Nibodhika

@Nibodhika@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do companies require you to submit a resume but also put the same data into their forms?⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Except it is, if you have the machine readable fields you can export the ones you’re interested in into a human readable document. Instead you have what the candidate thinks you want to read, which is essentially all of the information you had on the other fields.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the difference between http and HTTPS ?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  HTTP sends data in plain text, without any sort of verification. If you’re a malicious actor it’s a dream.

  While you need to understand a little bit of cryptography to fully understand it we can simplify a lot of you just accept public/private keys work. If you want to learn more about it you can read the wiki, but for the time being just accept that there’s a way to generate a pair of keys, a public one you share with the world, and a private one only you know, and that with these it’s possible for people to use the public key to send messages that only you can read, and for you to use the private keys to sign messages in a way that anyone can verify it’s you using the public key.

  So, HTTP is just a protocol to send text over the network, anyone can grab a package and read it. To make it secure there are some specific sites that contain a list of sites and their public keys. Your browser has an internal list of these sites. When you try to access, for example Google, your browser contacts one of these sites, and asks for Google’s public key, when it gets it it encrypts the message leaving only the header (which says this message is for Google) unencrypted and sends it. For everyone in the middle of the road they see a message for Google containing garbage, but when Google gets it they use their private keys to read it. Then whatever they reply they can sign it so that you can use the key to verify it came from them.

  With that in mind you might have noticed that what the server sends you back is plain text and publicly viewable. Therefore, every time you connect to a website there needs to be a handshake procedure, in short you send a message to the site (encrypted with his public key) telling it to reply to you using a public key you send them, now besides signing the message they also encrypt it using the key you gave them. And voila, no one can know what you said to the server because you encrypted it with its public key, and no one can know what the server told you because it encrypted it with your public key.

  This is a simplification of the protocol, but that’s the core idea on how it works. You also might have noticed that everyone can see who you’re talking too, and that there’s no way around that since your message has to reach the server other computers HAVE to know where to send it to. But, if you have access to another computer to use as a Hub, you can send messages to that computer encrypted with its public key where the content is an encrypted message to the site you’re actually trying to access, so no one knows where they go afterwards, and it can then send it to the site you’re trying to access. When it gets the response it can then encrypt it to send to you.

  That doesn’t really work if you’re the only one accessing that middle computer, but if lots of people do then it’s impossible to know what message is for who, because from the outside you see a bunch of messages directed to that computer, and a lot of messages from that computer to different sites. Some companies offer this service, its called Virtual Private Network, or VPN for short. Another reason why VPNs are important is that you have the public key on your system, so there’s less surface of attack.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a router ?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s get into very basic things.

  You have two computers you want to connect, you grab a cable, plug it in both and voila!

  You now need to connect a third computer, you could have a three way cable, but that makes it hard to replace things. Instead you have a box that has multiple connectors and internally it just connects all of them, essentially making a multi-end cable ok demand, this is what’s called a Hub because it’s just a centralized location where every package goes in/out.

  But now your machines need to know how to send messages to one or another, so you implement a protocol where each machine has a number, and every message sent you encapsulate in a header saying something like “For X”, and computers know their own number so they can discard messages that are not for them.

  Cool, but as you add more computers and longer cables the signal might become weak, you could add a very small chip to that box and some electricity so it can now act as a repeater. Most hubs were also repeaters, it was a small extra cost but a lot of extra functionality so it was an easy choice.

  As you add more computers you start to have an issue, whenever two computers send a message at the same time they collide and no one receives it. Now, this is silly, you have computer 1 sending a message to computer 2 and computer 3 sending a message to computer 4, there’s no reason these should collide, but because of the Hub they do (because both messages are actually sent to all computers and they just discard what’s not for them).

  It’s time to make your box a bit smarter. Instead of naively sending all messages everywhere, you add a computer there, it can understand the protocol we described before, and instead of just being a blind signal repeater. This box now knows which port each computer is plugged in, and so when 1 sends a message to 2 the signal only goes from the port 1 to the port 2, all other ports are free and can send messages at the same time. This is what’s called a Switch, because it switches what output the message goes to.

