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@pivot_root@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You can disable UAC (thinking practical, not necessarily security minded - but for an auto login w/o password, what’s security?)

  It’s not just the UAC prompt. Any window created by an elevated process will block synthetic input events created by lower privilege processes.

  Popups: yes. But then you’d need to actively use other software besides steam. Why would you do that, if using only a controller?

  • Game launchers installed as part of the Steam game.
  • Driver software automatically installed by Windows.
  • Windows itself, sometimes.

  Also that can happen in Linux, too.

  It depends on your DE and configuration. In KDE with Wayland, you can set it up to strictly enforce focus stealing prevention. The way that works is essentially by only allowing another program to steal focus if it’s the result of some user interaction.

  For the logoff or shutdown: Set or createHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\AutoEndTasks to 1 to auto kill hanging/not ending processes automagically. Also you can use WaitToKillAppTimeout there to define how long windows should wait before killing the processes (in milliseconds).

  The fact that these are buried in the registry… thanks, though. These will be useful. I concede this point.

  And regarding bitlocker after a bios update: why would you use bitlocker on such a machine (auto login on boot which would allow access to all files anyways)?

  Because it’s the default that is forced onto the user.

  Anyways, set or create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BitLocker\PreventDeviceEncryption to 1 to prevent bitlocker from running after an upgrade. With Pro, you could also leverage GPOs for that.

  Call me cynical, but I don’t think this will work forever. Microsoft has been boiling the frog with local accounts over Windows 11’s entire lifetime, at first allowing them, then hiding them, then making the bypass command only work under specific circumstances, etc.

  All it takes to destroy the UX is force-enabling BitLocker exactly once, and most of the people using the device won’t know how to undo it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Respectfully, I’m going to have to disagree about stock Windows working fine. There are multiple places where it necessitates having a keyboard and/or mouse connected.

  • Interacting with UAC prompts and other elevated-permission windows that block synthetic input events.
  • When a popup hijacks focus away from the game window.
  • When Steam (or other controller to mouse software) is not open, such as during the logoff screen where you sometimes have to click “Close Anyways”.
  • After a BIOS update, when the TPM refuses to unlock and you need to enter the BitLocker recovery key within the pre-boot environment.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  am still running Windows on it, but only for one reason: no first party support from SteamOS.

  For the most part, it SteamOS isn’t really necessary to get a serviceable desktop gaming experience. Pick a well-supported rolling release distro or a derivative, install Steam and Proton, and games mostly just work.

  It’s not perfect, but it’s usable. The only real pain point around gaming is getting HDR working properly.

  Closed-source software is a different story, however. Discord’s Wayland support is basically nonexistent and the AFK detection thinks you’re always in front of the computer, suppressing mobile notifications.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Valve creates an "entry point" for living room PCs, the console-beating Steam Machines will follow, argues Baldur's Gate 3's publishing director⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If other hardware vendors are going to follow, they have to be using SteamOS or something similar out of the box. Handhelds can somewhat get away with using Windows because of the touch screen, but a “console” experience that occasionally requires plugging in a keyboard and mouse to get past some controller-unfriendly menu or pop-up is just going to annoy users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Machine⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Apple gets away with it by having an ungodly massive memory bus.

  It’s kind of impressive how effective Apple’s marketing team was towards developers when they started that push towards ARM PCs. A lot of people can remember that having shared memory benefits from not having to copy memory between the CPU and GPU, but barely any of them remember that the only reason it’s feasible is because Apple gave their devices insanely high memory bandwidth.

  On the opposite end of the spectrum, look no further than the original Nintendo Switch. With an incredible 64-bit memory bus and 1600MHz memory clock speed, it was already being bottlenecked by its memory bandwidth 2 years into its lifespan. And that’s counting first-party titles like the Link’s Awakening remaster, not even shitty ports of games made for other consoles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨600 GB of Alleged Great Firewall of China Data Published in Largest Leak Yet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No, it really is. Tankies live in a fantasy land, thinking the wildfire is greener on the other side of the fence.

  Something can be said about unregulated, late-stage capitalism and American imperialism. The former is a malignant cancer that consumes all in its wake and demands infinite growth for itself and the ones who direct it. The latter, in service of the former, is a threat to the rest of the developed and undeveloped world.

  Those are entirely reasonable criticisms, calling an apple an apple. Unchecked capitalism empowering sociopathic, self-serving oligarchs will kill us all.

  Genuinely thinking of China as anything other than a competitor to America is just trading one leather boot for a different flavor of leather boot. They are both capitalist states, and they are both acting in their own self-interests of cultural and economic dominance. The only effective difference is that one calls itself a republic while the other calls itself communist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨600 GB of Alleged Great Firewall of China Data Published in Largest Leak Yet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You do realize that the original post is on lemmy.zip and not lemmygrad, right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Citing “market conditions,” Nintendo hikes prices of original Switch consoles⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As much as shitting on Nintendo is deserved, the Tegra X1 is only a 10 year old chip, being first announced in 2015. It was, surprisingly, only two years outdated by the time the Switch was released.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reminder that you do not own digital games⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nintendo: “hold my beer”

  Game key cards are the stupidest idea I have seen in a long time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer interview: my Q&A with the team behind RetroDECK⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Between EmuDeck and RetroDECK and having used both, I 100% prefer RetroDECK these days. It’s a single Flatpak install, it Just Works™ out of the box, and it doesn’t clutter my system with random crap sprawled everywhere. I also appreciate that it has a Steam Input template providing a way to do basically everything emulator-related that I could’ve ever wanted.

  Major props to the team behind RetroDECK and the excellent work they’re doing. The future is looking bright, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Three years later, the Steam Deck has dominated handheld PC gaming⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Their approach leaves me with conflicting feelings.

