Latest 30 Comments

My beard constantly starts due to laziness, but I either get remarks about needing to shave or it starts itching and I shave in any case 😅

Impressed that your partner prefers your (likely scratchy) facial fur 😆

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This wine version in my case

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Quoting: KoopaWhat has changed since the first reunion when the steam deck released?
Everyone now has a hipster beard!! 😂

Hipster?! I'll have you know mine started from laziness and now I'm not allowed to shave it off. The fiancée would not be happy 😆

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What has changed since the first reunion when the steam deck released?
Everyone now has a hipster beard!! 😂

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Great! I already have the supporter edition pre-ordered and looking forward to play it soon. :-) Also looking forward to see the official launcher on Flathub. ;-)

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I love technical article on Linux. I understand maybe half the words used, but I still get the feeling of the unstoppable march of progress.

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Quoting: benjamimgoisThanks for the post Liam ! GamingonLinux recognition makes a lot of difference.

Goverlay started as a GUI for overlay (mangohud), but the scope got broader. I'm thinking about rebrand the project. Maybe some community feedback / suggestions would be cool.

I always thought the 'G' stood for Gaming. TIL :) Now that it's more of a collection or gathering of tools maybe a name change is prudent? I would probably keep the G to keep it a little recognizable.

- GCore
- GAssembly
- GCentral
- GCentre
- GMachina

Good luck and thanks for all you work :)

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That girlfriend, if she is real and was really the reason for doing this, seems to be a keeper for her strong marketing skills. Now this game has become a limited edition release everyone is talking about and can't wait to get before the end of the month, when it comes an exclusive collector's piece.

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I see what you did there.

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I really need to replay MW2 before this comes out! 😆

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Amazing game. 100 hours played now. Still enjoying it.
About the AI things.. Personally i don't care if its done in a way it doesn't annoy me. I didnt even know voices were made with that, but there hardly are any voiceactors anyway in this game. Just Few mission messages and couple of cinematics.

edit:
If their AI tools help the team of their size make a fun game of this calibre then i dont really have much to complain.
Compared to companies that trying to milk the most out of their players with sloppy AI art

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Was this girlfriend an AI girlfriend by any chance? Maybe the algorithm told her to break up with him and that made him realize AI is not your friend?

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The bit about brainwashing in universities is kind of a red flag, so it's no surprised he was gullible enough to buy the AI hype. Good that he's backing off on this at least, but I doubt I'd be interested in anything he makes going forward.

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Quoting: AL2009manWait, you aren't supposed to be covering Arc Raiders due to its GenAI usage?

Then again, [51% of Japanese developers already uses it](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/51-of-japanese-game-makers-use-generative-ai). Pandora's Box is opened I guess?

I touched on that in the article. Anyway, I cover whatever I see that fits based on my own personal choices and the industry at large. In this case, it's too big too ignore - especially so as a huge game that has the anti-cheat enabled for Linux. And personally speaking again - I see their use of generative AI as vastly more ethical than most other uses. They hired and paid people for the voices used. Not that it really adds anything to the game, bit silly really. They really didn't need AI for it.

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Wait, you aren't supposed to be covering Arc Raiders due to its GenAI usage?

Then again, [51% of Japanese developers already uses it](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/51-of-japanese-game-makers-use-generative-ai). Pandora's Box is opened I guess?

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I was extremely wrong, looks like. Good for them!

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I tried out the Flatpak. For some weird reason with the Flatpak my Mangohud wasn't working in Steam anymore and also Mangohud settings could not be saved cause it gave you a warning that read only.
Also the Proton Tweaks environment variables got removed after closing the app and opening it up again.

Went back to the repo version and Mangohud works again plus saving the configs.

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...

Anyway speaking of Hytale itself and not doing off-top about social media: I'm glad that they managed to secure enough funds. Now let's hope that the end product will eventually be amazing.

