Latest 30 Comments

As terrified as I am of it. I'm starting to root for the climate crisis to be the end of the human race. Hopefully in millions of years the planet will eventually recover and a new species can evolve to be as intelligent as us, but will hopefully make better choices.

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It's worth watching Ross' latest video, where he explains that this was somewhat expected due to the commission regularly meeting with industry lobbiests behind the scenes. He also explains that the commission isn't really relevant to the situation any more and can be bypassed due to existing legislation being amended.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CgoODQFrPgw

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Meeting with lobbyist at invite only sessions days before the announcement. Yup, bunch of cunts they are.

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In other news, this quarter Ubisoft will put on the balance sheet a funny, large expense, labeled "Other - Bruxelles".

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Quoting: TightRopeI am very conflicted on this. I am always the one to say these types of things will lead to more government surveillance and loss of freedom of choice etc.

If you understand that their true motivation has nothing to do with the welfare of children, why are you conflicted then? It's not like these bans have any chance at being effective at stopping kids anyway. Like you said, education on the dangers of social media would be more effective at getting people to voluntarily reduce or eliminate the time they spend on social media. If this really was about the children, the government could simply do a public fireside chat on YouTube to educate everyone on the negative effects that social media is having on the country. Let's not get away from the fact that these bans are just a trojan horse that governments are using to get their people to willingly accept their own oppression.

Here's a list of bills that the Canadian government has tabled the past several months:
Bill C-2 - Surveillance bill. Warrantless private digital info sharing.
Bill C-22 - Mandatory data retention. Companies must comply and include government backdoors on all electronic services.
Bill C-8 - Absolute control over networks and utilities, giving the government power to arbitrarily cut services from anybody that holds opinions that they don't approve of.
Bill C-9 - Speech and ideology. Intentionally vague "hate speech" definitions for silencing dissent.
Bill C-11 - Regulates online content, controlling what you're allowed to see online.
Bill C-34 - Sort of like the UK Online Safety Act. Canadians will be forced to use government-issued ID for accessing social media. Bans kids from social media.
Bill C-63 - Pre-crime restrictions on online speech and expression.

I know what their motivations are, and they're barreling towards. I'm sure that the other Five Eyes countries are headed down the same path, some farther down that path than others. I think the UK is a few steps ahead of Canada when it comes to tyrannical laws, but our government is trying to catch up.

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Quoting: SlaxerMaybe the Brits of Gamingonlinux can chime in on this, but from what I understand, teenage drinking isn't taboo over there like it is over here. Without looking it up, I'm also pretty sure the legal drinking age in the UK is 16.

Not exactly. The legal age to buy alcohol is 18, and you can be stopped (and potentially arrested, but who wants to do the paperwork?) if you're drinking in the street under 18. If you're 16 or 17 you can drink with a meal in licenced premises as long as an adult you're with buys it. If you're under 16 you can go in a pub with an adult, but not drink alcohol there. You can't give alcohol to a child under 5. Parents can give children older than that alcohol at home with meals or whatever. So, depending on how you define it, the legal drinking age is either 5 or 18, with a fuzzy bit in the middle.

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What are you even talking about? When I speak about KLAC vs server-side anti-cheat I never speak about freedom or such kind. The whole point is system integrity, security, compatibility issues (also on Windows with 2 different kinds of KLAC that conflict) and eating up resources on your system, often even without playing that game. Freedom is a completely other topic.

Freedom also requires rules that take away freedom, otherwise you want "freedom for me, not for thee". And such rules can be "cheating only allowed on cheating-servers", so that you can play however you want, just in a manner where everyone agree it is okay to do so. That is also possible with server-side anti-cheat.

Server side anti-cheat begins with checking if an action is allowed like using a skill to check if it is on cooldown or not. That is the most basic thing that should be done and already prevents 95% of all cheats. Games that use KLAC, because they did not even build in these basics? League of Legends (at least the match making launcher), Grand Theft Auto Online (you can become a game master and crash the game for other players or block cheating reports or prevent players from connecting to other lobbies, there is 0.0% validation) and probably more. I am fighting against this laziness of game studios that in additional forces us to run these problematic tools on our systems.

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I really wish the kde team would do a major point release with ZERO new features and just patch like a thousand bugs.

