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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)MI
Posts
11
Comments
607
Joined
2 yr. ago
  • I don't think you need any active sabotaging in this regard. I'm not really worried about the future of LLMs, because we are already at a point of feedback cascade where thanks to LLMs, more and more of content they steal from the internet has been AI generated by them anyway, which will eventually cause the models to collapse or stagnate. And besides, you wouldn't be able to sabotage at a scale required for this. Thankfully, the spread of fake AI generated websites and content it has enabled is so massive, that it works as well.

    I'm looking forward to that.

  • On one hand, I'm really glad they had something like this ready, espeecially as someone who did work in cybersecurity.

    On the other, I really hope they move it outside of the US jurisdiction. As it is now (based in Washington, as mentioned in FAQ), the US has basically won - CVE continues to function, they don't need to pay for it, and they can still exert power over it since it is still in the US. Fuck that.

  • This. The whole discussion about "tinkering with immutable distros" fells like it misses the point and literal meaning of atomic and immutable.

    Rebuilding the whole OS to layer another immutable read-only part into it isn't tinkering. Of changing one OS file has you rebooting, then that's not tinker-friendly.

    Atomic distributions are by definition something you don't tinker with, and it stays the way you need it.

    And no, having bundled distrobox or rollbacks doesn't make it tinker friendly, you can do both on normal distribution.

    But once you have done tinkering and want the system to stay the way it is - that's what atomic means and is for.

  • Snapshots and rollbacks already exist in other distros, so the (only?) advantage you are mentioning is kind of a weak point.

    Everything is a bother, since you can't just easily dnf install what you need, without actually rebooting or dealing with containers. I wasn't able to get a Win11 VM and work VPN properly working for long enough that rebooting to windows and just doing the RDP there was easier for me. (Because getting TPM to work simply wasn't feasible on atomic, and no - FOSS rdps didn't work)

    If an app doesn't have Snap or .App file, it will be a bother. Having to enter a container just so I can edit something in a properly set up nvim just sucks, adding bloat to something that could have been one easy command.

    There's a learning curve that gets in your way a lot, and since there are no actually payoffs for going through it, why bother?

    I currently have Bazzite on my desktop as a daily driver, and it has been way worse experience than I had with Nobara, debugging any issues with I.e audio or drivers is awfull because the resources about it are a lot sparser, and so far I simply don't see anything it does better. I did rollback my Nobara few times with brtfs and it never was an issue.

    One thing that may be worth it, if it's the case - can you actually export your layers into a VCS that you can then simply clone, just like you can with NixOS? Because if not, then following your logic, there's really no point in choosing atomic distro over NixOS. Sure, it has a slight learning curve, but you get a system you can not only rollback, but also easily clone anywhere you need it. What are your reasons for not using NixOS?

    That said - there is one use case where atomic distros are amazing - if you have a, well, atomic environment you don't need to change often. Bazzite on SteamDeck or LegionGo being the best example, I'm using it there and it's been amazing experience.

  • He's 18, contributed to the Switch emulator Ryjunix, alongside some other projects while also doing school. His reasoning is that he along with Whisky doesn't have the capabilities, manpower and skill to properly contribute to the Wine on MacOS, just like Proton is doing for Linux, and that he's worried that if Whiskey would make CrossOver unsustainable (who do have the resources to do it better), that it could kill Wine on MacOS.

    I'd say that's fair, and anyone allegeding blackmail or buying off is insulting.

  • This... Is actually unironically the best argument I've heard in favor of AIs so far, that I haven't thought about.

    Still - the thing you'd be doing instead is feeding money and attentention to AI bros, and that's probably even worse than any job you could be micro sabotaging.

  • How's PostmarketOS doing recently, anyone using it as a daily driver? I have a PinePhone in a cupboard that I bought more than a year ago that lasted like a week as my daily before I quickly gave up on it (or rather, reinstalled it to Kali Nethunter and just have it in my pentesting bag. Not that I ever used it :D), since it had too many issues.

  • I highly recommend looking into vertical ergonomic mice. It's really easy to switch to (took me around an hour to get used to it when I randomly decided to get one), I regularly switch between regular and vertical for work/gaming and I don't even notice any difference, and they are reasonably cheap (I've been using one for 15EUR).

