So…

Is this an obesity thing? I remember back when I thought the switch joycons were “cool for docked mode” but was shocked when I found out how many people just put it on its (horrible) kickstand and played with their arms at their side. And when researching a kobo discovered that there is an entire culture of people who prop their e-readers on their chests and buy projector dongles as “page turners”.

And any time people actually say why they want it it is “Oh, it is hard to hold a tablet up for 20 minutes at a time” or “it hurts to squeeze my arms together”.

And now this.

Last I checked, using Kindle For PC on a windows (virtual) machine still works. I did it last weekend and the instructions are still on reddit.

In the process of re-verifying and ever so slowly using kvm on my desktop and will likely duplicate the instructions as part of that. But if you just go check the calibre board at reddit, it is super easy to find.

But yeah. Strongly suggest migrating to a different ecosystem. There is no guarantee that Rakuten aren’t going to shit it up but they are way better than Amazon right now (super low bar…). But since some of my favorite authors only self publish on kindle for pricing reasons…

I know we all want to clown on this because amazon sucks and we all stan Steam as our corporate overlords.

But there are actually a lot of REALLY good insights in the original linkedin post. Particularly the reality that anything that competes with Steam needs to be

It was a store, a social network, a library, and a trophy case all in one. And it worked well.

Epic is a shitshow and barely competent on the store front. But they took a very smart approach of starting from basics and adding what people want… and people want their video game store to be facebook.

Maybe if amazon had more tightly coupled that to twitch it could have worked but it is clear that coupling any services is a shitshow for them (remember when we could do actual watch parties if people bought stuff on amazon video?).

Andrew Rea is a special kind of asshole (gotta love how he uses his own, probably legit, stories of struggles with mental health to sell fucking Better Help of all things).

But recipes and paywalls have always been a mess. Cookbooks were, and still are, a thing. And the time and cost it takes to develop a recipe is REALLY high. Brian Lagerstrom has talked about this on and off and half joked about how many lasagnas and cakes he and his partner have eaten to get a 15 minute youtube video up. And then someone else just steals that verbatim without any credit at all. So a lot of “recipe creators” are looking at methods to make sure they at least break even on their IP.

And Rea is very aware of this. Partially because he has a long history of using the exact same techniques that Kenji et al do without any accreditation (Alvin is REALLY good about saying where he got an idea though) and partially because he is pretty good friends with some of the most notorious recipe thiefs out there.

But yeah. If they had done a “going forward, all recipes are paywalled” I would not be too bothered. But he retroactively paywalled all his old recipes. Which sucks because many videos outright contained errors that weren’t in the text recipes because he screwed up the narration.

But also? The good news is that you can generally just google a few of the ingredients of a given recipe and get the “real” name of it and five different versions.

Like others said: That is probably just “normal” spam

But also? This is the same logic as “AI can’t draw hands” and all the other gotchas. We are in an arms race and have been for decades. Captchas have always been about “bots” and have increasingly been defeated by various forms of computer vision which are the basis for how a lot of “AI” works. And we are in the same place now.

Ah. Thank you for actually finally citing yourself.

I actually HAD seen that before so:

1. .Protonmail Behaves like a CIA/NSA “Honeypot”: This is an incredibly sensationalized point that boils down to them having a really shit TOR page. And, agreed. But “In fact, the only other websites that operate like this are suspected NSA/CIA Honeypots.” is very much false. LOTS of sites are configured in a really shitty manner which gets back to people having to understand the tools they use.
2. Protonmail Does Not Provide “End to End Encryption”: Yeah. Which gets back to what I have been saying the entire time. If you actually care about your security, encrypt your own emails. Nobody should EVER trust a company to do encryption for them when it actually matters. Which speaks to the quality of proton as a service, not it being a “honeypot”
3. . Protonmail’s Was Created Under CIA/NSA Oversight: That article is almost entirely them just repeating that same inflammatory statement over and over. But it boils down to having issues with something coming out of MIT research which is a prestigious school with government grants and very questionable side hustles for some professors. The reality is that almost all software is at least “incubated” under very questionable circumstances because… people gotta eat and the people doing the kind of research that makes “cool stuff” tend to get government grants (well, not as of two weeks ago but…)
4. .Protonmail is Part Owned by CRV and the Swiss Government: Which is not the CIA?
5. CRV, In-Q-Tel & the CIA : I am not seeing a direct link to Proton Corp other than “Additionally, The mastermind, cryptographer & back end developer that created Protonmail, Wei Sun, now works for Google.”. Which… okay? If it was written properly that doesn’t matter. If it wasn’t then… encrypt your own emails.
6. Protonmail Follows CIA Email format & Metadata Requirements: "There are several ways to store emails, and Protonmail has selected the format that the CIA requires. ". Yup. Smoking gun right there. They chose the wrong standard. Yes, I would like it if they encrypted that metadata on principle. But it doesn’t matter. If they are compromised, they have that metadata anyway. Again, encrypt your own communications and maybe don’t use your personal accounts when you are discussing super sensitive topics?
7. . Swiss MLAT Law Could Give the NSA Full Access: Are we back to the Swiss being a CIA front?
8. Protonmail Uses Radware for DNS/DDOS Protection: So now it is Mossad who controls Proton and all they have to do is compromise a DDOS filter. Again, encrypt your emails.
9. Protonmail Developers Do Not Use Protonmail: if not wanting to eat your own dogfood means you are a CIA operation then Uncle Sam owes me a lot of money.
10. Protonmail engages in illegal cyberwarfare: They did a “hack back”, Okay? Fuck 'em, but okay?
11. Protonmail has a history of Dishonesty: Yeah, there is no bias in that list at all

You see, when you actually post a link to stuff people can discuss what you are talking about and explain why you are misinformed and clearly referencing a somewhat deranged hit piece.

The main takeaway from that? They are, at worst, as bad as gmail. Except with a much smaller customer base and at least more open that they want you to pay for functionality rather than not question what google is doing with your data.

And, as proton themselves even say: if it actually matters, encrypt your own emails. That way Proton Corp don’t have anything they can give to their CIA/Mossad/Swiss overlords.

you want me as an ally, your tone lost me…

If the only way you care about people protecting their privacy and very selfs is if someone is nice to you and cuddles you and thanks you for spewing uncited nonsense…

There was a blog post by a website called Privacy Watchdog (if I remember correctly), I can’t find that website anymore nor the blog post,

Yeah. And trump totally read an article somewhere that black trans people are the root of all evil. He can’t find it right now, but totally trust him on that.

I don’t know if you are just this stupid or if you are actually trying to undermine those who are trying to make educated decisions on what they should or should not “trust” communication wise (you’ll note that I all but say “don’t trust proton. protect yourself”).

But either find that mystery article so that people can make educated decisions or shut the fuck up.

I am not making arguments for US politics. I am not here to give you “something (you) can use in future discussion with others”

I am telling you that you have no evidence whatsoever but you are spewing bullshit. You are just as bad as trump making up bullshit about how he read a report that nuking a hurricane would solve all problems. Your argument is literally “I think I heard somewhere”

We are all scared. We are all trying to protect ourselves. Maybe you can be an ally instead of an agitator, hmm?

Sorry, just to check: your evidence is “I think I read it somewhere?”. If it weren’t for “weak argument, dismissed” being too “cringe” even for ME…

If you have evidence, please actually provide it. If you don’t, please shut your opinion hole.

And

she was the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council Chair of the Future of Internet Security

That actually seems like a good background to have for working on software/products like this?

Also, people should actually LOOK at what proton “promises”. Mostly it boils down to limited protections and suggested tools to protect yourself. Which is why, as a company, I like them. They aren’t promising to fight all the governments of the world. In fact, they are pretty open that they are gonna roll over because they don’t know you. But what they do claim to turn over? Combine that with some opsec and personal encryption and you are in a really “good” place for someone who has a warrant out on them.