  Cool, but now we have two separate networks, which means there are two Computer 1. You can’t just put one cable between the two switches because they won’t know where computer 1 is. Each switch needs to have it’s own number, and you need to wrap the message twice, e.g. Computer 1 connected to switch 1 wants to send a message to computer 2 connected to switch 2. Switch 2 is connected on port 5 to switch 1, so you wrap your message with something like “For 5, For 2”. The first switch sends to 5, the second switch receives it, notices it’s for himself, discards the first wrapper, and sends to 2.

  Magic, right? Well, not quite, you need to know where computer 2 is located, and know all of the path to it. That’s not feasible for users to manage. What if we gave each computer a unique number across networks? It would be a sort of an Inter-Network Protocol address, or an Internet Protocol address for short, or even shorter IP. So now each computer has a unique number, and computer one can just send a message to computer 10 and not have to worry where it is.

  But how does the message actually get to computer 10? Well, it’s time to add some extra logic to our Switch, and have it store a table of routes, so it knows that computer 10 is on port 5. Because they now not only know what’s on their ports but what route a package needs to take to reach its destination between networks this device is called a Router.

  And there you go. A short introduction to network to explain what a router is and how it works. Obviously I simplified a lot of stuff and the real thing is a lot more complex, but this should give you a good ELI5 version of routers and networking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One thing that helped shift my perspective was to use it for its intended purpose. I have it enabled on my code editor to use for auto-complete instead of traditional code parser or snippet library, it’s honestly very good at that, it still makes a few mistakes and suggests shitty code, but overall I think it mostly works and it’s easier to hit tab and have the full for loop or small function written and correct the variable access it got wrong when it does.

  Another thing that has made it very useful to me was in situations where I need to write code using libraries or languages I’m not used to. Having a copilot or Claude tab opened and asking it how to do certain stuff is a lot faster than reading the documentation to figure out the API or syntax. If something doesn’t work you feed it the error and it usually spots the problem. This has made me a lot more productive with for example Jenkins, since it’s a different language from what I use for everything else, and to properly test it you have to commit the code and let the pipeline run, before LLMs this was a very tedious work of reading docs, stack overflow, extrapolating responses, etc. Now it’s still tedious work, but at least I have my first draft much quicker and can then deal with the hallucinations or obsolete APIs it told me to use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What was the internet like before Y2K happened ?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  While technically possible it’s far more likely you were using ICQ or IRC back in the 90s. I had MSN when it launched in 99 and no one else was using it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Reaffirms Steam Machine Summer Launch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It could be Linux exclusive, which for most people outside of the Linux bubble is what PC means. That being said I doubt Valve would do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨God of War Laufey - Official Gameplay Reveal | PS5 Games⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  THANK YOU, I always feel I’m the only one who acknowledges that. Don’t get me wrong, I like T2, but it completely broke what was established in T1. I do understand why, you can only do that twist once, after the audience knows time is a loop you can’t add meaningful stories because there are no stakes. But it’s still annoying, that they undid one of the major things of the first movie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Could we create an adventure/treasure hunt game involving git ?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is a fork in the path, if you want to turn right go to commit abd123 if you want to turn right go to commit xyz321

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What’s your favorite video game that most people didn’t like ??⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a game that you liked that most people didn’t, Sleeping Dogs was very well received so I don’t think it qualifies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s probably old stock, everyplace here and where she lives has it at 30% more expensive than the Deck. Thanks for the info anyways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can you share a link of that laptop? My sister in law needs a new gaming laptop but everything I’m finding is waaaaay more like expensive than that. Granted, she’s doesn’t live in the US so whatever retail you send me won’t work but if the laptop is cheap the same brand/model would probably be cheaper there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life Is Strange⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The original game was great, I have played the demos of 2 but it didn’t felt the same.

  If you like emotional stories and have a webcam, I STRONGLY recommend Before your eyes, I got emotional playing life is strange, I outright cried playing Before your eyes. I think the gimmick of having to blink to interact makes you more involved as you struggle to keep your eyes open for some scenes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve raises Steam Deck prices by more than $200⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, no one ever doubted Valve was a for profit company.

  They aren’t going to sell a product if they don’t make a profit.

  Obvious

  They want to make more profit.

  O don’t think that’s what’s happening here, RAM prices are ridiculously high, and the Deck has RAM and SSD. We also know they’re selling it close to cost so they wouldn’t have been able to take the hit on those increases, and the price increase seems to be exactly what the components have increased in price.

  They have the potential to enshitify at any moment.

  That’s also true, and something we should be weary of, but I don’t think it’s warranted on this case.

  how is it different than Apple locking its customers in a walled garden?

