Melody

Melody , 23 hours ago

...Assuming the flash drive isn't loaded to the gills with malware alongside of every game it offers to install...that sounds fair.

But let's be real; No legitimate company stands a chance of doing this without getting sued into oblivion. Unfortunately that means the risk of getting viruses and malware with your purchase, likely ransomware or cryptominer droppers, is really high.

...but let's assume you're technical enough that you can disarm all the malware on the USB stick and clean the cruft out of it. Then; yeah...maybe you'll get your value's worth.

Melody , 16 days ago

This actually doesn't surprise me. Valve is getting greedy.

But; to be clear; by using these tools, to unlock the DLC without paying for it, you are cheating in the game. That's a mere fact; and not a moral judgement of anyone choosing to do so.

Personally, I don't judge anyone for doing so; and would use these tools myself if I thought a DLC were too predatory, expensive or otherwise unfair to not have it available.

That's not saying it's fair or right for Valve to do so; nor is it saying the VAC bans or account suspensions are deserved. If you get hit by this; you absolutely should pirate every title you already own/purchased via Steam right away, and pirate anything else you want in the future.

The only way to make them regret doing things like this is voting with your wallet; and asking others to do the same. Stop spending money on Valve. Once their earnings fall they'll be forced to hear people's concerns.

Melody , 16 days ago

Why Not Both?

Melody , 16 days ago

Godspeed. May this measure succeed with all haste and become the new normal.

For once it overtakes one country; others can choose to follow suit as best as they can.

Melody , 22 days ago

You can automate this; but you have to make sure that the automation you create is going to respect the ratelimits. I'd recommend something simple like using a command alias or short script written for your specific IRC client.

It's what I used to do with that sort of thing; and there are plenty of well known Open Source scripts in the wild as well

As an example; I would use mIRC with it's scripting system and write my own event trigger scripts to automatically request, wait for and then accept the DCC chat requests and route them appropriately in the interface. There were also scripts that helped with getting the lists; unpacking them, and displaying those lists in my client...so I didn't have to extract the text from the zip myself, and could select what I needed from the bot.

All of this was lightweight automation that was intended not to flood the bot with commands and fed into command queueing modules that let the bots have time to process.

Sometimes in those days you could get actually (+b)anned, Auto/KILL'ed or /(G/K):LINE'ed for causing a bot to crash...so you had to be careful and respectful with regard to scripts.

TL;DR; know your bot, source channel & network rules, and write your own scripts for safety or read any scripts you import in carefully and understand what they're doing.

Melody , 22 days ago

What happens is what's intended.

Everyone is going to do it; and it will cause companies, artists and creatives to step back and rethink a bit on how they monetize their creations responsibly. The ones that refuse to rethink and adapt will fail and flounder under the tiny handful of straw that Piracy adds to the load.

That's a GOOD thing.

What's unfortunate is that companies and people still think it's productive to worry and handwring over piracy as if it's killing someone; instead of being the thing you "don't fly too close to, lest your wax wings get melted off and you plummet to the ground."

Melody , 1 month ago

While this feed issue is manageable if you Pause Your Watch History and Clear Your Watch History before doing so; it does disable a lot of suggestions.

Unfortunately Google and YouTube do not make these options easy to find and they are quick to nag you about turning them back on; and You Must Refuse This and ignore the errors and whines at every prompt for a while before they leave you alone.

So by it's very nature NewPipe completely defuses this garbage by simply being a much saner front-end than using the "Native" YouTube apps ever were.

You know I think YouTube might start learning their lesson if more and more people began refusing to use their scummy front-end more than strictly necessary. Unfortunately they're going to go through the usual stages of grief while doing so and they absolutely are currently trying to attack apps like GrayJay and NewPipe with spurious lawsuits.

So instead; maybe those of you who "Pay" for YouTube Premium should simply cancel your service and start donating that amount to projects like NewPipe, when that is possible. (Yes I know Team NewPipe will not accept donations for legal reasons, but similar projects do exist, like FreeTube or Invidious, that can and do accept donations to cover costs for server hosted things in their developments.)

Melody , 1 month ago

Aye; I remember GPM, and before they enshittified it into the ground, it was damn near comparable to Spotify.

Melody , 2 months ago

I think I can explain some of the "inexplicable creepy" moments you mention here. Note that I'm not advocating for YouTube's favor; I'm just explaining how things tend to work in general.

1. Your spreadsheet seems to contain two key words or terms that are trending in the current year/week/month/day in your area. I wouldn't be too creeped out about this, it's just a lucky guess; Firefox cannot access your clipboard history, nor does it allow websites to do so. Furthermore websites cannot read your clipboard unless you have them focused as the active window and you click on a text field in that web page. Once again Firefox here is protecting you and most browsers behave the same way anyways. They don't get data about clipboard contents at all until they're focused. CAVEAT: If you were using Google Sheets or a spreadsheet application ONLINE that IS IN YOUR BROWSER then we have a different story. For sake of simplicity I assume you are using something like LibreOffice Calc or Microsoft Excel.

2. Second verse, same as the first! Your musical tastes are probably highly similar to many people in your vicinity and Google is using that to suggest content to you. This can even get spookily accurate if it even only knows your gender and age range based on what you watch. RECOMMENDATION: Clear your Watch History and keep it Paused.

3. Discord actually does load the video embed / information from the YouTube API. But unless you're living in SF; this is not linking back to you unless you are clicking on those videos at all. However, if you are loading Discord in your Browser; YouTube might be able to make some weird fingerprinting connections. The solution is simple: Download Discord Desktop and install it...or if you don't like Discord software you can always use Beeper ( https://www.beeper.com/ ) which is slightly more privacy preserving, but has limitations. Alternately you can isolate Discord tabs to a Private Window.

Melody , 9 months ago

Microsoft is stupid, someone high up is getting greedy or desperate.

Patching HWID is annoying and doesn't stop piracy. In fact it will break a lot of legacy systems in general; which is probably what they intended and why they are guilty of corporate greed in this case.

I hate Micro$hit but I am REQUIRED to use Windows by too many stupid fucking different idiots, apps, and games to count. Linux is still not there yet for me usability-wise; though it probably is still improving.

No; I will never accept that CLI is an acceptable end-user implementation; GUI is required; along with ease of use and the polish that comes with it. I don't mind CLI interfaces; but I do feel they're not user-friendly enough usually. They REQUIRE YOU to LEARN a few things to get used to them; which is the opposite of an intuitive interface.

NOTE: I am very FLOSS accepting when it meets my needs; but I will not hold back criticism. Do not try to shout me down. You will always be wrong. Windows is factually more user-friendly and application compatibility diverse than Linux.

I genuinely hope that Linux finds more ways to 100% match Windows functionally without forcing the user to compromise. We need to punish Microsoft for all these years of monopoly holding and reclaim computing more effectively.