[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 1 points 16 hours ago

Again; I must iterate how wrong you are.

People can and do travel and move to different countries with their consoles. There can be multiple accounts per console. People can feasibly have two consoles right next to each other connected to different networks and swap carts between them. People can change consoles because they upgraded or because they have multiple consoles in the household. And people can and do resell carts all the time.

These situations do not matter as the logic for detection is very simple. Is cartrige A with serial ABC in more places than is reasonably expected of that cartridge? With physical copies that limitation is exactly 1 place, 1 system at a time. Irrespective of who it's registered to or who owns it. Any cartridge that has been in more than one place at one time and your system cert is logged and inserted in the next upcoming ban wave / wave of system cert revocations. This revocation goes live on Nintendo's servers. Your system will not get the Online Service kiss of death until after this happens.

Other checks such as location, account, how often it happens and such can and may happen after this check to automatically limit false positives and prevent you from being instantly banned. But their system works; and it's consistent as to which condition triggers it; that's when the identity of any physical or digital game title is in more places than it is licensed to be in. (Actively caught piracy).

And there is no way to differentiate those scenarios even if you can/could track each cart individually.

Except that they can, and do. See other comments around for the how and why...it's related to Nintendo Gold Points.

There could be a record of which consoles have played which carts, but that gives you exactly zero information about how many owners the cart has had.

There absolutely is. An unmodified Switch console reports this sort of telemetry on a regular basis to Nintendo; and it's clear that they can ban your system based on bad Title IDs; (basically fake title headers, or dumped cartridge headers used to conceal flash cartrige usage)

Switch accounts aren’t associated to consoles and physical game entitlements aren’t associated to accounts. Any account can be in any console at any time and instantly show in in multiple places and while you could account for travel times it’s a pretty pointless thing to do that, to my knowledge, Nintendo is not doing.

They don't have to be. Just have to log that your System Certificate reported a new title. This System Certificate is used in all traffic to Nintendo as it authenticates your system to it's network.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 18 points 3 weeks ago

Alpha channels are critical. The ability to have images have transparency in them is much more useful than you believe it is. Many end users have a need for it, more than they know they do; so this argument really isn't doing much for your stance supporting PNG. Similarly PNG has supported alpha channels for quite a while.

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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by fwygon@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

Video Title: Open Source People are Fighting to Kill Open Source Projects

My take; since the comments have buried it under the angry defense of Wayland and Freedesktop by trying to dismiss the video creator (who isn't me).

I do think the video makes a pretty good point about how people who attack others for continuing X11 is very much violating the ethos of FOSS communities in general; and I have no doubts that if the claims made in the video are true; I think folks like Stallman would be kind of upset with people behaving that way because it only harms the FOSS community as a whole.

You may not agree with people who want to use X11 for their very niche use cases. That’s fine. But I do question any motives behind any kind of behavior that is not only ceasing all development on X11, but actively blocking and sabotaging others who want to work on X11 from doing so.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 24 points 10 months ago

Whoof. The burn.

Glad to see some people understand how much more problematic Trump is than anything that Harris would be doing.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 17 points 11 months ago

Firefox is open source. It's not going anywhere; even if Mozilla Co. goes broke and closes down the Mozilla Foundation.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 25 points 1 year ago

Linux must achieve 100% compatibility. Otherwise the doubters will not shut up.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 20 points 1 year ago

I should point out that this isn't always "Google is trying to block adblockers" again!

Google can, will, and does simply change how the YouTube watch pages look, feel and operate behind the scenes quite regularly.

Thankfully we have people like those at the FreeTube, NewPipe and yt-dlp projects to sift through those changes and update the code to cope with the new output.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 39 points 1 year ago

I pay nothing for running SearXNG locally on my machine.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 25 points 2 years ago

Unpaid internships really do need to be abolished.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 20 points 2 years ago

Most anti-cheat software can't do much on the client side. Really all it can do is look around at it's environment where it's allowed to look and see what's going on.

Most Cheat Software will run on a higher privilege level than the game; whether that's as an "Administrative" user or as "root" or "SYSTEM" in a context where it's running as an important driver.

In any case, the only thing the Anti-Cheat can reliably do on the client side is watch. If it's cleverly designed enough, it will simply log snippets of events and ship them off for later analysis on a server side system. This will probably be a different server than the one you're playing on, and it won't be sending that data until after the match has ended properly.

Sometimes it might not even send data unless the AC server asks it to do so; which it might frequently do as a part of it's authorization granting routine. Even when it has the data there may not be immediate processing.

