NuXCOM_90Percent
@NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
- Comment on In Response to Amazon preventing to download books you bought: Some DRM free bookstores and publishers 11 hours ago:
I haven’t checked this week (yay, might already be too late) but my understanding is that amazon only disabled the web interface to download ebooks to a computer.
Using the (Windows) Kindle for PC App at a sufficiently old version was still working last week even after people had claimed the web interface was disabled.
It is only a matter of time but it is also something that the vast majority of people are too computer illiterate to do so it is probably going to be a decent amount of time. Cost amazon more to disable it than to let people do it.
- Comment on In Response to Amazon preventing to download books you bought: Some DRM free bookstores and publishers 11 hours ago:
To my knowledge, Sanderson has not spoken out against Kindle*. His kickstarter was mostly to advertise Dragonsteel which is likely going to become his own publishing house at some point.
And while… fuck amazon, Kindle is a ridiculously author friendly platform to publish on and is the only reason we have so many amazing self published authors these days. And while KU is not great per book, it is an excellent way to get people interested in an author and buy their latest books. I strongly encourage actually reading what authors say instead of what users and armchair financial analysts do.
*: I would be incredibly shocked if he did. I think he is definitely becoming more “woke” than “mormon” these days based off his writing and character details but he is still very much a business person
- Comment on In Response to Amazon preventing to download books you bought: Some DRM free bookstores and publishers 11 hours ago:
I strongly encourage POLITELY reaching out to your favorite authors on social media to talk to them about this.
One of my favorite guilty pleasure reads is very open that this is why his ebooks are only on kindle. But he is also looking into alternatives (especially since he is now big enough to have at least a small publisher) because the readers he is trying to help with KU are the ones asking him to get away from it.
Not going to tear down my de-drm setup any time soon. But optimistic I might be able to before amazon does it for me.
- Comment on The MechLock wall mount for Steam Deck looks ridiculously slick 2 days ago:
So…
Is this an obesity thing? I remember back when I thought the switch joycons were “cool for docked mode” but was shocked when I found out how many people just put it on its (horrible) kickstand and played with their arms at their side. And when researching a kobo discovered that there is an entire culture of people who prop their e-readers on their chests and buy projector dongles as “page turners”.
And now this.
- Comment on EA has open sourced Command & Conquer: Red Alert under GPLv3 6 days ago:
RENEGADE!!!
- Comment on How to secure your phone before attending a protest 1 week ago:
But seriously, unless there’s some reason to stream live, old tricks are sometimes still the best tricks.
Cops who know they are being recorded MIGHT behave slightly better. It is why they are so hellbent on never wearing bodycams ever again.
An SD card on the person of someone being thrown in the back of a van to have an “accident” on the way to booking? Not so useful.
- Comment on How to secure your phone before attending a protest 1 week ago:
Again. IF we decide that “paddy wagon” is a slur toward the Irish, it is specifically a slur toward Irish cops. And fuck the police.
Simple as that.
Like I said, I’ll try to avoid it in the future because even though there is very little evidence that it is even a slur toward Irish cops, it sounds enough like one that I would rather avoid it. But I am not gonna lose ANY sleep over oppressors getting their fee fees hurt because people don’t like them.
- Comment on How to secure your phone before attending a protest 1 week ago:
Yes, the Irish were (and kind of still are) looked down upon by “Whites”.
They historically chose to address that by becoming cops. Oppressors. The idea being that if they were useful they would at least be better than the brown and yellow people. And irish cops have caused untold horrors amongst labor and minorities.
So while I disagree that “paddy wagon” is an Irish slur so much as MAYBE it is a cop slur, it is close enough that I’ll refrain from using it. But it is still the same issue as with “cracker” where… you are gonna have to try a whole hell of a lot harder for me to care if people’s feelings are hurt that folk don’t appreciate how many skulls they cracked in the name of impressing the crackers.
- Comment on How to secure your phone before attending a protest 1 week ago:
Every sourcing I have seen comes more from the UK as a way to shorten patrol and the argument that it is an ethnic slur against Irish people is similar to “cracker” in that… can you REALLY be that racist against the oppressors?
But tweaked anyway. Thanks.
- Comment on How to secure your phone before attending a protest 1 week ago:
Its a balancing act. You shouldn’t be recording tiktoks and doing the carlton.
But there is a lot of value in organizers being able to communicate. If you see a fat white kid with an assault rifle, you let people know. Same with when the paddy wagons roll in.
And there is a LOT of value in being able to make it clear to the cops that you are recording before they decide to “teach some people a lesson”.
I chat about this with my activist buddies a lot. And one thing we are increasingly realizing is that there is a LOT of value in convincing even a mid-tier IRL streamer to come out. Yeah, they are fucking obnoxious when they are trying to yell to chat. But it is someone who is high enough profile that they won’t immediately have their gear destroyed AND privileged enough that they won’t even realize that is an option until it is too late. At which point the decision as to how to handle the escalation is already happening.
