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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: February 15th, 2021

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  • But those are small fries, not “the provider of games”

    They have less to loose, then. That’s just as dangerous, if not more.

    I’m a small fry too, would you run a binary I send you without any form of sandboxing?

    we don’t run games as root

    No, we typically run them with the same user that stores all our useful private data and that we typically type our passwords with.

    Also, why are you OK with that level of sandboxing? don’t you want more “control”? You say containers are bad, but using user roles to protect parts of the system is ok? why are you not running all as root if you want “control”?

    we are speaking about Wine, so what they see is limited to WINEPREFIX

    Not really, by default you have access to other drives (Z:\ being /, the fs root), wine is not a perfect sandbox, it’s not designed for that… and if you actually did want it to become one (which ultimately would also lead to a need for memory separation to fight memory-leak attacks) then it would not be that different from what’s being pursued. You’d be essentially building the container in a custom version of wine shipped by Valve on Steam, it does not make any difference in terms of “control”.


  • Currently, in order for Android app to appear in the official Store, developer has to allow Google to repackage their app and sign it with Google key. So while we can inspect what is there in the code of the app in git, we don’t really know what lands on our phones if installed via Google Play

    You can still open an APK and decompile it… it being signed with a specific key is no different than the digital signatures some attach to their emails, it’s a way to prove authenticity, not a way to encrypt the message… you can open the email without having to even care about the signature.


  • We have no control over what they put in those containers

    Most games on Steam are proprietary software you don’t control to begin with. It seems reasonable to keep them encapsulated in containers (+1 if you run Steam on flatpak or so) rather than granting them the capacity to run amok in the entire system, which we would have even less control over.

    It seems contradictory to want to remove barriers that are preventing the software from taking more control, and at the same time complaining about how they are having too much control.



  • Personally, I would be happy even if it didn’t translate it but were able to give some half decent transcription of, at least, English voice into English text. I prefer having subtitles, even when I speak the language, because it helps in noisy environments and/or when the characters mumble / have weird accents.

    However, even that would likely be difficult with a lightweight model. Even big companies like Google often struggle with their autogenerated subtitles. When there’s some very context-specific terminology, or uncommon names, it fumbles. And adding translation to an already incorrect transcript multiplies the nonsense, even if the translation were technically correct.





  • I don’t understand the posh stylistic decisions around padding, rounded borders, etc. How do those things make the UI better exactly?

    As someone who used low resolutions for most of my University years (I did my thesis in a tiny ultralaptop), I relied heavily on a custom gtk2 theme I had to write to remove most of that padding that made the UI feel so unnecessary and my screen so cramped.

    Gnome now pushing for removing theming completely and relying on just color scheme customization feels totally backwards to me. I don’t have an answer for OP sadly… other than just using terminal / tui apps more whenever possible.


  • True. Same for Android. I feel some form of that should be part of the approach. Splitting it carelessly would likely either:

    A) result in no real change: ie. instead of allocating budgets within Google, they’ll just exchange money through deals and partnerships, as separate companies, but still having pretty much the same relationship between projects and level of control (Android & Chrome would continue favoring Google interests, even as independent companies), and they’ll keep being monopolies each within their own fields (I don’t see how that’s being addressed with the split).

    B) result in independent projects that push for monetization and shady schemes to try and be profitable on their own (although, to be honest Mozilla has proven that being non-profit is not a shield against this either). This actually might be a good thing if the enshittification manages to get people to switch away from Chrome to a better alternative… but I wouldn’t be so sure of that (both that they would move, or that they’d choose a better one …as opposed to say MS Edge which has just as bad of a ruler).


  • Yeah, it protects Jimmy from having to unconditionally contribute to society & its many organizations.

    It allows Jimmy to set conditions and control who can use it and who cannot. For example, he can ally with one particular big corpo (or even start building one himself) so they can hold that thing hostage and require agreements/fees for the use of that thing for a long long time.

    So now, instead of all people, including big (and small) corpos, having free access to the idea, only the friends of Jimmy will.

    The reality is that if it wasn’t for Jimmy, it’s likely that Tommy would have invented it himself anyway at some point (and even improved on it!). But now Tommy can’t work on the thing, cos Jimmy doesn’t wanna be his friend.

    So not only does it protect Jimmy from having to contribute to society without conditions, it also protects society from improving over what Jimmy decided to allow (some) people access to. No competition against Jimmy allowed! :D

    Even without patents, if the invention is useful I doubt the inventor will have problems making money. It would be one hell of a thing to have in their portfolio / CV. Many corpos are likely to want Jimmy in their workforce. Of course, he might not become filthy rich… but did Jimmy really deserve to be that much more richer than Tommy?


  • There are many games that had that mechanic before Arceus.

    In particular, Craftopia (which is from the same developers of Palworld) had capsule devices that you can throw to enemies in a “virtual space” while characters “engage in combat” before Arceus was a thing.

