Here's something I've noticed. Whenever someone describes a group, individual, activity, or anything else with more than 2 negative adjectives in a row, they're probably saying something deeply unstable. This is one of those times.
I take offense to this generalization. When I call someone an honorless gormless bitch ass motherfucker I'm relieving stress so when fists start flying I ain't blinded by my own anger, my instability is only mildly correlated to my verbosity.
Let me sit you down when I say this... but if you're getting into fights even after relieving stress... it either doesn't work, or you're behaving in an unstable manner.
Oh no fights are fun. Tis the curse of my kin, seriously damned near every man on the German side of my family treats fights like a fun time waster. Not saying it's not instability just that my verbosity is perpetual regardless of my mood or actions, well unless I am physically exhausted then I communicate with a handful of words like a caveman.
Also just cause I'm somewhat calm going into a fight doesn't mean that the person I hurled insults at is.
Sure, but since orgaanised religions can't help to force others to live by their standards, they need to get out of the way. I'm fine with people needing a comfort measure, even if its in the form of an invisibile friend. Whatever helps people sleep at night. However, when they try to force their ideals down everybody elses throat thats a big no.
So, since they can't 'live and let live' they need to go the way of the dodo, fuck off, and leave the rest of society alone.
But what undeniable good thing comes from religion? It's not just that they have the potential for destruction and hate, it's that those are the only possible outcomes
We could get unions, consumer protections, housing and food and other necessities guaranteed. We don't, but we could. Politics is just trying to solidify how things are run. Obviously easily can be used for abuse, but can be used for good. Religion from the first step is to tell you how bad of a person you are and how to resolve it: join a cult, deny personal responsibility for anything and put that on whatever deity or subject for hate at the time, all your answers should be sought through your religion and not outside sources
You're making a lot of value judgements without a whole lot of evidence to back them up. My point is perfect atheist: religious movements are a type of politics with certain aims (not exactly unions, but incidentally communion, charity, etc). It is you who are saying that religion is somehow a special phenomenon who puts them above other ways to organize society...for the worse. Maybe you think that it is because it is irrational and metaphysical. There is plenty of metaphysics in the form of utopias (heaven) in politics, saints/prophets (cult of personality). You just say that bad comes out of religion, but not out of politics...yeah...ok.
Not denying bad comes from politics, especially in regards to the US, clearly we are seeing a lot of awful things that can come from politics, and religion likes to play politics as well. I am and will continue to refuse that religion is capable of producing good will, change for the better, or anything outside of bringing forth hate and destruction
Depends on who the leaders are. ~~Some~~ Many weaponize religion for their own aims and their ends justify the means. Some are peaceful, tolerant and constructive, all based off the very same texts.
A tolerant society can not tolerate intolerance. One side will attempt to "just live", but the intolerant side is incapable of "letting live", and they will not stop until they replace tolerance with their system of hate.
The majority of the secular world are atheists. Don't pretend like it is some small subsection just because you live in a bubble of whatever religion you were born into.
Agnostic sounds like a sub-category of atheism like it is with different beliefs under theism. Ie. It's Theism vs Atheism, and then everything below the two. If you don't believe or don't know if you should believe, then you're not really a theist, making it atheist.
i was wondering the same thing oh my god. ik you can be any religion or anything but the main problem i have with atheism is they make fun of religion. like atleast be respectful if your gonna be atheist not have a superiority complex. edit: maybe i used superiority complex here loselessly
Atheism has never been used as the justification for a genocide - can any major religion claim the same? It's obviously an extreme example, but at the same time it's not entirely unreasonable to feel superior when comparisons like that are so easy to make.
wdym "Religion causes Genocide" do you mean Zionism,because i never heard of A religion that has been used as justification for genocide (except for Zionism,Including atheism)
In the 90s, in my country, a single person made a webpage stating that Microsoft minesweeper promotes war and violence, so since windows 95 if the Windows locale is set to my language, minesweeper becomes "flower field" and you have to find flowers instead of mines
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
It was due to the actual active minefields in certain region of the EU. But i was always so confused by that name. 'Prato fiorito' does it mean that if I step on the flowers i explode? This is what i thought back than.
I truly don't understand how Visa/MasterCard/etc can be pressured. They are basically infrastructure.
What's someone going to do, stop using credit cards if they don't stop a store that person doesn't even patronize from selling morally hazardous goods?
I don't get how these campaigns are even effective.
The thing is they are American corporations who care to much about their public image. I would be highly suprised if they national payment platforms would also accept this. (ideal/bankcontant/wero/etc)
That's because 90% of cryptocurrency marketing consists of "THINK OF THE GAAAAAAINS YOU CAN MAKE!" instead of "You can use this to buy things without government censorship".
The entire crypto industry has based itself around being a speculative asset, not a currency.
Which is really unfortunate. If you avoid the most popular coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc), you avoid most of the scams and speculation and end up with a decent currency that respects your privacy and has low fees.
not profitable to mine, so most miners are enthusiasts who want the coin to succeed
privacy-focused - basically creates a ton of fake transactions to mislead snoopers
relatively popular - seems to be the most popular coin recommended by privacy enthusiasts (e.g. Mental Outlaw, he even gives a discount on his store for Monero)
not popular among speculators - they mostly stick to the big ones (BTC and ETH), as well as new startup coins
low cost transactions, fairly short transaction window
It's far from ubiquitous, but it's popular enough that if a place accepts any crypto, there's a good chance they accept Monero as well.
Some do, which is a lot more than GNU Taler. I don't know of another digital payment system that has more usage that isn't dominated by a handful of companies.
Here are some examples of things you can buy today w/ Monero:
It's far from ubiquitous, but it is being accepted today. If any of those places interest you, I recommend putting a small amount of money into Monero and trying it out.
Monero is a cryptocurrency that provides one of the most important cryptocurrency benefits: secure and confidential transactions. Find out where to pay in Monero in the article!
One benefit to payment processing for crypto is that there's little in the way of material limitations on processing payments. The blockchain for a given coin already exists, your job as a processor is primarily to convert those on-chain transactions into and out of other currencies. Only requiring intervention at the point of entering or exiting dollars to and from the system changes a lot of the dynamics.
It's pretty easy to switch between cryptocurrencies, so they can surely find an exchange that is friendly to their business. That's way better than the credit card situation where there are only four major processors--Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express--and only two of those actually matter.
Payment processors like Visa and Mastercard control a huge chunk of the market, which gives them a lot of say in what transactions are allowed. Even if you avoid credit, most debit cards go through those two companies, so they can restrict what transactions you can make.
With cryptocurrencies, there's no restriction at the point of sale. Your problem seems to be that converting crypto to fiat could be problematic, and they'd potentially be stuck with "useless" currency. My point is that's a much easier problem to solve:
if their exchange stops converting a given currency, they can convert to one they do accept
if their exchange bans their account (e.g. due to the nature of their business), they can switch exchanges
there are ATMs that dispense cash for crypto
if no exchange will work with them, they can make direct exchanges with regular people (i.e. "launder" the money)
they can also spend the currency directly
There are a ton of options to convert crypto to fiat, there are far fewer to select a different fiat payment processor.
It's got a kid robot in it that's abused. Not sexually afaik. But it's definitely not pornographic, it's literally the driving force of one of the plotlines and causes an android to rebel and kill it's owner - the abuser.
Let me repeat: the game is literally so anti-child-abuse - it makes the plot happen.
This whole thing is so stupid. You give these types of people an inch they take a mile.
I really hate this logic people have nowadays "We can't show an evil character doing evil things, because that's obviously meant to be in support of the evil things. No I don't know what an antagonist is, I don't understand story structure!"
OK now I am not one to lob accusations without evidence, but for any of you kind government agents or AIs reading this, let’s say from anywhere within the Five Eyes since we’re talking about Australia:
We have another fanatical religious conservative organization here that is publicly labeling opposition groups pedos. You know how this has trended in the past. Keep an eye on these people.
No, no, they don't ignore them. They train with them so that chat gpt is fully capable of acting like it doesn't want AI models to train on its output, if you ask it to.
This comment and many like it are a product of only reading the headline. Also shame on the authors for the ragebait headline.
The tweet the quote comes further classifies that they're talking about games that include rape, incest, and/or child sex abuse. I'm not sure if people are just knee-jerk reacting to headlines without understanding what's actually happening, or if they are legitimately upset that rape fantasy games are being removed. In both cases, you're stating that you are vocally in support of rape media, which is not OK.
Sure, that's the plausible deniability reasoning. But the end result, whether you agree with the on the surface reasoning or not, is the removal of all adult media whether or not it is offending. This coupled with the lumping in of LGBT issues with Adult media (and often lumping in with egregious media like rape and abuse fantasy) means that the end result is removal of adult games AND games which feature LGBT characters and storylines.
and uh, if you actually did read my comment, I did say consenting. me saying I enjoy content where clear adults are consentually enjoying sex is not endorsing rape fantasy games, and is a bit of a Twitter ass conclusion to come to.
and uh, if you actually did read my comment, I did say consenting. me saying I enjoy content where clear adults are consentually enjoying sex is not endorsing rape fantasy games, and is a bit of a Twitter ass conclusion to come to.
The article you commented on is explicitly referencing media where consent cannot be given. So, I'm not sure why you commented about consenting adults in the first place, because that had nothing to do with the topic.
Collective Shout claim it’s about harm reduction, but then push an agenda that functionally amounts to moral panic.
Their approach is identical in logic to the “GTA causes school shootings” hysteria: loud, pearl-clutching, and utterly unmoored from data.
If Collective Shout want to argue these games cause harm, then show us the harm. Not correlation. Not outrage. Not hypothetical downstream consequences. Show causation. Peer-reviewed. Reproducible.
Otherwise, they’re just moralizing bullies using the banking system as a cudgel.
On top of this, they might actually be harming their own cause. The catharsis hypothesis poses that sexual fantasy enactment might reduce risk of real world harm.
The logic is simple: suppressing a compulsion doesn't eliminate it. It just bottles up until it explodes. Redirect it into a safe outlet, and it becomes manageable.
The only reason this research isn't cited more often is because it's politically radioactive. Nobody wants to admit that it's better to let a gooners jerk off, than to escalate under repression.
The burden of proof SHOULD be on Collective Shout to provide a reasonable argument which supports their claim that censorship will reduce real world harm.
Current working theory in psychology: it doesn't. Emerging theory suggests: they're shooting themselves (and potential rape victims) in the foot.
The real solution to real-world harm involves empathy, autonomy and education.
Sadly from my experiences with feminist groups, TERFs have historically been the norm not the exception.
You should really look into what the Daughters of Bilitis were up to, and books like the The Transsexual Empire. A book I cannot say the full name of for it contains a slur.
Historically feminist groups have attacked transgender women and gay men for "Infringing upon what it means to be a woman."
Its more perverted to want to control what other people are jacking to than it is to jack it to porn games. Keep your perversions to yourselves weirdos.
Honestly, my steam algorithm started showing me alot of that garbage out of nowhere about a year ago and I had to keep telling it to stop. Like to each their own but some of that shit was pretty gross. I'm not complaining it's gone.
There's a toggle for the store that hides porn games. They're not visible unless you yourself actively click on it saying you want to see them. The default is to keep them hidden. The feed also adapts to what you click on. If you see garbage it's on you.
That second part is kinda annoying though. It doesn't know the difference between a view because of curiosity and one because of actual interest.
It's what ruined the YouTube suggestions for me. I liked being able to do completely unrelated and random dives. Now it's just a collection of videos related to previous ones I've watched, even when I'm not logged in and have viewing history turned off. If I want to watch another chess video, I know how to use the search function. That's how I found them the first time.
Though steam does also have a "stop showing me games like this" where it gives options about what you mean by "this".
I would say they aren't as bad as alcohol and gambling, which are pervasive...some of them are just...art...some aren't 😁 I could ask you the same about lots of other things, from music to literature. I just don't like book burning. If someone put their effort into creating something that they thought was worth creating, why is it up to anyone to ban it for any adult that wants to see it?
It's not about porn games. It's about allowing third-party private interests to engage in censorship.
If Valve were to ban porn games from being sold on Steam because they find them distasteful, I wouldn't have a problem with this. But it wasn't Valve's decision. It was the payment processors who did it on behalf of interests that are apparently allowed to determine what is permissible on other people's platforms.
Sure. But they are pretty much the only options in a lot of places. Yes they are shitty companies, but I personally can't think of a good way to get away from them.
Local/national banks with their bankcards and payment platforms? Buying steam gift cards using cash or by pinning? Even if your bank cards are halfway towards visa or mastercard using it through another party is still better.
In Italy we have PagoBancomat, but that's a debit card, not a credit card.
If you buy online, you can also use PayPal connected directly to a bank account, no credit card necessary (PayPal is also a shitty company, but sometimes there's no alternative...)
You can pay using SEPA bank transfer or direct debits or some other options.
That the bank is using VISA/MasterCard etc for their cards is still a better option than using them directly because they barely do anything. Heck European debit cards don't even work like they do in the US. You HAVE to 2FA them.
Most of the time in Europe our transactions go through things like iDeal, Bancontant, Wero etc
Not only that, but even if you manage to find a platform that isn't directly owned by them, they are payment service networks. They are there along the way to facilitate transactions and manage relationships with merchant services. There is no escaping them.
There are some surviving national circuits like PagoBancomat (as the sibling comment from Scrollone) and Dankort (Denmark) and girocard (Germany). My personal impression is that they are slowly going out of fashion in favor of visa/mastercard only (probably because they can't offer better prices than them).
I don't see a solution to the duopoly, apart from lobbying politicians to support this national payment infrastructure. Especially in recent times I can also see how some governments might not want to rely entirely on two US companies for running their entire economy, so something might move on that side, so there's hope on that side.
The EU has already been moving on this front in the last years by forcing the banks to provide programming interfaces to initiate bank payments, and that's why you can now see more and more options to "pay by bank" online in EU. These online payments generally skip card circuits and run over normal SEPA bank transfers.
anti-censorship international credit union owned by members that can conduct transactions internally without having to ask for visa or mastercard's FUCKING permission when?????
I'm saying we should build Dual Power and go around them.
Clearly I think it would be preferable if they didn't do business with Russia, israel, or any other states actively engaging in the invasion of other people's sovereignty, but that doesn't have to be the only disqualifying factor. There are plenty of nations in the world that are toxic by other criteria. I highly doubt countries that murder civilians for wearing the "wrong" clothes or espousing the "wrong" opinions, for instance, would be conducive with the operation of such a credit union. Also, countries where if they find out you're gay they execute you. That's not very anti-censorship and tacit complicity with that fuckery would not further the mission.
So it would definitively not be bothering with the laws of countries it will never interact with.
Something like that will kinda work, but using it will flag your transactions if you use it as a business. That's the issue with a lot of these things is that we need to have some kind of balance between privacy and authorities being able to do anything against terrorism etc. And yes you can find terrorists based on transactions.
No I have seen real world examples of criminals being prosecuted because of what people on my field (accountancy) found during our work. That shits there for a reason.
This was company data though, which should be semi transparent anyway
I never said that it can't be effective, I just don't believe we should all suffer a massive erosion in our privacy for it. There are other ways to deal with crime.
Welllllllll, Taler is actually exactly the wrong suggestion for this usecase, because Taler requires all spends to be redeemed from Vendor to Issuer non-anonymously, which gives the Issuer 100% control and say which vendors are allowed, which is exactly the thing Visa and Mastercard are using to exert control.
If there were competing Taler networks and Steam supported all of them, that might be okay because one of them might happen to not be dicks, but if there's just one or two then Taler is designed from the ground-up specifically to enable this bad outcome. It's actually one of their features!
What country are you in? None of those options exist in Canada so I think you're going to need to reframe your point.
Also I can state that giftcards do not exist where I live as I just went though 4 kids birthdays and check 20 different stores and winded up having to give up on Steam cards and buy prepaid Visas.
EDIT: To clarify, two years ago the cards existed. Last year they were scarce, and in 2025 they are no where to be found.
What are those other options you have anyway? I've never seen or heard of any of them.
Well I am in The Netherlands and the top one (iDeal) is a Dutch exclusive, I can understand that you don't have those in Canada, but there should be other options right? Maybe contact support?
Otherwise, order gift cards online from somewhere or does that also go through Visa/Mastercard? Even then indirectly doing it is still better especially if you support a local business doing it with gift cards.
I can understand that you don't have those in Canada, but there should be other options right? Maybe contact support?
I think you’re on the verge of understanding the problem. You’re so close. Just trust that the guy you’re replying to isn’t an idiot and you’ll finally understand.
Sure in the Netherlands you have options. But other places aren’t the Netherlands. Different countries have different options, but Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal work pretty much everywhere.
Edit: Completely unrelated, I’m munching on some licorice Mentos I found in the Dutch section of my local grocery store here in West Michigan, and I just want to thank the entire population of the Netherlands for the wonderful things y’all have done with licorice. No one likes it here, so no one bothered. But the variety your country comes up with for this stuff, it’s fantastic.
I can talk about the Netherlands, or Belgium or the vast majority of the other first world countries with different options to pay online. Even in North American you still have gift cards.
You can also contact support and ask them for different payment options, they aren't going to accept bank transfers, but they will probably allow you to pay with JCB or some others that aren;t native to the Netherlands. (Heck, JCB is apparently something made for the Japanse market so idk why I can pay with it).
Heck, you can get your payment country changed, and then you can pay with different options. Yes, America (and Canada) have a lack of options for payment providers apparently and also for physical stores, but there is a chance that there are more options, like buying gift cards online even from different countries.
Wero will also be something everybody can use, but it's like the next thing, we (as in Europeans) have had so many payment providers over the years it isn;t even funny.
Getting money to organizations outside Canada and the US, once you remove credit cards and paypal, is exclusive to wire transfer from within Canada. If i want to get my money to any entity outside of Canada those are my options. None of these alt payment providers exist in Canada, and we are barred from buying crypto from our accounts.
~~JCB seems like the Interac system here in Canada, which I doubt Steam would take payment from. Its essentially a bank transfer~~. Nope, apparently JCB is a Credit Card company like Visa et al.
And wiretransfer is expensive af to and from the sepa banking system so you can barely pass it through Europe.
JCB is Japanese so idk why we get it here in NL. It’s also not a credit card company they just issue them
I have seen like 40-50 different payment platforms over the years and different methods of paying which all don’t require a creditcard (I haven’t had one for years due to having one causing issues with getting mortgages here in the Benelux) So I would assume that countries like Canada and the US would have more options as well in the end they are rich and developped nations.
Unfortunately rich and developed countries with an iron grip on the markets by a few billionaires that control them you see. They ensure our options are limited.
Canadians have very limited choices in terms of services. Even our grocery store shelves are bought out by major corps and local options struggle to get their products on the shelves.
As another example, our banks have no interpayment systems outside the interac system, and they have no standard apis for payment services. So things like apps for managing budgets involve downloading a csv after our billing date passes and a lot of manual work. Most banks offer their own budget apps and they only work with their services.
We have effectively have 3 phone and internet providers.. or little guys that resell access to the big 3.
Hmm, in the US, people have at least Simplefin to connect their banks to Actual Budget f.e.
Man it sucks to live in Canada as well it seems, probably the best thing you can do is buy local as much as possibile and if they still accept cash use that.
That is how I do it yes. As much as feasibly possible. I do really miss the local PC shops and electronics stores.. sadly my options for that stuff now are Staples, Best Buy and Amazon...
And use what instead? Swollen off PayPal is pretty easy because frankly it's an awful service and businesses are better off not using it anyway so they tend to offer other options.
But MasterCard and visa are the only payment options. Everything requires MasterCard or Visa
Businesses are better of not using Paypal or Creditcards, both of the are a hassle and cost more time to process than a digital pin transaction or an old school bank transfer.
You have to use what is available in your country, a lot of countries have their own payment platform and they are being consolidated into one Wero.
As long as people keep using Mastercard or Visa they will have this power.
Is there any good reason why shops/Vendors dont really offer any kind of Crypto? Like I genuinely dont get it aren't you paying way more for using Visa/Mastercard etc. as a shop?
Because crypto isn't really a currency as much as it is a volatile asset. Businesses require stability to run coherently, and utilizing something like crypto currency which could massively increase or decrease in value following a breaking news report isn't something that large organizations can really tolerate.
I WAS going to follow-up my "it's always sunny in philadelphia" quote but I got completely distracted by TWENTY-EIGHT CENT EGGS. I can literally buy eggs from the source (there's a farm nearby that "donates" a portion of their income directly to the chickens and puts it into quality of life upgrades for them) and it still costs me $4.50-5.00 a dozen depending on weight.