Contrast that with all the companies that DO make wild claims about having zero data and being willing to go to nu-gitmo for their customers and blah blah blah.

The reality is: if you are doing something the CIA should care about, you… probably shouldn’t be doing email at all. That said, there are ways to reduce your risk factor and they almost all boil down to communicating with trusted and vetted individuals where you can actually encrypt communications yourself rather than relying on a company to do so.

But if you are mostly just pirating shit or writing graphic lemons about threesomes involving trump, xinnie, and putin? Meh. You can do a lot worse.

They didn’t “pay vassalage to trump”. They spewed the same libertarian tech bro bullshit that most companies trying to cozy up to a new administration did. And the damage control responses align with that.

It isn’t particularly good. But on the list of “privacy” corporations that are potentially honeypots, they still rank fairly low.

The real pro move is to carpool with like minded people with a kid.

“Oh, I would love to stay but John’s son is so fussy and they are my ride. It was great seeing you, we should do this again”

1. Learn how to take a screenshot
2. Clean your damned screen

That keyboard looks like one of the worst abominations ever made. Keys that tiny and that close together basically means you need to get a stylus and peck or REALLY contort and angle your thumbs to type anything.

I am increasingly disheartened by the obsession over “Desktop SteamOS”. People don’t want Linux or even “a desktop computer”

They want a video game console experience on their PC. Some other company manages everything and they just run updates any time people post stability memes.

Which… is not too much of a shock considering the trajectory of things over the past decade or two. But also more or less confirms that things are gonna go real bad from a computing standpoint (as opposed to every other standpoint where we already know this…) over the next decade or so.

But it SHOULD at least mean Valve can be confident about releasing the Steam Box 2 (meh) and associated Steam Link 2 (woo) and Steam Controller 2 (HELL YEAH!!!) sooner than later. So… silver lining?

I mean, the guy would have been able to write their whole message on one knife rather than needing three bullet casings to get it across.

So I guess environmentalists and the metal industry (Big Metal?) would probably care a bit?

Got it. Being amused at the death of someone who has immensely profited off the death and suffering of others is genocide.

Thanks for the demonstration of what I was talking about, I guess?

Its the idea that “Oh, they are a human being with loved ones just like you”. When the reality is that he was a leech upon humanity who caused internally measured suffering and death. And his family benefited from that.

But, because the power of friendship and candy cane sandwiches, he is still a human being and we need to feel bad. It doesn’t matter how many people they murder for a buck, they are still a person and you are the bad person for not feeling bad for their death.

No

Killing the evil fuck doesn’t save any lives. The board (?) still had the meeting he was on his way to and they are still going to continue to deny basic human rights to the people who pay them for it.

The reality is that this is just yet another sign of immaturity and arrested development. I forget where I first heard it but… folk been watching WAY too much Steven Universe and similar warm and cozy shit. They think that by always taking the high road they are better people and the world will be a better place because if you do the right thing everyone else will.

When the reality is that people like the dead fuck prey on naivety like that.

If we ever find out who did it we are sure to find out they are also a pretty monstrous person. But, as satisfying as this has been, it changes nothing.

If you JUST want to read pirated ebooks? Kobo is probably the best bang for your buck. But you can also pretty easily sideload ebooks to any kindle via the email interface (which I believe Calibre can utilize).

That said? I have a mix of ebooks I got from legal and less than legal sources. And some of those legal sources include amazon kindle because the prices are REALLY good.

So I like my Onyx Boox. Yeah… it is jank as hell and it allegedly comes with a free 5g modem so be wary of what personal info you put on there. But it works well as I can use the kindle app (which also syncs with my phone) for amazon stuff and the native ereader for any epub files. And because I use a webdav to sync my notes, grabbing new books is as simple as remembering to scp a folder to my nextcloud periodically.

Actually “data” is a better term for that.

Bandwidth is capacity in the moment. Data is what is metered by Comcast.

To put it in less technical terms: Bandwidth is your max speed at any given moment. Data is your max range. The more Bandwidth you use, the faster you consumer your Data