lemmyvore

@lemmyvore@feddit.nl

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox lays off 268 more employees, merges Obsidian into Bethesda and puts Activision in charge of Halo⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Apple wouldn’t have survived the 90’s because, ironically, Microsoft saved them from bankruptcy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox lays off 268 more employees, merges Obsidian into Bethesda and puts Activision in charge of Halo⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  At this point a deathblow would be a kindness for the Halo franchise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  you are still thinking in terms of authoritarian regimes ruling by force or intimidation. You don’t need to if you can direct the opinion of 90%+ of the population

  I’m thinking like that because such regimes are always established and maintained through violence. Indimidation is much cheaper, faster and more attainable than convincing 90% of people – which is never going to happen btw, that’s a super high bar.

  it’s inefficient FOR WHAT THEY CLAIM THE GOAL IS. Because they are lying.

  Let me ask you, does it really matter if people don’t circumvent blocks because they can’t (because the block is effective) or because they won’t (because they fear the consequences)? Either way they’re doing what the regime wants.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re still missing the finer point. Depending on the punishment (which under an authoritarian regime can be torture in prison or being summarily executed or dissapeared), even a semi-effective block can have a completely chilling effect.

  Whether you can or cannot circumvent the block and get your hands on Taylor Swift’s latest album will be the last thing on anybody’s mind. Whether the fascists lie about the efficacy of the block will be irrelevant. They can point at a completely random person and have them shot and say it was because of “piracy”. But you can substitute any word there and it will work the same.

  This isn’t a technical problem, it’s a social and political problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Republican bill would order ISPs, DNS providers, and VPNs to block piracy sites⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And who’s going to block all the freely available DNS servers, proxies and also TOR?

  The ISPs will do the blocking if ordered and it will catch 99,99% of people. The average person doesn’t know how to use advanced techniques and it’s tricky even for tech savvy people. Using the wrong proxy for example can cause more trouble than it solves. VPNs and custom DNS are also trivial to block. Large-enough corporations can be trivially extempt from peasant blocking.

  It was done in Spain, the right-holders for soccer managed to get themselves in a legal position to tell the ISPs what IPs to block and they issued overly-broad ranges to be blocked. I was in Spain this summer for World Cup and when a match was on you could not reach completely unrelated services in other countries. It’s ridiculous and probably will get reversed in court but it was done, however temporarily, and it works.

  Internet censorship is very easy to do, I don’t know why some people tunnel-vision on the fact it’s not perfect. It doesn’t have to be perfect to still be very effective.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU’s new social media child protection rules to require all social media accounts to produce state ID - Leaked documents suggest that some existing accounts will also be subject to identification che…⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The democracy is in the process. Stuff like this gets introduced all the time by some politicians and pushed by some lobby groups, with counter-arguments from other lobby groups, and then gets rejected by other politicians and/or by the courts.

  It’s how a functioning democracy is supposed to work.

  If you’re an EU citizen and worried about this there are many ways to contact EU representatives and also to track what your EU MEPs are up to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EU’s new social media child protection rules to require all social media accounts to produce state ID - Leaked documents suggest that some existing accounts will also be subject to identification che…⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Locally, how does that work?

  FWIW, identity verifications schemes that attempt to maintain privacy are a contradiction in terms and cannot work. Same as encryption that both works and doesn’t work (backdoors).

  Verbose version here: pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/

  Based on paper here: www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/age-verify.pdf

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons Officially Have A Pay-To-Press Button⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, Valve is doing the minimum copy protection for keeping both players and studios happy.

  Let’s not forget that Valve also has a dedicated device, the Deck, and it uses the same minimal methods as the PC version. It has a standard configuration out of the box because that makes sense for a pre-built device, but they allow you to hack it to your heart’s content.

  Meanwhile there are companies that feel the need to host their platform on completely locked down devices, like Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo, and invalidate your games on older devices so you’ll buy them over and over again, and make you pay for Internet access etc.

  There’s also companies like Epic whose game store app on PC are very invasive.

  So yeah, Steam is not completely open, but it’s as good as it gets. There are much worse ways of doing things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons Officially Have A Pay-To-Press Button⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s very light DRM and it doesn’t lock the majority of game files nor the save files. You can freely back up the save files and it’s very easy to pirate the games. What stops people from doing that is because it’s much more convenient to have Steam manage them. Valve has always been all about convenience not the DRM.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Cons Officially Have A Pay-To-Press Button⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, Steam being open means you can also use an app like Ludusavi to make your own savegame backups, just in case.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft’s Secure Boot has been broken for a decade and no one noticed until now⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, UEFI was broken by design from the get-go. It was entirely designed around Windows and shims were an afterthought once the rest of the industry figured out they’d be fucked if they allowed Microsoft complete control. But they didn’t fight for an overhaul because Microsoft got all its OEM and BIOS makers on board.

  So shims are the best next thing, and they aren’t just about Linux, they’re a second PKI layer that allows other entities (than Microsoft) to sign shims. Those entities can be Linux distros but also other OS, software or hardware makers.

