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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)MO
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1 yr. ago

  • I would get 12mm screws of the same thread pitch (M2 is common) and file 0.5mm off the ends.

    If you don't want to file them by hand, you could ask someone with access to a grinder for help. They could probably do it in a few seconds if the screws are not stainless steel. Your local bicycle shop might have one, since this is a fairly common operation on spokes.

  • This article mentions using Global Privacy Control as a replacement for Do Not Track, but doesn't bother to explain what GPC does. Its adjacent article incorrectly claims that GPC uses the DNT: 1 header field, fails to explain further, and links to a Mozilla page that doesn't explain it, either.

    Even the GPC web site fails here, offering several pages of vague, abstract fluff about their intentions and a useless document full of marketing industry acronyms, without anything substantial about how it works. The single mention of a spec fails to state where to find it. The closest it comes is a tangential sentence containing a broken github.io link.

    Finally, and only because I happen to know github.io's URL format, I was able to guess my way to an organization page, and from there to a project page, which has a README file containing a footnote linking to the proposed spec:

    https://w3c.github.io/gpc/

    Geez... it's as though the people involved don't want anyone to know how this proposed safeguard is supposed to work.

    After reading it, it looks like these are the main differences in Global Privacy Control vs. Do Not Track:

    • Replaces the DNT: 1 header field with Sec-GPC: 1.
    • Adds a javascript property to indicate the same thing.
    • Does not honor preference changes after the first navigation to a site. (Having changes respected apparently requires clearing site data from the browser and reloading. A helpful browser might prompt the user to do this.)
    • Defines a way for sites to indicate that they are aware of GPC (but does not require them to honor it).
    • Expresses a wish that your data not be shared, but says nothing about it being collected.
    • May be considered legally binding in some jurisdictions. It's not clear whether the few that currently recognize it will enforce it in any meaningful way.
  • I would like to know the answer to this:

    It’s unclear what will happen to users who have DNT enabled when they upgrade to the affected Firefox version. They may see a message stating that “Firefox no longer supports Do Not Track,” or the signal may still be sent to websites. We have asked Mozilla to clarify this and will provide an update when we receive a response.

  • I thought this would be appropriate since I see 404media’s articles linked from lemmy often.

    Given the incoming administration and the importance of independent journalism, I think this story would be worthwhile even if 404 Media wasn't the target.

  • You might find Edward Bernays and his impact on advertising interesting.

    One of the numerous problems for America’s magnates was the consumption of the average citizen. Many only purchased what they really needed, a behaviour which moguls wanted to change. The Wall Street banker Paul Mazur summarised this in a particularly straightforward manner: ‘We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture’, he wrote in 1927 in the Harvard Business Review. ‘People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed.’

    https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/original-influencer

    https://www.npr.org/2005/04/22/4612464/freuds-nephew-and-the-origins-of-public-relations

    https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393

  • So most software packages are at least a little out of date because they only put the most stable and tested versions of software in their default repos.

    And for many people, this is a good thing. By favoring reliability, Debian Stable provides the most low-maintenance experience of any distro I've ever used. (And I've been using them for a long time.)

    The packaged software is generally up to date when a new Debian release lands. It's a year or two between releases, but that's fine, because the vast majority of software already had the features I needed, and I'm not addicted to watching version numbers rise or fiddling about with UI changes that some developers like to make every month. Security updates do come between releases, and the two or three packages that sometimes warrant a faster update cycle are easy enough to add if needed.

  • Seems like a pretty big project to hook all of the different parts together.

    Not what I would call huge, but big enough to be a real time investment, and nobody wants to spend that much of their life reverse engineering and building such a thing only to have it broken whenever Valve changes something.

    That, I believe, is why we have no open source Steam clients.

  • That project does its job by running steamcmd, which is an official Valve client, not by calling public APIs.

    That could be a viable way to implement parts of a Steam client, but since it depends on a proprietary tool, it wouldn't be all open-source.

    Edit: I wonder if Valve would be receptive to publishing the SteamCMD source code. They already have a github presence.

  • OP is comparing to tools that download and install games, but the Steam emulators you're thinking of don't do that; they only emulate a minimal set of runtime services that Steam games expect to be present in order to run.

    They don't implement Steam's online features, like registering achievements and making cloud backups of save data, and don't have the extra features like input device remapping or video streaming. They are great for running games without network access, or for continuing to play games if Steam ever shuts down, but they're not really replacements for the Steam client.

    I don't know whether Valve has opened the APIs for downloading games, registering achievements, etc. If they haven't, then a full replacement for Steam might still be technically possible, but it would require some reverse engineering and be vulnerable to breakage whenever Valve changes something on their end.

  • Valve offers an optional DRM system that has "steam" in its name, and Steam imposes some (easily circumvented) inconveniences that are also imposed by DRM, but no, Steam itself is not a form of DRM.