kyub

@kyub@discuss.tchncs.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A lengthy discussion was had⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Two words which every internet-using person should know about because they tend to be forgotten: proportionality and sophistication.

  Just because there is some element of crime within a specific group within a society, doesn’t mean that the solution is to completely exterminate the whole society.

  This is what the word “extremism” means - if you’re an extremist you find extreme measures at least OK because you’ve stopped differentiating and thinking about proportions. And when doing extreme measures to a specific group of people (usually a minority group, or even a whole weaker country), then you’re right-wing extremist.

  You wouldn’t want those things to be done to yourself when you’re part of a subgroup that’s under attack. You wouldn’t want to be a victim of extreme measures. That’s one reason why these extreme measures shouldn’t exist in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s just a tendency, not a hard rule.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  German here. These are some cultural and day-to-day differences compared to the US:

  • Sundays are officially a day of rest and so most shops and businesses are closed that day, with several exceptions like high priority stuff, restaurants, tourism/event-related stuff and so on. But you can’t go to a regular supermarket or expect a package delivery on a Sunday. Although some sundays are also different, it’s like an “event” where regular shops open sometimes. But that’s rare.
  • Cash is still very widely used (and you also should generally use it even if it’s less convenient because it’s probably the most privacy-preserving payment option), but other payment options are also available almost everywhere
  • There are tiny fees of around 1 € you probably need to pay when e.g. going to a public toilet or using a shopping cart. You also need to pay extra for bags, or bring your own.
  • Tip culture is very different, Germans usually pay very small tips compared to the US and no one expects you to, but in restaurants it’s common to tip something like 2 € for a bill of 25 € for example. Or you simply round up the number to avoid the hassle of small coins.
  • Prices always include taxes already
  • Water isn’t free and usually you can’t order tap water, although tap water is drinkable generally
  • You can drink alcohol with fully visible labels/bottles in public
  • For bottles and cans, there’s a “Pfand” which is like an extra deposit. So a bottle of water usually costs slightly more, but when it’s empty you can return it to get the extra deposit value back. It’s to encourage recycling.
  • Germans are more reserved in public and might do less small talk, and are usually more direct, but that doesn’t mean they’re unfriendly. This also applies to customer service! Personally I like this more than obviously fake and exaggerated politeness.
  • You should be more quiet in or near residential areas between like 10pm and 7am
  • Punctuality is highly valued, this is actually not exaggerated or a myth. Public transport might not wait for you if you’re 1-2min late. People will assume that something’s wrong when you’re a couple of minutes late to an appointment.
  • Highways have no speed limits in parts but you still probably shouldn’t drive much faster than 130 km/h. Pass other cars only on the left lanes, never on the right lanes. Also don’t drive on bike lanes.
  • Basically all streets or public spaces are safe to walk around. Also children don’t need supervision.
  • Most Germans have very good English skills, except maybe very old generations
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One Angry Man⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  1 (2012)

  How to Wagon your Dragon

  Soldier (Platoon)

  Something quiet on the Western Contested Spot

  Raindrop Man

  Shaun of One Body

  E.T. - The Default Terrestrial

  Star War: Appearance of a Jed

  Indiana Jones or the Only Crusader

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One Angry Man⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One ring to rule one person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One Angry Man⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  1 Ronin Plan 1 From Outer Space Buena Vista Solitary Spot Clover One-dimensional Point 1: One-dimensional Point District 1 Eye Narrowly Shut Edward Scissorhand Gremlin 1: The New Item The Langolier The One Grassleaf Mower Man The Ending Chapter Monty Python Or The Holy Grail Planet of one ape Policeman Student A Tale of One Sole Sister South Park: Small, Short & Cut Joined Limbguard

  Tap for spoiler

  47 Ronin Plan 9/From Outer Space Buena Vista Social Club Cloverfield Cube 2: Hypercube District 9 Eyes Wide Shut Edward Scissorhands Gremlins 2: The New Batch The Langoliers The Lawnmower Man The Neverending Story Monty Python And The Holy Grail Planet of the Apes Police Academy A Tale of Two Sisters South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut Split Bodyguard

