It’s only just about functional and clunky as fuck. But if you want to get rid of WhatsApp from your device but still need to talk to someone in it then it’s a good shout.

Probably not. Back when the WhatsApp Pegasus vulnerability happened, there was a vector on iOS, but it was iMessages.

I don’t know any first hand details, but my suspicion is that the way WhatsApp on Android worked was via Facebook system apps bundled with the phone by the manufacturer. Back in the day, Facebook itself used to be a system app on some phones (making it difficult to remove), but gradually they moved away from that to having the Facebook or WhatsApp apps be the same as the one on Google Play, but there would be a separate system app that would be much harder to remove. I suspect this system app used various exploits for further data mining by Facebook (perhaps even gaining microphone access so they can present ads based on what you say?) and that the Pegasus hack got into WhatsApp, then simply called the system app to use its established exploits. One other thing that maybe points to this: the Pegasus hack would only sometimes be effective on Android phones, and researchers couldn’t pin down why. To me, that suggests some other app or configuration variation.

WhatsApp on iOS shouldn’t have this vector, as Apple control both software and hardware on their phones, hence why the strategy was to go for Apple apps directly (as they had the direct access to system level permissions, like I’m alleging Facebook sometimes had on Android).

Like I say, the exact workings of the hack are my own assumptions, and I understand that the WhatsApp Pegasus entry vector has been patched, but ultimately I don’t think Facebook/Meta or any of their apps are trustworthy and encourage people to remove them from their devices.

I torrent on my media PC and stream from there.

WhatsApp is the big one, that shit is a proven vulnerability. It was literally the vector for zero click access to Android devices in the Pegasus toolkit.

One way around it is to have a separate device for WhatsApp itself, then use WhatsApp4Web from F-Droid. It’s basically a web wrapper for the browser version of WhatsApp, but it does run somewhat independently of the main WhatsApp device (unlike eg Threema where the website won’t work unless the device has internet).

Nominally EU voltage is 230V, and may be 240V. In fact, it can be as high as 230V +10% = 253V. Higher voltage means more power for a given current, so nominally it’s 16A x 230V = 3.68kW, but you could have say 16A x 250V = 4.0kW.

If your sauna is 400V then it sounds like you’ll be 230V (400V / sqrt(3) = 230). But the voltage can also be 230V -6% = 216V, so 220V is within scope.

But yeah, standard voltages in the EU are either 230V/400V or 240V/415V. They’ve been harmogenised, but if you look at the numbers you’ll see the trick - 230V +10% is roughly the same as 240V +6%. So the range is 230V-6% and 240V+6%.

You’ve got a 3 phase connection though so you might find you’ve got different single phase breakers on different phases (eg lights on one phase, sockets on another), with slightly different voltages for each one.

Linktree is a social media site that gives you a simple web page with all your links to your actual social media sites. This way, you can provide one link to your fans, taking up less space in a profile, then fans can pick and choose to follow on whichever services they prefer.

Usually, it’ll be something like instagram, onlyfans, fansly; maybe some others like snapchat or kik. I think sometimes music artists use Linktree sites too, ie completely SFW, but primarily they exist for NSFW content creators.

I think it was on a podcast or something, but someone somewhere once said that people/aliens in the future might look back on our civilisation and assume so much about us from social media bots. They might think that we go around greeting each other going “Link in bio” like Vulcans say “Live long and prosper”.

Apparently this was from Threadless. They don’t have this anymore, but they do have a KISS one:

The main thing this article is talking about is supermarkets in the UK that lock all their sale offers behind the loyalty card. Until about a year or two ago, you could go in and buy things on sale or buy one get one free or whatever offer, and then use (or don’t use) your loyalty card on top (to collect/spend points), but now you don’t get any discounts if you don’t have a loyalty card.

The article/campaigners are spinning this up into something about smartphones, because that’s how most people use these loyalty schemes now, but they still have the old style cards so that’s a bit of a red herring. The real issue is the way they’re tying their standard offers to the loyalty program, and making it more difficult for consumers not to get caught out paying full price.

You don’t need an app to use a loyalty card…

But yes I am against supermarkets that only provide discounts if you use their loyalty program, which in turn allows them to track your purchases. Especially since many items are priced with the discount as the “fair” price and the full price is really just a money grab.

In announcing the change, Twitch cited the “costly” indefinite storage of these highlights, which it says are responsible for “less than 0.1% of hours watched” across the site.

I don’t know how many hours are watched on Twitch, but I bet it’s so many that 0.1% is still a fuckton of hours.

You could always take the performance hit and install it on a virtual machine. I’ve even heard of people who have an APU (CPU and GPU on the same chip) along with a discrete GPU, or just two GPU’s, and they run the base operating system on the weaker GPU then run the VM and dedicate the entire good GPU to it, which gets near to bare metal performance allegedly.

That’s probably illegal.

If you follow the logic that makes Hertfordshire East of England, then Greater London should also be East of England.

Hitchin isn’t East of England, it’s in Northamptonshire and west of London centre.

I still have one that isn’t paywalled (gratis) but I don’t think it’s had any new games in a while. I hardly ever play on it though and haven’t kept up much.

Looking it up, Palworld was announced in 2021, but not released (under early access) until 2024. However they were apparently designing the game back in 2020, if not earlier.

When accessed by BleepingComputer, however, the link returned a 404 (Not Found), and according to several others who tried to access the URL, no content ever existed at the location from the beginning.

This really doesn’t mean anything, it’s not unheard of for malicious actors to not set up their C&C servers until later on. This has actually been exploited by law enforcement in other cases also, they simply registered the domain themselves and took control away ahead of the attacker.

There’s a risk with setting up the C&C that it could be traced back to the attackers. By not setting it up until it’s needed you avoid that risk until it becomes necessary.

Obviously this depends on the exact details of the patents, which are all in Japanese, as well as the specifics of Japanese patent laws.

However, patents only last for 20 years, and they are undermined by public disclosure before filing. The first Pokemon game came out more than 20 years ago. However^2 not all of the features in the patents were present in the original games. All 3 patents were first filed in 2021, well after many of these features were established.

The first patent is about aiming something and entering into a fight mode. This wasn’t in the original game. Aiming at enemies and entering a fight mode almost certainly existed before Pokemon (Final Fantasy perhaps). Furthermore, Palworld doesn’t really have a fight mode - it isn’t a turn based game but real time. Throwing a sphere is just one way to start a “battle” but there is no mode change between “explore” and “battle” modes because they are functionally the same in Palworld. Pokemon Go and Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, which were all around in 2018, would seem to amount to public disclosure that undermines this patent.

The second patent has more detail about catching Pokemon outside of battles. This might have some elements of Palworld gameplay in it. However, again we have prior art that predates the patent.

The third patent is about riding characters. This has certainly existed in other games before Pokemon and before this patent. Off the top of my head, World of Warcraft had you riding mounts, Final Fantasy had you riding Chocobos, and Mega Man let you ride Rush.

However the big issue with all of these is that these challenges are always better off done before the patent is granted. With the patents established it is a massive uphill struggle trying to get them withdrawn. Given that each charge is only for $33,000, so about $100,000 total, I expect a settlement will be reached instead of going on this fight.

I don’t think he quite did that, actually. From memory he ran a few “shops”, but these didn’t really sell anything and were just download portals to install pirated games directly from the internet (rather than downloading to a PC first and then copying to an SD card or installing over USB). However, I think he did take donations for early access to new titles, which would have been hard to get elsewhere at first.