  • If you can't stand anything else, I highly recommend giving vertial mouse a try. It took me around hour top to get used to it and forget that I switched mouse types, and I also regularly switch between vertical for work and regular for gaming and it's effortless.

    The point is that the mouse is, well, vertical, so you don't have twisted wrist. It's a pretty small difference and it's super easy to get used to it, and the mouse costs basically the same as a regular mouse. I have been using one for 15EUR for years now, and am pretty happy with it - I don't see any reason why not to make the switch, if it has a health benefit.

  • I have randomly decided to buy a cheap vertical mouse when I needed a new mouse in my office, and it has been suprisingly easy to get used to. I didn't struggle with it, and after a few hours I didn't even notice any difference, so I highly recommend giving it a try.

    I still use regular mouse for gaming, but for any office work or programming, as well as in a laptop bag, I have this mouse. I haven't really looked into any research behind it, and since I'm fortunate to not have issues with my wrist (so far), I can't really rate the health benefits, but I assume it should be at least slightly better than a regular mouse.

    And since the transition was effortless, the mouse is cheap and works for daily programming and web browsing perfectly, even if the health benefit was actually small, I don't see any reason why not use it instead of a regular mouse.

  • I didn't know that LINQ had more usages than just me being lazy to write a for loop, I have something to look into, thanks. Judging by the first documentation page I found, I wouldn't even recognize the syntax as the LINQ I'm used to. I really need to catch up on new C# stuff.

    Saying LINQ produces garbage is uncalled for when it’s a different use case and supports other or more use cases.

    I don't think I understand why would it be uncalled for, though. At least in the context of game development, where even small allocations can be a problem, it feels ok to generalize, especially if most people probably only encounter LINQ in it's basic form instead of the other use cases. Mostly for the sake of new programmers, who may fall into a trap of over-using it.

    Unless you are talking about using the term garbage, which now I realize may sound degradatory. That wasn't my intention, and I don't have any negative connotations with that word, so it was not meant in a negative way - I though it's the correct terminology for allocations that need to be collected by garbage collector later, which is an issue in performance critical applications.

  • I started as part time without any experience durring my college. I was studying gamedev software engineering, but we had one voluntary class about Ethical Hacking.

    I just asked my professor if he can reffer me to someone in the field, followed OWASP Web App Testing guide to the letter when testing the interview homework website, and landed the job without much prior experience (I did attend a few CTF competitions, though).

    Just following the checklist in OWASP testing guide made my results comparable to, or even better to some of my colleagues, and I've slowly learned the rest (especially internal domain pentesting) from our internal documentation or shadowing seniors during pentests, and simply being interrested in the field, having initiative and looking up new tools and exploits eventually got me to a Red Team Lead role (not a very good RT, though, but it did improve eventually).

    The pay was pretty good compared to what's usuall here in Czech, too. I could comfortably pay rent and get by even with part-time, during college.

  • I've never heard of them, but a colleague told me he recognized the name and thought that they do middleware that's extremely expensive. Haven't looked into it, but their FOSS stuff looks nice.

    Have you worked with their other/older projects? I'd be interrested in someones experience with this developer, if it's something that can be reasonably trusted.

  • I can imagine a few use cases, sorting or selecting or filtering a list is something that does pop up from time to time. It's nothing major, and definitely not a must have.

    From the top of my head it can be finding a closest enemy to the player, while it doesnt have to be done every frame, you'd want to do it often enough.

    Sure, you can just for loop it (as with any LINQ calls), but I'd say that LINQ is more readable.

  • I've picked the first example article I found, which was really old (Unity 2018), since I wasn't sure if the question was about what's garbage or how much, so I just wanted to illistrate the concept more than concrete numbers.

    The ZLINQ repo does have a benchmark screenshot in readme and it does shows that LINQ still does allocations. It's not clear what the benchmark was ran on, but it shows mean of 200b of allocations, so LINQ probably still does them in some capacity.

  • Game Development @programming.dev
    Mikina @programming.dev

    ZLINQ - A zero allocation LINQ rewrite, with added support for Unity and Godot scene hierarchy, that has a drop-in replacement support.

