Spyke

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Do you pirate? And do you justify pirating? i.e., what is your piracy philosophy?

I don't have an answer to your exact question but I want to emphasize...

NOTHING in the history of humankind has ever existed like computer data. A 100% identical copy of videos, pictures, and music can be made almost instantly at what is essentially zero cost to the original holder of the data. Any comparison to "stealing" or to a physical object (a car lol) just falls flat because the situation is just so different.

Practically speaking, the world we live in, with computers everywhere, cheap storage, and easy fast internet access for so much of the world, has only been around for about two decades, maybe three. NOTHING like this has ever existed before, and businesses, culture, and laws have been very slow to catch up.

I'm not saying pirating is right or wrong, just that the whole idea is still so new that society hasn't caught up to it yet.

linux

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I Think Ubuntu 23.10 is Making a Mistake…

This article is strange... The author uses "being able to open Microsoft Office documents" as a common example of what an OS that claims to be easy to use should be able to do. Then says...

When people download Ubuntu 23.04 they get an OS that can do everything Windows 95 did - with 23.10 they don’t

No default installation of Microsoft Windows EVER opened Microsoft Office documents. If this was a simple oversight in the write-up it'd be fine, but the point is hammered over and over again.

I don't have an opinion about Ubuntu including or not including more software in the default installation (my guess is it became too big to fit on a DVD?) but this article failed to make it's point to me by making a comparison to Windows that isn't true.

Also...

the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system (that’s Ubuntu, for those of you playing dumb)

Is this supposed to be a cocky joke? I can't tell. What metric of "most popular" is the author using?

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In Mario 2, why would I want to choose anyone other than Peach?

Oh man, I love Super Mario Bros 2! It's one of my favorite games of all time.

So, each character actually has very different stats.

Luigi and Princess have obvious special jumping abilities. I think Luigi can actually jump a little farther... But both of them have significantly shorter jumps and run more slowly when carrying a vegetable, and both pick up vegetables quite slowly (especially the princess). This can be extremely detrimental on sand stages that require a lot of fast digging to get away from enemies, or picking up a block to throw at a boss before he attacks.

Toad is the opposite. He can pick up vegetables and run with them blazingly fast, and can run and jump as high (higher?) while carrying them.

Mario is balanced all-around.

It's all explained in the instruction manual with some cute drawings. Each character is really quite balanced in my opinion.

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She did her best ok?

Anyone who thinks this has never hosted a birthday party for a bunch of grade schoolers. I get enough pizza so they can have a couple of full pizza slices each, they take a few bites, then immediately go back to goofing around with their friends.

Then I have leftover pizza for a long time. XD

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When you look for Dangerous Unicode in Testing

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I had to look it up.

The first unicode is just a standard Chinese character. Good to test out, make sure your code is using unicode correctly.

The second character is the Hangul Filler, which shows up as blank on some systems. The people who made Among Us didn't test for this, so people are using it to create blank names for their player in the game.

https://nerdschalk.com/hangul-filler-among-us/

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*Permanently Deleted*

Favorite character is Midna from Twilight Princess. Her design is just so weird but it works. She antagonistic towards the player but I can't help but love her. Your friendship grows throughout the game until that one incredible shot together. And the surprise ending is both fun and tragic.

EDIT: this shot.

https://www.deviantart.com/hayato-01/art/Link-And-Midna-screenshot-TWILIGHT-PRINCESS-517986893

Favorite relationship is Marin from Link's Awakening. She's wonderful on her own, but then she shares so much about her life on the island and her dreams and grows even deeper as a character. I feel a stronger bond between her and Link than any incarnation of Zelda.

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Who owns the servers for Lemmy?

Is each instance like another person with a server?

I just wanted to add, any computer with an internet connection can host a web page! A desktop, a laptop, anything. That's how the internet all started, as a collection on interconnected computers sharing data. I think many people nowadays forget this or even never knew about it (including me), since we live in a world where people spend all their time at like only a dozen websites. (Google, Instagram, Wikipedia...)

I have a public "webserver" in my basement. It's just some random computer hosting some photos for family members. And it's all completely free, I don't pay anything to do it. I could easily pop an instance of Lemmy on it too.

The biggest hurdles in setting up a server from home are needing some technical knowledge, and a free domain name / URL usually looks a little silly (unless you pay for one), and getting hacked is a very real threat unless you pay close attention to security.

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What's up with the end-to-end encryption notification all over the whatsapp?

From what I understand, WhatsApp does have proper end to end encryption, which means messages can only be read by the sender and recipient. It's a very good thing, and SHOULD be promoted in my opinion.

But that doesn't mean WhatsApp respects your privacy. Even though the messages are encrypted, the actual app is still collecting and scraping every little piece of info about you possible. Think location, IP addresses, your contacts, what's in your clipboard, camera, mic... I don't know the details, but that's where the privacy concerns come from.

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Recommendations on casual GB/GBA games?

Hi! I'm a Game Boy collector / enthusiast / reviewer. And this question has an easy answer in my opinion...

Catrap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfV4MnGfiA4&t=284

  • It's relaxing. It's a turn based, pure puzzle game. Like, there's literally no action. The enemies don't even move!
  • It's big. 100 puzzles that slowly increase in difficulty. I was able to beat them all, over time.
  • It's non-punishing. No time limits. No lives.
  • No stress. Catrap was the first(?) game to feature an undo button. Try something out. Didn't work? Just hold B to undo. You can undo all the way back to the start of the stage, as many time as you want.
  • It's simple. Up, down, left, and right to move. B to undo. I think A is introduced later to swap between characters?
  • IT'S FUN. It looks good, plays good, and just feels good to jump around the stage. And completing a stage is so satisfying.

I hope you like it! 🙂