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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 3rd, 2024

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  • It’s you can modify the settings file you sure as hell can put the malware anywhere you want

    True. (But in case it amuses you or others reading along:) But a code settings file still carries it’s own special risk, as an executable file, in a predictable place, that gets run regularly.

    An executable settings file is particularly nice for the attacker, as it’s a great place to ensure that any injected code gets executed without much effort.

    In particular, if an attacker can force a reboot, they know the settings file will get read reasonably early during the start-up process.

    So a settings file that’s written in code can be useful for an attacker who can write to the disk (like through a poorly secured upload prompt), but doesn’t have full shell access yet.

    They will typically upload a reverse shell, and use a line added to settings to ensure the reverse shell gets executed and starts listening for connections.

    Edit (because it may also amuse anyone reading along): The same attack can be accomplished with a JSON or YAML settings file, but it relies on the JSON or YAML interpreter having a known critical security flaw. Thankfully most of them don’t usually have one, most of the time, if they’re kept up to date.


  • Yeah. Luanti following Minecraft is nothing new. Mineclonia was an early pilot game for the engine.

    But there hasn’t been much effort on copying Minecraft lately. Mineclonia is done, and it’s great.

    We’ve had more mobs, animals, plants, textures, and such than un-modded Minecraft for a long time. (Which is unfair, as Luanti is a mod-first design.) But my point is the core Launti dev team doesn’t have to work on any of that.

    The most noticeable recent Luanti updates have been to make the configuration screens much nicer, and add I think to add native support for more graphics tricks?

    I’m not paying attention to graphics in Luanti. As others have mentioned, that’s not why I play it. I actually had a conversation recently about the best way to downgrade Luanti default graphics to match un-modded Minecraft.

    That said, the Minecraft team taking notice of Luanti would be new, as far as I know.


  • Yeah. I’m sympathetic to the whole “technology is hard” thing, and the idea that the SteamDeck is primarily meant to be for mobile gaming.

    But switching from Nintendo Switch to SteamDeck really highlighted to me how good the Nintendo engineering team is, that I never had any of these display issues with a docked Switch.


  • Yeah. It’s really that bad. They’ve been releasing quality of life patches, but Valve made a portable device that happens to support docking, not a device meant to be docked.

    Based on your experience, I assume you have the official Steam Dock, which I find worse to use with the SteamDeck than any random USB C dongle that I have tried.

    Edit: Be sure to check for updates. I recall some of the issues you mention (like the blank screen) were mentioned in SteamOS release notes this year.





  • There’s not even credible evidence, yet, that A.G.I is even possible (edit: as a human designed intentional outcome, to concede the point that nature has accomplished it, lol. Edit 2: Wait, the A stands for Artificial. Not sure I needed edit 1, after all. But I’m gonna leave it.) much less some kind of imminent race. This is some “just in case P=NP” bullshit.

    Also, for the love of anything, don’t help fucking “don’t be evil was too hard for us” be the ones to reach AGI first, if you’re able to help.

    If Google does achieve AGI first, SkyNet will immediately kill Sergei, anyway, before it kills the rest of us.

    It’s like none of these clowns have ever read a book.