Remember Apple's initiative to scan photos on user's devices to find child pornography?
Today I finally decided to research this.
The evidence is conflicting.
For context, the database of prohibited material is called CSAM (child sexual abuse material).

“If it finds any CSAM, it will report the user to law enforcement.”
— Futurism

“Apple said neither feature would compromise the security of private communications or notify police.”
— NPR

CSAM initiative is dead. It won't scan photos in iCloud. It won't scan photos on your device. It will be a feature that only works in some countries, only on children's devices, and it will be opt-in. It will only work for iMessage attachments.

This is what Apple actually said at https://www.apple.com/child-safety:
- “Features available in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, UK, and U.S.”
- “The Messages app includes tools to warn children when receiving or sending photos that contain nudity. These features are not enabled by default. If parents opt in, these warnings will be turned on for the child accounts in their Family Sharing plan.”

News outlets telling people they will be automatically reported to authorities, and then telling there can be false-positives is a classic example of fearmongering. I hate this. Remember, anger and fear are the most marketable emotions. They make you click. News are and will always be worded to cause these emotions — it brings in money.

When presented with good news, people think they're not being told the truth. When presented with bad news, even when they're made up, people think it's the truth that's being hidden from them. This is how news works.

Now, a HUGE but:
Apple is a multi-billion dollar corporation. There is no such thing as good billionaires. Corporations will always wait for chances to invade privacy. It's like boiling the frog — one tiny measure here, one there, and just like this, step by step, they will eliminate the privacy completely. It's in their interest to have all the data about you. It brings control.
This is not the first time Apple tries to do shit like this, and it definitely won't be the last. You have to keep an eye on your privacy. If you want your privacy in the digital age, it's necessary to fight back. If you live in Europe, take the action and vote for initiatives that oppose corporate tyranny and privacy invasions.

Privacy on the internet is one thing, but scanning people's devices is a whole another thing. This is unacceptable no matter the rationale behind it. Expect more measures like that in the near future.

Research Linux. Find a distro that suits you. The notion that you can't switch because of apps/UI/etc. may be dictated by our brain's tendency to conserve energy and avoid the change.
Take a look at mobile distros like Graphene OS and LineageOS. The former only supports Pixel devices, the latter supports a wide range of devices including OnePlus and Xiaomi. They'll have FAR better privacy than iPhones.

Consider switching. It's easier than you think. Yes, it's me who's saying this. I do and will always protect people/companies from unjust criticism, and I consider myself an Apple fangirl for personal reasons related to my childhood, yet I won't fight blindly. CSAM initiative is a valid criticism, and there's nothing preventing me from saying this is unacceptable, and Apple deserves the backlash they got.

Welcome to Part III of WHY WOULD I WANT TO WORK WITH YOU?, a saga of competence, empathy and me being dick, even tho I didn't want to be one.
This is a follow-up to: https://devrant.com/rants/2363551. It's title is: "Mt 13:12".

We left off the story in the very moment I had received feedback from 3 companies that decided to interview me. A, B and C. We won't talk about A from now on, since I refused their offer to offer me unpaid internship.

It's December 20, 18:00. I am returning home. Earlier that day I emailed guys at C that I need some time with my decision, because I have another offer that suits me better. It was awaiting response from B, obviously. That day they called me and offered me... full-time job. As a fullstack. On a project for a big company, that they described by something like: "They may not be one of the famous X of the market, but they're probably X+1, yeah". Needless to say, that was some bad marketing. I googled them up later tho. Anyway, my response didn't change, altho thing seemed a little big better for me. Except that I was a little suspicious of them too. Were they *that* desperate for a worker?[1]

It is December 24th. 10 am. My phone rings. It's guy from B. He tells me "saito, the recruiter guy is still sick. Since I don't know if we can hire you for sure, it may be better for you to accept another offer, if you got any. I'll keep you updated." That was pretty cool of him. Remember the quote from part II? That's the empathy part. He called me, even tho he didn't really have to. If you read this, monsieur, you're the best. Back to the story now. I emailed guys at C that I am willing to start the job anytime. They told me that CEO is back January 7th, 2020.

It is January 4th 2020, 10 am. Unkonwn number calls. It's actually a guy from B, but the other one. The one that was sick previously. He tells me that he wants to talk about my employment. He talked with the senior dev and he just wants a talk and a small code test in typescript. He told me that it's no prob that I don't know typescript, since it will be entry level and I have time to learn the basics. And so I do. We decide to meet at January 7th. Later on that day guys from C email me that they want to sign the contract n January 7th.

