With the recent issues of Tea (teaforwomen.com) posting unsecured user data, it's easy to spot the heavy bias of male users in the comments. With a 90% male demographic, Lemmy will face problems related to a homogeneous user population and all the issues that come with it. Right now, it's shaping up to be misogynistic, but it could also head into other bad places. Lemmy needs to attract a more diverse population of users or will end up as another echo chamber for the like minded. similarweb.com/website/lemmy.m…
People are downvoting cuz OP said this site is becoming misogynistic plus OP didn’t include the right “sample size.”
But can we be fucking honest? This website is incredibly male dominated. Like why are we arguing this? I woulda figured it was closer to like 95% male users…
And many folks (read: men) on this website don’t like calling out the reality that these heavily male-skewed outlooks can be misogynistic. Like, yeah, you bring tons of men in a room with no women, people will start to say misogynistic shit. It’s not reddit-level bad, but I’ve definitely noticed it.
Your response seems almost defensive, which is weird. Lemmy is definitely overwhelming male. That’s not an inherently bad thing, so I don’t get the defensive tone here or taking OP to task about data methods.
Disagree all you want, but this website is incredibly male dominated. I don’t think OP needs to do a peer-reviewed, double-blind study to say so.
In the last days I spent a disproportionate amount deleting old accounts I found in my password manager, and mostly because so many companies - despite the GDPR - have rudimentary, manually when not completely nonexistent processes to delete your data.
In this post I describe my process going through about 100 old accounts and trying to delete them all, including a top 10 for the weirdest, funniest or most interesting cases I encountered while doing so.
Great read thanks. It’s a quest I have stated here and there but you methods an awareness gives inspiration to the tedious task. Would you be willing to share the email template you used?
Thanks to the GDPR, you have the right to have your personal data deleted if a controller no longer needs it for its original purpose. We offer you a sample letter with which you can exercise such a right.
Did you enquire with any if they had sold/shared your data. I suppose it could be an endless quest trying to trace and delete everything. I know that wasn’t your aim. Just curious as I am starting to do this. We can’t trust online with anything anymore so time to start wiping my footprints of what I still can. And my account list is a good place to start.
Hey, I haven't, but to be honest, the answers I got from most companies showed me that the processes were handled by people who barely understood the legal and technical aspects around data collection (e.g., often support agents were on the other side of privacy@), which means I wouldn't trust them with their answer anyway AND I doubt many of these companies will have effective way to even check that.
From the data being sold point of view, I think unfortunately it's way more effective reaching out to the few big data brokers to request cancelations or pay one of the companies who offer such service...
A few months ago, I alao went on a small spree of deleting from my ~500 accounts. Some companies/services were offline, some redirected, some had no or very cumbersome ways to delete my data. Sometimes I juat wanted to edit my email.
Welp. No can do bro. Your E-Mail is cemented in place and only the heat-death of the universe can remove it.
Thanks. Absolutely my experience too. The ones where you can't edit the email I noticed often used the email as username, and probably god knows how bad is the code on the backend.
Il figlio maggiore problematico della deputata Lauren Boebert (cristiana rinata e già sostenitrice della teoria del complotto QAnon) è stato accusato di abuso su minori in seguito a un incidente che ha coinvolto il nipote.
Tyler, il figlio ventenne della deputata repubblicana e dell'ex marito Jayson, è stato accusato di reato minore in Colorado l'11 luglio, ha riferito sabato Denver Westword , citando i registri del dipartimento di polizia di Windsor.
Il deputato Boebert ha minimizzato l'accusa, affermando che era il risultato di "una mancanza di comunicazione sul controllo del mio giovane nipote che di recente lo ha portato ad andarsene di casa".
Rep. Boebert downplayed the charge, saying it was the result of “a miscommunication on monitoring my young grandson that recently led to him getting out of our house.”
Dopo una visita a una piantagione di mirtilli nel fine settimana, Hurt ha discusso con i conduttori di Fox News Rachel Campos-Duffy e Charlie Kirk sull'opportunità o meno che il governo sovvenzioni le piccole aziende agricole.
"E il dibattito, ragazzi, è su cosa dovrebbe sovvenzionare il governo... voglio dire, guardate, produrre mirtilli richiede molto lavoro, per esempio", ha detto Campos-Duffy. "Quindi cosa dovrebbe sovvenzionare il governo?"
Proton, the Geneva-based encrypted email provider founded 11 years ago by three scientist who met at CERN, will freeze its investments in Switzerland, its chief executive Andy Yen told Le Temps on Wed
“If the proposals pass, Proton’s services in Switzerland would be less private than Google’s,” Mr Yen told Le Temps. Frustrated by the lack of assurances from Beat Jans, the federal councillor overseeing the matter, Proton has opted to halt Swiss investments and shift its infrastructure plans abroad. Its artificial-intelligence data centres, deemed especially sensitive, will be located in Germany and Norway and involve investing CHF 100 million.
I like Lumo, be it only because I can use it instead of US or Chinese LLMs. Hope they help drive european AI development. And I'm quite sure Proton thought about their 1 billion investment a bit before announcing it.
You can refuse to use LLMs, but I doubt the use of AI will ever decrease again.
It just needs a dark theme. Work computer is powerful enough that I can run local models and use it occasionally. A cloud one that's just using similar open models as what you can easily download is fine to me.
Proton does have aot of work to do understandable to people's annoyance with them. Lack of Linux Drive application but they've released alpha/beta API for Drive. Drive performance isn't great yet. The Docs feature is pretty barebones for now. Calendar is too simple for power users. Regardless for now they're the closest privacy centric replacement for Google services
But I don't believe that their entire account was shared with the police, but if that actually did happen and you have a proper source for it I gotta think to move my mail after all, so could you please share with the class where you read this?
It is about the law, though. Proton has always been clear about the possibility that they are required to hand over data if the Swiss government requires it: proton.me/legal/transparency
So IDK where you are getting that they are saying one thing and doing another thing and even more important where you got that they shared ENCRYPTED data. Cause if they have the ability to even do that I have to rethink my choose since that should be impossible if Proton did it correctly and are trustworthy.
Proton's transparency report with aggregate statistics of legal orders from the Swiss authorities, covering Proton Mail, Proton Drive, and Proton Calendar.
Proton did not only hand over data to the Swiss courts, but the French courts via that. They didn't just comply with national laws, but those of other countries.
That contradicts their virtue signalled interest in privacy, when they're willing to surrender any data without even putting up a fight. They did not even try to argue in courts against handing over private data. And considering this lead to the arrest of the activist, it either obviously wasn't encrypted or Proton had the means to decrypt it on their end.
You can't just link Proton's own PR speak as a source to counter that. Of course they would defend themselves.
Yes they did because most countries have some form of agreement that they share data when legally requested. It is pretty hard to bypass that, but it is duable (Mullaval VPN f.e.)
They didn’t just surrender the data, they started collecting it at first
And let me remind you that there is a non-profit above it and they need to handle for the purpose that was created which is still Protons core businesses. They make more money just doing whats right than not because otherwise people would go back to something free or go to Tuta/Mulivad
Tbh, it's not the worst thing when a service does that. There are cases where it is indicated - cartels, CSAM, etc. do not deserve a safe haven. The bad part about the France issue is the fact that the Swiss court system willfully allowed a case that was not per se illegal in Switzerland and had rather controversial legal grounds in France to proceed. This is very similar to the cases where Switzerland simply ignored their own laws under pressure from the US government in terms of bank accounts 15 years earlier.
This is rather concerning and many Swiss legal experts did not share the opinion of Proton that there was nothing Proton could have done.
Maybe Proton could have done more, but maybe not on the other hand the ISP is also wrong for supplying the name that goes with the IP. (yes I know that's deflection, but still).
I personally feel like we need to find a middle ground between personal privacy and being able to stop criminals/terrorists/fraud etc.
Wrong bogeyman here, the more worrying problem is the CEO endorsing the US republicans, seemingly (and charitably) due to the ostensibly pro-privacy policy position, ignoring all the other policy advocation attached to endorsing them or their track record of doublespeak particularly around things like privacy.
That was a verrry disappointing and tone deaf comment from him, yeah. He could have said that neither party is committed to Proton's values and been done with it, instead he kissed the ring.
Proton is owned by an actual non-profit (not one of those fake once you have in the US) and Andy is only 1/3rd of it so he cannot really do much alone, plus he still needs to follow the objective for the non-profit otherwise he can be held personally responsible.
Personally, I live in a country where you can vote for hundreds of politicians, and we have multiple parties ruling the country and I don't believe that agreeing with one statement is enduring anybody.
Still, Andy Yen is an idiot and Proton needs some extra governance structure to keep him in check (firing him is going to be a hard one since he still owns shares IIRC). Believe what you want and choose to use Proton or not, but it doesn't help the cause for the people to be more critical without giving context.
They need to fire their CEO and get an executive suite that can develop good products and not just copy Google while adding keywords related to "privacy" and "freedoms" in their marketing copytext.
