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Quoting: MohandevirIt became a real dumptser fire since the creation of these "anti-social medias". Can't say I blame the governments.

They only became interested in banning social media when they realised kids listen to influencer lies more than they listen to politician lies. Can't have any of that. 😝

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> email address that's age verified

my old gmail account is 22 years old, maybe I should put it up for sale 😆

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I don't know... I must admit that I don't have a really good opinion about the "free internet" of 2026. It became a real dumptser fire since the creation of these "anti-social medias". Can't say I blame the governments. For my part, what you call "free internet" as lost it"s freedom way before these regulations... But It's probably just the ramblings of an old fart. 🤔

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England is becoming less free by the day.

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Thank you for writing an article about RTCW for Linux!

I still have it on my computer with a Pentium 4.

I remember that I first played RTCW in 2005, and it was one of the games that didn't support ALSA. In this case, I need to use Sound Blaster LIVE 5.1 to emulate OSS without having to type any commands in a terminal.

The Linux port was quite stable, but a single random crash could happen during the whole campaign with NVIDIA drivers.

That was a peculiar time when a Windows users asked about World War II FPS games, mostly Call of Duty. For many years, Linux users only had three recommendations:

- Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein
- Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

I can agree that 2002 wasn't the best year for Linux users playing the triple-A games. I still consider it a small step forward for Linux as a platform, with graphically impressive titles like UT2003 and unofficial Serious Sam: The First Encounter. LGP acquired the rights to some of the games from Loki, Tribsoft, Hyperion, and Titan Computer. The situation started to improve in 2003.

Most importantly, we had some new companies releasing indie games for Linux. They helped survive Linux and dominated the Linux game market for a decade. I know that some users weren't happy about it.

@Hamish
How well do Cursed Sands work on your PC?

I sent you the email message about the RPG game. Did you read it?

Quoting: rcritI'd have sworn there was a LIFLG script for this game but I can't seem to come up with it. Maybe it was a fever dream.

They removed it from their website, but it was for the older version.

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If you had a room full of developers and you got all of them to create a Linux distro, all of them would have differing opinions on what the ideal operating system should be. Sometimes major differences, sometimes minor - but still different in one way or another. What does this have anything to do with the article? Well...

As with software, people have very different opinions on how our countries should be and what values we should have. From what I know, the UK, Canada, Australia, and even the US are all trying to do this right now. Obviously, the countries I listed are all very different in many ways, but for some reason all their governments suddenly believe it's a priority to take on the responsibility of "saving kids" from social media. The fact that these countries are all doing this at the same time is very peculiar, and I find it very hard to believe that this wasn't planned by them years ago. You'd have to be a complete idiot to believe that this is actually about the welfare of our children.

As boring as it is, carefully read the bills your government is trying to pass. If you're into all the "left vs right" and "us vs them" nonsense, it's time to put that away. Put away the Reddit, the social media, and the Pravda news sources - and pay close attention.

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Quoting: such

Quoting: HamishI am still held back by my Pentium III 500 Katmai, which does meet the minimum system requirements listed on the box but not by much.

The minimum CPU requirement is actually PII 400MHz, so even this slowish PIII should be noticeably smoother for a number of reasons that go beyond raw clock speed.

I think this is probably a GPU bottleneck. I happen to have a Slot 1 PIII 500MHz rig ready to go, so I'll have a test on my end. Very curious.

On a GF4 Ti4200 I'm getting a consistent... 19.7fps, so yeah, that CPU is struggling and my GF4 is giving it even more rope to hang itself with. Max settings on 1024x768 at least. Knocked everything all the way down, 640x480, and ran it on Voodoo 2 in SLI just for fun. Half the textures were missing, but amazingly enough it did finish. 15.7fps.

There ya have it, folks, a Voodoo 2 (or perhaps 3 given the SLI, and you'll probably get... most if not all textures on V3!) isn't really that much worse than a GF4!

You tend to forget just how FAST hardware was progressing back then.

That said, the ATI probably is the bottleneck in that configuration while the MX400 is closer to a sensible pairing.

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I’ve fallen off in favour of Victoria 3, but I might see how the Star Trek mods have been shaping up and consider a return. 1000 hours but last played 2 years ago.

