Just tar and zstd. They're probably installed by default for most distros anyway.

I think this is what I used when I first tried out zstd https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-and-use-zstd-compression-tool-on-linux

Tar supports input from zstd so I put everything on one line.

tar -I 'zstd -v --ultra -22' -cvf YourFile.tar.zst -C /path/to/your/file YourFile

-I takes the input from zstd which is in quotes.

--ultra it should be redundant but for some reason its needed for higher levels of compression.

-22 the highest level of compression offered by zstd.

-c for compress.

-v for verbose.

-f for the file name.

-C excludes the absolute path to the file/directory and just takes YourFile as the file/directory to compress. Its not needed if you're in the same directory as YourFile.

I would recommend leaving out

--ultra -22

and just test how much compression you get with the default level first because 22 is super slow and if it just can't compress the file you won't see any difference in file size compared to the default compression level.

For 3DS games I use NDSTokyoTrim to remove useless data from the game files to make them smaller.

DreamCast, PS1 & PS2 games get compressed to chd with chdman.

GameCube and Wii are compressed to rvz with Dolphin.

PS3 I remove the PS3_UPDATE folder, 256MiB for each game adds up. I also use Gnarly Repacks for PS3 games since they have better compression than anything I've tried so far.

Switch games, I use nsz.

Then I use tar with zst on all of them, Nsz and rvz already use zst so theres no change but I just like to keep everything the same accross all of my roms and pc games.

Everything else, GB, NDS, SNES etc all get archived and compressed with tar and zst. For these I'll also use the --ultra -22 option since they're small enough files anyway so they don't take long to compress/decompress. If anyone knows any specific compression/trimming methods that are better than zst, I'd love to hear about them!

Copies of all the tar archives are kept on 2 separate drives and a copy of the games are on my PC in whatever the smallest format is that is compatible with their emulator.

https://support.rockstargames.com/articles/33490543992467/Grand-Theft-Auto-Online-BattlEye-FAQ

Steam Deck does not support BattlEye for GTA Online

Such a crappy way of wording it and trying to blame the steam deck when BattlEye has said that they have had linux and wine support long before the steam deck came out

Official Rockstar Community (RP) Servers will not require BattlEye to play. Community Server launchers will disable BattlEye as part of their launch processes.

What makes RP servers so special that they don't need BattlEye?

https://www.pcgamer.com/battleye-anti-cheat-confirms-steam-deck-support/

BattlEye has provided native Linux and Mac support for a long time and we can announce that we will also support the upcoming Steam Deck (Proton). This will be done on an opt-in basis with game developers choosing whether they want to allow it or not.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/genetics-firm-23andme-says-user-data-stolen-in-credential-stuffing-attack/

The information that has been exposed from this incident includes full names, usernames, profile photos, sex, date of birth, genetic ancestry results, and geographical location.

The threat actor accessed a small number of 23andMe accounts and then scraped the data of their DNA Relative matches, which shows how opting into a feature can have unexpected privacy consequences.

• Usernames Profile Photos DoB

They can be linked to other online accounts. This allows for phishing, potentially scamming or getting additonal information on them which can lead to more sophisticated/personalised scams. Older, less tech savvy users are better targets for scammers.

• Username Sex DoB Genetic Ancestry Location data

Data aggregators can sell this info to Health Insurance Companies or any other system who can then discriminate based on genes sex age or location

• All of this information

Can contribute to people committing fraud with their information if they collect enough information from different sources.

• DNA relatives

Having enough information about a user to use it to target their now known relatives in personalised scams.

The people that did this probably didn't know what information they were going to get, maybe they were hoping for payment info, and settled for trying to just sell what they got.

Any information, no matter how useless it might seem, is better than no information and enough useless information in the wrong hands can be very valuable.

Theres countless data breaches every year and people will collect it all and link different accounts from different breaches until they have enough information. Most people use the same email address for every website and a lot of people reuse the same passwords, which is how this data leak occurred. Knowing that these users reuse the same email/password combination here means theres a very good chance they've reused it elsewhere.

You can check out what data breeches have occured and if your email or password has been posted in any of these dumps here https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Once the information is out there, its out there for good and what might seem trivial now to you could be valuable tomorrow to someone else

Finally a good take. Or maybe I'm just a pessimist lol

Microsoft are masters at dancing around anti competitive regulation. Xbox is struggling, they've said so themselves. I think they're going to focus more on Gamepass and the Windows Store so making it as difficult as possible for the likes of the Steamdeck to succeeded is in their best interest. If they can push companies to adopt their new framework and at the same time make that framework almost impossible to implement into wine then its a win win. They can hurt wine while painting it as better security so they're isn't another CrowdStrike incident.

Anticompetitive practices disguised as user security.

