2 accounts consistently reporting the same IP, location and user habits etc being linked is more absurd than nobody ever noticing excessive uploaded data from their phones? It is very easy to monitor the amount of uploaded and downloaded data on a device, lots of people would have noticed by now. The amount of storage, bandwidth and processing power that would be required to monitor the audio from hundreds of millions of android users globally 24/7 would make this the dumbest business decision ever when there are so many easier and efficient ways to track users.

https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/33490543992467/Grand-Theft-Auto-Online-BattlEye-FAQ

Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online

Such a crappy way of wording it and trying to blame the steam deck when BattlEye has said that they have had linux and wine support long before the steam deck came out

Official Rockstar Community (RP) Servers will not require BattlEye to play. Community Server launchers will disable BattlEye as part of their launch processes.

What makes RP servers so special that they don’t need BattlEye?

https://www.pcgamer.com/battleye-anti-cheat-confirms-steam-deck-support/

BattlEye has provided native Linux and Mac support for a long time and we can announce that we will also support the upcoming Steam Deck (Proton). This will be done on an opt-in basis with game developers choosing whether they want to allow it or not.

Finally a good take. Or maybe I’m just a pessimist lol

Microsoft are masters at dancing around anti competitive regulation. Xbox is struggling, they’ve said so themselves. I think they’re going to focus more on Gamepass and the Windows Store so making it as difficult as possible for the likes of the Steamdeck to succeeded is in their best interest. If they can push companies to adopt their new framework and at the same time make that framework almost impossible to implement into wine then its a win win. They can hurt wine while painting it as better security so they’re isn’t another CrowdStrike incident.

Anticompetitive practices disguised as user security.

I know linux isn’t very popular for the general public but Apple has their own implementation of wine in development and Google has flooded schools with Chromebooks. If I was Michaelsoft, I’d want to crush the competition quickly and discreetly now before I implement my Windows subscription so people don’t have any good alternatives left

Yeah, sometimes there just isn’t another option. I have a 60GiB Win11 VM for things I use every few months for a couple of minutes at a time

I’d recommend https://www.qemu.org/ for virtualisation

https://virt-manager.org/ for a gui to manage VMs, you can easily add or remove cores, memory, internet, directories etc really easily.

https://github.com/winfsp/winfsp lets you add a directory from your host to the VM to easily share files

https://github.com/virtio-win/virtio-win-guest-tools-installer makes the cursor seamlessly move between the VM and host instead of pressing ctrl alt g to escape.

Win11 23H2 still allows for offline set up. Just press shift f10 when you’re at the internet set up and type

oobe/bypassnro

The VM will reboot and give you the option to select I don’t have internet so you can just use a local account

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat/ for getting rid of the unwanted bloatware

Theres also an easy way to activate windows for free, I don’t think I can link it here but its on github and MAS-sive amount of people have starred it.

If your phone has a password on it then its data is going to be encrypted until you unlock the phone.

You can temporarily boot a twrp recovery image. It will let you put in your password and decrypt your storage.

You should be able to transfer the files to your PC with a cable then

For me the issue here is, why put so much time and energy into basically rebranding an LLM. I’ve seen LLMs running on RPi and android phones. Why not write a blog post showing how to run LLMs locally with existing tools for the best privacy instead and put more focus on their existing services. It just seems like they’re jumping on the AI bandwagon and charging a premium for an already freely available LLM.

I see some benefits of AI like quality tts when using OSM and stt when transcribing/translating audio but other things like Googles AI answers and Microsofts Copilot leave me scratching my head wondering why consumer would want this

Am I out of touch?

a writing assistant was one of the most requested features in our recent survey

Apparently, I am. People actually want this

For Proton Mail, 59% of respondents want an easier way to send end-to-end encrypted emails to non-Proton users, while 29% want a writing assistant for proofreading, grammar, and composing emails.

Nothing I hate more than not giving a link to the repo

Scribe relies on open source code and models, and is itself open source and therefore available for independent security and privacy audits

Not on their support page specifically for it either

Had to got to Reddit and look at their comments to find out they’re using Mistral

https://reddit.com/comments/1e68sof/comment/ldsbs24

We built Scribe in r/ProtonMail using the open-source model Mistral AI to empower anyone in need of email productivity to use a privacy-respecting alternative to r/ChatGPT or r/GeminiAI that:
 ❌ doesn’t log or save prompts
 ⛔️ doesn’t use your data for training
 🔎 open-source code that anyone can inspect
 🖥️ can be run locally, so your data never leaves your device
 
See the official announcement here: https://proton.me/blog/proton-scribe-writing-assistant

https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1/discussions/8

Hello, thanks for your interest and kind words! Unfortunately we’re unable to share details about the training and the datasets (extracted from the open Web) due to the highly competitive nature of the field. We appreciate your understanding!

