Mozilla reviewed the privacy of a lot of dating apps. It isn’t very pretty, but there are some that are less bad than others. Article also gives some tips on how to improve your privacy while using them.

Privacy Guides also has a “Reducing the Risks while using dating apps” section in one of their articles.

Side note: I don’t think the commenters who are saying “go outside” have really dated in years. Like it or not, it’s by far the dominant way couples are meeting now, and unfortunately it’s becoming more and more of a requirement in the modern dating scene:

I also miss the gritty, dark, isolated atmosphere that KF1 had. I still had my fun with KF2, but when they introduced robot enemies, sci-fi weapons, and generally goofier cosmetics, it killed some of what made the games feel special

Is that true? It looks like at least some people have gotten AMD GPU passthrough to work unless I am misunderstanding.

Also, as an FYI most VR games worked well for me on baremetal linux through proton. Half Life Alyx, Beat Saber, The Lab, COMPOUND, Walkabout Minigolf, and 2-3 more indie titles all worked. Although I guess you need to have the right headset - I think only the Valve Index and a few HTC headsets work with minimal effort on linux, others might work with a lot of tinkering.

AMD is ideal but Nvidia is fine. Basically any game that would work on AMD will work on Nvidia (only exception I know of is the VR mode of Phasmophobia edit: apparently this was fixed ~1yr ago). Gamepass still won’t work though - blame Microsoft for that one.

That said, Nvidia has more of a performance hit when switching. Ancient Gameplays recently did a video comparing Nobara vs Windows 11, with both the RX 7900XTX and the RTX 4080 Super. These were his average results across 20 games:

RX 7900XTX: 1080p +2%, 1440p +0%, 4k -2.2%

RTX 4080S: 1080p -13.8%, 1440p -13%, 4k -10.2%

So your games will work. They just might run 10%-15% slower until you can snag an AMD card. If you’re interested in fully committing, looks like most used 3080s are going for ~$500 on ebay, so you could probably get an AMD card and get most of your money back.

I had the same audio crackling issues in Helldivers on Pop!_OS too. What fixed it for me was following mmstick’s (Pop!_OS dev) instructions from his reddit post about audio crackling, particularly the headroom advice (I think somewhere between 256-512 worked for me):

If you experience audio crackling, try changing the ALSA properties in /usr/share/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua. Particularly the period-size and headroom. Remove the leading -- from properties you are modifying. Log out and log back in after making changes. Note that any changes to this file will be overwritten on the next wireplumber update.

First start with changing the headroom to 1024, then 2048. Then try adjusting the period-size. Higher values increase latency and may reduce crackling. A lower period size decreases latency but requires more CPU.

Edit: also Pop!_OS uses pipewire by default for a few years now, not pulse audio

I know this is just a meme, but I think it’s an important clarification: The rule of thumb is ~6 months’ worth of expenses, not salary. It really is important to hold you over in case of sudden job loss, since it takes most people 3-6 months to find a new job (but it doubles as a fund for genuine emergencies too, which can save your ass for stuff like unexpected medical or vet bills).

But unfortunately, lots of people live paycheck to paycheck, so for them, a month’s worth of expenses is the same thing as a month’s salary…

“Some people need a budget to save; others need a budget to spend.”

My suggestion would be pick a % of your income to allocate as “fun money.” 5%, 10%, whatever; the most important part is you budget it. Stick it in its own savings account, then invest the rest. Then, whenever you have the opportunity to do fun things, spend extra on hobbies, help family, donate, etc, you know exactly how much you can spend.

uBlock has an “EasyList/uBO - Cookie Notices” filter that you can enable on both desktop and mobile, which is probably enough for most people.

If you accidentally ban linux users in three[1] different[2] banwaves[3], then linux was only halfway supported in the first place, even if they overturned (almost) all of those bans.

I think the real reason they did it was EA’s financial situation. Since money is tight, the amount of resources they were willing to put into real linux anti-cheat probably dropped to “none at all,” and now we’re here. Otherwise other cheater-prone games like Counter Strike, Overwatch, Halo, The Finals, DayZ, Hunt Showdown, etc would have probably dropped/blocked linux by now too.

@[email protected] @[email protected], a Respawn employee responded on reddit and wants a list of user IDs/gamertags for those banned on linux:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1fi77vs/comment/lnh13kj/?context=8

EDIT: A Respawn employee on reddit is now asking for the user ID/gamertag of those banned on linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/1fi77vs/comment/lnh13kj/?context=8

— Original comment —

Looks like you’re not the only one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1f5kyd1/psa_using_proton_experimental_or_at_least/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1ffxfjb/apex_legends_proton_epic_bug_that_do_that/

They’ve falsely banned linux players before, once in March 2023 and again in August 2023.

I got hit in the Aug 2023 ban, and had my permaban overturned after 1-2 weeks. Expect to have your appeal rejected, we had to make enough of a fuss about it to get a community manager to reach out to the development team to get people unbanned:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apexlegends/comments/15uqt7w/linux_users_getting_falsely_banned_again/

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Linux-players-getting-banned/td-p/12338557/page/50

I haven’t played in 9-10 months since the false positive put a really bad taste in my mouth, so I don’t have any datapoints to add for the current state of things, but I wish you the best of luck getting unbanned.

I had a very similar issue with Heroic Games Launcher (streaming to steam link, steam shortcut added, game thought I was using mouse and keyboard instead of controller). I fixed it by enabling “minimize heroic on game launch” in Heroic’s options. Maybe see if something similar exists for Lutris

It’s a shooter with no aim assist, and the UI isn’t setup particularly well for controller (at least not yet)

Valve has manually selected the game to be run with proton experimental under linux, and it works on my linux desktop. So it will probably at least run on Deck, but I don’t imagine it’s a very controller-friendly game. I have no idea about Mac.

Comet has a list of supported requests on their github readme, and at least the achievement requests seem to be present. I’m not sure if Heroic utilizes them though

If you or your family care about privacy, their Android app has fewer trackers (see Spotify v. Apple Music).

Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed Collection is a blast if you’re okay with a kart racer.

Flatout 2 is the OG combat racer.

If you’re looking for a true “racing sim” type game I would probably recommend one of the Assetto Corsa games, either the original or competizione.

CarX Drift Racing Online is probably not what you expect, but is really fun. Not exactly a traditional “racing” game because you don’t compete for time, but rather compete for “drift points,” with longer/wider drifts getting more score. It has a surprisingly thorough singleplayer mode, and the multiplayer is relatively relaxed. Multiplayer is setup in an open-world style; you join a big lobby and can just drive around with friends or randoms without actually competing for anything, although people in each lobby can start competitions that everyone else can opt-in to. The main reason I’m recommending it is it has very thorough car customization and is a chill, non-competitive driving game, whether that be singleplayer or multiplayer.

Looks like Lemmy.world has the entire instance blocked: https://lemmy.world/instances

Was wondering why I hadn’t heard of this bot before…

Seems like a peaceful hobby. [email protected] has a whopping 3.4k subscribers, so it seems to be relatively popular around here too.

Both Bitwarden and KeePass are very secure, certainly much better than something like Lastpass…

Bitwarden’s server and client are open source and completely E2EE (similar to Signal, the server is zero-knowledge). And even if you don’t trust Bitwarden’s official server, you can host your own.

KeePass is fine too, but it doesn’t have a centralized server like Bitwarden. You have to use other tools to sync your vault between devices. Which some people prefer, but others dislike. Just depends on your preference.