scrubbles

@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China Is Beating the US in the Battle for Energy Export Dominance | China’s exports of clean energy technology hit a record in August, with $20 billion shipped globally.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Conservatives told us these things were impossible while we desperately tried to make them a reality in the US. Meanwhile once again we are left in the dust.

  Remember when we felt challenged in our history when we stepped up and decided to take on the challenge, even if it cost us money or was going to be hard? The space race anyone?

  Now here we are. Energy. High Speed Rail. Many more items that others have just completed passed us by.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Renewables overtake coal as world's biggest source of electricity⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Conservatives parroting fossil fuel propaganda):

  • it only makes sense in small countries, we’re too big
  • it’s only a science fair experiment
  • hail storm right?! Haw haw haw stupid scientists
  • it’ll never make a realistic amount of energy

  China:

  Just does the thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Game Pass Ultimate subs don't get DLC discounts any more, Microsoft confess, amid reports about Call of Duty sales cannibalisation⁩ ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  No no no you don’t understand. Somehow gamers should not only pay subscriptions, but also pay for the games. That’s real capitalism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the factor when you're planning to self-hosted a instance?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I read the source code, the proxy essentially just hands all the responsibility down to pict-rs. Then pictrs has that environment variable where you can set how long-loved you want the thumbnail to be.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox: "Price Increases Are Never Fun For Anybody"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Even though I personally never used it I was astonished at how quickly so many people blindly trusted it. What I’m more astonished with is how quickly Microsoft has managed to destroy that brand trust.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox: "Price Increases Are Never Fun For Anybody"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s something we don’t take lightly, and we’re listening to the feedback of players and the community to try to provide them with more of what they’re asking for.

  God they will never understand that we see right through their bullshit corpo-speak answers will they. Everything they just said is nothing. They don’t take it lightly. They are listening. They will try. There is nothing concrete in that wet paper towel of an answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox: "Price Increases Are Never Fun For Anybody"⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for letting me know, I’ve been paying just for some spare OneDrive space but I think I’ll cut it if they’re raising the price

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the factor when you're planning to self-hosted a instance?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  oh that’s good to hear, I’ve never had anything pop up on mine, I’m sorry something has for yours. While I have you, do you have a script or anything you use for removing the flagged item?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the factor when you're planning to self-hosted a instance?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They are but there’s an environment vatiable to set how long it stays in cache. Cloudflare actually just ended their csam auto submission, at least the auto reporting. Does it still at least flag it?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the factor when you're planning to self-hosted a instance?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s halfway between us. Without proxying images are pushed into my server and I end up hosting them indefinitely, requiring me to manually review and remove something if it’s removed on another server. (Moderation actions like that from what I understand are still not federated, although maybe that has changed in one of the last updates).

  The proxy feature is a privacy feature, but for us admins it also works from a liability standpoint. If proxying is set to ProxyAllImages, it will send the image URL down to pict-rs. From there, pictr’s will cache the image based on time that you set. So yes, it’s stored temporarily in Pict-rs for quick retrieval, but then I time out after a day also, so if something was banned I hosted it for max a day before it was purged. It removes me manually needing to manually trace back to events that happened a month ago and wiping it from my S3. If my S3 was searched you’d find images from today, and a bunch of images of Taylor Swift.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the factor when you're planning to self-hosted a instance?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Very smart to pause and weigh things. There was a lot more to it than I thought when I started mine.

  • Renting a server is not cheap, but it’s not expensive either. Most VPS’ will be able to host it fine. You will need to invest effort into swapping data over to S3, volume storage is what really costs money if you use it incorrectly.
  • I’ll say do you want to have an individual/known user instance (like family and friends you deeply trust), or do you want to allow randos? The thing you don’t mention at all is liability. I don’t know where you’re hosted but in most countries you are responsible for reporting material on your server. CSAM? Guess what, you are responsible. You can look at my server, it’s based out of the USA and any server is automatically a “mandatory reporter”. I am legally obligated to report CSAM that makes it to my instance, if I don’t I am legally complicit.
    • Note that this has been drastically reduced with the image proxying, where if someone on say, .world posts CSAM it’s proxied through my server but not hosted by my server. So, liability is still a thing, but as long as the admins of .world take action then i’m protected with them. If proxying is disabled then the CSAM would live on my server too - and that means I’m legally required to report it.
    • NEVER allow open signups. Spam is real here on the fediverse, and bots are actively trying to sign up for accounts. If you allow signups you need to require a captcha, and I recommend either email verification or asking for a signup message “Why do you want to sign up?”. This gets rid of 99.9% of spammers.