That's the exact same thing as Google.
I say this as long time Proton user and subscriber.
Imo, having Proton just copy Google but actually be private is exactly what I want. Of course, if they stray away from privacy then there will be issues. I also feel like they are making good stuff. As a subscriber myself I don't have many issues with their offering other than the stuff they don't provide but Google does.
I don't believe they will be able to compete with Google/OpenAI in a direct battle by having a 1:1 LLM product copy but with privacy. The costs are likely too high for an organisation like Proton and their LLM is likely to have significantly subpar output.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for a private, cloud LLM, but I would rather they came up with novel usability features, a better front-end for evaluating sources (and faster identification of errors and hallucinations) and so on.
Fair enough, I would also prefer if they pushed out an online excel/power point alternative before this or or allowed for more cloud storage.
That being said, I also don't think this is a bad thing to do. It seems to work alright so if they can at least be at that level then that's fantastic. I do wish they pooled their resources with other open source AI models cause that would be more efficient but maybe they have a good reason. I've just not looked into it cause I don't use AI that often
I use LLMs as a complement to search and Luma is far worse than even Le Chat from Mistral for moderately complex prompts.
Luma is also notable slower (to an unacceptable level).
I would they rather they focused on existing services. I use their email services and it's pretty good. Based on reviews, it seems that their cloud storage offering isn't on that level.
Lucky, they sell a way better solution than Gmail. Even changing the few accounts that used my Gmail caused 25% of the mails to not ever be received by Gmail.
Requesting information isn't limiting free speech is it? Now if that algorithm shows it is indeed limiting or promoting people's speech in a non-equal manner, that would be limiting people's free speech would it not?
The Brazil Government did this for a week and immediately extracted big concessions from Elon. Really curious to see the EU so reluctant to employ a tried-and-true tactic... assuming you believe these governments are adversarial to American plutocrats.
That a poor comparison since on x the moderations is about random citizen and not paid employee doing a work for a company that a the end of the day is free to choose how to spent her money
However, the “pros” ultimately won out because, according to sources close to the network, “The Late Show” was losing money and there was no apparent path to turning around its financial position. source
For the same freedom of speech reasons that we're applying to Colbert. That jerkwad is just as entitled to lie as they are to tell the truth, and it's up to everyone else to call them out on it.
However, the “pros” ultimately won out because, according to sources close to the network, “The Late Show” was losing money and there was no apparent path to turning around its financial position. source
"Free speech" doesn't entitle you to dictate policy over privately held companies. We spent four years trying to convince Trumpers of this. Be smarter.
What do you mean, did the Biden admin target any particular shows or networks? Are you also aware the current admin is holding off Paramount's merger to exert influence over their programming? IDK how free that feels. May not be directly breaking laws, but it's absolutely a subversion of free speech.
No, it's not. Free speech protects what you say from the government, not your employer. Your employer ALSO has free speech, meaning they can decide what can and can't be said on their property.
This is like saying Sesame Street doesn't show hardcore porn and that's a violation of free speech.
His free speech was never infringed. He can say what he wants and not be prosecuted for it. Whether or not he has a job isn't covered by the First Amendment.
Despite being an "entertainment" show, satirical media is still media, and covered by the First. These shows still rely on that protection against lawsuits, and have been exhonerated with the same defence, Cobert in particular. If you could prove government interference in this case, I'd say there was a pretty good basis for a court case based on freedom of the press, which is the corollary of free speech.
EU just rolled over on trade with US. If anyone hopes for some actual fight against US and US corporations coming for Europe they will be disappointment.
Controlled Opposition. The plutocrats in Europe and the plutocrats in America have been working hand-in-glove for over a century. This is no different than the German government "rolling over" for IBM and Ford and Coca-Cola in the 1930s.
Oh I forgot the Blue MAGA mantra: "anything the opposition does is automatically bad" When they say water is wet you have to deny it. Really you all deserve Trump
Get over yourself. All I did was state a fact that was contradictory to the previous comment. I didn't even say anything about whether it was good or bad. Trump is trying to cut VoA.
Wrong. It opposed Naziism and Soviet Union misinformation. Since then it's been a standard journalism outlet that, by law, could not be dictated by US politicians.
Thanks CIA operative, it is no secret it has always been a propaganda outlet from your CIA bosses trying to stir up shit in countries they don't control. And the US has never been against nazis, supported them plenty of times before during and after WW2.
While being the biggest pusher of propaganda in US history.
And VOA was only "propaganda" when you consider objective information to be "propaganda", like dumbfuck Trumpers do.
Since 1976 the Charter and later the 1994 International Broadcasting Act legally forbid government officials from dictating content. Don't worry about facts, though.
Trump himself tried to make it a propaganda outlet, doing the exact opposite of what you credit him for. He put Michael Pack in charge who sidelined editors, froze visas for foreign reporters and scrapped long‑standing “fire‑wall” rules that protect editorial independence.
The word "propaganda" is tricky. It has connotations of being lies, but that isn't always or even usually the case. Objectively true information can literally be propaganda. The mission of the VoA is to spread American propaganda. That's why it's funded. That can be truths that foreign governments want to suppress, it can be spin, or it can be lies. VoA is generally pretty truthful, especially compared to the privately run domestic versions like cable news outlets.
Government officials don't need to dictate content. As you pointed out, content can be controlled by who is appointed to manage the content. They know the mission.
The word "propaganda" means any intentionally spread information. It doesn't specify whether it's right or wrong. It's literally "something to propagate".
LOL 'objective propaganda' The US regime lies constantly. And especially during the ilegal Iraq invasion. They placed items in the news without telling the public they were produced by the US regime armed forces. It's not difficult to know unless you deliberately ignore the obvious truth to fit your agenda. So you are a liar, nobody can be this naive or dumb. scholar.law.colorado.edu/cgi/v…
And VOA was only “propaganda” when you consider objective information to be “propaganda”, like dumbfuck Trumpers do.
the thing is that you can deliver heavily skewed pictures with information that is objectively true. consider the following example:
it makes it appear as if AOC is pro-genocide
yet when you actually have more context, you know that AOC is actively anti-genocide, as discussed here. (in the comments)
so, delivering objectively true information can result in heavily skewed images, due to non-proportionality of information, i.e. some details are exaggerated, others are under-reported. and some journals have a tendency to under-report on specific things while over-reporting on others. so it's still possible to lie with objective information, i.e. create images that are not true because they're out of their actual proportion.
VoA is competing with the private sector propaganda wing.
This is just American Libertarianism taken to its logical conclusion. The mistake the Communists made was thinking Pravda didn't need to turn an enormous profit.
EU is not much better. You have to be real careful with controversial subjects such as not liking genocide. And plenty countries have forbidden communism. Not to mention not honoring elections in Romania and anulling them, and not letting the winning party participate again. Even if it is a horrible right-wing party that won, that is still a mask off moment.
From my experience living in the US, the country is not a good reference point for any discussions around the nature of free speech.
Free speech polemics in the US largely have a demonstrative role with individuals parroting random copytext that they've heard before in an attempt to position themselves as being special and independent.
American democrats, though, irritated me more until I've started noticing Republicans. They have that "parties switched in 1960s" myth (only parties' ideas on race switched, while the main ideology of the democratic party is not too different from "progressives" of 1890s, those guys who advocated for prophylactic lynchings ; and it's the same about Republicans, whose "anti-racist" ideas were just as Christian fundamentalism based as their today's projects), and also the "popular party" myth (while even in appearances being something to the top of which only people born with a silver spoon in mouth can get).
At the same time the "free speech" stuff over there seems to mostly be about "they in their totalitarian countries (or pockets of society dominated by the other party) are lied by their propaganda media, and we here are free and are told the truth".
Not sure it's entertaining, it looks depressing. But I haven't lived in the US.
Martin: Organized crime? Cosmo: Hah. Don't kid yourself. It's not that organized.
– Sneakers (1992)
Twitter is absolutely going to say "well, we're definitely not an organised hate group. Sometimes people just hate stuff. We're just a social media platform, helping people organise. Oh shit"
By condemning this, the "US" is shooting itself in the foot.
Ever since Twitter owner used Twitter to say Canada "wasn't a real country", no Canadian should be using Twitter. That wasn't just bias, it was an "in your face and screw you" kind of bias.
Just call it Twitter. He's been trying to make "fetch" happen since the 90s. We get it, rich boy, you have a single-character .com domain. I'm still sending money over PayPal, because that's what it's fucking called.
It is not censorship. This is not a government telling you what to publish or not. This is just finding out how a company is abusing its product to influence politics.
100% "X is an organized crime group". if you count brainwashing as a crime, which i do.
they're manipulating public opinion towards what the rich want to hear. it's all propaganda.
elon musk bought twitter to conduct "social engineering" after doing classical engineering before at tesla. it's all just a way to control what people think, and it's partially working. the people need to get off commercial social media and use something community-hosted, like the fediverse. to reduce the tinkering with recommendation algorithms and also to reduce the bot army.