I know linux isn't very popular for the general public but Apple has their own implementation of wine in development and Google has flooded schools with Chromebooks. If I was Michaelsoft, I'd want to crush the competition quickly and discreetly now before I implement my Windows subscription so people don't have any good alternatives left

Yeah, sometimes there just isn't another option. I have a 60GiB Win11 VM for things I use every few months for a couple of minutes at a time

I'd recommend https://www.qemu.org/ for virtualisation

https://virt-manager.org/ for a gui to manage VMs, you can easily add or remove cores, memory, internet, directories etc really easily.

https://github.com/winfsp/winfsp lets you add a directory from your host to the VM to easily share files

https://github.com/virtio-win/virtio-win-guest-tools-installer makes the cursor seamlessly move between the VM and host instead of pressing ctrl alt g to escape.

Win11 23H2 still allows for offline set up. Just press shift f10 when you're at the internet set up and type

oobe/bypassnro

The VM will reboot and give you the option to select I don't have internet so you can just use a local account

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat/ for getting rid of the unwanted bloatware

Theres also an easy way to activate windows for free, I don't think I can link it here but its on github and MAS-sive amount of people have starred it.

I started The Witcher 3 for the second time. I tried it a year ago and I kept getting absolutely wrecked by the ghost thing in thr very first crypt so I gave up but this time I killed it straight away so who knows what I was doing wrong last time! Also, probably a bit controversial but I refuse to learn how to play Gwent, I don't have the time or patients to learn a card game inside an already massive game

I also started and finished American Arcadia this weekend and I absolutely loved it. I'm trying to play shorter games that I wouldn't usually play in between The Witcher 3 since its long. AA is probably one of the best games I've played. The story is fantastic and the gameplay is pretty basic, which suits me. It doesn't take itself too seriously and has some fun twists at the end.

I've also been playing Supraland, its a pretty fun, chill game. The areas aren't very difficult and the upgrade system is fun. I love the funny dialogues from the NPCs and again its a fun game that doesn't take itself seriously and I find myself smiling while playing it

I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Manjaro, is in fact, Arch/Manjaro, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Arch plus Manjaro. Manjaro is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Arch system made useful by pacman, yay and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Over and over and over and over the gaming community has been screwed over by Publishers so I'll stop grave dancing when Corpos stop being so horrible

• Requiring a third party account to play a game months after it was released and after selling it to customers who can't legitimately make an account because you don't feel like their country can make you enough profit. Helldivers 2

• Attempting to take away peoples digital "purchases" of media because you can't be bothered to pay licencing. Sony

• Changing the definition of "purchase" an established word in English and not defining your new definition until page 22 of a EULA that you know nobody is going to read. Sony, and everyone else

• Shutting down a server and rendering a game with a whole single player aspect completely useless and not telling consumers this at the time of purchase. The Crew (https://www.stopkillinggames.com/)

• Selling a terribly incomplete game filled with glitches for the price of a full game. Cyberpunk 2077 and so many others.

• Selling Pre-Purchases to let people play the game early but really its just another way to get people to pay to be Guinea pigs in your buggy game. That new Star Wars game and so many others.

• Adding so many stupid "micro transactions" to games to milk players as much as possible for useless skins and camos etc. Diablo 4 and so many more.

• Adding a "Season Pass"???? I don't even understand what this is??? Buy a full priced game and then buy a subscription to that game??? But still not have access to all of the content and then be shown a magic glove that costs €500, why is this not part of the subscription or is it???? I hope it is. New COD and probably others

• "Making" a game and selling it to people but really its just a scam where they got "volunteers" to work on the game for free. Then shutting the game down instantly. That zombie game with Will Smith.

• Something, something Overwatch 2 is a totally brand new game.

• Shutting down third party mods for an unsupported and dangerous game just after the sale for that game is over. Fine, they didn't own all of the assets used but they did fix the issue where people could infect your system with malware. COD

• Increasing the prices of all of your subscriptions and making those subscriptions worse by offering less while your parent company is posting ~$20 Billion profits in the most recent quarter, yes quarter, thats like 3 months...

Btw all of these examples have happened within the last 4 years. Its pretty sad that I can list these off the top of my head. I only play single player games and I only got back into gaming a couple of years ago after ~10 years of not really playing anything

If your phone has a password on it then its data is going to be encrypted until you unlock the phone.

You can temporarily boot a twrp recovery image. It will let you put in your password and decrypt your storage.