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Quoting: juliandelphiki

Quoting: scaineGonna nitpick here, but

Speaking on X/Twitter

...actually puts me off caring about this game. I know it's shallow, but there it is. I don't care if you're "reaching your audience" - first of all, you're not reaching me, and second of all, you're helping fund and justify the child porn platform.

I wonder what it'll take for genuine brands to realise that association with Musk's toxic hellscape rubs off on them. At least for me.

You are definitely more than welcome to your position, but I'm genuinely curious why would you black list a developer for trying to pitch their game? You can follow them on multiple social media platforms, including bluesky and 7 or so others, if that's your thing, and there are hundreds of millions of people to market to on these other platforms.

Not quite a black list, but I think less of them. Twitter's response to users creating child porn imagery in grok wasn't to fix the tech, or ban the users. No, they put the capability behind a paywall, so grok will still generate these images, but now you have to pay for it. Which actually sounds worse when you say it out loud.

Quoting: juliandelphikiPersonally, I don't do the social media thing as I believe it is the worst thing to happen to humanity across our entire history, but I don't begrudge anyone for trying to reach potential customers.

Sorry to say, but the fact you don't do social media is pretty obvious. Hypixel made this announcement on Twitter, but didn't do so on their Bluesky account, or even Insta. Hell, they didn't even post this on their own forums! That's just numbers of course - they don't even have a thousand followers on Bluesky, compared to half a million on Twitter. But if they closed Twitter, people would follow them to wherever they're active. They don't want to take that risk, clearly. And so, I judge them for that decision.

Quoting: juliandelphikiOn the other note, trying to hold a company's feet to the fire because of a horrific AI error.

It wasn't an error. It's a conscious decision by Musk to allow his AI to generate child porn.

Quoting: juliandelphikiI like to hear as much from those who disagree with me as I can and talk to people in person about it, because otherwise the echo chamber just forces you into compliance/group think with no innovation or real improvements to your ideology.

I disagree. You don't argue with fascists. Again, it's clear you don't do social media, since any engagement with fascists will result in abuse and dogpiling.

You also don't debate paedophiles. Why would you? Lock them up.

So when I say that a brand is tarnished for being on the child porn platform, I can't be any clearer. I think less of them for being there. They enable and justify the absolutely worst people on the planet... for outreach.

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Quoting: sarmadThe snap file format and client side tools are completely open source. What's proprietary is the backend, i.e snapcraft.io, which is fine.

Doesn't that kinda mean that snap being open source is pointless to a large extent? It's like an open source client for a proprietary messaging service

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Don't change the name. Goverlay is recognizable.

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Quoting: benjamimgoisThanks for the post Liam ! GamingonLinux recognition makes a lot of difference.

Goverlay started as a GUI for overlay (mangohud), but the scope got broader. I'm thinking about rebrand the project. Maybe some community feedback / suggestions would be cool.

Rebranding could throw people off for a time, though here are some crappy names I came up with:
FrameUtils
PerforSuite
GUISuite
GaminGUI (yes i know)
GamersNexus (LOL, cause it's a collection of tools, :P)
UtiGUI (utility gui)
SynerGUI

Familiar but probably also terrible ??:
GUItils
GoUtils
Go-Overlay

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Quoting: scaineGonna nitpick here, but

Speaking on X/Twitter

...actually puts me off caring about this game. I know it's shallow, but there it is. I don't care if you're "reaching your audience" - first of all, you're not reaching me, and second of all, you're helping fund and justify the child porn platform.

I wonder what it'll take for genuine brands to realise that association with Musk's toxic hellscape rubs off on them. At least for me.

You are definitely more than welcome to your position, but I'm genuinely curious why would you black list a developer for trying to pitch their game? You can follow them on multiple social media platforms, including bluesky and 7 or so others, if that's your thing, and there are hundreds of millions of people to market to on these other platforms. Personally, I don't do the social media thing as I believe it is the worst thing to happen to humanity across our entire history, but I don't begrudge anyone for trying to reach potential customers.