I’ve run into issues where a game will work with a specific version of wine but then not work with a newer version but then other games that don’t work with the older version, work with the new one.

Theres also potentially issues of dependencies for one game breaking another game. Separate prefixes just make it easier to troubleshoot a game not working since you can just install/uninstall whatever dependencies that it might need without worrying about messing up other games.

Its also just easier to delete the entire prefix when you realise you’ve installed too many useless dlls and you’ve finally found the one thing you do need to make the game work lol

I also like to archive games I like since companies can just decide to remove their games from existence whenever they want. So I just add the separate prefix that has any extra dlls or tweaks to the archive so that the game should still work in 3 years without having to try and download dependencies that may not be as easy to find in the future

But if you don’t have issues I don’t think its a big deal and if you do have issues with a game, you can just make a separate one for that anyway.

You could chance it, but they probably have logs of your IP/location data or they bought your data somewhere and so they could check, if they cared enough, but if you’re not an EU citizen and you live in an EU country then GDPR applies to you

Guide is maybe not the right word lol, it just exactly what I click to set up the majority of my games

I’m not 100% sure, but from my understanding yes the regisrty in the “prefix” folder would be changed. You can manually edit the wine prefix registry with regedit https://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guid<br />e/using-regedit and Lutris supports this, just click the arrow that brings up the winetricks option and its under Wine Registry

Every few months I like to clear out my password manager of any accounts I don’t need anymore, usually just throwaway emails aliases.

I’ll usually attempt to log into any services that I know I’ve deleted/requested to delete to make sure they’re not accessible anymore and so far I haven’t been able to log in to any of them so I can only assume my requests are working.

I suppose if a service had a data breach, after my information was meant to be deleted, and I found my information there then I’d make a complaint to my regulator about not deleting my data. I would have proof of my request and their acknowledgement of the request so it’d be pretty silly of them not to delete it after saying they did

I rarely use anything but email aliases and fake information anyway and I never let online retailers save my card information. And if my address in on my account I change it to P. Sherman 42 Wallabyway Sydney before I delete/request to delete my account.

I spend too much time reading emails so I try to keep mine short, especially when they’re going to a generic email like support or privacy.

https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/

The GDPR does not specify what a valid request to erasure entails. An individual can make a request for erasure verbally or in writing. This request can also be made to any member of your organization, not just to a designated contact. As long as a request meets the conditions above, it is valid, even if it does not refer to “Request for Erasure” the “Right to be Forgotten,” Article 17, or the GDPR.

There’s no template to follow for a request. Once GDPR is mentioned, they usually just email back saying that they’re doing it or its done.

I haven’t come across any difficult companies but I’ve heard some make it as hard as possible and follow the Erasure Request form template in the link above and ask for proof of I.D etc

I use Lutris and set up my directories a “GameName” and then 2 subdirectories “game” “prefix” and point Lutris to these.

All of the game files go in “game” and the prefix is created in “prefix” when I press play in Lutris. Any extras dlls that are needed can be installed with winetricks within Lutris to that specific prefix

This way you can just compress and decompress “GameName” folder and point Lutris to these locations on whichever machine.

You can choose which prefix version you want in Lutris and it will download that version for you. I’m pretty sure it saves the version to somewhere in ~.local/share/lutris I’m not at my PC now so not 100% sure of the path.

It saves it to ~.local/share/lutris/runners/wine and you can put a custom wine build here and Lutris should recognise it when configuring the runner options

So you could copy this over to the corresponding location on the deck and Lutris will automatically detect this version as installed and won’t have to download it again but its not necessary unless you don’t have internet on the deck, or you’re like me and want to keep an archive of the working prefix for the future in case the prefix version is no longer available for whatever reason and other version just won’t work.

