Readit Newsmastazi commented on Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/fleahunter
I have the exact setup shown towards the end of the article - HTPC and K400 keyboard/touchpad. I have tried all "smart" platforms in the past, and this setup is an order of magnitude better in everything. I used to have issues where a specific content provider doesn't have an app for my type of smart TV[1], this is no longer an issue because I just use a browser to access anything. And I can browse the web when I'm not watching something[2] (in fact I'm using my HTPC right now as I write this comment).
The only change I had to make starting from a "standard" Linux UI is bumping the screen zoom level to 150%. This may vary depending on your TV size and how far your couch is from your TV.
Building the HTPC was very cheap, I just boughs a horizontal form-factor case, and used spare "donor" parts coming from our household PCs after upgrades.
[1][2]For comparison, the only streaming platform that had all apps I wanted was Apple TV, but that one doesn't have a browser.
As much as I love Bazzite at end of the day it's still a custom distro and every single day there is a chance they just close the project down and move on. Happened to so many distros in the past, this is not out of question. I’m not saying “big corporate” distros are better but personally I'd rather stick to something more mainline.
Hopefully Valve will release a general version of SteamOS with Steam Machine coming (and even they are questionable with their track record)
People who are not new Linux users might prefer a distro which is part of the same "family" of distros they are already familiar with.
Steam OS I believe is based on Arch. Bazzite is based on Fedora. Personally I have experience with Debian distros so if I wanted a gaming-focused distro I would pick maybe something like Pop OS.
Clippy was never open source or "good" in any way, it not selling your data was a result of its time, not a conscious choice by its creators. The entire forced clippy "movement" is incredibly poorly thought out
Clippy was chosen precisely because it was so famously bad.
The point of choosing Clippy is to imply that much of what we have now is more anti-user than one of the most anti-user pieces of software of the 90's.
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mastazi commented on Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay forty.news... · Posted by u/foxbarrington
> For example, on Oct 7, 1985, Palestinian hijackers took over the cruise ship Achille Lauro. Reading this on a delay in 2025, the story unfolded over weeks: first they threw an American in a wheelchair overboard, then US fighter jets forced the escape plane to land, leading to a military standoff between US Navy SEALs and the Italian Air Force. Unbelievably, the US backed down, but the later diplomatic fallout led the Italian Prime Minister to resign.
From the perspective of 2025, I can't help but think about the people I know today getting vocally angry about Israeli violence in the Gaza strip, and suggesting that this violence has implications for US politics - and I wonder how many of those people would be happy to throw an American in a wheelchair off a ship in the name of the Palestinian cause.
Reading the wikipedia article about this incident, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking , it seems like the hijackers murdered the guy in a wheelchair before they threw his body off the ship, and it's possible but unproven that they picked him in particular either because he was Jewish or because he was in a wheelchair. The hijackers involved were given long prison sentences, but many of them were released decades ago and have fought against US in other ways since then.
I mostly think of the Israel/Palestine conflict as one that I have no dog in - I'm not Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian myself and have no ties to the region. Nonetheless, pro-Palestine political messaging is something that happens around me all the time today, and knowing that the conflict was happening 40 years ago and that some of the same things that were happening then are akin to what is happening now colors my opinion of what is happening now.
I am Italian, that was one of the proudest moment in our history.
The Achille Lauro episode was an example of Italy choosing what's best for the region rather than what's best for the people across the Atlantic. Hundreds of hostages' lives were saved by the actions of the Italian Government that day.
For context, in the post WW2 era, hundreds of Italian civilians were killed in accidents caused by US military operations in Italy, and our spineless leaders did nothing. In many cases they actively helped covering up the truth. Two of many examples:
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I really have difficulties seeing AI as anything else than yet another type of machinery. If your argument is "but it's replacing ALMOST ALL human labour" - well, the same argument was valid for tractors a hundred years ago (when almost everyone was employed in agriculture).