I'm cross-posting from https://lemmy.world/post/2712042 for awareness. If you would like to join the tribute please do so on that post, or one of the Vim instances.

Want ads? Because this is how you get ads. And not just ads, but targeted tracking and surveillance. Google wants to embed DRM in the entire web, and control it! They would be the ones who attest to what can be seen, and more to the point - What YOU see, or what THEY think you should see. Make no mistake, Google is an advertising company and this would crush all alternate and independent sites and content. Comply or never be seen again. This is purely an arrogant move to increase profits. Google doesn't want to save you from ads. This is a power grab to force you to see only their ads. And it's already being pushed into Chromium. What can you do? Get involved and voice your concern.

Join the github peaceful protest to remove the pull request.

Donate to organisations like Mozilla and EFF who will likely take this on if asked.

Use Firefox, Librewolf, Mullvad browser or something not based on Chromium.

Stop using Google products. Stop giving them any data to sell about you. Protest by withholding $. It will effect Chrome, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and any thing based on Chromium. Here's more information.

additionally: https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/05384cbd-be03-416a-8469-4187e871f106.png

I'm not a System76 developer, but I'm excited about the new Rust based COSMIC desktop environment and like to share progress as I see it. Even though it's still pre-alpha software I think it's usable as a casual desktop that does some browsing, editing and communication type tasks. A little knowledge of controlling the system via command-line is helpful when currently playing in COSMIC. For example, you may have difficulty setting up a network and VPN, but command-line works fine for that. Just nmcli is enough. Maybe preparing some scripts beforehand will be of benefit as COSMIC utilizes your .bashrc and/or .zshrc. Additionally, it uses auto-suggestions, auto-completions and autojump so it makes living in the terminal a breeze. Having said, most Flatpaks and Nautilus are working fine. I think some Flatpaks still don't like Wayland much regardless of DE. Tiling works great and stacking was introduced recently. Resize is a fresh inclusion and is working well too.

Above is a new screen which shows a neofetch and that I've been on for three and a half hours. In that time htop shows I'm clicking along at about 2GB memory. That includes cmus and OBS utilizing Pipewire. OBS is running on another monitor along with Nautilus and Image Viewer. So a nice load. Although I can do a nice screenshot with OBS, the desktop bogs down if I try to record or stream. It spikes about 3.6GB and the mouse is close to unresponsive, but works if you're patient. You'll notice that the "niceness" set by system76-scheduler is working properly too.

What I wanted to spotlight in this screen was the diacritics seen in cmus player. These are a result of cosmic-text, a brilliant piece of software written in Rust from scratch by Jeremy of System76. It handles text shaping, rendering and layout. The diacritics you see are French, Icelandic, Tunisian and German. The reason I wanted to spotlight this is that critics of COSMIC DE said it would take three YEARS to achieve just this one thing. Jeremy had it working in three weeks. The rate of development for COSMIC is amazing fast. There's a way to go, but it's looking so good.

When many manufacturers are currently looking to cut costs by using plastics or ultra thin metal, I wanted to spotlight the beginnings of System76's new Virgo laptop by pointing out the use of solid machined aluminum for the chassis.

The reason I wanted to bring attention to this is because I recently had a stupendous accident (you really wouldn't believe how it happened) with my HP Pavilion which is a full aluminum body. This machine hit CONCRETE on the CORNER from a meter high and survived with only a scratch/dent! The last time I dropped a laptop from half the distance it was destroyed. However, this HP has no signs of failure except the little scratch/dent and that corner of the deck sits about 1.5mm higher now. You can't notice it unless you look. The hardware, screen, hinges and system are perfectly OK.

I paid top dollar for this at the time it was released because I have that old school European over-engineering gene ingrained. I believe things should be made to last (and be upgradeable), so I applaud System76 for starting with what looks like a massively solid machine.

Pixelfed is a federated, decentralized image hosting solution that respects your privacy. An example;

No analytics or 3rd party trackers

User data is not sold to any 3rd parties

Data is stored securely in accordance with industry standards

Admin accounts are protected with 2FA

We follow strict support procedures to keep your accounts safe

We'll give at least 6 months warning in the event we shut down

Although instances can differ, they seem to be in stark contrast to your privacy abusing corporate sites. Regardless, you should read the fine print and privacy policy. Link - https://pixelfed.org/servers. Enjoy!

I normally wouldn't post such off topic material, but under the circumstances I think it is timely to help Pop!_OS Reddit refugees better understand how Lemmy, ActivityPub and federation work. I benefited from this explanation. https://lemmy.world/post/149743