Or maybe Firefox should find a sustainable business model.
I love and use Firefox the software, but their nonprofit is questionable, their leadership is scummy, and their business plan is nonexistent. They could, for example, start by accepting donations towards the development of the actual browser, which is the core product of Mozilla.
I absolutely hate “smart” TVs! You can’t even buy a quality “dumb” panel anymore. I can’t convince the rest of my family and friends that the only things those smarts bring are built-in obsolescence, ads, and privacy issues....
The paradox being that if therr were “premium” smart TVs for people like us - with proper support, privacy, customization options and no crap like ads - we’d probably buy it, and pay a premium for it.
But that’s just too much work for them and they probably don’t even realize that kind of market exists.
A Starfield remake, of sorts, has been created in 48 hours, incorporating seamless travel between planets, something missing from the actual Bethesda RPG.
Elite is still just cleverly hidden/styled loading screens. No Mans Sky (and apparently Star Citizen but I haven’t played it) is even better and more seamless.
A loading screen lets you load different areas of the game discreetly and make the game performative. This is especially important as Starfield is a single player game, it’s not hosted on a server or anything so it can’t distribute resource load that way, its all happening client side on the player’s system. They would have to simulate the entire world on their PC alone or develop a way to stream the content out dynamically and seamlessly.
That’s not how any of it works.
We have had level streaming in Unreal for like a decade. Sure it’s more complex to do things this way, but in general the way it works is that when you approach some area (are some distance from a planet or part of a planet) the next chunk of the world loads in, together with any NPCs and logic and everything else - it’s basically a self contained map, just seamlessly integrated with other maps. There is no meaningful performance hit if done correctly. You certainly don’t simulate everything all the time.
Additionally, all the other games mentioned (NMS, Elite, Star Citizen) also have basically all of the processing on the client side. The servers don’t help the clients in any way; they only store primitive states for gameplay purposes, but all the simulation and whatnot is done on the client. And they still manage to be better optimized.
That’s not an unsolvable issue, and you can always handwave it away for simplicity with some lore. The ships are already magics, like any star ship, so you can just say that the motors and calibration compensate for different planets and whatnot so the ship is easy to use everywhere.
Elite’s biggest issue is that it never really knew what kind of kame it wanted to be. An MMO? There aren’t enough multiplayer features for that. A (mostly) single-player space experience? It’s too shallow with no story, so it won’t satisfy the RPG fans. A space “simulator” where you just have fun flying ships? It’s probably closest to that, except you can’t fly any ship you want, and in fact it takes dozens of hours of grind to be able to switch things out so they’re fresh and you have more fun with the game again. And the simulation is very simplistic and not all that fun either, so it’s not for hardcore simulation fans either.
And because of this approach it has a bad combination of features that not only won’t fully satisfy either of the potential target groups; they also often work against each other. For example the multiplayer component is a dealbraker for me: I want a truly SP game where I can dictate how I play it - where I can mod it, or at least use cheats to find my own pacing, fly different ships on a whim, whatever. But the game simply won’t allow that.
But it’s also not a fully-fledged MMO where you could build (or at least own) systems/planets/bases whatever with your clan and compete against others for … idk, something.
And, again, it’s just not a story game that you could play from start to finish for the storytelling and worlbuilding.
Really sad, because the potential is there to have any (or perhaps even at least two) of those types of games.
For larger homes with central heating and radiators inverter air conditioners aren’t really a great solution - they are expensive (especially when you don’t have/need an air conditioner in the first place), unsightly and work for more or less just one room. A heat pump is a generic term for a multitude of things, but as a replacement for central heating you’d most likely have just one outdoor unit that spews cold air and inside you’d have a large heat exchanger where you warm up the water for your central heating (and possibly warm water in general for showering and the like).
That’s like the stupidest take, especially for most of Germany. In the worst case you’d supplement the heat pump with electric heat so in the coldest days when it doesn’t work at all (which will be a few days a year at most) you’d get to … checks notes … 1x efficiency, which is only as bad as having regular electric heating which many people have anyway.
Most modern heat pump systems account for that and have electric heating/defrosting built-in for those few cold days a year.
Also it’s not like you have to remove your old heating system*; you can just plumb in the heat pump into your central heating and have cut off valves for the original system, so you can still use it as a backup.
*) unless your government is retarded and in order to get subsidies they require you to uninstall it
The same thing that happens when you have electric or gas heating. It stops working, because none of those work without electricity nowadays. Hell if you have a coal/wood burner for central heating chances are it doesn’t work without electricity either.
Perhaps more importantly gas is just way more dangerous, heats up the space way too much when you don’t need it and wastes the heat, and overall just isn’t good for you - you need a well ventilated kitchen. Gas ranges need to die.