- Comment on Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC 1 week ago:
There is a massive push right now for energy efficient alternatives to nvidia GPUs for AI/ML. PLENTY of companies are dumping massive amounts of money on macs and rapidly learning the lesson the rest of us learned decades ago in terms of power and performance.
The reality is that this is going to be marketed for AI because it has an APU which, keeping it simple, is a CPU+GPU. And plenty of companies are going to rush to buy them for that and a very limited subset will have a good experience because they don’t have time sensitive operations.
But yeah, this is very much geared for light-moderate gaming, video rendering, and HTPCs. That is what APUs are actually good for.
- Comment on Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC 1 week ago:
And your phone isn’t repairable because it needs to be water proof. Your earbuds because of power efficiency. Etc.
Also, I suggest watching this www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3zB9EFntmA.
- Comment on Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC 1 week ago:
Oh. Okay. As long as I can replace the side panel.
- Comment on Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC 1 week ago:
Everything except the APU/RAM/Mobo combo is upgradable, and you don’t have to replace the whole machine if the board fails.
So… storage, case, and USB C dongles?
- Comment on Framework’s first desktop is a strange—but unique—mini ITX gaming PC 1 week ago:
So… now Framework Corp is selling non-upgradable hardware?
I dunno. Conceptually I want to like Framework. But their pricing means it is basically never worth buying and upgrading versus just buying a new laptop (seriously, run the numbers. You basically save 10 bucks over two generations of shopping at Best Buy). But they also have a system that heavily encourages people to horde spare parts rather than just take it to an e-waste disposal facility/bin.
- Comment on Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases 1 week ago:
One is the ownership of a digital copy on the same terms as a physical copy. That allows you to resell your copy, lend it to a friend, move it to a different device, retain the use of it even if the seller no longer exists . . . stuff that falls under the first-sale doctrine and other actions that are generally accepted as “okay” and reasonable. That’s what’s being called out here as not existing for most digital copies.
And you still aren’t authorized to do that with a “DRM Free” copy (which gets into a mess since those aren’t actually DRM Free but…). In large part because there is no mechanism to transfer authorization for updates and so forth. GoG made a cheeky “take that” to Valve when they said they would allow you to transfer a dead relative’s account… but even that is a huge mess and had a LOT of fine print at the end. Again, there are exceptions but they are few and far between.
Same with buying Ghostbusters on VHS. There is no DRM to speak of involved. But any teacher who threw it on because they were hungover was technically in violation of the terms of purchase and there were a few medium profile cases where people learned about public performance rights when they were showing “their” copy of a movie or album.
You can make as many arguments as you want. Until those go to a court of law they mean nothing.
However, that isn’t what most people expect to get when they’re purchasing a copy of a media work, regardless of whether it’s digital or physical.
We are specifically talking about expectations versus reality. Which gets back to the reality that even when you bought that CD you were engaging in what was a hell of a lot closer to a “lease” than not.
How IP in general and copyright in particular is handled does really need an overhaul, but that isn’t a problem specific to the digital world—it’s equally applicable to print books, oil paintings, and vinyl records.
Which gets back to the original point that most of those purchases were always “leases” because of how the legal system is set up…
- Comment on Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases 1 week ago:
I buy the correct way and it’s been working okay so far. The moment something is taken away, I’ll get it back another way.
Have you ever heard of “lost media”? Countless books and movies and songs were never actually backed up for one reason or another. And this is especially concerning as Amazon are pioneering the way to increasingly lock down kindle ebooks when they already have a history of editing books on their servers with no notice to the customer. It basically results in the GoG problem where even if you CAN back up everything yourself, you never will because of the updates and won’t know if it is important to keep 1.01567 of a game because that was the last version where they were able to distribute a specific version of an art file.
Speaking of video games: There are hundreds of games over the years that just never got cracked. It was usually a case where the DRM model was such that only one or two groups knew how to handle it and they were busy the week that game came out. And since there is no “prestige” in going back to crack a five month old game… they didn’t. Starforce was particularly notorious for this and my understanding is that denuvo is even worse. Let alone all the indie releases and patreon games where people just don’t bother at all.
Because… people also need a reason to bother backing stuff up. For example, I recently got it in my head that I should re-read the 100% free and available online webcomic Chimneyspeak. Color me surprised when it sounds like nobody bothered to back it up when it was still available, the author took it down because it cost too much money (hard to run ads on porny sites), and the wayback machine was missing large swathes of it. There wasn’t even any DRM or licensing to worry about. People just didn’t think to back it up and by the time they did, it was too late.
- Comment on Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases 1 week ago:
No. Outside of VERY rare occurrences, you are still licensing that media. If you owned it you would be able to distribute it yourself and so forth.
And if you actually checked through the fine print for the old big box games you would see very similar verbiage. Presumably the same with music
I do think it would be good to make people more aware of what they are actually paying for. But once EVERYTHING says “lease” it will just kill the meaning of the word.
- Comment on Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12 1 week ago:
Honestly… yeah.
How many millennial/genx gamers have stories about staying up all night playing Diablo 2 or WoW? Hell, it was almost a requirement for any games media person to have an “I almost flunked out of college because of WoW” story.
