Topics

51

DC Gamer Club / Good Instructions for Offline Updates for PS4/XBONE

« on: December 23, 2018, 01:13 PM »

When Christmas Day hits, a bunch of people are going to open up brand-new Xbox or PlayStation consoles, plug them in, and wait for gigantic system updates to download and install. Depending on how many eager gamers sign on to Microsoft or Sony’s services to grab updates—or play brand-new games—this process might take longer than usual if either company’s servers are feeling strained.

Thankfully, you don’t have to download multi-gigabyte console updates at the same time as everyone else. You can actually download the latest version of the system software for Microsoft and Sony’s consoles right now.

More at link.

I just downloaded it to hopefully stave off needing to make an update on Christmas, and it's pretty straightforward.

52

Living Room / Surreal trip through the $175 B Amazon Marketplace

« on: December 19, 2018, 02:14 PM »

(courtesy of The Verge)

When you buy something on Amazon, the odds are, you aren’t buying it from Amazon at all. Plansky is one of 6 million sellers on Amazon Marketplace, the company’s third-party platform. They are largely hidden from customers, but behind any item for sale, there could be dozens of sellers, all competing for your click. This year, Marketplace sales were almost double those of Amazon retail itself, according to Marketplace Pulse, making the seller platform alone the largest e-commerce business in the world.

For sellers, Amazon is a quasi-state. They rely on its infrastructure — its warehouses, shipping network, financial systems, and portal to millions of customers — and pay taxes in the form of fees. They also live in terror of its rules, which often change and are harshly enforced. A cryptic email like the one Plansky received can send a seller’s business into bankruptcy, with few avenues for appeal.

Sellers are more worried about a case being opened on Amazon than in actual court, says Dave Bryant, an Amazon seller and blogger. Amazon’s judgment is swifter and less predictable, and now that the company controls nearly half of the online retail market in the US, its rulings can instantly determine the success or failure of your business, he says. “Amazon is the judge, the jury, and the executioner.”

That and more on the specific instance in the article that sounds Hellish and arbitrary at the Verge.

I purchase a lot off Amazon.  I did the vast majority of my Christmas shopping there.  I use Subscribe & Save, Prime Pantry, Prime Reload, Twitch Prime, and a lot of other Amazon programs.  I try to stay away from Kindle, but even have books there now, and excised Alexa in favor of Google Home (though it's really two devils in that case, rather than a devil and an angel).  But seeing these articles, it makes it hard to support them.  But so far, the convenience outweighs my conscience.  That, and knowing people who make a lot more money in that way than they ever were able to through Mail Order, eBay, and Brick and Mortar.

53

General Software Discussion / SOLID: A New Paradigm for the Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee

« on: December 19, 2018, 02:08 PM »

With the impending G+ doom, I've been looking at a lot of options: The FediVerse (Diaspora, HubZilla, etc), the Mastodon Federation, MeWe, OpenSocial, and more.

But I just came across the concept for SOLID. (Github)

From the page, the blurb is "Solid was created by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Its mission is to reshape the web as we know it. Solid will foster a new breed of applications with capabilities above and beyond anything that exists today."

It's based on data ownership and making your data yours.  The applications that you choose to give access to it do not store that data, they merely use it to deliver their functionality to you.  This location where you store your data is termed a POD, which can be hosted on a provider, or locally, or in any location of your choosing.  It seems a lot like Keybase in that manner, though a lot less techy.

Has anyone looked into this or heard about it?  I'm just exploring it a bit now, as there is an importer for all of the G+ information exported from Takeout.

54

General Software Discussion / MOVED: DC Archive

« on: December 12, 2018, 04:45 PM »

This topic has been moved to Screenshot Captor.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=46827.0

55

General Software Discussion / MOVED: Donation software

« on: December 07, 2018, 06:57 PM »

This topic has been moved to Announce Your Software/Service/Product.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=46802.0

56

Living Room / Energy cost of mining crypto more than the cost of mining precious metals

« on: November 05, 2018, 08:19 PM »

Energy cost of 'mining' bitcoin more than twice that of copper or gold (via The Guardian)

Article based on the following research: Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies (note: URL so long because of entitlements- if you remove part of the URL, you will only get a preview)

One dollar’s worth of bitcoin takes about 17 megajoules of energy to mine, according to researchers from the Oak Ridge Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, compared with four, five and seven megajoules for copper, gold and platinum.

I've been sort of on the fence in regards to this whole cryptocurrency movement, and haven't gotten involved out of mostly impetus to do so.  I've thought that the other arguments against it were spurious, however.  But this...  I don't see how you come back from this if true.  I didn't look deeply into the methodology behind the findings, however.

Any thoughts?

