t3rmit3
@t3rmit3@beehaw.org
- Comment on Brazil rules that social media platforms are responsible for users’ posts 5 days ago:
It will make it extremely risky from a liability standpoint to operate any platform that allows users content. The EFF has a bunch of writeups on these types of laws. This is the last of a 4-part series on them: Link
Fediverse operators would for example be extremely vulnerable to lawsuits, because almost none of them can afford teams of lawyers to deal with claims, true or not, that they failed to enforce content policies.
It gives power to large corporations like Meta and Xitter, who can afford to handle legal threats.
- Comment on LeechBlock NG 5 days ago:
If I had the self control to not just unblock the sites or uninstall the extension, I’d have the self control to not go there in the first place. :P
- Comment on Mozilla Turns Firefox Away from Open Source, Towards Spyware: Firefox Labs Now Requires Data Collection 2 weeks ago:
I understand it’s a slippery slope argument, which is why I didn’t find it particularly convincing.
And if you’ve done bugfixing of software, you know that the data that users give you in reports is 90% of the time less useful than what you get out of crash reports or telemetry. Not all beta programs are there solely for the developers’ sake (some are there for e.g. third party devs to update integrations, etc), but this one seems to be, and that isn’t evidence of malice.
- Comment on Mozilla Turns Firefox Away from Open Source, Towards Spyware: Firefox Labs Now Requires Data Collection 2 weeks ago:
I am 100% on board with the author until they claim that this is not open source, immediately after noting that users can take the source code and remove the telemetry function from it. They try to reconcile that contradiction by seemingly saying that since Firefox has the telemetry, a non-telemetry Firefox wouldn’t be Firefox, and that somehow makes FF not open-source?
Is Firefox really open source if we have to submit to data collection to access features distributed under an open source license?
Yes, ordinary end users can create a patch set to enable these features without needing to submit data to Mozilla - but that would clearly no longer be Firefox.
Plenty of OSS licenses have rules baked into them about how you can use the code, or lay out obligations for redistribution.
“Is it really open source if I have to edit the source code I was given to remove a feature I don’t like?”
I mean, yeah? What a program does is completely orthogonal to the rights granted by its source code license, which determines whether something is open-source.
I am also not sure why they seem to think that this move either is meant to or is likely to push away technical users in favor of some supposed group of non-technical users who will go into the settings to manually enable a beta testing feature (Labs).
Yes, the purpose of a system is what it does, but the author isn’t presenting any evidence of what it’s doing vis a vis their claim of making technical users quit FF.
Mozilla has plenty of issues, but I just don’t see “forces you to agree to telemetry if you want to participate in beta testing” as some canary in the coalmine of enshitiffication.
- Comment on Anxiety is the most common mental health problem – here’s how tech could help manage it 2 weeks ago:
Technology isn’t inherently bad, obviously, but in our current world it’s primarily owned, controlled, and advanced by bad groups and people (for-profit companies, governments, and the rich). Until we actually extricate ourselves from this situation, we should be very wary of looking to technology for cures to out problems.
- Comment on New apps help immigrants navigate Trump’s deportation crackdown 2 weeks ago:
If they’re operating in the US, it doesn’t matter whether the app is intentionally pulling unnecessary information, there are still server logs showing the IP of each request being made for the real-time updates. That IP + timestamp would let the government know (with the help of your ISP, who are all in bed with the government) exactly who you are.
If you are routing all your traffic through a VPN, you can make that much harder to correlate, but unless you validate on the wire or in the code that the app isn’t sending e.g. a device ID or any other kind of unique identifier, it could still end up compromising you. A webpage just intrinsically doesn’t carry the same level of risk as a local app.
That’s why, as the article notes, many of these have been shutting down preemptively; they know they could be putting their users at risk.
- Comment on New apps help immigrants navigate Trump’s deportation crackdown 3 weeks ago:
I’m torn on this for any app-operating companies/orgs based in the US.
The real-time maps mean at best they’re able to see at least the IPs of users, and at worst, a ton of device or personal information (depending on what perms are granted to the apps). This would be a treasure-trove of info for ICE. A lot of women stopped using period-tracker apps for a reason after Roe was overturned.
