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kyub

@ kyub @discuss.tchncs.de

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231
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Native Arch Linux Games - Share Your Favorites

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  • 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 and well-maintained Linux client (not at all common), much better than I expected, VERY complex and content-rich, 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player horror games of all time and it also has a Linux client (which was a surprise for me) but that one is probably outdated and not maintained anymore by now I'd guess (but didn't look it up) so it might be better to play the Windows client via Proton.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. Oh, and POOLS also has a Linux client, that's a great small walking simulator, "Backrooms"-like, very atmospheric and great visual design.

  • US criticizes French inquiry into social media platform X

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  • While this is "nice", I guess, I also can't fathom how naive this generally seems.

    X is a proprietary black box and X or L.Ron Musk can change the algorithm literally at will, what they show which persons and when and when not. There is NO time ever where users have have any control over it, and to perform a statistical analysis on an online service blackbox is also kind of pointless because the blackbox can change randomly, at any point in time, possibly right after the analysis has concluded, or right before. I mean it's not like the blackbox is in your hands so that you can actually study inputs/outputs and get consistent results. Every time you visit any X URL, there's potentially a fresh blackbox version deployed to you (you don't know and you can't know). That makes it rather pointless IMHO. And it's just as pointless to believe what X claims about these issues. Of course they'll always claim that they don't manipulate. And you can never prove or disprove it, because of a complete lack of control over it from the user's end. So they can do what they want, as long as they do it sneakily enough that no one notices.

    For example if this study comes to the conclusion that there was no manipulation during the time of the study, that's meaningless because it could have happened before and it could happen afterwards. If it comes to the conclusion that there was manipulation at a certain time, then X can always claim that they've already "fixed" the issue and then it's again a new black box and no one knows when the next manipulation is being activated.

    The ONLY solution to this is to ONLY use open source platforms where not a single company or host is able to do what they want with the complete service. Or in other words, the only solution is to avoid X and other proprietary social media platforms like the plague that they are. Because communication should not be controlled by any big company.

  • White House unveils sweeping plan to “win” global AI race through deregulation

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  • The only "wins" for this current US regime are negative records: most cruel, most degenerate, most stupid, most racist, and so on. And the "grand prize" for these wins will be war (civil or conventional) plus a spot in history among the worst people ever to destabilize and rule a country.

  • About Cookies!

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  • So unfortunately websites routinely and carelessly lie about basically everything related to data protection stuff. This already begins with the term "technically necessary cookies". No cookie is truly technically necessary. What they usually mean by that is "we really really want to put this tracking cookie from our ad partners like Google into your browser, and we don't care whether you want that or not so we just claim it's technically necessary". But even if you refuse a cookie prompt, often your choice isn't respected at all and cookies are created regardless. In fact, many cookies are already created at the very beginning before you make any choice in any sort of cookie banner. Basically this whole ad/tracking industry is a complete mess and no one really cares and it's just best to completely ignore what sites claim and use technical means to protect yourself at least a little bit because you cannot trust ANY site's claims regarding that. Most of the time, even the phrase "we value your privacy" is already the very first and biggest lie. Don't trust what websites claim. It's pointless, and nothing happens when they violate their own rules or data protection laws anyway. Which they do almost all of the time anyway. This illegality is routine and almost omni-present. Cookies are also far from the only thing that sites can use to track you. They're just the most well-known method, which is probably why we have these near-pointless laws requiring sites to put up near-pointless banners to annoy visitors with.

    So as a user, you should just ignore any of that and completely rely on technical means to protect yourself from any or most kinds of shenanigans websites can do to you. Most privacy-respecting browsers have features that limit what sites are able to do with you, such as cookie isolation which prevents other sites from being able to read the contents of cookies belonging to other sites. Or more general, isolation of any website data, not just limited to cookies. But not every browser has these types of protection. If you use very common browsers like Chrome, Edge or Opera, then it's likely that you have none of that because the developers of those browsers are companies which profit from the user being more easily trackable through the web.

