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kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

I'd kind of hope everyone would know better than that after the disastrous Apollo I fire.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Backward-compatible Xbox 360 games will still be available for purchase on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S stores, Microsoft says.

So no, presumably Microsoft just doesn't want to deal with the tangle of close to 20-year-old code that holds up the Xbox 360's store interfaces.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

What an idiot. The Mouse does not forgive. The Mouse does not forget. DeSantis can't surely believe Disney are just going to give up and walk away after he threw down the gauntlet.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Kbin. Kbity. Like kitty but kbin. Kbity!

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Well, five times zero women checks out.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Great value for him, maybe.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Before adding "@@*$redirect-rule" to uBlock Origin filters:

  • With uMatrix enabled: 99%, everything except ads-api.twitter.com and ads.youtube.com was blocked.
  • With uMatrix disabled: 83%, 125/150 blocked.

After adding "@@*$redirect-rule" to uBlock Origin filters:

  • With uMatrix enabled: 100%, 150/150 blocked.
  • With uMatrix disabled: 85%, 127/150 blocked.

Using Firefox with uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and some others.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The undocked Switch is in the same ballpark for raw power as the 360 and PS3, so as long as they've managed to sufficiently unfuck the game's nightmare spaghetti code, should be just fine.

Shouldn't we be switching buses with light railway? (lemmy.tf)

Even if you think what you would say is obvious, please add. This is genuinely something I think makes sense regarding local bus routes given the longevity of light rail and how infrequently routes change, but I also suffer from confirmation bias, so I’m hoping for reasons this would be a terrible idea but obviously would...

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Tyres wear down and produce nasty pollutants, and metal-on-metal is more energy efficient.

kbity, (edited )
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The busiest core routes should be served with light rail, allowing an efficient high-frequency service for the most common journeys, and most parts of a city should ideally have some kind of connection to that rail system within a kilometre or two. But you can't just put rails and stations literally everywhere, so buses (or trolleybuses with batteries if you're so inclined) remain useful for less common routes, gaps between stations, the neighbouring areas of rail routes or last-mile connections from light rail to within a short walk of a person's final destination.

Buses are also necessary as a fallback during maintenance or unforeseen closures on the rail network. Even if it's just a temporary station closure, that one station will likely be the only one in walking distance for quite a few people (especially if we're talking about an interurban network where a small, outlying town or village might only have one station connecting it to the rest of its metro area), whereas that same area could have several bus stops, giving pretty much everyone there a way to continue getting around, perhaps even to get a bus to neighbouring stations.

And bus routes don't change that infrequently. Certainly, not infrequently enough that you'd want to tie them to placing or removing fixed infrastructure like tracks or wires. Diversions also happen sometimes. All of this isn't to argue against light rail, but to argue for a comprehensive multi-modal vision of public transport. Let passengers use the right combination of services for their particular journey's needs.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The NHS' virtual appointment service in the UK doesn't support Firefox either, only Chrome, Safari and Edge. The dark days of "please view this website in Internet Explorer 6" are creeping closer to the present again. I hate the modern internet.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Well, the ones based on Chromium aren't, anyway. I've heard some major criticisms of Safari in the last few years, for what that's worth.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

There's even rumours that the next version of Windows is going to inject a bunch of AI buzzword stuff into the operating system. Like, how is that going to make the user experience any more intuitive? Sounds like you're just going to have to fight an overconfident ChatGPT wannabe that thinks it knows what you want to do better than you do, every time you try opening a program or saving a document.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

That's incredible. Certified "Directive #4" moment.

Backwards compatibility is the best feature of Xbox, and I don't understand why Sony is so far behind on this

When I got the XSX recently, it was so I can play Starfield when it comes out. That was basically the only reason. I did not realize the extensive backwards compatibility that this thing has. But since getting it, I’ve been playing FF13 trilogy, Fable games, Dragon Age series, Lost Odyssey, etc. Basically all games of note...