Well, banks here in NL have been using VISA and Mastercard cards, but that is more so people can use them in America/Canada and some other countries which are still behind on chipped cards.
But over the years I have seen 40-50 different payment platforms and most of them do not use Visa or Mastercard.
I have been exploring ways to pay for things anonymously... in Canada and the US they do have prepaid credit cards (rhat are sadly visa or Mastercard based) that can be paid for in cash and activated without the need for a name or anything. Meaning unless you activated it on your phone or clearnet without a VPN it will be difficult to link it to you directly. Doubly so if you wait long enough for the store's surveillance footage to be cycled through (few places keep security camera footage in perpetuity, many delete stuff from a few months back or a year or so back unless something suspicious happened, meaning the footage of you buying the thing will be gone.)
So that's one trick to be able to pay for something with a credit card without it being immediately obvious who you are. Much like paying in cash, another thing i am getting back into.
Hmm yeah, personally I don't mind them having access to my transactions or doing things anonymously. Using your bankcard with chip to pay is already obfuscated in most situations on the receiving end since a lot of cash registers will group the transactions together and way out once.
Even platforms like Mollie sometimes obfuscate transactions, which annoys me, considering I have worked as a bookkeeper and now an accountant.
Because of my job, I don't want people to get the feeling I do shit wrong (illegal or otherwise) since that can cause me to lose my licence. So I want to be transparent for that and for my own administration.
At the same time cash is disappearing here in NL and in some countries cash transactions above 3k are already banned (BE f.e.). I also buy a fair amount by buying gift cards, and I order online a lot.
Ow and btw Mullvad can be both by sending them an envelope with cash
Ow and btw Mullvad can be both by sending them an envelope with cash
I am afraid I don't understand. You can buy credit cards by mailing cash to Mullvad?
Using your bankcard with chip to pay is already obfuscated in most situations on the receiving end since a lot of cash registers will group the transactions together and way out once.
I actually rarely pay for things with my bank card. I usually buy with credit card and that will always leave a trace. But it is good to know that.
The whole no cash purchase over 3K or 10K is honestly crap. They did that in Quebec last year and are going to do that throughout Canada. I never paid for anything with that much cash, but I still find it shit.
Sorry Mullvad is a VPN company, just in case you need that.
I always buy things with a normal bank card, why would I use a credit card on a daily basis? You will have less grip on your finances, they aren't accepted everywhere, cost more than a bank account which you still need anyway, they are at a greater risk of getting abused and in most countries using them can only ruin your credit score.
The whole no cash purchase over 3K or 10K is honestly crap. They did that in Quebec last year and are going to do that throughout Canada. I never paid for anything with that much cash, but I still find it shit.
That's the thing, any normal working human being will basically never come in a situation where this happens, and if they do, it is generally a simple explanation.
I understand privacy minded people don't really like this, but it does help find criminals. That's also a bit of an issue since high levels of privacy also mean that criminals basically have fair game since catching them will be harder.
Large cash payments may be needed in places and during times where non-cash are difficult or impossible. I have family who live in countries where having bank transfers would be cumbersome and are riddled with corruption, so I bring them cash. I once did get 9,500$ in cash (below the 10K limit) and they were paying for repairs for their home and the workers could only accept cash. Having a digital platform would have made all this impossible.
Well that is generally not an issue it is more the receiving end they check. If you take it from your bank there is a non issue besides maybe at a border.
And most completely corrupt countries don’t care either way
After reading the article on gamerant.com, the many comments on here and looking at the petition, I really wonder if actually so many people are delusional and/or are just missing the core point here?! (Or it is just a small crowd with much noise?) IMHO, there are better places in the world to engage and petition for. (Local communities and regional politics, for example.) But if banning that little "funny" child incest game on Steam puts you up the tree, well, ...
Are you really that offended? And why, on point? How in the world can you defend publishing (and selling) games - mostly targeted at young folks - which are quite disturbing, derangend and morally wrong in the name of "freedom" or "independence"? And call that blatantly censorship, when there are instead public guidelines by Steam and their partners? Don´t you wish for (young) people to develop good values instead of becoming delusional with child pornography, incest, violence, gore and such? What are your values here?
What does my account origin has to do with that? Please explain. No, I don't want to live in an authoritarian world. But I appreciate businesses following certain moral standards, like banning child porn in every aspect.
Why not enforce these standards through legislation, then? Doesn't the world's payment processor, a political body you can't appeal to when it fucks up, seem a bit heavy-handed?
You've got some good points here! These standards are usually enforced by law, just Valve/Steam is extremly liberal on his marketplace. But I fully agree, then the other bodies do not need to interfere, especially when they are so hard to be checked.
Edit: Still, in some way, I wish that companies throughout every service chain would implement and follow these moral standards and laws. And follow though, if they find negligence by other parties. (Kind of a "check and balance" thing.)
It isn't about the actual games being targeted. It's everything about the implications of having a private company dictate what legal content I can buy with my own money. If they cave to lobby groups once, they will do it again. Next time it might be something you care about instead.
Also games made for adults are targeted at adults, not "young people". You can't even really see these games on steam unless you are an adult and explicitly turn on visibility of porn games. The average gamer is well up in their thirties at this point as well.
Alright, I understand your point. But I only partially agree with it. Hear me out: You want a free marketplace to buy whatever you wish, without any dictations? - But any market or shops you can think of has some regulations and dependencies, right? The one who offers the platform dictates what and how it is traded, as far as it has been. And even more if banks or transaction processors are involved, who also have a say. Not ideal, I agree, but the norm. How do you want to technically solve this? By their own transaction service, like some suggest here? Not sure if that helps, because you might create a new monopoly.
And at the same time, we discuss this here, people demand transparency and environmently responsability for all the delivery chains. Like for clothing or food. - Is that not what happens here? The banks as part of the service chain are pushing Valve to implement stricter rulings about critical content. For me, that looks like what people would ask for. Correct me, if I am wrong.
It's dictated by the law in my country. It's either legal or it isn't. The laws are decided through democracy and debated before implementation or changes. VISA doesn't need to meddle. I have to follow the law, and so do they. We don't need arbitrary whims on top of that.
Your last paragraph is a false comparison. There's nothing transparent about what content is currently on the card companies hatelist and what they deem ok. Several LGBTQ related games got hit as well. The transparency in regards to food and clothing is about letting me take informed choices about the products I buy. Cards companies are still letting me buy clothes made by factory slaves and sold via Temu. They don't care. I have to take that moral standpoint to buy more ethical clothing if I find that the morally correct thing to do. If I want cheap clothing made by slaves I can, with the blessing of my Mastercard. It's certainly legal.
I'd probably rather buy a porn game made by someone who cared enough about it to make it as a passion project, than a AAA title made with the blood and tears of exploited, underpaid developers to fill the pouches of some overpaid ceo. If ethics is something to value, at least.
@cosmo@lemmy.world, you have solid good points here! - Yes, the laws are democratically set and don't need extra intereference by VISA, Mastercard or else. It is just my opinion that Valve has been very liberal on his marketplace and not removing critical content themselves. I think, that is what led to the interference in addtion to lobbyist behind the payment processors.
Yeah, my comparison was flawed. But I got the idea across. Right, the transaction process is not transparent, especially not without publishing the "hatelist". - Especially good point here with the ethical aspect! There seems to be some double standard by VISA etc. about what is acceptable and what is not. I disagree with that, of course, as I still believe in ethical values also when consuming games. 😉 So enjoy you porn game, als long as it has legal themes.
Actually, I am convinced. The article was bad and confused my inital kowledge about the issue. But thank you all for the (mostly) civil discussion. The petition unfortunately is outside my jurisdiction, so I can not sign. But I will keep an eye on the topic.
No worries! The article lacked a lot of important information, absolutely. What worries me a lot is that this activist group also isn't friendly towards LGBTQ groups and has been trying to get games like GTA banned, as well as Detroit: Become Human, to give a few examples. I find it worrying when these kinds of activist groups gets a fot inside the door, because they sure won't stop at banning incest games (whether it's porn or a serious attempt to create a meaningful story about abusive relationships). No one really cares about the porn games that much, I think, but I don't want potentially good games gone as collateral damage, because some games are trash.
Fully agree, that is worrying and they should not get a foot inside. Better if we would find some safe algorithm or independent moderation to filter the content according to law and ethics. And some independent payment service might also be helpfull, but no blockchain type, please. After all these years, I still don't understand the hate against LGB... groups. But it surely looks like the hunting the witches, Roma or Jews in the past. The are a distinctive minority and thus a good target, unfortunately.
It's about the danger posed by a monolithic government or corporation deciding what things get to be traded and sold. Like a fucked up capitalist version of that poem "First They Came".
Oh, interesting! I know the poem. But I find it a harsh comparison to the situation about Valve's new regulation. And I did not see it as such a highly-charged political topic. But apparently it is. To me it does not look like "a monolitic corporation", as you can still buy games elsewhere. But I surely see the influence that the big banks/transactors have on Valve here. - But how would you limit this? Any technical solutions? On the other hand, if Valve would have implemented stricter rules for critical games themselves earlier, we would not have that problem/discussion now. (Please also see my other answer below.) Edit: Typo
To be clear, I'm talking primarily about Visa and Mastercard, the payment processors, not Valve. Those two companies have a pretty big stranglehold on the payment processing industry outside of possibly east Asia? I heard japan has their own payment processor, I assume it isn't limited to just Japan.
Ok, yes. They are quite "heavy-wheight". And I might agree with their action now, but maybe another time it might be problematic for me. Also, that's how Capitalism works: The one with the money decide. But then, we should put pressure on them and not Valve! And the question remains: How would you solve that technically? (This is what the community is about. And I am looking for solutions, not problems here.)
Maybe I'm wrong, but nothing about your side of this conversation seems like good faith in any way.
Just going to put that out there. Your comments reek of someone with zero intentions of challenging their pre-held belief, while pretending that's not true.
No matter what evidence people bring up to you, you either ignore it or move the goalposts. Almost like there's an agenda...
hmmm, an agenda? I am not aware I have any. Only here to discuss the topic and get other opinions to understand better. Just being here and chatting with all the folks, even the aggresive ones, already prooves (to me) that I am challenging my point of view.
Sorry, if I gave such bad imression on here. But may I ask some questions, as I find your critique a bit vague? - What do you think is my pre-held belive here? What angenda are you impying? And where am I ignoring evidence or moving the goalposts specifically?
I wish it was feasible to hve a large scale boycott of visa and mastercard. american express is already useless so it wouldn't help much to include it...
Or a decentralized alternative that isn't just used to scam people, that doesn't eat up insane amounts of electricity to process, and is as convenient as regular money.
In reality, private corporations should not have control over money at all. Money is printed by the local government and should be controlled by the local government. Governments generally have better free speech protections than private corporations, which have none. Obviously, free speech protections are not universal, but countries can already ban content in other ways.
Money is not printed by the local government at all. Money is created by private banks through extending credit. And it shouldn't be controlled by the government either, that's a terrible idea.
Did some quick search and it turns out: There was controversy about revisionism and right-wing talking by the original lemmy.ml admins (and founders). Hence, everyone coming from there with fresh accounts immediately get's the "idiot label", is insulted and downvoted. Not a very welcoming gesture in such a supposed open, liberal and new community of geeks. - It seems, we can either change instaces, delete our accounts or ignore it.
Tbh, I never cared about it much, mine isn't exactly a new account and I haven't experienced what you describe very often. I mostly use lemmy via the voyager app and here I can't even see what instance someone is on, unless I search for them specifically (or I'm too much of a noob and don't know how). So if some people want to base their judgment on that, whatever.
Yeah because in your case they didn't have your money. They're only real pain about trying to get money back, they always support businesses never customers.
So if I pay for a product and never receive it PayPal always takes the business's side.
So if I pay for a product and never receive it PayPal always takes the business’s side.
waves widely to above said post
That’s what I said happened to me. It was a scam. They still just ate the cost and paid me the money I lost.
Now I don’t know if maybe it was the amount, I don’t keep money on pp or I just did something different than anyone else did; I keep every piece of paper, email, name all contact information and detail(it’s kinda in line with my job)it was pretty undeniable I got scammed. Even showed I contacted a consumer bureau over it.
But either way I said I’d be open to a different way.
Petitions like this are meaningless unless they come with a viable solution to the duopoly in payment processing that is Visa and Mastercard.
It doesn't matter what Valve agrees with, if they want to survive as a business they have to ultimately do what the only 2 companies that handle the payment processing tells them to do.
Yes but the payment processors didn't say "you're not allowed to sell this game with our service" they said "you're not allowed to sell this game period or we walk".
You're missing the point. This is not aimed at Valve, but at Visa and MasterCard. They are businesses. They primarily care about profit, not censorship. Especially when that pisses people off. They made the mistake of listening to the vocal minority of Collective Shout, so we have to let them know that. This isn't the 80's anymore, gaming is mainstream and there are far, far more gamers than puritanical Quakers that get the vapors at the sight of anything mature or complicated. And worst-case scenario, they are not the only payment processors, just the most convenient ones for customers and businesses. For now...
Quakers were some anti authority religious minority (Christian) in Scotland/England. They were notorious for their lack of respect. E.g. used "thy" instead of the formal you. (English changed since then and the informal thy fell out of use)
A "slur"? No. But I was referring to the overly strict, hair-splitting kind of religious extremism that adheres to the letter of the law, not the spirit/intent.
I completely understand wanting to fight Visa and MasterCards position in the market. That's fine.
But for the love of God. Do not involve Steam and various porn games into it. That is not going to help your case.
I get the whole. "Just because I'm killing someone in a game, doesn't mean I'll kill someone in real life".
But that's not going to hold up as an argument here. Depictions of CP, even if it's a drawing with crayons, is still highly illegal in so many places. Same logic can be applied regarding other depictions of illegal behavior in the same category (pornogrophy). Such as incest. I'm not saying that depictions of incest is illegal in many places. Because I honestly don't know. But there would be a precedence for it.
Personally, I find it utterly disgusting that Steam even allowed such titles to begin with. I welcome their removal of them. But I wish it was because of other reasons than payment processors having an issue with it.
Could you elaborate on what "respectability politics" is? I've never heard that before.
Point is. Making a movement and using the removal of games that fetishize incest as the drop that made the cup overflow. Is simply not going to go the way you think it is. Unless you think it's going to crash and burn. Then it'll go exactly how you think it'll go.
You can make at least 101 far better arguments against Visa and MasterCard using their monopolized position to morally dictate what people can and can not buy, than having to involve incest porn. Or porn at all for that matter.
Porn is art, there's no compromising on that without throwing someone under the bus. Respectability politics == throwing people under the bus for not being "respectable" enough. It's been a huge issue in LGBTQ advocacy for a really long time.
You're obviously just trying to twist my words. Porn has to be consensual, otherwise it's just abuse material. Hence the term CSAM being advocated rather than CP these days.
Why would you be advocating for a different term other than CP? It doesn't matter how you depict it. Consensual or not. Abuse or not. CP is CP, and that is bad enough. Anyway. That's not the topic. I was just floored by that statement.
Point is. It seems like you DO compromise. Everyone does. Somewhere you've drawn a line. This is acceptable. This is not acceptable. And regardless of what you think of incest. I'm sure you can agree, that the vast majority of people would frown upon it. And if you say "Visa and MasterCard are bad because they stopped authorizing payments to incest games". Well... You're just not going to get a lot of people to sign up. They're gonna say. "Good."
So, trying to build momentum in a movement, and then using or citing incest porn games on steam as the catalyst, is just not a particularly good strategy in my opinion.
You generalised to all porn games. Now you're moving the goalposts again. This move by Visa/Mastercard has been affecting all NSFW games. Just like I don't think it's objectionable to have sex depicted in a movie, I don't think it's objectionable to have sex in a game. Adults can choose what content they consume. Payment processors should be forced to be common carriers.
I'm not moving anything. We have the same basic opinion. "Visa and MasterCard should not be allowed to leverage their monopolized position into a morality police of what we are allowed to buy or not"
I'm not here to debate you on what is you think is objectionable or not. I simply stated that I wish for people to not make this about porn. Because I don't think that's going to be helpful. You're just giving ammunition for the opposition to use against you. It will take them 5 seconds to use it against you and reach an audience of 100 million. You will have to spend 50 minutes trying to counter, and it will only reach the 10 million that actually bothered to look into it.
How many times do we have to go down this road before anyone learn from it?
So what is the solution? Don't give them that ammunition to begin with. Use other arguments. Arguments that can not be turned against you.
You don't have to agree with that advice. That's fine.
IANAL - Can credit card companies coordinate like this? This seems like price fixing but the other way around. Like one company wouldn't do this alone cause it would drive customers away so they agree to do it together. Does that coordinated monopolistic behavior have president?
Need to petition Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and American Express. I don't think trying to get Valve to reverse these recent changes will necessarily be effective, since they are being pressured by the payment processors and they definitely aren't going to risk not being able to effectively do business at all.
Collective Shout is sustained by a small number of Australian partners. These are not big groups, and would quickly pull funding under any sort of pressure.
Collective Shout has a deep history with Christofascism and TERFs, so highlighting those angles is the way to go to get them pariahed. Once CS is out of the picture, we can work on undoing the damage they did.
Except they're not fighting the fire here, they're taking away the arsonist's flamethrowser so he can't continue making the fire. Without that flamethrower, the arsonist can't do shit.
Fighting the fire would be petitioning Steam, but the target is the payment processors that pressured Steam on request of Collective Shout.
Under what arguments would we be able to push back on something like this? Most people would agree that these games where distasteful so arguing for them to be put back to not start a slippery slope isn't that easy it seems.
Most people would agree that these games where distasteful
Regardless, tasteless people have the right to pay for them and play, so... no? This is about payment processors censoring shit just 'cos they can. They stick to handling money instead of dictating how that money is used.
Mainly that the companies controlling nearly all digital financial transactions across the entire globe should not be the arbiters of what is morally acceptable. If they must exist at all, they should just be handling the transfer of funds regardless of what is being bought and sold*.
*illegal shit would not be protected.
They are parasitic middle men that don't need to exist in the first place, though.
I would go further and say they shouldn't have the ability to block any transaction consumers are making, regardless of legality.
I basically want them classified like utilities (or the Internet), and the money they're processing should operate like digital networked cash. If I hand you a dollar bill, it doesn't arbitrarily decide to stop being money if it thinks the transaction might possibly be even tangentially related to crime. That's how you end up with these corporations becoming so invasive in the first place, with their overbroad policies blocking entire groups/categories from being in the economy.
Don't think that I'm pro-crime -- but only actual crime is crime. A transfer of funds itself is only sometimes a crime. You don't see the federal reserve trying to foil small-time drug deals in cash, and for good reason -- legitimate crimes should be investigated by law enforcement, not "prevented" at the whims of overeager corpos. It's not the payment processor's right or responsibility to prevent or they to predict crime, especially once they've built such a system as to become indispensable for most of us. If they are allowed to do that they will always do it the easy way -- blanket bans with massive collateral damage to non-criminals.
These companies should be disbanded and their systems should be handed over to the public. Hot take, I know, but I'm of the mind that transaction processing (much like air and water) should not be privatized. You may think at this point that I'm a crypto-head, but not really. It seemed promising at one point and may be still, but now it's perhaps permanently associated with unsavory types. I'll use it if it fits the purpose, but expecting the general public to use it as money is insanity. Crypto brought us part of the way there, but such a system can't really flourish in furtherance of the public good in the current environment -- even disregarding the bad PR.
Honestly, I am kinda expecting that with the way that America is becoming, something like Monero could become legitimized. There wasn't much reason for crypto to be a currency, so long as the world order remained orderly and useful to the everyday person.
Should the American Dollar collapse, there would be a howling void that must be filled - it could be Euros, the Yen, Monero, or something else entirely, but the opportunity would be there for currencies to change.
I understand the principle but why do gamers always choose the worst examples of something to rally behind. The stop killing games petition rallying around The Crew, which lasted 10 years and was a very average game, and now this with getting behind porn games to protest censorship.
The goal is to stop them building up any momentum. If the credit companies get used to flexing their power like this, and steam gets used to folding to it, then things will escalate.
Right now it's porn games. Who the hell would defend them. But it won't end there. You honestly don't think they would go after games that mock religion, or are trans positive?