There's still SO MANY BUGS for me. Like last time I tried to use it, I had a permanent undismissable notification about the search crawler indexing my system. No idea if it was actually stuck indexing forever, or if it was a glitchy notification, or what. Others had the same problem and it had been YEARS of reporting on the forums with no patch. Had all kinds of bugs setting up my widgets that I liked. Like sometimes they would just randomly reset themselves for no reason at all and become unusable, so I'd have to go redo all their placements. There was one other major bug that I can't even remember right now, and when I got that one, I decided enough was enough and just jumped ship to gnome. I like the Plasma interface a LOT more, but gnome is just more stable (for me at least) and has none of those bugs. Of course that probably comes from the fact that gnome has a LOT less going on compared to plasma, like no widgets for one. Stuff like that.

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I'm still waiting for this to be fixed: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461063

I think it's the only major gaming related bug that still impacts KDE Plasma for me.

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If you're as addicted to FromSoftware games as I am, I HIGHLY recommend the demo for Mortal Shell 2. It may be the best non-FromSoft Souls-Like game I've ever played.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2584270/Mortal_Shell_II/

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Holy shitballs SO MANY DEMOS ... whew a little overwhelming.

That Casualties Unknown looks AWESOME. Love weird stuff like that.

For me, here's a small list of things that look pretty awesome from a quick peek at the store front for the fest:

[Ghostpunk](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4378490/Ghostpunk/) - Investigate paranormal cases using a 1990s CRT terminal. Analyze photos. Decode audio. Interrogate suspects and decide what’s real

[Holonoptic](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4305470/Holonoptic/) - economic simulation and party-based RPG into a story-rich corporate alpine cyberpunk.

[Enarian Online](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4218510/Enarian_Online/) - text based ARPG experience that fuses classic adventure with modern action-packed gameplay

[Soul Diagnosis](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4657690/Soul_Diagnosis/) - dialogue-rich isometric cRPG where you are haunted by your mistakes. Navigate a labyrinthine hospital conspiracy, engage in fisticuffs with inanimate objects, and leverage your fractured psyche to survive.

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I am very conflicted on this. I am always the one to say these types of things will lead to more government surveillance and loss of freedom of choice etc. I have children that I did not permit to use social media until mid high school. I think they ended up mentally better off for it.
It is too bad US corporations were allowed to be left unchecked to create an addictive product and prey on our children and adults that do not understand how their addictive systems work.
Perhaps a social media education program would be more effective than age blocking. Maybe if parents, who never put their phones down themselves, understood how dangerous social media is for children’s mental health, would not be so quick to setup an account for a 7 year old.

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Quoting: Petethegoathighly recommend the divine frequency demo, imo it's something really special. dark, fuzzy, and intense uzdoom based dungeon crawling. super satisfying gunplay.

put links my man!

[Divine Frequency](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2548880/Divine_Frequency/)

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Every database is hacked, every service abused. Now UK goverment builds a database for pedos to easily find kids by nicknames... Imagine how much $$$ would somone sell that kind of data. Pure Gold!
They don't understand that they can do more charm...

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I keep considering moving to KDE but I've become addicted to Hyprland's Tiling Window Manager system since I made the initial jump to Linux (despite the compatibility issues). Maybe some day!

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Thing is, most of these social medias are private interests, trying to control our toughts, conduct and habits with algorithms, however fits them and you call that freedom... For my part, I call that brainwashing and brainwashing was never done at such a scale and with such efficiency. This is what I find really upsetting, personnally.

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And still no way to disable built-in drawing tablet support to allow using official or other drivers...

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Confirmed, this is getting so much better! I have bought it after your first coverage, and at first i wasn´t so sure. Now it is great! Oh, and they (Pixeljam) announced a Nova Drift DLC, too!

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou are comparing apples to airplanes.

No, you are.

Minors are legally allowed to smoke and drink in my country (Canada), you're just not allowed to sell or procure for them the cigarettes or the alcohol. Maybe the Brits of Gamingonlinux can chime in on this, but from what I understand, teenage drinking isn't taboo over there like it is over here. Without looking it up, I'm also pretty sure the legal drinking age in the UK is 16.

Quoting: TheSHEEEPParents clearly and obviously failed at the task. So beyond parents, who else is there? I can only think of government.

Heh, your name checks out. Don't worry about it, go back to sleep.

Quoting: TheSHEEEP“A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.” - Dorothy Sayers

So... don't quote anybody then, ever? What a shitty idea.

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I get the point of it being problematic that every adult now has to verify their identity. Then again banning minors from social media is not exactly the worst idea. Back when we grew up and the internet was young, it wasn't really that problematic.

Nowadays? Different story. The problem is that even most adults lack media competency. Throwing minors in there ... oh well. You can see what steam has become with all these weird "woke" cryers and so on. Somebody telling kids that this is "ruining gaming" will get them on board quick.