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Saw this on r*ddit, had to share with my people⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The “Borat” actor (forgot the name)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RPGs that are optionally pacifist?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not so bad. The good news is that the game gets easier the farther you go. The endgame is the easiest part. The bad news is that you still need to know about a lot of the enemies, items and potential situations that can occur and how to handle them. The most important thing is to gather what’s commonly called an Ascension Kit, which is an approximate list of items you pretty much should have in order to win the game because then you can deal with literally every enemy and situation (unless you make a stupid mistake). So you need to know what those items are, how to get them, how to identify them in the game and not waste them, and things like that. You can get somewhat far just through sheer luck but you’ll never make it through if you play blindly (don’t read any tips or spoilers) or just rely on luck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RPGs that are optionally pacifist?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In Nethack, you can fully play as a Pacifist, although it’s VERY hard and the game is already hard to get into to begin with. In that case, you are only allowed to indirectly kill enemies by having your pet(s) kill them or by using spells which make enemies attack themselves. Or simply by avoiding enemies completely. Playing as a healer or wizard is the easiest option, but still very hard. The game rewards this and other conducts (= supported “challenges”) by mentioning it in the very end after you’ve ascended.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The 5090 might most of the time draw like 350W but like many top-end cards (also from AMD) power draw can spike really high and can reach double that even for very short moments. So you need a beefy power supply regardless. For a 5090 in combination with a top-end 16 core CPU I wouldn’t recommend anything under 1200W (so you still have some wiggle room. Power supplies are also at most efficient when they’re not at ~95-99% capacity but at ~80%).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Some potential optimization opportunities:

  • Memory doesn’t need to have RGB lighting (unless you want it for the optics), you can get the exact same thing without RGB for a little bit cheaper. IIRC, the non-RGB model is called “Flare X” or similar, “Trident” is the RGB one. Also, CL32 seems slightly slow… not up to date on this but you can probably get CL30 or CL28 for even more performance. 6400MHz seems OK, there are faster ones but there’s also a trade-off to be made between stability and performance so I think 6400MHz is fine. It’s important to ensure good compatibility with your mainboard. Also, 64 GB is still oversized for just a gaming rig. For pure gaming, you get basically no extra value with 64GB compared to 32GB. You only might need more than 32 GB for workstation-like use cases (video editing for example) and/or when you use VMs in parallel. Unused RAM provides no value and no additional perfomance.

  • A CPU with 16 cores could be slightly oversized for a pure gaming use-case as well, in most games you won’t notice a difference compared to the 12- or even 8-core variant instead. Again, higher core count is primarily useful for workstation-like use cases or VMs. Sometimes, the 12core can even be faster for games if it has slightly higher clock speeds for example. You should look at some benchmarks to see whether the 16core provides any benefit for gaming.

  • Mainboard: the MSI Godlike is extremely pricey and there’s very questionable, maybe zero additional value compared to a moderately priced one. The most important specs are probably the same anyway. You should take a look at a cheaper option here, unless you don’t mind throwing out money.

  • Monitor: If the player isn’t playing any fast-paced e-sports titles I think 240MHz refresh rate is overkill, but YMMV.

  • SSDs: not sure if PCIe 5 is worth the extra cash, could also go with PCIe 4 still, they’re slightly slower but it’s almost not noticeable and for gaming only affects loading times anyway (slightly!), it doesn’t affect your performance in actual gameplay. Not sure if WD is a good NVMe SSD brand actually. Consider Samsung or SK Hynix maybe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xonotic Vanilla Duel Cup | #xonotic.pickup Cups | MxCrab⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As an ancient Quake 3 player, it makes me happy to see that Xonotic seems like a really great and even open source adaption of this type of fast-paced arena shooter game. Looks much better than I would have expected. Also, at least Kyle and Spike seemed really high skilled (at least as far as I can guess based on zero game knowledge), comparable to the best Q3/QL/QC players I’ve seen. Didn’t watch everything though, just skimmed through it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Native Arch Linux Games - Share Your Favorites⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Free: Battle for Wesnoth is really great, I haven’t played it in a long time but it was already great like 10-15 years ago so it’s probably even better today, Nethack (if you don’t mind the starting difficulty and the “graphics”) is also great, VERY complex gameplay but very rewarding if you know it fairly well. Also saw a video of Xonotic today, looks also really good if you’re into fast multiplayer arena shooters (Quake-like). Heard positive things about 0 AD as well (Age of Empires-like). All of these are open source and in the extra repository on Arch.