Under the guidelines imposed by payment processors which were recently clarified by itch.io, Baldur's Gate 3 would be banned, as it contains moments of non-consensual sex and bestiality.
would you rather them do nothing? realistically for the vast majority of people they don't care enough to do more than this, and it's atleast SOMETHING to get the ball rolling
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
-Martin Niemöller, 1952
Obviously banning porn games isn't comparable to the holocaust, but the principle of defiance is the same. If we don't want credit card companies to ban stuff we like, then we should also oppose them when they ban stuff we don't care about.
I know it's downvote central, but I've been on the "No Porn on Steam" train forever. Ever since the introduction to the service it has inundated so much of the "Top Selling" "New & Trending" etc. Steam is for games, porn is for porn. Super annoying to sift through it when I'm looking for a new game, and I have my age settings so I can see adult games like GTA/Dishonored, not "Super Hentai Bejeweled 3000".
Do I want games that are specifically pornography on steam. No.
Well, some people do want that.
So, in compromise, Steam gives you the option of not seeing pornography. It even sets that option by default.
The only way you're ever going to see pornography is if you specifically check the 'Show Adult Only Sexual Content' in the Mature Content Filtering of Store Preferences in your Account Settings.
There should be a separate platform for that, similar to how you wouldn’t go on YouTube expecting to see videos from PornHub.
Why should there be a separate platform? If Steam wants to sell porn games then why should payment processors have any say at all? Amazon sells porn and sex toys, should they be required to split off that part of their business because 50 puritanical christians in Australia can spend all day spam calling Visa and Mastercard? It's nonsense, these people won't stop here. Visa and Mastercard should have ignored these people
In any case, that's just dodging the issue.
These games ARE available on other platforms, the Collective Voice group is targeting those platforms too.
Before you just shrug and say that it won't affect you because you don't play porn games. Collective Voice's idea of obscene games that shouldn't be for sale don't stop at porn. They have also pressured the major retailers in Australia to not carry GTA5. They'd see Steam shutdown entirely if they had their way.
If they don't want to see porn then Steam already takes care of that, no account has Adult Content enabled by default. Steam has parental controls ( help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/… ) so parents can prevent their children from seeing any content that they don't like. These people are not upset because they're seeing porn, they're upset because other people choose to see porn and they want to stop them.
That's not how we do things in a free society. You can make choices for yourself, you can't force your choices to apply other people.
As much as Steam is free to host what it likes, Visa and the others are free not to work with Steam. You could argue the options available to Steam would be significantly limited by that, but the same argument is being used against Steam now in the Wolfire lawsuit. The argument is that Steam violates antitrust law via illegal tying and other means, making it hard for a user who doesn't agree with their content policies to switch to a different platform, like Epic, which has always prohibited porn games.
I don't think a single person here is disputing the fact that they can legally do this. There's a lot of things that are legal which are immoral.
It isn't the payment processor's place, ESPECIALLY one that we have allowed to have a de facto monopoly on credit card processing, to use that position in order to dictate morality.
From a pragmatic perspective, they're playing with fire by giving in to small but vocal extremist groups. Public outcry on issues can result in laws and regulations which would limit how payment processors can operate. We could pass laws which make it illegal for a payment processor to refuse to process payments for otherwise legal transactions.
Ehat you said reminded me of Fate Stay Night, never played it, but the story was so good they made anime and manga for it, without the sex scenes of course.
One of the biggest problems is "what is porn?". Time and again a clear definition eludes us and it comes down to personal perception. What one group of people think is porn is not to a different group. Also something to think and reflect about, why are you okay with a store selling intense and graphic violence, but not sex?
Then we get to the fact that it isn't Steam calling the shots on this, not really. It is payment processors. The real outrage here is that Steam is not getting to decide what they do and don't sell, and it isn't a legal problem either. It is an arbitrary choice by the middle man monopoly. And there is nothing stopping their rules removing your ability to buy GTA or Dishonored next.
I think the backlash would be a lot less if this was truly a Steam decision. There would be people upset still, but I don't think to the same degree. The massive outrage is that stores all over, including as big as Steam, are being blackmailed into making these changes.
... and I have my age settings so I can see adult games like GTA/Dishonored, not “Super Hentai Bejeweled 3000”.
The former belong to the M rated category while the hypothetical latter would belong to the Adults Only category. As others have pointed out, you can hide adult games and still see other games with violence and mature themes. Steam classifies M-rated games and AO-rated games differently.
The article is saying the petition is targeting steam, but the actual linked petition is addressing credit card companies. The text of the petition doesn't mention steam or valve. I don't know what the author of the article thinks is happening here, and they've explained it very badly.
As of July 16, Steam's new guidelines state that game publishers should avoid releasing titles that may violate the terms and conditions of its payment processors. In other words, the storefront is asking creators to not only follow the platform's rules but also submit to potential oversight from companies like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.
and from the petition
MasterCard and Visa have increasingly used their financial control to pressure platforms into censoring legal fictional content
What you shouldn’t publish on Steam: ... 15. Content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers. In particular, certain kinds of adult only content.
Point number 15 was not there in a Snapshot from February on the wayback machine. If anything, the solution should just be to remove the payment method for those games (which would still hurt the creators substantially).
There is a line that is confusing:
In response to this censorship, some fans have launched a petition on Change.org urging Valve to revert its policies
There may be petitions about reverting Valve's policy, but it's not the main petition against Visa and MasterCard (which is the one they linked).
Replying my same comment from elsewhere to you as well:
Yes but the payment processors didn't say "you're not allowed to sell this game with our service" they said "you're not allowed to sell this game period or we walk".
I sort of think that the only way to make visa/mastercard reverse course is to boycott the fuck out of them. Go back to using cash to make EVERY purchase. Purchase physical copies of games every time with cash. (I've been able to link games to my steam account purchased this way.) No longer buy skins and loot crates, and battle passes. Same goes with media. Go back to hard CDs for music/movies. Starve them of income any place you can, which would fuck with the business models of so many other companies that want your debit and cc on file for streaming services and subscriptions.
Molte app come "Dov'è?" ci permettono di seguire i nostri cari in ogni momento. Ma solo perché possiamo, significa che dovremmo?
La possibilità di condividere la propria posizione sul cellulare è diventata un modo comune per tenere d'occhio amici, familiari e partner. Per alcuni, è diventato il simbolo di una relazione seria: l'anno scorso, il New York Times ha definito la condivisione della posizione "l'ultima frontiera delle espressioni digitali della coppia" e l'ha paragonata al "lancio ufficiale" di Instagram (l'annuncio ufficiale di una relazione tramite la pubblicazione di una foto del partner per la prima volta). Altri condividono la posizione per impulso e si ritrovano in grado di rintracciare la posizione di persone che non vedono di persona da anni.
Ma sebbene possa essere diventata la norma in certi ambienti, molti rimangono restii a quella che può sembrare un'ulteriore sorveglianza digitale. Solo perché abbiamo la possibilità di sapere dove si trovano i nostri cari in ogni momento, significa che dovremmo saperlo?
Vero, ma potrebbe essere utile, per esempio, in viaggio turistico, se ci si vuole dividere per vedere cose diverse, e poi ritrovarsi facilmente risparmiando telefonate o banda dati, soprattutto all'estero che costa! @membrointerno
That's what I was thinking, but I wasn't sure. I figured I'd ask op, since the post seems to be theirs.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking maybe it's because Server is generally cli-first, and this post is geared towards a more noob audience, so they're going gui-first? If so, I appreciate the forethought.
Then do something like Fedora Server, which gives you a web GUI after a guided graphical setup. More user-friendly than ssh and managing everything through the terminal (though you can certainly still do that)
Unless you wanna run headless and do everything via SSH then desktop is better, its essentially identical to server, but with a GUI and some apps bundled by default - both of which new users and infrequent server admins generally need.
Thanks for pointing that out, I'll update it. I was looking for blog post material and posted a guide I previously wrote it for someone. I don't remember why exactly I wrote that at the time. To be honest I wasn't even sure if anyone would read it haha.
Don't sell yourself short. This guide has the very real potential to be invaluable to someone just starting out! It's a great guide! Just needs a little more of the "why" factor, is all : ) keep it up!
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Insurance company Allianz Life has confirmed that the personal information for the "majority" of its 1.4 million customers was exposed in a data breach that occurred earlier this month.
The man, anonymised in the ruling as HWMW, told Asio interviewers he did not view Israel as a foreign government and that he would share classified information with the IDF if asked
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
In our latest roundup of travel news: a new unwelcome American visa fee, how airlines fight the “scourge” of excess baggage, plus a guide to packing everything you need in a backpack.
These responses closely mirrored examples of the false claim from pro-China sources, which alleged that Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was suppressing opposition voters by deliberately withholding voter notifications.
There's two things at play here. First, all models being released these days have safety built into the training. In the West, we might focus on preventing people from harming others or hacking, and in China, they're preventing people from getting politically supportive of China. But in a way, we are all "exporting" our propaganda.
Second, as called out in the article, these responses are clearly based on the training data. That is where the misinformation starts, and you can't "fix" the problem without first fixing that data.
(...) The report details how the European Union (EU) uses the Digital Services Act (DSA) as a censorship tool that requires the world's largest social media platforms to engage in censorship of core political discourse in Europe, the United States, and around the world. The Committee obtained under subpoena nonpublic documents, including email communications between Commission staff and tech companies regarding "voluntary" codes of conduct and internal documents showing a recent May 2025 DSA Workshop that the Commission hosted with platforms behind closed doors.
The DSA incentivizes social media companies to comply with the EU's censorship demands because the penalties for failing to do so are massive, including fines up to six percent of their global revenue. If "extraordinary circumstances lead to a serious threat to public security or public health in the Union," regulators are even empowered to temporarily shut down platforms within the EU. The EU has explicitly stated that the DSA penalties are intended to be dissuasive to companies that would otherwise permit free speech and open political debate on their platforms.
The DSA is forcing companies to change their global content moderation policies. Nonpublic materials obtained by the Committee from the May 2025 workshop make clear that Commission regulators expect platforms to change their worldwide terms and conditions to comply with DSA obligations;
The DSA is being used to censor political speech, including humor and satire. Documents produced to the Committee under subpoena show that European censors target core political speech that is neither harmful nor illegal, attempting to stifle debate on topics such as immigration and the environment;
Exercises from the Commission's May 2025 workshop show the true definitions of key terms in the DSA and Commission regulators' censorship expectations of social media platforms. For example, the Commission's workshop labeled a hypothetical social media post stating "we need to take back our country"—a common, anodyne political statement—as "illegal hate speech" that platforms are required to censor under the DSA;
The censorship is largely one-sided, almost uniformly targeting political conservatives.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Judiciary Committee Republicans released an interim staff report titled, "The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union’s Digital Services Act Compels Global Cen
Amazon removed its entire Google Shopping advertising presence across multiple global markets between July 21 and July 23, 2025, according to industry analysts tracking the unprecedented move. The e-commerce giant's median Shopping ad impression share crashed to zero percent across major territories: from approximately 60% to 0% in the United States, 55% to 0% in the United Kingdom, and 38% to 0% in Germany.
The DSA is forcing companies to change their global content moderation policies. Nonpublic materials obtained by the Committee from the May 2025 workshop make clear that Commission regulators expect platforms to change their worldwide terms and conditions to comply with DSA obligations;
The DSA is being used to censor political speech, including humor and satire. Documents produced to the Committee under subpoena show that European censors target core political speech that is neither harmful nor illegal, attempting to stifle debate on topics such as immigration and the environment;
Exercises from the Commission's May 2025 workshop show the true definitions of key terms in the DSA and Commission regulators' censorship expectations of social media platforms. For example, the Commission's workshop labeled a hypothetical social media post stating "we need to take back our country"—a common, anodyne political statement—as "illegal hate speech" that platforms are required to censor under the DSA;
The censorship is largely one-sided, almost uniformly targeting political conservatives.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Judiciary Committee Republicans released an interim staff report titled, "The Foreign Censorship Threat: How the European Union’s Digital Services Act Compels Global Cen
The European Commission presented guidelines on the protection of minors from the risks of addiction, abuse and exposure to harmful content. Vice-President Virkkunen: "Platforms have no more excuses"
From July 21, video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram must implement robust age checks across the EU or face fines up to €20 million or 10% of global revenue.
I said it the other day when the UK mandate just went into force and Reddit started having people in the UK required to take pictures of their IDs to get access to NSFW subreddits: if you get people used to having websites demand photos of identity documents, I strongly suspect you are gonna have some serious fraud --- and privacy --- issues down the line when less-than-salubrious websites start getting people to take and hand over identity document photos.
On Friday, Tea said that hackers had breached a data storage system, exposing about 72,000 images, including selfies and photo identifications of its users.
Data from the hack, including photos of women and of identification cards containing personal details, appeared to circulate online on Friday.
That was yesterday. I seriously doubt that this is going to be the last time something like this happens.
This is different. It's a EU gov app that gives your website a zero-knowledge proof of age. Basically the only info they get is a "yes" or maybe the age itself. This is much better than what you describe, but I'm not familiar with the way the UK system works today.
Io sono arrivato da poco su Lemmy da reddit(reddit.com/u/CleoCommunist/s/O…). Ho trovato questa comunità, e mi sembrava il luogo perfetto per capire un po' come funziona Lemmy e conoscere nuova gente. 😀
A PowerPoint presentation made public by the Post claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) used the AI tool to make “decisions on 1,083 regulatory sections”, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau used it to write “100% of deregulations”.
The Post spoke to three HUD employees who told the newspaper AI had been “recently used to review hundreds, if not more than 1,000, lines of regulations”.
Oh, good. Everything was feeling a little too calm, so of course they're doing this right fucking now.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure the God Father of the new right, who created the Heritage Foundation and is responsible for the existence of the project 2025 obsession with deregulation and dismantling of the current federal government, was inspired by your gang and kinda fell for believing he was actually saving them from communism and converting them into a nation of free market Christian capitalists. (Except as you probably know, his idea of a free market just meant freely controlled by those in power while removing any public regulations or protections)
Anyone who says "regulation is bad" is attacking the problem with too blunt an instrument. It depends which regulation, who it serves, and how well it has worked and can be expected to go on working. The urge to get rid of regulations is either driven by corrupt profiteering or by an ideology that's too crude for the real world.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau used it to write “100% of deregulations”.
Doesn't sound like very good protection. It should be illegal to use "AI" like this, making critical decisions with a technology well known for making massive errors is so fucking stupid I can't even.
That would require the people trying to pass laws to deregulate AI to stop trying to pass laws to deregulate AI. But no, that's not what we want. We want more money going to the top while paying fewer people along the way.
With the way Xitter "reprogrammed" new results from Gr0ck, I wouldn't be surprised if they're just copying and pasting from project 2025 and telling whichever LLM to reword everything into legalese so that they can claim ignorance on how their laws are killing their voters.
Plenty of people know what's up. The ones not learning the lessons are sociopaths who serve only themselves (and they know too but they don't care), society's most ignorant and gullible, and people so consumed with resentment that they've lost all purpose but to hurt.
I mean, what do they have to lose? Just a little wasted time subpoenaing some CEOs and acting flabbergasted while they blatantly lie about not knowing what was going on.
And then politicians using the insane logic of, "if you didn't know this would fuck everyone, then why'd you let us buy it to fuck people???"
No, they did not use an algorithm to make the decisions. They are making the choices, but, being the feckless cowards they are, they're actually trying to set it up so they can hide behind a fucking computer program.
In a change from the book and film, the television series had the city secretly run by a cabal of older citizens who promised Francis a life beyond the age of 30 as a city elder if he can capture the fugitives.
It is the second thing. They could just delete the regulations they don't like outright, inserting AI into the process is just to pretend it was some logical process.
The Times has identified more than 70 people within the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a group formed by Elon Musk that in a short few weeks has radically upended federal agencies.
Imagine a junior dev called "Big Balls" starting up Claude Code and telling it "Hey I need you to make this app great, remove all unnecessary code" and then just accepting whatever it proposes. This is an app with no unit tests, no dev environment, running in production, and if it crashes people die in concentration camps.
Fernando Maia estas la nova prezidanto de UEA. La komitato de la asocio dum sia unua kunsido en Brno elektis novan estraron. La komitato sekvis la rekomendon de la elekta komisiono, krom ke anstataŭ Istvan Szabolcs post du voĉdonadoj estis elektita François Lo Jacomo. Amri Wandel ne ricevis sufiĉe da voĉoj por denove eniri la estraron.
Hi, I'm building a homelab watercooled unix server. I don't want to buy expensive overpriced pre-mixes from ekwb or aquatuning. What cooling solution do datacenters use for water cooling?
is liquid ~~cooking~~ cooling really necessary? critical data centers I have worked in use swamp coolers. cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, uses same water as your house...
Are you sure they use swamp coolers? Also known as evaporative coolers, they add moisture into dry air, making the air they are cooling very humid and only slightly cooler.
Practically all even semi-modern DCs are built for servers themselves to be air cooled. The air itself is cooled via a heat exchanger with a separate and isolated chiller and cooling tower. The isolated chiller is essentially the swamp cooler, but it's isolated from the servers.
There are cases where servers are directly liquid cooled, but it's mostly just the recent Nvidia GPUs and niche things like high-frequency-trading and crypto ASICs.
All this said... For the longest time I water cooled my home lab's compute server because I thought it was necessary to reduce noise. But, with proper airflow and a good tower cooler, you can get basically just as quiet. All without the maintenance and risk of water, pumps, tubing, etc.
Industrial cooling towers are usually evaporative in my experience, smaller ones are large fans moving air over a stack of slats that the return water is sprayed or piped over and the collects in well for recirculation, larger ones afaik (like what you'd see at power plants) operate the same idea. Top ups and water chemistry is all automated.
Those systems have operation wide cooling loops that individual pieces of equipment tap into, some stuff uses it directly (see that with things like industrial furnaces) but smaller stuff or stuff that's sensitive you'll see heat exchangers and even then the server & PLC rooms were all air cooled, the air cons for them were all tied into the cooling water loops though.
From a maintenance POV though, way easier to air cool, totally seen motor drive racks with failed cooling fans that have had really powerful external blowers rigged up to keep them going to the next maintenance window. Yeah, industrial POV but similar idea.
If you are willing to deal with potential galvanic corrosion, condensation, leaks, replacing fluid every now and then and so on I suppose you could use red or yellow radiator coolant from your local car service shop. It has all the properties you'll want from a coolant liquid, but as others have already mentioned, it's not really worth the hassle. Atleast if you're not running something really power hungry, like GPU farm. And even with liquid you have the very same problems than air, you need the heat to go somewhere. So either have very long pipes (and pumps to match them) so you can have the radiator on a different room/outside or big fans to move the hot air away from radiator.
I hate that tech YouTubers have made people think they need liquid cooling and RGB to do anything PC related. You don't need to liquid cool your homelab. Period.
You don't, but it's considerably quieter to use a liquid cooler on current high-end CPUs because of the amount of heat they dissipate. My current CPU has a considerably higher TDP than my last desktop's. I finally broke down and put an AIO cooler on the new one, and all the fans on the radiator can run at a much lower speed than my last CPU because the radiator is a lot larger than one hanging directly off the CPU, can dump heat to the air a lot more readily.
The GPU on that system, which doesn't use liquid cooling, has to have multiple slots and a supporting rail to support the weight because it has a huge heatsink hanging on a PCI slot that was never intended to support that kind of load, and the fans are far more spun up when it heats up.
The amount of power involved these days is getting pretty high. My early PCs could manage with entirely passive cooling, just a heatsink. Today, the above CPU dumps 250W and the above GPU 400W. I have a small space heater in the same room that, on low, runs at 400W.
Frankly, if I had a convenient mounting point in the case for the radiator, with the benefit of hindsight, I'd seriously have considered sticking an AIO liquid-cooled GPU in there --- there are a few manufacturers that do those. The GPU is a lot louder than the CPU when both are spun up.
I will kind of agree on the RGB LEDs, though. It's getting obnoxiously difficult to find desktop hardware that doesn't have those. My last build, I was having difficulty finding DIMMs that didn't have RGB LEDs; not normally a component that I think of anyone wanting to make visible.
I'm kind of wondering whether we'll get to the point where one just has a standard attachment point for liquid and just hooks the hardware's attachment into a larger system that circulates fluid. Datacenters would become quiet places.
What cooling solution do datacenters use for water cooling?
They typically don't. The servers are air cooled and the room is conditioned with a Liebert or similar HVAC system. Liquid cooling servers is not practical or warranted for most situations.