    So the easiest solution as a user is to use a privacy-respecting, well-pre-configured browser like Librewolf or Mullvad Browser, and use uBlock Origin as the only extension with several enabled filter lists. This alone makes you a much harder tracking target. And of course you can safely ignore or block any cookie notices, it doesn't really matter what you select in them most of the time anyway. Although your IP address is still always a liability with ANY browser, because it can be fairly easily linked to your person and you will expose your IP address with any regular browser, so if you want to browse anonymously you should use the Tor Browser (with mostly default settings and no additional extensions). That means that you won't have ad blocking protection, but at the same time the site and any ad servers don't know who you are anyway (you're just some random person from a random country for them), unless you make a mistake and log into a personally-identifiable account or so. The Tor Browser also contains the most amount of anti-tracking and anti-fingerprinting techniques possible. For casual anonymous browsing you should absolutely use the Tor Browser, because with it it's highly unlikely that a website is able to identify you. Its main disadvantages are that it's slower, some sites block that kind of browser, and since you shouldn't add any other extensions you will see ads with it, but your identity still remains protected unless you make a mistake. Still, it should be your go-to browser for anonymous browsing. Switch to your regular browser for when you want to log in to an account with personal details.

  • Well now I'm no longer impressed

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  • 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, where the erect penis is almost the same size than the unerect one. It doesn't grow much when erect. Both types 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.

  • “You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every article, book or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for”, President Trump says

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  • Maybe it works as an excuse when you claim you just wanted to train your own AI model with all those pirated books and videos. But who am I kidding. The reality is that copyright violation, as well as quite a few other things, is only really a crime if you're poor. This current "endgame capitalism" era we're in is becoming extra-legal quite fast. Maybe we should start making interactive law books where you can view whether a particular law actually applies to your person or your company, or not. Just to keep up with the times.

  • Abandon Ship!

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  • All MS needs to do is cook their frogs (users) slowly, over years, and MS will be just fine and can add whatever they want. As long as they do it slowly, incrementally. Postponing Recall after the first public backlash was also smart, because the audience tends to forget over time and now it's psychologically not such a big deal anymore already.

    I'm sure users will find some convenient excuse this time as well, maybe "yeah sure it's spyware but at least I can turn it off until the next update", not realizing that Windows in the past had no spyware included at all and that the amount of spyware that you need to turn off and also ensure it's off after each update has grown significantly over the years. In fact I'd even guess that without 3rd party anti-spyware-tools or well-configured group policies it's impossible for the common Windows user to find and plug all the holes which leak data. And even then, future updates might introduce new data leaks or re-open old holes.

    As long as this situation doesn't change, as long as there's no really simple way to turn off everything from one convenient place, this company is just screwing you around. Remember that Microsoft is, at least since Nadella is CEO, not in the "we sell you a decent OS and that's it" business anymore. They're in the data business. They're in the "we sell or gift you a somewhat usable OS with minimum maintenance from our side and in return we get more and more data from you. Also please use our online services so that we get even more data" business. And now they're also in the AI business, which means they want not just more data from you but they want to feed their bots literally everything you're doing, and that is only possible by having constant screen sharing with Microsoft active.

    The biggest problem of all this is that if you want to have a secure or private communication with a Windows user, you'd first need to check whether they don't have this stuff running in the background, because this gets data from all sorts of applications, including any open chat windows, and it also gets input from your microphone. It's like every Windows user will have a Microsoft camera behind them pointed at the screen at all times and one has to hope that this camera isn't actually on. If it is on at any point, it will undermine the security and privacy of any applications the user has open, because it can see and hear everything in clear text/voice. Or in other words: it's becoming increasingly more difficult to ensure that you can still have a private chat (voice or text) with a Windows user...

