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> designing for the deployment of 198,000 sensors per square kilometre

I wonder if they can sense my unease at that level of surveillance


BasicallyHomeless did a recent YouTube video on this.


The biggest giveaway the kernel level anti cheat is stupid is that Easy Anti-Cheat works on Linux without kernel level access.


It only works on Linux if the developer allows it, because it's not nearly as effective on Linux. Rust (the game not the language) uses EAC but doesn't run on Linux by choice for example. Neither does Fortnite. Apex Legends uses EAC and does run on Linux, and now nearly every public cheat for that game targets the Linux version because it's such a soft target.

I don't really like the status quo of installing random kernel-mode crap either, but nobody has a compelling answer for how to not make cheating absolutely trivial without it. Usermode anticheat barely does anything, serverside anticheat can only do so much, and the only other alternative is switching to console platforms which prevent cheating by giving the user zero freedom.


Still wondering what kinda special sauce that Blizzard is using in Overwatch. In my literal thousands of hours of playtime I encountered so few blatant cheaters its probably still in the double digit. Are there probably a good amount of cheaters I didn't realize were cheaters? probably, but does it really matter if you don't realize they are cheating?


PirateSoftware on twitch/youtube talks about his time at blizzard working on catching cheaters in WoW. Their methods are usually about figuring out how they're cheating and what behaviors cheaters follow.

Before overwatch they had years of experience catching cheaters in wow.


> game targets the Linux version because it's such a soft target.

I was going to say games on Linux should require secure boot so cheat kernels and modules can't run, but then the kernel could just lie about it being enabled.


Most Linux cheats don't even bother with kernel modules, a process running as root can read and write arbitrary memory in the game process without an unprivileged usermode anticheat having any way to know it's happening. It's embarrassingly easy compared to the hoops you have to jump through to maybe avoid detection on Windows.


Right, provenance is an issue.

I suspect the only way that might balance everyone's interests would be to set up a separate OS installation for competitive games. This could be done via bare-metal dual boot, via a hypervisor, or just by having a completely different computer for playing games on (what I have). At least in that world you still have a lot more freedom than you do on console, such as the ability to mod games that don't need anti-cheat (which is almost all of them).


Here here!


When was the last time you used KDE? Cause this time around that hasn't been my experience at all, it's gnome that's currently really disjointed with random hamburger menus and whitespace everywhere.

Current KDE feels like the most well put together DE I've ever used, and its really efficient once I get my custom keybinds in there.


> When was the last time you used KDE?

Half a year ago, thereabouts?

And no, Gnome is not inconsistent. I just opened a bunch of applications, and they either have a hamburger menu on the top left or top right, mostly with the same options list and "About" at the bottom of the list. There is some slight visual difference between GTK4 applications and GTK3 applications that are yet to have a rewrite, but it is very consistent. Which does comes with the aforementioned problem of the Gnome devs being very "my way or the highway".

In a strange way KDE reminds me of Windows, where the application devs always seem to be using 3-4 different frameworks, 3-4 different installers, and none of them try to get more than broad consistency between eachother.


I did say in my experience, whereas you seem to be speaking in absolutes.

Either way I disagree with you. I think we have differing opinions of what good actually is, and gnome just isn't good anymore to me. Best of luck to you though.


Nah, sell Boeing to Bezos.


I eagerly await my boeing prime membership to start out good and get increasingly overpriced and junk rapidly over time.


But when you get the comingled aircraft in your fleet, will the Chinese knockoff 737s be more or less defective than the next generation Boeings?


Every second part in the rockets would be counterfeit inside of 5 years.


As long as initially I can get shipped off this rock with free delivery it doesn't sound so bad.


At this point the benchmarks barely matter at all. It's entirely possible to train for a high benchmark score and reduce the overall quality of the model in the process.

Imo use the model that makes the most sense when you ask it stuff, and personally I'd go for the one with the least censorship (which imo isn't AliBaba Qwen anything)


They said he had balls of steel to try that one

For the yanks and elsewhere, yes conkers is well known in Britain. You basically put a chestnut (but its a conker) on a string by making a hole in the middle. Take turns swinging them on the string, whoever's breaks is the loser.

It used to be great fun till it was banned/requires eye protection now. There's an opportunity there, someone could make a perfectly safe conker app. I'm sure that would adequately replace it. /s


How is it banned? Banned in schools you mean?

Because I can’t see how authorities could ban anyone from picking up a conker from the ground and tying a string to it.

On a different note, if you’re just pulling a random one out of a bag, what is the competitive aspect? Is there a technique involved? Or just RNG?


It is banned in schools. As I said in another comment, that outlaws it for the vast majority of players at the place they used to play it.

Believe it or not adults playing conkers or people playing conkers outside of schools isn't a common pass time.

