KrokanteBamischijf
@KrokanteBamischijf@feddit.nl
- Comment on What are your favorite Dreamcast games? 7 months ago:
Definitely Sonic Adventure. But I’ll also name a gem no one else is going to mention:
- Comment on Has anyone had success with debloating their Phones? 7 months ago:
There is valid criticism as well though. Mostly on the topic of software support duration and scope vs. consumer expectations. But there are also some realiability and hardware failure rate concerns.
It’s important to view those critiques in the context of Fairphone being an underdog company with a relatively small production volume onto which we project the same expectations we have of Apple and Samsung.
Ultimately it is viability of the business case determines how good of a value proposition the Fairphones will be long term. Which is a shame, because Fairphone’s vision is almost exactly what I want in a mobile device. It all leads to this catch-22 situation where the Fairphone is not quite the undisputed best choice it should be, and the only way for them to get there is that everyone pretends it is. It should be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but consumers don’t want to make concessions.
- Comment on Has anyone had success with debloating their Phones? 7 months ago:
That’s my take on phones in general. It’s a “pick one” situation. You can either have fancy hardware features or you can have freedom in software, not both.
Hopefully my current phone holds out long enough for there to be a compelling choice that somehow has both.
As things are right now, it’ll either be a Fairphone 5 for the freedom it brings, Pixel as a compromise, or Samsung Galaxy for the features.
- Comment on There is no EU cookie banner law 8 months ago:
Excellent analysis. Especially this part:
It will be much more productive to try to solve this with the handful of Browser vendors than trying to regulate each and every consent banner.
Early cookie banners were a bad experience but they were manageable. But now thing have transitioned into content-blocking modals, dark patterns, forced individual consent/rejection for each and every one of the 943 partners they’re selling your data to, sites that refuse to serve content if you reject tracking and other ways to frustrate the end user.
I’m done with every piece of shit predatory actor inventing their own way of malicious compliance with the GDPR. You either implement the user-friendly consent API or you get no more tracking at all. Paywall your shit for all I care, at least then you’ll have a sustainable business model.
- Comment on mice 8 months ago:
Slugs to be you then, I guess. :P
In all seriousness, the graph shows different species as fraction of total uses recorded. Since the paper is mostly about mice, and behavioural differences under different circumstances, it being unfair to the slugs is probably not such a big deal here.
- Comment on Checkmate 8 months ago:
Simple counter: Don’t be French.
- Comment on Real! 9 months ago:
Blijft gewoon aandacht hè? Voelt toch goed, ondanks dat ze ons uitlachen.
- Comment on Real! 9 months ago:
Listen here, you little shit!
Swamp German is best German.
- Comment on You can remove or disable Windows 11 and 10's AI 'bloat' with new BloatynosyAI 9 months ago:
I have no idea why they’re even remotely interested in Windows as a product anymore. Surely they can’t expect that much revenue from integrated AI services when most of the general public’s needs can be covered by web services that will severely outmatch Microsoft’s development speed (y’know because of juggling legacy code and all).
Considering the fact that they gain most of their revenue by far from their Azure cloud services and enterprise customers, it just seems like a stupid business decision to invest this much into all kinds of random features for their desktop OS aimed at consumers.
In proper systems architectecture theory, we generally try to avoid mixing up functionality this much because a modular design allows your system to evolve without too much pain. Why build all this crap into Windows when you can just opt-in by installing an application for it?
I really don’t get it…
- Comment on Apple’s iMessage is not a “core platform” in EU, so it can stay walled off 9 months ago:
Apple’s whole modern “it’s reliable and just works” cult following exists because they found a fix for situations where the problem was between keyboard and chair.
Both Windows and Linux-based operating systems are plenty reliable if you actually know what you’re doing and you know how things work. Apple started a culture where you don’t need to know how things work because you have no influence over your own devices. Which lets people do the simple tasks without adressing the problem that your userbase will not amass any computing knowledge whatsoever.
And when Apple devices do fail (and trust me, they do), they fail catastrophically without a way to fix the problem yourself (which is by design).
The distinction is larger for computers than it is for mobile devices, but yeah in general Apple devices are for simpletons. But the biggest issue is that Apple’s design philosophy actively creates these simpletons.
- Comment on Apple’s iMessage is not a “core platform” in EU, so it can stay walled off 9 months ago:
It’s strange to me that the differences are so vast between different continents.
