• 13 Posts
  • 288 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2024

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  • I think it’d be great to live in a world where this technology required warrants, transparency, and other oversight from the start.

    Me too.

    It boils down to the fact that this technology is widespread, and will continue to be widespread regardless of my actions

    That same reasoning has been used innumerable times throughout history. I suppose each of us must decide whether we think it holds water. It reminds me of an old adage: No single drop believes it is responsible for the flood.

    Predator does way more than just ALPR.

    I know. I looked it up. I mentioned the name not because I think it represents what it does, but rather to point out that it will affect how people feel about you and your work, even if in subtle, imperceptible ways. It’s up to you to decide whether you’re comfortable with that.


  • I don’t have a specific suggestion, but here is what comes to mind:

    • Violation of human rights and civil liberties in order to gain power over others is always justified with noble-sounding excuses like protecting people and property. The reality does not match the claim.
    • Once violated, privacy of information is almost impossible to restore.
    • Anything that can be abused to someone’s gain will be abused eventually, if not immediately.
    • Relying on a benevolent gatekeeper (even yourself) to prevent abuse of your tech will eventually fail.
    • The name V0LT Predator evokes the feeling that it’s something the world needs less of, not more.

    Whenever I find myself on a fine line like the one you’re trying to walk, I consider whether I’ll look back on my life and be proud of what projects/causes/changes to the world that I advanced with the time and talents that I have.


  • Sony used to make compact variants of their flagship Xperia phones. Good specs. Good battery life. Good camera. Good display. Good sound. Good reception. Headphone jack. SD card slot. Unlockable bootloader, so they could be de-googled.

    Sadly, the “compact” models grew slightly larger with each model year, and even a not-so-compact one hasn’t been released in a while.


  • Look for an instance with these qualities:

    • Does not use Cloudflare or any other large content delivery network. Instances that use thse allow the CDN to monitor everything your read and write on Lemmy, which can reveal a lot about you even if you haven’t used your real name. Cloudflare can then correlate that information with your other browsing habits, and possibly your real identity, because they operate as a middleman for a huge number of popular web sites.
    • Maintains a sizable local image cache. Images served from other instances instead of your local one can be abused by remote parties to track what is viewed on Lemmy with your IP address (and sometimes your browser signature). Alternatively, you could block off-site images using a browser extension, but that would mean not getting to see as many pictures.




  • Blizzard games have always run very well in Wine.

    They run, but I wouldn’t say very well. A few counterexamples off the top of my head:

    • Wine raw input patches are required to avoid subtle mouse glitches in Overwatch.
    • Saving Overwatch highlight videos doesn’t work.
    • Battle.net launcher changes have made it unusable in Wine more than once, leaving people suddenly unable to play for days or weeks even when the games themselves would run fine if they could be updated and launched.

    You might not notice the problems (or not as often) if using Proton. That’s because Proton includes a load of Wine patches for stuff like this.

    It would be nice if Blizzard tested on Wine and worked with the maintainers to ensure things stayed smooth.






  • Yes, I’m aware of that justification. I like the idea in principle, but it doesn’t hold water in this game, because the mechanics they used to simulate ultra-realism are not realistic at all. Picking up a weapon in real life doesn’t impose a state of bodily malfunction where you have about as much control of yourself as a blind drunk standing on one stilt. I’ve used swords and bows, and trained in a fair number of other physical skills. Even my very first time, there was never a point where I suddenly found my arms or legs failing to work. The most forgiving way I can describe this implementation would be to call it a ham-fisted attempt.

    Clearly, though, there’s an audience for it

    It seems so. If some people enjoy slogging through those mechanics, then I’m happy for them. I have better things to do with my time.


  • I loved the environments in RDR2, but holy hell, the missions’ persistent denial of player agency drove me up a tree. Railroading is annoying in the best of cases. I could tolerate it in The Last of Us, which limited the places I could go but offered a wonderfully engaging story in those places and never dropped a 10-ton FAIL anvil on my head for trying something creative. In an open world game (a genre that I like because I’m encouraged to find creative solutions) I find it unforgivable.

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance drove me away for similar reasons. I like games where the challenge comes from learning how to work with available tools and moves, developing my skill with them, and figuring out how to use them most effectively. Making progress that way is satisfying. KC:D chose the polar opposite of that, interfering with my ability to control my character until I slogged through seemingly endless time sinks thinly disguised as “training” sessions. This mechanic had nothing to do with developing my skill as a player, but instead just arbitrarily denied me agency. I hated it, and since the reports I’ve read suggest that the sequel does the same, I won’t be buying it or anything else from those game designers.

    I guess my point is just to let you know that you’re not alone. :)