The point of encrypting something that gets decrypted midway by an organization is that there are worse actors than the organization out there. I’m not really scared of Steam abusing my credit card info, but I am afraid of random internet strangers.

Also remember that https doesn’t just protect your data, it also verifies that you’re actually on the website you think you are. The internet is basically unusable without this guarantee, especially on a network you share with others.

So no vetting at all presumably since you didn’t mention it? So how do you know that Dashlane is safer than a password scheme that might be guessed by someone after they’ve already compromised a couple of your passwords?

For someone to work it out, they would have to be targeting you specifically. I would imagine that is not as common as, eg, using a database of leaked passwords to automatically try as many username-password combinations as possible. I don’t think it’s a great pattern either, but it’s probably better than what most people would do to get easy-to-remember passwords. If you string it with other patterns that are easy for you to memorize you could get a password that is decently safe in total.

Don’t complicate it. Use a password manager. I know none of my passwords and that’s how it should be.

A password manager isn’t really any less complicated. You’ve just out-sourced the complexity to someone else. How have you actually vetted your password manager and what’s your backup plan for when they fuck up?

Both su and sudo originally meant “superuser” because that was their only use. They have retroactively been changed to “switch user” because this functionality was added later.

It’s not just Batman. This is a common trope in the superhero genre. Pop Culture Detective has a great video on the subject: https://youtu.be/LpitmEnaYeU

The source code in this torrent is a clone of the git repo. I don’t know if there are missing branches but it should have the entirety of the master branch history at least.

I have my own backup of the git repo and I downloaded this to compare and make sure it’s not some modified (potentially malicious) copy. The most recent commit on my copy of master was dc94882c9062ab88d3d5de35dcb8731111baaea2 (4 commits behind OP’s copy). I can verify:

• that the history up to that commit is identical in both copies
• after that commit, OP’s copy only has changes to translation files which are functionally insignificant

So this does look to be a legitimate copy of the source code as it appeared on github!

Clarifications:

• This was just a random check, I do not have any reason to be suspicious of OP personally
• I did not check branches other than master (yet?)
• I did not (and cannot) check the validity of anything beyond the git repo
• You don’t have a reason to trust me more than you trust OP… It would be nice if more people independently checked and verified against their own copies.

I will be seeding this for the foreseeable future.

First time I’ve heard of Mojeek. Why should I trust it more than any other company? Is there anything particular about its economic model or governance that makes it less likely to decide to be unethical?

Essentially ULWGL will allow you to run your non-steam games using Proton, Proton-GE, or other Proton forks using the same pressure vessel containerization and runtime that Valve use to run games with Proton

This is the crucial piece of information. In less technical terms: Proton is designed to run in a very specific environment and it might be incompatible with your system. Steam runs Proton inside a bubble so that it interacts less with your system and so the incompatibilities don’t become a problem. ULWGL aims to create the same bubble so it’s the correct way to run proton.

Aha I see what you’re saying. It’s possible that dr CD considered the second part to be crucial, but it doesn’t seem that people who listened to his message felt the same way, myself included. I probably speak for a lot of people when I say we hadn’t realized just how much these platforms are “subsidized” and how much damage that does to the entire market. So that part ended up being associated in our minds with the term enshittification.

“Enshitification” does not mean “I don’t like it”. It is specifically about platforms that start out looking too good to be true and turn to shit when the user base is locked in. The term is generally used for cases where the decline in quality was pre-planned and not due to external factors. Using the same term each time is, in my opinion, an appropriate way to point out just how common this pattern is.

From the naming it’s clear that GE wants this to be the new standard, but it’s not really a new standard. This is porting Steam’s launcher, which already exists, to non-Steam clients.

This is great. Proton is getting a lot of testing just based on Steam’s userbase and it is backed by Valve. We also have a lot of data on proton’s performance and potential game-specific fixes in the form of protondb. Making sure that non-Steam launchers can use all that work and information is crucial to guaranteeing the long-term health of linux gaming. Otherwise it is easy to imagine a future where proton is doing great but the other launchers are keep running into problems and are eventually abandoned.

One thing that I am curious is how this handles the AppId. If this AppId is used to figure out which game-specific fixes are needed, then it will have to be known. Do we have a tool/database that figures out the AppId from the game you are launching outside of Steam?

By the time you’re ready to buy a new card, Nvidia might be working well under wayland. They’ve already made significant changes in the past couple of years, like implementing GBM and hardware accelerated XWayland. To my understanding, this MR will also fix some remaining issues in the future. I don’t know how much more work needs to be done after that, but just the fact they are cooperating with the free software ecosystem is a good sign.

Perhaps more importantly, the free nouveau driver can now experimentally reclock nvidia gpus from the 2000 series and newer. With this breakthrough it is possible that nouveau + nvk will be able to compete with the proprietary driver in the near future. If/when we have a well-supported free driver, we will probably have proper wayland support as well.

I’m not really in a hurry to switch to Nvidia. I’ve been quite happy with my AMD cards so far. But it’s definitely a good thing to have the option to buy from any vendor.

I read through the article but it doesn’t seem to specify the nature of the book. How do we know it’s a “knock off”? It might very well be fanfiction. Copyright law aside, fanfiction can be original and is a valid artistic expression.

This is quite a nuanced issue. The author is claiming that the Rings of Power copied his ideas. Even if the author didn’t have the legal right to publish this book, he might have put original ideas into his work, and the Tolkien Estate should not automatically own these. The copyright owner “should” (within the current legal framework) be able to make you take down your derivative work, but they don’t own it. The article doesn’t specify why the original lawsuit was dismissed.

Clarification: In my previous comment I meant that the implementation was antiquated, which is why it was causing many problems.

Although I do think that desktop icons in general are outdated because they’re designed around a desktop metaphor that is itself outdated. Our use of computers has changed vastly over time and the original metaphors are irrelevant to today’s newcomers. Yet most desktop environments are still replicating the same 30 year old ideas. It’s because we’re used to them (which I understand is a valid reason), not because they are necessarily the most pleasant or the most efficient.

just gimme the damn option.

That’s what they did initially. Unfortunately, keeping around an antiquated optional feature that no developer wants to work on isn’t free. It ends up being a hurdle for improving other stuff and at the same time it doesn’t work as well as the user would expect. There is more context here if you’re interested.

Keeping code around isn’t free. Interfaces change, regressions pop up. You have to occasionally put in work just to keep it in a working state. Usually in cases like this there are discussions on the mailing list about who is going to maintain them and nobody volunteers. You can do that if you’re so passionate about keeping these drivers around.

Linux 6.1 will be maintained for another 10 years by the CIP. The hardware in question will be almost 40 years old at that point. I don’t have a violin small enough for users losing free support after 40 years from maintainers who most likely don’t even own the same hardware to test on…

The scam is that they undermine the actually viable platforms by offering something that is literally too good to be true. Then when all their competitors are dead their store will go to shit and you won’t have an alternative. When the time comes, you will wish you’d spent some money on a real store rather than play for free on theirs. See enshittification.