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Dark_Arc

@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg

Hiker, software engineer (primarily C++, Java, and Python), Minecraft modder, hunter (of the Hunt Showdown variety), biker, adoptive Akronite, and general doer of assorted things.

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Dark_Arc,
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Wondering the same thing

Dark_Arc,
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Don’t give these guys money. One of the worst studios out there.

Dark_Arc,
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Best for what requirements?

Lots of space? Ease of use? What devices? Web access? Etc

Dark_Arc,
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Proton because I get it basically for free under my existing Proton plan and because of Proton’s stellar reputation.

That’s not to say the apps aren’t a bit buggy or missing (Linux doesn’t have one) though.

Dark_Arc,
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If you’re going to use Windows … just use Windows firewall. There’s no real reason that I can think of anyways to replace that one component with something FOSS.

Dark_Arc,
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AFAIK, Windows firewall is perfectly fine, usable in commercial spaces, etc. You’re probably going to be getting into more “hobbyist” firewalls even if you do find one … and a firewall isn’t something you particularly want that with. You want something that’s well designed and well maintained.

(I say this as a guy that has run Linux on basically everything for … over a decade)

Dark_Arc,
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Man I remember cutting myself on some of those toy and electronics boxes growing up … All for a ban here

Dark_Arc,
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I’m kind of hoping for some asynchronous multiplayer features; Age of Wonders does this with some jank, but I think there’s room for a less jank / a more polished implementation.

Dark_Arc,
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I strongly disagree, email is a train wreck for secure communication.

Proton has done a pretty good job of making an implementation that’s actually secure but PGP email has fundamental flaws like the subject line and recipient being clear text on the message, user error/key management complexity, and it’s also just a high-friction means of communication vs “texting” or “IRC”-like approaches.

Dark_Arc,
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No idea what that means, but I do know the devs of this game also made War for The Overworld and they did a fantastic job of making and maintaining it.

I’d highly recommend their studio… and if this is the type of game you’re interested in, you should definitely check it out!

Dark_Arc,
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Maybe Valve is on to something with not counting to 3.

Dark_Arc,
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My hot take: hostile reads are in pore taste. It’s unique to the internet, and we need less of that.

Dark_Arc,
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I think we’re probably a lot further than that.

Dark_Arc,
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I don’t particularly care…

It sucks for people that live in countries that Sony doesn’t sell to … but also Sony just doesn’t sell to those countries.

Ultimately they made people use an account, something that’s long been extremely standard behavior.

I think people are overreacting, particularly those that are in a situation where it’s just “create a free account with your throw away email address.”

Dark_Arc, (edited )
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I think Eminem has always put down those vibes … that’s not particularly new.

There’s a different “tone” to the music in general, it’s a bit more “playful” and a bit less “fuckkkk, you” (Yah Yah, Survival) and/or “sad” (Mockingbird).

It’s different but it’s kinda fun.

Dark_Arc,
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He can ask congress to add another judge, but congress has to actually approve the appointments.

Dark_Arc, (edited )
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Man, have you ever tried bowling or god forbid golf, movies, or guns?

I’ve got games where I’ve paid the equivalent of less than a dollar per hour of entertainment and that’s after optional micro-transactions.

Dark_Arc,
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Yeah… Probably eventually knowing them, sadly not yet

Dark_Arc,
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Cool! It Takes Two is a great game; hopefully this lets more people enjoy it!

Dark_Arc,
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You mean that floatplane thing he has?

Dark_Arc,
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It could become independent with sufficient funding. I think that’s part of the idea.

Though, being able to use other indexes is likely still helpful.

Dark_Arc,
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I mean, the purchasing model was fine. It was like any other game store. It’s just it was a new service and lots of people already had existing libraries they wanted to take with them … which just isn’t how that sort of thing normally works. Particularly with the way Google had it designed so that you could play purchased games without a subscription.

Dark_Arc,
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The reason the US and Canadian governments are doing this is to stop that $10k car from destroying the auto motive industry in North America resulting in layoffs that make the recent tech layoffs look like peanuts.

I agree we need cheaper EVs in North America, I want one too… There’s an Ars Technica article where Ford basically goes “we thought everyone wanted expensive trucks … we made those electric … we realize we missed the mark, we’re going to work on smaller, cheaper, EVs.” So, they are coming hopefully within the next couple of years.

I’m not sure how important manufacturing still is to the Canadian economy, but for the US economy … trying to protect domestic production is important (and we should’ve done it years ago instead of letting cheap Chinese imports destroy a large amount of the factories in North America).

