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pteraspidomorph

1,085 karma · joined August 24, 2018

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pteraspidomorph··on Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat
Just a lil' userscript.
pteraspidomorph··on Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat
This is why we need to rename "social media" to the more accurate "antisocial media". I think everyone reasonable wants kids to be social with each other.
pteraspidomorph··on Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat
I really dislike the font on this website. It renders extremely misaligned at small sizes, or is that just my browser?
pteraspidomorph··on Meta VR Glasses
Pancake optics are really cool, very clear and lightweight without some of the light distortions you get from traditional optics. They are worth the tradeoff. But they don't work out beyond 100-ish degrees. I think the Steam Frame is really pushing the maximum the industry seems to be able to get out of them.

More niche manufacturers like Pimax have accomplished much higher FOVs but people keep returning them because they're expensive, heavy and uncomfortable (I think they're popular among people who lie down in cockpit rigs).

pteraspidomorph··on Meta VR Glasses
Valve never sells at a loss. A significant slice of that is probably the RAM and storage, even at scale.
pteraspidomorph··on Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived
I drew Vuk,a boy who lived in the 13th century Balkans. He died at 2. His dad was already gone. According to the statistics the life expectancy at birth for him was around 50%. I suspect a lot of our random people would have died early, if they were born before the 19th or 20th century...
pteraspidomorph··on AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
You can access page info through address bar shield > connection secure > more site information too. It used to be easier to access from there, but they redesigned that at some point I think.
pteraspidomorph··on AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
Also, people can and should go to the firefox settings > Permissions and data > Autoplay and change the Default for all websites to "Block Audio" (at least).

You can set per-hostname exceptions if you like! CTRL + I > Permissions

pteraspidomorph··on Devices with GrapheneOS support should be available in 2027
Graphene passes basic integrity, so most of them work. There is a list here:

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

pteraspidomorph··on Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2
I suspect that while Ron Gilbert is great at what he does, Tim Schafer was always the funnier writer of the Monkey Island trio...
pteraspidomorph··on Em dashes are fucking amazing
It's a stylistic choice. Here's an analysis, complete with a link back to an old HN discussion:

https://www.pbjstories.com/blog/spaces-around-em-dash

I beta read for a popular american author and they started using spaces too.

pteraspidomorph··on StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time
> It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps

If only. Maps are still super broken around where I live. I personally mapped everything in OSM (which thankfully is used by most third party services these days) a couple years ago, but Maps is still people's primary source for routing and traffic related stuff.

pteraspidomorph··on EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors
Remember it's also coming for you:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require...

> The KIDS Act Regulates Private Messages, Too

pteraspidomorph··on Your ePub Is fine
Have you tried foliate? Their embedded reader works quite well for me.
pteraspidomorph··on Denuvo has been cracked in all single-player games it previously protected
Maybe because a lot of users still have those games wishlisted?
pteraspidomorph··on State of Kdenlive
I can confirm that it got more stable for me in 2025. Good job!
pteraspidomorph··on I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over
I had this problem with Facebook 15 years ago. Nothing new, but as always, people will avert their eyes until it begins to affect them personally.
pteraspidomorph··on Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users
And we're still getting passwords changed periodically or requiring a number, upper case letter, symbol...

I'm an European engineer and I can confirm that our tech is often broken and customer-reachable people are usually obtuse and hostile about it. We don't even seem to properly implement our own legal requirements. Sometimes, Americans implement the RGPD better than we do.

pteraspidomorph··on Discord Alternatives, Ranked
As someone who has been on Discord since the beginning, runs Discord communities and writes Discord bots, here's my list of three things that I believe would make a viable Discord competitor:

- Free without requiring self-hosting;

- Absolutely frictionless community access - here's an invite link, you can start chatting immediately;

- High quality voice calls with screen sharing.

I don't think there is a competitor that hits all three points right now. Screen sharing in particular is often disregarded by developers who have limited interaction with Discord and don't truly understand the platform. It was not an original feature, but it is Discord's killer feature. Because screen sharing is also impromptu videogame streaming.

pteraspidomorph··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
OK, but you're not the one making that decision and you don't know/can't control how that decision is being made.
pteraspidomorph··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
That has always been the case, yes, though I'm not sure what you mean by "illegal" content. There is only a small overlap between NSFW and illegal content, and the NSFW filter has never been concerned with, uh, violating photograph copyright or something.

