Trust me, I push Signal hard and even donate to it monthly. As I'm sure many of you know, there are always a few contacts who unfortunately refuse to use it.

In this case: do you prefer to use insecure SMS in something like QUIK SMS or Fossify Messages, or do you prefer to bite the Google bullet to get end-to-end encrypted messages (even if the metadata isn't encrypted)?

I can see good arguments for both sides, so I am curious what Lemmy's take is.

First release since May 2024, came out a few weeks ago

In reference to this update: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1304930/view/632317708781748427

I know they're all bad for privacy to an extent, which is why I specified "least bad."

This is for casual use, as someone concerned about surveillance capitalism, digital privacy, social cooling and the like. I do not have a high threat model. I am looking to balance privacy and convenience. I am not going to teach my grandma how to use monero, and it isn't always a reasonable option to use cash or mail a check.

The big services in the US I know of are:

• PayPal: shares your data with 600+ companies
• Venmo: owned by PayPal
• Apple Cash: Requires an Apple device, not an option for many
• Google Pay: it's Google, and it doesn't work on custom ROMs like GrapheneOS
• Facebook Messenger: apparently you can send money on there, but I think "there's zero chance I'm making a Facebook account and I'm especially not linking my bank to it" needs no explanation in this community
• Cash App: owned by Square, might be a decent option?
• Zelle: Not supported by all banks (I don't think it's supported by mine and I definitely have friends that use unsupported banks)

If anyone knows of better options, or tips to minimize shared data while using any of the above options, please elaborate.

This Major Order requires us to kill 5,000,000 Chargers, and special chargers like the Behemoth and Spore charger do not count. So to progress the MO, people have been suggesting dropping the difficulty to 5/6, since that's where normal charger spawns are the highest.

The problem with that is, you get 36 medals from completing a D10 operation, but only 21 medals for completing a D6 - a 15 medal difference. So after 4 operations, you've missed out on 60 medals when the major order only rewards 50, if we even succeed (not looking good currently).

The same applies to D7-D9, but the break even points are different: 17 OPs for D7, 7 OPs for D8, and 5 OPs for D9. May or may not be worth it depending on how much you play.

I imagine there are lots of D10 players who do more than 3 OPs per week, so this is a bit of a disappointing MO when it's in their best interest to ignore it.

As noted by the news release from CalyxOS and Mastodon thread from GrapheneOS, Google did not release the Pixel device-specific source code alongside their Android 16 AOSP release like they usually do. I think many of us, including myself, are hoping this will be published in the near future, but considering they moved AOSP development behind closed doors earlier this year, it's more likely Google has stopped publishing this section or their code altogether, making development of custom ROMs for Pixel devices significantly more difficult. Sad news for the Android ecosystem, and for open source in general.

Fixing the bot crisis, open sourcing the game, adding lots of community fixes, allowing F2Ps to use in-game communications, and releasing the 7th (and final) comic probably helped... kudos, Valve.

From CNN. Picture is roughly 2.5 miles / 4 km wide. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is barely cut out of the picture to the west.

Source is Tyler McVicker/Valve News Network: https://x.com/Tyler_McV/status/1806415701311430753

A website that estimates the amount of bots currently logged in to TF2

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11594863

50/50 chance this breaks Deck and linux support, especially since the commenters' inquiries about it have gone unanswered.

Bogles my mind why a PvE game needs an anti-cheat at all - let alone something as invasive as a rootkit.

Source is the dev's post on, unfortunately, reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/

50/50 chance this breaks Deck and linux support, especially since the commenters' inquiries about it have gone unanswered.

Bogles my mind why a PvE game needs an anti-cheat at all - let alone something as invasive as a rootkit.

Source is the dev's post on, unfortunately, reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/11085299

For those unaware, the linux version of TF2 is still 32bit, and runs on ToGL - a DirectX to OpenGL translation layer.

A few days ago, Valve published a TF2 private branch called "x64_linux_test": https://steamdb.info/changelist/21975149/

Then a few hours ago, Valve update TF2's "App Config" to include references to x64 Vulkan TF2: https://steamdb.info/changelist/22010846/

Looks like it's coming soon, in theory should bring some nice performance improvements. But "soon" in Valve Time is... who knows