Dark_Arc,
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That reduces a lot of relevant context, like why they needed the 08 bailouts in the first place, how many times they’ve been bailed out, and the fact that China has heavily subsidized these cars to the point that even if they were making the same vehicle, it would be significantly more expensive.

Dark_Arc,
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Well… That sucks. It looked like a decent update on Dirt Rally 2 as well

Dark_Arc,
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Agree on the first part … disagree on the latter.

Joe has invested heavily in domestic production of “the next generation of technology” (chips, solar panels, electric vehicles, etc).

This is in no small part about protecting that … and I don’t think there’s much in terms of negotiating that China could do here.

Dark_Arc,
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This reminds me of the new game Andrew Gower and his brothers have been working on, Brighter Shores. It’s a pure passion project based on a from scratch game engine that was created to make programming (even massively) multiplayer online games much easier.

The goal isn’t profit but rather, to have fun, and make a cool enjoyable game. He’s said they’ve made more than enough money from the sale of Jagex and RuneScape back in the day (which FWIW, he regrets that sale and a lot of what has happened at Jagex/to RuneScape).

I love to see game developers (and people in general that … “make it” and then go “you know what, I do have enough”).

Dark_Arc,
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That sounds like a really cool title for a game if nothing else!

Dark_Arc,
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I can’t read it because of the paywall but IIRC (based on a similar article) that was such a nothing-burger issue.

People turned on an entirely optional (I think off by default setting) for some feature that allowed discovery of users by location … and shocked pikachu they could be tracked or something like that.

Dark_Arc,
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Server-side source code is a red herring. It’s meaningless, it can’t be verified.

The latter point is fair.

Dark_Arc,
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Cloud source server or open source server, you can’t know what server their running.

Pavel’s whole argument here is basically the same thing for the client; “you can’t verify the build in the app store matches what’s in the source code, so you have no way of knowing it’s actually what you’re auditing.”

Dark_Arc,
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I don’t know why Telegram users keep making excuses for that platform.

Honestly? Because the others are just so bad.

  • Element has an extremely clunky UX and uses Electron. The other Matrix app implementations are incomplete buggy messes.
  • Signal can’t sync old messages to the desktop, uses a messy Electron interface, and lacks a bunch of features/polish I’ve come to expect.
  • Discord doesn’t even pay lip service to privacy and uses a similarly doesn’t invest in native apps.
  • Threema has been saying that cross-platform/multi-device connectivity is coming for like 2+ years and has had nothing but the most minor of unexciting features added.
  • WhatsApp is run by Meta, has a crappy desktop experience, and has had several serious security vulnerabilities.
  • Jami is … extremely glitchy.
  • Session is basically Signal backed by a Crypto platform.

If someone took Telegram’s UX and feature set and paired that with Signal’s approach of “everything is encrypted”, that would be a winner. I kinda hope someday Telegram just does that and moves everything to E2EE. When Telegram was launched E2EE for group chats/at scale wasn’t really a thing … now it’s not nearly as novel but nobody has deployed E2EE with a feature set like Telegram’s.

It’s not nothing if Telegram makes people believe they only share their location in a limited manner, but instead broadcast it to the whole world.

That’s not even what happens by the way. It’s just that you can spoof a device into random locations and eventually figure out where someone is.

Dark_Arc,
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That’s fair … especially in the case of something Telegram like where the server is a major portion of the security model (for non-secret chats).

For truly private E2EE chats though the attacks on Telegram’s lack of an open source server side (and Signal’s presence of one) is fairly meaningless. If the client E2EE is correct and you’re using a reproducible build the server, and even any MITM (man in the middle), shouldn’t matter.

Dark_Arc,
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A “toot” isn’t a very persuasive piece of journalism.

I can verify that it absolutely impacts groups run by queer communities in the Gulf, because I was in one such group that was monitored and shut down by Etidal.

That claim needs a lot more investigation and context. At the very least, it needs investigated by a credible third party.

Also, do you even know what the feature you’re criticizing is? A “channel”? Because it’s not even really a part of the messaging portion of Telegram. It’s basically an in-app blogging platform.

Dark_Arc,
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That news article talks nothing about targeting groups unfairly and only talks about removal of extremist activity from what’s a social media platform (which is standard practice for all social media platforms). Specially that article talks about targeting “combating the online propaganda of ISIS, Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, and Al-Qaeda” which I believe is uncontroversial for all decent and reasonable people.

Dark_Arc,
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If that’s your bar for gaslighting I hate to tell you I can just edit my messages all over the place to say things that were never said.

