See https://alexbarry.net for projects I’m working on, and contact info.

Also check out github.com/alexbarry

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • This is actually what I did when I was in school, and overall it was quite pleasant. There was some WYSIWYG LaTeX program too that I shared with some colleagues when we were working on a document together, I remember it working okay.

    But I don’t see the average student, especially studying non technical stuff, to pick up LaTeX just for normal sort of essays. Even I am fairly rusty now. And honestly I don’t even know if I could have managed it during high school, where I had to write English essays and stuff with specific formatting for references. (I am grateful that my engineering education was less strict about that sort of thing).

    I was hoping that someone would suggest a self hosted web document suite, I think “Nextcloud” is a popular one. Then it should work on any OS, and you don’t have to worry about syncing files. Even if you can pay to have someone else host an instance (not sure if this exists), and ideally a program that can keep a local backup synced to your PCs would be a big step in the right direction. Syncthing seems pretty great, though I haven’t used it much, and on iOS it doesn’t seem to be able to run in the background.

    edit: I just read another comment that recommended OnlyOffice, this seems like another good option (source: this reply: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9415293). Aside: is there a proper way to link to a comment on lemmy that will go through your own homeserver?






  • thanks, how did you do this? Did you just download it and add a background yourself (and upload via lemmy) or is there some cool markdown/lemmy trick?

    I was going to say that I was on my phone and couldn’t do that, but I guess I probably could have. (edit: also I forgot that Lemmy even supports image uploading, let alone that I could link to it) I mostly just wanted to see if Lemmy supported the embedded image markdown syntax of ![description](URL to image). (It does!) I found online that some markdown variants support adding CSS at the end of the image, but it doesn’t look like lemmy supports them.




  • You may know this, but my understanding is that they randomly stop either to do another delivery on a different app, or to get gas/etc. (edit: I don’t think this justifies it to the customer, hence why I’ve stopped using these apps. I do have some sympathy for the driver, I have heard that the companies incentivize them to maintain a streak and take fewer breaks between drives, and somehow it seems like long unnecessary pauses aren’t penalized (perhaps because they’re hard to distinguish from traffic))

    I haven’t used delivery apps in a while due to cold food and outrageous prices.



  • Ah, the comparison to Epic helps me understand a bit… maybe. Are they simply worried about PS5 “winning” and Xbox disappearing? I don’t worry that Steam will ever disappear because of Epic and don’t care if they get games (in fact I have an epic account just to claim the free games, but I don’t really play them because they don’t support Linux). But if Steam did disappear in favour of Epic, I would be pissed. I wouldn’t care if there’s a merger or rebranding as long as Linux support and my existing library is maintained.

    Even still… worst case, they buy a PS5, and get all the same games and more? A friend of mine switched from Xbox to PS and thought it was pretty good. I do prefer the Xbox thumbstick placement over PS5, though. I guess they’d also lose their Xbox friends/following/achievements/etc. Though surely it would, at worst, be merged into PS.

    But still, even if you’re worried about this backfiring and Xbox disappearing… it seems worth the risk, to me. Presumably there are some good PS exclusives that could come to Xbox?

    I’m really trying hard to figure out how this isn’t just fanboy whining and I’m coming up short. I’m interested in other ideas!


  • I couldn’t understand why this would be anything besides good news, but I guess they’re worried that the hardware won’t get as much focus?

    (I’m out of the loop, I play PC games now and haven’t bought a console since the Xbox 360 back in… 2008 or so? I forget)

    “It’s so easy to see Xbox is killing its hardware and putting a stake in the heart of it by doing this,” he said. “And there’s no going back… it’s dead.”

    He later tweeted: “Xbox could have killed Game Pass, say buy our exclusives and focus on our hardware and that’s 100 percent the better idea [than to] SAY LETS KILL EXCLUSIVES AND put Halo on PS5. The outrage would be half of this and guess what you might be back to having a healthy business.”

    It still seems like an over reaction to me. Exclusives have always seemed bad. I’m just glad games are getting released on PC, though I haven’t played many AAA games in a while.


  • I may have missed it, but does he (or anyone else) have recommendations for options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?

    And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(

    I have some additional frustrations with Netflix:

    • they have removed some shows that I like
    • if you travel to another country, you can’t always watch the same shows— even if you downloaded them within the app
    • they completely remove some episodes: the episode of community where they play Dungeons and Dragons, and (other streaming services) remove the Michael Jackson Simpsons episode.
    • extremely user hostile way to browse content. They always move your list around and show the same show in multiple places
    • I absolutely hate how all these streaming services auto play to the next episode. You can often change this behaviour. But my partner sometimes casts it to our TV and the damn app (Disney+ in this case, I think) changes the interface just as you get to the credits. I want to sit in peace and let the credits play, and discuss the episode. But it tries to shove another one down your throat, presumably to “maximize engagement”. (I get it for content that you’re binging or are re watching. But this is horrible if you’re just watching an episode during dinner and don’t want to have to scramble to stop the autoplay as soon as it ends)