mctoasterson

@mctoasterson@reddthat.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Feds Say You Don’t Have a Right to Check Out Retro Video Games Like Library Books⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not a lawyer but I believe in the US this would be legal as you are granting the use of the original license and not duplicating any content for simultaneous use by others.

  What I would like to see is a gentlemans agreement of sorts where companies agree not to come after people for playing pirate, emulated or archival copies of games that are decades old and not for sale in any format anymore. I guess this is somewhat encompassed in the framework of “Abandonware”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: You don't own your Kindle e-books.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I am now of the opinion that you should just download books off indexing sites/IRC/ Usenet/torrents and if you like the book and want to support the author, buy a physical copy, or buy 2 and put one in a neighborhood free library. That maximizes the good you are doing and helps your community instead of just generating Bezos bux.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hacking Kia: Remotely Controlling Cars With Just a License Plate.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah… fuck this shit. This is part of the reason I still drive a nearly 20 year old vehicle. It has features I want, and can’t be stolen via fucking API calls. Absolute insanity.

  I think Hyundai/Kia group has done unfathomable damage to their brands. Kia, despite being a budget brand, wants to be seen as a legit competitor to Toyota or at least Nissan. Their corner cutting with the immobilizers and the resulting “USB” theft shit was bad enough. Now this exploit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hammerheads sharkz⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The toys were a wierd texture like rubberized plastic. The sharks skin and face was flexible but the lower half of the figure was normal plastic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered confirmed by ESRB rating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I bought the original on Steam sale about a year ago. Played 2-3 hours. Didn’t really feel hooked by the story or the gameplay. Graphics looked great to me on the SteamDeck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought about experimenting with this (Guess it is a good thing I didn’t). There are so many low effort “Lo Fi” types of streams and tracklists on Spotify and elsewhere. Who is to say my software generated garbage would be any worse than those?

  There are also YouTubers who generate low effort music and ask their normal content subscribers to stream their shit on Spotify even if they aren’t legitimately listening. So are those streams fraudulent as well?

  It sounds like the thing he is getting popped for is the volume of automated streams.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sorry, grandma⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Remember kids, the amount you like yourself is inversely proportional to the amount you like Evangelion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Studios are cracking down on some of the internet’s most popular pirating sites⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You do have to get an invite, seed, and maybe toss them a small crypto donation occasionally. The ratio thing depends on the tracker but usually it’s just a requirement to seed back anything for at least a week. Popular torrents become FreeLeech and they don’t count against your ratio.

  Because the participants are all vetted, you don’t get RIAA and MPAA shills in swarm trying to vacuum up IPs to start sending nasty legal letters out.

  A decade ago when I used public torrents I remember getting those stupid ISP strikes. I know shit-tier regional ISPs would even try to embarrass you with the content you pirated. They’d send you a letter like “the Copyright holder for ‘Anal Hookers of Beijing’ told us they’re big mad at you, and if you do it again you’ll get your service revoked”. Some of these ISPs were integrated with cable companies so they’d freeze your internet and cable, and display the text of the copyright strike on your fucking TV for your girlfriend or grandma to see.

  Fuck that noise.

  Since using a private tracker I have never received a single cease and desist or ISP warning letter. Then again, I only use Bit Torrent to download Linux ISOs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Studios are cracking down on some of the internet’s most popular pirating sites⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Private Trackers are the way forward.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If My Wife Becomes an Elementary School Student. Key Visual⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Anakin: In this anime the wife regresses to an elementary school kid.

  Padme: Because it’s wholesome, right?

  Anakin: …

  Padme: Because it’s wholesome, right?!?!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Aaaaah⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Used to get these like crazy. It can be from certain physical activities, poor diet, dehydration etc. My advice would be drink plenty of water, eat Potassium rich foods (bananas, sweet potatoes) and consider magnesium, either by oral suplement or topical (Epsom salts in bath or a product like theraworx directly applied to calf muscles).

  My leg cramps completely stopped after I started using the topical magnesium stuff applied every few days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of obviously fake tipoffs in this one. The overall scrawny bitch aesthetic, the fact she is wearing a club/bar wrist band, the bottle of Mom Party Select™ wine, and the persons thumb/knee in the frame… All those details are initially plausible until you see the shitty AI artifacts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is Losing The War Against Adblockers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think they should have included “ad free YouTube” as a perk for their YouTube TV service, which I had for a short while. Instead they wanted you to pay an extra subscription cost for YouTube Premium to get rid of ads.

  The dark pattern game they play with the “skip” options and the increasing amount and random placement of ads is really offputting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is Losing The War Against Adblockers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  On the one hand I understand they aren’t serving billions of hours of video for their own health. Not sure how one can justify the expenditure as a “loss leader”. But at the same time, the ad experience is horrendous.

  In the last month I have consumed YT on desktop browser, mobile, and regular TV. Guess which is by far the worst experience?

  On desktop, you can use an alternate browser or do a reg edit to re-enable manifest v2 plugins (for now) in Chrome, and continue blocking (for now). On mobile you can use alternate apps and frontends.

  TV viewing of YT is the worst experience, as there are no native alternative apps and DNS ad blocking doesn’t block YT ads. The native YouTube app (on Samsung and LG TVs at least) is horrendous. You get midroll ads sometimes mid-sentence as the content presenter is speaking. Sometimes you get pre-roll ads, disruptive mid roll ads, and then wash it down with a POST-roll ad at the end of the video. Depending on how the content is structured it is disorienting as to whether the video has ended or not.