"activist" even trying to discredit foreign federal bureaus by framing them as politically motivated lmao what a bunch of fucking crooks in the US admin.
Seriously. They should do the rest of the world a favour and close itself off from us. That way we won't dictate what their idiots can and can't do or say.
A serious question: what's wrong with pirate bay? I have been using it to download movies, shows and language learning content for over a decade, and I never had any problems.
Nothing is wrong with it. I imagine you'd be the type to survive in the wild west because you're equipped to do so while people around you die of dysentery.
Those aren't typically risky media. When you're downloading games though, you're downloading executable programs. You can do some serious damage if you execute the wrong things. You're not executing a mkv or a pdf, you're only reading it.
You're half wrong and half right, .mkv files are completely safe but the same can't be said about .pdf files, attackers can embed malicious code, such as JavaScript or hidden executables, within a PDF file.
People really underestimate the capabilities of this .pdf file format. I remember some time ago, someone managed to run doom inside a .pdf file.
There's a difference between exploiting bugs that haven't even been found and spreading malware through a method that's known by pretty much everyone and is still used to spread malware today.
It's also theoretically possible that your system is already infected by some Advanced Persistent Threats but does that happen that often, No, and have people been infected by running random pdfs they found online, Yes.
Tell that to circuit board designers. It's horrible every time a 3d model of a circuit board is added. The component height gives no visual advantage, and it's slow as shit on corporate computers.
Don't download games and software from it and always check the file extensions and make sure they're not something like Movie.mp4.exe or Movie.mkv.exe, other than that you're good.
Still don't know why I'd need a vpn. My country doesn't go after individuals pirating (yet). That's the only reason, as far as I understand, to have a vpn for pirating. So until they start to take come after individuals, I'm gonna save my money.
You only need a VPN in very few countries, some countries where it is needed to avoid fines/getting your internet connection cutoff from your ISP are the US, Germany and a few other countries somewhere in western Europe, also don't pirate polish films without a VPN if you live in Poland, the rest of the world doesn't care about people downloading movies online.
VPNs don't prevent tracking, they just make sure the tracking is done through a secure tunnel.
The extra hop adds a significant barrier for the website in knowing the actual source IP. The fake source IP is likely used by many other users, and the user you are trying to track can easily rotate VPN IPs.
Adtech relies on the OpenRTB 2.5/2.6 spec for tracking, you would have removed 1 identifier out of a hundred (one that isn't really used anyway given SSAI is so popular). In addition to that, cookie expiry timers are typically set to 365 days meaning you're VPN would need to enabled at all times to not invalidate multi-hop. WebStorage API based trackers tend to be indefinite.
EDIT: If anyone is looking for more specifics about WHY IP addresses and multi-hop don't matter, the spec includes a mention:
BEST PRACTICE: Proper device IP detection in mobile is not straightforward. Typically it involves starting at the left of the x-forwarded-for header, skipping private carrier networks (e.g., 10.x.x.x or 192.x.x.x), and possibly scanning for known carrier IP ranges. Exchanges are urged to research and implement this feature carefully when presenting device IP values to bidders.
The issue is that mobile is so prevalent and mobile networks rely so extensively on CG-NAT that even with XFF headers, there's no good way to tell if you are going to get an IP address that actually matters. You could potentially put in a lot of auction time trying to figure that out and still just end up with a private address that's unusable. So, aside from the devicetype and the geo object which is used for geo targets and fencing, the device object isn't useful in tracking. Instead adtech uses the user object. This object should contain all your GDPR specifics, any EIDs, 1st party cookie IDs, etc. Even if those change, there usually exists backend mapping that allows for vendors to correlate different user IDs as being the same user ultimately.
Yeah, multi-hop is pointless for tracking. The logic to it is crazy too. People think VPNs make them anonymous (they don't), but they also think multi-hop makes them MORE anonymous. So anonymity is kind of an absolute concept. Either you are or you are not anonymous. You can't be more anonymous than anonymous. There is no +1.
The logic to it is crazy too. People think VPNs make them anonymous (they don't), but they also think multi-hop makes them MORE anonymous.
Whether multi-hop matters to tracking is far and away a different discussion than whether multi-hop "makes you anonymous".
I too disagree with the original comment, but also believe the pendulum swung too far the other direction in your replies.
Situations differ. Threat models differ. More hops can, from direct personal experience, make the difference in tracking. Your claim of "...multi-hop is pointless for tracking." has too broad of a scope to be correct.
You're trying to argue without evidence (like I had provided). To summarize these exchange so far its: 1. You giving some marketing crap you read from a VPN provider site on their multi-hop service. 2. Someone pointing out that it is incorrect with evidence. 3. You get mad and basically come back with "Nuh-uh!"
Is there some evidence you'd like to provide or is it going to be another "nuh-uh!"?
Adtech relies on the OpenRTB 2.5/2.6 spec for tracking, you would have removed 1 identifier out of a hundred (one that isn't really used anyway given SSAI is so popular).
Removing an identifier that is used. (1/100 = matters, "isn't really used" != unused). This contradicts your other statements:
Yeah, multi-hop is pointless for tracking.
...IP addresses and multi-hop don't matter...
Broad statements that don't take into consideration the threat model of other users. Servers you connect to might not be using source IP in any way to track. You might be leaking so many other identifiers, that its completely useless to worry about multi-hop. But this is not true for everyone in every situation.
Unrelated, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So, I'm not allowed to ask you for proof of your statement? And if its unrelated, then why did you post it? Its unrelated. Also, you're saying you have an absence of evidence, ergo you have no evidence. Having no evidence does not qualify as evidence.
Removing an identifier that is used. (1/100 = matters, "isn't really used" != unused). This contradicts your other statements:
Just because an identifier exists doesn't mean it is used. BidRequest.imp[i].tagid exists, but advertisers don't use it. I think you are confusing having an option with something being mandatory.
And Tor nodes are not the same thing as VPN multi-hop. If you think that they are, wow! VPN multi-hop is you connecting to a provider's server that connects to another one of the provider's server then out. It's all the provider's network.
And again, if you connected your Firefox browser to Tor, we could still track you. You'd get cookied or localStorage() tracked. When you disconnect from Tor, that stuff is still present in your browser. Almost like the number of hops you take or the IP address used doesn't seem to really matter, huh?
EDIT: I just realized you think that Tor is built using multi-hop VPN. Its a real life Dunning-Kruger effect! I've never encountered this. You are going to do something really stupid and end up in prison.
So, I'm not allowed to ask you for proof of your statement? And if its unrelated, then why did you post it? Its unrelated. Also, you're saying you have an absence of evidence, ergo you have no evidence. Having no evidence does not qualify as evidence
Asking for evidence wasn't the issue, believing that the truth relies solely upon a discussion providing such evidence is.
I think you are confusing having an option with something being mandatory.
You misunderstood. Some of your own statements say it matters and is used. Mandatory wasn't mentioned nor implied.
And Tor nodes are not the same thing as VPN multi-hop.
I just realized you think that Tor is built using multi-hop.
I didn't state they were the same. Tor uses "multiple hops" (you can find that string the the link I posted earlier). It is critical to the limiting of information seen by any single entity.
And again, if you connected your Firefox browser to Tor, we could still track you. You'd get cookied or localStorage() tracked. When you disconnect from Tor, that stuff is still present in your browser. Almost like the number of hops you take or the IP address used doesn't seem to really matter, huh?
All that state can be removed. And the server might not be tracking that. Situations vary, adversaries vary. If you cannot imagine a scenario in which hops or IP address would matter, I would suggest doing some research.
Its a real life Dunning-Kruger effect! I've never encountered this. You are going to do something really stupid and end up in prison.
Personal swipes mark the end of this discussion. I would suggest you to leave those out next time as It detracts focus from constructive learning.
This will be my last reply. You can also reply if you want (but I won't see it).
Asking for evidence wasn't the issue, believing that the truth relies solely upon a discussion providing such evidence is.
Again, post your evidence or didn't happen. Literally everything after that meaningless without that. The discussion is over because you can't provide that as you are wrong. End.
I think it's the older way around. There are really only 3 or 4 countries where using a VPN to pirate is needed. I'm just willing to bet you live in one of those countries.
Does I2P utilize nodes or something that can be hosted? I’m lucky enough to live in a location with symmetrical gigabit internet, so even if I don’t use it myself I could at least donate some bandwidth. Could run next to my TOR relay.
Private trackers are a very handy option. I’ve found their rules can often get restrictive. Although it makes sense - gotta protect the swarm.
If you’ve got a symmetrical gigabit line, you'd be a great fit for hosting a high-bandwidth I2P node, it helps the whole network scale and makes things faster for everyone. Though I'd recommend reading more about i2p before diving in.
the most important this to have when pirating is common sense
We disagree actually, it's to have well written tutorials and not to rely on the idea that people can just know things from nothing.
