I came off as pretty aggressive, so I apologize. I’ve been interested in this field for a while and I am still an amateur in most aspects. This isn’t really an area that’s intuitive or easy to pick up for most people.
You’ve come out of the gate swinging. It’s technically possible for people to do the things you’re exploring… but the same people who are publishing these techniques and concepts are professionals. They may not have formal education in computer science, but they have the experience.
Spend time going over things like DEFCON presentations. Sharpen your coding skills. Vacuum up free courseware from sources like MIT.
You can probably pick up “normal” RF with a cheap SDR antenna setup, but then what? You are stuck with some waves and no idea what to do with them. Are you picking up intentional Bluetooth? How would you recognize Bluetooth that’s frequency hopping? Looking at RF waveforms for modern communications is absolutely ugly and tedious.
There’s so much to learn. You need to pick one topic and dig in. All of these things have much more depth than we can explain over lemmy.
You should try this. I guarantee that it’s nowhere near as easy as you’re thinking.
There’s a huge difference between proof of concept activities and useful, fruitful information gathering and analysis.
If you’re going to be downloading programs and running scripts without doing the work to understand how these tools were built and how to modify them to suit your use cases, then you aren’t actually going to get anything useful out of them.
I don’t think an RTL-SDR is going to help you with any sort of privacy outside of maybe validating that your devices aren’t emitting typical RF while they off. You aren’t realistically going to become an electronic warfare master with some shitty home equipment and no formal training.
Best route is to start combing through security conference presentations for anything relevant to your lifestyle.
A lot of the cutting edge information gathering stuff isn’t exactly practical for widespread use. I guess somebody living a floor above you could capture your wireless traffic, but you’re not interesting enough for them to dedicate high sensitivity antennas and bespoke equipment to phreak your keyboard strokes and break out fucking differential power analysis techniques on your home.
Practice good data and security hygiene, stay off social media when possible, and don’t use IOT devices. If anybody wants to get at you, and I mean really wants to get at you, there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do about it besides giving up all electronics.
Are you suggesting that we should raise the cost of Starfield’s development then and account for hidden engine costs?
We can do that. I don’t know what a good number would be, but let’s quadruple or quintuple it for fun. Are we sitting at the $1.5 billion dollar mark? This gives us a scenario where Starfield has now cost twice to develop than this game.
The game was still developed and released. At some point, long development times start to work against a product. This isn’t a field where consumer expectations and tastes remain constant. The longer a game takes to make, the more dated design decisions may appear. Graphics cannot remain cutting edge for the entirety of a 10 year development cycle without rework, which can be seen as a waste of resources. That time and energy could have gone towards something else. Rework enough systems and you begin to paralyze your ability to actually complete the project.
It would be great if Sony would commit to its own creative endeavors.
The PSVR suite has some great potential, but outside of like… 3? first party games, it doesn’t have anything that you can’t find elsewhere. And for the titles that are available on other platforms, they tend to be updated more frequently or are otherwise more feature rich elsewhere. There’s a lot of power behind the platform, but almost nothing to use it for.
PSVR 2 is not compatible with PSVR1 from the PS4, so all of your accessories and games don’t carry over.
The newly updated Meta Quest 3 can run standalone or linked up to a computer. I don’t expect Sony to ever open up compatibility outside of its ecosystem, but history has shown that Sony is fine with abandoning ideas that don’t immediately print money.
Starfield could have been programmed in potato with ti-84 calculators as dev tools. The work has been done to bring a playable game to the market.
What goes on behind the scenes isn't really important to an end user. They are purchasing an entertainment experience, not an investment into a game engine.
The base game gets updated over a period of what, 10 years? Core gameplay mechanics which don't work well or at least don't make the developers happy are tweaked or revamped all the time. I only really play Stellaris, but the changes to the game throughout the years have kept things interesting.
The alternative is... not updating things which they don't like? Perhaps that means mods never break, but then we're shifting the onus of fixing the game to a third party, who can decide to quit whenever they want and let their (closed source) code deprecate. I've seen that kind of thing in Civ and I wasn't a fan.