    I've recently discovered this project, which assuming it works as advertised (which I think wasn't really tested yet, since it seems to be a pretty new repo) sounds like a pretty good library to add into your toolbox.

    For those that do not know, LINQ is basically a query language over collections in C#, that allows you (from the top of my head) to do stuff like

     undefined
        
    someList.Where(x => x.value < 10).OrderBy(x => x.priority).Select(x => x.name)
    
    
      

    which would give you a IEnumerable list with names of elements where value is smaller than 10, ordered by priority.

    However, using LINQ in performance critical code, such as per-frame Updates, is not really a good idea because it unfortunately does generate a lot of garbage (allocations for GC to collect). Having a version that doesn't allocate anything sounds awesome, assuming you are a fan of LINQ.

    What are your thoughts? For me, it sounds like something really useful. While it's not really that difficult to avoid LINQ, I'm a fan of the s

  • My issue with canvas fingerprinting and, well, any other fingerprinting is that it makes the situation even worse. It plays right into the hands of data brokers, and is something I've been heavily fighting against, and simply don't visit any website that doesn't work in my browser that's trying hard not to be fingerprintable.

    Just now there is an article on the front page of programming.net about how are data brokers boasting to have extreme amounts of data on almost every user of the internet. If the defense against bot will be based on fingerprinting, it will heavily discourage use of anti-fingerprinting methods, which in turn makes them way less effective - if you're one of the few people who isn't fingerprintable, then it doesn't matter that you have no fingeprint, because it makes it a fingerprint in itself.

    So, please no. Eat away on my CPU however you want, but don't help the data brokers.

  • I did Software Engineering Bachelors and then gamedev masters, and while I didn't really appreciate it at the start, since it felt like I'm learning a lot of stuff I'd never need, I've eventually come to be really glad that I did it.

    Throughout the classes it felt pretty meh, I didn't understand why I have to do so much stuff that I'll never really use, and always felt like I'm just forgetting 90% of what I was taught the moment I was done with finals for that class. Why do I need to learn Smalltalk? Why Lisp? What even is Prolog? Does anyone even do UML anymore? I want to be a C# programmer, I don't need this.

    And it was true. From most of the languages I've had to go through, I don't remember almost anything. But that's not what it was about, and that's something I only came to appreciate with time - it was not about learning Pharo or Prolog, it was about overcoming the initial learning curve and getting somewhat familiar with OOP or formal-logic style of languages. And while you forget the details, the familiarity will stay with you. The goal is not to make you a Prolog programmer, but to make you a programmer.

    I've eventually realized that I can pick up any language pretty quickly, no matter what it is - because I've already seen and learned all of the different styles or types of languages there are, and no matter what it is, it's similar to something I vaguely remember seeing somewhere. And that's an immense help. I picked that up naturally, I've kept hearing the question "what programmer are you? What language you can program in?", and it felt weird - sure, I do know the most about C#, but I never had issues with picking up whatever was close at hand or needed, and writing anything I needed with a little bit of documentation and googling. And it was thanks to what I learned in school.

    And the same applies to the math and data structures that they hammer into you. Do I remember the difference between red and black tree, or a min-heap, and can I prove it? Not really, but I know they exist, and when I see a problem that sounds like it could use some obscure data-structure, it comes to my mind and I know what keywords to look up. And that's a skill that I've notice is missing from most of the people who didn't have formal CS background. Same goes for algorithms like FFT - you know it exists and what it's used for, and seeing a problem that could use it will trigger your PTSD.

    So, I highly recommend giving college a try. You will learn a lot of cool algorithm, and some of the classes were fascinating, and it will give you a vague overview that will stay with you throughout your carreer, feeding you with keywords about stuff that might be usefull for the problem at hand. It's the best thing I've done in regards to programming.

  • Opensource @programming.dev
    Mikina @programming.dev

    Looking for a lightweight blog/personal website that can Federate

    Hello!

    I've been wanting to start a blog, so I can get rid of the few opinion-pieces that are filling up space in my mind, but I've gotten stuck at selecting a good framework with which to host the site.