57

Living Room / Smart Tech people do some really stupid things

« on: November 04, 2018, 01:05 PM »

I saw this article today on Medium:

How I used a simple Google query to mine passwords from dozens of public Trello boards
https://medium.freec...rmation-8e5ccfef2724

excerpt:

A few days ago on 25th April, while researching, I found that a lot of individuals and companies are putting their sensitive information on their public Trello boards. Information like unfixed bugs and security vulnerabilities, the credentials of their social media accounts, email accounts, server and admin dashboards — you name it, is available on their public Trello Boards which are being indexed by all the search engines and anyone can easily find them.

With a simple google query, you can find this same info.  And this was a few days ago, and it still exists today.

Code: Text [Select]

1. inurl:https://trello.com AND intext:@gmail.com AND intext:password

in a simple google query turns up username and passwords for some company gmail accounts.

I was flabbergasted when I saw that they still exist!  There were other queries in there too for all sorts of simple information- stored in publicly accessible Trello boards.  The even worse thing about this, is that this article was written on May 9.

We know about the stupid things that people do.  Using password for their password or abcdef or 12345.  But this kind of stuff... I would still think that people at tech companies would take this into account.

I guess I was wrong.

58

N.A.N.Y. 2016 / MOVED: ScreenShotter at 4K resolution

« on: October 22, 2018, 02:30 PM »

This topic has been moved to Automatic Screenshotter.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=46563.0

59

Living Room / An article on the slow death of Google by Lauren Weisman

« on: October 08, 2018, 09:30 PM »

Love him or hate him, I think that Lauren Weisman says some pretty compelling truths in this article.

Google is dying. It may be possible to save the patient, but it’s also quite possible that Google has already passed the point of no return, especially with the array of forces now attacking it from all sides and from within. Since this situation has been largely enabled by unforced errors committed by Google itself, the prognosis can only be described as bleak.

Unfortunately, I have strong doubts that Google is capable at this time of making the kinds of “lifestyle changes” that would be required to truly save themselves. I would love to have these doubts proven to be incorrect.

A company named Google and its parent Alphabet will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, but for all practical purposes the Google that we all know appears to be in a kind of terminal decline, even as the money continues rolling in for now.

more at https://lauren.vorte.../the-death-of-google

60

Living Room / Google finds Vulnerability in G+ API. Sunsets G+ in response.

« on: October 08, 2018, 03:18 PM »

The most damning thing?

Google did not initially disclose a Google+ security bug when it first discovered it this spring because it feared regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing documents and people briefed on the incident.

(from https://www.cnbc.com...s-of-plus-users.html)

Google is shutting down Google+, a social media service it launched in 2011 that few people used. Google made the announcement the same day that the Wall Street Journal published a story about a bug in the unpopular social media service that allowed outside developers to access users private data. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google first learned about the breach in March of 2018, but quietly patched the bug and decided not to tell anyone for fear of a regulatory backlash.

(from https://motherboard....g-exposed-user-infoc)

Google's statement can be found on its blog at https://www.blog.goo...rity/project-strobe/

G+ was actually the only social network that I used.  I liked the fact that even though I didn't trust Google, they didn't really require much to register.  My account used was a throwaway account, so the security breach didn't matter.  I also liked the fact that they were pretty open with communities, for those times that I really didn't feel like signing up for yet another forum to discuss another niche subject.
 Facebook requires you to sign up to see anything and requires your personal data, so I have a different feeling towards them.  As a result, I had several communities that I used on G+, but avoided any on Facebook.

I know that it never really caught on... did anyone else use G+?

61

General Software Discussion / Site to see the historical DNS records for an address

« on: October 06, 2018, 01:14 PM »

Need to find the historical data for a site in regards to DNS records after they've already changed?  This site was a lifesaver!

https://securitytrails.com/

Why would you need it?  A service that I was using went down unexpectedly.  I'd even anticipated it, as I asked them "How do you make money" and they never responded.  But I used it anyway, and my data was stuck after their domain expired.  I went there, looked up the domain, and found that their previous IP was still up- it was just that the Domain had expired.  I put the domain name in my hosts file with one of the old IPs and was able to get in and retrieve my data.  After that, I figured I'd post it here in case anyone else had a need for it in the future.

62

General Software Discussion / Vivaldi and Multiple User Profiles

« on: September 24, 2018, 01:25 PM »

So, I started trying to look for a viable alternative for Chrome (trying Vivaldi and Brave right now for the second time each).  Though I liked Brave, there was just a bit too much still missing for me right now, and for having an ad blocker built in, they sure do miss a lot.  So, I'm on Vivaldi again.  Initial impressions are good, though I'm surprised that there aren't multiple user profiles built in.  Did any Vivaldi users here use this feature in Chrome?  If so, how do you get around it?  I see several threads on it, but nothing solid, other than installing a completely new instance.

