello” or “Cool <whatever you find interesting about them>” to a lot of people. If you’re at a store and see someone struggling to load their car or truck, ask if you can give them a hand.

Probably will go no further than that most of the time, however, it might just make their day. Which they will remember. Might have been the first compliment they’ve gotten in a while. Might have been the first time anyone has offered to help them without asking anything in return.

Ever now and then, though, you’ll find yourself with a new friend with a common interest. Probably just for the moment, but if you see them again, say “hi” again. If you’ve got something you think is cool that they might also find interesting, perhaps show it off.

And remember their name. It can help to work it into the conversation. Seriously, Bonje. People like hearing their own name in friendly contexts.

Relationships are really just a longer term version of this with people you already have met.

If this sounds a bit like sales, you ain’t half wrong. What you are selling is you. The payment you are asking for their time, their attention.

Don’t be pushy. Accept no as an answer. But say “hello” to everyone.

Enforcement against Linux distributions, however, is likely to be problematic. Distros like Arch, Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo have no centralized account infrastructure, with users downloading ISOs from mirrors worldwide, and can modify source code freely. These small distros lack legal teams or resources to implement the required API, so a more realistic outcome for non-compliant distros is a disclaimer that the software is not intended for use in California.

I had forgotten how much I miss that style of website. Well written too.

There is a paper on exactly that:
Front Nutr. 2025 Dec 1;12:1682746. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1682746
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12702719/

I didn’t read the whole thing, but it looks like, at least right now, they didn’t find anything major.

Well, since I’m not doing that, that would prevent me from having to install the apps that every damned company seems to insist I install rather than having a website. Kinda makes me wish for this nonsense to come to the US.

A point. However, how far do you need to go to reach an area, that doesn’t speak your native language commonly?

We recently moved a fair distance, not too far as things go here. Roughly 2000 km. English language spoken by almost everyone throughout the entire trip. Plus 15 random languages from tourists and immigrants from around the globe. I could have gone another 2000 km and I still would have had to dig to find a community that had a common language other than english.

I would have had to travel 2000 km the other way to reach an area where a single language other than English was spoken by more than 5% of the population.

Maybe 1000 km, I forget about Creole in Louisiana, though I’m not sure how common that language is in the State. I just remember running across the language frequently while driving trucks in that area for a living.

We are a truly massive nation that largely shares a single language. Most of us, rarely ever leave a 250 km radius from where we were born. Most of us don’t have passports and will never leave the US.

Hell, I’m well traveled. I’ve been to 45 on the 50 States, and in all my travels I’ve only needed another language once. In Larado, TX, which is right on the border with Mexico.

There are small enclaves that speak an alternative language, but they are few and far between.

Would it be to the students benefit to learn a second language, sure. But it’s unlikely that the student would ever use whatever random language they were required to learn. Spanish and perhaps Arabic might occasionally be helpful, but not necessarily, depending on what part of the country (or trade) you’re they are in.

Around me, the only language spoken with any frequency other than English is Spanish. In a half dozen different varieties. Even that wasn’t all that common until, maybe, 10 years ago. About midway through President Trump’s first administration.

Most schools encourage kids to take a language, but they are kinda a use it, or lose it thing. Unless you just happen to be part of a community or household that speaks a language other than English, you are unlikely to need it.

I just had to deal with this. Moving two households from Alabama to Minnesota, with myself, my wife and her mother (all 3 of whom are pack rats) and more than 1 one way truck and a car hauler was not in the budget.

What I did was rent a storage unit just large enough to match the volume of the truck I was going to rent. Anything that could fit in the storage unit could be kept. Everything else had to go. Anticipating trouble, especially from my MIL, I divided the storage unit into halfs using gaffer’s tape and one half (me and my wife’s) was again divided into half with one section reserved for me and the other for my wife.

Me and my wife downsized fairly problem-free. I got down to about 10 plastic footlockers and let my wife have the rest of my section. Our half was full, but not horribly so even after the furniture we wanted to keep. My MIL however was another story.

She kept saying we were trying to force her to give away everything she owned. She calmed down and started downsizing seriously when we finally packed up her house to move it to the storage unit and we completely filled U-haul’s largest truck, Tetris Style, with not even enough room left for a rolled up poster, and my MIL still had another half truck’s worth of boxes that she had, till that point, claimed she couldn’t bear parting with. I put my foot down and told her that, while I was willing to make multiple trips (neither of them were comfortable with the idea of drive the U-Haul) she would have to pay the full cost of moving everything that wouldn’t fit into the 1st truck and estimated that it would cost an additional $4K per trip, all in. That got her.

We wound up renting a second storage unit for interim use as she decided what would go on the truck and what she would have to sell, give away or toss. I think we may have single-handedly crashed the second hand market in our old town with everything we three donated. In the end, it was noisy, stressful and there were times when my MIL didn’t want to talk to me or my wife, but we eventually got it down to a single truck, and 3 cars, but damn, were they packed.

When others in your particular nitch are not posting. You may have a slightly better chance to trend that way.

Nice! I hadn’t thought of that.

It’s kinda an ethos thing that goes way back, and Microsoft keeps giving us examples of why it can be a bad idea. Essentially, it boils down to the idea that YOU should be in control of what your system is doing.

Most distros can (including Raspberry OS), and many of them will check for updates automatically, but none that I can think of will install updates automatically unless you purposefully choose to enable that function.

Raspberry OS is, imho, is not really representative of the desktop Linux experience. It’s a bit like Gentoo or Arch. Great OS’s, for their intended use cases.

While RPis with Raspberry OS can be a decent desktop replacement in a pinch (I’ve done it), it’s more intended for learning and experimentation.

If you’re intending to use it as your primary computer, I’d recommend using Ubuntu or Fedora. And running the OS on an USB3 external solid state drive.

With modern UEFI, it’s controlled by both the OS and the UEFI

I haven’t used Windows in a long while, but there is a setting in KDE that allowed me to disable the power button’s short press function and I think the long press as well.

Came in handy for me when my cat decided to start laying on top of my tower. Every now and then she’d decide to slap her paw down on the power button and abort whatever I was working on.

I was cursing the change away from mechanical toggle, and that button’s position on the top of the case, when she started doing that.

I would think they first would have to actually release the feature.

I’m also on SDF’s Mastodon server. Fairly small and largely general purpose. Seems to have pretty good uptime.