    Does anyone have a recommendation for a lightweight blog engine, that can prefferably federate into ActivityPub? I know about Wordpress, but I wanted to avoid it mostly in regards to security. Not that it would be unsecure per se and with proper maintanance, but I'm lazy and will probably forget to update it often enough, and due to it's popularity it's a pretty common target.

    So far I was considering https://writefreely.org/, but I'm not sure if I would be able to make it look good/interesting.

    I've also heard good things about Ghost, but the linked website seems to imply that federation is still not ready, is that correct?

    Is there anyone here with their personal blog, who have a software to recommend I should look into?

    Thank you!

    Game Development @programming.dev
    Mikina @programming.dev

    EDIT: Fake screenshot about some facts from the Palworld development, very loosely based on a really interesting blog post from the dev that's linked in the post body.

    UPDATE: So, apparently it's mostly fake, taken from this article [translation] (where they even mention some kind of VCS).

    However, even though it's not as absurd, it's a great read and a pretty wholesome story, so I recommend reading the article instead. And I'm even more convinced that this studio really does not deserve any of the hate they are getting.

    Here is my summary of some of the interesting points from the article:

    PocketPair started as a three man studio, passionate about game development, that couldn't find an investor for their previous games even though they've had really fleshed out prototypes, to the point where they just said "Game business sucks, we'll make it and release it on our own terms", and started working on games without any investor.

    They couldn't hire professionals due t

    cybersecurity @infosec.pub
    Mikina @programming.dev

    What distro you use/recommend as a daily driver for a Cybersecurity job (pentesting and Red Teaming)? Would QubeOS be a good fit?

    Hello!

    I'm working as a pentester/RT Operator in a cybersecurity company, which for some reason is a Windows shop, so we are mostly forced to work within VMWare VMs, WSL and similar. However, I've recently found out that we can in fact dualboot or reinstall our laptops, so I'm now looking for a good setup or recommended distros to use.

    When I last tried switching to Fedora, my main issue was that since we are deeply integrated into O365, and our Exchange server isn't configured to allow 3rd party apps (and we can't create app passwords), accessing Teams, Mail or just writing reports in Office was a struggle. And another issue was the fact that our PT VPN is Checkpoint, which I did not manage to get working on Linux.

    I'm of course familiar with Kali/Parrot/BlackArch, but I would not consider those fitting for a daily driver - each engagement can get pretty messy, and I think it's better to start with a fresh VM for every customer, just to avoid any potential issues.

    I've recently di

    Game Development @programming.dev
    Mikina @programming.dev

    We've had this Slack emoji ever since we started porting a Unity project and dealing with their bugs or support. I think it's pretty fitting now.

    I think now is the best time to share it. Unfortunately we're using it way more than we would like.

    Programming @programming.dev
    Mikina @programming.dev

    What do you think would be an actually good use of blockchain/smart contracts? What kind of problems (big or small) is it a good tool for?

    Hello!

    When I was creating a CTF for a conference, I've finally got to learn about how blockchain and smart contracts actually works in practice, and the whole concept is simply brilliant. A quick introduction for those unfamiliar with it would be in this summary, but just to summarize how I basically understand it, blockchain is simply a VM that runs code (smart contracts) a both the code, and result of every execution of it is calculated by a bunch of users (so, mining is basically running a VM) and appended into the blockchain based on some kind of consensus and proof of work. This means that you get a single source of truth and history of every execution of a smart contract that is decentralized and you can rely on it.

    But, almost every use of blockchain or smart contracts I have seen has pretty large issues either in sustainability in the long term, or in cases where you simply need some form of an authority to prev

    Patient Gamers @sh.itjust.works
    Mikina @programming.dev

    I'm looking for games with unique or experimental game design

    Hello!

    One of the things I really enjoy is unique, interesting or out-of-the box game design. It doesn't have to be AAA game, it doesn't have to be a perfect game, it can be pretty rough - but if it has a mechanic or design element that is somehow unique or original, I'm instantly in love with the game.