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The Xbox 360 was based on the same weird, in-order PowerPC 970 derived CPU as the PS3, it just had three of them stuck together instead of one of them tied to seven weird Cell units. The TL;DR of how Xbox backwards compatibility has been achieved is that Microsoft's whole approach with the Xbox has always been to create a PC-like environment which makes porting games to or from the Xbox simpler.

The real star of the show here is the Windows NT kernel and DirectX. Microsoft's core APIs have been designed to be portable and platform-agnostic since the beginning of the NT days (of course, that isn't necessarily true of the rest of the Windows operating system we use on our PCs). Developers could still program their games mostly as though they were targeting a Windows PC using DirectX since all the same high-level APIs worked in basically the same way, just with less memory and some platform-specific optimisations to keep in mind (stuff like the 10MB of eDRAM, or that you could always assume three 3.2GHz in-order CPU cores with 2-way SMT).

Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One seem to be run through something akin to Dolphin's "Übershaders" - in this case, per-game optimised modifications of an entire Xenon GPU stack implemented in software running alongside the entire Xbox 360 operating environment in a hypervisor. This is aided by the integration of hardware-level support for certain texture and audio formats common in Xbox 360 games into the Xbox One's CPU design, similarly to how Apple's M-series SoCs integrate support for x86-style memory ordering to greatly accelerate Rosetta 2.

Microsoft's APIs for developers to target tend to be fairly platform-agnostic - see Windows CE, which could run on anything from ARM handhelds to the Hitachi SH-4 powered Sega Dreamcast. This enables developers who are mostly experienced in coding for x86 PCs running Windows to relatively easily start writing programs (or games) for other platforms using those APIs. This also has the beneficial side-effect of allowing Microsoft to, with their collective first-hand knowledge of those APIs, create compatibility layers on an x86 system that can run code targeted at a different platform.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Funnily enough, one of the few legitimately impactful non-enterprise uses of AVX512 I'm aware of is that it does a really good job of accelerating emulation of the Cell SPUs in RPCS3. But you're absolutely right, those things are very funky and implementing their functions is by far the most difficult part of PS3 emulation.

Luckily, I think most games either didn't do much with them or left programming for them to middleware, so it would mostly be first- and second-party games that would need super-extensive customisation and testing. Sony could probably figure it out, if they were convinced there was sufficient demand and potential profit on the other side.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The biggest problem people have with systemd is that it's constantly growing, taking on more functions and becoming a dependency of more software. People joke that some day you won't be using Linux anymore, but GNU/systemd, (or as they've taken to calling it, GNU plus systemd) because it's ever-growing from a simple init daemon into a significant percentage of an entire operating system.

People worry that some day, you won't be able to run a Linux system that's compatible with much of the software developed for Linux without using systemd. Whether that's a realistic worry or not I don't know, and I don't really have a horse in the systemd VS not-systemd race, but I can appreciate being worried that systemd might end up becoming a hard requirement for a Linux system in a way that nothing else really is - you can substitute GNOME for KDE, X11 for Wayland (or Mir, I guess), PulseAudio for PipeWire and most stuff will still work, so the idea that systemd could become as non-negotiable an element of a Linux system as the Linux kernel itself rubs people the wrong way, as it functionally makes Linux with systemd a different target platform entirely to Linux with another init daemon.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

We've gone from "work from home" back to "live from work" at an astounding pace. That's... good? No, wait, the opposite. Fuck this society and the parasitic husks who direct it in this manner.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Yeah, Windows' bullshit is what drove me to Linux in the first place. I only have it on my gaming system, and only because Discord's stupid screensharing doesn't transmit audio on Linux, NVIDIA's drivers for Linux suck balls (going AMD next time now that their cards are good again) and there are a couple of games my friends play that have issues on Linux. I've never run into a game on my everyday laptop that Linux couldn't run, and the Steam Deck will take basically whatever you throw at it.

Windows is a barely-functional rat's nest of code spaghetti that falls apart at complete random. Sometimes your audio drivers will just stop working for no apparent reason. Sometimes your computer will just refuse to connect to the internet until you do a clean install. Windows Update apparently runs Prime95 in its spare time and so does the Antimalware Service Executable. I hate using it so much. I wish Windows would just curl up and die.