Also, unless people are side-loading the apps, Google or Apple will also know exactly who downloaded them, since you can’t download through their app stores anonymously.
There are websites with real-time information that don’t force you to install an app to view, and visiting a website rather than using an app makes it much easier to minimize the information you’re leaking.
- Comment on Linux Kernel Chaos Caused By A Broken Script 3 weeks ago:
The kernel is now well beyond the singular control or shepherding of Linus. He’s still hugely influential in the community obviously, so not a pure figurehead, but the kernal dev community will continue on very well.
- Comment on Epic’s AI Darth Vader tech is about to be all over Fortnite 4 weeks ago:
Yes, but by definition all of them are also playing the game, and given that this is mostly a novelty feature (and also based on how shockingly little use the user-facing chatbots I’ve seen in professional settings are utilized), I personally doubt that the chatbot energy usage will top the game’s.
- Comment on Lies of P is getting difficulty options to make the Soulslike more accessible [VGC] 1 month ago:
Every time I see someone say that most people haven’t swung a sword/ shot a gun/ been in a fight/ been in an accident, etc, I always wonder if I’m the one in the bubble or if they are.
- Comment on The Kids Online Safety Act is back 1 month ago:
I will trust the experienced lawyers and civil rights advocates at the ACLU, thanks. Nothing about this bill is good for children, it is a direct attempt to allow government to exert control over online spaces’ content, as well as de-anonymize internet users. Both of those are bad.
- Comment on PS5’s three best-selling digital games in April 2025 were all Microsoft titles [VGC] 1 month ago:
the capitalization of the game names is also completely unnecessary in this example
is it fine to disregard writing conventions just because its possible to understand the meaning without them
- Comment on PS5’s three best-selling digital games in April 2025 were all Microsoft titles [VGC] 1 month ago:
For anyone wondering:
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, Minecraft and Forza Horizon 5
Look at that complete lack-of-an-Oxford-comma just sitting there, mocking us.
- Comment on GTA 6's delay doesn't mean the games industry's in trouble - it's already dead 1 month ago:
R* sucks. Their asshole-simulator games-turned-live-service-cashgrabs have never represented anything but the worst of the games industry. GTA6 getting canceled would be an excellent opportunity for millions of people who would’ve bought it to spend their time playing something better.
Fight me.
- Comment on Open World Games: yay or nay? 1 month ago:
I’m a huge open world and/or sandbox nut. Non-linearity is my jam. Kenshi, Rimworld, AssOdyssey/Shadows, Project Zomboid, Witcher 3, X4…
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good story, but story takes many shapes, and not all stories are pre-written; plenty are emergent. I grew up playing with Legos (and still do), and me making whatever story I wanted (or that emerged along the way) was part of the appeal.
- Comment on Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday - IGN 1 month ago:
Yes and no. Most of the cost-reductions in hardware manufacturing lifecycles come from minimizing materials loss and optimizing design efficiency. The components don’t actually just get cheaper to produce over time on their own, from a material perspective. That means that material shortages are much more likely to have a big impact on cost than new manufacturing technology, for the same chip.
- Comment on Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday - IGN 1 month ago:
I don’t think they’ll do that for already-released games, but I wouldn’t put the big 3 (Sony, MS, Nintendon’t) from doing the barest ‘remasters’, and replacing their digital versions of those games with the ‘remasters’.
- Comment on We finally know a little more about Amazon’s super-secret satellites 1 month ago:
More space trash from trash corporations…
Cool tech used for boring purposes.
- Comment on After Years of Struggle, Blizzard Has Found Itself in Uncharted Territory: Overwatch Players Are Having Fun Again 1 month ago:
This is the incident that made me cancel my WoW sub, and close my Battle.net account. Never again trusting them, even under Microsoft (or rather, especially now under MS).
- Comment on The games industry is screwed. [26:11] 1 month ago:
Oh man, 2011… I’m a millennial, and even I was already out of college in 2011. My ‘kid’ games were $80 USD in the 90s. Here’s an article from 2014 that someone made about how insane N64 game prices were.
Star Fox 64 – $79.95 (Source: GamePro #106) - 1997 GoldenEye 007 – $69.95 (Source: GamePro #108) - 1997 Super Mario 64 – $66.99 (Source: GamePro #97) - 1996
According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $80 USD in 1997 is $160 today.
