That’s 2 different questions.

I believe VLC can open m3u links (playlists). Not sure about m3u8.

As far as downloading videos from an app, good luck with that. Or if you mean using an app (say, to download from a website), you could probably do it with Firefox?

If you have access to a computer, jdownloader2 is super easy to download from most websites.

I got Macs and an iPhone and I can download stuff so I know you can with Android. (I can also send videos easily between Android and iPhone.)

Thoughtcrime issues? You have thoughts about harming someone, you get punished for it even if you don’t take action?

I suppose the upshot is it could be used to detect and diagnose mental illnesses?

Furthermore, going into the future, it could ostensibly be used to control parts of the body that are damaged or otherwise not working, or emulate their function. For example, someone with damaged vocal cords could use it to speak through connected speakers. Someone who is paralysed could use it to walk with a mechanical exoskeleton.

The problem with something like that is, it would have to be privacy focused. Samsung, one of the most popular smartphone makers, updated their Health app a year or two ago to where you had to agree to allow them to sell or give away your medical information if you want to continue to use Samsung Health. And that’s a Korean company. Apple Health is still private, but Apple is an American company, so the question is begged, “but for how long?”.

So, the question is, are the powers that be/fascists in charge going to use it to weed out LGBTQ+ and put them in concentration camps, or what?

You ever see a dump truck that says “not responsible for broken windshields”? Guess what. EVERY truck — this is US law anyway — is responsible for securing its load. So why do they have the sticker? So you don’t bug them about it. Or at least so most people don’t bug them about it. They also say stay back 200 feet. That’s not a law. It’s just a bumper sticker and is equally as enforceable. If they crack your windshield because they didn’t secure your load, you (or rather your insurance company) can go after them. But the truth is, most insurance companies just write off so many broken windshields per however long anyway, they won’t go after the company even if you have proof. But they could — and so could you.

Post the review anyway. Or at the very least post a review that says “the terms say I can’t post a negative review so believe me when I say the service was acceptable.” It’s not a negative review. It’s not a positive review either. It’s a neutral review and it calls out the clause. It is heavily implied to be opposite of what you said. You said the work was acceptable, implying it’s unacceptable. If you used the same tactic and said the work was great, the opposite would appear true, that it was not great. But acceptable is not great. So say it was acceptable and imply you were forced to say that. Thusly, an intelligent person will see your message for what it is.

At least with Cyberpunk we have a number e.g. CP77

So… they let you uninstall it? Or are we talking about spyware not made by Meta?

Because the way I understand it, Meta has been hacking iPhones ever since the App Tracking Protection thing came about. Mostly via the in-app browser. Point is, Tim Cook said Meta can continue to track you, they just have to get your permission first, and even if you said no, they still found a way to do it anyway. Therefore, are Meta products not spyware?

(So are Google products. On iPhone, you block ads system-wide with a DNS filter. Same as you do on an unrooted Android phone, since you don’t have access to the HOSTS file — rooted users are just using AdAway or something like it to update HOSTS. Anyway, Google apps use Google DNS, which they say makes them faster, but it also has the convenient upshot (to them) of going around your ad blocking, and forcing ads on a user who has explicitly configured their device to block them.)

Not really. Most people don’t care about privacy, or their personal data being sold to the highest bidder. People still use Facebook, too.

Borderlands. The first one. The game is amazing by yourself and slightly better with friends. It’s not meant to be worse either way. It’s just a lot of fun.

The later BL games were made the same way, but I haven’t found any of the sequels (/“Pre-Sequel”) to be as engaging as the original. They are bigger and more ambitious, though, with BL2 being a fan favorite. I just really like the Soldier (Roland) from the first game. The other games don’t have a character I like playing as much as him, so I’d rather join the original rather than settle for a lesser character.

Actually, the best co-op game is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It’s played with your left hand and your right hand. I’m being a bit of a smartass, but technically it does qualify as co-op because two characters on the screen are being independently controlled and they must work together. But it is specifically designed to be played by one person. Your dominant hand should control the older brother, with the analog stick moving him and either trigger doing the action, whatever that may be (it’s basically a one-button game, plus the stick). Your other hand controls the younger brother, same thing. So naturally the older brother runs straight and does what you expect but the little brother tends to stumble and waver. All intentional. Also, don’t bother with the remake. It breaks a few things and honestly doesn’t look much better. Different art style, not better. Just play the original. You can get it on GOG on sale all the time for like $2-3. Also, it’ll take ~4 hours to complete and you’ll probably never want to play it again (but recommend it to everyone). I actually bought the remake (mistake) and had my wife play it. For the hell of it, I speed ran both of them (this was on Xbox) for the achievements. Then I did the same on the original. Interestingly, you do not have to complete the game to get all the achievements! You don’t even have to complete the final fight, or do the climactic scene before the final fight. Before you’re even aware the climactic scene is coming, you sit on a bench and blip, there’s the last achievement, if you’re doing an Achievement% run, that’s when you call time. (I’m not a competitive speed runner. I just did the runs to pop the achievements before uninstalling them.)

