[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Depends on when you played it. It came out in a decade of generic war shooters (including other spec ops games) so the subversion slid under most people's radar, which was intended. There are subtle hints as you play, but iirc the scene described above was the first time the game really slaps you across the face.

It took a few years for the game to gain a cult following and recognize it for what it is. Nowadays the only people who go back to play it already have some idea of what they're getting into.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 hours ago

It sucks that this is how humanity has to learn these lessons. "Sure, we've done a holocaust before...but have we done a holocaust during the age of the internet with a bunch of propaganda saying it's not happening?"

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 6 points 17 hours ago

I don't think people who refer to "Anonymous" are referring to "the average 4channer".

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 12 points 17 hours ago

If you're ok with being up front with people, you could just say "hey, do you mind giving me some alone time while I eat? It's nothing personal, I just prefer to use this time to recharge by myself."

If you'd prefer to manufacture an excuse, you could tell her you're going to use your lunch hour to try a new mindfulness meditation technique you heard about, and need to avoid conversation during that time.

If you have the option to take your lunch somewhere else where she won't find or bother you, that's an option.

I think usually just keeping your nose in your book a few seconds too long before giving short answers to questions, then going right back to reading, is enough discomfort for a person like her that even if she didn't get the hint that you don't care to be bothered, she would at least prefer talking to someone else instead.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 17 hours ago

For the record, Introversion and Extroversion have a scientific basis. The Myers-Briggs does not.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 8 points 21 hours ago

That's the thing, it does. GTA doesn't support BattlEye for linux.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The best way to do this is to show them the exploit in action. Nothing perks a kid's ears up like holding up a USB drive and saying "there is a virus on this".

Run a demo in class of how easy it is to plug a random drive into one computer, and suddenly have full access from another computer (remote viewer and webcam access to really drive the point home. They're not going to be amazed when you type whoami and the console says root.)

Doing this is like saying "I know black magic and if you listen to me, I can teach you how it works, and how to defend yourself against it". What you have is no longer hypothetical to them, they will be invested.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

When I was in high school I wanted to learn how to program, how computers work, etc., but when I took the Java course offered the assignments were boring basics that I couldn't use for anything. Everyone in the class thought of it as a blowoff course.

What everyone in the class was intrigued by was the fact that the teacher ran her own local network for the class and didn't properly secure anything. It wasn't long before someone figured out that they could shut down any other computer on the network using a simple shutdown command on the cmdline, passing another host as the target. Which led to an arms race of people finding ways to block themselves from being shut down, while also managing to shut each other down. Turns out a shutdown can't be issued if another shutdown is already in progress, so the first line of defense was to issue a 24h shutdown on your own machine. But then we looked at the params to shutdown.exe and found the ability to abort shutdown options. Soon we all had a library of offensive and defensive .bat files, and the class was an all-out digital warzone!

All that is to say, kids like:

  • to play games
  • they like to compete
  • they like to poke and prod things, make them behave in ways they're not supposed to
  • experiment
  • feel safe breaking things and learning from the pieces that come out
  • "hacking"
  • and they like walking out of the class, seeing a random piece of technology, and having a new found understanding of its strengths, weaknesses, and how to manipulate effectively.

They don't like:

  • assignments
  • being told to do the same thing as the person next to them, print out some expected result, and turn it in
  • leaving the classroom and thinking "finally"
  • not knowing how to tie anything they learned back to their lives outside the class.

I know you have a list of things you'd like them to learn, but most kids will look at how difficult and primitive the computer you're showing them is, and then look at their phone, and say "why am I learning how to use an old style computer? New computers don't work like this, they have touch screens, and voice control, and app stores". You and i know this is a misguided mentality to have, but that's what they will think. It's up to you to relate everything in the class back to the computers they are actually familiar with. If you give them a new way to understand and interact with the computers they use daily, you will have them hooked.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I don't get why people use Twitter as a social media platform, but the format is/was useful when you just want to see what a certain person or organization has said recently. Ex. Local DOT updates or a game studio during a server outage.

That said, twitter has never figured out how to be self-sustaining, even before Musk implemented his air-tight nose dive strategy. And I'm not a fan of public orgs relying on a for-profit platform to communicate with the community. Especially when that platform retroactively decides you need to make an account and log in to view anything on it.