  Because their hardware is not locked. You can do whatever you want with your Deck. Wanna pirate games? Go ahead, wanna install windows in it? Be my guest. That’s part of the reason why Valve can’t sell these cheaper than manufacturing cost like most consoles are, because it’s an open architecture people would just buy it in bulk to do servers and shit like they did with the PS3 before it was locked down for this exact reason.

  What happens if they decide to make all the games you bought unavailable for licensing reasons? What happens if they shut down and suddenly all your games are gone What happens if they lock their hardware?

  What happens if the government starts abducting children for their secret brainwashing institution? What happens if they shut down all personal own property? What happens if they lock all of the frontier?.. Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little bit to RAM being more expensive and a product that has RAM becoming more expensive too?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve raises Steam Deck prices by more than $200⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The short version is imagine the world has a production capability of X sticks of RAM per day. Up until now it consumed X sticks of RAM and all was good. Suddenly a new player enters the market that requires Y sticks of RAM and is willing to pay a lot more than everyone else, now the total amount of RAM is X-Y (and just to give you an idea of the size of the problem Y is approximately 40% of X). Factories might start working more and try to produce more, and they might increase productivity by Z, but if Z<Y we’re still in a deficit so we have over demand and lack of production. RAM factories are not made overnight, so it takes months if not years to open new ones and bump the amount that’s actually able to be produced.

  It will pass, lots of companies are rushing to open more factories, China has started producing RAM too, plus the new player that was buying Y before and signed to do so for months to come is trying to buy less now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The US is truly a very weird country. In any case even if that’s the rule CS is a free game, so no purchase required to participate in the loot boxes. So I’ll ask again, how is that any different?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No. I mean when the cap of a bottle of coke has prices or find the golden cookie and win a trip to NY. Those have a purchase required, and you can’t write to the company and get the to send you the price token for you ro exchange it for the price.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How is that different from any promotion like “find the golden ticket and earn an iphone”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is cryptocurrency good for anything?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you have a link to that video? Until you do I’ll believe the official communication from the company that I linked which has examples on the issues they were facing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should hate speech be protected under freedom of speech laws?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No, hate speech should not be protected, and there’s an obvious reason for that. We already recognize that speech that purposely harms people is not protected, for example going into a theater room and screaming FIRE causing people to panic and stampede and killing someone the person will be charged with involuntary manslaughter. That is not so different from someone going online and saying “gay people should be killed” and causing people to go out and do that, in fact I would even drop the involuntary from the charges against that person, because his intention was clearly to incite someone to do it. I’m not taking away the responsibility from the person who committed the act, but this situation is similar to a how in a group planning a crime even the boss who was in every meeting telling people to commit the crime but did not actually participate in gets charged with. And the same excuses apply “No, I didn’t think that because I told them to go and kill someone they would do it” is not a valid defense for a mafia boss, and it shouldn’t be for any person with public influence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yup, this is not going to replace KB+Mouse, but it is the closest we have been able to get in a controller form factor, so if you want to play on your TV in the living room this unlocks many games that you simply couldn’t play before.

  In short if you don’t care about controllers then you shouldn’t care about this, but as far as controllers go it’s, IMO, the best there is by a LONG shot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Controller: Reservations open May 8th - Steam News⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Instead of having people frantically trying to beat robo-scalpers through a system (predictably) crashing through surge of demand to purchase the item, people would be frantically trying to beat robo-scalpers through a system (predictively) crashing through surge of demand to put their name in a queue.

  Have we forgotten that the exact same thing happened with the Steam Deck?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Controller: Reservations open May 8th - Steam News⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  How do you think it would have gone differently if they had done this?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but getting into the queue had the same issues as the controller did now. I was also in the queue and it took me 17 minutes to get in it, which made it so that my deck wasn’t on the first batch even though I hit purchase the second it went live (as you might remember we had to pay a small fee to get in the queue, and processing those payments overloaded the servers like now). So, like I said, there was no queue, that came after you made the payment which put your name in the queue at the time you paid, if that’s your definition then the Steam controller also has a queue (assuming they prepare and send the orders in order).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There was no queue for the Deck, I mean, there was, but that came after. Everyone was stuck in the same screen as Monday hitting refresh until we were able to get through. I started trying to buy mine on the dot and only managed to get it over 15 minutes afterwards. I didn’t get into the first batch because of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It has trackpad which allow you to play KB+mouse games very fluidly. Also they can be used to add radial or grid buttons to any game.