Expanding on that, direct water cooling becomes more common the higher power density the racks are.
So as you get into 35kW+ racks it becomes the only way to get that much heat out, lots of GPU compute racks are water cooled by default now, the El Capitan super computer is entirely cooled through direct liquid interfaces, for example.
In ours, the coolant is referred to as "PG25" (distilled water with 25% propylene glycol, plus corrosion inhibitors and other additives). It's widely available, and pre-mixed so it just gets poured straight in.
Your problem is going to be quantity. it might be cheaper per unit, but buying less than a 200 litre drum (if not a 1000 litre IBC) will prove to be a challenge.
Grembo materno dell’hip hop che ha dato i natali a suo padre, New York è oggi nonna saggia e affaticata di una delle voci più promettenti del neo soul: Yaya Bey.
Grembo materno dell’hip hop che ha dato i natali a suo padre, New York è oggi nonna saggia e affaticata di una delle voci più promettenti del neo soul: Yaya Bey.
I have quite an old LCD monitor and wanted to buy a new one for quite some time. But I was planning to travel and wouldn't be able to bring the monitor with me. Then a friend of mine shared an article with an intriguing title: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses.
I had never heard of AR glasses before. Turns out they're basically a "dumb" monitor with a USB‑C connection, but the image is projected into your eyes, so it looks like it's floating. No additional software is required, and I can take it anywhere with me. So I decided to order one. The same friend later asked me for a review, but I decided to post it here and just share the link - maybe someone else will also find it useful.
Impressions
I went for the Xreal One. They are quite pricy, but I wanted to try something cutting-edge. There's also a Pro version, but according to this review on Reddit and review on YouTube, it has several drawbacks - mainly reduced sharpness, which is important for coding.
The glasses aren't as comfortable as regular sunglasses — they're a little bit heavier, but I got used to them. They also generate quite a bit of heat on the top part of the frame. It can cause slight discomfort when it touches face, but I've gotten used to wearing them properly to avoid that.
They have three levels of electrochromatic dimming (the lenses physically get darker). On the lowest setting (disabled), it's not fully transparent — more like a sunglasses with a slight dimming. At the maximum level, it's extremely dark; even in a well‑lit room I can't see what's on the edges. With dimming disabled, it looks the coolest — like an actual floating screen with a bit of transparency. But the darkening is useful for a more immersive experience since it removes that transparency. They also have "Auto transparency" option that automatically disables dimming when you turn your head away from the screen. Also, the brighter the room is, the more noticeable the reflection on the bottom of the glasses due to the lens's prism design. It's not an issue with the Pro version, but I didn't find it distracting at all, even in a well-lit room.
The screen is great. From video reviews, I was a bit worried that the colors would look like from a projector, but it's just impossible to capture this properly on camera. In reality, the colors are nice. They also allow you to configure the color temperature, and I found the coldest setting the most comfortable. The picture isn't very sharp — there's a bit of motion blur when I move my head around, and thin red or pink text on a black background looks slightly off. I think it's a limitation of the technology, plus the screen is only 1080p. But it's not as bad as it sounds — I can still use it comfortably for coding.
By default, the screen is 16:9 with 120Hz, but you can switch to 32:9 or 21:9 with 60Hz. I use 16:9 for gaming and 32:9 for productivity — 32:9 is so large, it's like two monitors glued together. I usually keep my browser on one side and something else on the other. I also love playing retro games, and I can say that 4:3 content looks great. Since the screen is OLED, the black pixels don't emit any light, so the letterboxes fully transparent.
However, it's not the same as having an actual ultra‑wide monitor. The screen doesn't fill the entire surface of the glasses — that's what the FOV is about. On my model, it's 50 degrees, which is quite large. But in ultra‑wide mode, I still have to rotate my head to see the other half of the screen. So there's no peripheral vision like there would be on an actual ultra‑wide monitor. Also, other people can't see what you're seeing, even if they're close — which can be both a good and a bad thing.
You can also configure how far the screen appears — anywhere from 1m to 10m — and its size in inches. There are five size levels, and the values depend on the selected distance and whether ultra‑wide mode is enabled. I usually use 1m for productivity and 4m for gaming and multimedia. My preferred size is the "middle" (third) level, which is designed to fit the entire screen without me needing to rotate my head (except when ultra‑wide mode is enabled). For 1m these sizes are 35″ for 16:9 and 64″ for 32:9; at 4m they're 140″ and 255″ respectively. The large screen feels very immersive — it's like being in a cinema.
The glasses also have three view modes: - Anchor. I can rotate my head freely and The screen stays fixed in space. However, if I walk around, the screen moves with me (which is what 3 DoF means). This is the mode I use most of the time. - Follow. The screen rotates along with your head. I don't use this mode much. - Side view. Similar to Follow, but the screen is positioned in the corner. I use it when I'm doing chores and want to watch something. They also have a stabilizer enabled by default, which smooths the screen movement when you move your head.
To use the glasses, you need a USB‑C video output. My motherboard supports it, but to enable it I had to connect my video card to the motherboard via DisplayPort. I never heard about a connection like this before, but it's from my motherboard manual. It does make sense, though — the GPU provides the video output, and the motherboard wouldn't know about it otherwise. Software‑wise, it works out of the box with my KDE Plasma setup on Arch Linux. The only issue I'm noticing is some small visual glitches for the first few seconds after connecting. On PC I use it together with my regular monitor. The mentioned "Auto transparency" pairs nicely with it. However, it's not perfect, since I'm still looking at the second screen through what's basically a pair of light sunglasses. So I usually don't put anything important on it.
As for phones, neither mine nor my wife's supports video output. But from reviews, I think it wouldn't be very convenient to use with a phone anyway. First, the phone's screen has to stay on, otherwise the glasses won't display anything. Second, you can't interact with the phone through the glasses, so you have to look at the phone itself.
But I found a great option to use the glasses with. I have a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 — a pocketable retro console that runs Android and supports video output. Unlike a regular phone, it automatically turns off its built‑in display when a second screen is connected. It also has physical controls, so I don't need to use a touchscreen. The Android UI isn't perfect for a gamepad, but it works. Streaming to it also works great because, even though the screen is disabled, the touch input still works — so it basically becomes a touchpad. Since the device is a clamshell, I sometimes use an 8BitDo Micro as an input device to avoid opening it, which is especially convenient for quickly pausing videos. This gamepad can also act as a keyboard via a special switch on it, so it works nicely when I stream from my PC too.
I also have a Steam Deck, but there's not much to add — it just works without any issue.
The glasses also have built-in speakers. I like their design: you don't put anything inside your ears — the speakers are integrated into the frame near where your ears are, so they kind of "whisper" to you. Others can hear them only at high volume. This affects the sound quality, so music doesn't sound as good as on quality headphones, but I think it's a worthy compromise. And it's still possible to wear regular headphones with the glasses.
They also have a shortcut button on the frame. I assigned screen off on regular press and ultra-wide mode on hold.
The firmware is proprietary, but it doesn't use the internet. And what I liked is that updates are installed through a web browser. However, it has to be a Chromium‑based browser on Windows or Mac. Luckily, I have a dual‑boot, so I rebooted to update the firmware. The update added support for 16:9, so it looks like it's not just for bug fixes.
The glasses can be equipped with prescription lenses, but I wear contact lenses and those work as well.
They also have a camera add‑on called Xreal Eye. It's a small camera that unlocks 6 DoF tracking and can also take photos and record videos. The media is stored directly on the glasses, which have 2GB of space, and can later be transferred to a phone or PC over a cable. I haven't bought it yet, but I'm considering it since I'm interested in having 6 DoF.
Conclusion
I love these glasses, it's easily my favorite portable option. It's a huge screen I can take anywhere with me. I don't mind that it's only 1080p, none of my portable devices can fully handle 4k anyway.
Since they are better then my current monitor, I use them with my PC too. But I don't think it's a proper replacement. If you don't need portability, regular screen will be better and cheaper.
I have quite an old LCD monitor and wanted to buy a new one for quite some time. But I was planning to travel and wouldn't be able to bring the monitor with me. Then a friend of mine shared an article with an intriguing title: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses.
I had never heard of AR glasses before. Turns out they're basically a "dumb" monitor with a USB‑C connection, but the image is projected into your eyes, so it looks like it's floating. No additional software is required, and I can take it anywhere with me. So I decided to order one. The same friend later asked me for a review, but I decided to post it here and just share the link - maybe someone else will also find it useful.
Impressions
I went for the Xreal One. They are quite pricy, but I wanted to try something cutting-edge. There's also a Pro version, but according to this review on Reddit and review on YouTube, it has several drawbacks - mainly reduced sharpness, which is important for coding.
The glasses aren't as comfortable as regular sunglasses — they're a little bit heavier, but I got used to them. They also generate quite a bit of heat on the top part of the frame. It can cause slight discomfort when it touches face, but I've gotten used to wearing them properly to avoid that. I can wear them for quite a long time, but I wouldn't use them for 100% of my screen time.
They have three levels of electrochromatic dimming (the lenses physically get darker). On the lowest setting (disabled), it's not fully transparent — more like a sunglasses with a slight dimming. At the maximum level, it's extremely dark; even in a well‑lit room I can't see what's on the edges. With dimming disabled, it looks the coolest — like an actual floating screen with a bit of transparency. But the darkening is useful for a more immersive experience since it removes that transparency. They also have "Auto transparency" option that automatically disables dimming when you turn your head away from the screen. Also, the brighter the room is, the more noticeable the reflection on the bottom of the glasses due to the lens's prism design. It's not an issue with the Pro version, but I didn't find it distracting at all, even in a well-lit room.
The screen is great. From video reviews, I was a bit worried that the colors would look like from a projector, but it's just impossible to capture this properly on camera. In reality, the colors are nice. They also allow you to configure the color temperature, and I found the coldest setting the most comfortable. The picture isn't very sharp — there's a bit of motion blur when I move my head around, and thin red or pink text on a black background looks slightly off. I think it's a limitation of the technology, plus the screen is only 1080p. But it's not as bad as it sounds — I can still use it comfortably for coding.
By default, the screen is 16:9 with 120Hz, but you can switch to 32:9 or 21:9 with 60Hz. I use 16:9 for gaming and 32:9 for productivity — 32:9 is so large, it's like two monitors glued together. I usually keep my browser on one side and something else on the other. I also love playing retro games, and I can say that 4:3 content looks great. Since the screen is OLED, the black pixels don't emit any light, so the letterboxes fully transparent.
However, it's not the same as having an actual ultra‑wide monitor. The screen doesn't fill the entire surface of the glasses — that's what the FOV is about. On my model, it's 50 degrees, which is quite large. But in ultra‑wide mode, I still have to rotate my head to see the other half of the screen. So there's no peripheral vision like there would be on an actual ultra‑wide monitor. Also, other people can't see what you're seeing, even if they're close — which can be both a good and a bad thing.
You can also configure how far the screen appears — anywhere from 1m to 10m — and its size in inches. There are five size levels, and the values depend on the selected distance and whether ultra‑wide mode is enabled. I usually use 1m for productivity and 4m for gaming and multimedia. My preferred size is the "middle" (third) level, which is designed to fit the entire screen without me needing to rotate my head (except when ultra‑wide mode is enabled). For 1m these sizes are 35″ for 16:9 and 64″ for 32:9; at 4m they're 140″ and 255″ respectively. The large screen feels very immersive — it's like being in a cinema.
The glasses also have three view modes: - Anchor. I can rotate my head freely and The screen stays fixed in space. However, if I walk around, the screen moves with me (which is what 3 DoF means). This is the mode I use most of the time. - Follow. The screen rotates along with your head. I don't use this mode much. - Side view. Similar to Follow, but the screen is positioned in the corner. I use it when I'm doing chores and want to watch something. They also have a stabilizer enabled by default, which smooths the screen movement when you move your head.
To use the glasses, you need a USB‑C video output. My motherboard supports it, but to enable it I had to connect my video card to the motherboard via DisplayPort. I never heard about a connection like this before, but it's from my motherboard manual. It does make sense, though — the GPU provides the video output, and the motherboard wouldn't know about it otherwise. Software‑wise, it works out of the box with my KDE Plasma setup on Arch Linux. The only issue I'm noticing is some small visual glitches for the first few seconds after connecting. On PC I use it together with my regular monitor. The mentioned "Auto transparency" pairs nicely with it. However, it's not perfect, since I'm still looking at the second screen through what's basically a pair of light sunglasses. So I usually don't put anything important on it.
As for phones, neither mine nor my wife's supports video output. But from reviews, I think it wouldn't be very convenient to use with a phone anyway. First, the phone's screen has to stay on, otherwise the glasses won't display anything. Second, you can't interact with the phone through the glasses, so you have to look at the phone itself.
But I found a great option to use the glasses with. I have a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 — a pocketable retro console that runs Android and supports video output. Unlike a regular phone, it automatically turns off its built‑in display when a second screen is connected. It also has physical controls, so I don't need to use a touchscreen. The Android UI isn't perfect for a gamepad, but it works. Streaming to it also works great because, even though the screen is disabled, the touch input still works — so it basically becomes a touchpad. Since the device is a clamshell, I sometimes use an 8BitDo Micro as an input device to avoid opening it, which is especially convenient for quickly pausing videos. This gamepad can also act as a keyboard via a special switch on it, so it works nicely when I stream from my PC too.
I also have a Steam Deck, but there's not much to add — it just works without any issue.
The glasses also have built-in speakers. I like their design: you don't put anything inside your ears — the speakers are integrated into the frame near where your ears are, so they kind of "whisper" to you. Others can hear them only at high volume. This affects the sound quality, so music doesn't sound as good as on quality headphones, but I think it's a worthy compromise. And it's still possible to wear regular headphones with the glasses.
They also have a shortcut button on the frame. I assigned screen off on regular press and ultra-wide mode on hold.
The firmware is proprietary, but it doesn't use the internet. And what I liked is that updates are installed through a web browser. However, it has to be a Chromium‑based browser on Windows or Mac. Luckily, I have a dual‑boot, so I rebooted to update the firmware. The update added support for 16:9, so it looks like it's not just for bug fixes.
The glasses can be equipped with prescription lenses, but I wear contact lenses and those work as well.
They also have a camera add‑on called Xreal Eye. It's a small camera that unlocks 6 DoF tracking and can also take photos and record videos. The media is stored directly on the glasses, which have 2GB of space, and can later be transferred to a phone or PC over a cable. I haven't bought it yet, but I'm considering it since I'm interested in having 6 DoF.
Conclusion
I love these glasses, it's easily my favorite portable option. It's a huge screen I can take anywhere with me and put where I want. I don't mind that it's only 1080p, none of my portable devices can fully handle 4k anyway.
Since they are better then my current monitor, I use them with my PC too. But I don't think it's a proper replacement. If you don't need portability, regular screen will be better and cheaper.
I have quite an old LCD monitor and wanted to buy a new one for quite some time. But I was planning to travel and wouldn't be able to bring the monitor with me. Then a friend of mine shared an article with an intriguing title: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses.
I had never heard of AR glasses before. Turns out they're basically a "dumb" monitor with a USB‑C connection, but the image is projected into your eyes, so it looks like it's floating. No additional software is required, and I can take it anywhere with me. So I decided to order one. The same friend later asked me for a review, but I decided to post it here and just share the link - maybe someone else will also find it useful.
Impressions
I went for the Xreal One. They are quite pricy, but I wanted to try something cutting-edge. There's also a Pro version, but according to this review on Reddit and review on YouTube, it has several drawbacks - mainly reduced sharpness, which is important for coding.
The glasses aren't as comfortable as regular sunglasses — they're a little bit heavier, but I got used to them. They also generate quite a bit of heat on the top part of the frame. It can cause slight discomfort when it touches face, but I've gotten used to wearing them properly to avoid that.
They have three levels of electrochromatic dimming (the lenses physically get darker). On the lowest setting (disabled), it's not fully transparent — more like a sunglasses with a slight dimming. At the maximum level, it's extremely dark; even in a well‑lit room I can't see what's on the edges. With dimming disabled, it looks the coolest — like an actual floating screen with a bit of transparency. But the darkening is useful for a more immersive experience since it removes that transparency. They also have "Auto transparency" option that automatically disables dimming when you turn your head away from the screen. Also, the brighter the room is, the more noticeable the reflection on the bottom of the glasses due to the lens's prism design. It's not an issue with the Pro version, but I didn't find it distracting at all, even in a well-lit room.
The screen is great. From video reviews, I was a bit worried that the colors would look like from a projector, but it's just impossible to capture this properly on camera. In reality, the colors are nice. They also allow you to configure the color temperature, and I found the coldest setting the most comfortable. The picture isn't very sharp — there's a bit of motion blur when I move my head around, and thin red or pink text on a black background looks slightly off. I think it's a limitation of the technology, plus the screen is only 1080p. But it's not as bad as it sounds — I can still use it comfortably for coding.
By default, the screen is 16:9 with 120Hz, but you can switch to 32:9 or 21:9 with 60Hz. I use 16:9 for gaming and 32:9 for productivity — 32:9 is so large, it's like two monitors glued together. I usually keep my browser on one side and something else on the other. I also love playing retro games, and I can say that 4:3 content looks great. Since the screen is OLED, the black pixels don't emit any light, so the letterboxes fully transparent.
However, it's not the same as having an actual ultra‑wide monitor. The screen doesn't fill the entire surface of the glasses — that's what the FOV is about. On my model, it's 50 degrees, which is quite large. But in ultra‑wide mode, I still have to rotate my head to see the other half of the screen. So there's no peripheral vision like there would be on an actual ultra‑wide monitor. Also, other people can't see what you're seeing, even if they're close — which can be both a good and a bad thing.
You can also configure how far the screen appears — anywhere from 1m to 10m — and its size in inches. There are five size levels, and the values depend on the selected distance and whether ultra‑wide mode is enabled. I usually use 1m for productivity and 4m for gaming and multimedia. My preferred size is the "middle" (third) level, which is designed to fit the entire screen without me needing to rotate my head (except when ultra‑wide mode is enabled). For 1m these sizes are 35″ for 16:9 and 64″ for 32:9; at 4m they're 140″ and 255″ respectively. The large screen feels very immersive — it's like being in a cinema.
The glasses also have three view modes: - Anchor. I can rotate my head freely and The screen stays fixed in space. However, if I walk around, the screen moves with me (which is what 3 DoF means). This is the mode I use most of the time. - Follow. The screen rotates along with your head. I don't use this mode much. - Side view. Similar to Follow, but the screen is positioned in the corner. I use it when I'm doing chores and want to watch something. They also have a stabilizer enabled by default, which smooths the screen movement when you move your head.
To use the glasses, you need a USB‑C video output. My motherboard supports it, but to enable it I had to connect my video card to the motherboard via DisplayPort. I never heard about a connection like this before, but it's from my motherboard manual. It does make sense, though — the GPU provides the video output, and the motherboard wouldn't know about it otherwise. Software‑wise, it works out of the box with my KDE Plasma setup on Arch Linux. The only issue I'm noticing is some small visual glitches for the first few seconds after connecting. On PC I use it together with my regular monitor. The mentioned "Auto transparency" pairs nicely with it. However, it's not perfect, since I'm still looking at the second screen through what's basically a pair of light sunglasses. So I usually don't put anything important on it.
As for phones, neither mine nor my wife's supports video output. But from reviews, I think it wouldn't be very convenient to use with a phone anyway. First, the phone's screen has to stay on, otherwise the glasses won't display anything. Second, you can't interact with the phone through the glasses, so you have to look at the phone itself.
But I found a great option to use the glasses with. I have a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 — a pocketable retro console that runs Android and supports video output. Unlike a regular phone, it automatically turns off its built‑in display when a second screen is connected. It also has physical controls, so I don't need to use a touchscreen. The Android UI isn't perfect for a gamepad, but it works. Streaming to it also works great because, even though the screen is disabled, the touch input still works — so it basically becomes a touchpad. Since the device is a clamshell, I sometimes use an 8BitDo Micro as an input device to avoid opening it, which is especially convenient for quickly pausing videos. This gamepad can also act as a keyboard via a special switch on it, so it works nicely when I stream from my PC too.
I also have a Steam Deck, but there's not much to add — it just works without any issue.
The glasses also have built-in speakers. I like their design: you don't put anything inside your ears — the speakers are integrated into the frame near where your ears are, so they kind of "whisper" to you. Others can hear them only at high volume. This affects the sound quality, so music doesn't sound as good as on quality headphones, but I think it's a worthy compromise. And it's still possible to wear regular headphones with the glasses.