On the other note, trying to hold a company's feet to the fire because of a horrific AI error means doing the same across the board. xAI isn't the first and you can rest assured they won't be the last either. OpenAI, Meta, Google and character.ai, etc. have all had issues with this as the AI market is moving faster than the pace of regulation and no one wants to slow down for fear of losing market advantage and influence. I'm not saying it's okay in any way shape or form, but you can't speak as through xAI is the only one to have this issue. Fair is fair. There are good people on all of these social media platforms and bad people on all of these platforms. I like to hear as much from those who disagree with me as I can and talk to people in person about it, because otherwise the echo chamber just forces you into compliance/group think with no innovation or real improvements to your ideology.

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Quoting: phil995511Snaps = non-free (proprietary) file format belonging to Canonical

=> No thanks, I don't want it on my operating systems

This is not correct. The snap file format and client side tools are completely open source. What's proprietary is the backend, i.e snapcraft.io, which is fine. The problem with snaps, other than re-inventing the wheel, is that it does not allow the end user to add new repos (other than snapcraft.io) like you can do with deb or flatpak.

Quoting: phil995511I don't like using AppImage either, it's too cumbersome to use for launching applications and there's no built-in application update system.

This is not true either. AppImage is a modular tool, which actually is more Linuxy than the monoliths that are snaps and flatpaks. In other words, the features you get from flatpak can also be achieved with AppImage, only that you have to install multple packages. There is an appimage launcher that makes installing and removing appimages as easy as flatpak, and there is a separate tool that provides auto updates, and there is also a hub for appimages similar to flathub. There are also separate tools for providing sandboxing. Out of the three formats, AppImage provides the most flexibility: you can download an appimage directly, or use a hub. You can use it sandboxed, or not. You can have appimages auto update themselves. You can use it for cli or gui, etc. If distros adopted AppImages and have it all configured out of the box it would've been as easy to use as flatpaks, but with extra flexibility, which actually is the essence of Linux.

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I left TwitX years ago, but I never managed to truly "switch to Mastodon" because I didn't end up engaging with the platform. I wish I could endorse it, but I just fell out of social media instead. I don't really condemn companies for having a TwitX presence, but I consider it a positive sign if they have a bsky or especially Mastodon.

I checked Hytale's website. They do have a Bluesky.

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Quoting: johndoe1. In Germany we still have to pay "Solidaritätszuschlag" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarit%C3%A4tszuschlag).
This money could be given to EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF) instead.

2. Forbid (proprietary) file formats like doc, docx, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx, rtf, tnef, ... in the EU (public and private sector). We already have ODF.
Force developers/companies of proprietary software to support ODF as first-class citizen.
Every mail server (public and private sector) should be configured to deny mails with these file attachments.

3. Force M$ to release a free converter for all their proprietary file formats into ODF. The results must be 101%😁

4. Forbid proprietary protocols and APIs.

5. Force developers/companies of proprietary software to support free SQL-Backend alternatives like MariaDB and PostgreSQL and treat them as first-class citizen.

This would be a good start... man can dream.

Edit!
Ohhh boy, I forgot the most important...
6. Forbid DirectX and Mantle.

The EU once [strongarmed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML) Microsoft in opening up the docx format for MS office 2007 Microsoft spend the following decade trying to put that genie back into the bottle.
This was only meagerly successfull.
As such Libre office has nowadays somewhat acceptable docx support.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the nitpicky side, the call for evidence is for how to steer european open source toward their objectives, not the importance.

Well, it's both. It's clearly important because they're looking to base their future on it, and they want to steer people to them.

Ah, Interperted your sentence wrong. I thought you said they were still trying to figure out how important it is.

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Quoting: Pikolo

Quoting: LoudTechieMy proposals were.
Publish cryptographic hashes of restricted material, so small player can collaborate to implement filters for illegal information like CSAM and copyright protected material allowing them to more cheaply preform moderation responsibilities.

