i interpreted it as the user’s first DE was gnome :)

Lock screen

Home screen (i applied a black tint since i had trouble reading white text against it)

I got them from lurking r/wallpaper though I wish i knew more of their original sources

try https://github.com/zhichaoh/catppuccin-wallpapers/blob/main/landscapes/tropic_island_morning.jpg

if you look in the same folder there’s also ones for day, evening, and night

What is the freakout?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Maybe i want to read other people’s code in a wacky comic-looking silly goofy totally awesome monospaced font!?!?!?!

__LINE__ returns the line of code its on, and % 10 means “remainder 10.” Examples:

1 % 10 == 1
...
8 % 10 == 8
9 % 10 == 9
10 % 10 == 0 <-- loops back to 0
11 % 10 == 1
12 % 10 == 2
...
19 % 10 == 9
20 % 10 == 0
21 % 10 == 1

In code, 0 means false and 1 (and 2, 3, 4, …) means true.

So, if on line 10, you say:

int dont_delete_database = true;

then it will expand to:

int dont_delete_database = ( 10 % 10 );
// 10 % 10 == 0 which means false
// database dies...

if you add a line before it, so that the code moves to line 11, then suddenly it works:

// THIS COMMENT PREVENTS DATABASE FROM DYING
int dont_delete_database = ( 11 % 10 );
// 11 % 10 == 1, which means true

maybe bring back the hyper key! (Wikipedia link)

Sorry 😅 I probably could have taken a closer look at other comments, but in any case this paints a nice picture for me, thank you :)

Edit: Actually I decided to boot into Windows and test this a little myself, and turns out when bluetooth is on it is discoverable (Windows is a peripheral, the BlueZ device is a central wanting to connect). When i connected from my phone to my computer, It seemed more accurate to what you described too. If you dont use bluetooth disable it, or make your device not discoverable. 😅

It does help to know it was a notification and to know what was in it. I was able to find an image which looked similar and led me to find a Windows feature called Swift Pair. It lets you connect to a bluetooth device via notification, rather than in the settings. You can try disabling Swift Pair if it is enabled.

Here is my conclusion:

As others said, BlueZ is essentially the program that allows bluetooth to run on Linux. The name alone doesn’t tell you if the person behind has malicious intent.

It’s possible that somebody was making a swift pair compatible device using Linux. Maybe they thought 5AM was early enough that the swift pair notification would only show up on their computer since they wouldn’t be able to prevent other people from seeing it otherwise 🤷

It could also just be some device rebroadcasting itself on a clock. I’m not sure why or what you would do with this other than to annoy people?

If you especially don’t trust your neighbors and want to imagine a worst case scenario, it could be spoofing something like a bluetooth keyboard, rebroadcasting until someone connects, and runs a series of shortcuts / commands to infect your computer to replicate the virus further. ((Issue is, it doesn’t make sense they’d develop on Linux with BlueZ even though the virus could only propagate on Windows. Kinda fun to think about regardless though))

I hope that answers your question :)

I think i’m still confused on how you came to know the device was trying to connect to you :D Was there a Windows notification? Did it ask you to enter or confirm a code? Were you using bluetooth in general at the time?

I guess my main proposal is that central device can’t begin to initiate to another central device. In the discovery phase, a central device is like an ear, and a peripheral device is like a mouth. Ears can’t speak to other ears, and mouths can’t listen to other mouths. Mouths don’t know if ears are even there to listen, only the ears can initiate a connection.

In most cases Windows is like an ear. Neither a central nor peripheral can initiate a connection to you. Only you can initiate a connection to some other peripheral.

However Windows can act like a mouth under specific circumstances, specifically I found that you can use your computer as a hotspot and share over bluetooth. Sharing over bluetooth means Windows opens its bluetooth mouth to tell anyone willing to listen that it is connectable. So if you were doing something bluetooth related at the time it could have allowed a foreign (central) device to initiate a connection

This does sound very unusual that it would try to connect, so I wanted to add more context about how bluetooth works, which might help figure out where to look next or if you should look into it at all

In bluetooth there is the idea of a central device and peripheral device. Peripheral devices advertise of their existence in hopes that a central device establishes a connection. The central device always has the final say. For example, a phone (central device) connecting to bluetooth headphones (peripheral device).

Your computer should really only act as a central device. So you get to choose which devices are allowed to connect … but there are two exceptions:

• a device can auto-connect to a previously paired device. Maybe you accidentally paired with the Linux device, or thought it was another device. You can unpair / forget the device if you did.
• special software which auto-connects to devices. For example the nintendo switch auto-connects to controllers when the “change grip/order” menu is open. I think this would be very unusual, even for malware.

