Pika

The Wolfire versus Valve antitrust case.

They submitted evidence of email chains from Valve customer support stating that they want Valve to have the best deal available and that they will not choose to do business with companies that do not give them the best deal.

On top of that, they also went on record stating that the steam product key page under the Steamworks area is meant to be intended for all products on Steam, not just keys.

It’s a textbook example of, hey look, this is our policy that’s written down, but we don’t actually follow it.

I just want to add in that what Valve has as official policy and what they actually practice differ in this case. Because yes, their policy states it’s for keys only. However, they have admitted in court that if the publisher has it as a cheaper price elsewhere, they will delist your game

I believe they are talking about this.

If you have it at all exposed to the internet, you should probally terminate it

As a summery: Multiple endpoints on the software don’t check for authentication and an unauthenticated person can retrieve your complete settings configuration including your API keys and your password and also change your current configuration, Just by sending a simple POST request.

That’s wild to me that that was something that was able to be done.

So I get what you’re going at, but I did want to add that secure boot doesn’t require Windows 11. And that the main issue with Battlefield 6 isn’t the fact that it has secure boot enabled because you can use Battlefield 6 on Linux with secure boot. The issue is it won’t pass the anti-cheat, which is Javolin if I remember correctly, breaks itself when in a Proton environment.

Being said, I don’t think secure boot is the threat everyone thinks it is. Microsoft was originally not going to let alternative platforms be allowed on the secure boot environment. However, they started facing legal threats regarding it, including a potential ban in Australia and part of the EU stated they were looking into investigating it in regards to anti-trust, so they ended up caving to avoid having a judgment in court. I don’t foresee Microsoft going back to making it so they’re the only one allowed again,and if they do it’s almost certain they’ll be anti-trusted

I can see the concern on a Google attestion style system, but I don’t ever foresee it getting that bad because people will just not use the system. The only reason it’s working somewhat well for Google is because it’s integrated into Android as a whole and practically forced upon developers if they want to use the existing integrity systems. Being said, I’ve only ever seen it in banking apps. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on a website to website basis.

Before I go full tin foil hat on this theory, I want to know how they plan on making it so the signal is sent client side without the client being able to fake the signal.

Like, this sounds like something that any type of OS that allows you to install a program will be able to bypass quite easily either by always sending the adult signal or never sending the adult signal

Like reading the bill, they explicitly forbid any type of personally identifying information being transferred. It sounds like it’s just a DOB check and if you say you are > 13 or whatever age they have it as it sends a signal.

I’m happy it isn’t allowed to send PII but like at the same time, I feel like just having websites put an age check prompt up does the same thing

i can’t say I’ve ever had much experience with timed download links for software. generally the software that I’ve used has relied on a permanent link that you can always access and then premium features for the link is locked behind a license key.

I decided upon seeing this article I should update my current windows 11 iso.

They have definitely changed the download flow since the last time I attempted.

In order to download the latest windows 11 iso on a non-windows system, you need to go to the download page, select the last option, verify the connection select region and then verify the connection again, upon finishing it they now give you a 24h time limited link.

This seems very counterproductive to convincing people to go back to windows if they had already bailed, I would have thought they would want as less restrictions as possible on the iso itself in hope to get people to go back.

I’m on the reverse end. I’m so sick of the “I hate windows, I’m switching to Linux” and then just never make the swap. Like stop bitching about it if you won’t do anything to fix it.

De-listed where? It’s listed still for me.

I’m guessing it was a regional de-listment and it just wasn’t specified.

Being said, this page was enough to make me install the app, still unsure if I wanna use it or not but, I don’t wanna risk losing the ability to install the app either.

Just don’t buy Triple A titles.

The last “AAA” title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)

There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.

The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.

Of course, this is just my thoughts on it, but it’s entirely possible that their original partner is dropping them due to PR concerns. Discord is a huge partner and they have been in the news constantly as of late with the ID talk, it might be scaring k-Id off because it’s almost entirely bad PR regarding their data safety and practices.

they have already done this for at least the last year or so easily. I noticed it when I requested by data package last year, theres a clear area on it that infers both your gender and your age in it.

