Skip Navigation

User banner

MudMan

@ MudMan @fedia.io

Posts
0
Comments
2469
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • BritCard ID Now Mandatory — What Happens if You Refuse?

    Jump

  • You sure everybody else agrees with you on that?

    Cause it doesn't sound like it.

    To be clear, I do think the UK's proposal specifically is problematic in that it requires you to own a specific device to support it and that it's targeting undocumented migrants specifically. That said, the UK has a contentious relationship with the concept of mandatory ID that goes beyond the practical implementation issues or the actual instances of overreach being proposed alongside it.

    I mean, for one thing I have no idea why they couldn't implement this as an ID card like everybody else does.

  • BritCard ID Now Mandatory — What Happens if You Refuse?

    Jump

  • On this they're both outliers. Mandatory ID is pretty much the norm.

    Living in a place with it... it's fine. Helps with some things. Definitely not the weird sci-fi tyrannical dystopia Brits and Americans suggest. It mostly depends on what is built around it. It's not like identification doesn't exist for fundamental transactions in places without a single consolidated ID document.

    And yes, ours has all the accoutrements, including a digital certificate and biometric data, just like your passport does.

  • Just in case you've been living under a rock: The Crew is playable again!

    Jump

  • No, for sure, it's a good thing. I just found the expression funny in the context. The Crew is what it is.

  • NSFW

    A sausage is meat in an intestinal casing so when you have anal sex with someone you turn them into a you sausage.

    Jump

  • If you like flavored condoms I am struggling to find a reason why not.

  • Just in case you've been living under a rock: The Crew is playable again!

    Jump

  • I mean, good on people getting this up and running, but "in case you've been living under a rock" may overrepresent how much the average person wants to play The Crew.

  • Beyond Left and Right. Digital ID is Everyone’s Enemy

    Jump

  • My country has had mandatory ID and digital certificates built into it for decades, so... the tone of this is going to miss the mark here.

    That being said, it's one thing for it to exist for remote signatures or access to online interactions with public entities and another to require it on general use of private interactions.

    This thing would get more traction if it had any amount of nuance, instead of fearmongering all the way into "ID existing is class warfare". It reads like a reductio ad absurdum of both a progressive and a privacy-minded position. It's really clumsy.

  • Google Starts Tracking Your Phone As Chrome And Gemini Change

    Jump

  • I was going to try to answer this, but I'd just be copy pasting the article. There's no real possible TLDR.

    Which is probably by design, but still.

  • This Linux phone with Android app support has three kill switches for complete privacy

    Jump

  • I mean, shout out to the drug dealer community out there, but I'd be more excited about... you know, a functional degoogled phone. Or, even better, a seamless way to do that to my existing phone, which I already like.

  • NSFW

    A sausage is meat in an intestinal casing so when you have anal sex with someone you turn them into a you sausage.

    Jump

  • A sausage is ground meat in an intestinal casing.

    If you wrap a whole steak in a sausage casing that's not a sausage. You need to pound that dick before you can call it sausage. So at the start of the process it may be way less sausage than by the end, depending on how you go about it, I suppose.

  • Just blow

    Jump

  • Yeah, ok, but blowing on something colder than you will warm it up.

    I mean, you can see the ice crystals melt on ice cream if you blow on it. This will work. Your breath is at body temperature. It doesn't just make things cold, you're not Superman.

  • Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it?

    Jump

  • I mean... I own both a LCD and an OLED Deck.

    I would absolutely not use it as a computer without a dock and I certainly wouldn't use it as a media player.

    Other handhelds maaaaybe. The Legion Go has a stand and detachable controllers, so it could be a thing if it didn't have the worst speakers ever devised by a human being. The GPD Win 4, the GPD Win Mini, the Ayaneo Slide and the Aya Flip all have some semblance of a keyboard, so you can get away with some stuff you can't on the Deck or the Ally. I don't think they make sense as a main computing device for the money, though, as they don't have even the Deck's low entry point as an excuse.

    FWIW, the optical nub on the Win 4 is the best pointer device in any of these, and even with that and the physical keyboard I still wouldn't use it to replace a laptop for media consumption if given the option. If I had a single device I could pick up I would sooner look into the ASUS Flow line of convertibles than into any current handheld, although you can certainly get a much cheaper all-rounder laptop than that.

  • The campaign against predatory in-game practices takes a step forward in Brazil, as President Lula bans loot boxes targeted at under-18s

    Jump

  • Well, I'm less black and white than you are on this, but I could agree with most of that.

    That's not what's in the law, though.

    The law outright bans any and all loot boxes in games aimed at kids or teenagers (meaning anything with any loot boxes is automatically 18+ rated) and sets an obligation for all stores to verify people's age on top of having parental controls. I guess you could go to court and find out, but the way I read it, age checks are mandated additionally to parental controls and both are set as obligations.

