the fact that it made you uncomfortable, or at least thought that it was too much is the point. in the future the author/designers are making a comment on sexual exploitation for profit is commonplace and has been normalised

it’s there to make the setting similar to those familiar to us from universes like blade runner, altered carbon, (to a lesser degree) firefly. it’s the standard sci-fi canon that future corporatocratic society is filled with these things: the money buys whatever you like - the basest of desires are on the table no matter what

and it’s also there in all of those universes as a comment on exploitation and morality: just because you (or rather a select few) can buy it doesn’t make it right

it may not often be part of the narrative per se, but it’s an integral part of universe building: you can’t have narrative in a void, so you need to build a convincing universe to tell the story inside

that is wildly inaccurate. do you have a source?

and also, security isn’t about 100% guarantees… we each have our own risk profile: regular joe gamer doesn’t need to be as security conscious as someone working for the NSA… their risks are different, because their exploitation value is different… most people only need to protect themselves from generalised attacks because they’re not going to be targeted

kernel level apps, however, blast a massive hole in the walls that keep us secure and potentially open attack vectors for generalised attacks… it’s just not worth that risk

“needs” might be debatable… i’m just don’t think the trade-off is worth it (and thus don’t play games that require kernel-level access)

code running in kernel space is hugely privileged… it can open up enormous security vulnerabilities because when you’re in the kernel you can bypass a LOT of security checks and restrictions… windows code is generally pretty well tested, so is unlikely to have particularly bad bugs like RCEs etc… but these kernel mode apps aren’t nearly as rigorously tested - things like this is what lead to the crowdstrike outage

things running in the kernel can also cause a lot more damage than user space apps, because the kernel doesn’t do a lot of the error checking and validation that stops things like kernel panics

load on boot INTO THE KERNEL is the main issue… this isn’t “just another executable”

cc companies

best to say card networks, as cc companies both include a lot of other things (like issuers), and doesn’t include some things (like debit cards, which still use the card networks)

that’s because it’s privacy first… in that case, privacy is really the only reason they offer the option. in this case, it isn’t about privacy. they want a system with stable value that can be transferred quickly from consumer to creator in the creators preferred currency

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

is banning porn games on the same level?

no… not even a little, but i think it’s pertinent… these groups keep pushing harder and harder and it won’t stop. it’ll eventually reach you as a person; not just your interests

or i share similar concerns with the person from the quote in the final part of the article…

i’m not sure how bringing up something in the article makes it “clear” that i didn’t read said article

next they’ll probably want to ban LGBT content since it’s “clearly pornographic”

visa have similar restrictions… the issue is that payment processor, merchant, card network, issuing bank, and acquiring bank (and a few more) are all different layers to facilitating a transaction… there are very few card networks in the world, and essentially people pay online using mostly either just visa or mastercard

technically you could probably run a site that only accepts amex, diners club, jcb, discover, etc but it really wouldn’t go well: people want to whip out their card (often their only method of online payment) and just pay and go

you’d also need to find a payment processor that would be comfortable taking on the risk of facilitating transactions around mastercard and visa… they might just cut them off from access to their network. sounds like extortion? yeah welcome to the world of banking, where in any other industry it’d be called a cartel

making things even more difficult is that by law in the US payment processors must offer at least 3 (i think? it might be 2?) “routes” (these things aren’t always straight forward - sometimes there are multiple card networks involved), so you probably have to have a pretty mature payment processor because they’d have to accept several of the alternative card networks

oh and you have to push various stats to the federal reserve which is a massive back and forth bureaucratic challenge even above the technical challenge of interfacing with some pretty awful systems. it often takes over a year to get things sorted unless you’re a “too big to fail” type customer

there are a buuuuunch of other spanners that get thrown into the works, but i’m not sure where the NDA line hits so i’m gonna just leave it there and say trust me, payment processing (distinct from payment gateway) is an absolute nightmare mess

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/criminal-career/escalation-in-the-seriousness-of-crime/BDBA0E71013CF101AC238215C1D353BD

this suggests that skill level plays a part in escalation. i’d argue that refining the “fantasy” is absolutely part of that (the same is true of the psychology of all fetishes: you start with something you’re not sure you’re into, and as you refine what it is about it you like you can dive deeper)

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0093854813485575

this paper suggests that both thrill seeking and self control have different impacts on people’s desire to commit crime

i agree with that research, and i agree with where you’re coming from but i’m not sure you can apply the same research to violence. there’s an argument that it gives people an outlet, but afaik also people that commit these crimes often escalate. making it easier for them to try out their fantasy could easily mean they escalate faster

meanwhile, i don’t have time to sit and focus on reading for 10-15min. what i do have time for is putting a YT video on in the background while im making dinner

if people who write blog posts were serious they’d have a video version on youtube available in parallel /s

they are different formats… so somebody does something you think you’d like in a medium you don’t want to consume… that is absolutely a you problem

yes but there’s still a EULA you agree to about redistribution and how you’re allowed to use the software etc…even FOSS software has licenses. if there’s terms in there about being able to back out of the agreement, i’d imagine there would be a clause about destroying copies of the software

that all seems very reasonable

at its core you’re still recording a number from 0% to 100% brightness in the image… if an image is more yellow, you’re adding some extra brightness to those channels, which potentially loses you information. it might not be noticeable most of the time, but especially around clipping there’s going to be information lost

all that said, i’m not a professional - i’m just an amateur with a blackmagic camera and a decent understanding of the data format it uses filling in some blanks

