cmhe

@cmhe@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Startup formed by former Intel engineers and backed by AMD legendary chip designer wants to become the Arm of RISC-V⁩ ⁨⁨36⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago⁩:

  But as long as they are RISC V chips, then they would run the same software as any other RISC V chips.

  Not necessarily, RISC-V is permissibly licensed, so they could add proprietary extensions, that would make the binaries or even compilers only work with their implementation of the RISC-V ISA.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thunderbird does not fall under the new terms frommmozilla⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So a bit like extending Mozilla Application Suite aka Seamonkey instead of focusing on standalone products?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AMD's new RX 9000 GPUs only officially support UEFI systems⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  AFAIK, UEFI isn’t technically a requirement. However, TPM 2.0 is, and that requires UEFI.

  TPM 2.0 does not require UEFI. I have a system here with TPM 2.0 and only legacy boot support.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google officially changes the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Maps⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting discussion about this on the OpenStreetMap forums.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There are different degrees of vendor lock in. If you use email (or Matrix) with a domain, you have no control over, you are soft-locked it. You can buy a domain, self-host or pay for a managed service and inform everyone that you are now reachable over some other address, but nobody else has to change.

  If you use Signal (or Discord or whatever) and want to switch to a different domain. You cannot. If you switch to a different protocol, everyone in your contacts has to switch as well, or you lose that contact. The network effect forces you into the service of one provider. The only way out of there would be if the service get so bad, that a critical mass leaves, but you will have to deal with that bad service all the way.

  As long as financial interest are there, non-federated services will sooner or later start to enshittyfy. So if you choose a communication medium, choose something that leaves your options open. If you don’t like Matrix, try XMPP, it has come a long way as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Matrix?

  IMO the whole “metadata insecurity” stuff about Matrix is over exaggerated. Also Matrix is improving there.

  If metadata security is really that important, you could try Tox or similar P2P chats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AFAIK, Signal does not want anyone to use alternative clients, has that changed?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you can still insert client side decryption into the app.

  But it isn’t really about the messages, it is about the control of the servers and the accounts. You cannot easily move away from their servers, because you will lose your contacts. This gives the people controlling the servers power over you. A sort of vendor lockin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The company (Signal Messenger LLC) is fully owned by Signal Foundation, a 501©3 non profit organization.

  OpenAI is also non-profit. Not really an argument.

  Probably around 80-90% of Matrix users are on the matrix.org homeserver, so it’s absolutely not as decentralized and resilient as you think it is.

  Well, the goal is that moving to your own server, will not mean that you will loose access to all your contacts. Which makes moving instances much simpler. If Matrix gets a hostile take-over, your don’t really need to reach a critical mass for an alternative server.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  But you should also be aware that Signal does not federate, so the company can be bought. They have control over all accounts and the servers, without easy way to migrate away again. So it might just be another trap.

  Try to use federated services (like matrix), they are more robust against hostile take overs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not even OpenAI's $200/mo ChatGPT Pro plan can turn a profit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Obsolescence of human workers/employees.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This argument seems hollow, releasing source code is not an all or nothing situation. They can just release what they are allowed to, and let the community replace the missing stuff.

  Releasing anything is better than releasing nothing and letting the community reverse engineer everything instead of just some third-party libraries.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨pump up the jamz⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nothing gets burned or otherwise destroyed when receiving EM radiation via a dish and converted it into electricity via a receiver.

  Sure, the amplification stage of the process likely works only one way, and should be replaced in order to send something.

  The one way process of burning oil to generate heat seems much more primitive than the energy conversion offered by a diode, TBH.

  You can push or tow an electric car and charge their batteries. Because electric motors are also generators.

  Even with your simplistic fossil fuel car in your example the alternator within can also be used as a motor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨pump up the jamz⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no such big differences between a light emitting (LED) and a light receiving diode (photodiode), they are just the reverse of each other. In fact photodiodes can even emit light, but very inefficiently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨pump up the jamz⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  These radio telescopes don’t transmit anything at all, they listen to radio waves coming from the cosmos. Much like a normal telescope doesn’t transmit light.

  If you invert the flow of the electrons, a receiver becomes a transmitter.

  Speakers can become bad microphones and vice versa. Pretty sure that a radio telescope is a very bad transmitter for songs, but it could be possible with some changes…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Star Citizen Expose Paints a Fairly Bleak Picture: 'There's No Actual Focus on Getting the Game Done'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also called bikeshedding.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome, such as uBlock Origin – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You where talking about “system wide AdGuard”, which is not the browser addon, but an app that uses DNS blocking, be it by either letting people set DNS servers manually, or automatically through VPN. Their VPN does not break TLS connection by inserting custom certificates and MITM proxies, so they cannot read/modifiy content.