EPA Approved a Fuel Ingredient Even Though It Could Cause Cancer in Virtually Every Person Exposed Over a Lifetime (www.propublica.org)

An EPA document shows that a new Chevron fuel ingredient has a lifetime cancer risk more than 1 million times higher than what the agency usually finds acceptable — even greater than another Chevron fuel’s sky-high risk disclosed earlier this year.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

At this point they've literally just developed a carcinogenic spray that happens to be a hydrocarbon. What the fuck. This cannot be allowed to reach the market.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Peter Thiel is interested.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Works pretty well. Reader Mode is great at unfucking user-hostile site designs like this.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

A Libertarian candidate for the US Senate back in 2018 proposed giving shotguns to homeless people for self-defence.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The Fediverse is home to a lot of young, tech-minded people distrustful of major corporations. The younger generations are more likely to come out as transgender due to greater awareness and acceptance of gender identity and dysphoria, and a decentralised, open platform is naturally going to appeal to communists, syndicalists and other left-wingers who don't want some billionaire buying the next website they get comfortable on. And funnily enough, there are a surprising number of trans people in the tech sector, to the point where trans-flag socks have become a meme among programmers.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

They already have alt-tech, which had kind of a headstart on the Fediverse.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

This is the first I've heard of the JPEG XL format, but it sounds pretty good!

Hopefully it doesn't get misused by websites to mangle lossless compressed images with so much compression they're barely visible to save a few kilobytes, though.

kbity, (edited )
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Unless they plan on programming all of Mosaic law into all of their algorithms going forward, that's a whole lot of hot air. And in any case it's a serious violation of the Establishment Clause, if not veering into "and domestic".

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Did you read the article? Excerpts include:

Generally, in business, it is sensible to provide your customers with what they want. With Twitter, the meme-makers' favourite billionaire is doing the opposite. The cyber-trucker is trying his best to cull his customer base.

Threads is what would happen if Twitter and Instagram made out in a bowling alley. It's all their worst parts combined - but it may well succeed. Rocket-man Musk's changes to Twitter have not exactly made it 'brand friendly'. Threads, meanwhile, is shaping up to be a paradise for in-your-face brands - and the AdTech industry would love for you to join them

and

Threads' naffness won't stop its success. It's data-scraping fluffily dressed up as substandard corporate twaddle. It's a cringe-inducing privacy invasion. It's not meant for users, but that doesn't really matter: you're not a user, you're a product.

It's describing Threads as a product not for users, but advertisers. The perfect brand-friendly non-place for companies to stick their marketing crap. That doesn't really come across as a ringing endorsement to me.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Yeah, federated network things.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Been using LineageOS with microG on my phone for the last couple of years out of a general distrust for Google, using open-source apps in place of the Google ones. My phone stopped getting OEM updates after Android 12, so being able to use Android 13 through LineageOS is a plus. Main downsides are that some apps don't play nice with microG and that unlocking the bootloader makes banking apps stop working.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Honestly, the biggest problem with the Quest headsets is that they're made by Facebook. Sorry, "Meta". The Quest 2 stand-alone headset would be an obvious recommendation to anyone curious about virtual reality if it weren't a Mark Zuckerberg product.

Nearly two years after Texas' six-week abortion ban, more infants are dying (www.cnn.com)

Some 2,200 infants died in Texas in 2022 – an increase of 227 deaths, or 11.5%, over the previous year, according to preliminary infant mortality data from the Texas Department of State Health Services that CNN obtained through a public records request. Infant deaths caused by severe genetic and birth defects rose by 21.6%....

kbity, (edited )
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

I'm so glad we prevented all those abortions so the unwanted or unhealthy kids could instead die in more painful ways such as congenital defects, poverty and neglect. Virtue signalling is bad, unless it causes preventable suffering to children in which case apparently Supply-Side Jesus is all for it.