Is that the first game? Yes, it was great. But the publisher was scummy AF and broke the game up into four parts. Now, granted, each part came with an anime DVD which gave you some of the back story/real world issues around the back story, so they did try to make it worth it. But still, it should have been one game.

It’s the other way around, it’s down to GrapheneOS to support other hardware. They simply choose to focus on Pixels.

You’re onto something with the AirTags but you haven’t got it quite right. Every Apple device participates in the Find My network, which means any Apple device marked as lost will have its location reported, anonymously, by every other Apple device it can communicate with. This is a good thing, unless you’re being stalked via an AirTag placed on your person, but Apple has taken pains to mitigate this issue. One shoe company recently released shoes with AirTag compartments so parents could track their kids, and the placement should mitigate the beeping they can emit. Honestly the AirTags and Find My network do more good than harm, the impact to devices participating in the Find My network is minimal, and if it’s your device that’s lost, you don’t want people opting out so thieves can get away with stealing your stuff.

Yes, ironically I just read another article about how Facebook/Meta has gotten around the ATT (App Tracking thing, I forget what the other T stands for) with in-app browsers. The article’s point was that all the beef between Apple and Meta is just for show and that they need each other like Apple and Google, Apple and Samsung, et al. So yeah, with you on that.

I read about this earlier on Ars Technica. I was expecting a paywalled link. Was not expecting to find a mention of “No Longer Human.” Ars didn’t mention that. Or the chat logs. It was a long article but didn’t go into the same depth.

So, I’ve read “No Longer Human.” A more recent translation is called “A Shameful Life” and that’s a bit more apt, I think, but doesn’t have the same ring. It’s about a guy who feels less and less like a person, like what he does and feels doesn’t matter. It’s a wild book, about a double suicide, and the author later killed himself much the same way. There have been several adaptations — none of them very good. None of them quite captured the book. I wonder if it’s just unfilmable. Anyway, it’s a shame that it’s being referenced here, because it’s good literature worth considering, and I hate to see it maligned in much the same way as the Doom game was following the Columbine massacre. Relevant or not (guns in that case, suicide in this case), it’s a shame art gets associated with tragedy simply by association.

Perhaps the same could be said of AI technology, and it has been. But certainly AI needs better safeguards. According to Ars, when the guy started asking about suicide, ChatGPT said it could not help him — unless he specified he was talking about fictional characters. So he did that (Ars constantly refers to it as a “jailbreak”) for a while, and then I guess (and they guess as well) that ChatGPT just assumed that context and stopped requiring him to specify that.

Not on Android. People love to stan for Android because “it’s open source,” but Android would have gone nowhere if Google didn’t buy it, and Google wouldn’t have bought it if they weren’t convinced it would let them scrape more personal data than Gmail. (And Andy Rubin made Android because he heard Steve Jobs say the iPhone would run OS X, and he thought he could probably whip up a Linux distro to run on a phone.)

You could get an iPhone and not run any apps by Google, Meta, Microsoft, X, or any of the other privacy-opposed companies. You’d also better change the default search off of Google. DuckDuckGo is an option. Ecosia might be. Not sure. The issue is, while Apple says they’re all about privacy, that’s based on them being a computer/hardware company first (and Google being a data company first). However, Apple is heavily leaning into services now — Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+, and more — and there are rumors they want their own search engine. So while Apple may be privacy strong now, you don’t know what they’ll be a year from now, or three, or five.

It’s like Tim Cook (Apple CEO) said about Facebook when they introduced the tracking limiter. “You can still give Facebook permission to track you all over the web, they just gotta get your permission first.” That’s true of privacy. You can still use Google, Meta, Microsoft, X, TikTok, and other privacy-violating companies’ products, but what you share is entirely up to you. You can use some of those services in Safari and block some tracking, or you can install the apps and allow it all. It’s up to you.

Or, you can buy a Pixel and reward Google’s business model, and put GrapheneOS on it. That is probably better, privacy-wise, than using an iPhone. But you’re still rewarding Google’s business model. And if they’re making so much money off your data that opting out isn’t even an option, why does the Pixel cost the same the iPhone does (and more, considering the Pixel Fold)? You are getting more RAM, but RAM is cheap. You’re not getting a better processor — Apple has won that race for years. Camera tech is about 50/50. Screen is up in the air — I think Apple’s is better, but Google et al use higher resolutions. Apple buys from the same companies but screens are made to spec which is why Apple’s are better than those by companies they buy from. Their spec is more demanding. “Good enough” is what passes in Android — it’s like how iPhones use NVMe and Androids use UFS. NVMe is more expensive, and it’s faster on paper, but in the real world? UFS is good enough. You wouldn’t see a difference, or a significant one, in real world usage. So what are you paying for in a Pixel? The lower specs plus the privacy/data factor should make the Pixel significantly cheaper… except Google is a publicly traded company, so they can’t sell it that low.