  It might be possible to use TLS breaking proxies for systemwide ad blocking, but even that wouldn’t help, because nowadays a lot of content and ads are loaded dynamically via javascript. So a browser is required to filter ads.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google looks to be fully shutting down unsupported extensions and ad blockers in Chrome, such as uBlock Origin – which might push some folks to switch to Firefox⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  DNS ad blockers are not sufficient to block all ads and often overly broad. So they have much higher rate of false positives and negatives compared to in-browser ad blockers. Differentiating between ads and useful content based on domain names will become more and more difficult. Both might use some url from the same cloud provider, and blocking those breaks a lot of stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Starfield's first DLC is one of the worst Bethesda and DLCs of all time⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.

  I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.

  For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.

  The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.

  If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.

  For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.

  Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  BTW, thank you for this discussion!

  The crux of the matter for me is the question wherever “the selection process” alone is enough to create art or not, and depending on my mood I fall to one side or another on that question. Not specifically if it is under copyright or not, because that sort of follows from that.

  Artists often use randomness in various parts of their creation process, what is really required is the human element. Is a picture of a cloud, that speaks to the photographer in some way art or just a picture of a random cloud?

  I guess this has to be decided on a case by case basis, therefore I cannot completely exclude it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, and you have copyright on the photo - not the layout of the plants and trees in it, nor even the angle of the subject. Someone else can go with a camera and take their own photo without touching your copyright.

  A work is original if it is independently created and is sufficiently creative. Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of ways and reflect the photographer’s artistic choices like the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph, lighting, and timing. As a copyright owner, you have the right to make, sell or otherwise distribute copies, adapt the work, and publicly display your work.

  www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/

  So if someone intentionally reproduces a picture, they violate copyright, IIUC.

  In the case of minecraft, I think a case can be made, where the “picture” is the minecraft world, and the creativity is the selection process by the artist. The artist chooses their angle, position, lighting, etc, in this case they choose properties of the world, maybe by visiting thousands of them, using seed search machines, or other reverse engineering tools etc.

  I all depends on if the artist can raise their work above just the random noise they get as an input in a creative way. I am not saying that all minecraft worlds (or save games for that matter) are subject to copyright, but since we are dealing with blurry lines of copyright, it is possible.

  You are correct it isn’t about the numbers, it is about the artistic and creative product that is copyrightable, which, in case of digital art, is represented as numbers, and distribution of those might be punished by law.

  I am just saying that digital art can be more that just still or moving pictures and sound. It can be a world space the artist prepared for you where you can move around.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nature is often random and unpredictable, but the process of selecting a interesting POV and taking a picture of it is still copyrightable.

  I wouldn’t be so sure that if you discover a seed, that can be transformed using minecraft into a world with very interesting and specific properties, could not be under copyright protection.

  In fact movies and pictures are specific numbers as well, that are transformed using a codec. That isn’t something that can be easily replicated without that codec.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I said “minecraft world file” which stores the chunks the player explored and potentially modified. And I said “could” not “must”, it depends on if hits a certain creative threshold.

  If the player decides to teleport around while creating a dickbud or whatever by just the explored chunks, that could meet it.

  If someone selectivly openes quests to use the open quest markers on a map in an RPG to create a dickbud, that cloud meet it as well.

  The save game could tell your individual story through the game, that cloud meet the threshold as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, I think both are human creation, you are using the machine and the game to create something new. In that sense, a save game file could also be under the players copyright.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When the current copyright comes from books, wouldn’t plugins or transient changes/cheats be like taking side notes with a pencil on their individual copy?

  Are side notes copyright infringements?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rockstar Games DDoSed Heavily By Players Protesting New AntiCheat Code⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Who was that developer?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rockstar Games DDoSed Heavily By Players Protesting New AntiCheat Code⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If a game offers multiplayer, they should also offer a dedicated server that people can setup for themselves.

  For MMOs, they can make the servers optionally federated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is UI design backsliding?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes they are, UX designers are not asked to make more efficient or usable designs, they are asked to make designs that “look good” in marketing, support ad integration, hook people into others services provided by that same company, make it more difficult to incorporate with workflows that include third-party applications, etc.

  This is deliberate UX design, which is part of the enshittification process.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is UI design backsliding?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People spend lots of money to buy big screens, only for apps/websites to use a fraction of it.

  I cannot control how every application or website I have to use looks, but where I can, I try to find solutions.

  When I am occasionally on reddit, I use old.reddit. I use addons for youtube, to remove unecessary stuff, or open videos directly in mpv.

  Mastodon and Lemmy have a much better design than Twitter or new Reddit.

  On the one windows machine I still have, I use the classic shell, to replace the start menu with something more usable.

  I use Libreoffice, and many other Software with sane functional UI.

  I don’t want to use old software, because the older software gets, the more hostile the environment becomes for it.

  A lot of UI decisions on the Internet seem driven by the need to create empty spaces to put advertising into, and with adblocker it looks just bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Venom vs Poison⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What if I put poison on my teeth, bite someone and they die?