It is pretty much RNG, though you can massively nerf a conkers structural integrity by making the hole through the middle poorly, so there are some techniques. People also used to use thicker shoelaces like in vans, which I think made the centre more solid. I've never run an experiment to verify the difference that might make.


I doubt it's banned in all schools. It'll be banned in a few which made headlines.

The HSE is pretty clear it doesn't justify it:

> The HSE said the safety risk from playing conkers was "incredibly low and not worth bothering about"


It's not banned, but the Daily Mail would like you to think the EU banned another British tradition.


I don't read the daily mail. Try again. Maybe be less partisan.


Page 3: "Carly 32D, 21 from Ipswich, thinks EU regulations on conkers is against British traditions"


I'm not sure if that betrays more about your opinion of women than you may have been aware.


I think they were just parodying the typical text that used to be shown against a page 3 girl bitd.


It probably betrays more about my contempt for how peoples biggotry is exploited to make them believe things that are not true. When that is not enough then show them some tits with the message and they will tell you all about how pigs fly.


It just looks as though you have your own set of biases, just against people instead of against overly coddling rules. No one's mentioned the Daily Mail or the EU other than you and the other poster with similar biases.


The "legislation against playing conkers" is demonstrably false.


You're writing that as though you're quoting someone. Where are you quoting that from?



But not anyone in this conversation, though? I'm not sure "someone said this on the internet" is a reason to respond to it.


I sincerely hope life starts treating you better than it clearly has.

I also hope you see the irony of your ways.


IIRC at some point schools decided to put a stop to it (it was a popular playground game in Autumn) because of the possibility of injury.

Or that might have just been a tabloid outrage-bait headline.


It's such a persistent myth that a health and safety organisation decided to sponsor the championships to try and debunk the idea. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7637605.stm


Interesting!

I have a weird memory of seeing kids in safety glasses on the tv sometime around the turn of the century…

Looks like, as with all good myths, there’s a kernel of something resembling a twisted half-truth that got blown up out of hand - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/dec/09/conker...


So the game is to test who has the stronger conker by hitting them into each-other?


Yes, that's it.

The reason I think this game is so popular is horse chestnut trees are very popular in the UK. For about a month each year, where I grew up the ground would be littered with conkers, both on my route to school and on school grounds. It's natural when walking around to try to find particularly large / impressive looking ones.


[flagged]


I have no idea why you think safety laws prevent people from playing conkers in spite of the very thread you are commenting on being evidence that people play conkers and it is perfectly legal.


Well it is banned in schools. I'm not sure how many adults you believe actually play conkers, beyond a few nutters (sic), but its mainly been banned for the people that used to actually enjoy it, kids.

I do wonder if by banning it in schools it will get less and less common till it disappears. I suppose you predictably think that's nonsense.

But pedantry aside, its banned for the people who used to play it most and enjoy it, at the place they did just that.


You're downvoted because you're repeating unfounded tabloid rage-bait, hours after someone else posted a reliable source showing the opposite.


Ah yes your experience of a 2008 BBC news article from Copenhagen outweighs my lived, witnessed reality.

How could I be so clueless?


It is legal, but it also did get banned at my primary school. It continued to be played.


Conkers, bulldog, smoking behind the bike sheds (ok vaping these days), and porn (nowadays on screens rather than naughty magazines) ... a lot about British schools can be summed up in this quote:

“What exactly are you so happy about?' Harry asked her.'Oh Harry, don't you see?' Hermione breathed. 'If she could have done one thing to make absolutely sure that every single person in this school will read your interview, it was banning it!”


And they are generally banned in 1 school from one incident by one head trying to quell anger from parents.

The ban is generally lifted or just not enforced at all after a year or two.

For starters the playground monitors have more important stuff to do than remember the list of banned activities and try to enforce them.


A quick google will get you websites of primary schools up and down this great nation with photos of their Conkers champions holding up their trophies.

As for "the law" - from a 2019 petition to make conkers legal again:

There's no law or government policy banning children from playing conkers, so we're not sure exactly what you'd like the Government or Parliament to do.

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/238105


I haven't lost an eye to a conker, but I did laugh.

EDIT: And now I feel guilty for doing so.



I would assume you got downvoted because you feel for a particularly implausible myth.


Indeed, a myth. One "disproven" by BBC news articles from 2008 when I have seen contrary evidence with my own eyes.

Believe it or not the world has come on a long way in 16 years.


Yup, as someone in this position HR want nothing to do with me.

My only options have been to make companies or freelance.

I do think the world needs more "generalists" though as we're often the only ones placed to even half understand, combine and fully utilise different specialists.


I think he's massively underestimated the ingenuity of developers who wish to not have work undone on the whims of a tyrant.

If there's one thing we don't like it's FUD on the future of something we want to have completed/easily maintainable.


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