  It has TMR sticks which means no drift and less power consumption.

  It has a gyro.

  It has 4 back buttons.

  It’s fully compatible with steam Input so you can do crazy mappings of every single input.

  It has capacitive sensors on the thumb sticks and handles so you can use that as input or modifiers.

  It uses a dedicated dongle that has a latency comparable with plugged device according to some tests.

  It also connects via cable or Bluetooth.

  It’s very reparable friendly and Valve will be offering replacement parts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s so good if you ignore

  the price

  Which is fair considering the features

  the symmetric thumbsticks

  Which some of us prefer.

  the awkward trackpads

  Which are the biggest selling point of the controller, if you don’t want trackpads an 8BitDo has almost the same features.

  and the fact it only works on Steam games.

  That’s not a fact, in fact it’s quite wrong. The controller works outside of steam normally, it’s just that it’s mapped to common desktop inputs which are less than useful for games butake total sense in a world where it’s meant to be used plugged to a PC and you might need to click your way through to open Steam. But there are open source programs to map the inputs to a controller which is essentially what SteamInput does. At least that’s what the OG controller did and from the reviews of the new one seems to be exactly the same.

  And before you say “but you have to install a third party tool” that’s also true for other controllers if you want full features.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I barely managed to get one, had to spend well over 20 minutes spamming the continue button, because the first couple of times I passed that screen something else failed (they even charged me one of those times but the purchase didn’t finish, so I imagine it will get reverted in a while).

  I liked my old steam controller more in theory than in practice, I still have it and use it occasionally but it’s more of a rarity when I think the features make up for the lack of d-pad and right stick. But the Steam Deck is just ideal for me, from the moment I grabbed it I have been wanting a standalone controller with that same format and inputs.

  In any case, sorry you didn’t get one now, I’m sure they’ll be back in stock very quickly, it’s likely they did a small batch first to test the waters on how much people wanted this. But production is probably ramping up just like what happened with the Steam Deck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My quest to get a steam controller has failed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, first of all an Xbox controller costs around 50 which is not a third of the price. Secondly the Xbox controller has literally less than half the inputs of the steam controller: Xbox controller has a d-pad, 2 joysticks, 2 triggers, 4 face buttons, 2 top buttons, play/pause buttons and the special power button; whereas the Steam controller also has 4 back buttons, 4 capacitive sensors, gyro, 2 trackpads (each of which on its own has a ridiculous amount of possibilities for usage) and 2 special buttons which are kinda irrelevant here. And that’s without mentioning the fact that TMR sticks are ridiculously better than traditional ones of the Xbox controller, or that the dongle works on a dedicated bandwidth instead of Bluetooth for the Xbox controller (because the dongle is sold separately I’m not considering it here, otherwise you need to add 20 to the total and then it’s DEFINITELY not a third of the price) so latency is much better.

  Also, I’m not near a keyboard and mouse most of the time when playing, as I usually play on my TV. If I were near a mouse and keyboard I wouldn’t need a controller to begin with.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How is Alexander the Great so great he gets that name, but not so great that just “Alexander”doesn’t disambiguate him?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Alexander is a common name, but it depends on context, if you say “at the time Alexander conquered X” most people would understand, but if you say “Alexander was here” you might be talking about a work college.

  There’s not only one Caesar, while you probably beat Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius and others were also “Caesar”, and you might referring to any of them. For example, “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” does not refer to the same Caesar you probably meant.

  Slim shady is a made up name and it’s way more specific than <common name> the <common adjective>.

  Charlemagne is short for Charles Magnus, or in English Charles the great, so that’s exactly the same.

  Attila is a very unique name, I’ve never met nor heard about any other Attila so the name is disambiguation enough, but it’s likely that if that is a common name in some country they have an extra qualifier to it, I’ve heard Attila the Hun, but there might be others.

  There’s nothing special, if a name is common you need disambiguation, if a name is overly specific you don’t, same reason why we have last names, “I met with John the other day”, “which John?”, “The Smith”, “Ah yeah, John Smith, not John the son of Richard”, “No, I haven’t seen John Richardson in a few weeks”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Uploads Steam Controller Unboxing Video, Launch Imminent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think it’s going to be 50-60, it has a lot more features and hardware than other controllers.