Apple may not be the best option, but they’re advertising that they are (with regards to privacy). And I think they’re trying. I’m not saying they’re saints. They are doing better than Google though. And you have to decide if that’s worth your money. And dealing with a crappy keyboard. The keyboard sucks.

Yeah, I think it was meant to. Maybe the origins are same/similar.

Fun trivia: Isekai is a Japanese genre that means “trapped in another world.” Sword Art Online made it popular but it wasn’t the first, even in Japan. The idea of being trapped in a video game goes at least back to Tron in the 1980s. SAO was itself a revamp/remake of an older anime called .hack//SIGN — not officially, but it shared way too many details with that decade-older show. (The books were written around the time it was airing, but the show would have been green-lit almost a decade later, knowing there was a very similar show already out. And the same people worked on it, made the music, made the games, so yeah, similar DNA in both.) But the first isekai may have actually been Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Isekai has western origins, Japan just gave it a simple name. And now it seems like there are dozens of isekai (word is the same singularly and plurally) coming out every year, and most of them suck. But isekai is everywhere. Stephen King has written isekai — The Dark Tower, The Talisman, 11/22/63, Fairy Tale, and probably more.

YouTube is trash. I was watching a cooking video, and I swear, after 60 seconds of ads, the YouTuber talked for maybe one whole minute before it went to ads again with a 60 second timer.

Try it and see?

If it’s the soda I’m thinking of, it’s sickeningly sweet, with something like 130% of your recommended sugar intake in a 20 ounce bottle — roughly 600mL to those outside the US.

These days I can’t drink soda (or anything carbonated, like champagne and beer) but I believe I have had Fanta Strawberry before. I know it was one strawberry brand.

But honestly, what olden days? The only strawberry soda I remember from back in “my” day (the 80s and early 90s) was Safeway Select. We didn’t have Fanta back then where I was. I remember Sunkist and maybe one other brand had orange and grape soda, but only Safeway had strawberry soda IIRC. And it wasn’t nearly as sweet!

“Woman”? Probably. “Human female”? Most likely.

Girls figure out from a much earlier age, on average, that most guys are comfortable knowing, that vibrations in that area feel good. So even without thinking about sex or pursuing orgasm, they will seek out things they can straddle that move in a way that feels good. One of those things, if you’re around enough girls or a girl long enough you learn but maybe wish ya didn’t.

How do you mean “where is it going?”

The most recent iteration of “derpy” I’ve heard was in the Kpop Demon Hunters fandom. That’s what fans call the tiger-spirit-thing. I don’t know what its real name is, or if it has one, and I’ve seen the movie three times. At this point I don’t care, its name is Derpy.

If you’re not familiar, it’s a tiger spirit (apparently this is a thing in Korean folklore) and it appears to one of the demon hunter girls, and after initially appearing scary, it knocks over a planter, and proceeds to try to right the planter before proceeding. After several failed attempts, the girl intervenes and sets the planter right… only for the tiger to knock it over again and again attempt to right it. (It’s not a scary scene. Everyone loves the tiger.)

There isn’t a phone. They’re just photoshopping other phones into photoshops of gold cases.

There isn’t a phone. All there is, is a grift.

Continue to not use Facebook/Instagram.

I switched to Lemmy when Reddit came out in support of people who abuse children. I don’t even mean Trump, I just mean in general. I suggested abusers in general should face harsher penalties. They banned me for it. I said “holy shit you just did me a huge favor, apparently I was on the wrong site because our values are 100% incompatible.”

I mean, there isn’t even a debate. I’m not talking about people who find themselves attracted to kids. I’m talking about people who actually went out and hurt a real child facing longer, more meaningful sentences and they said nah, those people are people and need to be protected.

I’ve moved social networks on account of incompatible values and I think others will, too. Maybe not the majority but I think some others will. Especially as things get worse. There are networks for people who hate (like Truth Social), and networks for people who don’t care (like Facebook/Insta/Whatsapp), but I think as things change, more people will care and will look elsewhere. Not everyone but some people.

It seems to me that Intel themselves aren’t doing anything wrong here by letting the government take a stake in their business.

They never promised you privacy, they sell complex tiny calculators that add and compare ones and zeros trillions of times per second.

As a Mac user, I feel that it affirms Apple’s choice 5 years ago to design their own silicon. Apple made the right move.

Owners of current Intel chips should be fine. It’s future Intel chips I’d worry about. AMD is probably still fine. PC builders and enthusiasts still have a lot of good choices.

As for the government, I don’t really see how. 10% doesn’t give them enough clout to ask for a back door. The UK didn’t ask chip makers anyway, they went straight to Apple and asked for the encryption keys. Apparently they’ve dropped the request, but that’s not something that needs to be done at the CPU level. It’s also the government — they’re not gonna do it the best way. They’re not gonna do it the way a mad Linux geek would do it if they were a fascist dictator. Governments are still run by Boomers.

It’s more likely exactly what Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders say it is: the government is investing in Intel so their investment through the CHIPS Act pays off. It’s just good business sense. Set aside the president’s nationalism and look at it strictly as a business decision. It actually makes sense, hence why Sanders is behind it as well.