63

General Software Discussion / Humble Bundle for Xara tools

« on: September 11, 2018, 04:25 PM »

We'd been talking about Affinity Publisher vs Adobe Indesign, and now Humble Bundle comes along to throw another entry into the ring.

https://www.humblebu...tive-design-software

For $25, you get a lot of software- but I'm most interested in Xara Designer Pro X.  Has anyone used it?  I've looked at a couple of comparisons and reviews, but nothing beats that hands-on review from a non-reviewer.  At $25, it's hard to lose out getting it, but I was just wondering if anyone had experience with it.

64

Living Room / The Web is still a DARPA weapon

« on: August 28, 2018, 10:48 AM »

The Web is still a DARPA weapon (and other stuff)

A visualization of all of the root servers, and the countries that control them

I went into this admittedly skeptical.  I just saw the title, and it was a free article (the only kind I read on Medium) and decided to read it.  He makes a convincing case.  The title is only a part of the article; he goes into other parts of history and the problem until finally settling on his point at the end:

Seriously, WebAssembly is the worst idea since JavaScript in browsers.
Not only because it’s a binary blob served by foreign companies but run on your PC, under the law of your country, but because they know you, your relations, your interests, and will “customize” that blob.

Even if implemented perfectly, without a single security issue, it’s a weapon.

You might object that JavaScript is already a weapon ready to fire on every PC and every smartphone out there. A weapon that constitutes a threat to free speech even if we ignore the power of Google and friends.

And you would be right.
JavaScript is a dangerous weapon that should be disarmed.

I cannot really understand how European states let this happen.

I’d like to think they were bribed, but the sad truth is that they do not understand the matter. Not even a little bit.

But developers do!
It’s time for developers to fix this mess.

Though it seems somewhat that he was burying the lede, the information is actually really interesting, and the point well is taken, so I forgave the article for it.



from The Web is still a DARPA weapon on Medium.

65

Mini-Reviews by Members / MOVED: selective backup of an account

« on: August 09, 2018, 09:40 AM »

This topic has been moved to General Software Discussion.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=45968.0

66

General Software Discussion / Interesting Software

« on: July 31, 2018, 06:32 PM »

Sometimes, I come across software on the web that I want to let people know about.  I don't really want to make a new thread of each one, and so sometimes I just don't.  I figure that others might have the same dilemma, so just like our thread for Android apps, I figured that this could be a place to post about interesting software that others might like.

I just came across one on GHacks that I wanted to share.  The original article can be found here.

It's called RainWallpaper, and it's free and portable.  It's a dynamic wallpaper engine, and it seems to be worth looking into.  I am running it now, and it's very soothing to see the wallpaper animate.  It's using about 20-40% GPU, but it pauses automatically during full-screen activities (like games) and gives you the ability to pause it also.  It also includes authoring, and sounds (with the ability to mute it).  It looks well thought out.

The homepage is found at http://rainysoft.cc/rainwallpaper.html.  It accesses a deviant art gallery from within it to download new wallpapers, and it seems like quite the active community from what has been posted.

Take a look, and post your little known software gems also!

67

Found Deals and Discounts / Mind Collected on BDJ 2018-07-13

« on: July 13, 2018, 10:09 AM »

Mind Collected on BDJ today 2018-07-13

http://www.bitsdujou...tware/mind-collected

Some people just work more efficiently when they operate on a visual basis. But databases just don’t seem to want to cater to the visually-minded – until now! Today’s discount software promotion is a powerful way to organize ideas and things visually, and it’s called Mind Collected.

Mind Collected lets you visually catalog ideas and things using photos, names, tags, notes, and interconnectivity. With Mind Collected, you’ll be able to automatically search and fetch images from the Internet that match what’s in your database, or use your own custom photos. Just input the things and concepts you want to catalog, make the connections to other things, and let your brain take over the rest!

The secret is this – by visually cataloging these things, you make them psychoactive, making your brain think about them more often without any additional effort. The result is a massive improvement in behavior that causes you to react more accordingly – recalling things better, making better food choices, the list is endless!

Has anyone used this?  It looks like an interesting concept.  Normally $49.99 - $19.98 today.

68

DC Gamer Club / Denuvo 4.9 cracked... and with a startling realization of how bloated it is.

« on: July 07, 2018, 02:28 PM »

“So I downloaded Puyo Puyo Tetris. I thought ‘it’s small game, it’d be easier to analyze’, but oh no no,” he said.

