Only so I don't have to turn down the volume, and turn it back up when the episode starts.

I barely use a calculator, but you could try SageMath if you like the thought of writing you math in Python.

I believe we are reffering to two different, but related things.

As i understand your comment, you are reffering to "the platform is responsible for what the users upload to it", or rather whether they are responsible and i am reffering to "(eg.) Torrent sites don't host copyrighted content, they only link to it".

My knowledge about the latter is from many years ago, so i might be wholly or partly wrong.

The former i think is a really interesting balancing act, since i believe that huge platforms that earns billions on hosting user content should be forced to use some of that profit to remove dangerous content, but if that obligation was put on small platforms like Lemmy instances or even the initial Twitter or Facebook, right when they lanched, they would be never be able to get up and running, which would cement the current Big Tech monopolies.

I am not very knowledgable about this specific topic, but i believe the European Unions attempts at solving this is distinguishing between the giants and everybody else, which again, is a great balancing act.

Base64 encoding is not a legal loophole, it's a method to avoid automated content filters on platforms like Reddit and Discord. Encoding a link in base64 offers no legal protections.

Thank you for correcting me. It makes a lot more sense that you can't just encode something to make it legal.

I must admit i don't know exactly what is and isn't in this community, but The Pirate Bay ended being closed because it "facilitated piracy" or something like that. (Of course it didn't actually close but the legal loophole was closed, so legal action could be taken)

I don't remember details but essentially it was decided (in some court, somewhere, i guess) that linking to illegally copied material was also illegal.

IIRC the new loophole became encoding the link to what ever you wanted to copy, for example as base64. That's what's done here, right? (Please correct me if i'm wrong)

My point is that this may, in a legal sense, actually be spreading copyrighted material, and the risk of being sued (no matter if you are in the right) is a very good reason to not run the risk, since the legal system favors deep pockets and good lawyers over challenging the limits of the law.

For good measure, i want to point out that i am absolutely for the free sharing of knowledge and culture. The whole world gains from free access to this. I just also sympathize with not wanting to be a martyr in this battle.

Also, as the person i replied to earlier made me aware, the admin of LW is apparently a homophobic asshole, so fuck that guy.

But it is hosted on your home server.

When you subscribe to a community, your home server downloads the content and passes it on to you.

This is not like when The Pirate Bay was allowed to live because it only hosted torrent files and not copyrighted content, in the fediverse, you copy the content to your own server, and pass it on to the client/user, which means hosting the content.

By circumstance.

It was hard for me initially to switch over because i kept either creating or running into problems i couldn't figure out how to solve.

This overlapped with the Snowden leaks and i got really interested in privacy and security which lead to me running Qubes OS[1] for a short while. It was a slow and almost painful experience since i didn't actually have anything worth that effort to protect - but it got me over the edge and i wiped Qubes and reinstalled Fedora 23.

At the time i just liked the package manager better, for reasons that are no longer relevant.

Today i like it because it forces me into good habits of: figuring out what exactly is misbehaving > finding the official documentation or issue tracker for it > finding a solution or reporting the it to the developers.

Don't tire yourself out with that in the beginning. Just do stuff you need or stuff that seems fun.

Protip: Learn how to use Toolbx or Distrobox to create a "sandbox", (that's both the technical term and a very descriptive one) that will make it easier to get back to a working state if you mess something up. Learn about and understand what it can't get back to a working state. This will help keep you sane if you like to tinker.

1 A Linux-like operating system that only runs VMs and everything you do happens inside one of these. This way you can isolate you virtual "work computer" from your virtual "personal computer", making it harder for malicious programs to access the rest if your data.

There are a lot of "linux for beginners" blogs/videos/whatever. They're a good way to get an overview and learn the first steps. Don't get into a rabbit hole, though. Watch a couple and start trying it out.

You can try out Linux distros in a virtual machine (VM). You'll have to use your web-searching-skills to find a program that can run a VM as i can't recommend one that runs on Windows.

That program runs the operating system on top of the one you have now, so you don't need to reinstall over and over again while you find a distribution that works for you.

A distribution is what we call "a linux". "Linux" is just a part of the OS, and a distribution combines it with other software to make something your computer can boot. If this is a bit confusing, don't worry, it's not important, you just have to remember the word "distribution" (or distro)

I use a distro called Fedora, but between that and Ubuntu and Linux Mint you should find one that works for you. Don't overthink it. They all do the same job in slightly different ways, so just pick one and start using it for the stuff you usually use your computer for. Ubuntu is the easiest to search for help for, and Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, so 99.9% of solutions will be the same for Mint. Distros not based on Ubuntu works with the same instructions 90% of the time, but that might be too annoying when you are justvgetting your feet wet.

Note that a lot of distros have multiple "editions", "spins" or whatever they decided to call it. They mostly differ in the way your "desktop" is presented. Just look at some Youtube videos and some screenshot and try them out.

Now go use your computer with Linux. A lot of the initial friction is from having to learn stuff over again. Search the web for solutions and if you don't find them ask for help.

Your distrobution's forums are usually a good place to start, so is places like this. Try to give information you think might be relevant when asking for help and and help people help you by following their instructions and providing the information they ask for. Finding solutions to problems is like a seperate skill you need to train, so if it's confusing or you feel dumb for not understanding something, don't get discouraged, you're just getting better.

Welcome to the Linix community, we hope you like it.