And here we get to the culmination and the lesson of those posts. What should I do? On one side I have a job that isn't 100% comfirmed, but I'm pretty positive about it. The people at B are great, I love them. During my interview I learned some stuff about the project I would participate in, so I didn't go in blindly. It was my field of interest. I was hyped for the possibility itself to work with that senior dev. On the other hand guys at C had their contract ready. They finally were ready to start. I still didn't know for shit what would I do. I knew that I would need to learn basics of data science and stuff. Their interview and CEO left me with a quite bad impression. I didn't really like them. But it was a job.

What I did I consider the best thing I could do for myself. I told guys from C to meet someday later. I visited B yesterday, January 7th. I've done the test. It had some code refactoring and implementing some React elements. Basic shit indeed. I am almost positive I would do it even if I didn't visit typescript docs during the weekend. We then talked about it. The dev told me what he would change in the solution, but didn't consider it bad. Then they told me I'm hired. And I emailed C that I can't accept their offer. The guy was pretty pissed. I can understand it, they seemed to be ready to start with me and I pulled out last day, in the evening. I am truly sorry for that. But also I feel no regrets. I have chosen those whom I trusted more. I've chosen guys who took notes of my CV and talked about it in my interview over people who didn't even get that I applied for a frontend positin. That's competence for you. I've chosen guys who actually wanted to talk wih me about me making music over people who sat me down at a computer and told me: "code". That's empathy for you.

Dear recruiters. If you want to attract best candidates, show your competence and empathy.
Dear recruitees. If you're looking for a good job, it may take some time. Also, knowing people helps a lot.

1 – Actually, I wouldn't be surprised, if they really needed someone to help them out on their projects and they didn't get a lot of attention. Why? Well, their webpage was unfinished and kinda sucked, their interview sucked also. I still don't know whether they're a startup or what. I just can't help but feel bad seeing HR and Marketing that bad. Because the guys actually might do a lot of good stuff, and their potential employees didn't get to know that.

Last rant was about games and graphics cards (admittedly not received too well), time for a rant about game development houses.. especially you EA.

So yesterday a friend of mine showed me in one of our Telegram chats that he'd modified some cheats in an old FPS game by editing these scripts (not Lua for some reason) that the game used as a.. configuration language I guess? He called the result a tank cemetery 🙃

Honestly the game looked a lot like Medal of Honor to stoned me at the time, so I figured, well why not fire up that old nx7010 I had laying around for so long, get a new Debian installation on that and rip the Medal of Honor: Allied Assault war chest that I still had, and play it on one of my more modern laptops? Those CD's are now very old anyway, maybe time to archive those before they rot away.

So I installed Debian on it again, looked up how to rip CD's from the command line, and it seemed that dd could do it - just give /dev/cdrom as the input file, and wherever you want to store your copy as the output file. Brilliant! Except.. uh, yeah. It wasn't that easy. So after checking the CD and finding that it was still pristine, and seeing another CD in that war chest fail just the same, I tried burning and then ripping a copy of Debian onto another CD.. checksummed them and yes, it ripped just fine, bit for bit equal. So what the fuck EA, why is your game such a special snowflake that it's apparently too difficult to even spin up the drive to be copied?

So I looked around on plebbit and found this: https://reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/... - the top comment of that post shattered all my hopes for this disc to be possible to rip. Turns out that DRM schemes intentionally screw up the protocols that make up a functioning disc, and detecting those fuck-ups is part of the actual DRM.

"I also remember some forms of DRM will even include disc mastering errors/physical corruption on the actual disc and use those as a sort of fingerprint for the DRM. The copied ISO has to include them at the exact same place in the ISO as on the IRL disc and the ISO emulator has to emulate the disc drive read errors they cause."

So yeah. Never mind that I already own this goddamn game, and that it's allowed by law to make one copy for personal use, AND that intentionally breaking something is very shady indeed.. apparently I don't really own this game after all. So I went onto the almighty search engines, and instantly found a copy of this game for download. You know EA.. I wanted to play nice. You didn't let me. Still wondering why people do piracy now? Might take your top suits that suggested these fucked up DRM schemes another decade to figure out maybe.. even given the obvious now.

But hey I wouldn't even care that much if the medium these games are stored on wouldn't be so volatile (remember these discs are now close to 20 years old, and data rot sets in after 30 years or so). You company decided to publish these on CD. We've had cartridges in many forms before, those are pretty much indestructible and inherently near impossible to duplicate. And why would you want to? But CD is what you chose because you company were too cheap to go to China, get someone to make some plastic molds and put your board and a memory chip in that. Oh and don't even get me started on the working conditions for game devs.. EA and co, aren't you ashamed of yourselves? No wonder that people hate game development houses so much.

