sylver_dragon
@sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
- Comment on Tis the season 1 week ago:
- Comment on Anon loves proprietary tech 4 weeks ago:
It’s always cancer.
Sore throat - cancer.
Back ache - cancer.
Tiredness, cough, loss of taste and/or smell - maybe COVID. But also, cancer. - Comment on What your coffee preparation method says about you 5 weeks ago:
BLUF: It’s been a mixed bag, but I would call it “worth it”.
I’ve used Ubuntu a bit before. That’s what my home server runs on and has for years. Granted, most of it’s functions live in Docker containers. I also used both Debian (via Kali) and Ubuntu at work (yes, I know Ubuntu is Debian based, but it’s also big enough to have it’s own dedicated ecosystem). I work in Cybersecurity and use Linux based tools for image acquisition, digital forensics and data recovery. Kali makes for a great “it just works” system to validate vulnerabilities and poke at a network. And, between a lot of tools targeting Ubuntu and frameworks like SANS SIFT, Ubuntu gets used a lot. I also supported several Red Hat based servers at work for various tools. I’m far from an expert on Linux, but I can usually hold my own.
In a lot of ways, Arch wasn’t an obvious choice for me. And I seriously considered going with Ubuntu (or another Debian based OS (e.g. PopOS)) at first. It’s worth mentioning that my primary use for my desktop is video games. So, that heavily effected my choices. That said, the reasons for choosing Arch ended up being:
- I have a SteamDeck and most of my games “just work” on it. With Arch being the flavor of Linux Valve is targeting, following their lead seemed like a good idea. I expected that a lot of effort to get games working on “Linux” would ultimately be focused on getting games working on Arch.
- I wanted a “minimal” system. I can be a bit of a control freak and privacy nut. I already self-host NextCloud, because I don’t want my pictures/data sitting on someone else’s computer. So, the “install only what you need” nature of Arch was appealing.
- I did do some testing of Ubuntu on my system and had driver issues (nVidia GPU) and some other problems I didn’t put the time into running down. In the end, it put me off Linux for a while before I came back to it and ran Arch.
One of the things I did, which was really helpful, was a “try before you buy” setup. I was coming from Windows 10. And, as mentioned above, gaming was my main use case. So, that had to work for me to make the jump. Otherwise, I was going to milk Windows 10 for as long as possible and then figure things out when it went EOS. So, I installed Arch on a USB 3.0 thumbdrive and left my Windows OS partition alone. I also mounted my “Games” drive (M.2 SSD) and installed games to that. It was still NTFS, but that only created minor bumps in the road. Running that configuration for a couple months proved out that Arch was going to work for me.
When it came time to fully change over, I formatted my Windows OS partition as ext4, setup the correct folder structure and rsync’d everything from the thumbdrive to it. So, everything was the way I’d had it for those couple months. I did have an issue that my BIOS refused to see the OS partition on the SATA SSD I used for my OS partition; but, that was MSI’s fault (I have an MSI motherboard). And that was resolved by changing where GRUB is located in my /boot partition.
Overall, I’ve been happy with the choice I made. Arch hasn’t always been easy. Even the Official Install Guide seems to come from a RTFM perspective. But, if you’re willing to put the time into it, you will learn a lot or you won’t have a functional system. And you’ll end up with a system where you can fire up a packet capture and have a really good idea of what each and every packet is about. As for gaming, so far I’ve had exactly one game which didn’t run on Linux. That was Call of Duty 6, which I was considering giving a go to play with some folks I know. But, Activision’s Anti-Cheat software is a hard “no” on Linux. So, I had to pass on that. Otherwise, every game I have wanted to play either had native Linux support or worked via Proton/WINE.
- Comment on Swords suck, spears are a way more effective weapon 5 weeks ago:
You only get a short time with the pointy end of the spear and then once a sword wielder is inside your range, you’ve got an unwieldy stick and they have a sword. Good for stand off melee maybe but prob not.
Yes, but getting in close without getting stabbed is really hard.
Here’s an actual example of modern HEMA folks giving it a lot of goes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLLv8E2pWdk - Comment on Avowed from Obsidian gets a release date, and pre-orders with earlier access if you pay £80 5 weeks ago:
And for those of us who are willing to wait a touch longer, it’ll go on sale eventually and we can pick it up for half the price.
- Comment on What your coffee preparation method says about you 5 weeks ago:
I have a Cuisinart grind and brew, which is pushing a decade old at this point. Love the thing and will replace it with something similar if it dies before I do. But, I use Ubuntu on my server and Arch on my desktop. So, not this meme fits, but it is funny.
- Comment on What do zoos do with dead animals? 5 weeks ago:
For a similar story, which isn’t a urban legend. My mother used to be the main resource for an archeological information center in the US Southwest. When work crews dug up a body, she’d get a call from the coroner to ask, “is it yours or mine?” While both are going to want to know the cause of death, the coroner isn’t going to open a criminal case for a Native America burial.
