reclusive techie zoomer

discord: @chris.0666 (ping me in the beehaw server if you want to say hi :) )

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Joined 1Y ago
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Cake day: Jun 12, 2023

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Gotta love how the republicans try to make it seem like theyre giving you freedom of choice. If they really wanted to lift the burden of paid insurance companies and offer choice they would offer a public government option to people.

well said, & exactly what i was thinking when i first saw the headline & saw that this act was called “CHOICE” 🙄 it’s funny how the only time we see the words “freedom” or “choice” in a republican legislation is when they’re trying to take one of those away from us

Theres also fear mongering about them taking away smokers, grills, and firepits which I cant find anything other than right wing sites mentioning it cause “california did it” but then when I google california they didnt lose their grills either.

it’s seriously concerning how little the modern republican will do any sort of research before believing whatever article/post they’ll see. the last time i talked to one, i realized that ~75% of their perception of “leftist states” are completely false & just from random articles strewn across the internet. their perception of california is so unrealistic it may as well just be an alternate reality


man, the whole elon musk/twitter situation seems less & less real the more it plays out


saw this earlier from an old twitter tab, thought my browser had been hijacked with some extension. what an amateurish logo, looks like what a tiny business puts up on their wordpress when they have no designers & are only making a logo because they have to, definitely not what i’d expect from one of the biggest social media sites in the world. elon has been fixated on the whole x thing for literal decades now & that’s the best logo he came up with?


House Republicans’ CHOICE Act would roll back some Obamacare protections
tl;dr: republicans have pushed the CHOICE arrangement act through the house. this act which will push back regulations on "short-term" plans (which [biden calls "junk insurance"](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/07/07/fact-sheetpresident-biden-announces-new-actions-to-lower-health-care-costs-and-protect-consumers-from-scam-insurance-plans-and-junk-fees-as-part-of-bidenomics-push/) because of how little they're required to cover compared to normal healthcare plans) & make them much more widespread. these plans, while cheaper, can often miss very important requirements such as prescription drugs, hospitalization, & mental health care
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tl;dr: chatgpt for android is now [officially available to register for download](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.openai.chatgpt) in the play store
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i thought i was the only one who knew about this game lol, i agree it’s a very good game & a lot more polished than 2048


Samsung confirms ‘slimmer and lighter’ Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Fold 5, teases tablets and watches
tl;dr: samsung confirms the z fold 5, z flip 5, tab 9, & both watch 6 models. with the foldables, they're adopting a new hinge design that will finally remove the hinge gap from the previous models. they also hint at even more cross-device connectivity in one ui.
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you’d be surprised, I’ve heard from other reddit users that entire discord servers, wikis, & other communities would first start from reddit group chats so apparently there were a lot super involved in it. one of the big community partnered discord servers I was in told me the only reason they were on discord at first was because reddit chat made it hard to search old messages


yeah, its getting a little worrying how they’re just buying the game market now, especially when you remember how horrible gates & ballmer era microsoft was with anticompetition


same here, the optimist (& diablo fan) in me is hoping that microsoft/xbox will make them a good enough company to where i feel comfortable giving them my money again, but the cynical part of my mind is just telling me that they’ll probably just go “welp, kotick’s gone, diablo 4 on game pass everyone!” then go “hands off” & just ignore the company aside from uploading their games to gamepass & funding them, like they did with arkane. hope i’m wrong though


man, what a shitty move. i had some chats that i wanted to keep in case i needed them in the future but forgot to back up :(