- Comment on From 4chan to the White House: James Ball explains how failing to take games seriously has fed the populist right 1 month ago:
Obviously. The list you rattled off looks like you did a Google or YouTube search on “gaming influencer” and picked a few random names.
I didn’t Google for those, they were, as I said, the ones I do know.
Don’t spout off uneducated opinions about subjects you don’t know anything about.
I know quite a lot about the gaming space. That doesn’t require me to go look up every middling alt-right YTer or streamer.
If you have an actual take on what I posted, apart from my examples being too well-known or something, feel free to post it.
- Comment on From 4chan to the White House: James Ball explains how failing to take games seriously has fed the populist right 1 month ago:
I think you’ve mixed up the timeline in my comment.
- Pre-gamergate era (2010-2014): channer-esque misogynists like JonTron are heavily popular on YT, but there is no political pipeline established. They are just voicing their own shitty thoughts, and their audience is almost exclusively young white males.
- Gamergate (2015): Right-wing politicians and shock pundits like Shapiro take notice of the large amount of misogynistic content that a lot of gaming YTers are spouting as GG gets national attentions, and think, “hey, those sound like people I can capture”.
- Early Alt-right pipeline (2016-2019): figures like Shapiro and Yiannopoulos start making content intended to target gamers, usually ‘shock’ videos with gamer-derived terms like “own” (the libs), and/or are interviewing right-wing-aligned gamer influencers, and the gamer->conservative voter pipeline is developing.
- Late Alt-right pipeline (2020-onwards): there are tons of right wing YTers, streamers, and talk-shows that target young white males, especially gamers, telling them that everything they dislike is due to ‘wokeism’, ‘DEI’, etc… you know the rest.
Even before that, there was this whole corporate wokeness marketing trope that really drove the concept into the ground
You’re using ‘woke’ unironically, in the way that the Right does. Neither of those things you posted are Woke, they’re just pandering. Woke means aware of the systemic biases in our social institutions. Your examples aren’t “wokeness”, they’re Feminist Capitalism (and Rainbow Capitalism also gets called ‘woke’ by the Right).
It’s like kids all running with this popular meme, only for parents to sudden adopt it and it’s not cool any more. So, right-wing spheres to pick it off of the ground, dust it off, and just carry that energy forward, which is unfortunately what they are good at.
No, that was never what wokeness was, it’s just that right-wingers started calling anything they didn’t like “woke”, despite their examples having nothing to do with wokeness.
- Comment on From 4chan to the White House: James Ball explains how failing to take games seriously has fed the populist right 1 month ago:
they saw “woke” as a reason for why games or movies turned out bad
This only became a thing after the pipeline was established. This rhetoric is what the pipeline feeds them.
I remember seeing JonTron videos back in 2011, well before the 2015 gamergate era. Even back then he’d make offhand remarks about how tough it was being White, how badly women treat men, etc. Gamergate in 2015 largely caught the notice of the Right’s political apparatus, and they saw the opportunity to convert the casual misogyny and racism into feeders for their political machine. “Woke” didn’t really become a right-wing attack in the gaming and movie spheres until pretty recently.
- Comment on From 4chan to the White House: James Ball explains how failing to take games seriously has fed the populist right 1 month ago:
It’s so frustrating to see so many comments doing exactly what the post is pointing out, either deriding games as a medium, or “gamers” as some monolithic group of disaffected young men.
Games are a medium, same as books, movies, or tv. They can convey any message, and yes, many games do have Progressive (or even Leftist, see Disco Elysium) themes. But unlike TV, books, and movies, where there is a constant stream of political interaction from both Left and Right wings’ political apparatuses, there aren’t really a lot of Leftist political entities attempting to reach young men via videogames.
Name one Left-wing gaming influencer apart from Hasanbi (who it should be pointed out, many Democrats tend to hate on). I can list off at least 3 different right-wing ones off the top of my head (JonTron, Asmongold, Dr Disrespect). And that’s not even beginning to get into the gaming-adjacent Rightwing influencers who those gaming influencers direct their fans to.
It’s a pipeline, and we don’t have one on the Left.
I remember the first time AOC played Among Us, and it was a huge deal for us on the Left, because it was possibly the very first time we’d seen a Democratic politician actually engage with games publicly.
