donn's recent activity

  1. Comment on Where does your username come from? (Following up on last year's thread) in ~tildes

    donn
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    donn
    • Exemplary

    donn

    10 votes

  2. Comment on iPhones stored for forensic analysis reboot, causing problems in ~tech

    donn
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    That is so absurdly funny. Anyways, it's a good idea and Apple should implement it.

    Though the prospect of Apple implementing such a security measure seems interesting at first glance, it's also probably not what happened here.
    In October of 2024, multiple users of iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max units reported that their devices kept restarting themselves for no apparent reason. This is a known issue that occurred during normal use and one that Apple fixed with the iOS 18.1 update.

    That is so absurdly funny. Anyways, it's a good idea and Apple should implement it.

    15 votes

  3. Comment on Could we get a ~politics.us? in ~tildes

  4. Comment on Thoughts on a Democratic postmortem in ~society

    donn
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    This is not a US-only trend. This has been happening in every democracy, despite what reading the average European's tweets these last two days may imply. Germany and France come to mind, and soon...

    This is not a US-only trend. This has been happening in every democracy, despite what reading the average European's tweets these last two days may imply. Germany and France come to mind, and soon Canada. Living conditions are shit globally and right-wingers are excellent at redirecting that anger at immigrants and minorities instead of the wealthy, which galvanizes their voting bases.

    Bernie's statement succinctly summarizes it for me. And just like he said, knowing trends from Europe, what will happen is that the Democrats will continue to move right on social issues (I'm already seeing UK Labor-style transphobia being adopted by some) just like as they've tried to move right on immigration.

    It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right.

    Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.

    Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse.

    Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.

    Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government's all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.

    Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.

    13 votes

  5. Comment on "Valve are gathering the avengers": we believe Gabe Newell is assembling the ultimate dream team for the one game everyone's been waiting for in ~games

    donn
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    Chrono Break finally confirmed, it's happening

    Chrono Break finally confirmed, it's happening

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition | Announcement trailer in ~games

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    I'm elated about this. This game holds a special place in my heart, even if it's something of a mess. Day one purchase for me.

    I'm elated about this. This game holds a special place in my heart, even if it's something of a mess. Day one purchase for me.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Norway is to enforce a strict minimum age limit on social media of fifteen as the government ramped up its campaign against tech companies it says are “pitted against small children's brains” in ~tech

    donn
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    Tangential but France wanting to confiscate smartphones at school nationwide reminded me of this: Back when I was in middle school, my phone and Nintendo DS were occasionally confiscated even when...

    Tangential but France wanting to confiscate smartphones at school nationwide reminded me of this:

    Back when I was in middle school, my phone and Nintendo DS were occasionally confiscated even when I'd only used them outside of class. We didn't have the manipulative infinite scrolling algorithms back then (or could afford the data for it at any rate) and school faculty still found an excuse to do it for some reason. I was a straight-A student so it wasn't my performance either.

    Anyways, I'm still salty about it as an adult. At least there's an actual scientific reason to do it now.

    14 votes

  8. Comment on Minecraft "Skyblock" creator in trademark battle with Microsoft in ~games

    donn
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    Not a lawyer but as I understand it protecting mechanics and game design elements of Skyblock would be more patent territory, which aren't automatically granted and you have to explicitly file...

    Not a lawyer but as I understand it protecting mechanics and game design elements of Skyblock would be more patent territory, which aren't automatically granted and you have to explicitly file for.

    Or you know, I could be totally off the mark.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on Controversial opinion: I don't like "cosmetic armor" being an option in games in ~games

  10. Comment on Switching to Linux, looking for distro recommendations in ~tech

    donn
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    Linux has an absurd issue still where any sufficiently taxing process may lock up your GUI, which is something that has been figured out in macOS and Windows at this point. I am told that the...

    Linux has an absurd issue still where any sufficiently taxing process may lock up your GUI, which is something that has been figured out in macOS and Windows at this point. I am told that the Pop!_OS scheduler improves that.

  11. Comment on Switching to Linux, looking for distro recommendations in ~tech

    donn
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    Pop!_OS or Linux Mint. Pop!_OS has so many little optimizations that are not in Ubuntu proper (and thus, Linux Mint), such as a sane scheduler and better power management on laptops. Mint is a...