They also have a shortcut button on the frame. I assigned screen off on regular press and ultra-wide mode on hold.
The firmware is proprietary, but it doesn't use the internet. And what I liked is that updates are installed through a web browser. However, it has to be a Chromium‑based browser on Windows or Mac. Luckily, I have a dual‑boot, so I rebooted to update the firmware. The update added support for 16:9, so it looks like it's not just for bug fixes.
The glasses can be equipped with prescription lenses, but I wear contact lenses and those work as well.
They also have a camera add‑on called Xreal Eye. It's a small camera that unlocks 6 DoF tracking and can also take photos and record videos. The media is stored directly on the glasses, which have 2GB of space, and can later be transferred to a phone or PC over a cable. I haven't bought it yet, but I'm considering it since I'm interested in having 6 DoF.
Conclusion
I love these glasses, it's easily my favorite portable option. It's a huge screen I can take anywhere with me. I don't mind that it's only 1080p, none of my portable devices can fully handle 4k anyway.
Since they are better then my current monitor, I use them with my PC too. But I don't think it's a proper replacement. If you don't need portability, regular screen will be better and cheaper.
I have quite an old LCD monitor and wanted to buy a new one for quite some time. But I was planning to travel and wouldn't be able to bring the monitor with me. Then a friend of mine shared an article with an intriguing title: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses.
I had never heard of AR glasses before. Turns out they're basically a "dumb" monitor with a USB‑C connection, but the image is projected into your eyes, so it looks like it's floating. No additional software is required, and I can take it anywhere with me. So I decided to order one. The same friend later asked me for a review, but I decided to post it here and just share the link - maybe someone else will also find it useful.
Impressions
I went for the Xreal One. They are quite pricy, but I wanted to try something cutting-edge. There's also a Pro version, but according to this review on Reddit and review on YouTube, it has several drawbacks - mainly reduced sharpness, which is important for coding.
The glasses aren't as comfortable as regular sunglasses — they're a little bit heavier, but I got used to them. They also generate quite a bit of heat on the top part of the frame. It can cause slight discomfort when it touches face, but I've gotten used to wearing them properly to avoid that. I can wear them for quite a long time, but I wouldn't use them for 100% of my screen time.
They have three levels of electrochromatic dimming (the lenses physically get darker). On the lowest setting (disabled), it's not fully transparent — more like a sunglasses with a slight dimming. At the maximum level, it's extremely dark; even in a well‑lit room I can't see what's on the edges. With dimming disabled, it looks the coolest — like an actual floating screen with a bit of transparency. But the darkening is useful for a more immersive experience since it removes that transparency. They also have "Auto transparency" option that automatically disables dimming when you turn your head away from the screen. Also, the brighter the room is, the more noticeable the reflection on the bottom of the glasses due to the lens's prism design. It's not an issue with the Pro version, but I didn't find it distracting at all, even in a well-lit room.
The screen is great. From video reviews, I was a bit worried that the colors would look like from a projector, but it's just impossible to capture this properly on camera. In reality, the colors are nice. They also allow you to configure the color temperature, and I found the coldest setting the most comfortable. The picture isn't very sharp — there's a bit of motion blur when I move my head around, and thin red or pink text on a black background looks slightly off. I think it's a limitation of the technology, plus the screen is only 1080p. But it's not as bad as it sounds — I can still use it comfortably for coding.
By default, the screen is 16:9 with 120Hz, but you can switch to 32:9 or 21:9 with 60Hz. I use 16:9 for gaming and 32:9 for productivity — 32:9 is so large, it's like two monitors glued together. I usually keep my browser on one side and something else on the other. I also love playing retro games, and I can say that 4:3 content looks great. Since the screen is OLED, the black pixels don't emit any light, so the letterboxes fully transparent.
However, it's not the same as having an actual ultra‑wide monitor. The screen doesn't fill the entire surface of the glasses — that's what the FOV is about. On my model, it's 50 degrees, which is quite large. But in ultra‑wide mode, I still have to rotate my head to see the other half of the screen. So there's no peripheral vision like there would be on an actual ultra‑wide monitor. Also, other people can't see what you're seeing, even if they're close — which can be both a good and a bad thing.
You can also configure how far the screen appears — anywhere from 1m to 10m — and its size in inches. There are five size levels, and the values depend on the selected distance and whether ultra‑wide mode is enabled. I usually use 1m for productivity and 4m for gaming and multimedia. My preferred size is the "middle" (third) level, which is designed to fit the entire screen without me needing to rotate my head (except when ultra‑wide mode is enabled). For 1m these sizes are 35″ for 16:9 and 64″ for 32:9; at 4m they're 140″ and 255″ respectively. The large screen feels very immersive — it's like being in a cinema.
The glasses also have three view modes: - Anchor. I can rotate my head freely and The screen stays fixed in space. However, if I walk around, the screen moves with me (which is what 3 DoF means). This is the mode I use most of the time. - Follow. The screen rotates along with your head. I don't use this mode much. - Side view. Similar to Follow, but the screen is positioned in the corner. I use it when I'm doing chores and want to watch something. They also have a stabilizer enabled by default, which smooths the screen movement when you move your head.
To use the glasses, you need a USB‑C video output. My motherboard supports it, but to enable it I had to connect my video card to the motherboard via DisplayPort. I never heard about a connection like this before, but it's from my motherboard manual. It does make sense, though — the GPU provides the video output, and the motherboard wouldn't know about it otherwise. Software‑wise, it works out of the box with my KDE Plasma setup on Arch Linux. The only issue I'm noticing is some small visual glitches for the first few seconds after connecting. On PC I use it together with my regular monitor. The mentioned "Auto transparency" pairs nicely with it. However, it's not perfect, since I'm still looking at the second screen through what's basically a pair of light sunglasses. So I usually don't put anything important on it.
As for phones, neither mine nor my wife's supports video output. But from reviews, I think it wouldn't be very convenient to use with a phone anyway. First, the phone's screen has to stay on, otherwise the glasses won't display anything. Second, you can't interact with the phone through the glasses, so you have to look at the phone itself.
But I found a great option to use the glasses with. I have a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 — a pocketable retro console that runs Android and supports video output. Unlike a regular phone, it automatically turns off its built‑in display when a second screen is connected. It also has physical controls, so I don't need to use a touchscreen. The Android UI isn't perfect for a gamepad, but it works. Streaming to it also works great because, even though the screen is disabled, the touch input still works — so it basically becomes a touchpad. Since the device is a clamshell, I sometimes use an 8BitDo Micro as an input device to avoid opening it, which is especially convenient for quickly pausing videos. This gamepad can also act as a keyboard via a special switch on it, so it works nicely when I stream from my PC too.
I also have a Steam Deck, but there's not much to add — it just works without any issue.
The glasses also have built-in speakers. I like their design: you don't put anything inside your ears — the speakers are integrated into the frame near where your ears are, so they kind of "whisper" to you. Others can hear them only at high volume. This affects the sound quality, so music doesn't sound as good as on quality headphones, but I think it's a worthy compromise. And it's still possible to wear regular headphones with the glasses.
They also have a shortcut button on the frame. I assigned screen off on regular press and ultra-wide mode on hold.
The firmware is proprietary, but it doesn't use the internet. And what I liked is that updates are installed through a web browser. However, it has to be a Chromium‑based browser on Windows or Mac. Luckily, I have a dual‑boot, so I rebooted to update the firmware. The update added support for 16:9, so it looks like it's not just for bug fixes.
The glasses can be equipped with prescription lenses, but I wear contact lenses and those work as well.
They also have a camera add‑on called Xreal Eye. It's a small camera that unlocks 6 DoF tracking and can also take photos and record videos. The media is stored directly on the glasses, which have 2GB of space, and can later be transferred to a phone or PC over a cable. I haven't bought it yet, but I'm considering it since I'm interested in having 6 DoF.
Conclusion
I love these glasses, it's easily my favorite portable option. It's a huge screen I can take anywhere with me and put where I want. I don't mind that it's only 1080p, none of my portable devices can fully handle 4k anyway.
Since they are better then my current monitor, I use them with my PC too. But I don't think it's a proper replacement. If you don't need portability, regular screen will be better and cheaper.
I have quite an old LCD monitor and wanted to buy a new one for quite some time. But I was planning to travel and wouldn't be able to bring the monitor with me. Then a friend of mine shared an article with an intriguing title: I ditched my laptop for a pocketable mini PC and a pair of AR glasses.
I had never heard of AR glasses before. Turns out they're basically a "dumb" monitor with a USB‑C connection, but the image is projected into your eyes, so it looks like it's floating. No additional software is required, and I can take it anywhere with me. So I decided to order one. The same friend later asked me for a review, but I decided to post it here and just share the link - maybe someone else will also find it useful.
Impressions
I went for the Xreal One. They are quite pricy, but I wanted to try something cutting-edge. There's also a Pro version, but according to this review on Reddit and review on YouTube, it has several drawbacks - mainly reduced sharpness, which is important for coding.
The glasses aren't as comfortable as regular sunglasses — they're a little bit heavier, but I got used to them. They also generate quite a bit of heat on the top part of the frame. It can cause slight discomfort when it touches face, but I've gotten used to wearing them properly to avoid that. I can wear them for quite a long time, but I wouldn't use them for 100% of my screen time.
They have three levels of electrochromatic dimming (the lenses physically get darker). On the lowest setting (disabled), it's not fully transparent — more like a sunglasses with a slight dimming. At the maximum level, it's extremely dark; even in a well‑lit room I can't see what's on the edges. With dimming disabled, it looks the coolest — like an actual floating screen with a bit of transparency. But the darkening is useful for a more immersive experience since it removes that transparency. They also have "Auto transparency" option that automatically disables dimming when you turn your head away from the screen. Also, the brighter the room is, the more noticeable the reflection on the bottom of the glasses due to the lens's prism design. It's not an issue with the Pro version, but I didn't find it distracting at all, even in a well-lit room.
The screen is great. From video reviews, I was a bit worried that the colors would look like from a projector, but it's just impossible to capture this properly on camera. In reality, the colors are nice. They also allow you to configure the color temperature, and I found the coldest setting the most comfortable. The picture isn't very sharp — there's a bit of motion blur when I move my head around, and thin red or pink text on a black background looks slightly off. I think it's a limitation of the technology, plus the screen is only 1080p. But it's not as bad as it sounds — I can still use it comfortably for coding.
By default, the screen is 16:9 with 120Hz, but you can switch to 32:9 or 21:9 with 60Hz. I use 16:9 for gaming and 32:9 for productivity — 32:9 is so large, it's like two monitors glued together. I usually keep my browser on one side and something else on the other. I also love playing retro games, and I can say that 4:3 content looks great. Since the screen is OLED, the black pixels don't emit any light, so the letterboxes fully transparent.
However, it's not the same as having an actual ultra‑wide monitor. The screen doesn't fill the entire surface of the glasses — that's what the FOV is about. On my model, it's 50 degrees, which is quite large. But in ultra‑wide mode, I still have to rotate my head to see the other half of the screen. So there's no peripheral vision like there would be on an actual ultra‑wide monitor. Also, other people can't see what you're seeing, even if they're close — which can be both a good and a bad thing.
You can also configure how far the screen appears — anywhere from 1m to 10m — and its size in inches. There are five size levels, and the values depend on the selected distance and whether ultra‑wide mode is enabled. I usually use 1m for productivity and 4m for gaming and multimedia. My preferred size is the "middle" (third) level, which is designed to fit the entire screen without me needing to rotate my head (except when ultra‑wide mode is enabled). For 1m these sizes are 35″ for 16:9 and 64″ for 32:9; at 4m they're 140″ and 255″ respectively. The large screen feels very immersive — it's like being in a cinema.
The glasses also have three view modes: - Anchor. I can rotate my head freely and The screen stays fixed in space. However, if I walk around, the screen moves with me (which is what 3 DoF means). This is the mode I use most of the time. - Follow. The screen rotates along with your head. I don't use this mode much. - Side view. Similar to Follow, but the screen is positioned in the corner. I use it when I'm doing chores and want to watch something. They also have a stabilizer enabled by default, which smooths the screen movement when you move your head.
To use the glasses, you need a USB‑C video output. My motherboard supports it, but to enable it I had to connect my video card to the motherboard via DisplayPort. I never heard about a connection like this before, but it's from my motherboard manual. It does make sense, though — the GPU provides the video output, and the motherboard wouldn't know about it otherwise. Software‑wise, it works out of the box with my KDE Plasma setup on Arch Linux. The only issue I'm noticing is some small visual glitches for the first few seconds after connecting. On PC I use it together with my regular monitor. The mentioned "Auto transparency" pairs nicely with it. However, it's not perfect, since I'm still looking at the second screen through what's basically a pair of light sunglasses. So I usually don't put anything important on it.
As for phones, neither mine nor my wife's supports video output. But from reviews, I think it wouldn't be very convenient to use with a phone anyway. First, the phone's screen has to stay on, otherwise the glasses won't display anything. Second, you can't interact with the phone through the glasses, so you have to look at the phone itself.
But I found a great option to use the glasses with. I have a Retroid Pocket Flip 2 — a pocketable retro console that runs Android and supports video output. Unlike a regular phone, it automatically turns off its built‑in display when a second screen is connected. It also has physical controls, so I don't need to use a touchscreen. The Android UI isn't perfect for a gamepad, but it works. Streaming to it also works great because, even though the screen is disabled, the touch input still works — so it basically becomes a touchpad. Since the device is a clamshell, I sometimes use an 8BitDo Micro as an input device to avoid opening it, which is especially convenient for quickly pausing videos. This gamepad can also act as a keyboard via a special switch on it, so it works nicely when I stream from my PC too.
I also have a Steam Deck, but there's not much to add — it just works without any issue.
The glasses also have built-in speakers. I like their design: you don't put anything inside your ears — the speakers are integrated into the frame near where your ears are, so they kind of "whisper" to you. Others can hear them only at high volume. This affects the sound quality, so music doesn't sound as good as on quality headphones, but I think it's a worthy compromise. And it's still possible to wear regular headphones with the glasses.
They also have a shortcut button on the frame. I assigned screen off on regular press and ultra-wide mode on hold.
The firmware is proprietary, but it doesn't use the internet. And what I liked is that updates are installed through a web browser. However, it has to be a Chromium‑based browser on Windows or Mac. Luckily, I have a dual‑boot, so I rebooted to update the firmware. The update added support for 16:9, so it looks like it's not just for bug fixes.
The glasses can be equipped with prescription lenses, but I wear contact lenses and those work as well.
They also have a camera add‑on called Xreal Eye. It's a small camera that unlocks 6 DoF tracking and can also take photos and record videos. The media is stored directly on the glasses, which have 2GB of space, and can later be transferred to a phone or PC over a cable. I haven't bought it yet, but I'm considering it since I'm interested in having 6 DoF.
Conclusion
I love these glasses, it's easily my favorite portable option. It's a huge screen I can take anywhere with me and put where I want. I don't mind that it's only 1080p, none of my portable devices can fully handle 4k anyway.
Since they are better then my current monitor, I use them with my PC too. But I don't think it's a proper replacement. If you don't need portability, regular screen will be better and cheaper.
Nice review, thanks for posting. 1080p sounds low for something that close to your eyes. Between the weight, heat, and the forced attention ( when traveling especially, I like aimlessly looking up from screen to see what's around me, especially if working outside), I think I'd happily sacrifice the big screen for my little lightweight Lenovo nano. Would love to try these though.
how do you change its settings, like the aspect ratio, the dimming or the distance?
They have an OSD like in a regular monitor. You press the mode switch button twice to bring it and navigate using the +- brigness buttons. For dimming you hold the brightness rocker to start adjusting the dimming. For everything else there is an OSD menu like in a regular monitor. You bring it by double pressing the switch button and navigate with the brightness buttons.
how does it know where is forward in anchor mode? if you are sitting in a vehicle that is turning, can you keep it using as if nothing has happened?
It's only 3 DoF without the eye add-on, so when you move, the monitor moves with you.
how do you do chores with it? I mean, what do you connect it to, and where do you place it so that it’s not in the way?
I just connect it to my Retroid Pocket Flip and put it into my pocket. Then I just enable side mode in the glasses, so it displays the image in the corner. And use my 8BitDo to navigate in the device.
what do you do to not get tangled in the cable, and to not get stuck on something?
The default cable is just very short 😀 It's a distance from the glasses to my pocket with about extra 15-20 cm.
The investigation follows two January complaints that alleged the X algorithm had been used for foreign interference in French politics. The social media company last week denied the allegations, calling them 'politically motivated.'
That Musk illustration originated here on Lemmy! I wish I could find the original post, but it was an art student who submitted it for something, and posted here for feedback.
While this is "nice", I guess, I also can't fathom how naive this generally seems.
X is a proprietary black box and X or L.Ron Musk can change the algorithm literally at will, what they show which persons and when and when not. There is NO time ever where users have have any control over it, and to perform a statistical analysis on an online service blackbox is also kind of pointless because the blackbox can change randomly, at any point in time, possibly right after the analysis has concluded, or right before. I mean it's not like the blackbox is in your hands so that you can actually study inputs/outputs and get consistent results. Every time you visit any X URL, there's potentially a fresh blackbox version deployed to you (you don't know and you can't know). That makes it rather pointless IMHO. And it's just as pointless to believe what X claims about these issues. Of course they'll always claim that they don't manipulate. And you can never prove or disprove it, because of a complete lack of control over it from the user's end. So they can do what they want, as long as they do it sneakily enough that no one notices.
For example if this study comes to the conclusion that there was no manipulation during the time of the study, that's meaningless because it could have happened before and it could happen afterwards. If it comes to the conclusion that there was manipulation at a certain time, then X can always claim that they've already "fixed" the issue and then it's again a new black box and no one knows when the next manipulation is being activated.
The ONLY solution to this is to ONLY use open source platforms where not a single company or host is able to do what they want with the complete service. Or in other words, the only solution is to avoid X and other proprietary social media platforms like the plague that they are. Because communication should not be controlled by any big company.
A California-based company with ties to billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel announced plans Friday to build America’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed facility to enrich uranium in far western Kentucky.
Iran's disinformation operations have drawn attention, but their presence on the Balkans remains out of focus while not without the potential for harm.
Ormai ci sono tantissime marche e sono veramente squisiti, oltre che la maggior parte sono #biologici come #formaggi #vegan e anche artigianali.
La mia marca preferita fin'ora è #Pangea che produce il #Gondino che se me lo ritrovo davanti lo mangio a mor
Ormai ci sono tantissime marche e sono veramente squisiti, oltre che la maggior parte sono #biologici come #formaggi #vegan e anche artigianali.
La mia marca preferita fin'ora è #Pangea che produce il #Gondino che se me lo ritrovo davanti lo mangio a morsi ahah :joy:
P.S. Lo uso anche per la #Carbonara veg :call_me_hand:
In caso ti saprò dire a breve su questo naturasi.it/prodotti/tofu-alla… o questo naturasi.it/prodotti/filettini… della Taifun perché volevo acquistarli proprio questa settimana per provarli al posto della Philadelphia perché hanno dei valori nutrizionali decisamente più adatti ai miei ultimi esami del sangue quindi volevo provarli e assaggiarli!
skariko mai provati ma il tofu no per il formaggio vegan ahah hai proprio da provarne alcuni per rimanerne stupito! Tu a cosa eri allergico/intollerante?
MAD7 ha detto in Quali formaggi vegan conoscete? 🧀: > skariko mai provati ma il tofu no per il formaggio vegan ahah hai proprio da provarne alcuni per rimanerne stupito! Tu a cosa eri allergico/intollerante?
facciamo prima a dire a cosa non sono allergico 🤣 con cosa sono fatti generalmente i formaggi vegan? Perché da qualche parte li ho visti con le mandorle ma purtroppo non posso mangiarle. In generale invece seitan (glutine), tofu (soia) etc non ho problemi.
skariko mai provati ma il tofu no per il formaggio vegan ahah hai proprio da provarne alcuni per rimanerne stupito! Tu a cosa eri allergico/intollerante?
MAD7 se ho capito bene tu sei delle parti di Roma, ma ci sono catene nazionali (o almeno che arrivino qui nel lontano nord) che vendono questi tipi di formaggi? Perché io trovo qualcosina solo da Naturasì (e non ha nemmeno tantissimo) ma non conosco altri negozi dove poterli cercare...
