my homie refdesk just called and said “we are so fucking back”

Have to agree. Siamese Dream by the Smashing Pumpkins executes on this so perfectly.

I don’t remember the specific article I read that dove into this but it was essentially sold due to it being one of the first large data collections (user data). I’m not sure the extent its traweled now but before the social media machine took off, it was the largest if not one of the largest concentrations of actual data points to run algorithms against.

Love that they clarified that after being called out, as if that somehow makes it more acceptable. “See? It was to charity guys, you think making money for charity is a bad thing?” While still missing the mark completely and refusing to send said prototype back.

Talk about moving goalposts. They fucked up.

I’m seeing if I can get through tactician with this build, and it seems like it’s going well so far (no spoilers): necromancer wizard with weapon master feat to use great weapons. Haven’t added armor yet since I’m relying on blur for dodge, shield reaction, and blindness for large threats. Almost done with act 1 so I’m not sure how the power fantasy will look like later in the game or what items are available.

This has revolved around an item that sets intelligence to a specific value. So I was able to drop all int, put it into strength, and essentially be a lich-esque wizard. Been interesting to say the least and teleporting to baddies with misty step has been a lot of fun. I may go into the tadpole tree and spec into the skill that punishes when enemies miss their rolls (which they are disadvantaged from via blur and also the ilithid skill itself). The sustain is good with vampiric touch; and if I fall under half health for whatever reason, I have a greataxe that does additional damage.

This game is amazing so far.

Yeah, definitely the downfall that spans way back to IBM. Thankfully my place gives that choice to folks (Apple and Microsoft both being proprietary but hey one is Unix based).

I’m so happy that I never have to use that dog shit OS ever again, or any of their software for that matter.

Man shut the fuck up lmao

I for sure feel this sentiment but damn does Qud hit that sweet spot. Like, sometimes I don’t want to feel like I’m writing a dissertation - which is what CDDA can feel like sometimes - but I still want said depth, or at least the feeling of said depth. CoQ hits that sweet spot. So much charm too, love it.

They also in the past got caught using affiliate links with crypto URLs which gave brave kickbacks. Scumbag shit. If you want actual hardened browsing forget brave or anything chromium based. Use librewolf which is a forked version of Firefox. Mull if you’re on F-Droid.

Sauce: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-affiliate-links-crypto-privacy-ceo-apology

Here you go https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/

Going to piggyback on this and just throw this here, which details the black box that is Apple data ingestion: https://gist.github.com/iosecure/357e724811fe04167332ef54e736670d.

I had used iOS on and off for years but I feel like I’m finally done with both companies. Its a very interesting read. The only reason Apple seems like a better company with data is a) they aren’t a full blown meta or alphabet and b) they market it more cleanly.

The portion about the notification center and all of the integrations was pretty mind blowing for me. Like it makes sense when its spelled out - how invasive it is, which is also what makes it the perfect ad serving vehicle.

Yeah, definitely. Some form of extortion because ultimately that’s what it will be either way. I mean, that’s really the whole point of being the party that chooses what is authentic or not (and, what the definition of that word even means in this context). Monetary, data, whatever. Gotta keep the bottom line increasing for shareholders.

Yeah, definitely. Some form of extortion because ultimately that’s what will happen either way. I mean, that’s really the whole point of being the party that chooses what is authentic or not (and, what the definition of that word even means in this context). Monetary, data, whatever. Gotta keep the bottom line increasing for shareholders.

Pardon formatting, on mobile. Its a form of device authentication. Apple does this with safari already BTW, and it can reduce things like captcha because the authentication is done on the backend when a request hits a server. While still an issue in concept with Apple doing it, chromium browsers are a much larger market share. In layman’s terms this is basically the company saying, hey you are attempting to visit this site, we need to verify the device (or browser, or add on configuration, or no ad blocker, etc) is ‘authentic’. Which of course is nebulous. It can be whatever the entity in charge of attestation wants it to be.

This sets the precedent that whomever is controlling verification, can deny whomever they see fit. I’m running GrapheneOS on my phone currently, they could deny for that. Or, if you are blocking ads. Maybe you’re not sharing specific information about your device, and they want to harvest that. Too bad, comply or you’re ‘not allowed to do x or y’.

This is the gist. The web should be able to be accessed by anybody. It isn’t for companies to own nor should it be built that way. Web2 is a corporate hellscape.

Edit wrt Safari: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/

mf really said your doohickey is frightening this here mite

It’s pretty memed on at this point (arch users, gentoo users, NixOS et. al) but I’d make the point - truly without being pedantic - sometimes you just want stuff the way you want them. Should everybody deal with portage on a daily basis? God no. Is it a viable option for folks to keep their build in check and know exactly what’s going on down to their flags/libs? Absolutely. Same reasons with why some folks jive with the AUR.

It’s all about finding use case, just like any piece of tech. Yes there’s dick measuring and all else that comes with that, but there’s a good amount of merit to “I like how this distro revolves around x, it makes sense to me so it’s easier for me to maintain”. If those are some of the things that get Linux on the daily driver aspect, I’m all with it.

This is definitely how I feel as well. None of the other shit matters unless it comes already on the machine. Even then, it absolutely has to be rock solid stable long term for it to be comparative. Of course that’s asking a lot, considering people still take their PCs into geek squad or wherever else when something goes wrong (or their printer won’t connect).

This always reminds me of the Dell XPS option of having Ubuntu installed but of course that’s far away from “Microsoft literally pays us to sell their shit”. So, until that - or some type of adoption occurs on a B&M level/online-storefront - it’s going to be pretty “voluntary” in terms of adoption. It’s just comparatively so much more work in the layman’s sense.

It’s in a weird way the same with cars. It’s been statistically proven that most people specifically won’t go out of their way to get a simple utility pickup truck. They buy the big fuck you truck because that’s what the dealerships have. It’s the same thing with kids going to college and the parents taking them to buy a laptop for class. My point is that it’s far more easier to just use what you get than try to rehash it. Maybe you don’t even know that’s a possibility so you just settle. Of course this isn’t the only issue, but imo the largest determining factor. IBM had businesses sucking from the teet since computers dropped, and we still deal with the ramifications.

How’s my driving, Doug Hastings?

“How I created a god complex for myself, part 1”