  My suggestion is to start a personal instance first. Get the feel for it, see how you like it. Maybe create one community on there that you’re passionate about and advertise that it’s there to the fediverse (since they won’t know about it until you tell them about it). Then judge your risk level and see how much you’re willing to do. For me, I host a bunch of swifties, it’s well within my risk tolerance. I approve everyone that comes in, and most have to ask to join.

  None of this is meant to scare you off, obviously I still host and I’m glad for it. My Swiftie Community has over 1,000 subscribers now! I’m very happy to host our little niche community, but I also have learned a lot on the way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly a third of all gaming PCs are still running Windows 10, even as Microsoft prepare to kill it⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  What are you talking about? I have an nvidia card I game on all the time. The only thing that hasn’t been supported for me is Gamescope, which is not required. It’s definitely a nice to have if you’re building a SteamOS type build where you want to boot into steam, but I’ve used it on PopOS perfectly fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox consoles are now getting a fullscreen Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ad at boot, just a day after a 50% price hike was announced⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You got a love how out of touch these marketers are. They really do think that they understand gamers while sitting in meetings at the Redmond campus.

  Oh we had mass cancellations yesterday! War room, what do we do?

  Full page ad?

  Brilliant! Gamers will obviously see the value and be grateful for it. Maybe now we won’t all be laid off by papa Satya

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"I’m Canceling My Subscription": Xbox Players Call to "Boycott" Game Pass "Hard" Over 50% Price Increase As Microsoft’s Website Crashes from Mass Cancellations⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So I’m not denying that it wasn’t a good value prop to you, but you individually one has to look back and decide did they play enough games and did they really get the value out of it then, and they will never want to play any of those games again

  So you got a good value prop out of it. Congrats. To others I don’t think it was. I don’t think as many people were as strategic with it as you were.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nearly a third of all gaming PCs are still running Windows 10, even as Microsoft prepare to kill it⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Remember friends, don’t just say “Switch to Linux”. Don’t be the neckbeard they all expect us to be, with a superior attitude. Offer to help them, word it like “I’ve been using an alternative to Windows that I’ve really liked, it’s like the Steam Deck, and it’s easy to try if you’d like me to show you sometime”. Give them an opening, let them come to you. Each of these moments is how we slowly claw market share away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"I’m Canceling My Subscription": Xbox Players Call to "Boycott" Game Pass "Hard" Over 50% Price Increase As Microsoft’s Website Crashes from Mass Cancellations⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For a year’s subscription was 180 at its best, which is 3 60 dollar games per year you could have bought instead, and still have them now to play. Instead that money is gone.

  So I’m not denying that it wasn’t a good value prop to you, but you individually one has to look back and decide did they play enough games and did they really get the value out of it then, and they will never want to play any of those games again

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"I’m Canceling My Subscription": Xbox Players Call to "Boycott" Game Pass "Hard" Over 50% Price Increase As Microsoft’s Website Crashes from Mass Cancellations⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I tried telling so many people that and their answer was always either so what, or no it wont. Well, here we are. If you own a thing the price doesn’t go up

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"I’m Canceling My Subscription": Xbox Players Call to "Boycott" Game Pass "Hard" Over 50% Price Increase As Microsoft’s Website Crashes from Mass Cancellations⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Definitely not alone. For the music I’ve rediscovered record stores. They’re great ways to fill in the gaps of your music library while also discovering new music. I buy CDs and take them home now, happy to keep them on my shelf.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨United States of Autism⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Calm down, you’re in a memes channel, and OP here posts science memes all the time. I’m very sure this is satirical

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah breaking down $360/year, that’s 6 $60 dollar games per year. So it only makes sense if you would spend more than that on games (all included in gamepass, remember no outsider games) in that time. That comparison also treats it like you’ll never ever play that game again, which the 6 $60 dollar games you still get to play the next year*.

