• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Could you expand on that? Not the alternative sourcing, but why the compatibility is better. Is it just something to do with Fedora vs Arch, or is there something else that makes Bazzite work better?

    I source almost everything officially, but one I was trying to do was Mass Effect 2. I played 1 on the Deck and loved it, so I wanted to buy 2 and 3 only to find that they don’t sell them anymore. You have to buy this huge trilogy remaster pack with remastered graphics and huge file sizes, which defeats the purpose of a battery powered 720p device.

    I couldn’t for the life of me get it unpacked and working, even if I copied the files from a Windows computer over. I assume that I’m just not good enough at Linux to figure it out but that it is possible. Would be helpful to know of a different distro would make that easier.






  • I see what you’re saying, but it really undermines Signal’s purpose and their integrity.

    Take Telegram for example, they used to have a secret chat option, where you could send a message with E2E encryption. Telegram would tout this secure feature, but it was somewhat hidden away and no one used it.

    An even better example is Signal removing its ability to handle SMS because they thought it was confusing to people that some messages it sent were secure, and some weren’t. This WhatsApp integration would again muddy the waters and the average person wouldn’t care to look into or understand the difference.

    At the end of the day we as people who care about security need to take on the burden of having multiple messengers for different purposes. The ones that want to join us on Signal can, but if we compromise Signal to meet them where they are, we compromise the simplicity of Signal and no one can say it’s secure and private without listing caveats.


  • I want to state for the record that I was one who boycotted MW2 and stuck to my guns. I have not bought a single CoD game since. I played Warzone (free) with friends when it was new, until it became a bloated mess that highly incentivized buying CoD.

    I am not the norm. That boycott was a total failure and in one swoop the publishers knew they could call our bluff. As gaming has branched out and become a household staple there is no such thing as “gamers” anymore as a tech savvy class. We are just regular people. Regular people are dumb and easily manipulated.

    I’m just happy to see the rise of indy PC gaming because we now have actual good games to choose from and I never have to support the AAA clowns again.


  • I’m very similar to you. It’s the principal of the thing. For me you either use Steam as a launcher, because it’s a good experience that actually adds value to my games, or you have no launcher. I do not want launchers within launchers. I do not want a weird online account I will never use to come up every time the launcher I forgot existed times out. I don’t want to take 10 minutes each new game to figure out how to play with a friend. I want to install this smoothly on my Steam Deck. It’s not a good experience and it’s not to my benefit.

    There’s just something slimy about corporations trying to suck more out of you with absolutely zero value, in fact negative value in return. That’s advertisments, that’s lainchers, that’s DRM, microtransactions, etc. All exist to the detriment of the customer and they ask you to pay for the privilege. Once you notice that you start to get a little crazy like you mentioned and avoid the insult at all costs.




  • I can understand that, but Valve is very customer focused, which is why people love them. It’s sad to say but these days most companies are not. Bad support, bad products, bad policies, etc most companies will try to give the shittiest passable product while spending big on marketing to grow.

    Valve has had excellent support, innovative and niche products, and very pro-customer policies. Gabe’s often repeated quote on why people pirate is upheld within his company and it’s how they succeed.

    I firmly believe that their success is due to their private ownership and his vision. If he were to sell or pass away, I would immediately stop trusting valve and look at them with a lot more scrutiny to see if they are changing for the worse, but for now he has earned my trust.

    I totally get preferring GOG or systems that don’t require launches. Trust me. I never buy Rockstar or EA games because their lainchers are so anonying. Steam just works so well that I see their launcher as a benefit and not an annoyance. That’s just me though. Anyway, that some perspective from a Valve fan.






  • Thank you for specifying that you’re not technical, that helps. Your idea doesn’t make a lot of sense since you have a misunderstanding of how the Internet works, and at which levels the problems occur.

    The first layer of the “Internet” is physical infrastructure. The router you mention, the ISPs you connect to, etc. All they do is move data around the world, mostly without a care to what that data is, and they do it VERY effectively. Apart from pricing or service you might not like, there is no need to replace this part of the Internet because it is by far the most expensive and complex component, and has little to do with the problems you lament. Setting your own version of this up would be vastly inferior, more expensive, and very unreliable.

    The second part of the Internet is the protocols and standards used to get this data around on the physical fibre and wires that the ISPs have laid down. Again, these protocols are time tested, mostly content agnostic, and highly compatible. Things like routing protocols, HTTP, DNS, etc are all open and free to use.

    The third part of the Internet is the millions of servers that actually hold the content. This could be web servers that show you the web page you’re browsing on, servers that orchestrate instant messaging, the backend to your apps, etc. This is what you seem to have the biggest issue with and it’s also the easiest (relatively) to replace.

    So, now that the basics are down, let’s discuss what you want to do. You want to have your own Internet that’s seperate from the one you see. You could do this as simply as getting some people together who are like minded, making some web servers to host the things you want like a Wikipedia clone, email server, what have you, and then and then use a DNS server that only resolves your new servers and does not return results from the broader Internet. Think of a DNS server like a phonebook for computers. If you make an exclusive friends club and print your own phone book and pass it around, but forbid anyone from ever looking at the local white or yellow pages, your little group is all they’ll know but they can still use the existing telephone system.