Sure, for a few days a year it might get as bad as resistive heating. How horrible! So you don’t get 3.2x total throughout the year, you get 3.1x. It’s a non-issue.
It’s insane to think that people think of that as cheap. It’s … adequate. Clearly enough to run a company that can support it and further develop it, all the infrastructure, etc. Somehow all other companies convinced us that it should be okay to pay $10 per month or more for the most basic of services, where until now their revenue per user was maybe $0.5/month for the biggest users (ad watchers).
$10 per year is what the vast majority of subscriptions should cost - they’d still make plenty of money, but it’s just not enough for them when they know they can nickle and dime you for more.
Is this some sort of a convenience feature hidden behind a paywall to justify purchasing their subscriptions or does generating the codes actually cost money? If the latter is the case, how do applications like Aegis do it free of cost?
Nowadays many services just force MFA on you in some way, and stuff like SMS or email verification is shitty, insecure and inconvenient. TOTP is then the next best thing, and having it integrated with a password manager is fine as long as you are aware of the risks.
The “value metric” that pisses me off the most is per user pricing when the service doesn’t incur costs per user.
Even in cases where there is a cost per user (or there is at least a correlation in cost increase with number of users) the price is usually many orders of magnitude larger than the cost increase.
If it wasn’t strictly bound to origin but could be, say, at least “licensed out” (perhaps with the places of origin still at least getting a small cut) it could be a win-win-win.
But as it is it’s just artificially inflating prices of goods that are potentially just as good (or in some cases potentially even worse) than some alternatives.
100% agree. Typescript is just a bandaid on top of a broken language. Sure it’s better than bleeding, but it’d be preferable not to get injured in the first place.
Have you considered using just the 3 domains with Proton and hosting the rest yourself? Assuming you have some more important/primary mail domains than others.
Technically you do lose the second factor, but nowadays 2FA is often mandatory or they force some crap like SMS/email verification onto you. If you are aware of the risk then it isn’t a huge deal.
Though you might want to consider not using it at least for the most important stuff like banking (here you don’t even have an option; banks have their own 2FA apps that you have to use) and primary/recovery email.
That’s a lot of trouble to go into to have questionable security. Though it’s admittedly really cool.
I guess this is only great if you have to use potentially compromised computers often, so you are risking leaking at most a single password at a time, but still…
Unlike a proper password manager this still has issues though; for one, saving in cleartext is just bad, reading EEPROMs is trivial, and (perhaps more importantly) unlike a normal password manager this doesn’t protect you against inputting data on a wrong (phished) domain.
Google kinda does do that though. You can have a recovery email (or multiple IIRC), or you can have a phone number.
TOTP and hardware authenticators are more for second factor authentication; you’re probably more likely to use those than a password, and they don’t really make sense for recovery.
Because you’re much more likely to lose or break a hardware fob than lose a password, let alone change (lose or whatever) recovery email or phone.
Like, it would be a neat option; ideally you could set up literally anything and say what combination of factors you want to use for recovery and which to use for authentication, but it’d be a pretty big change for a tiny minority of users.
Topics essentially works like this: rather than using cookies to track people around the web and figure out their interests from the sites they visit and the apps they use, websites can ask Chrome directly, via its Topics JavaScript API, what sort of things the user is interested in, and then display ads based on that. Chrome...
and I am really not impressed. I don’t want to know more about the story, don’t want to build a spaceship that I can fast travel with, don’t want to explore the universe....
I think your definition of decent charger&cable is just different from me then I guess.
I expect to get a charger that has the fast charging for the phone (not necessarily the top spec, but high enough) and a usable cable, let’s say a 0.5 to 1 meter, that can also do basic data transfer.
If I wanted a charger with 4 ports I’d buy it. If I wanted a braided cable I’d buy it. I don’t want either - but I want a charger that I know works fast enough with my phone, and it becomes my travel charger. Everything else I can manage.
This will be less of a problem as power delivery becomes the norm, but most people probably don’t have a decent PD charger several times over at home. Worst case you’ll have an extra charger where an old one dies, which seems to be common especially with some peoples’ cables.
Or, you know, alternatively do actually discount the phone by $60 or however much they act like it costs (it’s obviously way less than that, but chargers are still a significant expense largely because they need to have many different SKUs for different regions so the logistics are more complicated).
Maybe you’re better at finding news sources but I laughed because I can’t really think of event a decent outlet, let alone one where I’d think they do genuinely good work.
Many people who call themselves journalist nowadays are just literal bots with a tiny bit of editorial oversight.