You don't have to take my word for it, just check it yourself, although it seems that this week, they renamed the NSFW setting to "Age-Restricted Channel" (in preparation for this change, no doubt). The verification-related portion of the behavior I described was implemented for the UK months ago.

The description still contains: "Age-restricted channels are exempt from the explicit content filter."

EDIT: IANAL (or american) but if Discord was policing content for legality rather than age-appropriateness, wouldn't they lose DMCA Safe Harbor protections?

pteraspidomorph··on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Here's how Discord works. A third or so of its features, such as forum channels (EDIT: I think this specific example was wrong; stage and announcement channels, but not forum channels) or role self-assignment, are locked behind Community Mode. After enabling Community Mode, server owners are NOT ALLOWED to turn off content filtering anymore, meaning that by default, content in every channel may be filtered out by systems you cannot configure.

The only way for the server owner to circumvent the filter is to mark a channel as "NSFW", which doesn't necessarily mean the channel actually contains any NSFW content.

This change will not actually require ID for content confirmed to be NSFW. It will require ID for each and every "NSFW mode" (unfiltered) channel. The end result is that you have three choices:

- Ditch Discord features implemented in recent years (or at least this is currently possible) - this prevents a server from being listed as public;

- Require ID checks from all your users (per channel);

- Have everything scanned from all your users (per channel).

pteraspidomorph··on Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate (2020)
RTS like Age of Empires were more geared towards combat, and base building existed only to supplement that. Whereas in games like Pharaoh and Caeser you could plan your city if you wanted to.

My iteration of The Settlers was The Settlers II (also its later 3D remake) which is very much designed around roads that units mostly had to use! This was found in other early instances of RTS but later discarded (including in The Settlers series).

It's true, however, that events like floods or the tax collector were missing. Those are more easily found in board games.

pteraspidomorph··on Why medieval city-builder video games are historically inaccurate (2020)
Of course not, everyone knows there were only five Istari in total, Saruman the White, Gandalf the Grey, Radagast the Brown and the two Blue ones that were kidnapped by aliens.
pteraspidomorph··on Instabridge has acquired Nova Launcher
I used Nova for years and went through this research before, having tested many alternatives. Octopi is what you're looking for. It can do pretty much everything Nova did for me and more besides. They also update often with improvements and fixes!
pteraspidomorph··on The Going Dark initiative or ProtectEU is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt
I'm happy Airvpn is rarely mentioned in mainstream vpn lists and don't typically mention them myself (sorry airvpn folks, but here's my apology) because I suspect its relative obscurity is in great part the reason it works so well. Not only reputation - it's technologically good too, supports all the payment methods, good prices, lots of exit points, no nonsense. I've been using them continuously for several years.
pteraspidomorph··on The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting
If you enable privacy.resistFingerprinting in about:config I believe instead of trying to prevent fingerprinting entirely, it's supposed to make things annoying for the fingerprinters by regularly changing the various spoofed factors.
pteraspidomorph··on Steam Frame
I only own Index controllers, not the headset. I have a mixed tracking Pico 4 setup and wireless functionality is definitely one of the pluses; the higher resolution panels also make a significant difference (the Frame and the Pico 4 seem to have the same resolution). This is basically an open Steam-backed Pico 4 that's superior to my hardware and definitely superior to the Index. Here's a comparison:

https://vr-compare.com/compare?h1=0jLuwg808-j&h2=w8xCM-oPA

The 1000hz tracking frequency is from the Lighthouse tracking system, which the Frame loses. For that and other reasons, I am not convinced the controllers are better than the Index controllers. Personally I think it's likely I will keep using the Index controllers, since I have the whole lighthouse setup and I own trackers as well.

pteraspidomorph··on Steam Machine
I'm led to believe there's only so much FOV you can get out of pancake lenses? This is already spoecced to be the best pancake FOV seen to this date.
pteraspidomorph··on Steam Frame
As an Index controler and Pico user: The back straps are pretty much essential for any serious use; the controller purportedly includes finger tracking (capacitive) but you can't really open your hand without dropping the controller unless you have the strap.

If as I currently intend I end up purchasing this device, I will definitely endeavour to obtain the controller straps as well as the top strap for the headset at the same time, and I recommend others do the same.

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