Others have also mentioned that visible action may be delayed for random time periods as well; in order to prevent players from catching on to what behaviors they need to avoid to get caught, or to prevent cheats from getting more sophisticated before deeper analysis could reveal a way to patch the flaw or check to ensure cheating isn't happening.

Since cheat software can often be privileged, it also has the luxury of lying to the server. So clever ways to ensure that a lying client will be caught will probably be implemented and responses checked to ensure they fit within some reasonable bounds of sanity.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 32 points 2 years ago

I don't agree with the assessment of the OP or the original blog article. Grayjay is Open Source software.

It is, however, NOT FREE SOFTWARE and I do know that organizations like the FSF and OSI do not consider it to be free.

The free status of this software was never misrepresented by Louis Rossman. He blatantly explains that there is a cost to this software and that the license is how he plans to enforce his means of collecting this fee on the honor system.

He also outlines how he cannot; and will not...stop anyone from forking this software and basically removing the payment bits of the code and just redistributing it under a different name. I strongly recommend someone does that...and maybe license that work under a much more unrestrictive free license that FLOSS-Only users might find more palatable.

I get that nobody wants or needs to trust Louis to keep his word. He's gotta run a business at some point...and distributing this software this way on the honor system might not pan out quite the same way he hopes it will. I do hope that at the point where he and his compatriots choose to stop maintaining the application; that they do immediately retcon this restrictive license; and re-release it under a new, free, and unrestrictive Open Source Software license.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 28 points 2 years ago

Gross.

If you live in the USA; Go raise a fuss and holler and make sure that your local House Representative knows that this shit is absolutely facist and unacceptable.

[-] fwygon@beehaw.org 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

AI art is factually not art theft. It is creation of art in the same rough and inexact way that we humans do it; except computers and AIs do not run on meat-based hardware that has an extraordinary number of features and demands that are hardwired to ensure survival of the meat-based hardware. It doesn't have our limitations; so it can create similar works in various styles very quickly.

Copyright on the other hand is, an entirely different and, a very sticky subject. By default, "All Rights Are Reserved" is something that usually is protected by these laws. These laws however, are not grounded in modern times. They are grounded in the past; before the information age truly began it's upswing.

Fair use generally encompasses all usage of information that is one or more of the following:

  • Educational; so long as it is taught as a part of a recognized class and within curriculum.
  • Informational; so long as it is being distributed to inform the public about valid, reasonable public interests. This is far broader than some would like; but it is legal.
  • Transformative; so long as the content is being modified in a substantial enough manner that it is an entirely new work that is not easily confused for the original. This too, is far broader than some would like; but it still is legal.
  • Narrative or Commentary purposes; so long as you're not copying a significant amount of the whole content and passing it off as your own. Short clips with narration and lots of commentary interwoven between them is typically protected. Copyright is not intended to be used to silence free speech. This also tends to include satire; as long as it doesn't tread into defamation territory.
  • Reasonable, 'Non-Profit Seeking or Motivated' Personal Use; People are generally allowed to share things amongst themselves and their friends and other acquaintances. Reasonable backup copies, loaning of copies, and even reproduction and presentation of things are generally considered fair use.

In most cases AI art is at least somewhat Transformative. It may be too complex for us to explain it simply; but the AI is basically a virtual brain that can, without error or certain human faults, ingest image information and make decisions based on input given to it in order to give a desired output.

Arguably; if I have license or right to view artwork; or this right is no longer reserved, but is granted to the public through the use of the World Wide Web...then the AI also has those rights. Yes. The AI has license to view, and learn from your artwork. It just so happens to be a little more efficient at learning and remembering than humans can be at times.

This does not stop you from banning AIs from viewing all of your future works. Communicating that fact with all who interact with your works is probably going to make you a pretty unpopular person. However; rightsholders do not hold or reserve the right to revoke rights that they have previously given. Once that genie is out of the bottle; it's out...unless you've got firm enough contract proof to show that someone agreed to otherwise handle the management of rights.

In some cases; that proof exists. Good luck in court. In most cases however; that proof does not exist in a manner that is solid enough to please the court. A lot of the time; we tend to exchange, transfer and reserve rights ephemerally...that is in a manner that is not strictly always 100% recognized by the law.

Gee; Perhaps we should change that; and encourage the reasonable adaptation and growth of Copyright to fairly address the challenges of the information age.

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fwygon

joined 2 years ago