And I’d argue that even in No Man’s Sky it’s not as fun as one would want it to be; sure it’s “seamless” but it’s also more or less just a glorified loading screen. Turns out there just isn’t much meaningful gameplay you can do while moving from one place to another through empty space across vast distances especially when the game has to work in the background to load and unload everything.
But at least it’s immersive. In something like Skyrim you at least have something to look at, or in Fallout you can marvel at the desolate landscape that’ll be different everywhere you go. Space is just that, space. Which is why in, say, Mass Effect it works well, because you get to explore your ship and talk to the crew between missions and that’s fun, while the travel is minimized (though still just loading screens).
Telegram has plenty of features for larger groups, too. Easily enough for acquaintances and schoolmates. Considering how easy creating group chats is you don’t have to have a single one for everything.
I’ve met like 5 people more during my university studies, none of which I kept in touch with after graduating. I kinda regret it but I’m not really a person that makes friends easily (or at all), so whatever. I had different friends outside of that.
Additionally use any report functionality at your disposal, which may cause some mail providers to block them or cause them to offer proper opt out in the future.
All marketing emails are supposed to have a simple opt out without needing anything other than your email address.
While Jitsi is open-source, most people use the platform they provide, meet.jit.si, for immediate conference calls. They have now introduced a “Know Your Customer” policy and require at least one of the attendees to log in with a Facebook, Github (Microsoft), or Google account....
Théry are plenty of FOSS people who don’t believe in privacy. Just because you like openness in one thing doesn’t mean you want it in another. Though there is probably a larger overlap.
Kinda is, sure. The problem is when you become overly reliant on the tech without it being reliable. It’s also kinda bad when it causes you to lose skills that you need to maintain it or further it.
US government says Google pays $10bn per year to maintain market dominance (www.aljazeera.com)
The smart(shit)ification of TVs pisses me off.
I absolutely hate “smart” TVs! You can’t even buy a quality “dumb” panel anymore. I can’t convince the rest of my family and friends that the only things those smarts bring are built-in obsolescence, ads, and privacy issues....
Starfield remake created in two days actually lets you fly seamlessly from space to the surface (www.pcgamesn.com)
A Starfield remake, of sorts, has been created in 48 hours, incorporating seamless travel between planets, something missing from the actual Bethesda RPG.
Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds (www.theguardian.com)
www.cell.com/joule/…/S2542-4351(23)00351-3
Is Firefox browser's password manager safe? If not, Are there any other free safe alternatives?
thank you.
Why do password managers charge for TOTP code generation?
Is this some sort of a convenience feature hidden behind a paywall to justify purchasing their subscriptions or does generating the codes actually cost money? If the latter is the case, how do applications like Aegis do it free of cost?
Parmesan Makers Add Microchips To Cheese Wheels To Foil Counterfeiters (www.tomshardware.com)
Lemmy is losing users (programming.dev)
How can we make it more popular?
Twitter (X) loses over 30% of users in two months! (en.shiftdelete.net)
Refusing TypeScript is a signal that you don't care about code quality (vitonsky.net)
The Best Password Managers in 2023 (blog.thenewoil.org)
Google: Haven't provided your phone number? It'd be a shame if something happened to your email... (lemmy.ml)
Gmail prompt to provide phone number sounds like a threat
Google Chrome pushes browser history-based ad targeting • The Register (www.theregister.com)
Topics essentially works like this: rather than using cookies to track people around the web and figure out their interests from the sites they visit and the apps they use, websites can ask Chrome directly, via its Topics JavaScript API, what sort of things the user is interested in, and then display ads based on that. Chrome...
Injured person reportedly dies after Cruise cars block first responders (www.sfgate.com)
I watched 2 hours of starfield gameplay and an hour of review
and I am really not impressed. I don’t want to know more about the story, don’t want to build a spaceship that I can fast travel with, don’t want to explore the universe....
Sony Xperia 5 V review (www.gsmarena.com)
X's new privacy policy allows it to collect users' biometric data (www.cbsnews.com)
Starting next month, X’s updated privacy policy will entitle it to collect some users’ biometric data and other personal information....
Starfield Review Thread
Game Information...
Meeting new roommates for college and I suggested Signal and this was someone's response. I hate Gen Z. (lemm.ee)
Demanding selfie to unsibscribe (lemm.ee)
Hello nice people,...
Jitsi, the open-source video conferencing platform, now requires a Google, Microsoft, or Facebook account for their online service (jitsi.org)
While Jitsi is open-source, most people use the platform they provide, meet.jit.si, for immediate conference calls. They have now introduced a “Know Your Customer” policy and require at least one of the attendees to log in with a Facebook, Github (Microsoft), or Google account....
Generative AI boom "could come to a fairly swift end" (www.dezeen.com)