tl;dr from the article: > ## What you need to know > - The FTC is trying to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for almost $69 billion. > - After having a preliminary injunction denied, the FTC appealed the decision to the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, appealing the decision and seeking injunctive relief. > - The injunctive relief, which would've extended the existing temporary restraining order, has been denied.  > - Microsoft can legally acquire Activision Blizzard in the U.S. very shortly.
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tl;dr from the article: > ## What you need to know > - The FTC is trying to stop Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for almost $69 billion. > - After having a preliminary injunction denied, the FTC appealed the decision to the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, appealing the decision and seeking injunctive relief. > - The injunctive relief, which would've extended the existing temporary restraining order, has been denied.  > - Microsoft can legally acquire Activision Blizzard in the U.S. very shortly.
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How Hype (Passkeys) Will Turn Your Security Key Into Junk
tl;dr: passkeys, as proposed now, will fill up existing fido2/webauthn authenticators if the feature becomes widespread enough. this is because the feature of "passkeys" actually refer to resident keys, which most authenticators today can only store a limited amount of (some, none at all!). preventing this will require changes to either webauth, fido, or passkey libraries.
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good fandom sites are the ugliest & most bloated sites i’ve ever seen & used, & the only site that i’ve seen use 25-50% of the CPU (a wiki page with a lot of videos &/or gallery pages will do this every single time) while ublock is actively blocking ads. like, wtf


yeah the new blood in the internal microsoft teams love rust now, some of the windows team guys have been consistently talking about an internal shift towards rust on twitter since last year. the rust win32k drivers & userspace libraries actually dropped in rs_prerelease back in may, but for whatever reason the kernel wouldn’t actually use the new rust codepaths even if you loaded & enabled them


nice update for canary today. tl;dr: - the branch has switched back from `zn_release` to `rs_prerelease` & the dev semester is now gallium - all new features from moment 3/4 & dev have been foward-ported & re-enabled including: - dev drive - the new windows app sdk file explorer UI - windows backup - rgb lighting settings - passkey support - action center improvements (seconds on clock, new vpn experience) - emoji 15 support - rust code is actually (unlike the false alarm before) in the windows nt kernel now (gdi region, `win32kbase_rs.sys`) - 3d/gradient emojis are finally here (with a [new emoji font format](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/colr#colr-version-1-rendering-algorithm)) - windows arm32 support is dead
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Is setting up such a system unfeasible?

yes. not only would such a policy be messy to implement & partially unenforcable on the current internet for various reasons (look at what’s happening with porn site here in the usa, where some states are literally trying to add a real id system & it’s failing) it’d also be a law that hurts us well-meaning people (specifically, marginalized sections of populations that have a reason to take privacy seriously, such as lgbt people in non-gay friendly locations, for example) moreso than trolls. our privacy is already eroded enough imo, so if a real id system were to come out i’d just quit using the internet. & i’m sure a large chunk of the internet would do the same.

you assume that such a system would stop all death threats & racist/sexist comments & make the internet a safe place but… why would it? bad people are shameless. if a real id system catches on, but moderation doesn’t change, it’s more likely that these people will just put up their real names & continue doing what they’re doing. there are a lot of people who are already not ashamed whatsoever of having those comments attached to their identity right now, i mean look at how many <real name>s are on twitter & facebook & all that willingly posting hateful comments with their real name today.

look i get what you’re going for in spirit & why you want this system to be a thing. but the reason so much toxicity is on modern social media in the first place is simply because companies allow it, either by not spending enough on their moderation staff or, in cases like reddit, just by turning a blind eye to it. so, why not just be direct? why not regulate the companies rather than the consumers? imo a law that requires tech companies to take a zero-tolerance policy to hate speech & scams, as well as to actually spend enough on their moderation staff to allow that, would be much cleaner, safer & effective than a real id system


Please know there are many of us out here that do not feel like that.

my bad, i didn’t mean to imply that the entirety of the older generations feels the way the op did, though i see how it comes across that way 😅 i know a lot of older people out there have been through the same situation as we’re in now. i was more just turning the “entitled” accusation back around to show how baseless it is. the op just kinda generalized us all without backing it up whatsoever, so it was more of a “see, i can do it too” than anything else


I just don’t want Lemmy to become a echo chamber for any side and it seems to be that way when it comes to politics already.