    So it's great for you that you have this whole mental framework of why porn is cool but loot boxes are not, but that's not what the law says, so I'm going to guess I can chalk you up as disagreeing with this whole situation.

    Also, the idea that NSFW content in general, regardless of where you place the bar for "porn" has "never been marketed at children" is hilarious.

  • The campaign against predatory in-game practices takes a step forward in Brazil, as President Lula bans loot boxes targeted at under-18s

    Jump

  • Whose point is that? Because I don't think it's the previous guy's point, and it certainly isn't mine.

    I mean, the law (not a bill, this isn't the US and it has been approved, as per the text) outright bans loot boxes in games "targeted at children or teenagers". No qualifiers. Doesn't even say "paid loot boxes", so technically all videogames are now illegal if they have a loot table anywhere. I'm going to assume cooler heads will prevail and a categorization will come from courts or specific regulatory development, but it's certainly not in the law.

    So if you don't like this for doing both at once... well, that's weird, that's why laws have multiple articles. If you're worried that the inclusion is meant to stall the bill that's irrelevant, this has been published and comes in force in six months. If you think they're overreaching by outright banning loot boxes... well, I agree, but I don't think that's the point as the rest of the thread is defining it.

    EDIT: Someone in a different thread pointed out that despite referencing slightly differently there IS a definition of lootbox in the law and it does include a requirement for them to be paid, so I'm correcting the record here:

     
            IV – caixa de recompensa: funcionalidade disponível em certos jogos eletrônicos que permite a aquisição, mediante pagamento, pelo jogador, de itens virtuais consumíveis ou de vantagens aleatórias, resgatáveis pelo jogador ou usuário, sem conhecimento prévio de seu conteúdo ou garantia de sua efetiva utilidade;

  • Happy 34th Birthday!

    Jump

  • I still have a Redhat install CD from the early to mid 2000s somewhere in the attic. I think it came with a PC magazine.

  • Happy 34th Birthday!

    Jump

  • Arguably they still can't.

    But yeah, I'm less surprised that they already existed and more suprised that I had already heard about them.

  • Happy 34th Birthday!

    Jump

  • The thing is in my memory it wasn't that special because at the time computers came in a lot more flavors than now. There were a ton of semi-recent computers that used just some variant of Basic, others some variant of DOS, DOS and Windows were different things and both in use, Apple-IIs were a thing, but also Macs...

    I remember the first time I gave it a shot it was a bit of a teenage nerd challenge, because the documentation was so bad and you had to do the raw Arch thing with Debian and set up things step by step to get to a semblance of an X server, let alone a DE. And then after spending a couple nights messing with that I didn't think about it much until a few years later when Ubuntu sort of figured out making things easy.

    By the mid 2000s I remember people my age laughing at older normies for not having heard of Linux already, so it all moved relatively fast. It was maybe less than a decade between it coming into being and then it being something you probably don't use but you've heard of, which is faster than I would have said if you asked me.

  • The campaign against predatory in-game practices takes a step forward in Brazil, as President Lula bans loot boxes targeted at under-18s

    Jump

  • No, see, there is no logical mistake because at no point was there an argument about universal truths anywhere. There was a note that, despite the headline and article not flagging it, the same regulation covers porn and has some of the issues that anti-porn age verification has had in the past.

    You're just doing the thing where you read something on the Internet and it made you angry by not immediately reinforcing your preferences so you nitpicked a random bit you thought didn't check out regardless of whether it was part of the argument or not.

    I would much prefer to talk like adults, instead.

  • Happy 34th Birthday!

    Jump

  • I guess that contributes to it. I guess when someone gave me install media (I believe for Debian, if you're gonna be pedantic about it) their approach may have been "there's now free Unix you can just get" and that's why it didn't feel new.

  • The campaign against predatory in-game practices takes a step forward in Brazil, as President Lula bans loot boxes targeted at under-18s

    Jump

  • Once again, you don't get a say.

    They are the same in the law. They will be treated the same way.

    Also, what is your point anyway? That porn should be accessible to children but loot boxes shouldn't? Are you not OK with porn being for adults? The question here isn't whether the content is adults-only, we probably should all agree that's the case. The question is how that's enforced.

    I mean, if you want to tell me what you actually think about that I'm happy to listen, but going "these two things feel different to me" doesn't bring anything to this conversation.

  • The campaign against predatory in-game practices takes a step forward in Brazil, as President Lula bans loot boxes targeted at under-18s

    Jump

  • How are they different? They're both activities we allow for adults but not for children. For, arguably, good reasons.

    I mean, you can be into one more than into another, and you can argue whether or not loot boxes should qualify as gambling, but for practical purposes when it comes to regulation they are fairly interchangeable.

    Not that it matters, because regardless of what you and I think, they are listed together in the law. I'm not mixing diffferent issues, the law is specifically, explicitly applying the exact same regulation to porn and loot boxes. Doesn't matter how you feel about it, the Brazilian regulators think they're the same here.