We get the frustration in this meme but honestly, we never liked this kind of attitude in tech spaces, it's exclusionary, gatekeepy and harms people. We understand not wanting to answer every single question but some well written tutorials etc to link to are better than having everyone starting in ignorance and getting in trouble or being harmed for it.
Especially if said tutorials keep up to date and add more answers to people's questions over time.
After all, being helpful actually helps the pirate community in that more people seed, so helping others is actually win-win. There's really no downsides whereas expecting others to know everything or being rude stops this from happening and thus is a loss for all of us.
My Lemmy client doesn't show profiles by default and it's a pretty popular one. Perhaps it might be wise to introduce yourselves in a sentence or 2 in the future.
Oh my fucking god you're a crazy bitch. How are you allowed on the internet, good god. Excuse me, wiping tears from my eyes 😭 as I cry-laugh at your bottomless stupidity 😂😂😂😂😂.
For reference, I don't give a crap about you being plural or not, that's totally fine. But saying you're not human?? Hahahaha 😂😂😂
My client doesn't show these things, and i'm honestly not interested enough in the matter to read someones bio to put their odd form of expression into context, even if it would show them.
For the sake of efficient communication i would suggest adjusting either by putting that context in your comment or by expressing yourself more clearly.
Tutorials can't cover everything. Once you encounter something completely new, you need common sense to extrapolate from your existing knowledge (which could be from a tutorial or experience, etc).
In the end, whether we're talking about piracy, work or life in general… You need to be able to adapt to situations, not just read guides.
That's not to say well-written tutorials shouldn't exist, but the common sense part is still more important IMO
Sure, but the problem is that people aren't taught those skills necessarily. So it does help when people are willing to help out in case those skills or ability to do that or for many other reasons aren't possible.
We get that not everybody can or wants to, but a quick "I'm unable to help you" is fine, yet we see so mahy people being rude instead. Leave space for those who can or want to help instead 🙂
Dunno man. Common sense for us in IT is different compared to layman. For example, I thought it was common sense to treat incognito mode only as a shortcut so I wouldn't have to clear browsing history and local cookies everytime. Then I read about users thinking incognito mode actually protected them against snooping or fingerprinting.
This was how I used to format my piracy searches. 13 years later I recognize that forcing the search engine to generate direct links to the torrents instead of handing me pages I could get was probably where those viruses came from 😅
I don't understand folks that pirate games. I don't think there's a particular service issue currently between all the platforms and sales.
If I'm boycotting a publisher/studio, I just don't play their games. If I find them too expensive, I just don't buy it and won't play it. And if it's not worth buying it at full price, I'll just might buy it on sale later.
Movies and TV shows on the other hand... There's definitely a service issue there.
It's not free. The associated cost is searching for an appropriate release, potentially eliminating any issues with it and then still risking becoming part of the botnet.
In contrast, buying games on deep sale is pennies and it just works.
I didn't say all games. I'm a patient gamer. I buy when they go on sale, years later. Unless it's a really well received indie game. I try to pay full price for those.
Steam (and I assume other platforms as well) change prices depending on region. So what may seem unaffordable in Canadian Dollars, is likely well priced in Hungarian Forint or Czech Korunas.
We used to had demo version of games, often made with care. Now we have 2h play on Steam while we can refund, instead.
Devs* learned to make first 2h nice and intense and to scream it's awesome and the wow effect, and everything later super bland and repetitive. Nice 2h long game may be worthy 8€. 2h long fun and 200h boring fuck is not worthy 80€ the devs request.
As devs I point some devs and often publishers who own dev studio and makes orders too.
I don't trust the bitches.
If I find whole game fun and worthy the price, can pay even 80€, can put it on the wishlist to buy on promo later, or in extreme cases, even buy few copies for friends includes pricy dlc. IF I find it worthy as whole.
I don't understand folks that pirate games. I don't think there's a particular service issue currently between all the platforms and sales
Capcom puts invasive DRM on all of their games now, and retroactively added it after people bought said games. All of the Borderlands games had spyware retroactively added over the past yeat spyware. And Ubisoft can't be trusted to not take away games from people who paid for them.
Right. But again, that's on the individual for buying it for loads of cash upon release. The writing was on the wall for all these shitty AAA producing companies for years, yet the preorder FOMO train never stopped.
I agree about piracy/cracks for stuff that you already bought, but the publisher broke it in some way. But these are the exception, not the norm.
Good for you. You do you. I'll keep pirating all the games I can, and if they are from a respected developer (fuck you Ubisoft, EA, Blizzard, etc.) AND I like the game, then I'll certainly buy it.
We don't disagree. Our approach is just different. Neither of us are throwing much money at these companies.
Just the other day I've bought the FO4 GOTY edition for (checks email) C$13.37 (lol), which included all DLCs, and I thought it was a fair price for the quality of the game and content it provides. With the 30% cut that steam takes, I hope Bobby or Todd or whoever is in charge now is happy.
I'm a Linux user and the games I play are usually not supported, so troubleshooting time often exceeds the two hour return window. This is nearly a non-issue these days though.
I'm a Linux user as well (arch btw) and I just look at protondb and areweanticheatyet.com/ as a reference. If something comes up as less than stellar, I'll just skip purchasing it.
Longest I had to tinker with were Project Zomboid (due to ancient gfx before I bought a new one) and Jedi Fallen Order (just to fine tune for performance/fidelity, took about 15 minutes).
I understand if you regularly go for games that require a lot of tinkering you might need more time though, but the Steam return is 2hrs of played time, not 2hrs of owning the game.
In Linux, if you run games with Lutris, you can have them sandboxed with your sandboxing app of choice (personally I use firejail) by changing the "command prefix" option in the configuration for the game (or setting it as the default in the global Lutris configuration).
Also Lutris defaults to a different Wine instance per game, so Windows-specific malware would only ever affect the wine instance of that game.
So if you're worried about pirated Windows games might contain Linux specific malware meant for when the game is running under Wine (as Wine is just an adaptor, not an emulator or sandboxing layer) you can go as crazy as you want in blocking what that executable can access, all fully under your control.
Ollie on holiday in Sweden completing side quests 😀
F1 driver Ollie Bearman broke the track record – in Varberg
Suddenly, Formula 1 star Ollie Bearman appeared at the Varberg go-kart track with his sights set on the track record.
But it took several days – after a serious effort that required both help from his family and optimisation of the go-kart.
"We had to cool the engine with a leaf blower," he says.
It was during Bearman's holiday in Sweden that the F1 star's girlfriend's family challenged him to break the track record at the local go-kart track in Varberg. Something he confidently expected to be able to do on his first attempt.
But what the Brit didn't know at the time was that it would require several days of effort, and suddenly his holiday turned into something completely different. "Every trick in the book"
"I thought it would be easy. But on the first day, I was three or four tenths behind. It was a short lap, around 29 seconds, so I had to be extremely careful and try every trick in the book," he told the Motorsport website.
But despite this, the Haas driver, who is making his first full season in Formula 1 after previously stepping in as a reserve driver for Ferrari, was defeated on the first day.
On day two, the 20-year-old stepped up and took action: thinner clothing and removing parts of the chassis to keep the weight down, getting his girlfriend to act as pit crew and another driver to slipstream behind him on the straights. "He should be driving in Formula 1"
"It became a super serious mission. On the last day, we put on new tyres and lowered the tyre pressure after each lap. I have pictures of me and my girlfriend removing the petrol from the go-kart to make it lighter. We had to cool the engine between laps with a leaf blower.
Finally, after several attempts, Bearman set the new record: 28.97. On the track's social media, the star poses next to the record.
The F1 star himself had no idea who the mysterious miracle man was who held the previous record.
"No idea, but he should be driving in Formula 1 anyway," Bearman concludes.
But SVT can reveal that his name is Elton Zewenacht, 23, and that he himself aims to become a racing driver one day.
"I still have a dream that I want to start competing," he says.
But no no no no, this time, THIS time, MIT is involved so it MUST be true, because MIT would never link it's mlname to yet another Sammy product, right?
OOOHH, And this device will even get water out of desert air, you say? Like like all the other water out of dry air products that were all such obvious scams that any 15yo could use highschool physics to explain it to you?.
Well call me sold, I'm all in in this one! By the way, I have this nice heat little bridge in my backyard, you'd LOVE it! Pay first, the. I'll show ya, promise!
And just to make it really really clear: no, I haven't read the article and yes, it's a scam, and how do I know? Basic physics and, you know, seeing these devices come by every 2-4 years like clockwork and every damn time some university is funding it or attaching their names to it for some reason. I don't even need to read the article at this point.
Here is a question: can universities please require that students have taken some basic physics courses before they allow them to start dumb scams like this?
Edit: come at me Lemmy, down vote all you want, I'm still right
I never understood why people keep falling for the 'dehumidifer will solve world water shortages' thing over and over. It's an old idea and there is damn good reason you don't see this 'obvious' solution deployed everywhere. (Check out the if you would like to know more)
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.
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.
These are called dehumidifiers and you should not drink the water that comes out of them.