I know litteraly no one who actually uses iMessage. Never once (in recent years) seen some communicate through a channel that isn’t WhatsApp, Signal or something similar. The whole “ew, green bubbles” drama just isn’t a thing here. (Though the existence of iPhone users still harms society in different ways)
Though I do agree with many commenters that the EU caving to the lobbyists is a bad thing. Having the law only apply to “problems that are big enough to care about” is still a loss for the consumer in the end. I’m all for standardisation and free choice, which means any commercial messaging service should comply. Exceptions only for open source projects funded by non-profit organisations.
- Comment on ChatGPT's new AI store is struggling to keep a lid on all the AI girlfriends 9 months ago:
I don’t think anyone here is against this per se. It’s just that this store was probably intended for other purposes than providing an infinite supply of digital waifus that will actually respond.
I’m all for degeneracy, everyone has a right to get naughty, just like everyone has a right to friendship, love and happiness. Which is why it is a good thing these exist. I just don’t think they intended for them to be here, and in such large numbers.
- Comment on ChatGPT's new AI store is struggling to keep a lid on all the AI girlfriends 9 months ago:
Exactly what I was thinking. The whole AI hype has been cringe so far and this just confirms it. Seems that the ratio between legitimate use cases and fucking around is kinda skewed towards the meme side of things.
Or it might just signify our population has a HUGE lonelyness problem (for a myriad of reasons).
- Comment on GIS nerds be like 11 months ago:
[consults with other DMs]: “Wait…they can’t do that, can they?”… “Really? Well, damn”.
Your intern somehow manages to convince the local forestry corporation to share an old field map of the region. Problem is, the file is not georeferenced and she is having trouble doing so. Not being familiar with affine transformations, she picks some horrible references and her attempt has an error of a couple meters.
This is your chance to teach your intern a valuable skill and you’re very close to finalizing the map of the region. What is your next move?
- Comment on GIS nerds be like 11 months ago:
Success! You manage to build a somewhat useful TIN from the data. Upon further inspection, the contours of the watersheds you were looking for are vaguely visible. Occlusion from the surrounding trees has had an impact on the dataset though, and it seems the noise wasn’t filtered out of the dataset properly, leaving you with the occasional ridiculously stretched triangle to work with. Generating nice vector data from this will prove challenging.
How do you proceed?
- Comment on GIS nerds be like 11 months ago:
You’re now playing GIS DnD:
The LiDAR dataset you’re using was scanned in a forested area and doesn’t include any secondary return data. As a result, your watersheds are occluded and the data doesn’t provide the greatest cartography.
What do you do?
- Comment on Microsoft Will Charge for Windows 10 Security Updates in 2025 11 months ago:
Not just Wayland.
Every experience I’ve had so far with running anything Linux on Nvidia hardware has been unpredictable to say the least. Not just personal experience but those around me as well. Somehow it always comes down to driver compatibility issues, and there is a reason Torvalds used such strong words when describing the developer experience in dealing with Nvidia.
And these problems will likely persist until they decide to fully publish the source for their drivers.
- Comment on GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour 1 year ago:
Which is exactly why my first sentence explicitly states “product leadership”.
I agree, we don’t need any more games that prolong a shitty experience just to use collective playtime as a metric of success.
The correct metric could be play time AND experience rating: If I manage to put 300 hours into a game, none of it feels repetitive and I’m still having fun I’d be willing to spend more than if I get a couple hours of amazing gameplay and a giant “collect all these flags” middle finger for 100% completion.
Ultimately we need publishers to stop their short-term value strategies and start investing in long-term value from reputation, popular IPs and games that will be remembered.
- Comment on GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour 1 year ago:
This only works if you spin this with a product leadership strategy:
Shovelware games that don’t offer a solid chunk of hours or any kind of replayability should be priced lower, and proper games should be priced normally.
The thing is, this is not at all how pricing works if you’re building a business model. Prices are always heavily influenced by what the consumer is willing to pay, or in this case what they’ve been used to for years. For as long as I can remember “full price” has always been $50 or $60.
Special editions with marginal bonus content, $10 price increases on the base game and shitty DLC (horse armor comes to mind) are all examples of corporate shit tests, designed to see how far they can take it.
History has proven though, that changing consumer expectations is among the more difficult things to do in a market where alternatives are rampant. Though the whole franchise loyalty thing kinda ruins that, but I’ll be damned if I have to pay $200 for a game. That will promt me to just play something else instead.