  Non-free but really cheap: Stardew Valley is probably great, I’ve never played it and it doesn’t look like my cup of tea but I’ve only heard positive things plus it’s like #1 or #2 rated on Steam, so it must be really good.

  Non-free: Stellaris (got into it recently, great game, native and well-maintained Linux client (not at all common), much better than I expected, VERY complex and content-rich but still not that hard to grasp, quite expensive when you want all DLCs. It’s like a live service game, you’ll pay quite a bit if you want everything, but you also get tons of content). Also, Alien Isolation is one of my favorite single player horror games of all time and it also has a Linux client (which was a surprise for me) but that one is probably outdated and not maintained anymore by now I’d guess (but didn’t look it up) so it might be better to play the Windows client via Proton. I’m not up to date on that though - look it up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Well now I'm no longer impressed⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are also 2 types of penis, not sure what they’re called in English exactly but we call them blood penis or flesh penis. Blood penis is quite small unerect but can grow up to multiple times its size and also gets thicker when erected. The majority of men actually have this type of penis. The other type is the flesh penis, which is almost the same size whether erect or not. It doesn’t grow much when erect. Both of course get hard when erect. Since I sometimes see those jokes about small penises in unerect state I assume that quite a few people don’t know of these 2 types and their differences, and if you don’t know this kind of important detail then a flesh penis might look more promising when you’ve only seen it unerect. But, of course, there can still be size differences between different ones. Independent of the type. Anyway, the main point is if you really want to compare penis sizes you always have to do it in erect state, otherwise it’s completely meaningless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Zuckerberg Already Knows Your Life. Now He Wants His AI to Run It⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That, and also this might just be a fake PR stunt to make the Trump administration not seem so wrong. Remember that both Elon and Trump only really care about enriching themselves and their relatives. Anything they say or do doesn’t have much substance to it. It’s all about facilitating their goals. If they feel like they need to do a 180-degree turn in order to boost their public perception, they will do that. I don’t think they have much integrity, spine, morals or ethics at all. That would just stand in the way of enrichment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the other way around. In general, you should choose Linux over Windows, and only if you really need it, use Windows. Also, if you need Windows just temporarily for some things, consider running it in a VM inside Linux just for those occasions.

  Why - well, to keep it short, Linux’ main weaknesses for common users (difficulty, compatibility) are gradually fading away (they are already almost non-existent these days if you have mainstream hardware and a mainstream desktop distro like Mint, Fedora, Ubuntu) while Windows’ main disadvantages (forced stuff like cloud/AI integrations/ads, complete disregard of user’s privacy, increasing security issues due to outdated stuff being kept in the OS for backwards compatibility reasons, and many more things) keep on increasing at a rapid rate. Microsoft has a big business interest in getting all users locked into their cloud ecosystem, locked into a subscription with ever-increasing monthly fees, and give up control over their own computer and their digital privacy. They want users to pay them with their data AND monthly subscription fees. MS Office, for example, will probably not have a pure locally runnable version after 2029 (or around that year) anymore. Sure, it’s still 4 years away. And you might still be able to use a supported local version of MS Office for a bit longer after that. But this Microsoft train is still heading towards that wall. And the speed is increasing. And tons of users are still inside that train.

  Furthermore, by supporting Microsoft you’re supporting a very unethical company. They partner with big surveillance companies like Palantir and the despicable ad-tech-industry (the industry that’s spying on literally everyone and buying/selling/storing tons of intimate user data even though it’s illegal in most countries), they partner with the military, law enforcement and other things. Also, they are a US company, and we all know how US politics is like these days, and this can have a big influence on how “trustworthy” US-based proprietary software will become in the near future. Since 2020, arguably no US-based proprietary software or online service is trustworthy anymore anyway, because of the CLOUD act, which is current law in the US - it means that the US government has access to any customer data stored by a US-based company, regardless of where on Earth they are storing it. This means the often-used claim “my data stored by that US company is safe because it’s in a European-based datacenter!!!11” is false since at least 2020, because MS is forced by US law to grant technical access to customer data to their government. Also, all previous “data transfer privacy agreements” between EU and US like Privacy Shield were all a joke and were dismantled in courts already. So there’s currently zero legal data protection - any data you send to a US company is theirs to do with as they please, essentially. And even if there were any meaningful legal data protections left, those big tech companies might still simply ignore that data protection law and only face minor or no fines at all.