Honestly some kind of general internet license would even be better because even most adults are not fit to use it. Maybe require people to pass a test when making a contract with an ISP. The ISP requires your data anyways.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: tfkOh, well. Time to teach our kids how to use Tails I guess...

Time to bring back ICQ! 😆

Oh-oh!

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Quoting: tfkOh, well. Time to teach our kids how to use Tails I guess...

Time to bring back ICQ! 😆

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The thing is, state-of-the-art surveillance is really expensive. Flying saucers don't just land themselves in Gloucestershire, you know. It's way cheaper to just make everyone doxx themselves with every online interaction. Just throw in some fluff about saving kittens or protecting children and you're golden.

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Quoting: SalvatosFinally some good news. Hopefully they block them for 16 and up soon as well.

Quoting: UltraVioletjust like banning kids from smoking and alcohol this is a good thing

Amen to both of that.

Quoting: Slaxer

Quoting: UltraVioletjust like banning kids from smoking and alcohol this is a good thing

It isn't. The equivalent in this situation would be banning kids from being able to purchase phones and PCs.

That's not even remotely a fitting equivalent.
You are comparing apples to airplanes.

Smoking, alcohol and social media are all a huge negative impact especially on kids.
Phones and PCs are not, both can be quite beneficial if used correctly.
Phones and social media are often used somewhat interchangeably when talking about them, but the former can very well be used without the latter.

The idea that social media can have a positive impact on society has come and gone long ago.
All it did was ease the spreading of misinformation, echo chamber forming and unrecoverable societal division.
Instead of bemoaning the loss of Wild West social media, we should strive to get rid of them entirely, not only for kids.
Maybe it is not too late.

Quoting: SlaxerGiving the government the responsibility of managing a child's social media use will have overreaching effects way beyond their so-called "intent" of keeping children safe.

Well, someone has to.
Parents clearly and obviously failed at the task. So beyond parents, who else is there? I can only think of government.

Quoting: Slaxer"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

“A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.” - Dorothy Sayers

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Quoting: mr-victoryMeta was supposedly laying groundwork for such changes years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

I'm not surprised. According to the Snowden revelations in 2013, whether wittingly or unwittingly, many big tech companies are basically an extension of the US intelligence community. Namely Facebook/Meta, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft. Twitter was surprisingly unmentioned in the Snowden documents, but right after the time when Elon Musk bought Twitter, Elon was able to produce evidence that revealed that Twitter cooperated with the FBI to censor Tweets that they just didn't like, in violation of the 1st amendment of the US Constitution. Censorship via corporate proxy. Long story short, fuck all of those companies.

Fuck Reddit too btw. Reddit is not an honest platform.

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Quoting: UltraVioletjust like banning kids from smoking and alcohol this is a good thing

It isn't. The equivalent in this situation would be banning kids from being able to purchase phones and PCs. Giving the government the responsibility of managing a child's social media use will have overreaching effects way beyond their so-called "intent" of keeping children safe.

"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

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Quoting: HamishIt depends on what you are after. In terms of raw performance it is a no brainier, but the GeForce 2 is not period accurate to the rest of the hardware. My particular Rage 128 Pro was a later variant from 2001, but the actual architecture dates back to 1999, making it the more period correct.

A 1999 GPU is ancient history to a 2001 game. To put it another way: my period correct PC back then couldn't run RTCW at all, hah.

A 2002-3 GPU will at least support the features RTCW was built to utilize instead of offloading that work onto the CPU etc. The usual retro discussion follows ;)

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: SlaxerIt's funny you mention that. Canada's in debt $1.3ish Trillion (capital T), so the money sitting in your bank account is increasingly becoming more and more worthless by the day - and that's on top of the fact that you're also being taxed more on it than they did in the past. So you're losing money on two fronts, inflation, and taxes - which is something that can be entirely blamed on one group of people. Take a guess who? In theory, Bitcoin could fix half of that problem.

And btw, I would be considered "wealthy" by the government's standards... which is why HALF of my sweat blood and tears goes to the government - only to be squandered and spent in ways that only benefit themselves, and not the country. Trust me, people like me aren't the ones stealing from you. But anyway... let's bring it back to those gift cards eh? lol

Yes, yes, what have the Romans government ever done for us?

This country was better off before the anti-government turn around 1980 and the, basically, corporate takeover of government, back when government did more and taxes were higher. If we still had Connaught labs we would have been making our own Covid vaccine and our insulin would still be at cost. If we still had social housing programs, we wouldn't have a homelessness problem and people would be able to afford the rent.