  On one hand, I dislike how the Steam Deck is among the weaker offerings for performance. On the other hand, I appreciate that it’s not a commodified device like phones, which keep increasing in price with only miniscule incremental improvements year over year.

  It wouldn’t be as conflicting if they had better competitors followed the yearly-improvement business model, as that would give more of a choice for those who prefer buying a new device each year. But, at least right now, the competing devices are pretty shit. None of them have dual track pads and 4 back buttons in addition to the standard inputs, and they’re all running Windows 11.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can 2025 please be the year more games add Text and UI Scaling⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  >Mom, can we get quality options? >Mom: We have quality options at home.

  \Quality options at home:

  A photo of the PS5 next to the PS5 Pro

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Federal appeals court strikes down Biden net neutrality rules⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Brendan Carr, whom Mr. Trump has named as the incoming F.C.C. chair, has been a strong critic of net neutrality. The court’s opinion “puts to bed an issue that unnecessarily sucked up a lot of oxygen in tech and telecom for two decades now,” said Evan Swarztrauber, a former policy adviser to Mr. Carr.

  In a statement, Mr. Carr said that he was “pleased” by the decision and that “the work to unwind the Biden administration’s regulatory overreach will continue.”

  Sincerely, go fuck yourself, Brendan Carr.

  Net neutrality isn’t regulatory overreach. It’s overdue regulation to stop cable companies from fucking everybody by manipulating traffic and throttling connections to extort more money out of consumers and other companies.

  But, hey, you’re probably fine paying another $25 for a “4k streaming video package” that increases bandwidth for YouTube and Netflix, along with a $60 “online gaming package” that removes some artificial 150ms RTT latency.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Stop talking s*** about us' - Half-Life 2 mod blacklists a handful of YouTubers as 'anticitizens' and blocks them from playing⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Those mod devs are absolute assholes.

  As per the decompiler code, the game will refuse to load in certain cases with the message “Upgrade your PC, the current hardware is just ridiculous.” I can understand not wanting to field support requests from extremely outdated hardware, but being condescending and not even giving players the option to continue…

  BriJee, Amigus, and Obsolete— sincerely, go fuck yourselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Signal gets new video call features, making it a viable alternative to Zoom, Meet and Teams⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re barking up the wrong tree here, buddy. I’m not the person who said “it’s a few buttons.”

  I was merely pointing out that from a conceptual standpoint, deep links don’t need a team of dedicated researchers to figure out. The difficulty—as you pointed out—comes in knowing how to work with the various different platforms and integrating the feature into existing codebases.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Signal gets new video call features, making it a viable alternative to Zoom, Meet and Teams⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not really the best example to prove a lot of work. Call links are actually pretty easy from a conceptual standpoint:

  • Make a small website to accept https://join.my.website/?callid=…&password=…

  • Have the website redirect to: myapp:join/:callid/?password=…

  • Have your app register as a myapp protocol handler.

  • When a myapp:join/:callid/ URL is visited, open the same window that would be used normally for joining a call by ID.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo shuts down Ryujinx⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Because a subset of people are idiots. Remember: some people think unions exist to steal your money, socialism is communist dictatorship propaganda, and privatization of government services is good for everybody.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo shuts down Ryujinx⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Obligatory fuck Nintendo, but I also blame the selfish dumbfucks who keep posting videos of themselves playing unreleased games on YouTube and Reddit. If you want nice things contingent on having software which exists in a legal gray area, don’t openly poke the litigious hornets’ nest.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft paves the way for Linux gaming success with plan that would kill kernel-level anti-cheat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Because people are technologically inept and buy into the propaganda that kernel-level anticheat is more effective than the alternative solutions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is enabling BitLocker device encryption by default on Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This would be more acceptable if they didn’t unconditionally use software encryption by default. But, nah. Microsoft is going to Microsoft and force their preferences down the consumer’s throat, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to upgrade it to hardware encryption without a wipe and reinstall.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Chrome ships a default, hidden extension that allows code on *.google.com access to private APIs, including your current CPU usage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean…

  • It takes code from a remote source, compiles it into native machine code, and then executes said machine code.

  • It exposes hardware information, sensors, and system statistics to remote actors.

  • It can consume inordinate amounts of resources by mining for cryptocurrency in the background.

  • It keeps trying to get you to change system settings.

  • It’s hidden within the installers of other programs (thanks, Electron).

  Out of context, those sure make it sound like malware.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Chrome ships a default, hidden extension that allows code on *.google.com access to private APIs, including your current CPU usage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Chromium*, but yes

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SCOTUS agrees to review Texas law that caused Pornhub to leave the state⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In other news, the NSA adds blackmail to their income sources.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X is about to start hiding all likes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  My theory is that it gives Elmo a way to promote authoritarian and anti-LGBT tweets without making it obvious that the algorithm is politically based.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X is about to start hiding all likes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s just another Tuesday for MAGAts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Helldivers 2 has received 100,000 negative reviews since announcing players must link Steam to a PSN account⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  You won’t know until you try.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CenturyLink left users with no service for two months, then billed them $239⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Internet Lackof Service Providers

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vanguard takes screenshots of your PC every time you play a game⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve tried to see if this is real but I fail to find any source code leaks for Vanguard or if it has ever been leaked.

  The variable names suggest it’s a decompilation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Intel investigating games crashing on 13th and 14th Gen Core i9 processors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  You mean my 250W processor isn’t better than a 120W one from AMD? A 100W light bulb is clearly better than a 60W one, so I’m calling bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Deck hits over 14,000 games rated Playable or Verified⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Now it all works except for anti-cheat because of those terrible cheaters. publishers are too cheap to pay for dedicated authoritative servers, instead relying on P2P networking that blindly trusts other clients’ game state updates.

  FTFY