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Pew, seems none of my AUR packages are affected:

bsky-electron-bin 0.4.1-1
fcitx5-im-emoji-picker-git 1.1.1.r4.g2c4d19f-1
minigalaxy 1.4.1-1
obs-pipewire-audio-capture 1.2.1-1
python-pipewire-git r152.6941921-1
sway-git 1.13.r7679.47ec005-1
timers 0.1.0-1
whalebird-bin 6.3.0-1
wlrobs 1.2-3
wlvncc-git r150.cc0abf8-1
xdg-terminal-exec-git 0.13.2.r0.g65cdde2-1
zapzap 6.5.1-2

I am aware that using the AUR is a risk and at the beginning I used to check the scripts.
But after a time I thought if there were major attacks they would already have happened.
So I am very disturbed about how easy it was to compromise a lot of packages.

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All of those anti-cheat techs are "feel good" software. In a world where you can use a AI PC to analyze gameplay from a secondary, clean as a whistle PC/Console and make inputs on it to cheat, there is nothing this invasive crap can do about it.

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After reading the first article in GoL, I purchased Utopia Must Fall. My play time has been 100% on the Steam Deck, where the game worked flawlessly. I was surprised that a retro arcade game could be so visually pleasing and have so depth. The options available for postponing the alien invasion are very creative. Each day you survive the alien onslaught you can a new choose upgrade for the next day. While standard options like weapon and shield enhancements are available; you can also use nukes, drones, robots, illicit arms deals, enforced blackout hours, etc. My favorite option is to invite the aliens to lunch. For people that enjoyed games like Galaxian or Missile Command, this game is a must buy.

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So is this the HDMI 2.1 support we've all been waiting for? Guessing not since the hdmi 2.1 stuff was something like mid april or may.

From the link:

commit f52bbb00deaaa137271217e158537151f6c792b6
Author: Mika Kahola <[email protected]>
Date: Thu Mar 12 08:06:37 2026 +0000

drm/i915/lt_phy: Refactor LT PHY PLL handling to use explicit PLL state

The LT PHY implementation currently pulls PLL and port_clock
information directly from the CRTC state. This ties the PHY
programming logic too tightly to the CRTC state and makes it
harder to clearly express the PHY’s own PLL configuration.

Introduce an explicit "struct intel_lt_phy_pll_state" argument
for the PHY functions and update callers accordingly.

No functional change is intended — this is a preparatory cleanup for
to bring LT PHY PLL handling as part of PLL framework.

v2: DP, HDMI 2.0, and HDMI FRL modes are port of the VDR configuration 0
register. These modes are defined by bits 2:0. Decode these to
differentiate DP and HDMI modes when programming PLL's. (Imre, Suraj)
v3: Pass port_clock as argument instead of recalculating it (Suraj)
v4: Fix checkpatch warning of line length exceeding 100 columns

BSpec: 744921
Signed-off-by: Mika Kahola <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Suraj Kandpal <[email protected]>

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Really been looking forward to this one since it was announced. Being nomadic is going to be a huge difference in playstyle. And at long last I can finally create a proper "nomadic traders" Melnorme polity to fill out my collection of species from Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters. 😁

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I would be *so* happy if this listing means they're working on Linux support for Fortnite, I, just a couple days ago, set up a Windows 10 IoT LTSC dualboot because the damn Fortnite bug bit me again.

Fortnite is, literally, the ONLY game I play at least semi-regularly that absolutely requires Microslop and I refuse to put Windows 11 on this machine. 10, though, that's fine.

(They lured me in with the anxious little jester and jackass rabbit from the cartoon that I like. I'm only human.)

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Quoting: tuubiNo relation to Gibson's classic Sprawl trilogy? I suppose the name might be a coincidence or it could be a homage.

HAS to be an homage.

• has both the worlds "sprawl" and "zero"


• graphics are kind of sort of from that era


• you control a cyborg to take down a tech cult

wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too coincidental lol

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Quoting: blindcoderI'll be sad if this won't get a DLC called "and far away" :D

Followed by the sequel "over the river", with DLCs "and through the woods" and "to grandmother's house we go". 😁

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uh oh ... I was planning on enjoying this demo tonight in bed on my steam deck, after kids put down ... but if you didn't good performance on your 6800xt then I have no chance on the deck! damn.