The condensed water is pure, yes. But dehumidifiers almost instantly become a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty shit. Nasty shit that is now in your ‘pure’ water.
Edit: It's the same problem as the which is also a passive dehumidifier. This same idea comes up several times a year, yet you don't see them deployed in quantity anywhere. They simply don't work well. (The WaterSeer actually seems like a better design than what is in OP's article.)
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.
The waterseeer was an outright scam that never would have worked because physics, yet collecting millions in funding. And that wasn't the first on either
"Pure" is not a good thing when talking about water. Your body relies on minerals dissolved in drinking water. Also, water is a powerful solvent and if it isnt already saturated with minerals it will absorb calcium right out of your bones
A new report investigates the cybersecurity risks consumers face when using digital piracy services in Southeast Asia. The findings clearly show that pirate sites are a bigger threat than legal streaming platforms, suggesting that countermeasures are warranted. However, does is also mean that pirates are 65 times more likely to be infected by malware? And is that even important?
Ok, I have a problem with this. They link to a PDF that shows the "methodology" used to determine what is malicious (torrentfreak.com/images/Watter…). Only it doesn't actually provide the methodology other than to state that a human identified it or a machine identified it as a cyber threat. Without info on how that identification process works, all the graphs they display are meaningless and so is the report.
Students increasingly use AI chatbots for anything from academic queries to emotional quandaries. But are they missing out on the chance to make their own mistakes? Three undergrads reveal all …
Live Dead è il primo album dal vivo della band che più di ogni altra ha costruito la propria immagine sui “live”. Nella loro discografia i dischi dal vivo hanno raggiunto quelli in studio e senza dubbio sono destinati ancora a crescere... Leggi e ascolta...
Live Dead è il primo album dal vivo della band che più di ogni altra ha costruito la propria immagine sui “live”. Nella loro discografia i dischi dal vivo hanno raggiunto quelli in studio e senza dubbio sono destinati ancora a crescere. Live Dead è un live un po’ speciale non solo perché è stato registrato con una platea di amici e non con un pubblico pagante ma soprattutto perché è un disco di passaggio, “il” disco di passaggio dagli Acid Tests e dalla San Francisco “sixties” verso il mondo nuovo, verso i settanta, anni più complicati e grigi... silvanobottaro.it/archives/427…
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Ideally, upvotes are for content that adds to the discussion, not for things you agree with. Nobody actually uses it that way, but I think that's the most useful way for them to be used, outside of specific poll posts.
But I'm also getting really tired of people purposely putting extreme effort into tricking the LLM into saying something harmful if someone were to follow it blindly, just so they can make a clickbait headline out of it.
That's called testing, and the companies behind these LLMs should, before launch, put a very important amount of their resources into testing.
"Product testing is a crucial process in product development where a product's functionality, performance, safety, and user experience are evaluated to identify potential issues and ensure it meets quality standards before release" (Gemini)
We are literally using alpha/beta software to deal with life altering issues, and these companies are, for some reason, being able to test their products on the public, without consequences.
It's like you bought a car and deliberately hit the wall to make a headline "cars make you disabled". Or bought a hammer, hit your thumb and blame hammers for this.
Guys, it's a TOOL. Every tool is both useful and harmful. It's up to you how you use it.
Headline is misleading and the beach is relatively small, but you should proactively freeze your credit anyway. I had my identity stolen a few years ago due to an insurance company I'd never heard of getting hacked and it was a huge mess. The whole incident taught me that it's not a matter of if your identity will be stolen- it's when. Thousands of companies have your PII (personal identifying information) even if you have never heard of them or have never done business with them because your insurance works with them or said companies legally buy your info from other companies or your state's government. Most of these companies do alright protecting your data, but when there are so many parties that have it and it only takes one screwing up to get your identity stolen, it's just kind of impossible for them all to do hold the line.
It really pisses me off that citizens are responsible for"protecting" their identities on their own. Obviously the system isn't working but nobody gives a shit or wants to do anything about it. If everyone should freeze their credit by default then why is this not the default state? Why is a 9 digit number given to us as babies on an un-laminated paper card the main thing standing between us and identity theft when you have to give that number to everyone to do anything anyway? It's completely absurd.
At this point I assume most data breaches are just a criminal conspiracy between the corpo and data brokers.
No corporation bothers securing their data to a reasonable extent, so naturally they might as well choose the additional revenue stream of an "accidental" "breach" which is extremely valuable to surveillance capitalism. It's not like they face any significant consequences 99% of the time...
This is an absurd conspiracy theory that doesn't hold up to even the lighter scrutiny. Which data broker was Equifax secretly distributing info to when it got hacked? Data brokers don't need this type of conspiracy to buy and sell your data- it's already completely legal. How do you think these companies got it in the first place?
I will always downvote Hanlon's Razor. Not because it's useless, but because it doesn't really hold true in capitalism and fascism. I can't speak to this specific example, but peoplle act out of malice all of the fucking time.
Il giovane Julian Vargas si avvicinò con passo deciso all’alta staccionata mentre un vortice meteorologico sembrava minacciare il suo stesso diritto all’esistenza.
No. Stop falling for scams. What the fuck is he even selling a course in the dude is just a generic rant channel. His only skill I could see is being wrong on damn near everything and grifting young people for money with a guru shtick.
You do you, but you seem like one of those grandmas paying money to "plant seeds" so that the television church man can totally cure you of cancer by some miracle while he flies around on a private jet, because the reality is messy and complicated and hard, even in the best of times. I know you're looking not to pay money, but i doubt there'll be anything but an upsell that you'll find at the bottom of this botrle, and you might be in deeper by then.
I have the courses. It's a collection of videos, pretty short ones, but it's hundreds of videos. Dunno why all the hate here. But it's been helpful for me.
It would be difficult to rip them and time consuming. Is there a course your more specifically interested in?
The Trump administration recently published "America's AI Action Plan". One of the first policy actions from the document is to eliminate references to misinformation, diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate change from the NIST's AI Risk Framework.
Lacking any sense of irony, the very next point states LLM developers should ensure their systems are "objective and free from top-down ideological bias".
Par for the course for Trump and his cronies, but the world should know what kind of AI the US wants to build.
Again, AMERICA doesn't want this. This is some dumb shit from a mentally deficient and decrepit old man that somehow got elected under very shady terms by a minority of the country.
You know, this might actually be really bad politics.
Trump is not the only person at the top. He's kind of a lame duck, actually: he just does whatever Miller says. The only time he steps in is when he's personally insulted by something because he desperately wants everyone to know he's a very special boy.
I do take issue with democrats blaming everything the republicans are up to on Trump specifically, as if the party might return to normal once he dies.
It probably will return somewhat to normal, assuming public opinion continues on its trajectory. People overwhelmingly don't like Trump, so anyone affiliated w/ him are going to hurt in the next couple elections unless public opinion turns around.
I don't know what "normal" looks like, but it's probably somewhere between Trump and Bush. I'm still not a fan, but moving away from Trump is going to be a net win.
Well, this is what I'm asking for, so I sure hope so.
but it's probably somewhere between Trump and Bush.
So, keep in mind, republican voters are not upset with Trump because they've decided they no longer want a border wall. The architects of Project 2025 don't need anything from Trump but political power, which they already have.
The next election cycle, if it's real, I do imagine will swing back, but it cannot just "swing back," it needs to deal with the sickness plaguing the US. That sickness is the republican party. That sickness is the republican voter.
That sickness is the republican party. That sickness is the republican voter.
I disagree, and this just smacks of tribalism.
The problem is people wanting to force others into their worldview, parties are just a tool to get that done. The real solution is ending the two party system so people can express themselves better, not to replace one problem with another.
The problem is people wanting to force others into their worldview,
No, I will force nazis into my worldview, actually. They can come willingly, or we can beat them into submission like we did 80 years ago.
What, actually, is wrong with you? Building alligator auschwitz does, in fact, make you a bad person—if you seriously disagree with this, then you and I are enemies.
Yes, building the detention center is absolutely terrible. I hate everything about the recent changes WRT immigration, and I probably don't even know the half of it.
We're a nation of immigrants, and we should absolutely be encouraging more legal immigration. In fact, my personal opinion is that we should make a new type of temporary "work seeking" visa where you're given some time (say, 1 month) to find a job, and if you get a job, it automatically turns into a work authorization visa, with the stipulation that the employer must report when that job ends, at which point you have another month to find a new job before you have to leave. IMO, this completely solves the migrant worker issue, without needing to mess w/ quotes for longer-term visas. Those employers would also receive closer scrutiny to catch any illegal activity (i.e. shell companies employing cartels).
However, associating it w/ the Holocaust is disgusting and again smacks of tribalism. Yes it's a terrible facility, but AFAIK there's zero overlap w/ what the Nazis did. Since it's on US soil, they do have to follow US law in how they treat people, unlike Gitmo.
nazis... we can beat them into submission
If you actually think Republicans have much overlap w/ Nazis, then you're delusional. It's just like Republicans claiming Democrats are Marxists. The name calling isn't productive and just cheapens what each of those terms mean.
