Quoting: melkemind

Quoting: DrNickHonestly, it's not worth getting involved with most of the chinese handhelds. Ayaneo especially have terrible customer service.

So, Asus and Lenovo are both Chinese as well. Is their customer service also bad, or is it only worth mentioning it's Chinese if it's bad?

AFAIK ASUS, MSI, (NVIDIA to a large degree) and a bunch of others are Taiwanese, which technically is Old China pre-1,900s pre-cultural-revolution (Also known as the destruction of Thousands of Years of Chinese History, Artifacts, and Culture).

Lenovo is quite literally made in Beijing, the capitol. (This is easy to check on Wikipedia)

One (Lenovo) is under the National Security Law & National Intelligence Law requiring cooperation with government espionage (according to US officials), or prison, and the other (ASUS-Taiwan) is not AFAIK.

Source: When US officials were pressed in early 2019 to provide evidence that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, had facilitated spying on the US and its allies [...] [ The director referenced in Chinese Law ] the introduction of a new national intelligence law in 2017 [...] The law states that “any organisation and citizen” shall “support and cooperate in national intelligence work”
- The director of the US National Counterintelligence and Security Center
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/china-business-xi-jinping-communist-party-state-private-enterprise-huawei [External Link]

Anyways, those are the facts as I know them.

China is a large geographic region that has something like 47+ different ethnic cultures, similar to how North America and South America have many peoples -- Mongolian, Cantonese (Southern Coastal), Han Chinese, Taiwanese (The Islanders), Technically debatable the Tibetans, now Hong Kong (The British Colony under the Queen), and other areas.

Personally, I buy Taiwanese products -- like the Ergodox Ez, ASUS products, BV-Tech has some network gear with US Military approved certification.

Could the sub-components come from the mainland, or could there be concerns of the mainland effecting Taiwan companies? Sure -- I woulds say the same is possible for Samsung (South Korea) and LG (South Korea) the same as any other tech from the region, even Japan does manufacturing in mainland China for some things.

So in conclusion YMMV and the choice is ultimately yours who you give your hard earned money to. Do your research, and read, and remember if you reward bad behavior the future will suck. It's up to each of us to decide for ourselves.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

AYANEO NEXT LITE no longer ships with SteamOS-like HoloISO Linux - Windows 11 instead

Alternate title: People pretending to be communist-socialists ship device with fascist operating system instead of you know... a more communal, globally developed one XD.

I see this kind of last minuet reverse-uno all the time. Makes you wonder what powers that be do behind closed doors to make sure the future stays on track for the authoritarian-fascists to win.

Whatever small interest I had in their devices is now null, I'll keep my eyes open for more worthy selections in the future, preferably one that has CoreBoot.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TiZ

Quoting: KimyrielleI am thinking of a really compelling reason to containerize Steam and can't come up with one...

Not even one? I have an easy one. First, Steam is proprietary. [..] That's not it, either. I have about... 800+ additional reasons, at least in my Steam library. A whole litany of proprietary, closed-source games. Only a fraction of them are native, and would have hypothetically unfettered access to the whole filesystem when unsandboxed, but that's enough to prefer to be safe rather than sorry.

100% this. "anti-cheats" *cough* *cough* kErNeL r00tk1Ts -- for now I have completely separate machines for Linux Gaming vs Desktop, and the Steam Deck does a great job Appliancizing and air gapping proprietary access by who knows which panaroid schitzo government to our machines.

Anyways, steam is a saint but there is a big difference between the store(s) and the publisher(s) in terms of ethos, ethics, and vision -- not all of them share the opinion that consumers are people or have human rights to privacy or dignity.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Remember RocketLeague Gate.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Linux hits nearly 4% desktop user share on Statcounter

My reaction to winning the OS Wars after all these years, Mein Führer...! I can valk! [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: TheRiddickTalk about making it political.

Regarding your criticisms:

UEFI security threat:

https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/12/just-about-every-windows-and-linux-device-vulnerable-to-new-logofail-firmware-attack/ [External Link]

Apparently a news story from today dropped on this exact issue.

https://x.com/Barchart/status/1738360359201771854?s=20 [External Link]

Its not my fault Pelosi is a politician. Who bought 5M of Nvidia literally today IIUC.

Normal people are going to tilt their head.

Also, let's not forget about the blackbox "blob" and Nvidia cockblocking Linux for over a decade.

Regarding my Bluetooth LORA claims:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-tIK3Fk-bLA [External Link]

I'm totally willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you are just not informed about these topics, and that's okay, but please just be the kind of people who thirst to learn and read. This is where we area unfortunately.

Edit: Bonus source showing Taiwan TVs were hacked https://businessinsider.com/taiwan-nancy-pelosi-7-11-hack-get-out-messages-cyberattack-2022-8 [External Link]

TL;DR -- the cyber dystopian future is already pretty much here if you've been paying attention.

And if one country or military has the backdoor, pretty much all do.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I hope they fixed the ridiculous way the user is expected to edit the panels -- changing width -- scaling height -- dragging and moving items around -- they should not reinvent the wheel and stick to typical user-expectations. The panel is one of the biggest complaints about KDE. It's embarrassing when switching somebody to KDE and having to explain why the Panel is a mess to edit (I had this happen).

--

All in all, I am most excited to see how v6 iteration improves Plasma Mobile and how it stacks up against Phosh and Gnome Mobile in the near future.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

You can finally hide your naughty games on Steam

I hope one of you decides to hide all your "not naughty" games leaving only naught games ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualDo you know what the situation is with the AMD drivers? My understanding is that the HDMI standard prevents a free software implementation of the standard (due to patents, maybe?) so the AMDGPU PRO drivers need to be used for that?

HDMI is definitely proprietary, and also (can't remember which version) adds Ethernet to the spec -- so every HDMI display is theoretically or potentially a back-door for governments or hacker groups inside your LAN -- not good! Similar to bluetooth being a major security problem with LORA Mesh Net Radio turning bluetooth devices into Wireless Repeaters like Routers creating the Bluetooth Internet of Things to be used by who exactly? And for what?

HDMI needs to die just like 16:9. VIVA LA DISPLAY PORT, and IIRC VESA and Open Standards.

Considering the vested interest of Nancy Pelosi and other higher ups in the US, at this point I can't help but see Nvidia as an extension of the US Military Industrial Complex.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The Steam Awards voting

Totally expect Baldurs Gate 3 to win yet another game of the year award.

Steam Winter Sale 2023 is live

Excited sigh, I hope I find more Steam Deck PvP stuff to play. Golf with Friends was pretty fun, but I thirst for more LAN games to play in the living room on Decks.

View this comment - View article - View full comments