(I don't think the government actually wants any of your blood, sweat or tears; sounds kind of unsanitary. I just pay my taxes in $Cad)

As to the government debt . . . go learn some Modern Monetary Theory. It's a very limited theory which only says anything about, well, money, which is not nearly as broad an issue as MMT proponents seem to think. But, it's not batshit insane, which makes it better than right wing pseudo-populist claims about money. Bottom line, private economic surplus is created by government debt--that's not so much a theory as an accounting identity. If the government ran surpluses your blood, sweat and tears would, on average, stop making money and start taking losses. Platitudes about government spending that treat it like a household (specifically, one that doesn't buy cars or homes or take out student loans) are deeply misguided and end up turning the real world on its head, because governments do not resemble households in any relevant way.

[The assumption here is that innovation and experience can't create/find spare capacity.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory)
Destroying the entire value of the market.
Yet, it also assumes the need for market growth.
As an engineer I hope the 2019 surveyed economists are right and this is wrong.

It also raises some questions about history, such as "wait does that mean air nitrogen extraction isn't more productive than nitrogen mining" and does that mean penicillin has such a gigantic drain on all living things that it corrects for all the created working hours.

Edit:
also this implies schools are useless, since they're supposed to make the population more productive, which is impossible in MMT since that would increase the static maximum value in an economy, which is stated to exist.

Actually I now realize most of MMT has been tested by [Erdoğan](https://www.turkishminute.com/2024/12/28/after-18-month-orthodox-economic-erdogan-again-vowed-lowering-interest-rate-fight-inflation/).
It didn't go well.

I'm not sure what in that wikipedia article got you to any of what you said. However, you're not wrong--but you wouldn't be wrong saying any of that about any school of economics or theory of money.

As far as I can tell there is no school of economics that allows for the possibility of change or growth or innovation. Conventional mainstream economics is based on a set of math that assumes a single, timeless moment in which markets clear. Conventional theories of the firm assume no profits, therefore no reinvestment and no growth. The theory of comparative advantage in international trade assumes that what a country has advantage in cannot be changed. Time seems to be very difficult for economists. Understandably; start talking about time, and by implication change, and uncertainty, and inherently unpredictable technological innovation, you're bringing in the whole damn real world.

MMT has the defence that it isn't about any of that stuff. What MMT has right, and about all it really covers, is that it gives a slightly more detailed account of why Keynesian economics works. And it's based more on what actually seems to happen in terms of government and bank money creation, where more conventional ideas about money are based on some theorists' ideas of what they think should be reasonable.

One thing it does not do which many seem to think it does, is claim that unlimited deficits are OK. What it says is that if there is slack in the economy, basically if there are economic projects in need of capital that could get under way if they got it, then government spending can spend into that slack, and this will not cause inflation. Beyond that, if government puts out money but there is no economic capacity to use it, this will not stimulate the real economy but will cause inflation. (In point of fact, probably the inflation will be from this excess money being used for speculation. This is probably what happened in Turkey, along with the debt not being in Turkish currency).

And it says if the debt involved is denominated in the issuing government's own currency, that debt can always be repaid, which is just true (Turkey's debt is almost certainly mostly in dollars; MMT does not really cover that very common situation of debt in currencies issued by other countries, except to say that most of MMT does not hold in that case). And it says that public sector surplus and deficit are mirrored in the private sector--a government surplus is fundamentally pulling money out of the private sector, creating a private sector deficit, i.e. increase in debt. And when you think about it this is also clearly true--a government surplus is government taxing more money out of the (private) economy than it spends into the (private) economy.

MMT also takes no position at all on a host of important issues. It does not say how much government spending is desirable, or what government should spend money on, or whether economic growth is desirable; it does not take a position on whether high inequality is good or bad; it says nothing about the desirability or otherwise of high minimum wages; it has no position on trade; it does not mention monopoly; as you note it has no concept of technological change or innovation. Like mainstream economics, it can't tell you why advertising exists. But it's not a theory of that stuff; doesn't make it wrong, just means it's not a general economic theory. MMT proponents tend to talk about it as if it's some grand unifying theory that refutes most of current economics, but it totally isn't, it's a pretty good theory of an important detail.

The entire capitalistic model is based on it.
Competition drives innovation, innovation drives productivity gains.
Conventional theories assume with the non-ponzi assumption no macro profits, but existing micro-profits in a small enough time-scale allowing for reinvestment.
Specifically above average efficient parties do make a profit, while others run a loss.
Allowing efficient ideas to rise to the top and only than profiting the larger unit in recursion, but non-existing profits in regular snapshots.
[On the non-recursive view MMT also falls apart. Not, because it's new(It's basically Kenyesian economics with new conclusions), but because it lacks causality.](https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s11293-021-09713-6.pdf)
Ofcourse I'm bringing in the real world, because you're proposing real change in real world policy.
Also all academic models are meant to meaningfully reflect the thing they're modelling and in this case it's an economy.