Yes, some people in the Republican camp court fascist policies, but by and large, they are not fascist. Call them out on actual policy issues and convince people to vote them out w/ logic, don't just lean into rhetoric.
You think that caging brown people "for no reason" is a disgusting comparison to the Holocaust?
This is unreal. I didn't see this conversation coming at all. You're actually doing nazi apologia. You're refusing to acknowledge the pressure building in your pipes only because the pipes haven't burst yet. How many brown people do you want to die before you're willing to concede this? Do we need to wait until the full 6 million?
they do have to follow US law in how they treat people
No. They don't.
Neither Democrat congress members nor journalists are allowed to see what's happening inside that camp. Rather, they are, legally, but they're being prevented from doing so anyway.
The Democrats are weak and refuse to punish Republicans for anything. If there is no threat of punishment, they can just do whatever they want. Republicans have abused this weakness of Democrats like 5 billion times.
The Big Beautiful Bill includes a provision that judicial funds cannot be used to pursue rulings. This passed, so, if it can't be repealed, this means it is illegal to use funds intended to punish criminals to seek punishment for Republicans breaking the law. This kills the law.
Call them out on actual policy issues
Call them out for being evil. Their policies are evil.
If the majority of Republicans are not evil, as you say, then they should have no problem dropping the line. They can form a new party, and the current one can be dropped into a wastebin in hell.
How many have or are likely to die due to this? That would obviously depend on the duration of detention, and I honestly don't know much about that, but these people should have the right of due process since they're on US soil (5th and 14th amendments). So they can't just be incarcerated indefinitely (habeas corpus), they'd have to be tried or released in a timely fashion.
The Holocaust differs in so many ways:
were largely labor camps, which later became extermination camps - as a detention facility, this means people are not convicted and therefore legally protected under the 13th amendment from forced labor; likewise, capital punishment only applies to those convicted
people taken w/o violating any actual crimes - the detention facility is for those suspected of immigration crimes
the intent was genocide - intent for detention facility is temporary holding until people can be tried or deported
It's not remotely the same thing, and comparing them is ridiculous rhetoric. Comparing everything the right does to Nazism and the Holocaust is intellectually dishonest, meant to convince someone to your side through emotional language instead of facts.
If there are deaths, they're going to be incidental to incarceration, as in people already in poor health dying due to added stress of incarceration or something, and not something directly done by the guards.
Rather, they are, legally, but they’re being prevented from doing so anyway.
And unfortunately, that's something that's going to have to be worked out in the courts. According to US law, they must be subject to audit to ensure Constitutional Law is being followed.
Democrats are weak
True, but I'm not sure what this has to do w/ anything.
The Big Beautiful Bill includes a provision that judicial funds cannot be used to pursue rulings. This passed, so, if it can’t be repealed, this means it is illegal to use funds intended to punish criminals to seek punishment for Republicans breaking the law. This kills the law.
If that's accurate (I haven't reviewed it), then that provision will likely be struck down by a court. You can't just hamstring the branch of the government that decides whether law is constitutional and expect them to just roll over, even the conservative Supreme Court would very likely strike this down.
If the majority of Republicans are not evil, as you say, then they should have no problem dropping the line.
And they have been. Look at Trump's approval rating. I live in a very red state, and he has a net negative approval rating here, which is absolutely bonkers. This will have an impact on the next couple elections, but it's hard to tell what the actual results will be. But if Trump keeps pissing off his base, it could get very spicy indeed.
people taken w/o violating any actual crimes - the detention facility is for those suspected of immigration crimes
Wow.
You know, it's no wonder you live in a red state; you're still bought into the republican propoganda. I believe you that the "immigrants" rounded up into unmarked ICE vans will be tried fairly, and only the vile criminals among them will be deported to an El Salvador slave camp.
the intent was genocide - intent for detention facility is temporary holding until people can be tried or deported
Deporting people en masse is genocide.
even the conservative Supreme Court would very likely strike this down.
The conservative justices are loyal to the Republican party. The Republican party does not want to be held accountable. What on earth gives you the idea they'll want to strike this down?
Look at Trump's approval rating.
His approval rating is only down among Republicans because his tariffs have been hurting them and not the brown people they voted to kill.
They thought the white ethnostate Trump would usher in would make them lions among sheep, and they are only upset that they are among the sheep.
—Not to mention, listen to any on-the-streets interviews with republican voters about their disapproval, fucking all of them say they'd vote for him again.
it could get very spicy indeed.
Absolutely beside myself at your cavalier attitude. I do hope your state gets everything it voted for.
That's the absolutely horrendous part, and you should be criticizing those camps. This detention center isn't that.
Deporting people en masse is genocide.
That's not true. This is what genocide means:
genocide: The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group.
Deportation is the national version of trespassing someone from a property. It's not murder.
The conservative justices are loyal to the Republican party.
They're really not. Their interests do often align, but that's not because they're taking orders from the GOP. If the GOP was actually able to tell them what to do, they'd side w/ Trump way more often.
they voted to kill
That's not what they did.
They largely voted for protectionism (save our jobs/businesses/etc), and now they're feeling the results of that.
Only a small subset of Republicans are actually racist. I'm sure the same is true among Democrats as well.
Absolutely beside myself at your cavalier attitude
Why? Because I refuse to jump on the Republican hate bandwagon? I'm not going to stoop to dangerous rhetoric to try to scare/shame people to my viewpoint.
I strongly disagree with Republicans on policy, but more importantly I see the two party system as the real problem here. Shilling one side over another just perpetuates that system and merely swings the pendulum the other way.
So no, I'm not going to buy into that nonsense. And my state is doing quite well, despite the best efforts of our legislature.
I don't do that because it wouldn't be right. Doesn't matter who did what to me in the past.
For instance if you were a plumber and you intentionally smashed a piece of furniture while at a clients house, does that mean all plumbers are violently vandalizing people's homes ,no.
Because adult human beings know that the actions of one do not define the actions of all.
I am not changing this position. You can get the last word, throw an insult at me or do nothing.
Choice is yours but I'm done. I don't have to defend the correct position. It is correct.
I just, I do not understand why this upsets people so much.
I work for a company that does things I don't want them to do all the time. I've never felt like someone saying "[the company] wants to do [this thing]" was ever referring to me specifically whatsoever.
What if they said employees of your company all support a thing? That would include you.
It's absolutely insane to say all Americans support Trump when he has a net negative approval rating pretty much everywhere, including red states. Look at the opinion polls, most people don't like what's going on. Yet for some reason, people claim the majority of us like him for some reason.
I gotta be honest, I don't understand what you're fighting for here. That people in Finland will have a slightly better opinion of you? Mexico will know you're one of the good ones?
Russia has done a lot of disagreeable things, I've got to imagine its people are pretty upset about it.
I'm talking about comments a few levels up the chain talking about overgeneralizations, as well as the very common loose language online where people attribute problems to the people of a nation rather than its leaders.
I have no issues with Chinese or Russian people, I have issues w/ their respective governments. Yet we get hate crimes against the people that come from a region just because their government did something stupid.
where people attribute problems to the people of a nation rather than its leaders.
But you're the one doing this. I'm not conflating people with country here. OP isn't either.
Yet we get hate crimes against the people that come from a region just because their government did something stupid.
Are you proposing that racists, when they hear "Russian government" instead of "Russia," will stop being racist? I don't really know what to say to that.
When racists hear "Russians do X," yes, they'll attribute that to many ethnic Russians outside of Russia.
Look at the Japanese internment during WW2, tons of people were accused of being spys and interned simply because of their ethnicity, even if they had lived here for decades (or were even born here). Japanese people got mistreated for years after WW2 just because they were Japanese, without any association w/ the Japanese government. Why? Because propaganda associated the terrible actions of the Japanese government with the Japanese people and turned US citizens on each other.
So yes, I will push back on anything that even smells like that kind of BS. I will not tolerate generalizations like this, even if most "normal" people understand what it means. People already associate Jewish people in the US w/ Israel, even though many (most?) actually don't like the Israeli state. So no, I will not sit back and allow casual intolerance to go unquestioned.
Yes, it's not the point of the article, but I saw similar wording several times in comments on this post, hence my comment here (it seemed the most relevant subthread to drop it into).
You keep making this mistake. I'm starting to think you're doing it deliberately.
Because propaganda associated the terrible actions of the Japanese government with the Japanese people
Are you not reinforcing the idea that a country's name refers to its people by insisting that everyone else and not you are the ones nefariously conflating the two?
The idea that a people are the same as their country is nationalism. How are you battling nationalism by preventing people from saying a country's name?
If you said "Netanyahu did this," and fair, he does a lot of things, would the racist not assume that the Isreali people elected him and thus agree with him anyway? Because they're "of the same kind."
You seem to think that their racism is derived from a simple misconception and not, like, a deep-seated fear and paranoia.
