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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: February 10th, 2024

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  • no long-term OS support

    IMHO, we need well-enforced laws requiring manufacturers to do both of these things:

    • Provide service manuals and reasonably priced parts for a sensible period, much like existing requirements for replacement car parts. (Perhaps 5 or 7 years minimum?)
    • Put into escrow all the information needed for community support of these devices, to be publicly released when the official support period ends. (The easiest way to satisfy this might be in the form of source code, but data sheets and API documentation could suffice if they are reasonably complete.)

    Some people have argued that the second point is impossible because phones are made with components that don’t come with specs or source code themselves. That might be true today, but if large economies start requiring it, then those component manufacturers will either fall into line or lose the market to competitors who do meet the requirements.

    and not easy to load an alternative OS on.

    This is another big one. We need to be able to unlock our bootloaders, install an OS of our choice, and re-lock our bootloaders. (Without permanently disabling any of the hardware features; there must be a way to fully revert to stock.) The only major brand smartphones I know of with a reputation for doing this right are from Google, which is kind of embarrassing.







  • All of those things are implemented in modern Android.

    No, they are not all implemented on any version of Android that I’ve seen. I don’t know about iOS.

    Well, almost.

    Right. We don’t need just a few pieces of what I listed. We need them all.

    an OS popup asks you if you want to give the app permission to use the feature.

    That’s not a bad interface, but it doesn’t address what I wrote: Individual control.

    Why should email address, sexual orientation, and home address be lumped all together into a single permission? Lumping installed apps and search history together isn’t much better. Why should a music player, which obviously needs access to music files, be also granted access to biometric data like voice recordings?

    This is impossible? The OS can either let the app use the mic or not,

    Of course it’s possible. The OS can record the file and then hand it off to the app. No microphone access required.

    Android always shows a green indicator on screen (upper right corner) when any app is using the microphone

    That alone is better than nothing, but not enough. How is a user to know if something was captured when the screen was off?

    These things are indeed improving as new versions come out, but at a glacial pace. Heck, it was ages before Android stopped letting apps spy on each other’s log messages. It’s now at version 15 and still doesn’t have basic controls like restricting network access.





  • Pretty sure that qualifies for that permission.

    I don’t know what you mean. Existing behavior does not provide the control or visibility that I described.

    One important difference is that the “permissions” in the screen shot are effectively all-or-nothing: if you don’t agree to all of them, then you don’t get to install the app. They’re not permissions so much as demands.

    (Some OS do have settings that will let you turn them off individually after installation, but this is not universally available, is often buried in an advanced configuration panel, leaves a window of time where they are still allowed, and in some cases have been known to cause apps to crash. Things are improving on this front with new OS versions, but doing so in microscopic steps that move at a glacial pace.)


  • if you record a video with sound, then the FB app has to have permission to record your audio.

    I can’t tell if you’re trying to explain how it currently works (which I know very well, thanks) or asserting that the current behavior is necessary in order to record with sound.

    It really doesn’t have to be as it is. The OS can provide a record-video API, complete with a user-controlled kill switch and an activity indicator, and the app can call it. The app doesn’t need direct access to the microphone to allow the user to create a file with sound.

    Edit to clarify: I’m not saying that the “permission” doesn’t work as advertised. I’m saying that recording an audio file doesn’t have to require a permission system as coarse and disempowering to users as it is today. I guess the people clicking the downvote button misunderstood.






  • For Linux, I recommend the DualShock 4 (PS4) and DualSense (PS5) controllers. They have native support built into the kernel, so you don’t need to install drivers. They’re great in Steam, emulators, Wine, and most native linux games. They work in both USB and bluetooth mode. Motion controls work. Touchpad works. Rubmle works. Dead zones are nice and small.

    The only features I’m not sure about are the DualSense haptics and adaptive trigger feedback. There was work happening on those when I last looked a couple years ago; I haven’t checked recently.

    A few people have reported lag with certain bluetooth adapters. I haven’t seen it with any of the hardware I’ve used, but if you encounter it, you can always get a different bluetooth adapter or exchange the controller for some other model.


  • Make your cut scene compelling, or at least interesting, and people will slow down and experience it willingly. Once.

    Force players to slog through your cut scene whether they enjoy it or not, and you’re just being self-indulgent, ignoring the fundamental purpose of a game (entertainment) in favor of your own ego. If you want to do that, make a movie, not a game.

    Forcing them to do it again after they’ve already watched it (during a subsequent play-through, or after your game crashed during the mission, or because they made a mistake and want to retry) is well beyond game designer arrogance; it’s just plain bad software design. How would you feel if you had to read and click through time-consuming new user help screens whenever you launched an app, and not just the first time you used it, but every single time?

    Red Dead Redemption 2 is particularly bad in this area, as it has cut scenes as long as ten minutes, and not only forces them down the player’s throat, but also makes it impossible to save the game just afterward, so fully restarting a mission requires slogging through the cut scene again.

    Note that the emphasis here is on unskippable. Cut scenes on their own are fine. Even slow ones.


  • I consider any mission that starts with an unskippable cut scene, especially one that lasts several minutes, to be bad. Needlessly wasting the player’s time is unforgivable.

    I consider any mission that instantly fails if you step outside an invisible and unstated boundary, especially in an open world game, to be bad. Punishing the player for creative thinking is unforgivable.

    I consider any mission that presents a challenge, and then cheats to force failure when a skilled player is about to succeed, to be bad. Breaking the physics of the game world in order to artificially cancel excellent play is perhaps (barely) forgivable, but terrible game design.

    So I guess I don’t get to be in your gang. But I’m glad you had a good time!

    (P.S. The game world was beautiful, at least. Props to the folks at Rockstar who did that.)


  • mox@lemmy.sdf.orgtoGames@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    6 days ago

    In my experience, it can handle most games that expect the Steam client/libraries to be present, so long as DRM is not involved. Some games might require special configuration, like generating an interfaces file, which is documented. So… pretty reliable?

    I have also used the experimental build to block internet access for a game that was trying to collect data from my system and phone home, without breaking LAN multiplayer features. Not foolproof (I don’t think it blocks DNS) but good enough for what I needed.