S410

S410, 2 months ago

You can lose access to regular accounts as easily as to a blockchain. In fact, losing database of your password manager is even worse, because even if you have backups, they're not going to be complete.

With a blockchain all you have to worry is your private key. And you can write it down on a piece of paper, if you want, and put it away in a safe or a bank vault or something. Then, if you use it to restore your access years later, nothing will be lost.

"There are 2 types of people in the world: those who make backups, and those who don't make backups yet."

S410, 2 months ago

Well, why would banks replace the system which allows them to charge fees for every other interaction with their services? A blockain solution would allow multiple different banks (and, possibly, even regular people) to access the data with no middlemen, and, therefore, no fees. Or, well, no fees that directly end up in the bank's pockets as profit, that is.

Getting rid of that is bad for business. So, unless something magical happens and the EU, for example, pass a law requiring the banks to switch to a more de-centralized, more fair system, it's not going to happen.

S410, 2 months ago

What a lovely fucking precedent to have.

S410, 2 months ago

Oh, I guess that's slightly better. At least this fucking idiocy didn't make it into, essentially, law. But it also means that Nintendo (and other corpos) will not stop suing people left and right.

At what point will they sue fucking computer manufacturers, I wonder? Clearly, the ability to run unsigned code facilitates creation of code that's illegal (such as DRM circumvention tools and fucking Nintendo emulators), which, in turn, obviously facilitates piracy of Nintendo games! Poor Nintendo is loosing dozens of dollars because of those evil, evil computers which are clearly used for pirating their games and nothing else! This needs to stop!

S410, 2 months ago

I've noticed that too. Intentionally veered a conversation into a different topic and, lo and behold, I get "relevant recommendation" short time later. That was, not entirely coincidentally, the same day I unlocked the bootloader and flashed a de-googled ROM.

S410, 2 months ago

Android is sending a ton of data, though, even if you're not doing anything internet related. It, also, kinda reacts to "okay, google", which wouldn't really be possible if it wasn't listening.

Now, it obviously doesn't keep a continuous, lossless audio stream from the phone to some google server. But, it could be sending text parsed from audio locally, or just snippets of audio when the thing detects speech. Relatively normal stuff to collect for analytics purposes, actually.

Now, data like that could "easily" get "misplaced", of course, and end up in the ad-shoveling machine... Not necessary at Google's hands: could be any app, really. Facebook, TickTok, random free to play Candy Crush clone, etc. But if that data gets into the interwoven clusterfuck of advertisement might, it will likely end up having an effect on the ads shown to the user.

S410, 2 months ago

Regular bullets fired out of regular firearms basically disintegrate in water. Counter-intuitively, putting more energy into a bullet only worsens the results, making it stop even faster.

Underwater firearms do exist, but they are not common, and even they have incredibly limited range. As far as I know, none have effective range greatly exceeding 50 meters, let alone 100.

S410, 2 months ago

Every source I can find mentions maximum effective range at 15ft to be ~98 feet, not 909. So that zero in the middle is probably a typo, if I had to guess.

S410, 2 months ago

Dualbooting is possible and easy: just gotta shrink the Windows partition and install Linux next to it. Make sure to not format the whole thing by mistake, though. A lot of Linux installers want to format the disk by default, so you have to pick manual mode and make sure to shrink (not delete and re-create!) the windows partition.

As for its usefulness, however... Switching the OS is incredibly annoying. Every time you want to do that you have to shut down the system completely and boot it back up. That means you have to stop everything you're doing, save all the progress, and then try to get back to speed 2 minutes later. After a while the constant rebooting gets really old.

Furthermore, Linux a completely different system that shares only some surface level things with Windows. Switching to it basically means re-learning how to use a computer almost from scratch, which is, also, incredibly frustrating.

The two things combined very quickly turn into a temptation to just keep using the more familiar system. (Been there, done that.)

I think I'll have to agree with people who propose Virtual Machines as a solution.

Running Linux in a VM on Windows would let you play around with it, tinker a little and see what software is and isn't available on it. From there you'll be able to decide if you're even willing to dedicate more time and effort to learning it.

If you decide to continue, you can dual boot Windows and Linux. But not to be able to switch between the two, but to be able to back out of the experiment.

Instead, the roles of the OSes could be reversed: a second copy of Windows could be install in a VM, which, in turn, would run on Linux.

That way, you'd still have a way to run some more picky Windows software (that is, software that refuses to work in Wine) without actually booting into Windows.

This approach would maximize exposure to Linux, while still allowing to back out of the experiment at any moment.

S410, 2 months ago

Wayland has it's fair share of problems that haven't been solved yet, but most of those points are nonsense.

If that person lived a little over a hundred years ago and wrote a rant about cars vs horses instead, it'd go something like this:

Think twice before abandoning Horses. Cars break everything!
Cars break if you stuff hay in the fuel tank!
Cars are incompatible with horse shoes!
You can't shove your dick in a car's mouth!

The rant you're linking makes about as much sense.

