Had to be done. It’s just too damn close not to.

“Treatment request rejected, insufficient TC level”

One of the experiences I will never forget was “teaching” an ICT class about 2 decades ago (I was a TA who got left to cover a class - good times).

The older ones of you will remember the trick (many of us used it for playing flash games like adventure quest!) - have two browser windows open, minimise the one with the thing you were not supposed to be doing on it when the teacher comes around - no evidence right?

These kids were doing the same thing - I swear I’ve never seen so much porn in my entire life. Oh and yes, a lot of it involved Japanese animation. This was on a network with parental controls enabled by the way, because it didn’t block those sites.

Here’s the thing - and we all know it, no matter what measures you put in place kids will find away around it. More crudely put “If little Timmy wants titties, Timmy going to move heaven and earth to find them”.

They’ll sneak a parental passport at 3am when you’re sleeping, or just VPN on in, or even invest in a fake ID. Nothing you do is going to stop that; you have to sleep some time, you have a lot of goals, they can stay up all night, and they only have one.

Catching your kids with porn and dealing with it is a game of whack-a-mole every parent has to play, and honestly it’s one they need to play. It’s about having those difficult talks and saying “it’s ok to want to look as long as you realise it isn’t real”.

Mass surveillance isn’t the way - if I were a government hostile to the USA (and soon the UK), I’d be working on making the best free porn site ever made. Think of all the free documents and credentials, think of all the blackmail material, think of all the harm that could be inflicted.

Admittedly, skin cream is likely to face less of a rabid drive from kids, and isn’t something you’d blackmail over. Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion, or maybe president Puta wants to use my girlfriend’s skin lotion addiction to compel me to spy for Russia?

Credit to Putin, it’s a good play. The only counter is for Europe to unite against both Russia and the current US government.

Theoretically possible, but unlikely unless the non-EU states also fall in line early.

Currently snowed with marking - hoping the weekend will grace me with some time to tinker and test.

Thanks, I’ll try a small exFAT this week and see if that works better!

"A trader or third party can upgrade and improve the features of digital content so long as it continues to match any description given by the trader and conforms with any pre-contract information provided by the trader, unless varied by express agreement. "

That’s an odd paragraph to include.

For every mod you add, complexity usually increases exponentially.

Depending on the game, difficulty also varies: modding stardew valley is joy (117 mods in a pack, easy afternoon sipping tea), modding skyrim less so (oh god,these two amazing mods tweak the same tree, time to go patch hunting, 2 weeks later you play it only to spot obscure graphical glitches, all hail wabbajack automation!), trying to make a working multiplayer mod pack for rimworld is pure suffering (why do you hate me, why do two compatible mods generate mass instability?!? 4 months of bug hunting and unsalvageable runs due to strange mod interactions, gave up for now).

Repolarise the electron microscope’s phase inverter!

Of course we do, you just need to keep on zooming!

A devastating blow!

Darkness closes in, haunting the hearts of men.

Keep going! It’s almost visible!

Thank you for the archive link!

-> <-

If you zoom in on the line above, and I mean really zoom in you will see a violin small enough to express my level of sympathy.

As a mathematician who has worked in tech, this I am very much aware of XD

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

What you’re likely seeing here is innovation similar to the early tech sector. The hardware limitation (no Nvidia chips) means different (usually more complex) solutions are needed.

These solutions usually require a deep understanding of a specific area of mathematics, and expertise in coding. The person making it normally has to be heavily invested, since it still eats a lot of hours.

I often joke, the mathematician who finds a faster algorithm for matrix operations is sitting on a billion dollar idea.

It’s going to sound really silly but here goes:

1. Ensure their background is the same as it was (seriously, they often use it as an extra way to find things).

2. Where possible, use windows icons for desktop shortcuts and mask link names to match vocab they’re familiar with.

3. Have rustdesk set up with a link saying “Let <your name> help me”.

4. Make sure they have their password written down somewhere.

5. Make sure you have their password written down somewhere.

6. Where possible have background updating, where not possible have a .sh file to do it for them.

7. Add desktop links for things like downloads, documents and pictures.

These are tips for any distro when moving less tech savvy relatives over. For those that like to game, ensure your fs on their gaming drive is a Linux one as it stops weird behaviour. Also, you know, install the games for them!

I mean, it sounds like a lawsuit to me.

1. A takedown request was issued on false grounds.

2. This takedown was then actioned without any due process.

3. The issue has caused tangible, and measurable, loss (calculable from prior sales records).

Honestly, there needs to be a fixed penalty fine for bad takedowns…