pulsewidth
@pulsewidth@lemmy.world
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 18 hours ago:
The Internet Archive. No need to reinvent the wheel. Have a discussion with them - set up a new project. Boom - everyone’s mods hosted in perpetuity by a free digital library.
- Comment on Nexus Mods Sale Sparks Concern in Modding Community 18 hours ago:
Since mods are almost exclusively unable to be copyrighted nowadays, there is a very good chance the Internet Archive would be more than happy to host the mod data - as they have with many community projects.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
Its just as risky for a non-American buying from a US company. And despite what others have said, customs can be a point of interception. But it’s not customs you need to worry about, they hand-off to the spy agencies to do their thing when they get a valid order to do so. Example program:
arstechnica.com/…/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factor…
Like others have said though, your threat model is what’s important. And if you are a person of interest to security agencies eg a whistleblower or journalist then you’d be wise to have someone you know make the purchase instead of you.
I’d be more concerned about Chinese products in general, as they have been caught again and again with pre-embedded untargeted malware. Meaning, everyone who ordered that model got a helping of malware, not just those under active surveillance by three letter agencies.
A few examples in this blog entry: georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/…/flawed-by-d…
- Comment on Do you care about up/down votes? 1 week ago:
I’m onto you’re plan
- Comment on Why is Jordan Peterson both a Christian and not a Christian? 1 week ago:
Fair enough. I don’t see Mormons or Jehovah’s as ‘not Christians’ though, nor do they as they believe in Christ as the son of their God - which is really all it takes to be a Christian fundamentally. However I do agree that the practices of the Mormon and JW church are very manipulative and controlling to their followers in the way cults often are, and overall a negative impact to the lives of most of their followers (except those at the top).
When people brand certain Christians as not Christian because they don’t follow Christs teachings the way they believe they should be followed or by some other personal metric then it quickly becomes a ‘No True Scotsman’ situation.
- Comment on What's going on with Borderlands 2? Steam is giving it for free, but the game has 23% positive recent reviews. 1 week ago:
Would it shock you to know that ALL of these are in the Steam terms of service also?
The only really sus one to me is the forced arbitration clause, and Steam also had that til they were pressured to remove it by multiple legal cases, including a class action brought to them by Steam user just last September. It is only sus because it’s outdated - companies are generally removing them now rather than adding them. legal.io/…/Valve-Removes-Mandatory-Arbitration-fr…
RE: remaining top 5 bullet points, 3 of the remaining 4 bullet points are uncontroversial bullet points about anticheat. The fourth is banning modding, which is also just a heavy handed anticheat attempt, and not uncommon for online games to add to their ToS to allow banning at their discretion. Either way its clumsy at the least as some mods can be harmless eg HUD mods for colourblind people and deserves some negativity - but not to this level, given everything else is just so boilerplate.
Collected data types: these are all for if you buy stuff with a credit card / paypal / etc off 2k/parent company Take 2. Remember, they sell games with in-game purchases. They also have an app which has location permissions option which is what the precise location is about.
So yes - again, as OP said, this is nothing controversial if you have paid attention to ToS meaning and content over the past 20 years.
Aside from the forced arbitration crap - which Steam, Microsoft, Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Google, AT&T - and hundreds of other major companies all snuck into their ToS over the years, and many have now been legally pressured to remove by consumer rights group. That is stupid because it shows their legal team is behind the times, companies are mostly removing their forced arbitration clauses nowadays because it has been the cause of many lost class actions.
- Comment on Why is Jordan Peterson both a Christian and not a Christian? 1 week ago:
I can completely believe you - but this man is a certified psychologist and has lectured and even written psychology textbooks, right? When I watched a few videos in the past (circa 2017) to find out who this guy the alt right was falling in love with was, I took away from it that broadly he was a grifter selling himself & books, but as for his discussions on psychology I’m a layman so couldn’t digest some of it. He sure does seem to think the world starts and ends with Carl Jung though, almost every problem had a solution that came back to a Jungian archetype.
- Comment on Why is Jordan Peterson both a Christian and not a Christian? 1 week ago:
He literally wanted to open a church and deliver servons every Sunday. He is not an atheist, he is just a charlatan.
Highly recommend anyone interested in him read this article / open letter written by an (ex) close friend and colleague, back in 2018.
- Comment on Why is Jordan Peterson both a Christian and not a Christian? 1 week ago:
He is 100% a Christian - a rather devout and conservative one at that, he just doesn’t like to admit it in public as he doesn’t like to agree to any premise on anything he believes in, or really any statement he’s made - as he’d then have trouble linguistically dancing around it when it was no longer convenient for whatever argument he was in.
If you’ve not read this open letter / article written by a colleague and (ex) close friend of Jordan’s way back in 2018 I highly recommend it to everyone researching him. Though it is long it gives a lot of insight into who he is behind closed doors, and his aspirations.
- Comment on Why is Jordan Peterson both a Christian and not a Christian? 1 week ago:
Succinctly put. In retrospect his behavior is classical grifting, but because he’s so well educated in psychology and has spent decades lecturing students he’s well armed to win over the 16-30yo disenfranchised/semi-intellectual male audience without them realizing.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Ehh. The default setting of life is to be ignorant - not politically engaged. So when someone does something like this meme they generally just go back to (now willful) ignorance.
Essentially they’re Cypher from the Matrix, but instead of having their memories wiped with machine technology they use Ambien and Champagne.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Most school curriculums nowadays have critical thinking interwoven as important parts of the STEM classes, in both primary and high school. Its not exclusive to college graduates, however if you do a philosophy course then you will have learned the highest level of it - and I’m sure many school systems around the world have varying degrees of quality of education.