Che tu sappia, di cosa è fatto un formaggio vegan? Se non c'è il latte vaccino, forse useranno un latte vegetale...
Posso chiederti il perché della scelta di non mangiare formaggio tradizionale? Oppure 'anche' tradizionale, cioè di essere onnivoro...
Ciao...
Ps: capisco, ripensandoci, che tu ti riferisca alla questione dello sfruttamento animale. Io stavo pensando più al prodotto in sé che non a questo fatto.
Jonat ha detto in Quali formaggi vegan conoscete? 🧀: > Che tu sappia, di cosa è fatto un formaggio vegan? > Se non c'è il latte vaccino, forse useranno un latte vegetale...
Ciao :relaxed:
Hai fatto tutte ottime domande e ti rispondo con piacere dato che son anche interessanti :blush: I formaggi vengono fatti con la lavorazione di materie prime come frutta secca fino a crearne un latte vegetale che poi viene trasformato in formaggio. Non conosco tutto il processo ma per esempio la prima formaggeria vegan di Roma, con il suo negozio fisico, condivide spesso sui social video di come fanno i loro formaggi artigianali e pure biologici (che adoro! :grimacing: ) loro si chiamano Fermaggio .
Che tu sappia, di cosa è fatto un formaggio vegan? Se non c'è il latte vaccino, forse useranno un latte vegetale...
Posso chiederti il perché della scelta di non mangiare formaggio tradizionale? Oppure 'anche' tradizionale, cioè di essere onnivoro...
Ciao...
Ps: capisco, ripensandoci, che tu ti riferisca alla questione dello sfruttamento animale. Io stavo pensando più al prodotto in sé che non a questo fatto.
Jonat ha detto in Quali formaggi vegan conoscete? 🧀: > Posso chiederti il perché della scelta di non mangiare formaggio tradizionale? > Oppure 'anche' tradizionale, cioè di essere onnivoro...
Anche questa è una bella domanda.
Per tanti motivi e cioè:
1) Etica, lo sfruttamento animale come di ogni essere vivente è contro il mio approccio di vita antispecista;
2) Il formaggio tradizionale in realtà fa molto male e uno studio recente di un'università (se lo ritrovo te lo invio) ha identificato il motivo del consumo delle ossa con annesse malattie e cioè una proteina che si trova nel latte animale che va a causare osteoporosi e tanto altro... Ma essendoci dietro un business di miliardi non la divulgano come notizia fondamentale per prevenire le malattie alle persone;
3) Impatto ambientale, la produzione di latte crea allevamenti intensivi che hanno un gravissimo impatto sull'ambiente;
4) Le condizioni di salute di quei animali è drastica e il loro latte contiene pus e tantissimi antibiotici per tenerli in vita quindi di conseguenza preferisco evitare di alimentare il mio corpo con ciò dato che è l'unico corpo che ho;
5) Il latte è fatto solo per le mamme per i loro cuccioli e me ne nutrirei e mangerei formaggio da latte animale se l'animale fosse cresciuto e vissuto in totale libertà senza alcun abuso e il latte gli fosse stato prelevato per una salvaguardia di salute dell'animale come per esempio la mastite, e che ciò ovviamente eviti di privare del latte ad altri cuccioli. Allora in quel caso si perché sarebbe un bene che andrebbe sprecato.
6) Trovo il latte vegetale, biologico e senza zuccheri aggiunti, come anche il formaggio vegan buonissimo! Anzi io adoravo i formaggi e ritrovarli vegan, sani, etici, bio ecc. ecc. mi da gratificazione sia quando li mangio ma anche quando supporto aziende etiche.
Che tu sappia, di cosa è fatto un formaggio vegan? Se non c'è il latte vaccino, forse useranno un latte vegetale...
Posso chiederti il perché della scelta di non mangiare formaggio tradizionale? Oppure 'anche' tradizionale, cioè di essere onnivoro...
Ciao...
Ps: capisco, ripensandoci, che tu ti riferisca alla questione dello sfruttamento animale. Io stavo pensando più al prodotto in sé che non a questo fatto.
Io sono stato per diversi anni in Trentino e ricordo queste mucche che passavano la giornata sdraiate sull'erba del pascolo a guardare noi turisti che passavamo. Poi la sera se ne tornavano nella stalla e la mattina dopo erano di nuovo al pascolo a guardarci.
Ecco, il latte di animali così, perché no? Mi riferisco solo al punto 1, gli altri punti sono molto più complicati per me.
Citiverse, la città dei social liberi, è l'alternativa aperta e italiana ai gruppi di Facebook dove è possibile parlare con persone della tua città o della tua tua organizzazione.
Io bevo da anni 'latte di riso' ma lo alterno al latte vaccino intero, quello parzialmente scremato non mi piace. Io non sono vegano, mangio un pò di tutto, anche se condivido il principio per cui se un animale da allevamento fosse trattato con dignità, i prodotti che derivano da lui sarebbero migliori.
Ci sono tanti tipi di formaggi, alcuni di fanno il formaggio in casa, quindi la questione della sua genuinità cambia a seconda di dove provenga il prodotto, se da un supermercato o da qualcun'altro. Un pò come i pomodori di un orto personale, senza sostanze chimiche.
Inoltre è da considerare la quantità. Per quanto uno cerchi di proteggersi, lo scorrere del tempo avviene comunque, la vecchiaia, la malattia e la morte, quindi trovo più giusto, almeno per me, ritagliarmi un momento di piacere con un alimento che mi piace e che, senza abuso, non aiuta più di tanto i principi contrari alla salute.
Se uno potesse, dovrebbe fare i suoi acquisti direttamente da quelle persone che, avendo scelto di tornare a vivere in campagna, fanno molto da sé fuori da ogni logica di profitto, solo per il gusto di fare cose buone e in modo indipendente.
Ciao :blush: spesso c'è tanta mancanza di informazione e lo capisco perché il marketing di queste grandi aziende ha distorto la visione e mai ci potrebbero essere esseri viventi da allevamento trattati con dignità... Pensa solo al fatto che per fare il latte devono esser mamme e vengono ingravidate artificialmente, il latte sottratto, i cuccioli rubati e l'animale emotivamente e fisicamente è distrutto perché sono mammiferi come noi... Capisco ciò che dici ma allo stesso tempo mi piace anche poco raccontare la verità che c'è dietro, un po' come per l'etica digitale quando ti dicono che google, amazon, meta e compagnia bella non sono il male :lying_face:
Io bevo da anni 'latte di riso' ma lo alterno al latte vaccino intero, quello parzialmente scremato non mi piace. Io non sono vegano, mangio un pò di tutto, anche se condivido il principio per cui se un animale da allevamento fosse trattato con dignità, i prodotti che derivano da lui sarebbero migliori.
Ci sono tanti tipi di formaggi, alcuni di fanno il formaggio in casa, quindi la questione della sua genuinità cambia a seconda di dove provenga il prodotto, se da un supermercato o da qualcun'altro. Un pò come i pomodori di un orto personale, senza sostanze chimiche.
Inoltre è da considerare la quantità. Per quanto uno cerchi di proteggersi, lo scorrere del tempo avviene comunque, la vecchiaia, la malattia e la morte, quindi trovo più giusto, almeno per me, ritagliarmi un momento di piacere con un alimento che mi piace e che, senza abuso, non aiuta più di tanto i principi contrari alla salute.
Se uno potesse, dovrebbe fare i suoi acquisti direttamente da quelle persone che, avendo scelto di tornare a vivere in campagna, fanno molto da sé fuori da ogni logica di profitto, solo per il gusto di fare cose buone e in modo indipendente.
Jonat ha detto in Quali formaggi vegan conoscete? 🧀: > Ci sono tanti tipi di formaggi, alcuni di fanno il formaggio in casa, quindi la questione della sua genuinità cambia a seconda di dove provenga il prodotto, se da un supermercato o da qualcun'altro. Un pò come i pomodori di un orto personale, senza sostanze chimiche.
Sui formaggi solito discorso, sicuramente quelli artigianali è differente ma valli a trovare i pascoli all'aperto, son rarissimi... Comunque io rimango per le alternative in cui alcun essere vivente è stato sfruttato e/o abusato in nessun modo e già questo porta un'apertura importante, o almeno a me ha cambiato il modo di vedere la vita in generale migliorandomela :blush:
Io bevo da anni 'latte di riso' ma lo alterno al latte vaccino intero, quello parzialmente scremato non mi piace. Io non sono vegano, mangio un pò di tutto, anche se condivido il principio per cui se un animale da allevamento fosse trattato con dignità, i prodotti che derivano da lui sarebbero migliori.
Ci sono tanti tipi di formaggi, alcuni di fanno il formaggio in casa, quindi la questione della sua genuinità cambia a seconda di dove provenga il prodotto, se da un supermercato o da qualcun'altro. Un pò come i pomodori di un orto personale, senza sostanze chimiche.
Inoltre è da considerare la quantità. Per quanto uno cerchi di proteggersi, lo scorrere del tempo avviene comunque, la vecchiaia, la malattia e la morte, quindi trovo più giusto, almeno per me, ritagliarmi un momento di piacere con un alimento che mi piace e che, senza abuso, non aiuta più di tanto i principi contrari alla salute.
Se uno potesse, dovrebbe fare i suoi acquisti direttamente da quelle persone che, avendo scelto di tornare a vivere in campagna, fanno molto da sé fuori da ogni logica di profitto, solo per il gusto di fare cose buone e in modo indipendente.
Jonat ha detto in Quali formaggi vegan conoscete? 🧀: > Se uno potesse, dovrebbe fare i suoi acquisti direttamente da quelle persone che, avendo scelto di tornare a vivere in campagna, fanno molto da sé fuori da ogni logica di profitto, solo per il gusto di fare cose buone e in modo indipendente.
Sicuramente è il male minore, capisco ciò che dici, ciao ciao :call_me_hand:
Io bevo da anni 'latte di riso' ma lo alterno al latte vaccino intero, quello parzialmente scremato non mi piace. Io non sono vegano, mangio un pò di tutto, anche se condivido il principio per cui se un animale da allevamento fosse trattato con dignità, i prodotti che derivano da lui sarebbero migliori.
Ci sono tanti tipi di formaggi, alcuni di fanno il formaggio in casa, quindi la questione della sua genuinità cambia a seconda di dove provenga il prodotto, se da un supermercato o da qualcun'altro. Un pò come i pomodori di un orto personale, senza sostanze chimiche.
Inoltre è da considerare la quantità. Per quanto uno cerchi di proteggersi, lo scorrere del tempo avviene comunque, la vecchiaia, la malattia e la morte, quindi trovo più giusto, almeno per me, ritagliarmi un momento di piacere con un alimento che mi piace e che, senza abuso, non aiuta più di tanto i principi contrari alla salute.
Se uno potesse, dovrebbe fare i suoi acquisti direttamente da quelle persone che, avendo scelto di tornare a vivere in campagna, fanno molto da sé fuori da ogni logica di profitto, solo per il gusto di fare cose buone e in modo indipendente.
martinligabue@tsukihi.me già sentito ma non ricordo se l'ho provato e si alcuni se ne approfittano del vegan, bio ecc. ecc. invece per fortuna altri no e rimangono onesti con prezzi se paragonati al kilo sono alla pari dei formaggi artigianali :blush:
Progetti passati e futuri, un’estate che si preannuncia indimenticabile, Moira Sorrisi, si racconta all'Ufficio Stampa Mp di Salvo de Vita.
Puoi farci un piccolo bilancio dei tuoi ultimi programmi: soddisfatta dei risultati? C’è qualcosa che porterai con te da questa esperienza?
Quest'anno un bilancio di successo perché sono stata al timone della conduzione di un nuovo programma televisivo su Canale 10 che si occupa di cucina e si chiama Sorrisi in Cucina e mi ha dato tante soddisfazioni perché ho avuto l'opportunità di girare tantissimi ristoranti, conoscere tanti chef, ma soprattutto conoscere un'ottima cucina, un programma che veramente mi ha preso il cuore e mi ha dato veramente tante soddisfazioni.
Ho avuto la fortuna di essere stata al fianco di Giovanni Ciacci in un nuovo programma che si chiama Pic Mag Show Nazionale in onda su Canale Italia e poi da quindici anni sempre al fianco di Carlo Senes però come opinionista a Punto e Virgola, in onda su Canale 10, infine sempre come opinionista per Lazio TV con L'occasione Giusta sempre al fianco di Tiziano Soddimo. Quindi è stato un anno ricco di tante sorprese, di emozioni e ricco di lavoro in cui abbiamo avuto anche l'opportunità di girare tanto d'Italia di andare tra serate eventi.
Cosa porto con me? porto con me la soddisfazione di arrivare al timone della conduzione di programmi televisivi, dopo anni e anni che faccio televisione, accompagnata da un bagaglio ricco, comunque, di soddisfazioni.
Programmi, vacanze, nuove sfide: cosa bolle in pentola per la tua estate 2025?
Abbiamo chiuso il palinsesto televisivo e siamo alle porte ormai dell'estate già aperta quindi ci saranno serate in giro per il Sud Italia dalla Calabria alla Sicilia e in più sarò sul palco di una nuova manifestazione che sarà realizzata nelle piazze del Sud Italia che si chiamerà “80 voglia di 90” dove io sarò la speaker e faremo ballare tanta gente nelle piazze, ovviamente l'organizzatore di tutto ciò è Marino Anzani Ciliberti nonché il mio manager.
Dopo l’estate, quali progetti hai in cantiere per l’autunno e l’inverno? Nuove trasmissioni, collaborazioni o sorprese in arrivo?
Dopo l'estate sarò nuovamente al timone della conduzione di Pic Mag Show insieme a Giovanni Ciacci e a Naomi, credo per tutta la stagione invernale, poi come opinionista di Punto e Virgola di Carlo Senes, il conduttore del programma, ed infine, verso l'autunno, dovrebbe partire un nuovo programma televisivo che condurrò io su Canale 10 che si chiamerà Smile, quindi, sicuramente metto nel cassetto l'esperienza fatta in Sorrisi in Cucina, per iniziare con questo programma nuovo che si chiamerà appunto, Smile, dove regaleremo un sorriso a tutte quelle persone che si vogliono regalare un giorno in un centro estetico, a chi un giorno si vuole regalare un'acconciatura un colore in un negozio di parrucchieri, a chi si vuole regalare una manicure un pedicure, a chi si vuole regalare una cena romantica, sarà un programma tutto nuovo dove, come ho già detto, regaleremo sorrisi alle persone.
Questi sono i programmi già assegnati e poi chissà, speriamo che sarà un anno ricco di sorprese e che comunque ci darà tante soddisfazioni.
Nel tempo, anche attraverso i social, il tuo personaggio pubblico ha acquisito nuove sfumature. Come valuti questa evoluzione e che ruolo hanno avuto le piattaforme digitali nella tua crescita personale e professionale?
Le piattaforme digitali ormai danno più successo della televisione e i social, lo dico sempre, saranno la televisione del futuro, dico questo perché vedo che, comunque, quando cammini per strada la gente ti riconosce più come personaggio tiktoker, che come personaggio televisivo e quindi, ovviamente, ci dedichiamo a queste piattaforme dove la gente ci nota di più. Su TikTok ci mettiamo in gioco e ci divertiamo tantissimo, perché tiriamo fuori l'ironia e nello stesso tempo, ci mettiamo una maschera, nascondiamo noi stessi e ci rendiamo ridicoli perché oggigiorno piace molto il trash..... la gente si fa due risate... e siamo più seguiti, mentre, se trattiamo argomenti sensibili, cambia subito pagina.
Per quanto riguarda Instagram o Facebook sono due piattaforme dove pubblichiamo tutto quello che è il nostro lavoro giornaliero e la pubblicità dei nostri programmi, dei miei programmi televisivi eccetera eccetera e a volte anche la nostra vita privata.
Dietro al personaggio pubblico si nasconde una persona umile che ama molto gli animali puoi raccontarci di più?
Un personaggio abbastanza umile, direi, questo grazie ai miei genitori mi hanno insegnato educazione, rispetto ed umiltà, dobbiamo sempre ricordare che noi siamo una lampadina, ma il faro che ci illumina è il pubblico, è la gente e quindi non bisogna mai montarsi la testa perché il lavoro che facciamo è un lavoro come tutti gli altri lavori, non c'è nulla di diverso l'unica differenza è che sei davanti alla telecamera e ti rende pubblico, ma per il resto è un lavoro come tanti perchè nessuno è nessuno e ogni lavoro va svolto con umiltà e professionalità, ma soprattutto sempre con il massimo rispetto.
Per quanto riguarda gli animali, li amo ne ho cinque anche se adesso sono diventati quattro perché da poco la piccola Sofia, che aveva quattordici anni, è venuta a mancare, è stato un dolore immenso, perché, i cani, alla fine fanno parte della nostra vita perché, dopo quattordici anni, al tuo fianco diventano come figli, quindi nel momento in cui vengono a mancare è un grande dolore, però ho la fortuna di poter ancora coccolare gli altri quattro pelosetti, Chanel, Asia, Eva e Luna.
Se l’amore fosse un colore, una melodia, un quadro… come lo descriveresti?
Allora l'amore, quello vero, quello bello, lo vedo un colore fucsia, un colore abbastanza acceso, ma ad oggi lo vedo di colore nero perché comunque, oggi come oggi ,trovare l'amore è veramente difficile, non è più l'amore dei nostri nonni o dei nostri genitori, perchè oggi la donna è indipendente..... l'uomo a volte si perde... e siamo sempre con questi cellulari in mano i quali creano sempre dei fili non connessi a livello sentimentale.... e quindi, oggi come oggi, l'amore lo vedo in questi colori. Sono attualmente e puntualizzo felicemente single, ma felicemente perché sto bene come sto, perché amo talmente me stessa che, al momento, al mio fianco non vorrei nessuno... però nello stesso tempo sono una persona, che se capita, ben venga, l'importante è che mi faccia sorridere più di quanto sorrido adesso. Se dovessi associarlo ad un quadro,invece, lo vedrei come un quadro di Picasso... bello per chi ci crede. Infine come melodia direi un brano di Serena Brancale perché mi piace tantissimo mette tanta allegria perché l'amore quando arriva, quando c'è, ed è vero, deve essere quella melodia che comunque ti diverte.
Articolo: Dott.ssa Mietto Elisa
Dirigente del servizio: Dott. Salvo De Vita
Supervisore e Resp. Pubblicazione: Ufficio Stampa e Produzioni MP
After two decades of sharing more online, it looks like we've decided to share less. New polling shows that nearly a third of all social media users post less than they did a year ago. That trend is especially true for adults in Gen Z.
BBC Special Correspondent Katty Kay and writer Kyle Chayka discuss the ways that social media is changing – and what that means for how we live our lives online.
La guerra infuria sotto i flutti, lontano dagli occhi umani che potrebbero tentare di giudicarla. Quietamente operosa, la colonia tende all’espansione in base a linee guida chiaramente definite dall’esperienza.
Dal 2 al 9 agosto torna a Vauda di Rocca Canavese la Sagra della Pesca Ripiena, evento molto atteso organizzato dall’associazione La Baraca, con il patrocinio della Città metropolitana di Torino. Immersa tra boschi e vigneti, Vauda è al centro dell’altipiano delle Vaude, tra le Valli di Lanzo e il Canavese, e richiama ogni anno migliaia di visitatori per la festa patronale.
Al centro della sagra c’è la pesca ripiena, cucinata secondo l’antica ricetta della nonna e cotta nel forno a legna. Lo stand gastronomico propone esclusivamente piatti tipici piemontesi: acciughe al verde, tomini, peperoni di Carmagnola, salame di turgia, agnolotti, fagioli con le cotiche nelle tofeje di Castellamonte, carni alla brace, salsiccia artigianale e Toma di Lanzo, accompagnati da vini locali come Barbera, Bonarda e Arneis. Un’occasione per riscoprire i sapori autentici della tradizione contadina.
Domenica 3 agosto, alle 16, si terrà la 10ª edizione del raduno di auto storiche, con esposizione, giro turistico e cena alla sagra.
