122
I prefer apps over websites generally because native programs are usually smoother than in-browser programs, but I despise apps that are clearly websites wrapped in Electron to justify being an app. Wasting my RAM and wasting my time.
WhyEssEff
joined 5 years ago
MODERATOR OF
nothingburger speech of all time?
historians if you're reading this and he does it you have to call it the Fools Offensive
been a consistent listener since 2019 to pad my commutes. they hit a slump in the Brandon years that was furthered by Matt being out of commission, but they've been putting it back together this year IMO. Doesn't seem as checked out as it was in the past some years. Matt was great last episode and he seems to be recovering well, it's a delight to hear him on the pod more often lately
honestly I was penning a defense of this on "this work fundamentally relies on specific presentation and double meanings" grounds but I realized midway through typing it that it's a very silly problem because the solution to this is:
- hire someone fluent and proficient in both languages, someone with Spanish literature degree would be the type of person you’re looking for here
- have them act as an Official Liaison between you and the localization company
- ask in abstract "can you convey this, is there things we can do with this idea" with the company
- get your Official Liaison to proofread it and describe what they are reading in detail to you and also loop them in on it and ask them if there’s anything they can think of that they could be doing to make the translation utilize its language better.
- if you're still uncomfortable rubber-stamping a translation you can’t read, call it the Toby-Supervised Semi-Canon Spanish Translation or something. You know how to disambiguate where needed! If people still say "well I want a canon translation," that's where you can comfortably draw the line and say "it is my personal creative philosophy to not rubber-stamp things I cannot understand" because at that point it is pedantry.
the second, more PR-centric solution to this flare-up (aka, if your art brain still freaks out at the first option) is to toss money at the fans who localized your game for free, like "Sorry, I'm really really really not comfortable releasing my art in languages I can't understand, it's a personal creative neurosis. I really appreciate what you are doing, I just cannot officially rubber-stamp a translation, but here's some funds roughly-derived from the steam sales in LatAm countries you helped bring my game to. Thank you." It will, to adopt a cynical outlook, immediately create backlash to the backlash and temper future reactions. Crisis averted, people don't attribute your creative neuroses to racism. Just be sure to also be like "no, don't harass them please, it's highkey my bad and I wanted to make amends because I was being stubborn, it makes me feel worse if you take this out on them" if you want to at least somewhat avert the rabid counterswing of anglophone fans that is the price of this option.
I think it's a bit silly on both sides, it's not like unofficial fan translations are an invalid way of playing a game (e.g. playing Mother 3 in English), but it’s more silly on Toby's side because it's not a binary choice and you can take steps to preserve your integrity to the best of your ability while broadcasting I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WORDS HERE THIS IS NOT EXACTLY CANON. I can empathize with his reservations as someone who has her own creative-control neuroses, but you have to recognize that it’s going to rub people the wrong way if you refuse to support their language.
it's the same argument for supporting revisionist USSR over liberal US, I believe it's much easier to resolve the contradiction if people are given the tools to identify the problem. Honestly, only abject betrayal of the revolution itself would even make it slightly contentious when compared to the horrors of American Empire
even if CPC stays the capitalist path, I'd still support China, because I believe that a hegemon with an internal contradiction of being founded as communist and distributing communist literature that fails to diverge from a capitalist mode of production is historically progressive from its predecessor, the unapologetic anti-communist bulwark of U.S. hegemony 
country with four times less people has more people incarcerated
you know, we make light of it, but China statistically has a mass incarceration problem: google "22 percent of the world's prison population"
furthermore, Zionism, in essence, is undeniably the suffering of the Palestinian people! Zionism as a basic idea is the colonization of the place where Palestinians are living. How do you create a Jewish state in a land populated primarily by Muslims? What is this 'Zionism' you have created in your mind?
also indigeneity only matters insofar as it exists as a colonial relationship. even if 'Jews' (all? a majority of them? a plurality of them?) descend from ancient Levantines, the reality is that of you settling a place that is/was actively lived in by another people, forcing them out of that land and subjugating them.
It's like the "reverse racism" argument. It simply does not matter or harm beyond the level of individual prejudice. The primary harm of racism comes from the fact that it exists as a social structure that is propagated to systematically reinforce socioeconomic hierarchy and create 'internal enemies' for the insecure and/or downwardly-mobile whites to blame instead of the bourgeoisie. Similarly, colonizer's 'indigeneity' does not fundamentally matter because it does not make them colonized.
he made a 'release schedule' so trash 
even his binge watchers 'clowned' on him 
58
[Séamus Malekafzali] Hezbollah confirms that it launched missiles at an IDF base south of Haifa
(hexbear.net)
source. looking for a translation of the announcement so I can add it as alt text/body text, preferably non-MTL. as for now, via Google Translate:
Statement issued by the Islamic Resistance (1):
Military Media of the Islamic Resistance
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
And permission has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, God is fully capable of giving them victory.
