Melody Fwygon

No.

It is hard to have both; but not impossible. You can still be privacy friendly without sacrificing necessary functionality.

It will require that the “provider” of such a dataset constantly scrub, sanitize and remove data that would cause privacy hazards as quickly as reasonably possible however. That in and of itself is a technical challenge; though not impossible.

Ideally there’s not a whole lot of data that needs to be kept.

Legitimately all that needs to be stored is a few things:

• Location (GPS)
• SSIDs (Wifi APs only)
• Cell ID & MCC/MNC (Cell Towers only)

and things they MUST NOT STORE OR SHARE like:

• IPs of contributors for longer than a few days
• un-hashed BSSIDs (Wifi/BT)
• MAC addresses (Wifi/BT)
• IMEI/IMSIs (or other cellular identifiers derived from them)
• APs that don’t exist in a fixed location (Think mobile hotspot SSIDs) for longer than a fixed amount of time.
• BT devices
• Non-unique SSIDs or IDs that may indicate no user config took place and manufacturer did not differentiate device ID. (Things like “SETUP” with no unique number (SSIDs like"SETUP-be3fd34d" would be valid) or “[ISP]@HOME” or “[ISP]Wifi” which provide no meaningful discriminators)

Linux must achieve 100% compatibility. Otherwise the doubters will not shut up.

I like that he is being decisive about it. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the feature was only being delayed because of internal project politics or quirky policies that normally make sense, but don’t in this specific scenario.

I’m not being harsh; they bungled that initial transition badly too; despite it being a Google action.

Unfortunately they left a lot of users in the lurch when they left the Play Store as well and that too left a bad taste. It’s not exactly easy to migrate across versions and packages and software differ wildly as they allowed both versions to do their own thing without relabeling them so you could run them side-by-side.

I don’t blame them for Google’s actions; but I do blame them for how they handled it.

You might be confusing my transition into a rant against Google as blaming Termux.

I stopped using Termux in general because of this inanity where they moved off and stopped supporting the Play Store Version; now this happens where they’re unable to keep things from conflicting across the different APK sources?

Yikes. Seems like a good time to continue staying away from Termux and not recommending it.

It’s a shame since I really love the concept of the app; but each increment of Android has been rough on it and I can’t imagine it being useful with Google being stupid about their policies.

…Unfortunately they’re often quick to blame apps they dislike for problems in the ecosystem, and they often directly attack them through nerfing APIs and system calls that the apps tend to use; which I think is absolutely a dogshit thing to do.

Please, stop enshittifying our phones Google.

Looks like the WaPo will probably start to enshittify too. It’s sad to hear; and it doesn’t bode well for them. Undoubtedly their true journalism will no longer exist under the new leadership and everyone will be afraid to be bold or write anything too shocking.

The move reeks of corpo profit-chasing; and was probably ignited by their CEO falling for the usual Trump/Musk/Zuck garbage spew.

Gabe Newell knows that any potential buyer will run Valve into the ground. Thus he already promised too long ago that he would never sell or let Valve go public.

Considering how many game studios that Microsoft just killed off in the last 3 years alone; they’re never going to be worthy of buying Valve.

These are the kinds of cops that should be summarily fired on the spot and not ever given a badge again. Such sickening behavior.

Even a progression from “Closed Source” to “Source Available” is nice progress I think.

If we assume that the License is not restrictive we may be able to fork Winamp into a codebase that might actually be Fully Open Source Software and track changes of the upstream as we need.

Minimum SDK also does get bumped in Android in general at a snails pace. Given that we’re basically coming up on Android 15; it’s not unfair to assume that, eventually, we will simply see Android intentionally and permanently REFUSE to run the app because it’s Minimum SDK value is considered to be too low and thus Android must assume that the application is completely insecure.

The largest barrier for me in FLOSS and FOSS applications is simply a lack of GUI tools for what is considered to be “Advanced” functions.

Just because I can do it on linux doesn’t mean it’s easy or intuitive. Unfortunately a lot of FOSS and FLOSS applications are, of necessity, extremely limited in what tasks they are targeting. Frequently you cannot rely on the “alternative” to have a relied upon function or feature until deep in it’s lifecycle; when finally enough people have complained and the feature is implemented.