Technically, the bluetooth spec does allow bluetooth devices to be a central and peripheral at the same time. In theory if Windows is advertising itself as a peripheral, then the Linux device could connect as a central. The issue is, I don’t know if or when Windows is sending these bluetooth advertising packets. Maybe when bluetooth settings are open or if you have a wifi hotspot enabled?

Also, not all devices support running both modes at the same time, so you can rule it out if the device can’t be a peripheral. According to this guide, this is how you check that: https://www.howto-connect.com/see-if-windows-10-pc-supports-bluetooth-low-energy-peripheral-role/

If it just appeared in the connectable device list, then there is nothing to worry about really, bluetooth has some range to it, and it could just be a neighbor’s device.

A more polished wayland with plasma 6 :)

huh, TIL brushing before is apparently better

I go 1, 3, 2 because it was easier for me to form the habit that way. I don’t always have time for breakfast in the morning, so I anchor it to 1 instead of 2

Agreed. First LMG needs to clean house to make it a mentally safe work environment so there is never a repeat of Madison’s case … cause wtf. Second, an apology to Billet Labs … cause wtf. Third, they need to slow down the pace of work so the employees can focus on quality and accuracy.

The rate at which they pump out content is, in my opinion, unsustainable for the employees and unsustainable for the semi-regular viewer as well

I’ve noticed my recommendations have largely stopped showing me LTT videos over the past several months, probably because youtube recognizes that im not watching a large % of their videos, so why would youtube recommend the next one? i feel like their pace is thinning out their semi-regular viewers and leaving a highly devout community. To me, the semi-regulars are what add balance to the community rather than it becoming an echo chamber.

I think by slowing down, LTT will be in a much healthier happier place in the long term, even if the numbers don’t obviously show it. That said, idk if I can see their videos in the same light knowing what’s happened behind the curtains. I think for rn, that might be it for me.

me too fyi

Lol, ok there might be a little more than what meets the eye, cuz when i type `&` (without amp;) it converted it to & !!

new challenge- try to get it to render a & instead of & inside of `` (or ``` ``` for bulk testing)

tried:

• `&`
• `&`
• `&`
• `&;`
• `&<invisible character>`
• `&divide;` still becomes `÷` weirdly enough

I kinda cheated cuz its not the same character… but I got it to show by using the japanese monospaced & (＆)

test: ＆

＆

There’s not enough symbols on my keyboard, so let’s invent a code so we can write other symbols

1. lets say & means start of code
2. and say ; means end of code
3. Between the start and end is the code

Now let’s make some real symbols

• ¢ can be &cent;
• © can be &copy;
• ÷ can be &divide;

I want to tell other people how to use our new code, but if I tell them to “just write &divide;” it’ll turn my message into “just write ÷” !! So how can we fix this?

What if we make & its own code?

• &amp; —> &
• &amp;divide; —> &divide; ???

Yes! That’ll work :)

This is how &amp; came to be, and it’s specifically used in HTML as a way to write those symbols above (and escape other a few other symbols for similar reasons we did with &amp;)

As for why & shows up as &amp;, there are 2 main places I can see this happening:

1. The editor you use to write it automatically converts an & —> &amp;. But the user typed in &amp; (making it &amp;amp;). I think this is most likely. I’m guessing the title of posts automatically do the conversion, but the post body and comments do not because it uses a raw markdown editor
2. In some contexts the & specifically doesn’t get converted? like how you can write `&amp;` to get & as opposed to seeing ＆

hmm what if you use the escape code to write the escape code :P

&amp;

written as &amp;amp;

… written as &amp;amp;amp;

Mint is great, i’d say stick to it if it’s working! :P

Unless you want to branch out, I don’t think it’s much of a failure to return back home to a “noob distro.” To my eyes no such thing exists, they are just working operating systems and there’s nothing noob or beginner about that

I do use Arch, but because I’ve had bad luck with (proprietary) OS’s in general, so being able to choose exactly what to install and being able to fix it myself (if something ever happens) is something I value a lot. But I will say it takes a delicate type of nerd to handle that 🤣

Just throwing another suggestion to look for, maybe check your RAM usage? When I was first trying Linux i was using a persistent live iso, and it would randomly lock up like you describe. Just about the only functionality I had was to REISUB lol. It turned out my OOM services weren’t closing programs until it was too late … or maybe it was trying to put memory into swap space that didn’t exist. Who knows. Try opening firefox a bunch of times and maybe see what happens

This type of thing shouldn’t happen with a normal setup though.

I hope you can figure it out :)

agreed. r/infp especially, i always felt more at home there (even if my interests are more intp-like)