    Most protocols are encrypted these days, so your DNS and web browsing can be fairly anonymous if everyone conforms to a set of standards. If you want more you could set this whole thing up over a system of VPNs.

    Long story short is, big mesh routers are just a bad idea for so many reasons that I haven’t even gotten into like RF spectrum use and maintenance. You’re better off participating in small corners of the existing Internet you enjoy (like Lemmy or other alternative sites) and ignoring the rest. If for some reason you really felt you wanted to make a Dark Web 2.0 for like minded people it can be done, but I wouldn’t start by cutting the cable to your ISP.




  • Thank you for taking the time to write such a well thought out comment. I’ll try to reply to it but honestly the amount of downvotes I’m getting for trying to understand something is a bit discouraging so I don’t think I’ll be keeping the conversation going much longer.

    “Deviations from the norm” would imply that there is a specific baseline “norm” to point at, when it’s much more of a vague idea of what is average, which changes over time and with increased understanding/study.

    I’m making a pretty general statement so I don’t have numbers to back anything up, but I would be very surprised if we didn’t have basic statistics on how many people identify as gay, or are diagnosed with ADD, etc. So I think we do understand norms, but you’re right this always changes with increased research and study.

    Grouping ADD, homosexuality and musical creativity together is also a bit of a stretch IMO.

    I did this on purpose. I’m not saying any of these are similar at all, just that they’re attributes that might make us unique and as far as I’m aware (since I’m not religious) these are functions of brain chemestry. Somone who has a very creative mind can be encouraged through their upbringing and surroundings to use it for music, arts, etc but I do think think there is something physical in the brain there. I’m not a neuroscientist so I don’t know how much is attributed to genetics, hormones, etc.

    (Illness) It’s commonly used to establish a baseline platform for justifying and normalising bigotry and hatred towards something.

    I agree completely, which is why I say it’s not the right word. I am totally against people saying homosexuality is a mental illness because it implies it’s something that needs to be corrected. I do see it as something that deviates from the norm, but in a way as harmless and inconsequential as left-handedness.

    The strict definition of the word abnormal isn’t particularly useful here , it’s only when it’s given context that it makes sense.My view is that the word “abnormal” when used in the context of homosexuality has been continually used as a weapon, a way to normalise and justify bigotry.If you establish up front what it is exactly you mean (for me this would need to include what you mean by “normal”), then you might get more positive responses.

    This is the conclusion I came to in a seperate comment here. That I am coming at the word abnormal from the statisctical point of view, as in it deviates from a known norm. A lower percentage of it happening compared to other outcomes. Other people are using the word abnormal as a way of shunning “the other”, which is unfortunate.

    I thought I had done a good enough job of establishing upfront what I meant when I said that I was pro LGBT and was coming at this from a point of trying to understand, but I the backlash clearly shows that was not enough. I find it frustrating having to tiptoe around topics like this and always try to explain myself because people are so quick to look for the bad, but I suppose that is the current world we live in. It’s a sad fact that there are a lot of people trying to opress anyone who is different, and I can’t exect strangers on the internet to know me or what I believe in.

    “but that is the concensus is it not?” As far as i understand it, no, it is not.

    I’ve done a lot of explaining myself, but I’m still not conviced my original assumption is incorrect. I still think that homosexuality has a biological/mental aspect because gay people say that they were born that way, it’s not a choice, it’s who they are. I didn’t choose to be straight so that makes perfect sense to me. I also know that the people who feel that way are in a minority, therefore something is happening mentally, biologically, I don’t know, to a small subset of people making them an abnormality.

    What I HAVE learned is I need to be more cautious of using the word abnormal which goes full circle to my question on if this is an issue of language. Most people really don’t like words that black and white say they’re different, because while it may be true, it can be used by people who do not feel like deviations from the norm are acceptable, and they will attack them for being the “other”. This is just a very polarizing topic and can cause people who say they’re on the same side to get at each other assuming the worst, which is unfortunate.

    Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me. Thanks for the reply.


  • I think we’re on the same page then, we just have different taste when it comes to using certain words. I can certainly appreciate your slippery slope point where anbnormalities can be twisted by society into being negative. That’s a very real thing and you have some good examples. I suppose I’m just disappointed that we as a society are choosing to step around words and not confront the elephant in the room that abnormal things happen all the time and they aren’t bad.

    I wish we lived in a society where people aren’t always looking to paint people in a bad light, where we could speak factually and not take offense to everything. At the end of the day the more I try to explain myself in these comments it appears to be the definition of normal that I’m getting hung up on. When I think “normal” I’m thinking statistically average, this is a fairly probably outcome. Others are thinking of “normal” as in socially accepted, not a big deal.

    I think homosexuality in humans is abnormal (statistically) and normal (socially). I’d never heard that most giraffe sex was gay though, so that’s interesting. Time to get lost in Wikipedia.