    Just because they wrote a patent does not make it enforceable… patents don’t really mean anything until they are actually tested in court so they are just tools to try and scare people away whenever a company wants to bully with the prospect of a lawsuit.

    I feel that Palworld is likely to win this, this actually is an idiotic move from Nintendo and a win for Palworld… now they will get more publicity, perhaps another spike in sales, and they are finally given the opportunity to prove how they are in the right, so they can shut up all the naysayers who complained about it. I’m hoping all the paranoic empty claims about “blatant asset theft” will be settled once and for all.


  • Is “intent” what makes all the difference? I think doing something bad unintentionally does not make it good, right?

    Otherwise, all I need to do something bad is have no bad intentions. I’m sure you can find good intentions for almost any action, but generally, the end does not justify the means.

    I’m not saying that those who act unintentionally should be given the same kind of punishment as those who do it with premeditation… what I’m saying is that if something is bad we should try to prevent it in the same level, as opposed to simply allowing it or sometimes even encourage it. And this can be done in the same way regardless of what tools are used. I think we just need to define more clearly what separates “bad” from “good” specifically based on the action taken (as opposed to the tools the actor used).


  • I think that’s the difference right there.

    One is up for debate, the other one is already heavily regulated currently. Libraries are generally required to have consent if they are making straight copies of copyrighted works. Whether we like it or not.

    What AI does is not really a straight up copy, which is why it’s fuzzy, and much harder to regulate without stepping in our own toes, specially as tech advances and the difference between a human reading something and a machine doing it becomes harder and harder to detect.


  • Yes, I don’t think it’s just about the execution of Win32 code, but also the possibility of MS using marketing techniques and dirty manipulation methods to give themselves advantages within the Windows platform to sway the general public to their store in a similar manner as how they push their browser, their MS Teams communication platform, their One Drive Cloud Storage, their search engine, their data-collection tech, their assistant, etc.


  • Content curated by “the core geeks and nerds” might appeal to “geeks and nerds”, not to those consumers.

    They want “consumer” content. And if one day they get tired of it then I doubt any amount of “steak” would have stopped them leaving anyway, since that was never what they were looking for. It’s not like reddit has to be the only place they visit in the internet, nor is the internet their only source of consumption. Just because you go to a snack bar does not mean that’s the only place you go for meals.



  • Ferk@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlHyprland is now fully independent!
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    6 months ago

    Which is why you should only care about the personal opinion of those people when it actually relates to that reliability.

    I don’t care whether Linus Torvalds likes disrespecting whichever company or people he might want to give the middle finger to, or throw rants in the mailing list or mastodon to attack any particular individual, so long as he continues doing a good job maintaining the kernel and accepting contributions from those same people when they provide quality code, regardless of whatever feelings he might have about whatever opinions they might hold.

    You rely on the performance of the software, the clarity of the docs, the efficiency of their bug tracking… but the opinions of the people running those things don’t matter so long as they keep being reliable.


  • Ferk@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlHyprland is now fully independent!
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    6 months ago

    I have contributed to other projects without really needing to get involved in their community in any personal/parasocial level, though.

    I just make a pull request and when the code was good it was accepted, when not it got rejected. Sometimes I’ve had to make changes before it getting merged, but I had no need to engage in discussions on discord or anything like that. I’ve been in some mailing lists to keep track on some projects, but never really engaged deeply, specially if it goes off-topic.

    If I find that a good code contribution is rejected for whatever toxic reason, then the consequence of that is the code would stop being as good as it could have (because of the contributions being rejected/slowed down), so it’s then that forking might be in order. Of course the code matters.


  • Ferk@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlHyprland is now fully independent!
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    6 months ago

    To his point: if not “discuss”, what is the correct approach against fascism? war and murder? dismiss it, try to “cancel it” without giving any arguments so it can continue to fester on its own and keep growing in opposition?

    To me, fascism is a stupid position that doesn’t make much sense, to the point that it falls on itself the moment you “discuss” it.

    I would have expected that it would be the fascists the ones unable/unwilling to discuss their position, since it’s the least rational one. So it’s certainly very jarring whenever I hear people jumping to defend against fascism while at the same time stopping in their tracks when it comes to discussing it. Even if those unable to reason might not be convinced by our arguments, anyone with reason would. Rejecting discussion does a disservice, because it does put off those willing to listen and strengthens those who didn’t really want an argument anyway.

    Like flat-earthers, they should be challenged with reason, with discussion. Not dismissed as if it were true that there’s a huge conspiracy against them. Whether they listen or not to that reason, dehumanizing them and rejecting civil and rational discourse would play in favor of their movement.

    Stating “genocide is bad” should NOT be a statement of faith. Faith is the shakiest of the grounds, if we are unable to articulate the specific reasons that make genocide be bad, then we are condemned to see it repeat itself. So, I’d argue it’s for the sake of the victims in Auschwitz that antifascism should not be turned into a religion, but into a solid and rational position that’s not distorted nor used willy-nilly.