If you’re new to Lutris, I wrote a step by step guide on how I use Lutris on a different community

https://sopuli.xyz/comment/9858101

I usually just write

Hi,

Please delete my account and all data associated with this email in accordance with Article 17 of GDPR, I’m an EU citizen

Thanks x

I just assume if they haven’t made it easy to delete your account by now then they never will but these are really good points that will hopefully make companies change their policies, especially since its all things that benefit them

I’ve never used miui devices but I think you need to make an account and use this https://en.miui.com/unlock/download_en.html so you will probably need to have wine installed to run it, unless it has a native linux version in the zip file. Then you should have an unlocked bootloader

The “media network” is https://kinectivemedia.com/ and they have a link for US customers to opt out that leads to here https://uniteddigital.iad1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_88OQmAbr20oeHn8 but of course you’re going to want to also read Qualtrics privacy policy before using their services https://www.qualtrics.com/privacy-statement/

Clicking https://kinectivemedia.com/ privacy policy links to https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/customer-data-privacy-policy.html

They collect the usual stuff you use for travel like name, address, payment details, biometrics, I.D etc and also

Information collected in your use of our mobile application(s) includes, but is not limited to:

• With your consent, your pinpointed physical location information from technologies like GPS, Wi-Fi, or cell tower proximity (geo-location tracking)

• With your consent, while at or near certain airports in the U.S., your pinpointed physical location will be tracked continuously to provide you location-based offers, services and other information. For more information, see the Location Services FAQ located on the side menu of the United App;

• Your domain name;

• Device ID or alternative ID where required by the platform provider;

• Electronic data concerning operating systems and computing devices/browser, including types;

• Features you use and links you click;

• Amount of time spent in the application;

• Installs and uninstalls;

• Transaction details and history.

We may combine this information with information that we already have collected about you.

We collect information about you from third parties. If you make a reservation through a travel agent, we will obtain your travel information from that agent. We may also obtain information about you from our marketing partners, advertisers and other third parties.

We primarily use your information, including personal information, to provide our services to you and to fulfill your requests. In certain circumstances, such as for advertising purposes, we combine your information with other information that we have about you, that is publicly available and/or that we have obtained from third parties (either individually or in the aggregate)

We also use your information for the following purposes:

For marketing and advertising. United uses your information, consistent with applicable law, individually, in the aggregate, and/or combined with demographic information that we maintain or collect from third parties, for marketing and advertising purposes (via email, direct mail, telephone, web or other electronic advertising) and to send you news and newsletters. Specifically, information that we collect about you may be used to send you email, direct mail, or telephone communications about offers from United, its partners or other third parties, that might be of interest to you (please see the section on Disclosing your information below and the section on Changing your marketing preferences below). We also use your information to determine appropriate advertising channels and venues and to place ads on such channels and venues, including placing advertising on social networking sites.

I’m sure the money they make from this will subsidies flight costs that will be passed on to the end user for cheaper flight!

You should be able to kind of do both through android settings

Settings -> Apps -> YourApp -> Mobile data usage -> Allow Network access and Mobile Data

For VPN you’ll need to add a VPN and then Settings -> Network and Internet -> VPN -> YourVPN -> Always on VPN and Block Connections without VPN. This blocks all apps. There is 2 issues with this though, Blocking connections will block split tunneling connections set up through VPNs and also potentially this depending on the apps you’re using https://mullvad.net/en/blog/dns-traffic-can-leak-outside-the-vpn-tunnel-on-android

I’ve used https://github.com/Softcatala/whisper-ctranslate2 before for transcribing English and translating non English audio into srt files and its been pretty good for TV shows for me. Its not perfect but it usually gets me about 95% of the way there

Ha, we’ve been doing the same thing for the past few months! I just made a generic Immich account that we all log into and upload to that. I auto backup the library to other places as we go, just in case. Once we’re done, we’ll all get copies of the directory to do with as we please.

I have Immich set up to keep the name of the files instead of giving them a random name. As we scan we name the files with the peoples names and generic tags like Tom.Mary.Birthday.1992 and putting Mary before birthday indicates that it was Mary’s birthday. So that if I decide to try and add meta data to the files it will be easier.

I haven’t figured out a plan for adding meta info to the files so they at least have the year/month they were taken and I don’t know if I even want to since we’re 1000’s of photos in now

Yeah, carrier unlock and OEM unlock are completely separate and have nothing to do with each other. People will say ‘unlocked’ and mean carrier unlocked because most people don’t know what OEM unlocking is so it can get really confusing when trying to buy second hand and explaining the difference. Its a really common misconception that has been an issue for over a decade that’s why I always try to explain they have nothing to do with each other

I don’t know any other carriers that do this but I wouldn’t be surprised if more did. I never recommend buying from a carrier since most just carrier lock their phones anyway so its just more hassle if you decide to switch carriers.

I find buying from the manufacturer works out cheaper than from any carrier where I am. Its also better for privacy since I don’t have to deal with bill pay and can just pay cash for PAYG without giving any personal information and can switch to whoever has the best deal without faffing about, just get a new Sim card and I’m ready to go