An economy with non-constant value can be modelled as the total value of the economy on a certain moment in an idealised system this way:
P^[1;>=relative value that goes into a certain part of the economy.
T^[1;>=total value of a certain part of the economy
E^[1;>=efficiency of a certain part of the economy.
If I leave out the ^ and what follows behind it, it's the same value for the entire macro economy.
T=T^1+T^2+T^3...
Where T^[1;> is T*P^[1;>*E^[1;> of the last iteration(I know recursion can be written mathematically, but I'm not that good at advanced mathematical notation as a programmer), thus T^future=P*E.
Most economic models are trying to find hidden factors and logic from the real world in that final part and do that by observing P and its parts, because that one is the easiest to manipulate and thus test.
Capitalism advertises equalizing T*P^[1;> with the last version of T*P^[1;>*E^[1;> of the last iteration, but tends to ignore socialized costs when calculating P and its parts.
Socialism making P^[1;> equal
Communism advertises P^1=1
As you may notice each of these hypothesis can be formulated quite well without any serious recursion making T=T^1+T^2+T^3... a useful statement about the economy when answering questions about P distribution, which is where the non-ponzi assumption comes from.
Simply, because we're looking at the one variable we can actually manipulate.

You criticize me for bringing in the real world and than you state MMT reflects what "is actually happening".
What is actually happening is the real world.
The reason other theories don't directly include money production is, because they consider money production a tax, which they do include, just a tax on transactions and holdings of the national currency.

Yeah, they indeed don't state that limitless public debt is okay, because they assume that the central bank printing money to cover the deficit cancels it out, ignoring the inflationary effect leaving that money in the economy has.
Now, why do I think this causes inflation.
I'll be using that macro non-ponzi assumption or more accurately constuct a post-ponzi assumption formula and calculate the parts.

When the government prints money, it's creating money not value.
Money represents value, specifically it represents what you believe to be able to buy with it in your next transaction.(in a certain way this is indeed speculation)
Since the nature of the next transaction isn't specified(which is the primary reason, we use currency instead of barter) we can generalize this into the macro-economic context and thus use our non-ponzi assumption(you know you'll be able to buy the product which holds the most value for money for you in the entire economy).
Also the next transaction is assumed to be part of the economy, because it's in the national currency, which is only accepted to purchase things from your economy(global reserve currencies violate this reasoning resulting in funky economics).
The value of money is, thus the total value of the economy/the amount of money in that economy.
Meaning the value of individual aspects of money goes down the more there is of it(true for any commodity as mass production has proven, but we're talking about money specifically here)
You appear to be right about the Turkish debt build up.
In, which case I will provide to you another example Pre-WOII germany all their debt was in ReichsMarc, which they paid with suddenly printed money. Causing famines and fuel shortages in the country that dominated the car and fertilizer(aeoral nitrogen based artificial fertilizer had just been invented by a german, who was making big bucks and bugs(as in guns not insects)) industry.
This was, because suddenly most wealth of all the ReichsMarc holders was distributed to those who held German debts, allowing them to cheaply buy german goods common germans needed.

It takes a stance on the desirability of central bank independence and the desirability of the mass production of national currency. The only reason you don't believe those are important issues is, because as an MMT advocate you don't believe in currency inflation. The rest of us considers this an important issue, since we hold currency and our wages are paid in currency.

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While it's a wonderful idea to let anyone come along and package extra apps and such if they're missing from Arch Linux repositories

No, it's not, and never has been. Arch is a clownshow, I've been saying it for years. It became the choice for newbies because it intentionally makes installing it laborious, so they feel like they're hacking the Gibson or something. "Hey look at me, I survived installing Arch Linux." Yeah, congrats, the list of things you typed in using a guide, and that you won't remember, are pretty impressive. Maybe it's a better idea to run a "newbie" (i.e. well engineered) distro like Ubuntu or Fedora after all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Quoting: Liam Squires-HandWe're all old now I'm afraid.

Awww, maaaan...

As pointed out by Snowdrake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein was 2001!

Filthy liars the lot of you! That game cannot be that old, I played it only a couple of years ago!

You got me all worked up now and I think I've hurt my back. Where is my Ibuprofen?

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