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Quoting: mattaraxiaThe problem is they can't rethink it without essentially killing it.

The near complete lack of oversight and controls is basically the AUR's one feature that distinguishes it from everything else out there.

So what they need to do is essentially kill it, then fork Arch so there'll be a little distro, let's call it "Arch Hardcore", that continues to use an AUR in the old style and is now obscure enough again to get away with it. 😁

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Quoting: rustynailSo I'm guessing there is probably no particular intent to improve gaming from the kernel team, it's just that somebody out there happens to be doing that.

Quite possibly somebody who works for Valve . . .

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I'd have sworn there was a LIFLG script for this game but I can't seem to come up with it. Maybe it was a fever dream.

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Quoting: GrishnakhGeneralized comment here: I own Stellaris, haven't played it yet. But a quick check on Steam shows there are now 24 DLCs etc. I haven't bought and paid for.

There comes a point where I can't justify spending more money to "enhance" or "experience the ultimate" a game has to offer. If it wasn't the best you could make it with Release 1, why should I have to invest (at Steam retail) ~$250 to make it the best? Do I really think I'll have the time to meander through all the cultures, colonizations, and conflicts?

At this point Stellaris is so vast there's no meaningfulness to it for me. Kudos to those who enjoy it and can spend a demi-lifetime in it. I just can't buy into the "this is really awesome!" DLC marketing with each new release.

Just try playing the base game. I think it's unlikely DLCs for a game you haven't played are going to have meaning to you. Once you've played it, if you even like it, then you'll start having an idea which DLCs you might figure would be good and/or worth the money. Until then it seems to me you're overthinking based on too little evidence to draw any conclusions.

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Quoting: devland

Quoting: dibzThe real answer is for people to get over the idea of rolling distros, they've always been dangerous like this, and always will be. Most people don't actually need the latest and greatest, or only need very specific things that are.

In the professional world things like immutable distros and verified images and such are coming full circle to "solve" this problem that never used to exist used to be a niche crowd. Or you know, flatpaks, snaps, appimages, pick one - they're all solutions to the same issue.

The official ARCH rolling release repos were not affected. Quite the contrary. Only some of the old & unmaintained AUR repos were affected and that goes against your "rolling release is bad" idea.

If anything, rolling release gets you fixes for whatever problem the fastest while traditional distros like ubuntu take the longest to update or never do since they have EOL cycles.

Flatpaks, snaps & appimages all have the same trust problem as AUR because not all of them are fully contained within their sandbox; many require additional access to function and you just trust them to not require more than they need. They are all third party apps that you use at your own risk on top of whatever immutable system you might have.

Whatever you might be using, there is always a level of risk because you have to blindly trust the people that made it and there's no way to objectively measure someone's trustworthiness.

Quoting: Jarmer

Quoting: dibz

Quoting: shadowofwardSo what distro is safe now? Anyone know a gaming centered disrto not based on arch? I was using cachyOS but im ready to try anything thats fast stable and not arch based, Anyone??

The real answer is for people to get over the idea of rolling distros, they've always been dangerous like this, and always will be.

ummmmm excuse me what on earth?

I'm not sure so I just have to ask: do you understand what we are even talking about here? This has nothing to do whatsoever with the distro itself, or if its rolling or not rolling. Rolling distros are 100% not "always dangerous" that's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard.

Wow, some easily offended folks in here (not everyone I'm responding to so much). It's still the same fundamental issue, which is that they're very susceptible to supply-chain problems; In classic development, that really just meant stable packages that changed little, so presumably, a vast swath of compromised source wouldn't have actually trickled down to user systems very quickly. Obviously there can still be supply chain issues, but the attack surface is much smaller.

Take the XZ compromise not all that long ago, which released a new "stable" compromised version that actually made it on to user systems - y'all know the problem commit was only about a month old? That's a crazy short timeline. Virtually anything that pulls remote (untrusted) source to compile is far easier to compromise. In a classic environment, this would be whatever the dev package by the vendor is, so the compromise - and this happens - would have to be in the repository itself. Anything that pulls source from something like github some jackass can compromise by having their keys stolen - or if they're just bored and feeling frisky.