to a degree, but it’s much better to get it right when you’re shooting… you lose dynamic range if it’s off

if you do it often, i have a great little pack of credit card sized white and grey cards… they are an absolutely life saver for fixing white balance in post

honestly with online only games i’d be “okay” (not that it’d be great but okay) with them just releasing a bunch of internal docs around the spec. you’re right that open sourcing commercial code is actually non-trivial (though perhaps if they went in knowing this would have to be the outcome then maybe they’d plan better for it), but giving the community the resources to recreate the experience i think is a valid direction

you can’t sign away consumer rights in a EULA… they might try and out them in there, but if it were law then they wouldn’t be able to enforce it

also loans still exist regardless of investment like stocks, which is the way most small businesses start anyway

over COVID, the company i worked for did the best possible thing: they called an all hands and said they didn’t want to let anyone go, but would likely need to unless everyone took a voluntary 20% pay cut for a bit… they expressed that not everyone is in the position to do that, and if you can’t you shouldn’t feel bad… executives and leadership making the decision took a 40% pay cut for the same period, and any profit that the company made went to reimburse people’s salaries in proportion to the amount they lost. because they were honest, and sacrificed more themselves the buy in was something like 95%, they didn’t have to fire anyone, and we ended up getting about half of it back…

afaik onlyoffice has financial connections to russia, fyi

i’m actually super surprised australia makes the cut… AND is about 10% of the USA with like 7% of the population… our power grid is fucking disgusting for carbon (although i guess we’re only just above the USA in per capita emissions too so that makes sense i suppose)

but like… there’s literally no market for apple parts because you can’t really use them for repairs or anything at all - it’s ewaste unless it’s in the original device, and the whole phone is ewaste unless it’s logged into the registered apple account - you can’t just wipe it or anything because of all the serial numbers etc

swings and round abouts… tbh i love this feature of apple hardware because it pretty much means there’s no point to stealing an iphone: you can’t even part it out and sell it in bits… i’ve left my phone in random places all the time and i’ve never been worried it’s going to get stolen

totally understand that people have the opposite POV though: that it’s your device and you should be able to do whatever you want with it, and that locking down parts is a method to ensure apple status in the loop with repairs and overpriced parts

i think both points of view are valid

perhaps, but Apples rosetta2 works great with crossover and games. valve just pulled proton out of nowhere: they might just decide to do the same with a hypothetical x86 translation layer

(although i have heard that rosetta is so good because apple made some fundamental additions to the silicone to make it more x86-like so that translation performance didn’t suffer too much, which valve couldn’t do)

it’s a 30% uplift for 30% more power budget and 30% more cost. the fact that they added a new version of frame gen etc that has both up and down sides is pretty much a wash

especially a GPU that’s not even that good relative to last gen

i agree FOSS is the way to go, and that OpenAI has a lot to answer for… but FOSS is not the only way to interpret “open”

the “open” was never intended as open source - it was open access. the idea was that anyone should have access to build things using AI; that it shouldn’t be for only megacorps who had the pockets to train… which they have, and still are doing

they also originally intended that all their research and patents would be open, which i believe they’re still doing

They don’t care if you play on steamOS, Windows, or a steam powered adding machine.

i think yes and no: they make their money from selling games, so they want more people to buy more games from them

… but, SteamOS achieves that in a multi-faceted way:

• it provides a fit-for-purpose platform for handhelds and consoles which previously steam didn’t have any market share over, and if that’s in SteamOS they have a massive advantage
• it gives valve some leverage over microsoft (if MS controls the platform that you depend on, they can do some pretty wild things and you have no recourse). in this case, they definitely care about bumping their numbers - more on SteamOS means less power microsoft has over them
• it creates competition, which forces microsoft to invest in making their own experience better, and better experience anywhere means probably more people game more often

i think that last point in particular is critical: every $ valve spends on steamos is multiplied, because microsoft has to spend their own money to keep up, and it propels the whole ecosystem forward

the point is that the architecture and development style of linux provides for a very robust and reliable platform to develop hardware for

gaming is a VERY new thing on linux, so it’s not at all surprising that support is in its infancy… but you look at things that linux has been doing basically since the internet has existed: servers, and hardware support is unmatched

… and there’s way more server hardware than there are most other categories of hardware

i mean… any hardware is kinda just a matter of time imo

linux already works with more hardware than windows does, and often more reliably - not some of the complex stuff required for gaming of course, but again… matter of time. it’s not important until it’s important and then it really kicks off

i hold no particular belief about this particular case either way; i was just replying to your comment about contract workforces

for sure wow… i remember in xfire days it logged like 20-25k hrs

… i literally have nightmares where my character is reaching out of a black void sobbing “please im so lonely come back and play with me”

fuck that whole game

perhaps - i didn’t read the article, but going by your comment: if it’s your contract workforce rather than full time then sometimes you just want to transition from expensive “temporary” employees to permanent positions

the reality of the situation is that these 2 things look exactly the same in 99% of circumstance and 100% of circumstances that consumers actually care about

at the very least it’s probably about as good as a pi, but for free… and has a built-in UPS and backup internet connection… could be actually very helpful for reporting system status through power outages etc - perhaps even use the camera as a remote view of the systems

if only they had some way to ram an unwanted LLM into the windows handheld experience

Ohhhh no, poor Microsoft can’t further their monopoly until GOOGLE comply with THEIR MONOPOLY-BREAKING court orders! Poor, poor MONOPOLIES

ftfy, i’m not sure which is worse

(well, one because it’s factually untrue… but…)