Sometimes a feature is never implemented due to an entirely shifted paradigm in the way the program is implemented and the feature is “impossible” or “inconsistent with xyz”.

One example of this is the number of GUIs and frontends written for ffmpeg; many of which simply are lazy GUI implementations of what the ffmpeg CLI binary itself will helpfully print out in the console when you ask it for help with the correct switch(es). Many are even less thought out than this and will often unhelpfully provide an obtuse box at the bottom for custom commands you wish to feed to the program…which is great if you know the command(s); but make using the GUI unhelpful when compared to just firing up a CLI and reading the output and figuring out the correct command for exactly what you want it to do.

Keep in mind; I am not at all uncomfortable with using CLI interfaces; I just expect that a GUI doesn’t force me to fallback, or become so unusable that I am forced to fall back on an original CLI tool because I cannot possibly discern why it failed to work

Frequently things that would be simply be an option buried deeply in the GUI menus only and are otherwise fairly simple are relegated as being only possible within a CLI interface; and I find that reality quite infuriating most often…as the limitations of a CLI oftentimes make the task I am trying to complete far less simple than it really should have been.

Unpaid internships really do need to be abolished.

Personally I would expect 2 or 3. Most likely 3, so they can appeal to sensibilities and say they plugged up the executive power loophole until an act of Congress modifies the constitution thusly.

Yeah I think Trump is doomed. I don’t think the SCOTUS will touch such a toxic decision with a ten foot pole.

Of course this is just a stupid delay tactic by his defense attorneys.

I do think the current judge can simply refuse to wait. I don’t know if they will or not. The SCOTUS can also simply refuse to make any ruling and just challenge the defense to appeal the case up to them after the current judge rules.

Further, the latest batch of Ukraine spending was funded by cutting funds to the IRS, so we’re not only losing money now, but in the future too.

That’s factually untrue. The IRS has not been defunded; but House Republicans have been in such disarray that currently no government agency is getting more funding.

It’s been the Republicans demanding the cuts; not the Democrats, who would rather spend money so that we can fund everything important appropriately so that real recovery from the pandemic is felt by the people.

The Republicans are demanding we reduce our debt at a time where that’s just not practical and are holding our budget hostage so much that our credit is being slashed.

The Republicans have been disrupting the financial state of the country. They caused the ding on our credit. They have consistently refused to compromise throughout this entire session of Congress.

Most anti-cheat software can’t do much on the client side. Really all it can do is look around at it’s environment where it’s allowed to look and see what’s going on.

Most Cheat Software will run on a higher privilege level than the game; whether that’s as an “Administrative” user or as “root” or “SYSTEM” in a context where it’s running as an important driver.

In any case, the only thing the Anti-Cheat can reliably do on the client side is watch. If it’s cleverly designed enough, it will simply log snippets of events and ship them off for later analysis on a server side system. This will probably be a different server than the one you’re playing on, and it won’t be sending that data until after the match has ended properly.

Sometimes it might not even send data unless the AC server asks it to do so; which it might frequently do as a part of it’s authorization granting routine. Even when it has the data there may not be immediate processing.

Others have also mentioned that visible action may be delayed for random time periods as well; in order to prevent players from catching on to what behaviors they need to avoid to get caught, or to prevent cheats from getting more sophisticated before deeper analysis could reveal a way to patch the flaw or check to ensure cheating isn’t happening.

Since cheat software can often be privileged, it also has the luxury of lying to the server. So clever ways to ensure that a lying client will be caught will probably be implemented and responses checked to ensure they fit within some reasonable bounds of sanity.

How can you call it sensationalist when you know that the consequences of Trump being elected that are listed in the article are highly likely to be true?

I don’t consider it sensationalist. I consider it to be a strong warning. If you read the article through to the end; you’ll note the tone changes and explains why this has happened. Is it potentially sounding the alarm too soon? Personally, I do not think so. It might be the intention of the author to scare someone of enough power into action extraordinary enough to Stop Trump.

