I love this instance in principle, but it has had recurring technical problems since before I joined, and I don’t have any reason to think that will change. I suppose they just don’t have the resources to keep up with lemmy issues. I’m using a different instance now.

Qt is still the only excellent cross-platform desktop GUI framework.

It’s a pity that its current custodian’s commercial licenses:

• are subscriptions
• are painfully expensive for a solo developer or small group
• have a reputation for triggering legal threats and badgering from The Qt Company if one ever wants to end their subscription or (separately) use the open-source license for a FOSS project

This situation makes me afraid to use their commercial offerings, which in turn means they won’t get any money from me at all; I feel that I can safely use their libs only in open-source code. Their business model is their decision, of course, but I can’t help wondering if their whale-hunting approach actually nets them more money than a more accessible, lower-cost, one-time (or one-major-version) license option would. In many other industries, high sales volume reaps more profits than high price.

Thank goodness for the KDE Free Qt Foundation.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview

You had cassettes? We had to manually transcribe machine code from printed listings.

Long ago, I solved all of the ways in which PHP made me sad…

…by abandoning it.

Nowadays we have better languages that can do the job at least as well.

Do these accept cash, or only ATM cards? (The latter would link your transaction to your bank account, of course.)

What do they give? A printout of a wallet address?

Their summary of Dodo doesn’t include a link, and a web search finds a seemingly unrelated webmail service. This looks like the right project:

https://github.com/akissinger/dodo

What fascists are ruining OSS?

Glad you got it working!

BTW, in case you’re not aware of it, you might find the shellcheck command useful when writing scripts.

I can’t tell from that error message whether the inner quotes are being discarded when the command is run, or just hidden when the error message is displayed.

Too bad it doesn’t tell you what part of the command is causing the syntax error. Have you checked for more info in the output of journalctl --boot _UID=1000? (Assuming your user id is 1000 and you use systemd.)

Re-reading the spec page that I linked above, I see reference to both a general escape rule and a quoting rule. That could be complicating things with the quotes and backslashes, and maybe even the dollar signs and semicolons, which apparently are reserved. In case it helps, I don’t think those semicolons are needed at all.

Before diving deeper into escaping rules, though, I would consider whether it’s time to move the whole command line into a script, and simply pass %f to the script in your Exec= line. That would avoid the need for nested escaping/quoting, and allow you to write debug information to a temporary file when the script runs.

You’re using single quotes in your Exec lines, which is not legal .desktop file syntax.

I suggest replacing your single quotes with double quotes, and replacing your double quotes with backslash-escaped double quotes.

https://web.archive.org/web/20241130225327/https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/exec-variables.html

TIL 7 is a “massive amount”.

For anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with Debian’s release process, the Testing distribution is not a release. Rather, it is a holding area for packages that may eventually become part of a release.

Some people choose to run it instead of Debian Stable in order to get more recent non-security updates to packages, with the understanding that occasional breakage is normal for Testing.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_practices_for_testing.2Fsid_users.3F

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting

https://www.debian.org/devel/testing

The right answer is definitely not landfill.

Most people use their computers to run a web browser, maybe a word processor or media player, and… not much else. Even someone who has only used Windows can figure out those basics on a Linux desktop.

If the charities are unable/unwilling to provide support for Linux, they could give computers away on Craigslist before dumping more e-waste into our environment.

As someone who runs multiple desktop sessions at once, each on a different virtual console, sddm is a continual pain in my workflow. Notably:

• It assigns desktop sessions to virtual consoles inconsistently, and has no way to manually configure them, so Control+Alt+FN often switches to a session that’s not the one I wanted. The assignments can change from day to day or any time a session logs out and back in. This makes using multiple desktops a constant pain.
• I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it is behind the graphical glitch that makes the desktop session unlock screen draw incredibly slowly on KDE 5. Having to wait several seconds for each character in my passphrase to register is an annoying waste of time.

Guest computer?

Dedicated server for multi-player games?

Retire the Nvidia card, put the rest in a small case, and make it a Kodi box?

I think it’d be great to live in a world where this technology required warrants, transparency, and other oversight from the start.

Me too.

It boils down to the fact that this technology is widespread, and will continue to be widespread regardless of my actions

That same reasoning has been used innumerable times throughout history. I suppose each of us must decide whether we think it holds water. It reminds me of an old adage: No single drop believes it is responsible for the flood.

Predator does way more than just ALPR.

I know. I looked it up. I mentioned the name not because I think it represents what it does, but rather to point out that it will affect how people feel about you and your work, even if in subtle, imperceptible ways. It’s up to you to decide whether you’re comfortable with that.

I don’t have a specific suggestion, but here is what comes to mind:

• Violation of human rights and civil liberties in order to gain power over others is always justified with noble-sounding excuses like protecting people and property. The reality does not match the claim.
• Once violated, privacy of information is almost impossible to restore.
• Anything that can be abused to someone’s gain will be abused eventually, if not immediately.
• Relying on a benevolent gatekeeper (even yourself) to prevent abuse of your tech will eventually fail.
• The name V0LT Predator evokes the feeling that it’s something the world needs less of, not more.

Whenever I find myself on a fine line like the one you’re trying to walk, I consider whether I’ll look back on my life and be proud of what projects/causes/changes to the world that I advanced with the time and talents that I have.

You’re welcome.

BTW, commands like these predate Linux. You’ll find them on BSD, macOS, Solaris, and practically every other OS with a Unix heritage.

Edit: You might find this video (or at least the segment I’ll link) interesting.

https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?t=297

My guess: Because it’s both FRee and frEAkish (atypical) compared to commercial uniX.