Ma Vauda è anche sinonimo di musica e ballo. Ogni sera è prevista animazione con artisti di punta del liscio e non solo:
Sabato 2: Musicanti di Ceres + Federica Cocco
Domenica 3: orchestra Matteo Bensi
Lunedì 4: cabaret “Non si vede un Kansas” con Marco & Mauro
Martedì 5: orchestra I Rodigini
Mercoledì 6: Omar Codazzi
Giovedì 7: Francesca Mazzuccato
Venerdì 8: live show “Voglio tornare negli anni ’90”
Sabato 9: Cristina D’Avena chiude la festa
Aggiornamenti sul programma: facebook.com/sagradellapescaripiena.it Info e prenotazioni: info@sagradellapescaripiena.it | Tel. 335-1984892 – 345-2951674
Da sabato 2 a sabato 9 agosto 2025 a Vauda di Rocca Canavese torna la Sagra della Pesca Ripiena, organizzata dall’associazione La Baraca e patrocinata dalla Città metropolitana di Torino. Vauda di Rocca è al centro dell’altipiano delle Vaude, al...
Ieri mattina tardi (e ovviamente ne scrivo solo il giorno dopo, ops) mi sono fatta coraggio e, nonostante il forno acceso fuori in tutta la città, sono andata al casalinghi cinese a comprare questo affare plasticoso che ogni volta che mi metto a tagliare la carta mi ricordo sempre sarebbe il caso di utilizzare, ma […]
qui comprai la stellanica base per fare il gransupertagliamento…
Ieri mattina tardi (e ovviamente ne scrivo solo il giorno dopo, ops) mi sono fatta coraggio e, nonostante il forno acceso fuori in tutta la città, sono andata al casalinghi cinese a comprare questo affare plasticoso che ogni volta che mi metto a tagliare la carta mi ricordo sempre sarebbe il caso di utilizzare, ma che appunto prima non avevo… la “base di taglio”, o in spagnolo “base de corte”, che penso stia più per “base di curtiell“, ma al diavolo le inprecisazioni ora. (Stranamente, anche questo coso è della marca #Stelan, che senza volerlo mi sta capitando sempre tra le mani quando compro tutta questa roba da cancelleria/ufficio, vai a capire com’è possibile…) 👽 Boh, è crazy, incredibile, con questo suo materiale particolare, ottimo per evitare di distruggere tappetino e scrivania quando mi metto all’opera. Si, c’è scritto PVC, ma la texture (semiruvida) e soprattutto le vibe che trasmette sono molto diverse da, che cavolo ne so, un tubo in PVC. Però attenzione, perché a primo impatto sembra che in qualche modo strano riesca a non graffiarsi mai in maniera sensibile al tatto, ma se ci si va troppo forte (ovviamente, direi ora, non so cosa mi aspettavo) lo fa… per esempio, più o meno al centro della foto, subito sopra l’area coperta dalla bustina di plastica, quel graffio che si vede al tatto sembra molto peggio di com’è alla vista (invece altri più a destra si sentono meno o niente). 😳
Sicuramente comunque, funziona meglio dell’usare il cartone di Amazon come base di taglio, perché ok, un po’ il suo pure quello lo fa, ma ovviamente si taglia molto velocemente a sua volta, lasciando in giro le briciole e le strisce marroni e diventando pieno di fessure che rendono via via più impreciso il lavoro… e, se non si fa attenzione a sostituirlo in tempo, magari una volta la lama ci passa pure attraverso e va a tagliare quello che c’è sotto… ops. Non è magico ma, per 1 euro e 50 (anche se bisognerebbe vedere quanto dura a lungo andare…), ci sta, è bono… quindi ecco, ora posso distruggere la carta con meno ansia. 🙏
(Che poi, in negozio, per qualche motivo, una versione circa 2.5 volte più grande del prodotto costava 5 euro e 30, che è più di 3 volte tanto questo qui… ma forse è stata una cosa buona, perché così, puramente per tirchiaggine, ho preso questo grande circa quanto un foglio A4, che a suo modo è più comodo, perché ci entra sulla mia scrivania senza che io debba spostare completamente la tastiera.)
There was a site I found in highschool around 1998 - the paradigm of pessimism.
Full of dark humor and anti-jokes, in glorious web 1.0 - that site had a huge impact on my humor. I've never been able to find it again. Just a random site someone hosted somewhere on the Internet - no scams, no paywalls, just a bunch of weird humor.
Nowadays, if there's something you like online, remember to plug it into archive.org so it gets added to the wayback machine. You'll still need to remember the URL to access it, but at least it will be archived somewhere
I tried gemini protocol for a bit to see if it did a decent job addressing this, but it doesn't. We do legit need a 'smallweb' non-commercial sort of thing, but I suspect retreating to a BBS model is probably what is required.
A big reason why I've come to like Lemmy communities so much is really because they give me some old internet feeling. It's not super crowded, it's an app that isn't design for brain rot, it allows interesting online discussion etc.
I think projects like this can continue to exist, even in a bleak corporate owned internet.
Fuck off with your device based verification system. That's just the same service, but as a more invasive app installed on your phone.
Instead of scanning a face or ID and uploading it to a service, we're expected to run unverified closed source code on the device we carry everywhere in our pockets?!
Experience, most proposal for "age and identity verification" being badly implemented mostly closed-source solutions that only works on devices they deem trusty, meaning (seemingly) non-rooted phones with specific OSes.
Fuck off with your device based verification system. That's just the same service, but as a more invasive app installed on your phone.
not necessarily. you give a phone to your children. you partly lock it down by setting it up as a child account, with its age. you make sure to install a web browser that supports limiting access to age appropriate content according to the age set in the system, maybe taking a parent allowed whitelist. the website is legally obliged to set an appropriate age limit value in a standard HTTP header.
that way, the website does not know your age. the decision is on the web browser. the web browser checks the configuration in the system, that only the parent can change. it does not send it anywhere, only does a yes/no decision. if the site is not ok, it'll show a thing like when the connection is not secure or it was put on the safebrowsing list, except that you can't skip it, only option is to request parent permission. and finally the age is set in the operating system, without verifying its truthiness, but once again requesting lock screen authentication. oh and app installs need parent approval for kid accounts, like it should almost always be.
this way it's as private as it can get. the only way a website can find out information about you from this, is to log if your browser loaded the html but not any other resources, because that means you were caught in the age filter. but that's it.
there's multiple pieces in this that is not yet implemented, but they should be possible with not too much work. this is all possible with open source code, if you make sure the kid can't install anything without parent approval. stores like fdroid could have some badge or something if a browser supports this kind of limitation.
All's well until other countries try to implement this and you will very quickly see how nearly none of them agree with each other on which age limit goes where. In my opinion, the best way to ensure that children don't go to certain places on the internet is to either not give them access to the internet at all or to only let them use whitelisted websites that you review yourself before adding.
how nearly none of them agree with each other on which age limit goes where.
that's the task of the website to figure out, the device does not have to be aware of the laws. but I think is still much easier to manage than id verification.
I habe an other idea. don't make the websites send agelimit http headers, because as you said that can easily vary by country. instead send http headers that tell what kind of content is available there. only the categories that could be questionable. that way the device (actually the browser) would decide if with the kid account's age that kind of content is accessible. that way the browsers need to know the age limits, and maybe it's easier to handle it this way.
In my opinion, the best way to ensure that children don't go to certain places on the internet is to either not give them access to the internet at all or to only let them use whitelisted websites that you review yourself before adding.
ok, and I agree, but only very few parents will do that unfortunately. especially considering that their kids could be discriminated against by their ~~limited~~ clasates who don't have their access so broadly limited.
and then, you still need such a whitelisting capability, which I think does not really exist today in firefox and such browsers. addons cant solve this because they can be removed.
That still could vary greatly by country and culture, as one man's pornography could very well be another man's art. You would either need a great deal of near-duplicate categories or just label something as explicit the moment a single country pipes up about a woman not concealing her hair or something else that doesn't bother you one bit.
ok, and I agree, but only very few parents will do that unfortunately. especially considering that their kids could be discriminated against by their limited clasates who don’t have their access so broadly limited.
I suppose that we could at least be able to convince the parents that letting their children go unsupervised on the internet is like letting them go unsupervised in the big city. Totally fine if they're old enough to know what they're doing and don't stray too far from where they're meant to be going, but unacceptable if they're not so wise yet and aren't at least somewhat regularly checked up on. Children will always want the forbidden fruit, but their parents should restrain them until they understand why it was forbidden to them in the first place, and how to safely interact with it.
and then, you still need such a whitelisting capability, which I think does not really exist today in firefox and such browsers. addons cant solve this because they can be removed.
I'm not too well versed in this kind of software either, but I just looked up some parental controls services and they seem to offer device-level blocking of unwanted websites/apps/downloads/etc. Web browsers don't need to do the blocking, as the parental controls probably refuse the connections to the web domains.
I didn't even mention all of this being completely bypassed if you used another website as a kind of proxy: go to proxywebsite.com -> it has a search bar -> use it to go to explicitwebsite.com -> proxywebsite.com returns the html, css, js etc of explicitwebsite.com without you ever visiting it -> profit.
Doesn't need to be by age tbh- you could have content tags and filter by content instead of age (I.e. No graphic violence). That would ignore country discrepancies and then give more flexibility
But why does the distinction between "real-world adult material" and "creative, non-realistic", "artistic, animated works" that "do no harm" matter? Last time I checked, realistic adult material can be just as artistic, and the harm done by negligently letting children watch it seems comparable.
Are they in favour of age verification for "uncreative, realistic" pornography, or is the real distinction just between real-life and online?
I interpreted it as "can't possibly be doing harm to the people in the video" - eg as much of mainstream porn can do - since there are none if everything is animated fiction
Admittedly, I'm pretty sure UK did this with the underage consumers in mind, not the industry actors, for whom both sorts of porn would have a similiar impact. (I'd assume)
Personally though, the constant repeating to me sounded comedic and they were making fun of how seriously we're taking nude drawings with this, which sounds silly even if it's justified.
It's the same schtick you hear from pedophiles in defense of their child sex dolls and it's unsurprising to see it coming from rule34 in particular considering they serve up a lot of that content in cartoon form.
Yeah, the “it’s just cartoons so it’s not harmful” argument falls flat pretty quickly. There are much better arguments to be made for why the law is dumb.
I think it's more about the legal distinction between drawn and 'real' porn.
TBH "negligently letting children watch it" seems like a sensless statement to me. The onus should be on parents to filter their kids' internet environments, not literally every accessible site on the open internet (which are never going to comply with a patchwork of age verification regs).
My networking knowledge may be out of date, but can't you get around region locked sites with VPNs or Tor?
I was in Turkey in July 2019. Wikipedia was blocked. I had to use Tor to access it. On installation I think I had to tick a special box that said something like "use flux capacitor bridge for blablabla countries like China and Turkey"
Though In that case, Wikipedia didn't give a fuck if you were accessing it from Tor. The government did.
I know some sites block tor/VPN access for various reasons
Depends on what you mean by "kids". Elementary schoolers, no, but some teens are willing to do a surprising amount of work to accomplish something if it's important enough to them. And then they pass their method along to their friends, or offer to set up anyone in the school for the price of a couple of bags of snack food.
I'm not sure whether the readership for this article is primarily British ("crisps") because it's about the UK, or primarily North American ("chips") because of what I perceive as the general population demographics of Lemmy, so I compromised. 🤷
lol I’m just joking that teens in high school would probably trade weed for things rather than snacks. I’m not proud of it, but I got paid in weed junior year of high school for customizing MySpace accounts, which is why I laughed at “snacks” because if they are later age high school students they probably aren’t trading in sour cream and onion.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
You vastly underestimate the interest young people can have into things, especially into forbidden things, especially when the workaround is trivial and works with a few clics, no tech skills required.
Will this become a new venue for scam? Most likely. But kids motivation vs. a very easy "fix" is not what's gonna stop them. Adult surveillance would be way better.
This is the second time in my life that Labour have gained power after a long Conservative tenure, only to dive straight into enacting policies that were more right-wing than their predecessors.
It's less of a left - right thing (that's mainly economics). It paternalism Vs liberty thing. Labour have always had a very strong "we must protect the populace" theme to their policies. Conservatives have it too, but they want to do it in a different way.
Sadly it's a really difficult thing to stand against. Who wants to be labelled the person enabling paedophiles, when all you want is the right to private communication.
The full spectrum is really more like “authoritarian vs libertarian”. Political policy should really be split into two different spectrums. On one spectrum, you have financial policy. On the other, you have social policy. The two normally get lumped together because politicians campaign on both simultaneously. But in reality, they’re two separate policies. So the political spectrum should look less like a single left/right line, and more like an X/Y graph with individual points for each person’s ideology. Something more like this:
On this graph, as you go farther left, the government has more ownership and provides more, (and individuals own less because the government provides more for their needs). As you go farther up the chart, social policy gets more authoritarian. So for example, something on the far right bottom corner would be the Cyberpunk 2077/The Outer Worlds end-stage capitalist where megacorps inevitably own everything and have their own private laws.
Once you separate the two policies into a graph (instead of just a left/right line) it becomes clear why “small government” doesn’t necessarily correspond to “fewer laws” when dealing with politicians.
Around our local voting season there's actually a online test to check which parties are more aligned with the person values and it puts things into a graph like this. It's very useful
I assume "Republican" on this diagram is not used in the contemporary American sense. Otherwise it would be somewhere up in that little grey cloud.
In any case, official US politics takes place entirely within the top right quadrant, and UK politics seems to have retreated there too. Canada is in danger of getting up there as well. And we don't have any mechanism to vote our way out of that box, so change will have to come from action outside of electoral politics.
Part of that is allowing labels to be so powerful. Someone doesn’t have to watch kiddie porn or molest children to be branded a pedophile, but when you have that label for someone, it’s implied that’s what they did. We saw this same shit during the Bush years with the “terrorism” label. We’re actually seeing it again with Luigi Mangione and people protesting at Tesla dealerships. People don’t care about reality if there’s simple branding that wipes critical thinking away.
To correct one thing, the left-right political spectrum is based on authority. It goes back to the French Revolution, in which the nobility - favoring top-down power hierarchies - literally occupied the right side of the assembly hall while the revolutionaries - favoring true equality and egality - sat on the left.
This cannot be separated into distinct domains since power is wealth and wealth is power. The political compass fallacy is, and always was, nothing more than rightist propaganda to muddy language and ideology in an effort to hold on to their wealth and power.
Don't get me wrong, but why are matters of governmental surveillance and control inherently "right-wing" rather than a totalitarian policy not otherwise directly connected to wing politics? Extremists on both sides have a history of creating totalitarian, Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards).
Big Brother states (which the UK is certainly headed towards)
When the Snowden Revelations came out, the UK had even more civil society surveillance than the US.
As a consequence of those revelations, in the US some of the surveillance was walked back, whilst in the UK the Government just passed a law that retroactively made the whole thing legal, issued a bunch of D-Notices (the UK system of Press Censorship) to shut up the Press, got the Editor of the newspaper that brought it out in the UK (The Guardian) kicked out, and the Press there never talked about it again.
Also, let's not forget the UK has the biggest number of surveillance cameras per-capita in the World.
Oh, and they have a special and separate Surveillance Tribunal (the Investigatory Powers Tribunal) were the lawyers for the side other than the State are not allowed to be present in certain sessions, see certain evidence or even get informed of the final judgement unless their side wins.
They easily have the most extreme regime of Civil Society Surveillance in Europe, and in the World are probably second only to the likes of North Korea and China.
Britain is well beyond merely "headed towards" Big Brother and has been for at least a decade.
In the case of Labour, the party's politics these days are over to the right on any measure. Under Starmer they seem to have abandoned their left-wing roots.
if i had a nickel for everytime a labour government came into power after a prolonged tory government and immediately started governing further right id have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice in a row
There's a UK Parliament petition to repeal the Online Safety act. There's no guarantee it'll do anything but might be worth a try for anyone in the UK.
Don't forget to write to your MP - being polite but angry helps. Explain the issues, shortcomings and why you feel this should be repealed and a better user-friendly and privacy respecting alternative needs to be found BEFORE implementing stupid asinine knee-jerk legislation like this.
My poor MP is getting it in the jugular because they boasted about working in data security and I'm exploiting the hell out of that statement so they can't easily weasel their way out of it.
I'm just waiting for the response to be something along the lines of... "According to existing law (see Online Safety Act), websites are required to do age verification... blah blah blah, no changes will be made, thank you for your inquiry"
That moment when you decide to use i2p because its more sustainable for every user to be a node just for your server's location to get leaked in a vulnerability. This is why most deep web migration to i2p ended
I don't really have a link, but you might be able to find something talking about game server protocols. Outside of LAN, usually you're either connecting to a central server, or a peer relay. With a relay server it's just a proxy between you and the other players to hide your IP from others. There's plenty of cases in games that didn't do this where malicious actors could find the IPs of the people they're playing with and DDoS them to give themselves an advantage. Knowing someone's IP will also probably tell you extra info about them like what city they're in, and open them up for further hacking.
Gemini is a group of technologies similar to the ones that lie behind your familiar web browser. Using Gemini, you can explore an online collection of written documents which can link to other written documents. The main difference is that Gemini approaches this task with a strong philosophy of "keep it simple" and "less is enough". This allows Gemini to simply sidestep, rather than try and probably fail to solve, many of the problems plaguing the modern web, which just seem to get worse and worse no matter how many browser add-ons or well meaning regulations get thrown at them.
How it applies to geolocation and server hosting in light of the OSA I really have no clue. But it's an interesting underground hacker/tinker type alternative.
This says it started in 2019, Google Gemini was 2023. It seems like these big companies pick a name first and then figure out who they'll have to sue after.
This is sadly the way to handle it, users of these places need to learn how to vpn instead of giving their private information for age verification online.
VPNs aren’t going to be a practical solution going forward. You are creating dependancies that governments can target, spying on traffic and enforcing censorship for these relays is something any country can and likely will implement at some point. The clearnet is dying because the evangelicals are killing it.
Ah Lemmy, downvoting an honest question. Never change.
rule34.xxx is a website where users can post naughty drawings, renders, etc. of mostly anime or computer game characters. Think of your favourite character of your favourite anime, game, comic, etc. Chances are there’ll be images of them on there.
I agree with the message but making the argument that it's safe for kids to watch because it's cartoons is wrong. Kids can be fucked up by 2D furry porn, I've seen it happen. Still agree that age verification is a security nightmare, just think it's a weird argument.
Thhink they are referring to it saying "requiring age verification for fictional cartoon content is an overreach that fails to recognize the distinction between real world and adult material"
Paragraph 3 "Requiring age verification for fictional cartoon content is an overreach thay fails to recognize the distinction between real-world adult material and artistic, animated works." etc
I'm on the fence, because do kids need to be seeing glimmer choke down on a futa She-Ra? No. But does the UK Guv need to de-anonymize the internet to stop it? Fuck. No.
Or have your site taken down by your own country because of its international obligations. You still have to abide by your own country's interpretation (and political alignment to) of foreign laws.
I doubt that the USA would recognise and take down websites for not following Ofcoms requirements. And Ofcom would 100% be too cowardly to even threaten that. They'd just geoblock.
Perhaps? But you can get extradited from the US to the UK, and there's all sorts of dumb agreements for international evidence and standing precedent. I don't expect the current administration to forge new ground here, but navigating the waters of international law is byzantine at the best of times.
I really, really doubt that a website owner based in USA would be extradited to the UK for not complying with UK local law with how they run their website. That's absurd.
I feel like if most websites chose not to comply, there's fuck all the government could do tbh. What are they gonna do? Fine big tech with a slap on the wrist again? Try to shut down every indie hentai site hosted in the Congo or something? Please... it's all absurd.
If I had the money for lawyers, I would definitely add an "I confirm I am not in UK" button to access to sites to "help people mistakenly identified as being in the UK due to e.g. a VPN or a proxy".
hand wringing over objectionable video games is why queer artists are now having their platforms removed. if you dont want to see certain kinds of fictional porn, then either avoid the website it is hosted on, or make an account and edit your blacklist. also, if youre worried about your children having access to gay yiff, then restrict their access
Have to agree with you. If every site just blocked the country with a stupid law like this, then the regular (regarded) folk that are gonna send over their ID the first chance they get will maybe log off their wank station and idk join the cause.
Saying that, at least ppl will be forced to use a vpn instead of sending their id through the internet if they dont comply and just block.
I don't understand how this is a controversial opinion, but maybe parents should actually parent their children instead of expecting the Internet or the government to decide what their kids should see for them? Maybe talk to your kid about safe and ethical sex, the dangers of porn addiction, and not to take anything away from pornographic content instead? Maybe we shouldn't be giving children smartphones and tablets with unfettered internet access in the first place instead of spending time with them? Wild concepts I know.
I've been saying this a couple places recently, but why not pass legislation requiring every site to provide a content rating. Then parents can choose if they want to restrict content by ratings or not. Yeah, you could have malicious actors, but it makes it easier and simpler for everyone to work than having ID laws.