a political space leaning towards a certain side is, naturally, going to be an echo chamber. i mean, couldn’t i just call every right-leaning space a conservative echo chamber too? imo, we need to stop perpetuating the myth that “neutral” spaces are normal, & “echo chambers” are some new bad thing that the leftists keep doing to shield themselves from information. when people call a group an “echo chamber”, what they really mean is “a group that shows bias”, & because it’s natural for humans to show bias, most social hierarchies we form tend to naturally bias towards certain opinions too.

every group of humans, whether on the internet or in real life, is an echo chamber that reflects the beliefs & opinions of the most active users. there’s always a majority opinion, & from what i’ve experienced groups that try to avoid their biases just tend to turn into places that feel completely unnatural to talk in, where everyone dances around eggshells what they truly believe but end up letting it bleed through anyway. & from the introductory posts that describe the spirit of this site, that situation the exact opposite of what this instance was made for.

so while it’s not strictly against the rules to be conservative, & i don’t think it’s fair to say that conservative opinions are completely unwelcome on beehaw* (there are definitely conservative & center-right leaning instances out there so i don’t think it’s fair to ask about all of lemmy in the title), if you’re looking for other people here to agree with you, well bad news - a leftist bias here will be unavoidable. if you choose to participate here, you just have to accept the fact that this instance is made up primarily of leftist users, & thus threads here always be naturally biased primarily towards leftists opinions.


same, back ~2015-2018 i was hangouts’ biggest fan. now i avoid most google platforms in general aside from gmail, android & youtube. i can’t trust anything else to stay around anymore, & even when they do keep an app alive they end up just endlessly shuffling them around like this for no reason



eh, i don’t think it’s fair to discount a youtube frontend for having a bug, especially not a frontend as new as this one. projects at this early a stage always have issues, & youtube frontends have to deal with the added bonus of google randomly rate-limiting & consistently trying to break them. youtube frontends are always going to have issues & need constant updates by nature, there’s not much any of them can do about it


google’s messaging strategy has gotten so bad that they now have to remind consumers which of the apps are made for them. i myself had no clue that the google chat app in the play store was targeted towards consumers, i just assumed that the app was google workspaces only considering they always push rcs & that the play store description doesn’t go two sentences without talking about enterprise & google workspaces.

it’s kinda wild when you consider that they had a 17 year headstart on this & still somehow lost the messaging app/site race multiple times


tl;dr: after pushing rcs so hard for years, killing hangouts well after forgetting about it, & hiding it from gmail, google now wants you to use its (and google allo's) successor, google chat.
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I paid for my loans - why should we forgive the loans

first off… you do know that the economy doesn’t just stay stagnant for decades, right? houses aren’t $17,000 anymore. the fact that you were able to pay your loans before has little to do with how expensive student loans are now.

secondly, the logic of “i did it so they should have to do it to” is quite a toxic & nonproductive way to think about society, & societal change. what you need to realize is that this sentiment comes from a place of envy & bitterness rather than actual logic. you don’t want things to improve for the next generation because you can’t fathom someone having it easier than you. you could apply this logic to anything, & the final conclusion will always just be “why bother changing”, it’s not much different from the conclusions you’d reach through pessimistic nihilism. growing up i was poor, so much so that sometimes we didn’t even have dinner, a house or even a car to sleep in. does that mean i should raise my future children in poverty too? why not? i did it, got through it, so the next generation should have to get through it too, right?

if, throughout human history, our entire reasoning for making changes in society was “well i had to do it so they have to too” then we’d still be in huts & making fire with sticks. our ancestors didn’t work, fight, & die so that the next generation would have to live the exact same life as them, they worked so that their children could have better. & this drive for the next generation to have a better life than the last is the reason why we’ve worked so hard to improve, invent, & innovate over the course of human history. it’s why we even have a safe society in the first place, & probably why your parents worked so hard to give you a great life too.

what is already the most entitled generation ever?

according to who, & what? from my perspective, the generation who had an economy so great that they could afford a house & family without college & yet still choose to complain about everything is the most entitled. but i guess we’re all spoiled brats because we want to have an actual future.

