Hiker, software engineer (primarily C++, Java, and Python), Minecraft modder, hunter (of the Hunt Showdown variety), biker, adoptive Akronite, and general doer of assorted things.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 10th, 2023

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  • They can do whatever they want. Operating systems are effectively divided into two partitions, privileged kernel space and user space.

    When you run a kernel level anticheat what you’re really doing is running a custom program in the kernel space. It effectively becomes part of Windows.

    This means that anything that an operating system can instruct hardware to do, that program can do. It can read your files, check your email, print letter you wrote to your crush in Word but “deleted” because it was embarrassing, log every key you type, turn on your webcam, listen to the microphone, download explicit or illegal imagery, upload your hard drive to the NSA, disable your computer fans, etc

    You really only want to run this stuff if it’s from a trustworthy vendor and even then it’s completely defensible to object to running one of these programs.

    Currently these things have yet to be caught doing any of these things, but that’s because they haven’t been instructed to, not because they can’t.



  • China is state capitalism. Capitalism isn’t losing. The West is losing because China is using state funds to buy up successful Western companies, and as their new owner, has the ability to force them to do China’s bidding.

    Meanwhile the West is completely barred from buying a majority stake in any successful Chinese company and even if it could would not be taking it over on behalf of serving the state.

    The problem is China plays by its own rules and those rules are heavily stacked against every other nation. That was fine when they were making junk for Walmart; it’s not so fine when it’s highly sophisticated electronics and software (that can do whatever China wants it to in the West) … and to add insult to injury it’s often based on stolen Western technology (since us idiots decided to put the factories that manufacturer the designs there).



  • I had some pretty terrible Thai in Poland, so it’s definitely not uniquely Mexican food 🙂 That’s just one that I’ve had a few more encounters with that was more consistently bad.

    Fair point about the cultural influence; it’s probably less cultural influence than number of immigrants (and the US definitely has a lot of immigrants from asia and Mexico). I live in Ohio, so I’m fairly far from the border, but the Mexican food still ranges from “pretty good” to “fantastic.”

    Meanwhile finding like good French, German, or Belgian cooking, even in areas with historic immigration from those areas in decades or centuries past is quite difficult.

    Even more traditional “early European American immigrant” food (like chicken and noodles, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, mush, turkey, roast beef sandwiches, etc) can feel endangered outside of Amish country, family kitchens, and large chain restaurants that do it badly.


  • It’s not just the US that has bland restaurants and/or is afraid of spice.

    I’ve been to restaurants in the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Austria, and Bulgaria.

    I’m sure there are places that spice things up more and some of the restaurants were really good, but some were also some of the most bland food I’ve had at a restaurant.

    It’s the same thing in the US; there are places that won’t put any spice on and there are places that will leave you crying the food is so hot and everything in-between.

    Also every “Mexican” food dish I’ve had in Europe has just been bad. Y’all are doing it wrong.



  • Yes, it’s expensive as hell, and my suspicion is that long term the displays will be replaced with a waveguide (Stanford’s looks pretty good at this point), so it won’t need the external-facing display

    Interesting; any more information on this? I tried a search but didn’t turn much up.

    I think that they saw what Google glass could become capable of, and thought that the phone as it is now (screen, etc) was going to become obsolete at some point, and they were terrified of losing that race.

    That’s very fair… I definitely think the only viable future here is lightweight AR glasses.