- Comment on Over 40,000 admin portal accounts use 'admin' as a password 1 year ago:
Yikes, imagine not using a password manager on that. That’s some next-level numpad skills.
- Comment on Readers prefer ChatGPT over Wikipedia 1 year ago:
Of course they do, people also prefer being told lies that put a positive spin on things over being told the truth. That’s human nature.
- Comment on Is there something better than SQL? 1 year ago:
Sounds like it’s not really SQL as a query language but rather the whole database paradigm that’s the problem here.
Look into noSQL databases and their respective drivers. They often use JSON-like syntax and are more likely to be seamlessly integrated with whatever programming language you’re using.
- Comment on After USB-C win, EU tells Tim Cook that Apple must 'open up its gates to competitors'. 1 year ago:
TIL, thank you. Edit has been made.
- Comment on After USB-C win, EU tells Tim Cook that Apple must 'open up its gates to competitors'. 1 year ago:
with only a few exceptions for safety, like cars. No. There are three main bullshit arguments being used by lobbyists actively making the world a worse place by fighting against this type of legislation.
- safety and security
- intellectual propery rights
- hindering innovation
All three are demonstrably used in hearings to convince legislators to not sign right to repair bills into law. And all three are absolute bullshit.
Replacing the brakes on your own car is not generally seen as introducing safety risks, so why would software be any different? The only things that actually make cars safe are competent drivers (wether flesh and bone, or digital) and proper manufacturing (so no malfunctioning during use).
There is a reason full self driving is not legal in most places worldwide, and likely won’t be for a very long time. We’ve seen too many examples of software fuck ups and the legal responsibility in case of an accident is still a difficult part of the equation.
If we’re able to integrate full infotainment systems into cars, and all kinds of AI gadgets for driving assistance. We should be able to make cars safer even if the software is user servicable.
No more gatekeeping bullshit.
- Comment on What games have the best mining/smelting/forging components? 1 year ago:
I’ve identified good progression systems as the main thing I like about games with crafting. You make something which enables you to get the next best thing, repeat.
Notable examples are Terraria, (modded) Minecraft to some degree, Runescape (no bias towards OSRS or RS3), Monster Hunter series, various MMO’s, Subnautica, ARK and Forager.
- Comment on Markdown everywhere 1 year ago:
It’s a simple and elegant way of covering 95% of document structuring needs, while being as close to readable plaintext as possible.
The vast majority of documents currently written in MS-word could just be markdown. The vast majority of web content could just be markdown. This would save the modern world petabytes of XML bloat.
If you need something fancier, either use a vector format or do fancy client-side styling.
- Comment on Isn't technically everything open-source? 1 year ago:
Going into a little more detail:
There are plenty of ways to do open source, and the differences mostly come down to the license something is published under. Some licenses prohibit redistribution, while others restrict commercial use. One of the more popular permissive licenses is the GNU General Public License (or GPL for short). Which you can read up on over here.
Technically there’s nothing stopping you from ignoring the terms of the license agreement and just doing whatever. Think “agreeing to the terms without actually reading them”. While the licenses are usually proper grounds for legal action, it depends on the project and the resources associated wether actual legal action is within the realm of possibilities.
When it comes to “everything is open source”, you’re technically correct in the sense that you can reverse engineer everything and the amount of work you’re willing to put in is the only limiting factor. Compiled code and techniques like code obfuscation and encryption will pose barriers, but they will not protect from someone determined to get in. In the same way a door lock will not protect you from someone who brings a blowtorch.
Some code is technically not open source, but is delivered in human-readable form. This is the case for things like websites and scripts in languages like python. Other software is compiled (pre-converted to specific instructions for your processor), and is delivered in binary, which is not particularly human-readable. But with the right tools even binary applications can be “decompiled” and converted into something slightly more closely resembling the original source code.
A great one liner from the YouTube channel Low-level Learning is “everything is open source if you can read assembly”.
So, in summary: It depends how you look at it, generally speaking open source means that te source code is available for the public to see and that you’re free to submit any suggestions or improvements to the code, no matter who you are. In practise the source code is sometimes visible (out of technical necessity or for troubleshooting purposes) even though the product is not open source, in which case the end user license agreement will likely contain a clause prohibiting you from doing anything with it.