- Comment on Sony boss admits forcing PC gamers into PlayStation accounts can "invite pushback," but insists they have to keep games safe – which doesn't really track in single-player 1 month ago:
I don’t see in what way having a PSN account would make Horizon Zero Dawn safer on PC.
It’s safer for Sony’s stock price, as they can report higher numbers of people on the PlayStation Network and greater “player engagement”. What, you thought this was about improving the experience for the customer? No one gives a fuck about them.
- Comment on The Schwartz is with Josh Gad as he says everyone who read his Spaceballs 2 script has been "blown away" 1 month ago:
Nope, this is them searching for it.
- Comment on Not all PDFs are documents; some are apps! Insurance company sent me a form to sign as a PDF with JavaScript. Is it a tracker? 1 month ago:
This could just be a really stupid format, put out by a specific application for creating PDFs, because the original authors didn’t want to pay Adobe (never attribute to malice, that which can be sufficiently explained with stupidity).
Does pdfinfo give any indication of the application used to create the document? If it chokes on the Java bit up front, can you extract just the PDF from the file and look at that? You might also dig through the PDF a bit using Dider Stevens 's Tools, looking for JavaScript or other indicators of PDF fuckery.
Does the file contain any other Java bytecode? If so, can you pass that through a decompiler?
would love it if attempts to reach the cloud could be trapped and recorded to a log file in the course of neutering the PDF.
This is possible, but it takes a bit of setup. In my own lab, I have PolarProxy running in one Virtual Machine (VM), using QEMU/KVM. That acts as a gateway between an isolated network and a network with internet access. It runs transparent TLS break and inspect on port 443/tcp and tcpdump capturing port 80/tcp. It also serves DNS using Bind.
There is then the “victim” VM which is running bog standard Windows 10. The PolarProxy root cert has been added to the Trusted Roots certificate store. The Default Gateway and DNS servers are hard coded to the PolarProxy VM. Suspicious stuff is tested on this system and all network traffic is recorded on the PolarProxy system in standard pcap format for analysis.
- Comment on Fuck that i aint forgot what happened to my boy steve irwin 😤 1 month ago:
The diver probably has some food on him, which the stingray is trying to get.
I visited Stingray City in Grand Cayman a lot of years back. Part of the tour package was that they gave you small squid to feed to the stingrays, and they would climb up you, out of the water for that snack. Also, there were a lot of stingrays in the area. We were instructed to shuffle our feet as we walked, to avoid stepping on one. The swimmer in the picture only needed to hang out for a bit before one or more stingrays would have come over, looking for any handouts.That said, the experience of Stingray City was absolutely worth it. Between that, and snorkeling at the barrier reef, I have a lot of fond memories of my time at Grand Cayman.
- Comment on How is anime and manga more popular than comics and western cartoons? 2 months ago:
I’d argue that the main reason you see more anime is the target audience.
Western animation is usually aimed at young children. For as much as I may have loved Disney’s Gummi Bears as a young child (decades later and I can still hear the theme song on my head), it’s now pretty painful to watch. Some shows have aged pretty well and some newer shows aren’t quite so bad. But, the target audience still seems to be younger children for much of it. There are exceptions, and several of those are pretty well known. For example, The Simpsons and Futurama are both popular animated shows, and both are not aimed at children.
Anime, by contrast is often aimed at teenagers. This means that it’s part of the audience’s formative years. People form bonds with the shows and carry some of those bonds into adulthood. And while the writing often falls into cringe inducing melodrama, there’s enough of it that is passable fun, usually simple hero stories. The shows can be like a comfy blanket that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence too much.
I’d also note that anime’s appeal goes back further than the 2000’s. My own introduction was Robotech, back in the 80’s. While it was a bastardized version of Macross, with some pretty awful writing (not that Macross’s writing is going to win awards any time soon) and a couple other shows, it was certainly a step above what most western studios were putting on for Saturday Morning cartoons. And that created a lifelong soft spot for anime. Heck, my desktop background is currently a Veritech Fighter. I still love the idea of Robotech, even if I only watch it in my memory through very heavily rose tinted glasses. And I imagine I’m not alone. The show may be different, but I suspect a lot of folks graduated from Disney and Hanna-Barbera cartoons to some type of anime as they got older and that anime was stuck with them.
- Comment on Square Enix invests in Playtron for their Linux-based PlaytronOS - first Alpha out now 3 months ago:
Playtron’s CEO, Kirt McMaster, added, “We are thrilled to join forces with such a legendary games publisher as Square Enix. The PC we know is morphing into new forms that require a purpose built OS for gaming that meets the demands of powerful new gaming hardware such as handhelds and new players who have grown up in a mobile 1st world with much more sophisticated UX sensibilities. This investment will accelerate the development and deployment of GameOS and create new experiences for players around the globe.”
Huh, so Playton’s CEO is an early example of an AI being used to replace people.