  The only people who “should” be subscribing now are parents who are too financially illiterate to see what a scam it is, or who are such inattentive parents that they don’t care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s how Microsoft’s Co-pilot worded it:

  This Game Pass overhaul is a masterclass in anti-consumer design. First, they removed the $1 trial and now they’re pushing a $29.99/month Ultimate tier that bundles third-party services like Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft+—whether you want them or not. You’re paying for extras you might never use. Second, cloud gaming is now locked behind Premium and Ultimate, meaning if you’re on the cheaper Essential tier, you lose one of the core features that made Game Pass revolutionary. Third, the loyalty rewards system is just gamified spending—play more, spend more, get points to spend more. It’s behavioral manipulation dressed up as perks. And let’s not forget: none of this gives you ownership. You’re renting access to games that can disappear at any time. Microsoft is turning Game Pass into a monetization funnel, not a player-first service.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Engineers and creatives breed innovation. Capitalism exploits it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s such a well known play now, I keep wondering who would possibly think buying from private equity is a good thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Trust me man, I’ve thought the same thing. The first story? With the contracts signed? If they had just asked me and listened to me it would have been successful. We had clients chomping at the bit wanting the new app, and obviously people ready to sign. We had guaranteed money - but it all failed because they thought they knew better than the head engineer.

  The real kicker? You want to know the absolute punchline? This was a educational platform specializing in live video for professors, to aid with virtual students. This story happened in late 2019.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We have no official name, the bloggers and media are calling it Mass Effect 5, it’s the fifth Mass Effect game, this is just pedantics now. Until there’s a title, Mass Effect five is perfectly fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  ME4 was Andromeda.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If Bioware wasn’t already dead from the corporate bullshit that was Dragon Age 4 (and that comes from me who still found enjoyment in DA4), then this is. I doubt that Mass Effect 5 game will ever see the light of day.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨New EA Owners Hoping AI Will Cut Costs And Boost Profits, It's Claimed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man, this is hilarious from the outside because I’ve worked for private equity before. They are the biggest hype bros that exist. They are in their own reality every time. They can see something as small as a random tweet and think that it’s the truth. There’s no way this goes well for them.

  2 examples. Long story but if you want to hear how smart “Private equity” is in tech, here are my two anecdotal experiences:

  First, I was an engineer on a project that we were wrapping up a major “V2” rewrite of. We were weeks from finishing this now year long project. They came and asked “How long until released” and I said a month until clients can start using the beta. (Padding a week or so just in case). They didn’t just come back and say “You have a 2-3 weeks”, they came back and said “You have 1 week because we have signed contracts saying that it’ll be ready by then”. What. I was the head engineer. On whose authority did they do that? Who told them it would be ready? Of course no one, they just said it should be done, engineers lazy, they super smart. The project isn’t done in time of course, clients pissed, and they fired the dev team. I hear a year later the entire org had shuttered. They pissed away the entire investment.

  Second, again working leading up a major project, a whole new idea in the fintech space. Team is jazzed. We push for 9 months and we release - zero bugs, not a cent lost, we test scaling and we should be able to handle millions of users - we’re ready. We release to… zero fanfare. None. We had no idea what was happening, we’re engineers so we’re used to it but no one cared. Turns out we were being acquired! Hooray said the investors! So much money! The other company claims to be doing what we are already… interesting since we had a novel idea. So we merge, and we decide to do a bakeoff (test each product against each others). Ours of course passes. Theirs tips over after 100 users. Ruby on Rails monolith, they’ve never had more than 100 users. Turns out they just slapped some stuff on a postgres database and called it a fintech product. Business investors at the top high five, show off how much money they’re going to make. Same thing, our loyal customers who were excited for our product got pissed and left. They lied to everyone else about the product just like the other place, the lies eventually caught up, and the stock tanked. Now they have two worthless companies. From what I heard they didn’t make a single sale in Q1 or Q2 of this year, and are shuttering the offices and moving engineering to India. Typical big brain business move.

  Never work for private equity. If you ever get bought by private equity immediately start planning your exit. This is a card game to them, they’re sitting at the table in Vegas and are doing anything they can to make it look like the company is valuable just long enough to con someone else into buying it. If they make any profit it will go to them, the company will not see a dime of it. Your budgets will be less than shoestring, you will not have bonuses or dinners out, everything goes to them. You immediately are replaceable, with any, and I mean any developer or AI bullshit being able to replace you. Everyone at EA should be looking for new jobs right now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FFS Plex, the server is on my local network⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I also bought Plex lifetime pass also for $100 and I am getting ads like this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FFS Plex, the server is on my local network⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Feel free to go read the multiple writeups from the maintainers that go over each one, we don’t need to copy them all here into the comments for you.