Otherwise where does it stop? Are they going to forgive mortgages and car loans next? Why not? It’s the same principle.

slippery slope is known as a logical fallacy for a reason


in my experience being a part of both communities, there isn’t a wearos piracy scene at all. i’ve seen a few shared watchfaces here & there since wearos (well, then android wear) launched, but i can count on my fingers how many times that’s happened. definitely not enough to count as a scene or community imo.

to your first point of getting a watch to replace a phone though, as someone who’s owned multiple wearos watches (both stock & oneui) & tried to use the watch as the primary device multiple times i’d recommend against it atm. even on the best wearos watches (the gw4/5 atm) the experience as a primary device is just, not there yet. while samsung did a lot for wearos, watch apps are still clunky & still omit even the most basic features, some of the worst offenders imo being the stock wearos/google apps (google clock still doesn’t even let you set an alarm name, tone or snooze time).

this all applies of course when there even is a watch app, a lot of android apps either simply don’t make one or ended up abandoning theirs years ago - even apps you’d expect to naturally have one like first party apps (gmail & google calendar were JUST announced after a decade of wearos being alive) or messaging apps. essentially, software-wise on a galaxy watch everything aside from built-in oneui apps & the few best wearos apps will just frustrate you & make you pull out your phone. on a stock wearos watch… lol.

an even bigger issue than software though, is hardware. while i don’t have an lte watch, from what i’ve heard from people that do use their watches without their phones near regularly, watches still run terribly without piggybacking off the phone for everything, & using lte & disconnecting from the phone pretty much instantly causes heat, lag & battery usage to double. i’ve experienced a bit of this myself by turning my phone off & trying to do basic tasks like listening to music, texting & talking to assistant. though i (obviously) didn’t get the heat & battery drain that comes with an lte connection, the whole experience just becomes kinda laggy & choppy when the companion app isn’t connected


highlights: - windows copilot is now rolling out & replaces microsoft teams in the taskbar - settings has a new homepage - libarchive is in file explorer - the fluent volume mixer (introduced in canary a while back) is now in dev
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if the rumors are true & microsoft is planning to make windows 365 the de-facto way to purchase windows in the future like with office, it’ll be the dumbest move they’ve ever made & proof some new leadership is probably needed at some level. individual apps are one thing but no one wants something as critical & expansive as the os to just be a glorified rdp session, nor do they want it to be dependant on a subscription. i’ve told some of my non techie friends about this (all lifelong windows users) & they all said it’d be the one thing that makes them go to something else.


imo if you have a compatible machine (& prefer the taskbar at the bottom of the screen), then yes. it’s essentially just 10 with some kernel/core updates & a new ui that’s much better.


late commenting on this but finally, i’m so excited! sync is the only thing i’m still grieving from reddit, jerboa is nice & the devs have done a great job so far, but a bit too early stage for me atm


yeah, i’d contact steam if it’s really bothering you but otherwise just wait. steam support is one of the chillest cs teams i’ve ever dealt with so you shouldn’t have any problem either way. also keep in mind a few popular games are on sale atm so they might just be processing some more than usual


I thought this would be an automated process.

not entirely. while steam does auto approve refunds for games that are both owned less than 14 days & played less than 2 hours (not sure if this part is automated or if they train staff to just glance at the playtime & click refund in their ticket system), they still have a refund department to vet & process refunds that fall outside of that category. they’ll send you an email if what you’re refunding doesn’t fit the criteria for automatic approval:

Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any title that is requested within 14 days of purchase and has been played for less than 2 hours (this includes online, offline and shared library playtime). Even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can submit a request and we’ll take a look at it.

if you played the game for over 2 hours, even if it’s just by one minute, your request is gonna be in limbo for a while until a support team member gets to it. i’ve had it happen a few times over the years & in my experience it takes anywhere from like 1 or 2 days to as many as 5, depending on how busy it is (steam sales seem to slow them down). i’ve also heard from some on the steam community that even when a refund is auto approved it can sometimes still get stuck in the system for a few days.