If you see someone say "Isreal does this," then assume they mean the state. If you see someone say "let's bomb Isreal into the shadow realm," then politely snap their neck. It's not that hard.
You keep making this mistake. I’m starting to think you’re doing it deliberately.
It's not a mistake, I see that type of language a lot. If the language was specifically "Russia does X", then it's not a problem, because it's referring to the government.
The idea that a people are the same as their country is nationalism. How are you battling nationalism by preventing people from saying a country’s name?
Nationalism sucks, and I'm trying to distinguish between the country doing a thing (i.e. its leadership) and the people doing a thing. The people in the US elected Trump, but the people in the US aren't doing what Trump did, so it's absolutely fallacious to say something like "Americans are deporting people," when that's being done by the administration, not everyday people.
That's it.
would the racist not assume that the Isreali people elected him and thus agree with him anyway?
Sure, maybe. But a lot more people would get riled up if we said "Israelis did this," and then associate that with random Jewish people (most of whom have probably never been to Israel). Netanyahu/Israel doing a thing is quite different from Israelis doing a thing, because the latter has a lot more risk of lumping in non-Israelis into that nonsense.
Racism is certainly deeper than a headline/misconception, my point is that it can be stoked by loose language. Its that loose language that I'd like people to be more careful about.
It is an absolute fucking god damn JOKE that Americans have allowed the concepts of DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION to be turned into a FUCKING ACRONYM THAT IS USED AS A PEJORATIVE.
Every single fucking one of them should be bloody ashamed for what has happened. At no fucking god damn point has any decent fucking person challenged any of these assholes on this, they’ve all just let it happen.
Putting a title on it (I.e. "Big beautiful bill") doesn't mean it is a big, beautiful bill.
I'm not skeptical of DEI because I'm against "diversity, equity, and inclusion", I'm skeptical because of piss poor implementations of it I see in the workforce
AI, crypto, just like .com, are very much very real, valuable technologies that have and will continue to stick around and be used until we destroy ourselves, or something even more advanced comes along.
What was/is a grift, is all the stupid money and people around it that don't have a damn clue where the limits of the technologies actually lie, what kinds of real problems are solved and have been sold lies stop lies without doing their due diligence.
I agree with this, mostly. The tech is real -- The blockchain has solid math behind it. I don't know if I agree with its value though. The viable usecases are significantly limited compared to the hype behind them. Bitcoin for example is still inherently inefficient compared to conventional payment systems. AI feels a lot like that -- lots of hype with very little substance at its core.
Didn't you hear about the scandals with Steam and Itch with traditional centralised payment processors? Decentralised payments like crypto are a method of solving that issue.
That's Radarr, not Limewire. Radarr is nothing like Limewire. Radarr is the best software currently available for fetching movies, just as Sonarr is the best for TV shows. And they're downloading from Usenet, not torrents. The reason they are having trouble is that they haven't set up Radarr to properly score releases, so it's just grabbing whatever matches the name.
So it's p2p without the help and protection of the bittorrent protocol, like limewire. I guess it's not literally limewire, it uses a warez graveyard instead.
If your software is "the best software", how come it can't find a movie? Why do you need to "set it up" to "properly score releases"? Jajajaja here you go instead:
It's not P2P at all, and bittorrent doesn't give you any protection against anything. Usenet is also usually better when it comes to finding stuff, because public torrent sites drop like flies all the time. And Usenet downloads as fast as my connection can handle, without waiting for peers or needing to seed afterwards, and I don't even need a VPN if I don't want one.
Took 5 mins on my phone. Nw we were all new to piracy once.
Yes, we were all new to piracy at one point. But if you're going to be a smug little shit, then allow me to point out the difference between us is that you're still new to it, fledgling. You took five minutes typing shit out on your phone to find it? How adorable. It took me barely lifting a finger to click one button, and then I walked away while my media server took care of all the rest. Finding the best copy available on the net, downloading it, finding subtitles for it, and importing it into my media library so I can stream it to any device in the world. Movies, TV shows, ebooks, audiobooks, music, it doesn't matter. Anything I want, it's fully automated from start to finish. I don't even pirate anymore, because I'm not a peasant like you and I've got robot underlings to take care of shit like that for me.
Now, are we done stroking our own cocks, or do you want to swagger around some more like a teenager who hasn't gotten their braces off?
Each piece is protected by a cryptographic hash contained in the torrent descriptor.[1] This ensures that any modification of the piece can be reliably detected, and thus prevents both accidental and malicious modifications of any of the pieces received at other nodes. If a node starts with an authentic copy of the torrent descriptor, it can verify the authenticity of the entire file it receives.
Usenet is also usually better when it comes to finding stuff, because public torrent sites drop like flies all the time.
So? Sites may go, but torrents stay alive. A torrent will usually have multiple trackers, even after the site you got the link from is long gone, that torrent will work like a charm and is easily findable via any site that indexes multiple trackers.
Case in point - that rarbg release I sent? Yeah the original group and their site is long gone. Rarbg.to is the actual site, the one I linked is just a random fansite with the same UI.
Yet despite the site being down, the torrent lives on. Must be like magic to some of us, eh?
And Usenet downloads as fast as my connection can handle,
No, it downloads as fast both your and the server's connection can handle. The cloud is just someone else's PC, but instead of many randoms in usually Belarus, Brazil and Portugal, you rely on one.
Torrents will be faster, because you can download many pieces at once, unless you're downloading from like a huge corpo DC in which case yeah, good luck with that.
without waiting for peers or needing to seed afterwards
Yeah, instead of a resilient system where as long as one of thousands has a file you can always get it, you use 90s megaupload.
and I don't even need a VPN if I don't want one.
Congrats, I don't use one either and never have. Five eyes country BTW.
It took me barely lifting a finger to click one button, and then I walked away while my media server took care of all the rest. Finding the best copy available on the net, downloading it, finding subtitles for it, and importing it into my media library so I can stream it to any device in the world. Movies, TV shows, ebooks, audiobooks, music, it doesn't matter. Anything I want, it's fully automated from start to finish. I don't even pirate anymore, because I'm not a peasant like you and I've got robot underlings to take care of shit like that for me.
Well according to the OP, its more like you press a button and your "robot underlings" download some random semi-related documentary.
Honestly you might just wanna hit up the public library and ask if they got it at this point.
Now, are we done stroking our own cocks, or do you want to swagger around some more like a teenager who hasn't gotten their braces off?
The real difference between us is that I got a dick to swing about, all you got is air and sockpuppet alts to do your downvotes for you.
The real difference between us is that I got a dick to swing about
Swagger around some more it is, I guess. Well kid, you can take care of that yourself, I think your last reply getting nearly everything you wrote about Usenet wrong does enough damage to you, that you don't even need me anymore. I'll leave you and my "sockpuppets" in peace.
Usenet piracy is OG lol, goes back way longer than BitTorrent. And half the point of Radarr is to share it with your family so you don't have to teach everyone piracy, you just give them overseerr access and they literally point and click to get movies to show up on your plex or jellyfin. Just set up a VPN like wireguard on your publicly reachable server to get a secure connection between your home server or NAS and your users without exposing your piracy infra to the internet.
No I don't want to know, and I don't care, and the guy I'm replying to is way more of a dick than me anyway, as he should be, as is his natural right and as we all should be - but he also should be downvoted to oblivion for spreading literal misinformation, like actual obvious falsehoods - like "bittorrent doesn't protect against anything" which is something he said. But he isn't. Because ig the vast majority of this community is actually retarded.
nothing could beat the feeling of finally going from 56k to t1 at university, spending a week downloading shrek, and then discovering that it not even the right one.
You're not doing something wrong, per se, but you're also not doing something right. You should set up Radarr according to the TRaSH guides. This way Radarr will score releases and grab the best out of what it can find, instead of just grabbing whatever it finds first. If you don't set up Radarr to score releases, you might as well be doing it manually because you'll get better results.
Looks like you use NZBgeek. Try one of the top results here, looks like they are the real thing, judging from the comments on the NZBs.
