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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2025

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  • Since you’re just starting you’ll want to make sure you have a good foundational understand of what Linux is and how it works. Understanding the File System Hierarchy, file permissions, user/groups management, etc will help the ‘feeling over your head’ part. There are a lot of Youtube videos/playlist talking about the basics, skim a few to see if you like how they’re presenting the information and pick whichever works best for you.

    For a more structured approach, look for books (or a class at a vocational school if that’s something you’d do) teaching Linux+. This is an entry level certification by CompTIA and the course will cover all of the fundamental things that you need to understand.

    Have a project in mind to motivate you. In the end, you’re learning all of this so that you can do something with Linux so pick a something that would improve your setup. Jellyfin running on a NAS is an good and achievable goal to start with.

    Join some of the Linux/selfhost/homelab communities: !linux@lemmy.ml, !linux@programming.dev, !selfhosted@lemmy.world, !linuxmemes@lemmy.world. These are great when you’re stuck on something and need to ask for help.

    On Reddit the homelab, linux and selfhosted subreddits are also good to read.

    When you’re getting started and also when you have a problem remember: RTFM - Always, ALWAYS read the manual/docs and also check the Arch wiki and Gentoo wiki. Asking for help without first reading the documentation and wiki is… frowned upon in the community. Some people will give you a hard time if your question is answerable in a Google search or in a wiki article.

    LLMs can be useful as well. You have to be careful here because they can hallucinate and provide you with wrong information. LLMs that search and summarize based on your question will generally be more accurate but generally don’t run any terminal commands that they give you without first verifying what they do. Treat them like a search engine, a starting off point for you to do your own research. You could probably just ask for the exact terminal commands to setup a Jellyfin server on docker and get pretty far, but you wouldn’t learn anything and that will hurt your efforts to learn. I’ve been using Kagi’s AI assistant which includes a research agent option that has been pretty useful.

    Finally, don’t avoid using the terminal, you can do a lot with a GUI but being comfortable with terminal use is fairly mandatory for anything but casual desktop use.






  • Imagine a service with a set price, no ads, never increases prices except to maintain operation in the face of inflation. Not beholden to shareholders, but rather to stakeholders.

    I think that would be amazing and, in the US at least, there is a new business entity that could do that.

    One of the issues with trying to make Netflix not enshittify is that companies have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value (Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. (1919) is the case if you want to read further). So if Netflix decided to try what you’re suggesting then some shareholder could sue the company and show that they’re not doing everything to maximize returns.

    There are around 40 states in the US that recognize a new corporate entity type called a Public Benefit Corporation, which is allowed to operate without the legal obligation towards profit so that the company can pursue goals other than making money. The AI company Anthropic is an example, they are a Public Benefit Corporation. Because of that fact, they’re able to take a moral stand against the US Government… a decision that will cost them money, without worrying about shareholder retaliation.

    I think eventually we’ll see more of these companies forming and I will certainly support them. However, as it stands now, we’re on our own and have to work together as a community to mitigate the worst of it. I’d certainly be interested in running a Public Benefit Corporation towards those ends, if you know anyone with a few tens of millions of dollars to burn!


  • I think maybe you don’t know what ‘weasel words’ mean.

    From Wikipedia:

    In rhetoric, a weasel word, or anonymous authority, is a word or phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated. The terms may be considered informal. Examples include the phrases “some people say”, “it is thought”, and “researchers believe”. Using weasel words may allow one to later deny (a.k.a., “weasel out of”) any specific meaning if the statement is challenged, because the statement was never specific in the first place.

    There’s none of that here.

    Summary review:

    The passage does not contain significant weasel words. It acknowledges uncertainty explicitly with phrases like “I may be wrong,” “I would guess,” and “I assume,” which actually counteract weasel wording by qualifying claims. The author distinguishes between fact and opinion, admits lack of knowledge about the individual, and provides a source for a factual claim about social media as a news source. Overall, the language is transparent about uncertainty rather than using vague or evasive phrasing to appear more confident than warranted.