I guess with a studio that has demonstrated a pattern of long-term support for their games, this is what we get.
I feel like Stellaris is a measurably different game than release. I bought the game on steam like 10 years ago and while it looks largely the same, the mechanics have seemingly had complete makeovers or renovations every few years. As far as I can tell most of the modified mechanics have been introduced to the base game as well, so those without DLC aren't completely left out.
The game used to be some weird rock-paper-scissors game of either wormholes, gateways, and jump drives with corvette death columns. There was an optimal way to play and everything else was a handicap
Society as a whole does not agree with this viewpoint. Let’s drive this home.
Take the US: families with children under a certain income (let’s say $75k, I don’t feel like looking up the specifics) effectively pay no federal taxes. All of their tens of thousands of dollars that would go towards the programs discussed all around this thread instead goes back to them.
Seems unfair right? Instead of parents paying their fair share and shouldering the cost of developing little people, they pay nothing!
Turns out that for government to function for the next year, it needs to plan out its budget. That’s somewhat easy.
How about government functioning in 10 years? Requires some more foresight and projection, but can probably be done with reasonable assumptions.
How about government functioning in 50 years? If we do not build in a layer of population growth, then the numbers get ugly real fast. People retire. People die. People unexpectedly die before it’s their time. With no children born to replace people, society crumbles within a generation or two at most. I think every reasonable person would see these projections and agree that if no new people join society, it ceases to exist. Even for the most selfish people, they will have no support at old age.
You may see supporting the costs of educating children as an unfair burden on everybody else. I don’t agree with that idea, but it’s your right to feel that way. Instead, I ask that you open your mind to expanding the bounds on the concept of educating kids to raising a new generation. Kids cost a shit ton more than just school. They also use medical services. They need to eat. They use public transportation. They consume free media. They do many of the things you do, but you are uncomfortable sponsoring them as we do you.
If nothing else, try to see children as the next generation of humanity. We can always make things more difficult on parents, but we as a species will suffer, and in your very lifetime.
Any interest in having a discussion on alternative methods to address dissent?
It’s kind of shitty for the only solution to be to walk away. That can leave apathetic or otherwise undesirable people left in positions that are still important for society.
Anybody know if there’s some sort of conscientious objector clause for the State Department?
On one hand, anybody working for the DoS is acting in an official government capacity. That is to say it’s not about an individual’s thoughts or feelings - anybody in the job is supposed to be acting in the interests of the United States. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t like what you do. It might matter if you’re morally opposed to your tasking, but the solution to that is usually to bring it up and have somebody else to the work.
On the other hand, the United States government, and DoS by extension, is supposed to work for the people. Here, the DoS should be taking a stance that works in the best interests of the country and its citizens. If popular opinion says that there’s a misalignment, then we need a way to fix the issues so that the organization can run in a manner consistent with the people chartering it. I’m not sure individual employees are the right people to take on this role, as there’s no consistent way to act across an organization like this.
I’m not an expert here, but I can see reasonable arguments on both sides of this
Nono, they raise prices with parity such that they’re still technically minimally cheaper.
That being said, I don’t think AMD and Intel have similar game streaming services. It’s pretty much GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud streaming as the big dogs.
I came off as pretty aggressive, so I apologize. I’ve been interested in this field for a while and I am still an amateur in most aspects. This isn’t really an area that’s intuitive or easy to pick up for most people.
You’ve come out of the gate swinging. It’s technically possible for people to do the things you’re exploring… but the same people who are publishing these techniques and concepts are professionals. They may not have formal education in computer science, but they have the experience.
Spend time going over things like DEFCON presentations. Sharpen your coding skills. Vacuum up free courseware from sources like MIT.
You can probably pick up “normal” RF with a cheap SDR antenna setup, but then what? You are stuck with some waves and no idea what to do with them. Are you picking up intentional Bluetooth? How would you recognize Bluetooth that’s frequency hopping? Looking at RF waveforms for modern communications is absolutely ugly and tedious.
There’s so much to learn. You need to pick one topic and dig in. All of these things have much more depth than we can explain over lemmy.