It was hard to care TOO much with D2 because any additional monetization was mostly illegal gold farmers (and let’s ignore the various former devs who have acknowledged they were involved in those…). But starting with WoW? That was a subscription model. That “I need to run this raid 500 times to get the drop I want” equated to increased subscriptions which was profit. Again, there were limits-ish in that very few people ran multiple accounts so it was a fixed cost per year. But it was still there.
Fast forward again and we have the same concepts going into loot boxes and, eventually, gacha games where it is 100% predatory and basically what the majority of successful live service games are built around.
Like anything, it is about understanding what you are and aren’t susceptible to. But it is also important to actually think critically and wonder if you REALLY like the gameplay of that game or if you just like the flashing lights and sparkles of a good drop?
- Comment on Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12 1 week ago:
I can’t speak to factorio since every time that dev has ever opened his mouth it has just been horrific hateful bullshit.
But Civ is more just “addictive” because the gameplay is fun. That is not to downplay that but it is generally closer to “escapism” than not when you get into that “one more turn” cycle and realize it is 3 am.
ARPGs were very much designed around skinner boxes/operant conditioning chambers which are one of the core tenets of how things like slot machines are designed. We can see similar (and it was outright acknowledged by many reviewers/influencers) with games like Vampire Survivors.
At the end of the day, the reality is that the “This is fine if you are 13” system is idiotic and what we actually need is fine grain warnings… which will go down great in an era of “Eww, trigger warnings are woke”. But, like, I have a cousin who is well aware that he is incredibly prone to addiction when it comes to gambling and on many occasions he has texted family and friends to ask if it is “safe” for him to play a new game. And… it is kind of concerning how often the answer is “no”.
- Comment on Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12 1 week ago:
Good.
I very much think games like Balatro DO need to be assessed and probably have an increased rating because they are unabashedly designed to be as addictive as possible. Same as ARPGs that have been built around skinner boxes basically since Diablo.
But this was never that. It was just “oh, cards and poker theming? GAMBLING!!!”
- Comment on Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding 1 week ago:
Facebook got
FBI_README.txtat the root of their DC++ share. - Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
And now ableist bullshit.
Well. I guess this is what we get when people leave reddit. Oy
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
No link, a one week EA period (?!?!?!), and HTML everywhere.
You REALLY screwed up this advertisement.
- Comment on Amazon's previous VP of Prime Gaming said they "tried everything" to disrupt Steam 2 weeks ago:
I know we all want to clown on this because amazon sucks and we all stan Steam as our corporate overlords.
But there are actually a lot of REALLY good insights in the original linkedin post. Particularly the reality that anything that competes with Steam needs to be
It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well.
Epic is a shitshow and barely competent on the store front. But they took a very smart approach of starting from basics and adding what people want… and people want their video game store to be facebook.
Maybe if amazon had more tightly coupled that to twitch it could have worked but it is clear that coupling any services is a shitshow for them (remember when we could do actual watch parties if people bought stuff on amazon video?).
- Comment on Digital Fingerprinting: Google launched a new era of tracking worse than cookie banners | Tuta 2 weeks ago:
I just wish Tuta put more effort into their product than their marketing.
I noped out because of them not letting me have any control over my emails outside of asking them for a dump. But reading the support reddit is just brutal.
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 2 weeks ago:
Ah, my deepest apologies. I was not aware there was absolutely no issue or threat to anyone because you didn’t connect a kindle to the network either.
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 2 weeks ago:
And Kindle supports mobi files? It is just that those tend to get preprocessed into azw or the other one files. Much like Kobo tends to work best if you preprocess those epubs into kepubs.
The issue is that Amazon has repeatedly changed their mobi variants to fight against de-drm tools as well as increasingly locking down their apps and even devices to make it harder to get data off (and now on) to them.
There is absolutely nothing stopping Rakuten from doing the exact same with Kobo. And people should be aware of that rather than just stanning their favorite company.
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 2 weeks ago:
Profitability as reported by companies, especially tech companies, is complex. Also understand that most of that 20 years (assuming that is an accurate statement) was the era of venture capitalism and infinite funding.
But yes. Amazon did spend decades inventing and taking over e-commerce.
But that is not what you described. You described a “bait and switch” which implies that they designed the old keyboard kindles with built in wikipedia support as some long con to get around the eventual invention of a de-drm plugin for the eventually invented Calibre library manager.
The reality is that this is just a case of locking down walled gardens to take advantage of market share. Everyone is doing it. It isn’t some deep conspiracy and is more just the logical end result of a walled garden with large market share.
- Comment on Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books 2 weeks ago:
The “original sale” in that case is not even pennies. So… not sure why amazon would care?
Also: Many smaller authors basically depend on kindle because of the ease of use of the web portal and incentives to do larger discounts for their audiences. One of my favorite guilty pleasures has talked about exactly this (although he IS investigating alternatives).
And, much like with video games: The Sandersons of the world will be pirated. MAYBE a Dalglish will be too. But nobody cares enough to go after a Samphire or Shel.