But agreed it is absolutely something that people are not born with and must (and should) be taught.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Sorry but that is wrong. You are using the textbook definition of confirmation bias.
Critical thinking “is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, evaluating these justifications through comparisons with varying perspectives, and assessing their rationality and potential consequences.”
- Comment on 8BitDo no longer shipping to US from China due to Trump tariffs 1 month ago:
Am I wrong or do the 8BitDo controllers almost all have inbuilt batteries of unusual capacities? They could just build them to use standard AAA or AA rechargeables, but instead they do proprietary batteries which 8BitDo happily sell replacements for - sure seems like a path to more e-waste.
- Comment on Torrenting is not allowed on Windscribe 2 months ago:
Can also vouch for AirVPN. Going on 7 years now with no issues.
They do excellent discounts aound black Friday so you can pay for the year(s) ahead if you do decide to use them long term.
- Comment on How likely is it that Trump will be the first President assassinated since Kennedy? 2 months ago:
A bullet never went through his ear. The FBI amended their statement to say he was ‘grazed’ by a bullet or a bullet fragment, after initially questioning if he had been hit at all (because his medical team withheld all information from them during the investigation - which was unusual and suspicious). I mean you could see plain as day just a few weeks later when he removed the bandage his ear was almost completely undamaged.
- Comment on How likely is it that Trump will be the first President assassinated since Kennedy? 2 months ago:
They like this one though - he’s very easy to manipulate. Why get rid of him when they can just get everything they want from him.
- Comment on 6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux? 2 months ago:
For Shure maybe, but what about for other audio products companies?
P. S. I unironically believe 2025 may be looked back on as the year of the Linux desktop. May have finally got through the trough, we’ll see though.
- Comment on 6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux? 2 months ago:
Upgraded to Linux or Windows 11?
Because nobody is claiming you’ll lose functionality with Windows 11, so your post seems to imply Linux but I’m unsure.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Carl Sagan released his book The Demon Haunted World in 1995, where he championed the scientific method and critical thought and lamented the dumbing down of (particularly US) society, so no… It’s not new.
I will add that your premise is wrong on the 60s. The leftism in the 60s was counter-culture, it was small and it was mostly confined to the youth… It was certainly not the prevailing attitude of the country. It was not unlike the leftist groups you see in the US today - small, loud, and a reaction to the heavily conservative country they find themselves in.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Lol @ thinking Elon Musk was ever ‘left’ he was never even left of center.
- Comment on How effective would sanctions on US by the international community be? 2 months ago:
I think aiming to sanction the US is the wrong plan, treat it like it is what it is - a country run by an autocrat, and go after the oligarchs. Same approach as taken with Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.
In terms of effectiveness. Frankly we’re (globally) only getting rid of Trump and his cronies if the American public rise up against him and oust him through whatever means that may take. Protests and extended strikes for starters - and the people will be more likely to band together with Trump than against him if the whole world starts Tariffing and sanctioning the USA like a rogue state.
On the other hand, sanction and freeze Trump & Co. assetts all over the (western) world and when he retaliates to protect his own interests its a lot harder to sell to his constituents.
How you would even legally go about that is another question though, he would have to be breaking financial international laws and the countries involved in the personal sanctions would have to be ready and willing for blowback.
Its all fantasy at this stage until he starts blatantly breaking international laws that allow his assets to be seized. Likewise with the idea of sanctions - look at how much Israel has done and they’re not sanctioned, and it took a great deal of blatant acts of war before Russia and North Korea were sanctioned also.
- Comment on Technology isn't fun anymore 3 months ago:
Thanks saved me a click on a video that didn’t really have much to say. OP on this thread was right.
- Comment on Technology isn't fun anymore 3 months ago:
Consisting your friend is a huge movie buff I’m surprised it didn’t bother the heck out of him, film fans usually turn that crap off as soon as they turn on the TV. Supposedly it’s because sports, soap operas and a lot of low budget TV are shot & broadcast at higher frame rate than film - so when you watch a film with the frame rate artificially increased your brain goes ‘I am watching low budget soap trash’ subconsciously. I think people are just used to film looking a certain way and anything that makes it appear quite different is too distracting for them to relax into the fantasy.
- Comment on GO FORTH AND SEIZE YOUR DESTINY 3 months ago:
66cm x 42.4cm x 26.67cm and 152kg converted from old fogey to metric.
So yeah big and heavy I’d say.
- Comment on Stop touching your stuff! 3 months ago:
- Comment on Sending the dick pic works on other guys though 3 months ago:
Ain’t what happened.
Somebody: *uses redundant “nobody:” meme format. *
Someone else: that was redundant, why do people do this?
Flame-baiters: quotes meme back at them
- Comment on Freedumb 3 months ago:
Shingles is apparently one of the worst chronic pains a person can endure. Adult chicken pox can be deadly.
Worth looking into if you’ve never been vaccinated against chicken pox. There are options for adult vaccination.
Or don’t. Just don’t say nobody ever warned you.
- Comment on Liquid Death Quietly Adds Stevia to Tea Drinks 3 months ago:
You can drink a zero sugar saccharine drink every day for the rest of your life and experience no problems from it whatsoever. It’s the most tested artificial sweetener in history and has been used commercially since the 1890s.
People switching to the low and zero sugar products is a good thing. It is much healthier than people drinking sugary beverages - which is the alternative that that they replace. They do not replace water.
Switching from smoking to vaping is an improvement, but not a fair comparison as vaping has been shown to have significant negative health impacts.