You should be able to transfer the files to your PC with a cable then

No, its the same character model as a normal Mind Flayer. At least it was a few months ago when I did it but I doubt they've changed it since then

Even if your coutry reaches 100% and you haven't signed, please still do incase some signatures are invalid

TIP – It is better to collect more signatures than required. Sometimes the national authorities might not be able to validate all the statements of support you provide.

https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en

Around 16 TiB and I keep 3 copies of everything so 48 TiB used of around 65TiB. I encoded all my TV shows and most of my movies with AV1 and keep most of my files compressed, which saves a bunch of space so hopefully I won't need more drives any time soon

For me the issue here is, why put so much time and energy into basically rebranding an LLM. I've seen LLMs running on RPi and android phones. Why not write a blog post showing how to run LLMs locally with existing tools for the best privacy instead and put more focus on their existing services. It just seems like they're jumping on the AI bandwagon and charging a premium for an already freely available LLM.

I see some benefits of AI like quality tts when using OSM and stt when transcribing/translating audio but other things like Googles AI answers and Microsofts Copilot leave me scratching my head wondering why consumer would want this

Am I out of touch?

a writing assistant was one of the most requested features in our recent survey

Apparently, I am. People actually want this

For Proton Mail, 59% of respondents want an easier way to send end-to-end encrypted emails to non-Proton users, while 29% want a writing assistant for proofreading, grammar, and composing emails.

Nothing I hate more than not giving a link to the repo

Scribe relies on open source code and models, and is itself open source and therefore available for independent security and privacy audits

Not on their support page specifically for it either

Had to got to Reddit and look at their comments to find out they're using Mistral

https://reddit.com/comments/1e68sof/comment/ldsbs24

We built Scribe in r/ProtonMail using the open-source model Mistral AI to empower anyone in need of email productivity to use a privacy-respecting alternative to r/ChatGPT or r/GeminiAI that:
 ❌ doesn't log or save prompts
 ⛔️ doesn't use your data for training
 🔎 open-source code that anyone can inspect
 🖥️ can be run locally, so your data never leaves your device
 
See the official announcement here: https://proton.me/blog/proton-scribe-writing-assistant

https://huggingface.co/mistralai/Mistral-7B-v0.1/discussions/8

Hello, thanks for your interest and kind words! Unfortunately we're unable to share details about the training and the datasets (extracted from the open Web) due to the highly competitive nature of the field. We appreciate your understanding!

I've run into issues where a game will work with a specific version of wine but then not work with a newer version but then other games that don't work with the older version, work with the new one.

Theres also potentially issues of dependencies for one game breaking another game. Separate prefixes just make it easier to troubleshoot a game not working since you can just install/uninstall whatever dependencies that it might need without worrying about messing up other games.

Its also just easier to delete the entire prefix when you realise you've installed too many useless dlls and you've finally found the one thing you do need to make the game work lol

I also like to archive games I like since companies can just decide to remove their games from existence whenever they want. So I just add the separate prefix that has any extra dlls or tweaks to the archive so that the game should still work in 3 years without having to try and download dependencies that may not be as easy to find in the future

But if you don't have issues I don't think its a big deal and if you do have issues with a game, you can just make a separate one for that anyway.

You could chance it, but they probably have logs of your IP/location data or they bought your data somewhere and so they could check, if they cared enough, but if you're not an EU citizen and you live in an EU country then GDPR applies to you

Guide is maybe not the right word lol, it just exactly what I click to set up the majority of my games

I'm not 100% sure, but from my understanding yes the regisrty in the "prefix" folder would be changed. You can manually edit the wine prefix registry with regedit https://www.winehq.org/docs/wineusr-guid<br />e/using-regedit and Lutris supports this, just click the arrow that brings up the winetricks option and its under Wine Registry

Every few months I like to clear out my password manager of any accounts I don't need anymore, usually just throwaway emails aliases.

I'll usually attempt to log into any services that I know I've deleted/requested to delete to make sure they're not accessible anymore and so far I haven't been able to log in to any of them so I can only assume my requests are working.

I suppose if a service had a data breach, after my information was meant to be deleted, and I found my information there then I'd make a complaint to my regulator about not deleting my data. I would have proof of my request and their acknowledgement of the request so it'd be pretty silly of them not to delete it after saying they did

I rarely use anything but email aliases and fake information anyway and I never let online retailers save my card information. And if my address in on my account I change it to P. Sherman 42 Wallabyway Sydney before I delete/request to delete my account.

I spend too much time reading emails so I try to keep mine short, especially when they're going to a generic email like support or privacy.

https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/

The GDPR does not specify what a valid request to erasure entails. An individual can make a request for erasure verbally or in writing. This request can also be made to any member of your organization, not just to a designated contact. As long as a request meets the conditions above, it is valid, even if it does not refer to “Request for Erasure” the “Right to be Forgotten,” Article 17, or the GDPR.

There's no template to follow for a request. Once GDPR is mentioned, they usually just email back saying that they're doing it or its done.

I haven't come across any difficult companies but I've heard some make it as hard as possible and follow the Erasure Request form template in the link above and ask for proof of I.D etc