“The game executable is 128MB big, of which just 5-6MB is the real game code. The rest of it is Denuvo. It’s the most bloated Denuvo I’ve ever seen.”

Why don't they just stop?  That's insane!

https://torrentfreak...oksi-on-fire-180706/

69

DC Gamer Club / Prime Day 2018

« on: July 03, 2018, 07:27 PM »

Prime Day is on the 16th of July, but there's a special for Twitch members that have prime.  For short periods, there will be several games available this month.

https://www.reddit.c...or_amazon_prime_day/

Readable for humans:

• Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition: July 2-4
• Metal Slug 3: July 3 - August 2
• The Last Blade: July 3 - August 2
• Twinkle Star Sprites: July 3 - August 2
• Q.U.B.E. 2: July 3-4
• Battle Chef Brigade: July 4-11
• Manual Samuel: July 5-12
• Gonner: July 6-13
• Next Up Hero: July 7-14
• Uurnog Uurnlimited: July 8-14
• Hue: July 9-15
• Deponia Doomsday: July 10-16
• Observer: July 11-17
• Tacoma: July 12-18
• The Bridge: July 13-26
• Brutal Legend: July 14-27
• The Red Strings Club: July 15-21
• Tyranny: July 16-18
• Broken Age: July 17-31
• The Framed Collection: July 18-31
• Serial Cleaner: July 18-31

So today, the following are available:

• Pillars of Eternity: Definitive Edition: July 2-4
• Metal Slug 3: July 3 - August 2
• The Last Blade: July 3 - August 2
• Twinkle Star Sprites: July 3 - August 2
• Q.U.B.E. 2: July 3-4

They end up on your Twitch account to be used with (yes, another one) the Twitch client.  All you have to do is link your Twitch account with your Amazon account and have Prime.

And don't forget, if you do have Twitch Plus with Amazon Prime, you can subscribe to one feed for free, and the broadcaster gets paid just as if you were a paying customer.

70

Living Room / RIP Harlan Ellison

« on: June 29, 2018, 09:57 AM »

Harlan Ellison was one of the most influential writers of short fiction and nonfiction of the 20th century, writing in every genre he could and protesting any attempt to pigeonhole his work.

RIP.

“For a brief time I was here, and for a brief time, I mattered.”

Harlan Ellison Obituary on TOR

71

DC Gamer Club / Find out how much you've spent on Steam

« on: June 18, 2018, 11:17 PM »

https://help.steampo...untdata/AccountSpend

I wish I'd never seen that number...!

72

General Software Discussion / Microsoft to buy GitHub in $7.5B all-stock deal

« on: June 04, 2018, 09:32 AM »

Microsoft to buy GitHub in $7.5B all-stock deal

Microsoft Corp. struck a $7.5 billion all-stock deal to acquire software development platform GitHub.

The developer-focused GitHub will be part of Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud segment after the deal closes, which is expected to occur by the end of calendar-year 2018. The companies said June 4 they expect the deal will bring GitHub to more enterprise users and expand Microsoft's developer tools and services to new audiences. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman will head GitHub as CEO. GitHub's current CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow working on strategic software initiatives.

GitHub will continue to operate independently with an open platform available to all developers across operating systems, cloud systems and devices, the companies said.

Article on USA Today and Ars Technica

73

Site/Forum Features / Feature Request

« on: May 21, 2018, 04:52 PM »

Not sure how feasible this is, but it came up in another thread, and I at least thought I throw it out there:

Would it be possible to make the at-sign actually signal you in some way on this forum...  it would definitely be a help to bring people into a conversation or signal the person that they were being referred to in a thread.

74

General Software Discussion / PSA: New RightNote upgrade

« on: May 03, 2018, 03:17 PM »

I bought Rightnote, but quickly decided it wasn't for me, and went back to Evernote.  I figured this alert might be good for people using RightNote, that might not read it before updating.

-----

E-mail Image

Spoiler

Text of e-mail:

Hi there,

We recently released v4.4.2 of RightNote. A couple of users were upset to find out that their current license no longer worked with this version - only after they had gone to the trouble of installing the update.They would have liked to be informed about this before updating - not after.

So I am writing this message just to inform you, that a RightNote license includes free updates for a period of 12 months. After that period your license will not work with further updates, and if you do update, the Program will revert to the Freeware edition, where certain notes are read-only. (Of course this does not apply to Lifetime upgrade licenses)

You can best tell when you purchased your license by going to Help->About.

So once again my apologies to those of you who had this upset, and I hope to include a warning about this in upcoming versions.

75

General Software Discussion / MOVED: New Software Suggestion

« on: April 14, 2018, 03:41 PM »

This topic has been moved to Post New Requests Here.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=45376.0