Yeah. SimpleX has a similar problem, because it’s basically creating a bunch of 1:1 connections between everyone to preserve anonymity - IIRC (I freely admit I could be misremembering this). As I understood, it’s a decent limit, though - more than the 7-12 friend/family group you’d reasonably trust in a chat group.

I did not consider this a blocker - who’s using encrypted chat for large groups? Large group chats are fundamentally insecure; is the use case about anonymity, not encryption?

IME, beyond the install, it’s all distro- and desktop-specific.

• How to find and install apps varies from distro to distro. IIRC, the Mint menu item is something obvious, like “Install software”, but on Arch (you’d have to hate your newbie to throw them into Arch), it requires a chicken/egg finding and installing a graphical installer. If you know the distro, this would be good information - or if you’re helping with the install, create a desktop launcher.
• Showing them where settings are. Surprising to me, this has been super-not-obvious to my newbs. Even though the KDE Settings app is called “settings”, I think Windows and Mac folks are used to looking for settings in a specific place, rather than an app name - and in Windows, there’s can be several ways to get up different settings, like changing display stuff is always in a weird place. Again, maybe a desktop or panel shortcut would help.
• One of my newbs used Mint for two years without opening a shell, so I don’t think that’s an issue. He even found and installed a piece of software he wanted, but I can’t remember if I originally showed him how to the first time. But that’s Mint. He did, however, need help setting up a printer, but that’s because he couldn’t find the settings program; he came from Windows originally.
• Edge cases, like printers and other peripherals, can be hard, and I don’t think any amount of extra documentation is going to help, because almost every difficulty is practically unique. There’s a ton of online help for stuff like that already. And then, if they want to, eg, attach a game controller… well, that’s very specific and again varies by controller. I don’t think you can cover all of these edge cases.
• Games can be hard only because of the indirection of having to install some other software, like Proton or Steam, creating an account, knowing how to check for compatability - there’s a lot of moving parts. It’s not just: go to the game’s web site, buy, download, and install something and run it, like I imagine it is on Windows. So maybe that would be useful - or - again - pre-installing one of the game stores and (surprise) making a shortcut would eliminate that.
• Network connections. Again, I always find figuring out how to get to network configuration in Windows to be hard, and bizarrely having multiple ways of accomplishing the same task, so I’d guess going the other direction would be confusing. Having a note about how to get to the configuration would be handy.

As I think about it, I realize that configuration under KDE of way more encapsulated and clear than on Windows, and people having learned the byzantine and myriad ways of Windows, KDE’s relative simplicity is confusing. Windows people look for configurations in places they’ve learned to look, which aren’t always where they are under KDE (I can’t speak much about Gnome - I don’t use it or set people up with it). MacOS isn’t as bad, having a similar configure-everything-through-a-single-settings-program approach.

Anyway, that’s my experience.

This was many years ago, but since I was learning on the fly and asking Germans for translations of English words and was trying to learn words, I’d gotten in the habit of simplifying my requests. So instead of asking how to say “all of” I asked for “whole”. I also may have phrased it differently where “whole” made more sense - this was 20+ years ago, and I don’t remember exactly what was said.

I would still like to understand why Jami is never mentioned in these posts. I’m not aware of any technical or security objections, and the less I hear about Jami, the more concerned I become about using it.

I was living in Germany and was learning Germman on the fly and was with my sister and her girl friends at Octoberfest, and I wanted to ask one what she did with her whole time, so I asked what the word for “whole” was. I ended up asking her what she “did with her hole time.”

I was living in Germany and was learning Germman on the fly and was with my sister and her girl friends at Octoberfest, and I wanted to ask one what she did with her whole time, so I asked what the word for “whole” was. I ended up asking her what she “did with her hole time.”

Huh. tar tf and unzip -l. I’m not sure I’d even bother to write a shell function to combine them, much less install software.

Zips just exploding to files is so common, if you just mkdir unzpd ; unzip -d unzpd file.zip it’s going to be right nearly all of the time. Same with tarballs always containing a directory; it’s just so common it’s barely worth checking.

You write the tools you need, don’t get me wrong. This seems like, at most, a 10-line bash function, and even that seems excessive.

function pear() {
case $1 in
  *.zip)
    unzip -l "$1"
    ;;
  *.tar.*)
    tar tf "$1"
    ;;
esac
}

hmmm indeed.