- Comment on If I live in a red state, would it be better to vote for rfk to take votes away from trump? 5 months ago:
No, because your vote won’t encourage investment in flipping the State. I agree that the current duopoly sucks. I was an ardent Bernie supporter and would very much like viable third parties. But, the DNC isn’t going to be looking at those third party votes. They need to believe that the Democrats have a chance of winning before they will invest in a State. If all they see are protest votes, then they won’t see a viable path to them winning and they will continue to ignore the State.
Ya, it sucks, but we really do need to just keep holding our nose and pulling the lever for the Democrat in the general election.
- Comment on If I live in a red state, would it be better to vote for rfk to take votes away from trump? 5 months ago:
If you are in a deep red state, it will seem that your vote won’t matter. Because it mostly won’t. However, the way States vote changes over time. The closer the vote totals in a State, the more likely the National Democratic Party is to invest resources into building up and promoting candidates in those States. That sort of thing can shift the needle, if slowly. Keep in mind that California voted Republican from '68 to '88 (source) but shifted over time.
It sucks to vote and feel like you’re just pissing in the wind. But, each vote moves the needle just a bit more and maybe, eventually, things will swing.
- Comment on It's a time portal! 6 months ago:
Had a Windows 2000 computer show up on the company network about a month ago, it was an oscilloscope. It was already infected with malware and trying to reach the malware C2 server.
- Comment on Making healthier choices 6 months ago:
What is the serving size?
Without knowing that, it’s impossible to make a judgment about how “high” the protein is. - Comment on Iron 7 months ago:
New ethical dilemma just dropped - kill 300 to forge the sword, or deny 3150 people blood in an emergency to forge the sword…
- Comment on Over 10 years later 7 Days to Die is going to leave Early Access 7 months ago:
One of the more recent updates added in a lot of new Points of Interest and helped make the random maps less “WTF” and more reasonable. Though the replayability is down to personal preference. My wife and I will spin up a new world, play until we reach a point of “well, we’ve basically done everything” and then move on to a different game. And then come back to 7d2d when we want to scratch that “crafting, zombie survival, base defense” itch.
In a lot of ways, 7d2d is like a comfy sweater. It’s not going to ever be radically different; but, it’s nice to wear for a bit. Personally, I’d be all for getting the gang back together. Unless you are all so saturated in other games to play, why not relive the fun? I’m also a sucker for survival/crafting games and have a Steam library full of them. There are only a couple which I keep going back to, Valheim and 7d2d being the top two. So, YMMV, but I’d say it’s a fun enough game and the official release is a good excuse to kill some zombies together again.
- Comment on Over 10 years later 7 Days to Die is going to leave Early Access 7 months ago:
I guess Satan decided on a nice frozen makeover for Hell.
Joking aside, 7d2d has been one of my ongoing favorites since I bought it back in 2016. I’m glad to see them take this (long overdue) step.
- Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 studio will likely bring their next game to early access again, but admit it’s not for every dev 8 months ago:
Based on DOS:2 and Baldur’s Gate 3…
- Comment on Elder scrolls 9 months ago:
I remember Windows XP coming out and we all mocked it as Windows but with an interface by Crayola. But I’d gladly have that Crayola interface back rather than the flat modern crap we have now.
- Comment on When people setup two factor authentication on an account on sites that allow it and insert a phone number, does that site assume by default that it's their own number or do they see it as "a" number? 10 months ago:
Wow, ok hopefully I am unpacking this question correctly. But let’s start with the question from the title.
Does Google et al. assume it’s your number or just a number you have access to? It’s the former. Google assumes you are entering your number. If you put in a communal number, that’s on you for screwing up the base assumption underpinning SMS as a second factor for authentication. When working with a factor which is supposed to be “something you have” it needs to be something that you control. Think of it like the keys to your home. If you aren’t the only person with a copy of that key, then that lock does not provide security for your home against others with the key.As for the “DNA” question. I’m going to guess this is about websites “remembering” you for login purposes. The way this usually works is that, after the first login, the website sets a cookie in your browser. This cookie contains a cryptographic value which is also stored on the web server. When you go back to the site, your browser uses this value with your request for the site. The server then compares it to the stored value. If it matches, you are logged in, without needing to reauthenticate. It’s more complex than just sending the value, but that’s not worth getting into.
If you have multiple logins “remembered” this way, it may be possible to move to different accounts without the need to reauthenticate. Also, many modern browsers can save passwords for you. This lets the browser auto-fill your credentials for you. It’s universally a bad idea to save your passwords this way, but it could allow you to switch accounts without knowing the passwords.
- Comment on How can I clean my mouse wheel without taking apart my mouse? 11 months ago:
The mouse had wheels which sat on the balls. It was sometimes necessary to clean those as well. Though, I suspect that the person you responded to wasn’t thinking about those wheels.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Seems like MS is trying to run afoul of anti-trust laws, again.