So it's kinda the inverse of OP's question: I get why it's a useful idea even though it's not actually working out.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

Prometheus: "If you can't own fire, then stealing it isn't piracy."

Zeus: "I can own fire."

Prometheus: "oh."

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

All of the ethical reasons listed by the top post are true, but the real answer is that the epic game launcher is severely lacking in its featureset compared to steam, and people don't want to be forced to buy games through a different storefront from where the rest of their library lives.

Also Tim Sweeney tweeted this, which technically isn't wrong as long as you accept that the US govt is also owned by private corporation and interests.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 13 points 2 days ago

"Linear" is not a word I would use to describe it, hah. I'm pretty sure you can go back to the start, make different choices, and play another 70+ hours of content you've never seen. Which is even more insane.

14

Just ran across this in the newcommunities discussion. Figured I'd jump start a thread for people to chime in on.

  • What have you been playing lately?
  • Anything you're looking forward to?
  • What do you wish you could play, but never have the time or players?
52

I'm curious what people's thoughts are about Matter. This is the first I'm hearing of it.

I've been trying to find a way to replace my old Chromecast Ultra (because Google), but I really like having that little cast button show up in apps, even on the phones of guests. But from what I can tell, Google killed this functionality on open alternatives (ex. Raspicast) with a lockdown to the Chromecast spec.

I'm hopeful that Matter could be a way to have my devices cast streams to each other in a standardized way that wouldn't require me to rely on Google/Apple/Amazon/etc. Maybe even Newpipe could get in on the action?

I don't know how it will work, or if this "Connected Standards Alliance" (which is apparently used to be the ZigBee Alliance, also news to me) will still have to greenlight specific devices despite it being "open", which would rule out Newpipe. I would assume the official YouTube apps will be particularly resistant to supporting Matter.

Anyone have any experience here? Has anyone else successfully replaced their media device with something open that also works with the casting button in apps?

14
submitted 1 year ago by teawrecks@sopuli.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I'm trying to wrap my head around the pipewire ecosystem. I think it's great that we're getting a fully featured audio system with all the upsides of pulseaudio and jack, and none of the downsides (that I know of), plus a bunch of completely new features. However, I can't help but think it could have used a little more vision in its interface (or maybe just qpwGraph).

From what I've read, my mental model is that pipewire holds the graph, while a "session manager" manipulates it (create/modify/remove new nodes/ports/links/etc). That's fine. I also understand that wireplumber is such a session manager, and despite having a really convoluted config syntax, it does its job (I assume).

As a simpleton, though, I'm drawn to the wysiwyg interface of qpwGraph, but it's not clear to me how it's supposed to fit into pipewire's vision or how it interacts with wireplumber. It seems to render the current pipewire graph as it is, it can create/remove links between ports, but also it's not a session manager (right?).

I suspect that whatever I can do in qpwGraph I could also do using just wireplumber via conf files and the cli. But dragging my mouse between nodes is so much easier than learning a new syntax. But then I also don't understand what "Active" and "Exclusive" mean. I'm guessing that if Active isn't checked, it won't do anything at all, but if Exclusive isn't checked then...maybe wireplumber can override it? Does that mean if Exclusive IS checked it's able to override wireplumber (look at me, I am the session manager now)? Is that why, if I have a qpwgraph active that links VLC to both OBS and my headset, I hear/see a delay of the link to my headset when a VLC process launches? First wireplumber decides where it should link, and then qpwGraph modifies it several ms after?

I feel like it's currently not clear what qpwGraph is in pipewire terms, but it's also clearly the most intuitive way for someone to use pipewire right now. I think it would be best if qpwGraph was either a standalone, fully featured session manager (not to be used in combination with wireplumber) or just a front end for wireplumber rather than talking to pipewire directly.

Thoughts? Anyone else confused? Am I missing a piece to the puzzle?

1
submitted 1 year ago by teawrecks@sopuli.xyz to c/main@sopuli.xyz

Hi, I'm sure this is just a noob lemmy question. I saw on /c/newcommunities@lemmy.world that there's a new YouShouldKnow community: https://sopuli.xyz/post/675270

But when I search for it through Sopuli, it doesn't show up, and if I use the ! link in the top comment, it returns a 404 from sopuli. It seems the sopuli server doesn't know about the community yet, how is it supposed to find out about it? Thanks

1
submitted 1 year ago by teawrecks@sopuli.xyz to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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teawrecks

joined 1 year ago