  Microsoft forgetting to revoke signatures for old shims is orthogonal to the design, but it’s also true that it’s not a very good design. Again, because it was originally made to only deal with Windows and does not deal well with other stuff. The article goes into some detail about workarounds on top of workarounds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PC Games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The thing about Elder Scrolls games is that they tend to be mostly RPG while BotW is mainly a sandbox game with some RPG elements. Most people I’ve seen trying to get the “BotW feeling” from an RPG ended up dissapointed.

  You can mod ES games extensively to make them feel more sandbox-ish, or simply ignore quest lines and freeroam but it’s not quite the same.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dutch gamers file €220 million claim against Valve, operator of game platform Steam⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Civ 5 is 30€ on Steam and 2-3€ on other Stores.

  Outer Wilds is 23€ on Steam and 16€ elsewhere.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dutch gamers file €220 million claim against Valve, operator of game platform Steam⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It can import your Steam wishlist and give you tons of examples. 😊

  Here’s some: Civ 5, Disco Elysium, Yakuza 6, Borderlands GOTY, Outer Wilds, Doom Eternal.

  You can also make filters that limit the suggestions to a certain sale percentage (eg. 50%+ off), or to a max price (eg. $10).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dutch gamers file €220 million claim against Valve, operator of game platform Steam⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But if you go on isthereanydeal.com you will see a whole bunch of online stores that offer sales on games. They offer Steam codes too but are not limited to Steam, they cover many other platforms (including Epic).

  (Those btw are all legit sites showing only sales endorsed by the game publishers themselves, they all sell new game codes. ITAD has a standing policy to only source from that kind of sales, strictly no key resale sites.)

  So if you can get Steam games cheaper than are currently listed on Steam, and many games are also available on GOG which is DRM free… not entirely sure what this lawsuit is about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Critical Unauthenticated RCE Flaws in CUPS Printing Systems⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  How do you avoid interaction if it’s being done automatically by your machine when you open up a print dialog, and if malicious servers can use the same names as legit printers?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Best way to play the original Prince of Persia Trilogy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Isn’t it fourth?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Third Party Cookies Must Be Removed⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Mozilla has already shipped strict privacy mode by default in recent versions of Firefox so they’re already a leg up on this.

  Google is currently trying to transition people to its own proprietary method of tracking (where the browser itself tracks you) so they would love it if third party cookies were no longer usable for that.

  Mozilla has also added a direct tracking feature (anonimized) to Firefox btw. Not sure what their agenda is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Russia legalizes Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  I doubt they intend to mine it. For the Russian state is easier to acquire Bitcoin by hacking wallets than mining, and the plebs can’t afford the electricity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Russia legalizes Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Trading is trading and they’d be risking sanctions whether they take payment with Swift or Bitcoin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Ruined Windows⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  I beg to differ, 7 was actually well optimized. It ran OK on an office PC with 512 MB of RAM and a 512 MHz CPU.

  You wouldn’t use that because by that time apps like browsers and office were starting to feel restricted by that little RAM to the point you could only run either or. But the OS itself stayed out of the way as much as possible, and if you gave it just a little more RAM (like 1 GB) suddenly you had a usable office machine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Ruined Windows⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  But you only have two kidneys, how will you buy a third Mac?

  Macs are outrageously priced for the hardware you get.

  Non-Apple laptops can be just as reliable and last just as long nowadays, and you get to upgrade them at a fraction of the cost. Actually I should say you get to upgrade them, period.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ...⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  One day Proton will retire their bridge and there will be a lot of Pikachu faces.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ...⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately all the volume-based email providers I know (Purely, MXroute, Migadu) are one or two-person operations. Doesn’t stop them from being excellent, of course.

  I wish the volume-based pricing model was more popular but unfortunately very few people know about it, and is course the large providers prefer to charge by account or add all kinds of artificial limitations because they make much more money that way. Having multiple mailboxes for the same domain costs the provider nothing and yet you get charged per mailbox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ...⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Use a volume-based email provider like MXroute, where you pay strictly for the resources you consume (storage space and mails sent) not made-up limitations like number of accounts, aliases, domains etc. that cost the provider nothing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What JRPG combat is your favorite?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  I liked the puzzle battle style of games like Disgaea 2.

  Not a big fan of the classic “let’s all stand face to face and take turns bashing each other” approach.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft and Reddit Are Fighting About Why Bing’s Crawler Is Blocked on Reddit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  …I thought that was the whole point of Spez blocking other spiders.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SAG-AFTRA Calls Strike Against Major Video Game Companies After Nearly 2 Years Of Contract Talks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on who wins the election. Trump would come out with anti-union legislation so the large studios might decide to hold out for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Is the Only Search Engine That Works on Reddit Now, Thanks to AI Deal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not a big deal… for now, because most of the time when I limit DDG results I ask for 1 year back (for solutions that are sort of recent but not ancient).

  I would never limit results to just the last week, and typically posts that are that fresh won’t have enough accumulated knowledge so even if they pop up on the results they’re not really useful.

  Again, that’s just my experience. I’m curious if others have similar ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Also P!=NP⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  Or it’s a language where each number is a different instance, and != compares addresses.