Dark_Arc,
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  • Signal can’t sync old messages to the desktop
  • Persistent voice rooms
  • Custom emoji
  • Animated emoji
  • Location sharing
  • Chat folders
  • Topics/rooms for larger group chats
  • Support for larger group chats
  • Quoted replies (i.e., quote part of a reply or create an arbitrary quote block)
  • Code snippets
  • Message forwarding
  • Polls
  • Animations in the UI
  • Detailed custom theming
  • Chat room theming
  • A content index (e.g., view only the files, links, videos, etc that were sent in this chat)
  • Group invite links to people you don’t have in your contacts
  • Channels (i.e., micro-ish blogging)
  • A nice bot API
  • Subjective UI/UX changes to put things in more reasonable places (e.g, why can’t I right click on a chat to pin it in the desktop client, why is the Electron menu bar shown by default)

And probably several other things I’ve forgotten because … basically nobody I know is still using Signal.

Dark_Arc,
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Signal’s location share AFAIK can’t be a live location share (which is useful during events like amusement park trips and stuff)

They have invite links to group chats? I don’t know how that would work

Dark_Arc,
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Huh… That I did not know, thanks for the info. I’m not sure how that works with their encryption model

Dark_Arc,
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I mean it’s entirely possible this was for crossplay or cross save … I doubt this is about the number of accounts created in a given year.

Dark_Arc,
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Yes, but presumably you have accounts with those games? If not, you can play with people on those platforms but you can’t play with specific people on those platforms (e.g. a friend on the platform – which is the bigger deal in my mind with crossplay).

Like, the PSN account is the equivalent of a Bungie, Paradox, or Crytek account, something that allows the game developer to maintain a cross platform friends list? No?

I suppose they could use a room code invite system for crossplay but that’s way less convenient.

I never got into Hell Divers because it legit would not run on my system so I’m not super up on all the details but that’s been my impression of why they might want it.

Either way… With all the negative feedback I’m surprised they’re not screaming from the rooftops “we’ll do something else!” I understand Sony is tying their hands as well though.

Dark_Arc,
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Fanatical and all of the discount sites are basically “you bought it, you own it, no refunds.” That’s part of why they offer discounts, it’s kind of a risk you take.

…fanatical.com/…/201027572-Can-I-get-a-refund-can…

Issuing a chargeback for a product that was delivered could land you in court even if it works. More realistically will result in Fanatical permanently banning your account.

Never buy a game on these sites if you are at all uncertain about it. There is no refund and the key has been exposed.

Dark_Arc,
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Missed that part, but you’re right… They might make an exception but I wouldn’t count on it.

Dark_Arc,
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Yeah, the court thing was more a general thing… I doubt they’d actually do it.

All the same, I completely agree about not buying from these sites if you’re uncertain about things like this

💯 I look at them as a gamble/only buy things I’m SURE I want.

Dark_Arc,
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I don’t believe there’s any issue actually building the app. However, the app store policies forbid them from shipping it or offering it as a side-loadable option.

Dark_Arc,
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Always buy the best stuff you can get for your money, don’t give a fuck about the companies.

I’d add to this but just performance per dollar … but also things like:

  • performance per watt
  • how it works as part of the overall system you’re building (e.g. if you’re going to run Linux does it run well there)
  • will this decision hurt my ability to reuse other hardware in a timeframe I care about (a compelling point for AMD to me is you can reuse the motherboard much much longer than Intel)
  • what does warranty/repair look like for this? Is that something I need to worry about?

You can (if you’re in a comfortable position to ask this) also ask:

  • Where is it made?
  • Does that country have strong labor laws?
  • Does that country have strong environmental laws?
  • How does the company treat its employees?
  • How does this compare to the competitors?

If we collectively decide to punish bad companies by not buying their product just because they made their product a slightly better deal … I think we’re all a bit better off.

Dark_Arc,
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Hm… I agree that Instagram is not a neutral source. I also agree that there are going to be some biases imposed by the user base.

I don’t believe the US government plays a major role in Meta’s content moderation behavior. Meta if anything has shown a reluctance towards any political or news content in recent years. That’s not to say the US government doesn’t have influence but their influence is (from what I’ve seen) oriented around fighting disinformation and threats of violence … not cherry-picking the discussion of subject matter. I think there would’ve been a pretty significant leak out of Meta by now if there really was a strong political bias or government influence in content moderation.

I don’t think any of these lines particularly fall along political lines within the US either. There are people on the left and right taking different sides on virtually all of the topics with statistical divergence; many of them are unusually bipartisan within the US.

Dark_Arc,
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So, I took another look at the report, they did do this sort of statistical bias correction. See “U.S. Politics” page 8 networkcontagion.us/…/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.2…

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