    Pop!_OS or Linux Mint.

    Pop!_OS has so many little optimizations that are not in Ubuntu proper (and thus, Linux Mint), such as a sane scheduler and better power management on laptops.

    Mint is a more vanilla GNU/Linux experience. It's basically just a touch different than the world's most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, with some saner choices (i.e. they use the more common flatpak format instead of Canonical's snap format for applications.)

    1 vote

  12. Comment on Should we chat, too? Security analysis of WeChat’s MMTLS encryption protocol. in ~tech

    donn
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    The obvious aside, why are they rolling their own crypto? Seems like a lot of wasted effort. Can't be a backdoor because it's not E2EE anyway and any data can be accessed on the other side, so...

    The obvious aside, why are they rolling their own crypto? Seems like a lot of wasted effort. Can't be a backdoor because it's not E2EE anyway and any data can be accessed on the other side, so what gives?

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Summer Eternal - A new cooperative game studio from ex-ZA/UM devs in ~games

    donn
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    Two are just normal capitalist companies now, one is funded by Netease (China,) and one is a worker's cooperative. It's so on the nose it hurts.

    Two are just normal capitalist companies now, one is funded by Netease (China,) and one is a worker's cooperative. It's so on the nose it hurts.

    8 votes

  14. Comment on X overtakes WeChat in spreading Chinese disinformation about the 2024 US presidential elections in ~society

    donn
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    Not a fan of the prick any by any means but it really devalues the term "disinformation" when the first point mentioned is an unfalsifiable opinion. The rest seem okay though.

    Below are five key disinformation narratives the CAA identified about the 2024 election on Chinese-language social media are views that are widely shared among US right-wing groups:

    1. Trump is the only savior of the US, and today’s problems are because he is not in charge

    Not a fan of the prick any by any means but it really devalues the term "disinformation" when the first point mentioned is an unfalsifiable opinion. The rest seem okay though.

    12 votes

  15. Comment on Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of September 30 in ~news

    donn
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    These are the well-thought "replies to others" you're asking me to read to adequately assess your thoughts before calling you hopelessly propagandized? Seriously? Luckily for those of us not...

    These are the well-thought "replies to others" you're asking me to read to adequately assess your thoughts before calling you hopelessly propagandized? Seriously?

    Luckily for those of us not living with extreme cognitive dissonance, IDF soldiers and Finance Minister Smotrich are clearly documenting the State of Israel's genocidal intent. We are not in need of someone who logs in twice a month to talk about Elon Musk or defend Israel to try to gaslight us about what a genocide is.

    8 votes

  16. Comment on A year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, four Americans are still being held hostage in ~news

  17. Comment on A year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, four Americans are still being held hostage in ~news

    donn
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    What's the point of lumping POWs with civilian hostages, again?

    What's the point of lumping POWs with civilian hostages, again?

    1 vote

  18. Comment on Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of September 30 in ~news

    donn
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    They get their opinions from the U.S. State Department

    They get their opinions from the U.S. State Department

    5 votes

  19. Comment on A year after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, four Americans are still being held hostage in ~news

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    Among the American hostages are young Israeli soldiers

    1 vote

  20. Comment on I'm getting a new Macbook Pro. What's your favorite apps and tips? in ~tech

    donn
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    Coconut Battery and Daisy Disk are very, very useful apps. One is free and the other is a one-time purchase that pays off. For gaming, you want to grab Whisky. It sets up Apple's GPTK, which is a...

    Coconut Battery and Daisy Disk are very, very useful apps. One is free and the other is a one-time purchase that pays off.

    For gaming, you want to grab Whisky. It sets up Apple's GPTK, which is a lot like Valve's Proton if you've heard of that. You can have the full Windows version of Steam and all that entails.

    For dongles, these are good, well-built and cheap: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Basics-Converter-High-Speed-Certified/dp/B01GGKYXVE/

    Android integration is pretty poor unfortunately-- one nasty surprise is that macOS does not support the Media Transfer Protocol commonly used to get data on and off Android devices (and the Nintendo Switch for some reason.) You're going to have to find a third party solution, one that comes up is "MacDroid."

    5 votes