They are just acting like this is a “new system” but in reality its a system that have had for awhile now, just didn’t have any public facing usage of it.

For anyone else that wants to see it themselves, and they have a discord takeout. its located at the very bottom in the events file in activity/analytics.

the end of the file shows json objects that indicate what your predicted age and gender is.

edit: I found this file isn’t a static location, it is still in the activity/analytics directory in one of your event files, but you need to search “age” or “gender” to find it if it isn’t at the bottom

mmmmm lets see here

for the pavillion 16…

$34.99 a month with no protection plans available and no option to buy out over time and requires a 650 credit score…

or $979.99 for a one off purchase with the ability to have a protection plan ontop of it (this same laptop is also on a sale via HP for 429$ if you use their financing system…)

I don’t see how this is helpful to the general consumer. The typical user doesn’t replace their laptop every year, and at the prices they give you end up breaking even around 2 years. You would need to be processing an upgrade at least every 2.3 years in order to make your money worth it. I’ve had the same laptop for 8+ years now. I don’t know anyone who had a laptop fail outside of accidental damage prior to the 2 year mark. Most system issues appear prior to the one year warranty end date if something was /going/ to happen.

I can see how this could be helpful for a company that has temp workers… but even then it’s not like the company couldn’t just re-provision the laptop and give it to the next person.

I could see this being more handy if accidental was included on it, but out of the current offerings it’s just not worth it for anyone.

I’m waiting for some government to outlaw collecting the information in general outside of official government agencies. I would love to see big tech squirm as they try to figure out a valid way to harvest the data in one country, but prevent it in another.

Honestly it sounds like an amazing way to rack of fine money due to violation notices.

For ID scans, Discord says that documents “are deleted quickly.”

Just a few months ago they had a data leak which proved that they were indeed /not/ deleting documents and ID’s like they had been claiming.

Granted in that case it was mostly countries that force keeping that data but, I’m sick of companies lying and saying “lol yea we defo delete the data after”

sadly, it’s a little more complex than just enabling it. The supported self host deployment uses docker, and the docker containers that are available don’t contain the interfaces for voice or video calling as they are not up to date.

If I understand it right, to enable it would mean you need to either pull the source yourself and run it off of docker, or make a custom docker image using a version of stoat web that contains the ability to do voice calls.

reading the draft of the linked issue, it looks like the author isn’t doing voice call for the reason that they don’t know the proper way to integrate it into the docker image.

So to answer it: yes it looks like you can use voice servers on the current self hosted model, but you can’t use pre-existing docker images, and it will require you to manually add the new web UI in and patch where needed.

Just a fair warning in reply to this that the self-hosted version of Stoat doesn’t currently have voice chat. It’s an open issue that’s currently paused until they can finish their rework.

If you have the skill for it, it seems like you can patch work the existing voice chat back in, but it’s not part of their initial setup and there’s no instructions on how to do so properly

TIL I even had an application key there. I don’t think I’ve ever used it.

Personally, it seems like it’s trustworthy again. The previous owner of the repo did eventually admit that they authorized the transfer, but, The entire transfer process was extremely sketchy and had no chain of custody or trust. It was just the repository got deleted, and then a few days later showed under a whole blank state again with a user with no profile, no contribution history, and it was just a trust me bro, I knew the original maintainer look I have the keys to prove it.

The maintainer of the Google Play build of it seems to trust them though, and they are established in the community, plus they archived their sync thing builds again in favor of just using one repo, so it’s likely fine.

For future people wondering about it as well, it doesn’t help that the new maintainer of the app has deleted every issue that had to do with the migration, so you no longer can research the issue for yourself. The only information you have available to you is the discussion chain listed on the community forums, But any type of issue that they link to were deleted.

Personally though, I plan on keeping my current version pinned to prior to the transfer until either I’m forced to update due to bugs or I feel comfortable with the current maintainer again. I’m not sure how long that will be.

For an app that contains very sensitive information, I was not impressed with how the transfer process underwent.

Fully agree. if they actually go through with banning it, piracy will thrive. People aren’t going to just not play games as a result of not having access to a game. Smaller launchers will rise, people will download from other sources. A method of obtainment will be found.