  Say for example its a 30 minute video. I would rather they show 5-7 minutes of predictable ads at the beginning of content, so I can at least have the same experience as broadcast TV, and make an informed decision to get up and use the restroom and feed the pets while the ads roll. Then once the content starts, don’t randomly interrupt it.

  Imagine the YT model applied to broadcast television. The quarterback drops back to throw a deep pass towards the endzone, and suddenly you find yourself watching an undskippable ad for diarrhea medication, while the football is in the air.

  And we wonder why people have ADD.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Was Elvis Presley a pedo?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait til you read about Gandhis sleeping habits in his old age.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gemini is replacing Google Assistant on Pixel phones, and it’s a train wreck⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  laughs in Graphene OS

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨N64 Platformer 'Glover' Returns As A Physical Switch Release | Time Extension⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably because it was released just before OoT so it was an irrelevant title almost immediately.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infamous $30 Logitech F710 called out in $50M lawsuit over Titan sub implosion⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Since the story came out people fixated on “lol he used a shitty gaming controller” but really that is one of the least sketchy design choices in the entire rig. Why reinvent the wheel and make a custom set of controls that are realistically another huge expense and potential failure point, when off the shelf solutions exist for that component?

  The corners that were cut are the ones involving the viewport/nose adhesion to the ships frame, and the structural integrity of the carbon fiber hull itself. They had test data suggesting it was a bad idea to engage in repeated dives with their design, and an even worse idea to operate at the depths they chose. They decided to ignore that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2.9 billion hit in one of the largest data breaches ever — full names, addresses and SSNs exposed⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The SSN itself is limited to under 1 billion possible permutations anyway because the format is 9 total digits. (3 digits hyphen 2 digits hyphen 4 digits.)

  And if I recall they also have something weird with the state you were born roughly corresponding to which 3 digit prefix you’re issued. Obviously that isn’t purely true either because that would only give you about 1 million unique numbers per prefix.

  Either way they’ve gotta be close to the theoretical maximum of the format without recycling numbers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Leaked Cellebrite Tool Docs Reveal List of Phones That Can Be Unlocked⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice to see some benefit to updated vanilla AOSP, Graphene, and other options.

  It goes without saying but it seems like a deeply fucked business model to horde zero-days that could cause billions in damage or safety issues if they fall into the wrong hands, in order to keep your mercenary surveillance product working.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t wait to see quality titles such as “Best Pickup Lines for Beginners” trained on Reddit users posts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean they aren’t wrong. From an efficiency standpoint, current AI is like using a 350hp car engine to turn a childs rock tumbler, or spin art thingy. Sure, it produces some interesting outputs, at the cost of way too much energy for what is being done. That is the current scenario of using generalized compute or even high end GPUs for AI.

  Best I can tell is, the “way forward” is further development of ASICs that are specific to the model being run. This should increase efficiency, decrease the ecological impact (less electricity usage) and free up silicon and components, possibly decreasing price and increasing availablity of things like consumer graphics cards again (but I won’t hold my breath for that part).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DVDs are dying right as streaming has made them appealing again⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Several tech YouTubers have talked about moving entirely to Jellyfin or similar, self-hosting their own movies and TV series from legally owned, ripped copies from their own DVD or Bluray collection.

  It takes some work and time to rip, encode, and organize the files. But if you want to go this route, there has probably never been a better time. You can routinely purchase used DVDs and Bluray from thrift stores for a few bucks per disc… sometimes less. If I had a server and hard disk space I’d probably be going this route for media consumption.

  Eventually the DVDs will go away entirely and then it will be impossible to create your own legal archival copies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's AI-powered search summaries use 10x more energy than a standard Google search | The Hidden Environmental Impact of AI⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The annoying part is how many mainstream tech companies have ham-fisted AI into every crevice of every product. It isn’t necessary and I’m not convinced it results in a “better search result” for 90% of the crap people throw into Google. Basic indexed searches are fine for most use cases.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Multiple nations enact mysterious export controls on quantum computers⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  …another argument for aggressive statute of limitations for all non-violent crimes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The FPS That Paved The Way For Wolfenstein 3D & Doom Is Getting A New Big Box Release | Time Extension⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pathways into Darkness also came out the same year as Doom but few seem to remember it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some good YouTube channels about the Nintendo 64?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  MetalJesusRocks for some hidden gems type of content.

  MVG for technical or development deepdives.

  Karl Jobst for speedrunning content.

  Retrogamecorps, Taki Udon, Wulff Den, and ETA Prime for emulation.

  All those channels cover various content besides just N64, but they’ve made some of the best N64 game related content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Plus-Sized Elf Will Be Uncensored on HIDIVE⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hilariously the French title translates to “Fifty Shades of Fat: The Elf who loved French Fries too much”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Uncovering Every Lie in MKBHD's Softball Interview; a scathing critique of 'brand safe' influencers⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I just take Marques for what he is - normie entertainment tech channel.

  All marketing hype associated with Apple is always to be taken with a grain, nay, a shovel of salt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The internet connects people⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Agree. Not every hobby and common trait is automatically a “community” nor should it be.

  The tiny house community The pickleball community The eating ass community

  etc.