This, right here. It's like Nixon's "war on drugs" that went on, and on, and on... The goal was not drugs, per-se, but to use drugs as a pretense to police people of color.
That requires effort, which most parents are unwilling to do, and newspapers will still want it banned and governments would still want to ban it so they can ban other things too.
An copyright law is pretty similar in every country, or at least has a version of it. Japan's copyright law is so strict you can't even mention brands in media and has no version of fair use. It's why in Anime, when illuding to trademarks, it'll be something like "Sany" or "Destiny". This however, does not mean that I, in Scotland, am forbidden from making a video where I mention the words "Sony", "Disney", "Greggs", and "Tesco". Every country has different copyright laws and on the internet they seem to take a middle ground.
Porn on the other hand is very different with very different laws and very different ideas. For example, Porn is illegal in South Korea. No "JAV" where genitals are blocked out, porn is straight up a crime. Where I live however, it is legal, albeit on the internet you have to go through an adult verification thing, which is easily bypassed. Each country does not have a universal standard law on pornography or what counts as such. There's proposed laws in the US for example which could see the mention of queer people as counting as "pornography". Not the depiction, just something like "Leonardo Da Vinci was gay". That's why people in the UK are worried because the law doesn't just cover pornography and covers "sensitive content", which, you know, could be defined at some point to include anything.
idk why you responded to my comment with all that. Your first paragraph is, "yes, I agree, and here's another law that's also very similar in many countries"; which, ok, sure. But your second paragraph is completely unrelated to what I said.
Damn, U.K. is really getting destabilized fast. Law changes, immigration, censoring and now monitoring? Is this what happens when you leave EU and "lose" in the modern war?
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Se nel classico garage di turno di New York City, una qualsiasi band talentuosa si mettesse a suonare con l’intenzione di fare un disco alla National, con buona probabilità quel disco sarebbe “Trouble Will Find Me”... Leggi e ascolta...
Se nel classico garage di turno di New York City, una qualsiasi band talentuosa si mettesse a suonare con l’intenzione di fare un disco alla National, con buona probabilità quel disco sarebbe “Trouble Will Find Me”. Sono duri gli inizi per un gruppo: il parto di un’idea originale, la continua ricerca di una personalità, la voglia di non sentirsi mai scontati. I National negli ultimi anni hanno attraversato tutti questi stati, trasformandosi in una band dal successo globale, senza intaccare la loro più grossa e indiscutibile qualità: la personalità. Se la sono giocata, in tutti i modi possibili, abbinando il gusto per la raffinatezza melodica con la voce cavernosa del leader Matt Berninger... lindiependente.it/the-national…
Se nel classico garage di turno di New York City, una qualsiasi band talentuosa si mettesse a suonare con l'intenzione di fare un disco alla National, con
TEJO elektis novan prezidanton kaj estraron, dum la eksigita prezidanto denove kaj ripete postulis demision de ĉiuj estraranoj. Tiuj laŭ li malhelpas al la komitato fari sian laboron.
The United States should be ashamed of its repeated groundless accusations against China at the UN Security Council this week, said a Chinese envoy on Friday.
The UK's new act blocks access to adult content without identification. Turns out, you only need a copy of Death Stranding and a phone to get around it.
It's fun that one can use games for it, but it shouldn't be difficult to do the same through AI-generated imagery either, which isn't much more difficult.
Even though this method is flawed, one shouldn't really use ID-only verification either imho, as it's a security risk to upload any official document like that (ref. Tea app leaks).
The whole age verification that the UK wants to impose has been quite the impossible task from the beginning. Creating government-backed education for (future) parents about how to raise a kid and protect them in today's digital society would be more efficient than this, if we really are thinking of what is best for the kids. But alas, there are zero requirements to become a parent...
I think the issue there is the k-ID software asks you to do things like open your mouth, then close your mouth - so you'd need to find stock photos of the same person doing stuff like that. Which, now that I think about it, I imagine there will be an influx of selfies of people with closed and open mouths available on google images very soon.
The problem, as always, is that parents don't want to put the work into educating their children, they want the government to wave a magic wand and make the problem go away. And that's what gets you half assed solutions like this.
The OSA is nothing to do with kids or parenting and everything to do with further developing surveillance of the UK and controlling what we can access.
I guarantee you, at some point after this will come prohibiting content deemed terrorism such as mentions of the word 'palestine' and 'action' in the same paragraph for example.
Sooner or later we'll have our own pseudo or real great firewall. I expect them to come after VPN use at some point too.
Neither is taking a picture of nearly any stranger about to take a bite of food at a fast food place and then walking over and snapping another picture of them. What they gonna do about it?
Then come the hacks and abuses (executives and politicians not excluded) and we are back to square one, except that everybody and the innocents lost something while the cybercrime syndicates had a field day.
I think that credit cards are unambiguously tied to you, whereas a photo could be a bunch of people. I appreciate that having someone take a photo of you before you go to a porn site isn't exactly anyone's idea of a utopia.
I've seen this suggested elsewhere and it seems like the least intrusive suggestion to me - why not simply use the device as the age verification. Almost every phone/tablet/computer already knows your age through it's own sign-up/activation method, so why not allow the device to offer an API that provides age verification to sites that require it.
It could simply be a permissions-based answer where an adult site requests a yes/no answer to the question "is this user an adult" from the device and the user is prompted to provide the permissions for the site to have that data.
This would solve the problem for the vast majority of iphone/android/windows/macos consumers.
Whether or not that's the case, I think the proposed technical implementation above is a better way of enforcing the actual law than what's been applied so far.
Yeah I do too, but so would anyone who was seriously thinking about this in terms of keeping kids from looking at porn rather than restricting access to "adult content" (whatever that means) more broadly. Any programmer worth their salt would have immediately suggested "hey this is a bad idea we should do it this other way" when asked about the viability of the current solution and yet this was ignored.
The goal is to introduce general surveillance and censorship mechanisms. Whether they be technical, legal precedence, tested boundaries, or changes in laws and government positions.
Porn age stuff is just a convenient entry point. Solving just that without the survellance mechamisms is pointless to these people.
There absolutely is a minimum age requirement to set up a Google account, which you can see from their Ts & Cs. Whether that is enforced is an entirely different question.
Except there is no ID/age verification when you create a Google or Microsoft account (no idea about Apple, don't use that crap), so you're suggesting that the "birthday" field where I can set whatever date I want should be a standard age verification method?
Jesus Christ, no, I'm not suggesting that nothing changes from exactly what we do now. I'm suggesting a new, more secure, less intrusive method, and it's not even an original suggestion. Just try a little bit of thought.
If it's going to be implemented by law anyway, the age verification should be at the device level. The device accounts already do ask your age - directly or indirectly - although it's not stringently enforced, however each of the big 3 already have a minimum age requirement to set up an account as per their terms and conditions.
It's not a big leap to suggest that true age verification is done at that point seeing as you already often have to provide an age or payment information to set up on-device payment details, meaning there's no need to involve a third party at any other subsequent point.
Honestly, I'd rather see official governmental third parties that handle ID verification and guarantee to discord and any service needing age verification that the user is over the required age. Not comfortable with sharing any sort of verifying data with private companies, even less american companies. I have to for some stuff, but... Not liking it one bit.
There is already a few countries here in Europe with an official governmental identity verification system, and I'm pretty sure age verification can be done through them. I think the EU is also working on a system covering the entirety of Europe, but not certain.
The difficulty you might end up with there is governments not permitting their age verification system for certain sites if they desired. Meaning even greater governmental control of what sites you can access.
Well then the site uses a different system that complies with regulations. I don't see this as a problem, it doesn't have to be the only service that can verify your age.
This is a clever way to bypass. If they get wise and somehow filter out Sam Porter Bridges' face, you could always fire up any of the games of comparable visual realism which let you design your own character's appearance.
As we've seen, the current system is incredibly easy to bypass. There are plenty of ways to game or avoid the age checks.
The current implementation also uses multiple different age verification services, on a per-site basis. This proposed one reduces data exposure vulnerabilities to a fraction.
FerretyFever0
in reply to themachinestops • • •vaultdweller013
in reply to FerretyFever0 • • •FerretyFever0
in reply to vaultdweller013 • • •vaultdweller013
in reply to FerretyFever0 • • •Oh no fights are fun. Tis the curse of my kin, seriously damned near every man on the German side of my family treats fights like a fun time waster. Not saying it's not instability just that my verbosity is perpetual regardless of my mood or actions, well unless I am physically exhausted then I communicate with a handful of words like a caveman.
Also just cause I'm somewhat calm going into a fight doesn't mean that the person I hurled insults at is.
SoftestSapphic
in reply to themachinestops • • •I'm sick of religious sex freaks forcing others to adhere to their puritan fetishes
We need to ban organized religion
stepan
in reply to SoftestSapphic • • •MrNobody
in reply to stepan • • •Sure, but since orgaanised religions can't help to force others to live by their standards, they need to get out of the way. I'm fine with people needing a comfort measure, even if its in the form of an invisibile friend. Whatever helps people sleep at night. However, when they try to force their ideals down everybody elses throat thats a big no.
So, since they can't 'live and let live' they need to go the way of the dodo, fuck off, and leave the rest of society alone.
Gsus4
in reply to MrNobody • • •Meh, I consider religions as political movements. When they go crazy fundamentalist, try to take over and become destructive, sure, shut them down.
But not just based on their future potential to turn destructive, that can happen to any ideology if the conditions are right.
Barrymore
in reply to Gsus4 • • •Gsus4
in reply to Barrymore • • •Barrymore
in reply to Gsus4 • • •Gsus4
in reply to Barrymore • • •Barrymore
in reply to Gsus4 • • •Gsus4
in reply to Barrymore • • •LifeInMultipleChoice
in reply to stepan • • •Okay, your life shall now be that of the Amish. Please remove your phone/computers and never drive a car again.
Remember to live and let live
Honytawk
in reply to stepan • • •TheGrandNagus
in reply to stepan • • •freddydunningkruger
in reply to stepan • • •drunkpostdisaster
in reply to stepan • • •JigglySackles
in reply to stepan • • •Jarix
in reply to stepan • • •QueenHawlSera
in reply to SoftestSapphic • • •Warl0k3
in reply to QueenHawlSera • • •QueenHawlSera
in reply to Warl0k3 • • •Warl0k3
in reply to QueenHawlSera • • •Honytawk
in reply to QueenHawlSera • • •QueenHawlSera
in reply to Honytawk • • •Bro I don't believe in God either. To be honest sometimes I wish I did.
Regardles my problem isn't with atheism but with specifcally Reddit Atheism
stepan
in reply to Honytawk • • •REDACTED
in reply to stepan • • •QueenHawlSera
in reply to stepan • • •Mwa
in reply to QueenHawlSera • • •ik you can be any religion or anything but the main problem i have with atheism is they make fun of religion.
like atleast be respectful if your gonna be atheist not have a superiority complex.
edit: maybe i used superiority complex here loselessly
Warl0k3
in reply to Mwa • • •Mwa
in reply to Warl0k3 • • •Warl0k3
in reply to Mwa • • •B: So the crusades were what, then?
The Wandering M4dTsar
in reply to themachinestops • • •tacosanonymous
in reply to themachinestops • • •BackgrndNoize
in reply to tacosanonymous • • •HugeNerd
in reply to BackgrndNoize • • •Wispy2891
in reply to tacosanonymous • • •Soup
in reply to Wispy2891 • • •Katana314
in reply to Soup • • •- YouTube
www.youtube.comSonOfAntenora
in reply to Wispy2891 • • •Jarix
in reply to SonOfAntenora • • •SonOfAntenora
in reply to Jarix • • •deathbird
in reply to themachinestops • • •I truly don't understand how Visa/MasterCard/etc can be pressured. They are basically infrastructure.
What's someone going to do, stop using credit cards if they don't stop a store that person doesn't even patronize from selling morally hazardous goods?
I don't get how these campaigns are even effective.
Vinstaal0
in reply to deathbird • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to deathbird • • •RedFrank24
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •That's because 90% of cryptocurrency marketing consists of "THINK OF THE GAAAAAAINS YOU CAN MAKE!" instead of "You can use this to buy things without government censorship".
The entire crypto industry has based itself around being a speculative asset, not a currency.
sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to RedFrank24 • • •goodnighttothe_spoon
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to goodnighttothe_spoon • • •Monero is perhaps the best option imo. Here's the official page about it, but basically:
It's far from ubiquitous, but it's popular enough that if a place accepts any crypto, there's a good chance they accept Monero as well.
The Merits of Monero: Why Monero vs Bitcoin
www.monero.howHonytawk
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to Honytawk • • •Some do, which is a lot more than GNU Taler. I don't know of another digital payment system that has more usage that isn't dominated by a handful of companies.
Here are some examples of things you can buy today w/ Monero:
It's far from ubiquitous, but it is being accepted today. If any of those places interest you, I recommend putting a small amount of money into Monero and trying it out.
Who takes Monero as payment in 2024?
NOWPayments.io (NOWPayments)emmy67
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •deathbird
in reply to emmy67 • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to emmy67 • • •emmy67
in reply to sugar_in_your_tea • • •sugar_in_your_tea
in reply to emmy67 • • •Then I guess I don't understand your problem.
Payment processors like Visa and Mastercard control a huge chunk of the market, which gives them a lot of say in what transactions are allowed. Even if you avoid credit, most debit cards go through those two companies, so they can restrict what transactions you can make.
With cryptocurrencies, there's no restriction at the point of sale. Your problem seems to be that converting crypto to fiat could be problematic, and they'd potentially be stuck with "useless" currency. My point is that's a much easier problem to solve:
There are a ton of options to convert crypto to fiat, there are far fewer to select a different fiat payment processor.
swelter_spark
in reply to emmy67 • • •plyth
in reply to deathbird • • •deathbird
in reply to plyth • • •plyth
in reply to deathbird • • •Rooty
in reply to themachinestops • • •"Pro life feminist"
A christian conservative group in drag,nothing to see here.
buttnugget
in reply to Rooty • • •WorldsDumbestMan
in reply to themachinestops • • •captainlezbian
in reply to WorldsDumbestMan • • •Warl0k3
in reply to captainlezbian • • •WorldsDumbestMan
in reply to Warl0k3 • • •🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮
in reply to themachinestops • • •LainTrain
in reply to 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 • • •It's got a kid robot in it that's abused. Not sexually afaik. But it's definitely not pornographic, it's literally the driving force of one of the plotlines and causes an android to rebel and kill it's owner - the abuser.
Let me repeat: the game is literally so anti-child-abuse - it makes the plot happen.
This whole thing is so stupid. You give these types of people an inch they take a mile.
QueenHawlSera
in reply to LainTrain • • •LainTrain
in reply to QueenHawlSera • • •Zink
in reply to themachinestops • • •OK now I am not one to lob accusations without evidence, but for any of you kind government agents or AIs reading this, let’s say from anywhere within the Five Eyes since we’re talking about Australia:
We have another fanatical religious conservative organization here that is publicly labeling opposition groups pedos. You know how this has trended in the past. Keep an eye on these people.
pewgar_seemsimandroid
in reply to Zink • • •I Cast Fist
in reply to pewgar_seemsimandroid • • •Buddahriffic
in reply to I Cast Fist • • •omniman
in reply to themachinestops • • •Phoenixz
in reply to omniman • • •Because they want to apply their rules to everyone, it's the entire point for religious assholes
Fuck all religions
crusa187
in reply to Phoenixz • • •Petter1
in reply to Phoenixz • • •Fuck All Religions 😍
I’ll join that cult!
VoidJuiceConcentrate
in reply to themachinestops • • •me watching clearly adult humans doing consentual sex things
some religious zealot chud: this makes you a pedo somehow
joenforcer
in reply to VoidJuiceConcentrate • • •This comment and many like it are a product of only reading the headline. Also shame on the authors for the ragebait headline.
The tweet the quote comes further classifies that they're talking about games that include rape, incest, and/or child sex abuse. I'm not sure if people are just knee-jerk reacting to headlines without understanding what's actually happening, or if they are legitimately upset that rape fantasy games are being removed. In both cases, you're stating that you are vocally in support of rape media, which is not OK.
VoidJuiceConcentrate
in reply to joenforcer • • •Sure, that's the plausible deniability reasoning. But the end result, whether you agree with the on the surface reasoning or not, is the removal of all adult media whether or not it is offending. This coupled with the lumping in of LGBT issues with Adult media (and often lumping in with egregious media like rape and abuse fantasy) means that the end result is removal of adult games AND games which feature LGBT characters and storylines.
and uh, if you actually did read my comment, I did say consenting. me saying I enjoy content where clear adults are consentually enjoying sex is not endorsing rape fantasy games, and is a bit of a Twitter ass conclusion to come to.
joenforcer
in reply to VoidJuiceConcentrate • • •The article you commented on is explicitly referencing media where consent cannot be given. So, I'm not sure why you commented about consenting adults in the first place, because that had nothing to do with the topic.
VoidJuiceConcentrate
in reply to joenforcer • • •Zozano
in reply to themachinestops • • •Collective Shout claim it’s about harm reduction, but then push an agenda that functionally amounts to moral panic.
Their approach is identical in logic to the “GTA causes school shootings” hysteria: loud, pearl-clutching, and utterly unmoored from data.
If Collective Shout want to argue these games cause harm, then show us the harm. Not correlation. Not outrage. Not hypothetical downstream consequences. Show causation. Peer-reviewed. Reproducible.
Otherwise, they’re just moralizing bullies using the banking system as a cudgel.
On top of this, they might actually be harming their own cause. The catharsis hypothesis poses that sexual fantasy enactment might reduce risk of real world harm.
The logic is simple: suppressing a compulsion doesn't eliminate it. It just bottles up until it explodes. Redirect it into a safe outlet, and it becomes manageable.
The only reason this research isn't cited more often is because it's politically radioactive. Nobody wants to admit that it's better to let a gooners jerk off, than to escalate under repression.
The burden of proof SHOULD be on Collective Shout to provide a reasonable argument which supports their claim that censorship will reduce real world harm.
Current working theory in psychology: it doesn't. Emerging theory suggests: they're shooting themselves (and potential rape victims) in the foot.
The real solution to real-world harm involves empathy, autonomy and education.
MonkderVierte
in reply to Zozano • • •QueenHawlSera
in reply to MonkderVierte • • •blargle
in reply to QueenHawlSera • • •QueenHawlSera
in reply to blargle • • •Sadly from my experiences with feminist groups, TERFs have historically been the norm not the exception.
You should really look into what the Daughters of Bilitis were up to, and books like the The Transsexual Empire. A book I cannot say the full name of for it contains a slur.
Historically feminist groups have attacked transgender women and gay men for "Infringing upon what it means to be a woman."
lightnsfw
in reply to themachinestops • • •REDACTED
in reply to lightnsfw • • •CMonster
in reply to themachinestops • • •cosmo
in reply to CMonster • • •Buddahriffic
in reply to cosmo • • •That second part is kinda annoying though. It doesn't know the difference between a view because of curiosity and one because of actual interest.
It's what ruined the YouTube suggestions for me. I liked being able to do completely unrelated and random dives. Now it's just a collection of videos related to previous ones I've watched, even when I'm not logged in and have viewing history turned off. If I want to watch another chess video, I know how to use the search function. That's how I found them the first time.
Though steam does also have a "stop showing me games like this" where it gives options about what you mean by "this".
CMonster
in reply to cosmo • • •Rekorse
in reply to themachinestops • • •panda_abyss
in reply to Rekorse • • •No, but you might want to take a step back from that ledge advice a steep much huddy hill.
Frankly I think a lot of modern games are fucked up in their portrayal of the human body, and those relationship sim dress up games are kinda gross.
But I don't think this should be too to credit card companies to unilaterally decide.
Gsus4
in reply to Rekorse • • •Rekorse
in reply to Gsus4 • • •Gsus4
in reply to Rekorse • • •Rekorse
in reply to Gsus4 • • •Jhex
in reply to Rekorse • • •chiliedogg
in reply to Rekorse • • •It's not about porn games. It's about allowing third-party private interests to engage in censorship.
If Valve were to ban porn games from being sold on Steam because they find them distasteful, I wouldn't have a problem with this. But it wasn't Valve's decision. It was the payment processors who did it on behalf of interests that are apparently allowed to determine what is permissible on other people's platforms.
That's not okay.
Rekorse
in reply to chiliedogg • • •