Or maybe it will scare an everyday reader into leaving the country to escape the growing fascism, or into actually turning up at the polls and voting for anything but the Orange Tyrant.

Emphasis added - I will try to avoid highlighting who is responsible for the failures but they are listed in the article. I am not sympathizing with Trump Supporters; I am pointing at how this article outlines how we got here today.

What is certain, however, is that the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left. If eight years ago it seemed literally inconceivable that a man like Trump could be elected, that obstacle was cleared in 2016. If it then seemed unimaginable that an American president would try to remain in office after losing an election, that obstacle was cleared in 2020. And if no one could believe that Trump, having tried and failed to invalidate the election and stop the counting of electoral college votes, would nevertheless reemerge as the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party and its nominee again in 2024, well, we are about to see that obstacle cleared as well. In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.

TL;DR: The odds are higher because the listed barriers have been cleared.

Yes, I know that most people don’t think an asteroid is heading toward us and that’s part of the problem. But just as big a problem has been those who do see the risk but for a variety of reasons have not thought it necessary to make any sacrifices to prevent it. At each point along the way, our political leaders, and we as voters, have let opportunities to stop Trump pass on the assumption that he would eventually meet some obstacle he could not overcome. Republicans could have stopped Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, but they didn’t. The voters could have elected Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t. Republican senators could have voted to convict Trump in either of his impeachment trials, which might have made his run for president much more difficult, but they didn’t.

TL;DR: There were many people in power who could have stopped him, but did not, as they felt certain that "Surely the next obstacle will stop him. The next obstacle did not stop him

Throughout these years, an understandable if fatal psychology has been at work. At each stage, stopping Trump would have required extraordinary action by certain people, whether politicians or voters or donors, actions that did not align with their immediate interests or even merely their preferences. It would have been extraordinary for all the Republicans running against Trump in 2016 to decide to give up their hopes for the presidency and unite around one of them. Instead, they behaved normally, spending their time and money attacking each other, assuming that Trump was not their most serious challenge, or that someone else would bring him down, and thereby opened a clear path for Trump’s nomination. And they have, with just a few exceptions, done the same this election cycle. It would have been extraordinary had Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators voted to convict a president of their own party. Instead, they assumed that after Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was finished and it was therefore safe not to convict him and thus avoid becoming pariahs among the vast throng of Trump supporters. In each instance, people believed they could go on pursuing their personal interests and ambitions as usual in the confidence that somewhere down the line, someone or something else, or simply fate, would stop him. Why should they be the ones to sacrifice their careers? Given the choice between a high-risk gamble and hoping for the best, people generally hope for the best. Given the choice between doing the dirty work yourself and letting others do it, people generally prefer the latter.

TL;DR: The Psychology is briefly explained; and it highlights how extraordinary that taking action would have been for the person(s) in question.

A paralyzing psychology of appeasement has also been at work. At each stage, the price of stopping Trump has risen higher and higher. In 2016, the price was forgoing a shot at the White House. Once Trump was elected, the price of opposition, or even the absence of obsequious loyalty, became the end of one’s political career, as Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul D. Ryan and many others discovered. By 2020, the price had risen again. As Mitt Romney recounts in McKay Coppins’s recent biography, Republican members of Congress contemplating voting for Trump’s impeachment and conviction feared for their physical safety and that of their families. There is no reason that fear should be any less today. But wait until Trump returns to power and the price of opposing him becomes persecution, the loss of property and possibly the loss of freedom. Will those who balked at resisting Trump when the risk was merely political oblivion suddenly discover their courage when the cost might be the ruin of oneself and one’s family?

TL;DR: More Psychology is explained briefly and it highlights that the price to stop Trump has been rising exponentially with each step.

yeah no, you’re missing the point.

What Trump did was a gross abuse of power.

To be fair; this ruling is a result of Trump packing the SCOTUS, not something Biden himself did.

Not saying this wasn’t a Democratic party failing; they let Trump win in the first place during all that kerfuffle about Hillary.

But I do think we have to consider the context.