  So this is not a baseless claim. Just because I might keep some statements short doesn’t mean that there are no backing arguments. It’s a very good idea to reduce your dependency on Microsoft’s (or in general, US-based) proprietary software and services. For multiple reasons. Digital sovereignty has never been more important than these days. It has always been important but it was maybe too abstract in the past for many common users to realize. They are slowly starting to realize now that dependencies on proprietary software from any rogue regime (and the current US regime also falls into that category now) are not great to have. Plus, there is Microsoft on its own already putting ever-increasing user- and customer-hostile features into their products. It’s like being in an abusive relationship. It’s just not good for you long-term.

  So as a user, you should instead choose software which allows you to retain your digital sovereignty and control over your own computing, and simply not take all that abuse. Linux- or *BSD-based OSes with their open/transparent development models, fork-able/modifiable code bases, permissive licensing and essentially zero unwanted crap like adware, spyware, bloatware etc. offer exactly that. And because mainstream Linux distros have already become so easy to use these days, there are almost no reasons not to start using them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Obviously Linux is the correct choice but I fear most will simply continue to suck it up and upgrade their Windows.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are a lot of phenomenal indie games. There also are still a couple of really good AAA games, but AAA gaming isn’t what it used to mean. In fact I’d be careful with AAA by default unless reviews state that the game is actually good. Ubisoft even tried to establish an “AAAA quality” game with Skulls & Bones or how it’s called and it’s a total flop.

  The real quality these days lies in indie games or (mostly) independent gaming studios. I think it’s kind of safe at this point to just assume that Bethesda, Microsoft, EA, Activision-Blizzard and so on simply cannot produce actual good games anymore (there may be some exceptions, but again, wait for independent reviews, and unless it was independently verified, don’t trust them to produce a good game).

  Another problem is the sheer mass of games flooding the market, because it means that true gems aren’t found so easily. But they exist. There’s no shortage of great games, you just have to look harder, and look in the right places.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite 1000+ hour games?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Deep Rock Galactic

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nuclear Demonology⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It does again show that these people are irrational, unscientific, religious cultists, and they don’t even want to hide it. We, as in humanity, should aim to progress away from such a dark past, not regress back into one. That way lies madness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dragon Age: The Veilguard releases today, and players are celebrating the famous ‘Bioware Turn’⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Larian’s CEO / producer of Baldur’s Gate 3 apparently likes DA: Veilguard. That alone probably means I have to play it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is china as bad as america makes it out to be?⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Broad question, broad answer:

  Is the situation in USA bad? Yes, in several aspects (and getting much worse if the current fascism movement wins out in the end).

  Is the situation in China bad? Yes, in much more aspects.

  Most important goal for USA right now is to ensure they’re not regressing into an authoritarian, fascist regime. Because then, the situation for US citizens will start becoming really similar to China or Russia. After that, goal is to combat climate change. And preventing World War 3.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happened to the turn based RPG and RTS genres?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a perceived unpopularity with these genres. However, some truly great games like Baldur’s Gate 3 are living proof that you can make a niche genre very popular. It’s just that almost no one tries, or doesn’t like the risk involved. That’s why you don’t see a lot of these genres anymore. Well, you DO see them, if you look close enough and include indie and A/AA titles, but a massive AAA title with big budget and advertising for those genres is pretty much non-existant (I’m not familiar of any other exception like BG3). I think big studios are unlikely to risk such things. Look for smaller game studios, they’re much more innovative and either keep “dead” genres alive or they try mixing genres in innovative ways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delectable⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well with food something unusual at first feels weird but once you try it it might actually be good. I’ve had this experience quite a lot. Probably shows how much you’re conditioned to liking certain foods just because you’re used to them and grew up with them. So I’m not gonna judge how this would taste. But the first impression was like “ugh”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you use Google’s Play Services and/or other Google proprietary apps and services (they are standard on all commercial Android phones), then your battery will be drained slightly more due to it having spyware (euphemism: “telemetry”) integrated. The Google Play services app, for example, does transmit at the minimum this data roughly every 20 minutes to Google:

  Phone #
  SIM Card #
  IMEI (world-wide unique device ID)
  S/N of your device
  WIFI MAC address
  Android ID
  Mail Address of your  logged in Google account
  IP address
  

  And that is just if you have disabled ALL telemetry in ALL of the options, even the most hidden ones. So this is the minimum amount they are always gathering from every Android user, no matter what you selected. To make matters worse, the Google Play services is typically installed as a “system critical app” which means you as the owner of the phone can’t even uninstall it or reduce some of its permissions.