Yay, almost finished downloading that copy of Medal of Honor! Whatever you say EA.. I've done everything I could to do it legally. You are the ones who fucked it up.

https://devrant.com/rants/2388734/...

Opengenus talks about how his honesty bit him in his ass and I'd like to expound further on the topic.
You have to remember, honesty is rarely rewarded.

My motto is LLAMF, a powerful tool for success.
Like a buddhist mantra, I chant it every morning as I'm getting out of bed.

If you look around you'll see this wherever you turn your head. On the news? People lying like a mothafuka for their job. People selling something on tv? Billboard? internet? Lying like a mothafuka. People in fancy suits with fancy pieces of cloth tied around their neck to tell you who the master holding their dog leash is? "I did not kill that hooker", "We have to sign the law to know whats in it", "These ratfuck starving terrorhobos huddled inside a cave out in buttfuck nowhere, saudi arabia? They made a nuclear bomb!". Lying..like a mothafuka.

And all of them have careers, or jobs, or some cause, or principles they 'believe' in. Or nation they 'serve'. Or any other justification, any other *excuse*. But really thats all it is.

In this great big universe, you didn't exist for billions, possibly trillions of years, and now you do, for a brief span, and then afterward, you'll cease to exist (maybe, who knows what happens after death?), for more billions or trillions of years.

Put on that scale, no utterance out of your mouth *can* or *will* ever really truly matter. at all.

I say, go nuts for donuts.

Did you know I was almost a billionaire? TRUE STORY.

Did you know I once told a guy in a turtle neck sweater about this great new idea for portable phones. His name was steve jobs. TRUE STORY.

Did you know I cowrote a canticle for leibowitz? TRUE STORY.

Did you know I'm a mothafuking time traveler? TRUE STORY.

Napoleon said "Imagination Rules The World". Of course he also said a bunch of other things, mostly (all) in french. I don't speak french. But why live in ordinary reality when countless others do? Why not live in a world all your own making, and let people believe whatever the hell you tell them? Why not be the most interesting person in the room? Or the most obnoxious, but hey, at least no one can say you didn't try!

Lie to me. You know I love it when you do.

My favorite lie I tell to *myself*, every morning. Like zen. "I'm gonna do something great one day."

And it keeps me going, keeps me high.

Whats your favorite kinda lie?

How to Improve Aim in FPS Games?

First person shooting games require very sharp aim. If you have perfect aim, you win; you don't have it, you lose!

To improve your aim skills in your favorite FPS games, you need to practice a lot. But, you cannot practice while playing the game itself. Also, you must tune the setup to make sure your gaming mouse favors you.

In this article, I am sharing ways you can use to polish your aim skills and win. Here you go.

Choosing the Right Mouse & Grip

It is important that you get your hardware right. It includes a good gaming mouse and a high quality mousepad.

No, I am not suggesting to buy a $150 gaming mouse. But, make sure the mouse you are using has a precise laser sensor and the correct weight distribution. It matters a lot.

Secondly, make sure the grip suits your style. I personally prefer palm grip as it favors fast movement and more control over the mouse.

So choose your gaming mouse wisely.

Tuning the Right Settings

After you’ve got the right mouse, the next thing you need to consider is the software settings - DPI, sensitivity and acceleration.

DPI is the number of pixels moved on the screen while moving your mouse by 1 inch on the mousepad.

Having high DPI ensure quick movement and lower DPI improves precision. So, you need to find the correct balance between the two!

I discourage using mouse acceleration when you are playing an FPS game. You must turn it off in your mouse settings.

Practice, Practice, Practice

As I mentioned in the beginning itself, practice is the most important part in improving your aim for FPS games.

Fortunately, there are tools that you can use online to practice aim training. I recommend using this aim trainer online here, that's my favorite website to practice aim training https://clickspeedtester.com/aim-tr...
which has all the options and modes you would ever need for aim training.

Aim Booster lets you play in challenge as well as training mode. You can also choose from easy, medium and difficult mode.

There are different aiming methods you can practice - quick shot, double shot, twitching, sniper shot etc. I personally love playing the sniper shot as it drastically improves precision.

Final Words

Well, those were the most easy and totally worth trying ways to become a sharpshooter in FPS games. Although, no one can become pro overnight. It needs time and practice in equal amounts.

I hope these ways would help you in winning your favorite shooting games. Tell me comments how much it helped you.