  • Potential mother of my foster cat

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  • Unfortunately there's probably no way to know for sure, outside of DNA tests or something like that, whether that's the mom or not. From the outside it's hard to tell. Cats don't have human-like family relationships to each other. Sure, the moms usually care for the kittens but they also do that for kittens which aren't their own. They also likely won't recognize their own kittens anymore (and vice versa) after some time has passed and their smell has changed. They probably still care for them out of instinct or social habits but not necessarily because they know it's their child. From their behavior it might look like they know but they might just as well not.

  • According to research, 11% of Trump voters can be won back

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  • Well, it's too late. They needed to be not stupid during the last election. Now, Trump will likely just continue his reign of destruction, ignoring opposition, constitution and courts.

  • Linux Users- Why?

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  • When I was new to the Linux desktop world (late 90s to 200x) I tried lots of different distros and (X11) window managers and tools and whatnot. Changed themes a lot. And so on. And I think there's value in all that, because it expands your horizon of what's possible on the desktop, how different UI/UX paradigms work out in practice for you, and you learn how to use different environments.

    On the other hand, there's also value in having a consistent, well-integrated desktop environment. It can mean less "pain points" in various circumstances, and it's also efficient when multiple programs share the same libraries or code base instead of having separate tools all around.

    In the end, it comes down to what works best for you. But this might also change over time. For example I'm really considering switching to Cosmic once it's mature. I'm also considering taking a look at Niri because it seems well thought-out. But currently I feel cozy using Plasma at home and Gnome at work because Plasma is currently the least-annoying and at work I still use Gnome because it's been historically more stable than Plasma for me. I've tweaked Plasma's hotkeys so they work more like Gnome's and since I also need to use a couple of Windows-based systems at work I've also configured common Windows shortcuts like Super+L, Super+E, Super+R so that they all behave the same everywhere.

    Oh, and my distro is Arch everywhere because I've used it for ages now and I like its technical simplicity, stability and modularity. It's the one distro that gets in my way the least.

    I think one should learn enough to be flexible and be able to use everything, while also not being too narrow-minded and just focus on one solution too much. What works best for you now might not be the best choice for you in a couple of years.

  • I'm disappointed but not done with Putin, Trump tells BBC

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  • There are really only 2 options I think: a) either Dump is a Russian asset, in which case he's lying, or b) he's not a Russian asset but simply doesn't care about the war in Europe and wants the US not spending any money there, and to achieve that he's also lying. Both cases kind of result in the same, so it doesn't even matter whether a) or b) is true. He will in both cases just say whatever makes him look the least bad but so that he can still achieve his goal of not supporting Ukraine or Europa in its war against Putin. I've never seen such obvious lying, deflection and (in other contexts) corruption from any other administration. Sure, many politicians lie and are corrupt, but here it's orders of magnitude more extreme.

  • Alright you nerds, I made the jump to Linux.

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  • Good choice, welcome. But generally, desktop Linux right now is quite mainstream-compatible. So it's not really just for nerds anymore. It was like 20+ years ago.

  • Linux gaming for a non-technical person?

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    1. Arch
    2. For gaming, ~7 years. For everything else, ~20 years. I've used Windows for gaming in the past, but I've been a long-time Arch user in general, who switched to Linux full-time (also for gaming) once it got so compatible with running Windows-based games. Which was approx. 7 years ago. Since then, I don't have any Windows partitions anymore.
    3. For gaming, really minor things only sometimes, and that amount also decreased over time as the compatibility layers and tools got better and better. I think Linux is in general very newcomer/mainstream-friendly for gaming and general use right now, just pick the right distro for you. Since I'm on Arch, I obviously have to put in slightly more time, and I wouldn't recommend Arch to new users, unless that new user is also willing to enjoy the benefits of having a technically simple and lean OS while not caring about the disadvantages (having to invest slightly more time into it). That said, I also usually game on Steam and don't play games with invasive anti-cheat-systems in them. Which makes it even easier.
    4. No.