  (If you have an iPhone instead, and think you’re safe from this, no you aren’t. Apple also collects a minimum amount of telemetry data which you cannot ever completely disable, it just does it slightly less frequently (IIRC, it was like every hour or so, compared to Google’s every 20min at the minimum).

  And then there’s also the advertisement ID, a world-wide unique identifier set in all commercial Androids as well as iOS, for apps to track you. You can only reset it to a new random ID but never disable it fully.

  To stop all of this bullsh!t, and also to stop the additional battery/resource drain caused by this, I recommend getting a Pixel phone and replacing the proprietary stock Android OS with GrapheneOS and then not installing any Google apps/services on top of it. You can get apps via F-Droid, Obtainium, Aurora store (those are the convenient methods). You can use ntfy as an alternative to the Google firebase messaging (notification) service that you won’t have access to when not having Google Play services running.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's discuss: Monkey Island⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  MI is great, I played 1+2 when they were new (in the 90s), they were brilliant back then. These days, they’re probably still good point&click adventure games. There were some special editions or remasters which probably make them play well on modern machines. They belong to a long list of awesome LucasArts point&click adventures during the 90s and early 2000s. Most of these games are great. You should definitely try them out, especially if there are remasters available. But you can also play the originals using ScummVM most likely. Ron Gilbert is like the mastermind behind the series. He still creates adventure games to this day. And they’re all pretty good, but the genre is kind of niche these days. It wasn’t niche back then. It was just as big as action or soulslike games are today. The Monkey Island titles were probably the most successful or popular ones of the bunch. But there are some others which are equally good. Adventure games are rare these days but basically they are like puzzle games where you have to solve certain situations by combining items, finding items in the first place, trying different approaches, and so on. You kind of know once you’ve overcome a challenge when you were able to progress further in the game. There’s little to no handholding, but also little to no handholding needed. There’s one timing-based riddle in the original Monkey Island which I never liked that much, but it’s still a funny one. It’s not hard but it doesn’t really fit the genre well because nothing else is timing-based. It does fit the game’s art, setting and humor well though. The soundtrack is nice indeed. This is probably the most well-known track: invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=FoT5qK6hpbw These are games which were made in a time when games like this were made with love and for the fun of the making. You will also experience this while playing. They are great games made by people who really liked doing that stuff. They aren’t your typical recycled assembly line games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chrome will block one of its biggest ad blockers⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but my post is for the people who DO care about privacy issues. I also don’t like the defeatist’s attitude. You can always start making things better. My post is for those who want to make a better informed decision, that’s all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can't change controller settings without updating Windows first⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, you should use Linux regardless. ;-)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reminder that Jagex Privacy Policy is Opt Out - Link in Description⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well this whole area is mostly based on deceit. Like if they claim they MAY do something they will absolutely do it all the time, if they claim they aren’t getting anything from it, it just means they aren’t getting anything directly, but indirectly instead, or from a different involved party. I also like the message at the top of the page: “Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.”. Under some circumstances you have rights. Which is weirdly accurate. Because in most circumstances, they will just sh*t on data protection rights. Which is also evident by everything being opt-out, rather than opt-in. Then again, it’s an industry-wide problem. Not specific to Jagex.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chrome will block one of its biggest ad blockers⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Reasons are the data transmissions happening by default and Mozilla’s questionable inclusion of add-on things like Pocket. See for example: kuketz-blog.de/mozilla-firefox-datensendeverhalte… vs. kuketz-blog.de/mullvad-browser-datensendeverhalte… kuketz-blog.de/librewolf-datensendeverhalten-desk… (You might need to translate the site to English) If you compare that, you can see why it’s easy to recommend the forks over the original.