God Almighty has spoken the truth
In revenge for the pure blood of the Supreme Leader of the Muslims, His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Imam Sayyid Ali al-Husseini al-Khamenei, may his soul rest in peace, which was unjustly and treacherously shed by the criminal Zionist enemy, and in defense of Lebanon and its people, and as part of the response to the repeated Israeli attacks, the Islamic Resistance targeted, at midnight between Sunday and Monday, March 2, 2026, with a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of drones, the Mishmar al-Karmel missile defense site belonging to the Israeli enemy army south of the occupied city of Haifa. The Resistance leadership has always affirmed that the continuation of Israeli attacks and the assassination of our leaders, youth, and people gives us the right to defend ourselves and respond at the appropriate time and place.
The Israeli enemy cannot continue its aggression, which has lasted for fifteen months, without receiving a warning response to stop this aggression and withdraw from the occupied Lebanese territories.
This response is a legitimate defensive response, and those responsible and concerned must put an end to the Israeli-American aggression against Lebanon
And victory comes only from God, the Almighty, the Wise.
Monday, March 2, 2026
212 Ramadan 1447
47
Since a lot of miscellaneous online accounts are reacting glibly to the idea that states like California and Colorado could force Linux to bake forced age verification into the kernel, my instinctual response is to a) disregard the opinions of smug computer guys because they're usually libertarians and b) consider which vectors these laws will actually be enforced through. There is a clear sweeping effort to implement these policies, so I assume the effect will be somehow tangible.
Since I'm doing self-study for IT certs at the moment, I’ll list out all the ways I can think of off the top of my head, though some, if not most, will be overcomplicated/inefficient. Disclaimer that I am only doing some investigating here and relying on my prior experience/knowledge otherwise (reason: eepy) so do not take this as anything definitive/inherently correct. I'll try to skip over the ones that have the same vector of implementation/execution (I.E. where are they enforced through?)
- Client-side:
- via hardware/manufacturers - controls on boot loaders via boot-restriction mandates, so that commercial laptops and desktops sold in the US are required to ship with UEFI firmware that refuses to boot un-American operating systems.
- via OS distributors - operating systems/distributions made by companies operating in the US are required to integrate age verification protocols into their onboarding experience in order to continue operating/doing business in the US, or in order to avoid fines. Microsoft, Apple and Google would probably already be on board with this from the jump, so what's a few rankled Linux distro maintainers going to do? Not comply? Time to pack your shit and move, then! Now you can't access the consumption core as a market anymore. Sucks to suck!
- via browsers - Browser controls. This is how it could transmit your information reliably to web servers. Google is based in the US, Mozilla is based in the US, Apple is based in the US. Chrome (plus all US-based Chromium forks), Firefox and Safari now ship with a process that verifies you have a digital ID registered on your device, prompts you to register one if you don't, and locks you out until you do.
- Server-side:
- via websites/applications - All social media (or even all sites/apps) operating out of the US are legally required to validate against a digital ID protocol baked into your operating system, routed in via your Freedom-Compliant Browser as a mandatory fingerprint that you can't not expose. If the digital ID is determined to be not present, either through subversion or non-compliant software, you cannot access the site. This would probably be selectively enforced w/ regards to penalizing the sites themselves, because otherwise Silicon Valley throws a tantrum, but it would force your browser to expose your age at best and your identification hash (or however they would decide to implement the protocol such that you are a traceable entity) at worst.
- Social enforcement:
- on an individual level - Even if it's not 'truly enforceable' if you find a hack that lets you bypass it because you know how your device works, it could be used as a charge-stacking/pinning vector for dissidents, call it Digital Identity Fraud.
- on a corporate level - Most of them will pre-comply, but if they don't, just declare their products non-compliant with the law and treat them accordingly, killing their legitimate revenue and forcing all non-compliant systems underground so laymen decide it's not worth the trouble of navigating even if it's better for them, like piracy
Ultimately this is just me theorizing with my limited half-finished A+ cert study knowledge and general tech understanding, but I tried to engage the thought experiment on how this could be turned into something tangible as best I can.
I'd like to turn this over to people who might know more than me here. Is my idea of how this might be implemented (if done competently) consistent with the underlying tech, or am I misunderstanding some things? What other vectors might be used here? If these new bills pass, does anything change for us? What could our approach be individually/as a site/as a movement? What behavioral changes should we implement with regard to our internet usage as precaution? Would appreciate answers to any of these bits, even individually. Thus far the only approach that I can think of on 5 hours of sleep is the correct approach and has always been the correct approach and that is to 
but I'm curious if and how we can struggle against the furthering of the panopticon as targets of it.
52
merchant class seizes power and starts a Wario Land timer on life as they exponentially delete the biosphere. you have half a millennia to install a DOTP before your planet is razed. the most dice roll bottleneck fathomable. if there are dead aliens and they developed like us we gotta one-up them quick gamers
actually never mind… that's too long… that's a while… too far away 
view more: next ›
A spectre is haunting Silicon Valley—the spectre of Ed Zitron