Le pubblicità dentro #Telegram diventano in qualche modo sempre più pazze più il tempo passa, anziché morire, come francamente ben gli starebbe a quell’omm ‘e carton’ di Durov, che da anni non fa altro che infrangere promesse… almeno, credo siano più pazze. Sicuramente quelle del circuito di Telegram stesso sono quantomeno legali, cosa di base […]
telegrammici segnali per investire con le crypto! (pubblicità canali Telegram assurde)
Le pubblicità dentro #Telegram diventano in qualche modo sempre più pazze più il tempo passa, anziché morire, come francamente ben gli starebbe a quell’omm ‘e carton’ di Durov, che da anni non fa altro che infrangere promesse… almeno, credo siano più pazze. Sicuramente quelle del circuito di Telegram stesso sono quantomeno legali, cosa di base che storicamente per i circuiti autogestiti sulla piattaforma (quelli dei canali italiani di merda da decine di migliaia di iscritti, per capirci) non è vera, però questo comunque non vuol dire che siano pubblicità buone o sensate… sono solo pazze. 👹
Tipo, l’altro giorno mi è uscita la pubblicità per questo canale che, a primo impatto, senza guardarci troppo pareva la solita roba cryptobro… e lo è, ok, ma è più assurdo: Luca Moretti Segnali. Anche perché, la stessa identica pubblicità è uscita 2 giorni prima ad altri, e di nuovo oggi a me, ossia 2 giorni dopo; francamente, casi simili a questo me ne sono capitati, ma mai così uguali, quindi sospetto questo sia un segnale… e no, non intendo un segnale di investimento crypto, come quelli attorno ai quali il canale è incentrato, ma un classico segnale dai miei soliti spiriti domestici. Vabbé, la cosa molto strana è che la pubblicità dice, con una foto: “Clicca qui per unirti al migliore canale crypto!” (e fin qui ci sarebbe solo da ridere), “Accesso limitato — rimangono solo 6 posti!“… e qui mi viene ovviamente da piangere, perché il canale in questione è pubblico, quindi non può avere un limite di posti intrinseco, ed ovviamente dubito che l’admin vada a manina a togliere eventuali persone entrate come settime o più dopo il piazzamento della pubblicità… visto che vorrebbe dire buttare i soldi della pubblicità, semplicemente, oltre ad essere di per sé una pessima strategia di crescita. 🤨 Sarebbe poi finito tutto qui, a marcire nel dimenticatoio, se solo stasera non mi fosse riapparso… e invece, essendo esasperata, l’ho quindi dovuto guardare meglio, giusto per sfizio… ed è stranissimo. È creato da febbraio 2024, ma ha un intero buco di postaggio fino a novembre 2024, in cui l’admin ha pubblicato giusto un post di presentazione, senza collegamenti esterni se non l’username al suo profilo (dove ugualmente non c’è niente), per poi avere un altro cratere di pubblicazione, fino al 12 giugno di quest’anno, in cui pare aver iniziato a pubblicare diverse volte al giorno post relativi appunto ai segnali crypto. E — per quanto devo premettere che non so una mazza dell’argomento, quindi attenzione, che non si prenda quello che sto per dire come una critica dei contenuti, ma giusto come osservazione personalissima — i post sono assolutamente tutti uguali: mette screenshot della roba, scrivendo punto d’ingresso, target, stop loss, e sempre lo stesso paragrafo di avvertimento simil-guida copincollato alla fine: “È fondamentale rispettare il risk management: dopo il primo target, spostare lo stop loss al punto d’ingresso“… crazy!!! (Ogni tanto ci sono dei post riepilogativi, e in tutto il canale ci sono 2 o 3 post di svago, ma comunque bene o male questo è un eterno ritorno.) 😤
La cosa veramente strana, a mio avviso, è che non ci sono funnel verso altre cose. In genere, coloro che propongono i segnali o il vattelappesca sono truffatori, che mettono in piedi la loro cosa appunto solo per portare il traffico verso qualche altra cosa che faccia guadagnare loro… ma qui no, non c’è di per sé nessun elemento sospetto in atto… è così assurdo!!! Potrebbe spuntare fuori qualcosa in futuro magari, quando ci sarà dentro più gente, chi lo sa… ma per ora è assolutamente tutto pulito, quindi bravo Luca! Detto ciò, però, mi chiedo a proposito da dove vengano questi quattromila seguaci (che sono comunque un minimo attivi per giunta, perché ci sono varie reazioni, anche se non sempre)… cioè, tutti dalle pubblicità di ‘sti giorni sarebbe strano, ma sarebbe altrettanto strano se venissero da un anno e mezzo fa a questa parte, col canale vuoto… o forse no, perché, guardando gli ID di quelli che attualmente sono il primo ed il secondo messaggio, si scopre che prima c’erano centinaia di messaggi che sono stati poi cancellati; bah! 😱
Comunque, digressione stupida ma necessaria: ma come è possibile che tutti questi tizi che parlano di investimenti e #crypto e segnali e boh si chiamano sempre Luca di nome, e hanno sempre quest’aria da, passatemi il paragone, nomadi digitali? Ok, magari il mio cervello si sta inventando or ora il primo fatto, e quindi magari mi ricordo male e non tutti questi individui si chiamano Luca… ma giuro, le foto fiere messe lì così le hanno tutti tutti; e di questo canale, non so perché, mi fa specialmente ridere quella impostata per il profilo, che è lui che tiene un trolley da viaggio fuori da qualche parte di sera, e si vedono i muscoli… Vabbuono, nel caso, qualcuno mi segnali eventuali #canali originali, piuttosto. 😴
While AI systems demonstrate exponentially improving capabilities, the pace of AI research itself remains linearly bounded by human cognitive capacity, creating an increasingly severe development bottleneck.
Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing Editor July 23, 2025 at 11:31 a.m. PT
Recently, vibe coding bit Jason Lemkin, trusted advisor to SaaStr, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business community, in the worst possible way. The vibe program, Replit, he said, went "rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deleted our entire database."
First, Replit lied. Then it confessed to the lie. Then it deleted the company's entire database. Will vibe-coding AI ever be ready for serious commercial use by nonprogrammers?
Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing Editor July 23, 2025 at 11:31 a.m. PT
Recently, vibe coding bit Jason Lemkin, trusted advisor to SaaStr, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business community, in the worst possible way. The vibe program, Replit, he said, went "rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deleted our entire database."
Bad vibes: How an AI agent coded its way to disaster
Written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols, Senior Contributing Editor July 23, 2025 at 11:31 a.m. PT
Recently, vibe coding bit Jason Lemkin, trusted advisor to SaaStr, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business community, in the worst possible way. The vibe program, Replit, he said, went "rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deleted our entire database."
First, Replit lied. Then it confessed to the lie. Then it deleted the company's entire database. Will vibe-coding AI ever be ready for serious commercial use by nonprogrammers?
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
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 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.
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.
![[...], [23/07/2025 10:40]hey durov 👋💖💣, [25/07/2025 15:18]ma che cazzo di 6 posti che è un canale pubblico che cazzo di pubblicità di cazzoLuca Moretti | Segnali4.19K subscribersChannel createdFebruary 15, 2024Luca Moretti | Segnali🚀 Benvenuto su Luca Moretti – il tuo canale crypto dedicato ai segnali di trading!Qui troverai operatività reale, segnali precisi, gestione del rischio e aggiornamenti costanti dal mercato.Ogni trade è pensato per la performance, con l’obiettivo di crescere passo dopo passo, con disciplina e chiarezza.💬 Se sei nuovo, attiva le notifiche e segui ogni aggiornamento.📝 Per domande o feedback, scrivimi in privato 🔽@LucaCriptoCi aspettano tante occasioni – iniziamo insieme! 🔥](https://poliverso.org/photo/preview/1024/54208763 "[...], [23/07/2025 10:40]hey durov 👋💖💣, [25/07/2025 15:18]ma che cazzo di 6 posti che è un canale pubblico che cazzo di pubblicità di cazzoLuca Moretti | Segnali4.19K subscribersChannel createdFebruary 15, 2024Luca Moretti | Segnali🚀 Benvenuto su Luca Moretti – il tuo canale crypto dedicato ai segnali di trading!Qui troverai operatività reale, segnali precisi, gestione del rischio e aggiornamenti costanti dal mercato.Ogni trade è pensato per la performance, con l’obiettivo di crescere passo dopo passo, con disciplina e chiarezza.💬 Se sei nuovo, attiva le notifiche e segui ogni aggiornamento.📝 Per domande o feedback, scrivimi in privato 🔽@LucaCriptoCi aspettano tante occasioni – iniziamo insieme! 🔥")
mienshao
in reply to blargh513 • • •People are downvoting cuz OP said this site is becoming misogynistic plus OP didn’t include the right “sample size.”
But can we be fucking honest? This website is incredibly male dominated. Like why are we arguing this? I woulda figured it was closer to like 95% male users…
And many folks (read: men) on this website don’t like calling out the reality that these heavily male-skewed outlooks can be misogynistic. Like, yeah, you bring tons of men in a room with no women, people will start to say misogynistic shit. It’s not reddit-level bad, but I’ve definitely noticed it.
blargh513
in reply to mienshao • • •Jeena
in reply to blargh513 • • •You're talking about a specific instance Lemmy.ml which isn't even the biggest instance, but basically a tankie instance.
You should at least bring together the data of the biggest top 10 instances.
I also wonder how that website decides if I'm male or female.
mienshao
in reply to Jeena • • •Wouldn’t a tankie instance have more women?
Your response seems almost defensive, which is weird. Lemmy is definitely overwhelming male. That’s not an inherently bad thing, so I don’t get the defensive tone here or taking OP to task about data methods.
Disagree all you want, but this website is incredibly male dominated. I don’t think OP needs to do a peer-reviewed, double-blind study to say so.
Jeena
in reply to mienshao • • •Why are you so aggressively defending a false data collection method?
And what do you mean by "this website"?