[Perceptual hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing), used for copyrighted content and CSAM detection is very different from cryptographic hashing. The goal is to catch images and videos that are "sufficiently similar". It's as vague as it sounds, and unless configured with a very low sensitivity is guaranteed to cause false positives. When configured with low sensitivity, it's possible to bypass. When you take into account the quantity of CSAM perceptual hashes out there, false positives happen regularly. So you can either block everything, or block random things. Far from a solved problem

Using perceptual hashing for copyright enforcement is even worse, because the algorithm has no way to account for [exceptions to copyright](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright). That should always be a human's judgement call, but with copyright trolls in the picture you get a lot of pressure towards false positives.

I know this.
I asked for cryptographic hashes, because it's better than nothing and can be used as a start to build a functioning system.
Cryptographic hashes can be freely published, since they're cryptographic hashes meaning that they're sufficiently resistant to collision, decompression and other attacks.
Many parties can't get access to the perceptual hashes normally used to enforce laws, yet still want to host lawabiding servers.
A list of cryptographic hashes could be used for the following:
- public accountability of what's being removed by government mandate(throw your sensitive publications in a hashing algorithm and find out if you're being censored)
- A self hosted file server/forum/other user content providing service, which can build perceptual hashes from the lazily posted illegal content it catches on its own server(only one criminal has to be too lazy to edit a file and all instances already on the server can be caught, repeat offenders can be used as data mines for more cryptographic and perceptual hashes, trust of law enforcement can be won by reporting).
These servers would never publish the perceptual hashes they generate, just provide back cryptographic hashes to the project that enables them to automate large part of their moderation, which can use this to enable more to catch and share.

Edit:
Also cryptographic hashes are accurate, which means they won't be dealing with too much false positives and can carefully expand their coverage avoiding many of the mistakes big tech made along the way.

Beside that European copyright exception are only slightly comparable to US copyright exceptions.
They might have the opportunity to fine tune on the way.

Law based moderation software packages tend to be expensive riddled with NDA's, big tech dependencies and absolutely critical for anyone trying to solve the EU's hosting power problem.
This could be a start to a more open, accountable and sovereign European internet.

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Quoting: Jarmer

Quoting: tfkOpen source mobile phones,
Open source desktops,
From there,
EU based payment systems for easy EU based online transactions,
EU based and open source security layers for said payment providers.
Educational programs to show people how to be the owner of their own system again, and how to do critical thinking again.
Ban on American cloud services like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. I mean firewall block. Boom!

Edit: gave my feedback.

This all sounds amazing as an American. Especially the payment thing. Here we are so screwed with horrible options for sending money around in friend / family groups. Most people in my social circle still use venmo for everything which is just paypal, a horrifying company.

Microsoft is so screwed in the corporate sector. I don't think they care though, right now Satya's brain has turned completely to mush with ai garbage so he can't even think properly. The entire corporate world over the next decade is going to dump office (or copilot 365 app LOLOL) and windows, so that's a TON of revenue lost. Again I don't think microsoft cares, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with windows.

This is actually making great strides.
They're fusing the national payment providers many countries have naming it Wero.

They're also trying to work with India to [bypass swift.](https://www.cnbctv18.com/personal-finance/what-the-upi-tips-link-means-for-india-europe-digital-payments-19770000.htm)

Edit:
I give them >90% chance for achieving Wero
Just 60% for a successful Swift competitor.
China couldn't do it, Russia couldn't do it.
The EU does have a pretty serious market, their current system works EU wide and if this deal succeeds they might gain the backing of another serious market.
Also Trump is destroying the US market.
Yet, Swift's market dominance is legendary enough to move the worst dictators to tears and to make the CCP tremble.

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Quoting: ChrisznixOkay, you got me, i have to have this. Did you play it on the deck yourself? I'll take a look if i get the soundtrack with it, too, it seems to be really good.

I played it entirely on the Deck. Very cool UI for controllers. The game itself is an absolute blast, and the OST is opium for my ears.

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