sylver_dragon

At least on Android (I’d assume iOS does it as well), you can set Do Not Disturb (DND) to turn on and off automatically, based on the time. You can also designate certain contacts to be allowed to bypass DND, so the phone will ring normally. I setup DND a long time ago, because I don’t want to be bothered by random shit while I am trying to sleep. However, my job is such that I might reasonably be called at 03:00 and need to roll my arse out of bed and start working. So, the number they call from is set to bypass DND. My elderly mother and brother are both similarly set to bypass. It all works out quite well and if some random marketer figures out my number and calls in the middle of the night, I don’t get woken up to talk about my car’s warranty.

Perfect, we’ll just spin up an image of your machine in EC2, give it a public IP, set the default network rules to “allow any any” and we’re good. And I have no idea why the security team just all quit.

they will find escape goats.

Well now I want to stick around. Who wouldn’t want an escape goat?

I don’t quite understand, what do you mean by “KISS is not available via pacman”

I was making a joke about Arch not being simple and pacman not having packages one would expect, often having to turn to AUR to find such packages. Seems the joke failed to land and now we’re in “explaining a joke is similar to dissecting a frog” territory.

IT installed a firewall between the legacy environment and everything else. Devs threw a fit and so the firewall was configured with a default allow rule. Security was last seen crying into their beer.

arch-based distros are more noob-friendly

I’ll take some of whatever you are smoking. And I am typing this on an Arch Linux system.
Sure, I love that I have a high degree of control; but, if I were planning to ask a new user to install Linux, I would not be handing them Arch. The Install Page may look nice; but, it’s a minefield of “oh go chose something” and you come back three hours later having read way too much detail about bootloaders.

Arch is fantastic for choice, but the KISS principal is not available via pacman. It may be available in AUR. So, go learn what AUR is, spend way too long picking an AUR package manager only to learn it’s not available their either and you need to build it from source.

Joking aside, I do need to try the SteamOS install. That might actually be a noob-friendly Arch distro.

It’s right there in the article:

Reviver’s $29.99 monthly subscription fee.

What, you thought this was supposed to help the customer?

Reviver’s $29.99 monthly subscription fee.

Someone, somewhere is making money on these and probably providing kickbacks campaign contributions to get laws passed to allow this sort of stupid.

Porn.
All six of them, just different forms of porn.

But is #7 true if they don’t have a backup?

Na, my experience is that Defender is fine with users downloading browsers and “updates” from random Russian sites. It’s happy to let the users install that software and only bothers to log a “hey, maybe this was bad” alert some time later. Edge, on the other hand, loses it’s shit when you visit the official download sites for Chrome or FireFox.

Ya, in fairness to MS, Windows XP was a good release (post SP1, like most “good” MS releases). But, the fact is that MS is going to push the latest version, regardless of how ready it is for use. MS was hot for folks to switch to Windows ME. And holy fuck was that a terrible OS. MS also did everything short of bribery to get folks to switch to Vista (anyone remember Windows Mojave?). The “upgrade, or else” mantra has always been their way. Not that I blame them too much, it does need to happen. It just sucks when the reason for the new OS is more intrusive ads and user tracking.

Many years ago, I attended a Windows XP launch event. The Microsoft presenter had the perfect line to describe how MS views this:
“Why should you upgrade to Windows XP? Because we’re going to stop supporting Windows 98!”

This was said completely unironically and with the expectation that people would just do what MS wanted them to do. That attitude hasn’t changed in the years since. Win 10 is going to be left behind. You will either upgrade or be vulnerable. Also, MS doesn’t care about the home users, they care about the businesses and the money to be had. And businesses will upgrade. They will invariably wait to the last minute and then scramble to get it done. But, whether because they actually give a shit about security or they have to comply with security frameworks (SOX, HIPAA, etc.), they will upgrade. Sure, they will insist on GPOs to disable 90% of the Ads and tracking shit, but they will upgrade.

Probably worth noting that, if you are using an employer owned system to watch said porn, they likely have software on the endpoint which will let them see what porn you are watching, regardless of HTTPS/VPN/Tor. Depending on how much your employer cares about such things, that may or may not come back to bite you. I’ve worked at places where we regularly reported on users watching porn on work computers, and I’ve worked at places where we only reported on users getting malware while browsing porn at work. But, never assume your activity isn’t being monitored on employer owned systems.

writes Nestler. “We want to hear from you when you think Reddit is making decisions that are not in your communities’ best interests. But if a protest crosses the line into harming redditors and Reddit, we’ll step in.”

Translation: We don’t really give a shit what you think. Now shut up and generate that content for us to sell to AI companies.

It is now functionally impossible to detect anything about the traffic or the Wi-Fi router without some serious or illegal methods.

You should really spend some time learning about WiFi signals. Tracking down rogue Access Points is a pretty common thing and having the SSID turned off does fuck all to prevent it. On the easy end, many enterprise wireless network controllers have rogue AP detection built right in and will show you a map of the location of the rogue AP. Harder, but still entirely possible, is running around with a setup just detecting the signal and triangulating it.

Welcome to AI:

Re-read what I wrote, but hop down off your high horse first, it’s obvious you weren’t able to read it clearly from up there. I’m neither promoting nor defending piracy. Quite the contrary, I’m praising the legitimate services (and Steam in particular) for understanding that competition with piracy isn’t all about money, it’s often about the quality of service. Funny enough, your own comments are actually a point in favor of this:

You ever wonder why these companies don’t operate in countries that don’t have strict piracy laws and can’t shut down sites with court orders? Because it’s still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.

Yet somehow, with a lot of time, money and effort put into shutting down piracy, the pirates were able to provide a better service. Seriously, step back from the whole “napster bad” for a moment and think about the dissonance of the situation. Large companies, pulling in millions of dollars a year, with no need to worry about law enforcement or monied interests coming after them, somehow failed to create anything resembling a functional digital marketplace. They were stuck in the physical distribution paradigm and fought tooth and nail to avoid digital distribution. At the same time, a few kids, with little money, and law enforcement trying to shut them down created a pretty good user experience. Sure, some of that is not having to worry about licensing. But, a large part of it is understanding what the users want and giving it to them.

It wasn’t until Apple came along and basically created “Napster, but legitimate” that music piracy really fell off. Netflix pulled off something similar with video (though that is rebuilding some rough edges at the moment) and Steam did it for games. Sure, piracy still exists, and it will always be a problem. But, a lot of piracy can be tamped down by having a good service available.

One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. – Gabe Newell, 2011

Time and again, digital distribution platforms have proved this. Apple Music became a dominant music distribution platform at the height of Napster, LimeWire and other peer to peer sharing apps. They did it, because it was easier to just buy the tracks/albums you wanted than to dig through trackers and websites which may or may not actually have what you want. Netflix became the de-facto source for streaming movies at a time when BitTorrent was common and well known. Again, they made it easy and convenient, while not charging an arm and a leg. Steam also faced competition from BitTorrent piracy. But again, Steam made buying, downloading and running games easier than the pirates. And people are willing to pay for that convenience and not dealing with the crap which floats around the high seas.

And, so long as Steam continues to treat it’s customers right, those customers will keep coming back. And that’s the problem with Pitchford’s whole premise. Developers will go where the customers are. Sure, you’ll get the odd case of a publisher/developer doing an exclusivity deal. But even then, it’s probably limited, because the customers are on Steam. If another storefront wants to draw customers, they need to start with treating customers well. They will still face headwinds, as Steam has a large “first mover” advantage. But, success is going to start with making customers want to come back.

Ok, good luck with that! Can’t wait for this guy to start whining that he can’t find employees.