    The problem is that such games do not usually get a lot of exposure, since it is after all a niche. And that is really a shame - in the past few years the most fun had with video-games was playing such smaller and shorter indie games with something unique or pretty clever, where I can obsess over the design and more importantly - get inspired. That leads me to my question - are there any communites or blogs or content curators that are about this kind of smaller, maybe unpolished, but original games? Or what games would you recommend that would fit into this description? I don't mind if it's a 5 minute experience. It's ok if it's more interactive art than a game.

    To better illustrate

    Lemmy Bots and Tools @programming.dev
    Mikina @programming.dev

    Would a single-user self-hosted frontend for interacting with Fediverse apps be feasible?

    Hello!

    While discussing about privacy on Lemmy and in the Fediverse, I've stumbled upon an idea that would solve some of the issues inherent to the fact that you need to have a home instance, that is under control of someone you have to trust. But my knowledge about ActivityPub is lacking, and I'm not sure if something like this would be possible or not. Also - it possible that something like that already exists, but I didn't manage to find anything.

    So, would it be possible to create a Fediverse/ActivityPub app that is just a self-hosted frontend for interacting with other apps, such as Lemmy or Mastodon, that only hosts your own personal data related to your account, but not the content you post to other instances?

    The main thing I'm unsure with is how Fediverse works in this regard - who hosts the content. If my home instance is programming.dev, and I create a Post or a Comment on lemmy.ml, who is the source of truth for that post? Does the content get saved on my home instance,

    Privacy @lemmy.ml
    Mikina @programming.dev

    Apps/Extensions that feed random fingerprinting data? Something I'd call "offensive privacy tools".

    Hello!

    Ever since I've seen the screenshot of permissions that the Threads app requires, I've been thinking that it would be a great idea if you could have an app that would give them the permission, but kept feeding it random and bullshit data.

    This could extend to other fingerprinting tools on the web - I can make my browser have limited fingerprinting, but as far as I know, it's usually static. Using letterboxing will set your pixel size to a common value, and privacy focused browsers are using constant User Agent that includes everything.

    But that's not going to help too much - I want my fingerprint to be random, and totally wrong. Feed them unusable data, something that not only isn't useful for them - but also actively sabotages their analytics. Pair that with a VPN, and now they have no way how to track you across sites, and also get a lot of bullshit data.

    Another great thing would be an Adblock extension that not only hides every ad, but also click on it. Multiple times.

    Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Mikina @programming.dev

    In my understanding of the main principles of the Fediverse, federating with any large corp should never even be considered. Is my understanding wrong? What is the "idea of the fediverse" to you?

    There is one argument I've seen missing in most of the de/federation discussions, that I think should be mentioned, and warrants it's own discussion.

    I've seen a lot of people mentioning that defederating with Meta means we have broken the promise of Fediverse, that you can use one account to interact with whatever service you choose, and that it should be inclusive.

    But I don't agree that's the main idea. There is something that's more important, and to make sure I'm not misinterpreting it, I'll just directly quote various websites about the Fediverse I've found (I was just taking top results for Fediverse on DuckDuckGo, but I did select only the parts that are the most important point for me personally). But I do concur, I was not able to find a single source of truth, and I'm not really sure how credible the resources are, so please disagree with me if it's wrong or I've chosen some no-name site that just matched my rethorics.

    https://www.fediverse.to/ has the following sentence

    Headphones @lemmy.film
    Mikina @programming.dev

    ELI5 - What is the difference between headphones, earphones and IEMs?

    Hello! I was looking through the sidebar's list of recommended earphones, and after clicking through some of them, I've realized that I actually don't know if that's a list for me, a consumer looking for something to jack into my phone.

    I've tried quickly looking for differences between IEMs and headphones, but didn't managed to reach a conclusion. I've vaguely familiar with the term "monitors", since I do help out from time with band shows, but I never actually dealt with audio equipment or audio setup (aside from carrying it to the stage). From what I assume based on what I've seen, monitors are the the speakers that play on stage, so the band can hear what they play. And IEMs are earbud versions of monitors that the band uses instead.

    I've always assumed that they are basically headphones/earphones, just connected to some kind of transmitter, and calling them IEMs just makes it easier to find earbuds focused on audio quality, because the term is not as mass-marketed as earbuds are