Remember the 10-year-old rape victim who had to travel out-of-state for an abortion, and poor Milo Evan Dorbert, who lived a short life of 99 minutes before dying painfully of Potter syndrome, which left him without functioning kidneys. There are many other rape victims and babies with invariably-fatal conditions who have needlessly suffered for political reasons.

Google is working on essentially putting DRM on the web (github.com)

The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s...

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

This is a total affront to the ethos of the web and everyone involved in drafting this awful proposal should be publicly shamed. Stick sandwich boards on each of them saying "I tried to build the Torment Nexus", chain them together and march them through the streets while ringing a bell and chanting "shame".

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

All it takes is enough people who aren't fully committed Trump voters in swing states finding it difficult to vote, or ending up not voting out of apathy. Or those states picking electors who will give the votes to Trump regardless of who wins the vote. A Trump victory can't be ruled out even with what should be several major disqualifying factors running against him. That's more an indictment of America than a credit to the strength of his candidacy, frankly.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

And it's still less shit than Snaps. It's the giant douche and turd sandwich situation with this stuff.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The void wants to be your friend!

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Centralisation in this instance refers to control over the network and standard itself rather than control over what's posted on it. There's no single authority that can unilaterally change how every Fediverse instance and system works - for example, there isn't anyone who can decree that from now on Lemmy will no longer allow connections from Canada, or that nobody is allowed to post pictures of capybaras any more.

It's intended to prevent a /u/spez or Elon Musk situation where one asshole can bring down the entire ecosystem built around an API. Nothing stops anyone else from hosting their own instance if they dislike lemmy.world, whereas if you don't like Twitter, you can't just host your own copy of it.

Has anyone used or contributed to OpenStreetMap?

I’ve tried using it over the years but I never liked it because there was no information. So last night I looked at my local city and there is almost no information at all. I spent a few hours last night adding buildings and restaurants and removing incorrect items. It was actually kind of fun and therapeutic and I plan to do...

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

OsmAnd actually works pretty well in my experience, at least in the UK. It's not always up to date or fully-detailed but it's far from useless and I appreciate that. It's my primary map program on my phone.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Well, you're paying for all that performance, might as well get as much out of it as possible. God knows Snaps or Windows 11 can sometimes drag even the best hardware down to a crawl.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Thank God there's a less awful alternative frontend for Fandom. Absolute garbage website, unusable without an adblocker.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

And yet they keep buying and killing their competition to try and funnel you into their godawful hellsite.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Because the last decade has shown the rather terrible consequences of private, proprietary and profit-driven networks like Twitter and Meta's various crap becoming de facto part of the common infrastructure of public life. A lot of public transit services publish service updates on Twitter. Most politicians have a Twitter presence. Many restaurants and small businesses don't even have websites anymore - just Facebook pages.

We want to stop exploitative for-profit entities from furthering their stranglehold on essential parts of everyday life. Nobody should be forced against their will to use crap like Facebook or Twitter, and that means advancing viable alternatives to those platforms that can fill the role they do in the internet era. If the "digital town square" idea is to live on, it should be as a commons like an actual town square, not a publicly-traded company or a billionaire's personal cult compound.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

It got mentioned a lot on /r/RedditAlternatiives and since its API is already up and running, there are a whole bunch of apps for it. With mobile apps being the thing that started the whole Reddit disaster, it makes sense that Lemmy would grow quicker than kbin which doesn't have mobile apps yet.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Well, there's the thing, you need a browser. You'd be surprised how many newer Reddit users access the site primarily or even exclusively on their phones, and who tend to use apps rather than their mobile browser.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

The users Facebook deserves. Zuck can keep them, somehow I think we'll do just fine without these outrage-farming reactionaries.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Nice, here's hoping for a Kbin version once Kbin's API is ready!

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

I'm taking the one that glows when you're hungry, at least it might double as a way of blinding your enemy and it won't kill you via old age.

kbity,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

If you want one for your phone, Feedly is pretty good. On desktop, I use Liferea.

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