S410, 3 months ago

There are plenty of cases where the police overreact or use excessive force entirely unjustified. There are even more cases when the police get shot at without any rhythm or reason.

There's a reason they're trained to open fire in uncertain situations. A split second decision might be the difference between them dying on the job and going back home to their families.

So, don't create those uncertain situations, unless getting shot is what you're looking for. If the police are banging on your door, they suspect that something is going on. Best you can do, is help them figure out the situation. The cops, however, are not psychic and don't know you and your intentions. So, if you have a gun, keep it in your holster or off yourself entirely. Identify yourself. Talk to them. Don't just walk out on them, gun in hand...

S410, 3 months ago

The slogan isn't "get shot and die, because you're too tough to shoot an armed person first" either.

Just imagine yourself in this situation: You're a cop. You're in front of a house that someone, reportedly, broke into. You bang on the door and identify yourself. Several seconds later, a person with gun walks out, not saying a word.

Even if you take a second to access the situation: there's a person, brandishing a weapon (which, in most cases, is a crime) walking out of a house that has been broken into. How does this come off as a safe or normal situation, exactly?

S410, 3 months ago

That did not happen.

There's a video. You can watch it.

Also did not happen. Holding a weapon is not brandishing it.

The definition of "brandishing" in holding or display a weapon in an intimidating or threatening manner. Substitute the cops with a pizza delivery person, for example, and I bet they'd feel pretty darn intimidated and/or threatened in this exact situation.

When you greet someone at your door, you keep your gun in your holster, just like you keep your dick in your pants. That's called common sense. If you don't have, you've only got yourself to blame.

S410, 3 months ago

The cops are several yards to the right of the door. Last time I've checked, the cops didn't posses the ability to see through walls or behind corners.

S410, 3 months ago

"Pouncy's girlfriend told reporters Friday that she and Pouncy heard banging on the door and that Pouncy walked to the door with gun."

It's not on the video, but it's confirmed that it has happened. Not everything has to be in one place.

S410, 3 months ago

Okay, fine. At the door. In direct line of sight. With a gun in hand. Because that changes everything.
This conversation isn't going anywhere. Look, if you think that walking up to cops with a gun in hand is good idea, more power to you. Have fun figuring out that actions have consequences.

S410, 3 months ago

Clearly that's only reason police exist. No exceptions. They never do anything other than abuse power and shoot people for funzies. Not at all.

As we all know, the world is perfectly black and white. Assigning qualities to groups of people and, then, treating people in those groups as if all of them posses those same qualities is a perfect system with no flaws. AdolfSchmitler would know.

S410, 3 months ago

Okay, I officially feel like an idiot now.
This entire thread is like arguing with a dog regarding its barking. No matter how much thought and logic is thrown at it, the dog just wouldn't shut up, because it doesn't even comprehend what "an argument", "logic" and "reason" are.
Same here. You use logic and explain that the world is not perfectly black and white, in returns they yell "acab" just because they "feel" like it.

S410, 3 months ago

Being lectured for supposedly "dehumanizing people" by people who yell that "all cops are bastards"...
Maybe look in a mirror once in a while?

S410, 3 months ago

A person who grabbed a gun after the police knocked on the door and announced themselves.

Treat a firearm like you'd tread your dick. You keep the latter in your pants and the former in your holster. It's not illegal to hold your dick in your hand while your at home, but if you answer your while doing so, chances are, you're getting charged with indecent exposure. Makes sense, right?

Similarly, it's perfectly legal to carry or even flail around a gun while you're in your own home. But it can very easily turn into brandishing if you'd go to answer the door with one in hand. So here's a crazy idea: how about you don't? Particularly when you're answering the door to police, of all things, who you know are armed.

S410, 3 months ago

She literally grabbed a gun.
There's a difference between having a gun on yourself or in the vehicle when you're getting pulled over, and pulling one out and putting it in your hand.
When you see someone grab a gun, you don't assume they're going to scratch their back with it, do you? So, if you get pulled over and the first thing you do is grab a gun, you'll get lit up. Because you're an idiot.

S410, 3 months ago

Overwhelming "support" is not that surprising, to be honest, when the question is "Do you support Putin or do you want to fall out of a window?"

S410, 3 months ago

Contribute to FOSS software.

S410, 3 months ago

Simply disabling registration of new accounts using Tor/VPN should be sufficient and won't affect existing users.

Although, requiring verification of accounts made via those would be a better approach. Require captchas to prevent automated posting. Automatically mark posts made from new accounts and/or via Tor or a VPN for moderation review.

There are way to mitigate spam that aren't as blunt and overreaching as blanket banning entire IP ranges. This approach is the dumbest, least competent way of ensuring any kind of security, and, honestly, awfully close to being needlessly discriminating. Fuck everyone from countries with draconian internet censorship, I guess?

S410, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Seems to region locked. There isn't a word about the game being given away, unless I log out of my account and use a VPN.
What even is the point of region-locking a fucking giveaway?

Edit: well, at least changing the region in the settings works. I guess it defaults to whatever country it thinks the IP the account was registered from belongs to?