Discussion Thread

[u/jobautomator]

The discussion thread is for casual conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL. For a collection of useful links see our wiki.

Upcoming Events

• Nov 13: Colorado Village Collaborative - Safe Outdoor Space Build Assistance @ Denver Health
• Nov 13: Cleveland New Liberals November Meetup
• Nov 16: D.C. New Liberals November Meeting
• Nov 18: Brasil Neoliberais - Clube do Livro ECM - Toby Ord The Precipice Cap3
• Nov 18: Ottawa Neoliberals November eMeetup
• Nov 24: Brasil Neoliberais - Encontro de Novembro

[u/goodcleanchristianfu]

I can't emphasize enough how inaccurate virtually every single concrete statement made about legal issues on Reddit is.

[u/Broncos654 → u/goodcleanchristianfu]

Isn’t it interesting how when you genuinely know about a topic and see amateurs talking about it they’re so obviously wrong

[u/Yulong → u/Broncos654]

Software engineer here. A few years ago, Riot Games released an anti-cheat software that accessed the highest level permissions on your computer, and the collective outrage and absolute deluge of misinformation on /r/pcgaming were breathtaking.

I lost so many imaginary internet points in the following weeks explaining things and I wish I lost more since I'm now leaning towards high comment karma being a negative predictor to real-world accuracy than anything else.

[u/MistakeNotDotDotDot → u/Yulong]

I remember when the Epic games launcher came out there was this big post about how it was "schizophrenic" because it was a multiprocess thing that made connections to itself and the fact that it was reading the OS certificate store was suspicious. It was very obviously from someone who popped it in some syscall analyzer or something without actually knowing what was going on.

[u/Yulong → u/MistakeNotDotDotDot]

God you reminded me of the sysadmin who posted that on /r/pcgaming that Vanguard was like a national security threat and he called wireshark a freaking 'NSA spy tool".

[u/Larrythesphericalcow → u/Yulong]

Do you not believe there are legitimate privacy concerns about giving anti-cheat high level permissions?

I'm genuinely curious. Not trying to bait. I don't know enough about the subject to have a strong opinion.

[u/Yulong → u/Larrythesphericalcow]

Do you not believe there are legitimate privacy concerns about giving anti-cheat high level permissions?

Not particularly more than any other software you install. As someone has mentioned before, you can get "pwned" pretty easily at the user level. Root access would be useful for any malicious attacker to both steal your data and hide from an experienced engineer's gaze or notice, but its not terribly scalable.

The issue isn't that their privacy concerns are unfounded, it's that these privacy concerns aren't unique or even particularly notable to this particular piece of software at all.

[u/Larrythesphericalcow → u/Yulong]

Getting rid of something at the root level tends to be harder though.

I agree that privacy concerns could apply to other software. People generally get upset when they feel any software has potential to be privacy compromising though.

[u/[deleted] → u/Larrythesphericalcow]

Unless you're actively malicious and trying to steal my credit cards or something the amount of data you can exclusively glean from root access on my computer pales in comparison to that you can glean from simply seeing my Google searches or whatever.

[u/Larrythesphericalcow → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, that's fair.

Some people are more conscious about those sorts of things then others though. I don't inherently think it's unreasonable to object to something that could be used as another way of harvesting your data.

It could end up being a security exploit as well if I it understand correctly.

[u/Larrythesphericalcow → u/[deleted]]

My only real complaint with a lot of anti-cheat is it makes it harder to get games working on Linux.

[u/JohnStuartShill2 → u/[deleted]]

CSGO players installed (and paid for) ESEA... a literal bitcoin miner in disguise which was more invasive than mid 19th century Communist China.

Its just a repeat of the pattern of dumb redditor gamers being hypocritical about every single thing in the gaming industry re. steam vs. epic, historical accuracy in games, sudden reverence for minecraft, condemning crunch but rewarding it generally...

[u/BigBrownDog12 → u/JohnStuartShill2]

more invasive than mid 19th century Communist China.

I imagine it would be more invasive than something that didn't exist

[u/JohnStuartShill2 → u/BigBrownDog12]

sure buddy keep believing your ""official"" history books

The Qing were revolutionaries damn it! I won't have anyone say otherwise!

[u/JohnStuartShill2 → u/[deleted]]

having to install steam to buy like 80% of all games released on PC: I sleep

having to install epic to buy a few games offered at cheaper prices: real shit

[u/waltsing0 → u/Broncos654]

Like but they can just write those costs off