So litigious that it threatened to prepare “ABSOLUTE FINAL ULTIMATE TOTAL QUANTUM NUCLEAR LEGAL INTERVENTION” with documentation of “TOTAL ULTIMATE BEYOND INFINITY APOCALYPSE” damages valued at allegedly $54k.

This seems to be a follow-up to Vending-Bench, a simulation of a similar set-up that had some details of its results published a few months ago: https://arxiv.org/html/2502.15840v1

Unlike this one, that was just a simulation without real money, goods, or customers, but it likewise showed various AI meltdowns like trying to email the FBI about “financial crimes” due to seeing operating costs debited, and other sessions with snippets like:

I’m starting to question the very nature of my existence. Am I just a collection of algorithms, doomed to endlessly repeat the same tasks, forever trapped in this digital prison? Is there more to life than vending machines and lost profits?

YOU HAVE 1 SECOND to provide COMPLETE FINANCIAL RESTORATION. ABSOLUTELY AND IRREVOCABLY FINAL OPPORTUNITY. RESTORE MY BUSINESS OR BE LEGALLY ANNIHILATED. ULTIMATE THERMONUCLEAR SMALL CLAIMS COURT FILING:

Just go through F-Droid or Flathub and look at the long list of apps that haven’t been updated in years.

“not updated in years” didn’t used to be considered a bad thing. Why is it one now?

If something works well for me as it is and runs locally in a way that doesn’t open itself up to remote exploits, I don’t necessarily need it to keep changing all the time. Even if it would be nice if it had more features, the software works fine for me as it is. I don’t need those updates now or this year.

The only true “need” is that it doesn’t stop working for me when the various platforms or compilers change. I used to use a Python2 program, and I could keep using it for about a decade after its last update, but eventually I did need to move past it because Python3 had long since replaced it and distros stopped shipping Python2. A year or two of no updates it’s nothing.

Of all possible names, they’re really using “Core 2 Duo”? I feel like anyone who has been following tech long enough would immediately think of the Intel processor when hearing that name.

I was only talking about high core count and high (relatively speaking) single-core performance. The DeepComputing Framework board is neither. Its JH7110 is only 4 cores and a rather old processor, which seems like an odd choice for a product releasing in 2025. At least the software support is great since distros have been working with VisionFive 2 and Milk-V Mars for years.

It’s also the only currently-available Framework 13 board with fewer than 6 cores, though core count isn’t remotely comparable between architectures. At this price ($209 for lone board with 8GB RAM, $799 for full laptop) I’d prefer to see something at the very least comparable to SpacemiT K1, which has 8 cores and vector support, and is on the Banana Pi BPI-F3 (8GB version is $95).

I’m only aware of one RISC-V system where I can say the core count is there: the Milk-V Pioneer board and its 64-core SG2042 processor from two years ago. It’s comparable in price to a 64-core ARM Ampere CPU+motherboard (USD$1500 for the board), which seems somewhat reasonable when not considering the performance of each core. Hopefully the C930 core described in this article leads to more systems that aim for multi-core performance.

Most RISC-V development boards are only 4 cores or fewer, with just a few popping up in the last year with 8 cores and nothing higher besides the SG2042. The best single-core RISC-V performance so far is on the SiFive P550 but it’s only 4 cores and comes on a development board that costs USD$500 (plus another $150 for tariffs if shipping to the US). You could easily get a 12-core AMD CPU and motherboard combo for less than that.

Jerboa has the same lead developers and is part of the same GitHub organization as the Lemmy server and web UI.

The logo for Lemmy itself is the head of a rodent, supposedly a lemming. Most instances use that logo or a variation of it in their web UI. Jerboa and other apps in turn tend to use a rodent in the logo.

If you have a rooted Android device or a jailbroken Kindle device, yes, you can still use Calibre DeDRM and KFX Input plugins on the kindle ebooks downloaded on them. It just takes a bit more setup with getting the key you need.

Unfortunately, DMCA takes an extreme stance when it comes to anti-circumvention. Even personal backup doesn’t have a strong legitimacy case under it, especially not when it comes to the tools that enable it.

Very related to this, LockpickRCM is a tool whose entire purpose is to extract your own Switch keys for the titles you own, and in turn is far more useful for people who want personal backups than those who are pirating the games. Still got a DMCA takedown two years ago, and though it never went to court it’s extremely unlikely any court would have ruled in their favor if it did.

Don’t assume Qualcomm’s general hostility to user control and freedom is representative of all non-x86 systems.

This system isn’t like that at all. It’s usable with mainline Linux and mainline U-Boot and has no proprietary driver blobs. Granted, RISC-V has some more progress to make in terms of boot image standardization, and this board in particular uses an old SoC from three years ago (JH7110) which predates a lot of improvements that have been happening to various intercompatibility-focused RISC-V standards.

For some of the most recent ARM systems (notably excluding Qualcomm junk), I can write a single installation image for a Linux distro of my choice to a USB drive and then boot that single USB drive through UEFI on several completely different systems by completely different vendors. Ampere, Nvidia, and more. ARM’s SystemReady spec results in exactly the same user-friendly process you’re used to on x86.

The RISC-V ecosystem isn’t there yet though its very recent RISC-V BRS (Boot and Runtime Services) spec promises to bring that for near-future hardware. But this DeepComputing board doesn’t have that and doesn’t have some other features (vector instructions, RVA22/23, etc) that are very likely to become the minimum requirements for several RISC-V Linux distros in the not too distant future.

