sp3tr4l

Any streaming service with multi episode shows.

A dumpster fire, drama generation website comprised primarily of yapping narcissist sociopaths, simps, just-barely-not-pornstars, and insufferable v tubers...

...all of which is monetized and gamified as all hell, and aimed at mostly children and young adults....

...which consistently fails at defining and enforcing its code of conduct...

...all of this to be essentially a platform for advertisements.

Oh, did I mention they probably still are not even profitable?

If Bezos is brazen enough to tell WaPo to not endorse Kamala, its not much of a stretch to imagine this Amazon owned, giant corporate advertisement platform will soon be getting pared down and scaled back, further monetized/ad-infested, have much more draconian content regulation/censorship, and/or just shut down in the next year or so.

I don't like capitalism.

I don't like censorship.

But Twitch is basically a giant corpo run simulation of human interaction whose ~~parasocial addicts~~ users have the false impression that its some kind of staple, constant feature of their lives.

It isn't, it is a failing business, and I really get the feeling that a whole lot of Twitch users are going to basically have their brains broken when it starts acting much more like a failing business.

Even though EAC and BattlEye have both supported linux for 3 years now, and the devs don't actually have to do anything as Proton functionally ports the game from Windows to Linux automatically at no cost to them.

... They're lying.

Maybe for a smaller game studio, I could actually believe they don't know these things.

But massive AAA studios that have direct business ties to MSFT?

They're lying.

They're saying anything they can to slow down linux adoption, because MSFT wants to dominate as a PC gaming OS.

They used to just ignore, play dumb, feign ignorance or perhaps just actually be incompetent... now they're just lying to our faces.

Sure Apex. Show us your stats for how many cheaters you caught who were running on Windows vs running on Linux, and show us how at least a smidgen of methodology you used to determine the bare metal OS of someone running on a VM.

Cheating software running on Linux is more challenging to detect than Windows-based kernel-level tools, and they require an increasingly higher level of attention from the Apex Legends team.

So, for starters, this is not a direct quote (of the interviewed Apex dev), so this is basically just the author's opinion.

More to the point: Purchasable cheats that currently defeat AC on Apex are far, far more easy to find for Windows machines.

... and they defeat Kernel level AC on Windows all the time.

Also, Apex uses EAC which uh... supports linux, has for 3 years.

https://onlineservices.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-online-services-launches-anti-cheat-support-for-linux-mac-and-steam-deck

EDIT 2: The article states Apex uses BattlEye, not EAC for AC... but all the info I can find on Apex says they use EAC? Maybe there was a recent change?

Either way, BattlEye supports linux/SteamDeck as well, also for 3 years now.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3104663180636096966

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-deck/proton-battleye-anti-cheat-support

I mean maybe there is some truth to cheat developers preferring to develop their cheats on linux....many programmers prefer to develop things on linux... but they develop them for Windows users.

Like... I obviously do not support cheating, so I won't post the links... but a quick web search very, very easily reveals that all the cheats one can purchase... well they work on Win 10/11... no support for linux is indicated.

Granted I am no uberl33th4x0r, but I don't see any Apex cheats which are easily acquirable which support linux.

...

EDIT: Oh right, it is probably also worth mentioning that after CrowdStrike Y2K'd half of the world's enterprise Windows machines... through pushing a malformed update... that interfaces directly with the Windows kernel..

... MSFT is now re-evaluating giving kernel level access to 3rd parties, and is looking to create higher level APIs (above the Kernel) that are less likely to expose Windows to massive system stability errors from 3rd parties, and looks to want to at the very least have much more involvement with reviewing any 3rd party code that accesses the kernel:

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3483641/crowdstrike-backs-microsofts-demand-for-reducing-kernel-level-access.html

https://www.securityweek.com/microsofts-take-on-kernel-access-and-safe-deployment-practices-following-crowdstrike-incident/

Maybe these Kernel level AC proponents are a bit worried about their Kernel access on Windows being either much more stringently reviewed, or limited, and are making a fuss about it by scapegoating linux, you know, as a misdirect?

Just a thought.

EDIT 3:

A quote from the article I linked pertaining to BattlEye

BattlEye’s Steam Deck compatibility is great news, but its arrival on the handheld comes with small print. According to the anti-cheat solution’s clarification, developers will have to “opt-in”, suggesting that specific games could forgo compatibility. While it’s hard to think of a compelling reason why a company would want to do this, Valve’s PC competitors could, in theory, use the option to their advantage.

Pff, what an outlandish notion, that giant AAA studios (who all have massive business ties to MSFT) would exert pressure to limit linux marketshare/adoption, what a baseless and silly worry.

=P

Flight School.

Now now, Elon does technically have one patent to his name personally.

Its the shape of the charging port for Teslas.

He patented this with the idea that if he ever did actually build out that massive EV charger network, he would basically be owed royalties if it successfully became the USB C of EV charging ports, so himself personally would be owned royalties if other car companies wanted to use that charging port shape.

But that was like a decade ago, and last I heard he fired the entire team at Tesla dedicated to the charging network.

Unless you really want to split hairs on a per article basis, in general, it is both.

If your subject for parody is 'news about current events', then you can argue that anything presented in the format you would expect from a newspaper, but comically exaggerated, counts as parody.

If a certain Onion article is fairly clearly a modification or exaggeration of a specific news event, it fulfills another common attribute of parody by having a specific thing it is parodying.

But sure, some of their stuff falls more into satire.

Satire more often has a more ... thorough and deliberate alteration of a base material or style, with the intention of conveying a more intentional critique of or commentary on the source, a fairly obvious prescriptive moral message, by subverting it in specific ways...

... as opposed to parody, which, by itself, doesn't really need to have a 'message', it can be just a level of exaggeration that is humorous in and of itself.

Generally, most of the Onion's produced content is both parody and satire.

I mean I agree with the sentiment, but churches have been openly discussing and endorsing specific political views and candidates for quite a while now, and this trend is getting more and more widespread and extreme.

Nobody actually enforces the Johnson amendment.

No.

The Onion, and parody in general, aims at being an exaggerated caricature of the truth, something that has a kernel of plausibility in its core, but has elements or scale that is blown out to ludicrous extremes, or is framed in an unexpected way such that it inherently juxtaposes a social approach to a certain realm of topics with another realm of topics, exposing a double standard that larger society has.

Parody is not just 'plausible, but fictional.'

That would ... just be a hoax, mis or disinformation, or realistic fiction if not presented as news.

... The fact that it is so difficult now to tell many parodies from a person's or group's actual actions or statements, or complex events... this speaks to an increasingly extreme world, it speaks to ... basically the death of a general concept of 'normal' from which parody can grow.

The problem I am aware of is moreso that the number of programmers that know COBOL is vanishingly small, it ... COBOL does not seem to really be taught anymore...

...so if something goes wrong at that level, you may be SOL if you cannot find an increasingly rare programmer that knows COBOL well.

DARPA has unironically been funding a tool that purports to translate C / C++ into Rust...

https://www.darpa.mil/program/translating-all-c-to-rust

... Are the Feds aware that the core systems that many, many older companies (and government agencies) use are still based on COBOL?

Is... is that not of any concern?