So yes, modern development practices affect rolling distros more because they tend to use the latest and greatest all the time - which is not always great.

Editing because I forgot to address me bringing up appimages/flats/etc, which I probably shouldn't have for the context of this thread - that's a more general complaint regarding rolling releases being the normal now. I've brought that up in other posts where it's more appropriate.

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Ughhhhhh. Well, I'm just gonna jump ship for now. Welcome back, Fedora.

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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.

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Generalized comment here: I own Stellaris, haven't played it yet. But a quick check on Steam shows there are now 24 DLCs etc. I haven't bought and paid for.

There comes a point where I can't justify spending more money to "enhance" or "experience the ultimate" a game has to offer. If it wasn't the best you could make it with Release 1, why should I have to invest (at Steam retail) ~$250 to make it the best? Do I really think I'll have the time to meander through all the cultures, colonizations, and conflicts?

At this point Stellaris is so vast there's no meaningfulness to it for me. Kudos to those who enjoy it and can spend a demi-lifetime in it. I just can't buy into the "this is really awesome!" DLC marketing with each new release.

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I didn't know I needed this. But, I do.

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Quoting: LoudTechieSecure anti-cheat can be build in an open manner, but nobody has done it yet.

At the end I don't care for games that do not customers my freedom, especially on THEIR systems. Or does the game company pay me for getting my system compromised, while they also could do proper server side anti-cheat? My system is no gaming console, it is also a productive machine. And many other PCs of many other people are similar.

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I'll be sad if this won't get a DLC called "and far away" :D

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Paradox writes "release" but it's actually pronounced "early beta".

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Pyrate

Quoting: LoudTechiealso relevant to this discussion.
Valve will never accept monero, because it's anonymous and decentralized.
The scammers for which they sacrificed their own gift cards would exploit exactly this decentralization and anonymity to hide their activity.

Even though I can't imagine how that could happen, (just like how I cant believe peoole sfill fall for gift card scams), you're probably right. I wonder when this stops being about a problem with gift cards and currencies, and more about people not thinking clearly when falling for these scams.

People will always fall for scams. That's not a problem that'll ever go away. Which is why we need governments, laws and regulations to protect the vulnerable. Of course governments do that with varying success and enthusiasm, but that's a political and social problem that doesn't have a technical solution.

In my opinion, the reason scams work so well is because they are exploiting the individual's innate greed and, in some cases, the appeal of getting something for nothing (i.e., minimal effort or work). So, greed exploits greed, in the end, and, ironically, we look to government regulation to protect us from ourselves. I think the old phrase "and if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you", says it all. Better to operate under the idiom that "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

I wouldn't go all in on victim blaming, unless you only count the "investment opportunity" scams and the "Nigerian princes". And sure, I want governments to protect their citizens from exploitation by criminals (or greedy corporations) even if they're too greedy or gullible for their own good.

Oh, I'm not saying that governments shouldn't protect their citizens from such scams just that we citizens should also take some responsibility for ourselves in the matter. I also agree that some scams are a lot harder to detect than others. I prefer to err on the side of caution with anything unusual or suspicious.

If observing financial and blocking financial transactions aren't tools governments're allowed to demand to be able to use to achieve this goal, which tools would you consider appropriate to demand for the government to enforce this.

Education?
Asking nicely?

Edit:
randomly arresting people?

Huh? 🤔

First, I provide a supposition for why people fall for these scams and it is assumed that I am advocating for no government protection. Then I clarify that this is not the case and I get taken to task for supporting ineffective or excessive government measures to achieve this goal. I can't win!

@LoudTechie, I wasn't commenting on enforcement in the first place. Its complicated, as you've indicated. Governments handle matters like this by passing laws and create policy. Leave it to them to figure out how to accomplish this in a fair and impartial manner. We can hope they'll get it right.

You're right I grouped you in with the crypto advocates and crypto's primary pitch is "free from governmental control and insight".
You absolutely didn't deserve that.
I just did.
Sorry.

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