What was going on?

Salem’s Lot.

It was forbidden, but on TV, so I’d flip channels to watch it in 30 second clips. It was far more terrifying that way, as I found out later in life; watched all the way through, it was a fairly mediocre film.

Kobo only. I’ll convert long articles to epub and throw them on the Kobo before I’ll read them on the phone. Usually, I send them to the desktop, though, b/c it’s easier.

Long form reading on a phone sucks; I don’t know how people can do it. Oh, great! 7 words per line. That’s super comfortable.

This content really enhances Lemmy. I, too, want to know the answer to the wing question. It’s been long enough to grow wings, surely?

Now please send over a video of you saying “My hero is Dick Butkus. I love Dick!”

Now, send a video of yourself pronouncing “Worcestershire Sauce.”

That’s a 10 hour toilet visit, right there. No mute.

Oh, yeah. Bias to action is often cultivated, and considered a positive trait. It can be really bad, especially in people who are bad leaders.

I’m sorry you’ve had that experience.

You are conflating awkwardness with poor communication skills

You believe that social skills aren’t dependent on communication skills?

It really doesn’t matter that is fantasy, I think that makes it a more powerful as a teaching tool not less.

The claim was that it taught social skills. I claim it will only do that if the teachers have excellent social skills. Not all teachers are good, or are good at teaching social skills.

Also eeew no, almost all the managers I have had that were in the military (ESPECIALLY men) have trash leadership skills

You’re conflating social skills, and military experience, with management ;-)

I didn’t say the military made people good managers. Management is a very specific skill set, and you don’t have to be socially fluent to be a good manager, although it helps. And being a good communicator, and having good social skills absolutely does not automatically make you a good leader!

You seem to be reading things in my comments that I’m not saying. For example, that I had a bad time gaming; or that the military makes good leaders. We have a communications gap here; how can I be more clear?

I’m not sure how to read your last paragraph; it seems to be an expression of frustration with men, in general, and I don’t know what kind of response I can provide. You haven’t had positive experiences with ex-military (usually male) managers? How many of those have you had?

I didn’t say I had an awful time; I loved it. I said it doesn’t improve general social skills, which was the OP claim.

Not only did I play AD&D from 12-18, I also played a lot of Traveler, a bit of Runequest and Cyberpunk, and a smattering of other games like Phoenix Command. And I’ll say that my observation is that not only did it not improve my social skills, it didn’t measurable improve those in the various friend groups, some of whom, 40 years later and still gaming, are just about as awkward as when they were in high school.

It’s because it’s fantasy, and the reactions you get from NPCs is what the DM comes up with; they’re not real people, they’re all one person. The gamers in your group could be just as socially awkward as you; all you’re going to learn from them is how to interact with other socially awkward people.

Now, if your party consists of a bunch of extrovert players, you could learn from them. But IME gaming only made things worse: it exacerbated the inside joke, us-vs-the-jocks, we’re skater because we play intellectually stimulating games mentality that contributes to social awkwardness.

Building an echo chamber of friends, most likely much like you in headspace, doesn’t expand your ability to be socially fluid.

You ever been to a convention? There are some really great outgoing people are those. There are also a large number of folks who are just plain fucking awkward. I was one of them.

You know what guaranteed helps with social skills? The military. Enforced, constant interaction with a bunch of people of all personality types that you don’t get to choose.

I am pro-gaming. I think it’s a great pursuit. It might even help improve your basic math skills, but I don’t think it cures cancer, and I don’t think it at all helps with improving general social skills.

I did not find that role playing improved my IRL social skills.

Time to reshare this classic!

It’s now 5 years old.

Years.

We got a glimpse of what a true exodus could look like, and I’m with you. As much as I’d love to see Reddit collapse from its own shittiness, for Lemmy’s sake I’d rather see a trickle who have a chance to learn manners and leave their vitriol behind.

Not saying Lemmy’s perfect. I’m not saying I’m perfect: I have bad days and make asshole responses, too. But they get swallowed, or I get a reasonable response and I apologize. In the main, the real, consistent excuses for human beings who resist the opportunity to become better people tend to join instances like Hexbear, and can be blocked en mass.

Are books not media?

I was thinking through my list, and almost mentioned Calibre Web, but decided it’s media related.