Gaming is literally the largest entertainment medium now by a large margin (yes, larger than movies and tv), but we don’t see politicians putting out lists of games to play like they do books or movies. Instead, most times we see an article about a Democratic politician somewhere like Kotaku, it’s often because they’re trying to blame video games for something.
So instead we have largely ceded the gaming sphere (not the games themselves, but the areas of discussion around gaming) to the Right. They pull in disaffected young men, tell them women and ‘wokies’ are the reason for their problems, and then hand them off to overtly political folks who transform that general disaffection into right-wing political capital.
- Comment on From 4chan to the White House: James Ball explains how failing to take games seriously has fed the populist right 1 month ago:
I think you’re misunderstanding what “taking games seriously” in this instance.
The Right takes the political power of games seriously. They understand that games can be tactically used as an access route to young men, to influence their politics. They know that it is just another medium like TV or movies or books, and don’t eschew interacting with them for political purposes like Democrats traditionally have.
That’s why it was such a big deal when AOC played Among Us (and later, her and Walz streaming various games). It was a politician on the Left actually ‘deigning’ to interact with young people in a platform that they inhabit, and not belittling it.
The closest equivalent person we have on the Left to someone like JonTron or other YTers who mix Right-wing talking points with games to draw young men into their pipeline, is Hasan, and Democrats treat him like he’s practically Ted Kaczynski in waiting.
- Comment on Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI 1 month ago:
the repetitive tasks that turn any job into a grind are prime candidates
The problem is, this varies from person to person. My team divvies up tasks based on what different people enjoy doing more, and no executive would have any clue which repeating tasks are repetitive (in a derogatory way), and which ones are just us doing our job. I like doing network traffic analysis. My coworker likes container hardening. Both of those could be automated, but that would remove something we enjoy from each of our respective jobs.
A big move in recent AI company rhetoric is that AI will “do analyses”, and people will “make decisions”, but how on earth are you going to keep up the technical understanding needed to make a decision, without doing the analyses?
An AI saying, “I think this is malicious, what do you want to do?” isn’t a real decision if the person answering can’t verify or repudiate the analysis.
- Comment on The inarguable case for banning social media for teens 2 months ago:
Its not an empty panic if you actually have real reasons why its harmful.
Every panic has reasons. Whether they are valid reasons, proportional reasons, or reasons that matter, is up for interpretation.
First you’d need laws in place that determine how the social media algorithms should work, then we can talk.
Yes, then we can talk about banning systems that remain harmful despite corporate influence being removed. You’re still just arguing (by analogy) to ban kids from places where smoking adverts are until we fix the adverts.
companies ARE making it harmful, so it IS harmful
No, companies didn’t make social media harmful, they made specific aspects of social media harmful. You need to actually approach this with nuance and precision if you want to fix the root cause. If, on the other hand, your actual goal is just to ban social media because you’ve decided that is your ideological goal, you need to be upfront about that.
That, and there are various other reasons why its harmful
Every reason that’s been cited in studies for social media being harmful (algorithmic steering towards harmful content, influencer impact on self-image in kids, etc) is a result of serving profits. There are other harms as well, such as astroturfing campaigns, which are non-unique to social media, and can’t be protected against by banning it.
Let me ask you upfront, do you believe that children should not have access to the internet in general?
- Comment on The inarguable case for banning social media for teens 2 months ago:
This is the newest think of the children panic.
Yes, social media is harmful because companies are making it harmful. It’s not social media that’s the root cause, and wherever kids go next those companies will follow and pollute unless stopped. Social Isolation is not “safety”, it’s damaging as well, and social media is one of the last, freely-accessible social spaces kids can access.
We didn’t solve smoking adverts by banning kids from going places where the adverts were, we banned the adverts and penalized the companies doing them.
- Comment on Bluesky rolls out blue check verifications 2 months ago:
This got me curious, so I started digging into their documentation. It looks like you can currently stand up the appview backend as a dev environment, but making it actually run as an alternative instance doesn’t appear to be possible (which is why no one is doing it).
- Comment on Bluesky rolls out blue check verifications 2 months ago:
There is only one instance, which is the company’s because the company has not released the server software. It’s completely centralized.