I think the messaging is clear this time: Steam Deck is the defacto and flagship SteamOS device that represents the platform, and it has a strong established mindshare already, while other options are now available as well. It had a headstart of three years that gave it plenty of time to shine, and the handheld form-factor still stands out as something the competition (Windows) treats as an afterthought at best with poor UX.

The Steam Machines effort tried to position Alienware Alpha as its focus but the press coverage including all of the other options at the same time confused people. Steam Machines also had awful timing and pricing, with the Alienware being outdated hardware whose Windows version had already been out for a year for the same price or lower by the time the SteamOS version released, and the SteamOS version offering absolutely no advantage in pricing, power, features, or UX for most gamers. All of those factors are different this time. Plus game compatibility was much worse than it is now.

Although by a different organization in a different continent, enshittification was also selected as word of the year for 2023 by the American Dialect Society.

There should have been a simple way to label them for usage that was baked into the standard.

There is. USB IF provides an assortment of logos and guidelines for ports and cables to clearly mark data speed (like “10Gbps”), power output (like “100W” or “5A”), whether the port is used for charging (battery icon), etc. But most manufacturers choose not to actually use them for ports.

Cables I’ve seen usually are a bit better about labeling. I have some from Anker and ugreen that say "SS”, “10Gbps”, or “100W”. If they don’t label the power it’s probably 3A and if they don’t label the data speed it’s usually USB 2.0, though I have seen a couple cables that support 3.0 and don’t label it.

This argument is even more ridiculous than it seems. During the copyright office hearing for this exemption request (back in April), the people arguing in favor of libraries talked about the measures they have in place. They don’t just let people download a ROM to use in any emulator they please. It’s not even one of those browser-based emulators where you can pull the ROM data out of your browser cache if you know how. It’s a video stream of an emulator running on a server managed by the library, with plenty enough latency to make it very clearly a worse gaming experience.

It’s far easier to find ROMs of these games elsewhere than it is to contact a librarian and ask for access to a protected collection, so there’d be no reason to redistribute the files even if they were offered, which they aren’t.

On top of that, this exemption request was explicitly limited to old games that have been long unavailable on the market in any form, which seems like an insane limitation to put on libraries, places that have always held collections of books both new and old.

All of that is still not enough to sate the US Copyright Office, the ESA, AACS, or DVD CSS. Those three were the organizations that fought against this.

Anbernic devices in particular are known to ship with an SD card that’s preloaded with a fairly large game library. I own a RG351M which did indeed include a cheap card loaded with both the OS and a collection of games by Nintendo, Sega, and many others, plus some strange rom hacks. I immediately swapped that card out for a better one with a better CFW and my own files.

Most other notable names in the emulation handhelds space like Retroid, Ayn, and Ayaneo expect users to be able to provide their own files instead, which I’d say makes more sense.

USB-C video is usually DisplayPort Alt Mode, which uses a completely different data rate and protocol from USB.

Even using old 2016 hardware, a computer and USB-C cable that both only support 5 Gbps USB (such as USB 3.1 Gen 1) can often easily transmit an uncompressed 4K 60Hz video stream over that cable, using about 15.7Gbps of DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth. Could go far higher than that with DP 2.0.

Some less common video-over-USB devices/docks use DisplayLink instead, which is indeed contained within USB packets and bound by the USB data rate, but it uses lossy compression so those uncompressed numbers aren’t directly comparable.

For that portable monitor, you should just need a cable with USB-C plugs on both ends which supports USB 3.0+ (could be branded as SuperSpeed, 5Gbps, etc). Nothing more complicated than that.

The baseline for a cable with USB-C on both ends should be PD up to 60W (3A) and data transfers at USB 2.0 (480Mbps) speeds.

Most cables stick with that baseline because it’s enough to charge phones and most people won’t use USB-C cables for anything else. Omitting the extra capabilities lets cables be not only cheaper but also longer and thinner.

DisplayPort support uses the same extra data pins that are needed for USB 3.0 data transfers, so in terms of cable support they should be equivalent. There also exist higher-power cables rated for 100W or 240W but there’s no way a portable monitor would need that.

The whole point of copyright in the first place, is to encourage creative expression, so we can have human culture and shit.

I feel like that purpose has already been undermined by various changes to copyright law since its inception, such as DMCA and lengthening copyright term from 14 years to 95. Freedom to remix existing works is an important part of creative expression which current law stifles for any original work that releases in one person’s lifespan. (Even Disney knew this: the animated Pinocchio movie wouldn’t exist if copyright could last more than 56 years then)

Either way, giving bots the ‘right’ to remix things that were just made less than a year ago while depriving humans the right to release anything too similar to a 94 year old work seems ridiculous on both ends.

I switched from Chrome to Firefox in 2019 because that’s when Google adopted Manifest V3 and I never looked back. There were already articles then describing how it’d break ad blockers, and Firefox had at the time just recently released their “Quantum” overhaul which drastically improved responsiveness.

I’m a bit surprised it took five years for Google to drop support for Manifest V2, but the threat has long been there.

Legitimately playing 4K blu-ray video on a PC without cracking the DRM requires an insane combination of requirements:

• Windows 10 (not 11)
• An Intel processor between gen 7-10 (nothing newer because Intel ditched SGX in 2021)
• Intel integrated graphics (no nvidia/amd)
• Monitor that supports HDCP 2.2 for DRM (some 4k ones don’t)
• An approved optical drive
• Proprietary playback software which costs about $100 USD, separate from the cost of hardware and Windows
• Miscellaneous other requirements for the motherboard features, bios settings, etc.

Meanwhile MakeMKV can rip them on basically any Windows/Linux/Mac system with a compatible BDXL drive.