    For newcomers, best picks for a gaming-optimized Linux distro right now would be Bazzite, Nobara or simply any general-use but up to date distro like Fedora, Pop!OS, Kubuntu, OpenSuSE, CachyOS, EndeavourOS, Arch (the last three only if you can deal with the Arch-based distros, it's not for everyone). If you have a designated gaming machine, I'd probably use a gaming-centric distro. If you also use the machine for other tasks, I'd pick a general-use distro which can do gaming just fine as well. There's really no difference in capability between the two types other than what's already preconfigured OOTB and how fast you can go from zero to gaming.

  • ‘Egregious.’ ‘Brazen.’ ‘Lawless.’ How 48 Judges Describe Trump’s Actions, in Their Own Words

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  • The key people from the Trump administration and their key supporters need to be jailed for their complete disregard of the constitution and laws. If you can't stop them your justice system is broken. Any regular citizen doing a tiny percentage of what these criminals do would already be jailed for life. Enforce the laws and the constitution. Put those criminals where they belong.

  • Trump threatens Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship: "She is a Threat to Humanity"

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  • Well, they massively expanded jail space everywhere, as well as funding for ICE. Of course they're going after much more people than just "illegal immigrants". That's just the low-hanging fruit for them (still anti-constitutional). Fascists will always move on to other groups of people because they constantly need to find new enemies, not realizing that they themselves are the only ones causing actual harm. They will also turn on each other if someone blames another one of "treason" or "aiding the enemy" or whatever. It's a purely destructive cult-like force and if you can't stop it it will cost millions of lives over a couple of years.

  • 'Negotiating with Donald Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon'

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  • A pigeon is strictly better than Trump because they don't destroy the environment, societal and scientific progress, or other people. Now that I've thought about it 1 second more, it's not even a fair comparison. Because Trump existing means active harm and destruction in many areas.

  • Get ready to lose again, assholes.

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  • "The US will always do the right thing... after having exhausted all other possibilities."

  • Trump is waging war against the media – and winning

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  • Well, the point in time where it was maybe possible to defend against Trump and his cronies normally or legally is already over. Now they have gathered too much power and also already pretty much operate above the law. The Supreme Court is on their side I guess, not on the side of the constitution or the laws anymore. So it'll only get worse from now on, and quickly. Only regime-approved media will soon be left over, i.e. media distributing the regime's propaganda even further. And they will soon throw all of their opponents into concentration camps, not just "illegal immigrants". That's just the low-hanging fruit they needed for initially starting building concentration camps and expanding other jail space and their ICE army massively. Technically they would only need jail space for themselves and all supporters of this fascist regime, but they will jail all others they can get their hands on instead.

    You will have an actual fight on your hands if you want to revert all this. Either just from the inside, or both from the inside and the outside once they start waging war on former allies like Canada or Denmark (Greenland). You should probably create local communities of people who are ready to help each other vs. ICE raids. Create logistical and resource problems for them. Make it hard and costly for them to destroy people's lives. If you let them kidnap too many people, you will not have enough people for resistance anymore.

  • Happy 4th! Remember who to actually to blame for the death camps :3

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  • It's like a reverse independence day this year... the non-US world declares its independence from the US. But maybe next year, or hopefully in a very short amount of years, the US can celebrate its independence or liberation from fascism at least, maybe also from neo-liberalism. But first, fascism is hitting your with full deadly and extralegal force.

  • 【The Year of the Linux Desktop】

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  • Not sure there will be a big change there, because they are already powerful enough for most common tasks since several years now. And everyone owns at least one phone or tablet already. So I don't think that number is going to rise significantly anymore. Those people who are OK with using a phone/tablet for everything probably already do so right now. Maybe if living conditions for the non-super-rich become worse and people look for more affordable computing devices. But even then, older devices which can run Linux desktops for example are already dirt-cheap. I just don't think that the UI/UX of phones or tablets is on par with desktops or notebooks running a regular desktop OS when using a big screen. Those UIs are primarily made for touch and for smaller screens. Trying to do everything with just one UI paradigm just leads to Windows 8 ugliness.