The Arab parties’ 18 seats is the biggest game changer. The Netanyahu block will obviously never partner with them, and neither they nor the Eisenkot block is large enough to form a government coalition without them. So the only way we make it out of this mess is with some real Arab representation in the government.

I really hope that happens. But it’s worth noting that some (not all!) of the Arab parties don’t acknowledge Israel’s legitimacy, so obviously cannot be included in Israel’s government.

Please oh please let this work out. I want to get off this Bibi horror ride.

The alternative is to link to a specific instance. In which case if you open it you’ll be logged out.

Thanks.

I couldn’t care less about the downvotes, just like you I’m just interested in having a good conversation and sharing accurate information. So thank you for providing it!

You’re right about all of that. Especially the takeaway that it’s nuanced. Yeah, it really is.

I think what most people, including you, are reacting to is who is doing this rather than what is being done. And rightly so. I don’t want to trust Epic (or Mic🤮soft) with this kind of thing. But anti-cheat is nuanced, and I think I can persuade you (if you don’t agree already) that some kind of anti-cheat that actually works to some extent is needed.

You brought up:

… you have to ask yourself what platform you’re participating in and why.

I think the answer is pretty obvious here. The platform is an online game. Let’s say Fortnite just because it’s the obvious example to use (personally I’ve never played it). The reason you want to participate is for fun, for competition (maybe even professional), or both.

One thing is very clear: if other people playing Fortnite are cheating when playing with you, it prevents you from having fun or winning the competition. Unless you are a cheater yourself, you only want to play with non-cheaters.

So obviously you want there to be some way you can play Fortnite with some level of guarantee that other players aren’t cheating.

So let’s say you, the player, get to decide how this is enforced. The stipulation is that every player including you will be subject to the same level of enforcement, and any player that isn’t will be locked out of the platform. How do you do it?

You and every player will have to somehow credibly convince the game that you’re not cheating. The only way to do that is to reveal some information about the system running the game. The TPM and all those other technologies that you seem to understand much better than I do, are the way to do that credibly. The only question left, then, is which information (or “how much”) would actually be sent to the server to provide this proof.

That’s the trade-off. I agree with you that these companies will almost inevitably exploit this system to extract data about you that has nothing to do with cheating. If not at first, then soon afterwards. And that’s an endless battle that we’ll continue to fight. But it’s also besides the fundamental point.

Cheating in online games is a real problem that actually needs solutions. I think the framework presented by EAC v2 is a good one, and can be used to enforce anti-cheat on Linux without spying on you in any other way. That, I think, is a good thing.

What would be best, of course, is if a more trustworthy organization made a similar anti-cheat solution following EAC v2’s footsteps.

I didn’t because linking to a post or comment on Lemmy (or the fediverse at large) is awful. Does this work? https://vger.to/discuss.tchncs.de/comment/29001869

So are you saying it doesn’t get root type privileges? And can be as trusted to not be as invasive as anticheat is on windows being able to look through your entire system?

From my understanding, that’s right. My understanding is very shallow though, so you should look into it yourself if you really care enough. I think the links I posted are enough of a starting point.

Personally, I don’t even play any competitive multiplayer games so I generally have no interaction with anticheat one way or another. For that reason, I don’t see myself doing the steps required to get EAC v2 working.

But, given that there are loads of people who:

1. Want to play and enjoy these competitive multiplayer games
2. Don’t want cheaters to ruin the game for them
3. Acknowledge that cheaters will ruin the game if nothing is done to prevent that

Then, some trade-offs are inevitable. Anti-cheat is required for that, there’s no getting around it. That is the “good reason” for which the attestation is needed.

Maybe for you that’s not a good reason - that’s fine, it’s the same for me, I just don’t play those kinds of games and so the games I play don’t need anticheat. There’s really no reason to get angry with a solution that DOESN’T AFFECT YOU if you’re not interested in it, but actually serves a purpose for others.

This isn’t putting anything sleazy in your kernel. Please take a look at my reply to another comment.

This isn’t putting anything sleazy in your kernel. Please take a look at my reply to another comment.

That’s not what this is doing. From my understanding, the kernel doesn’t include any new code made by Epic. It just needs to support Secure Boot and a bunch of other requirements, all of which are already possible with existing Linux solutions.

The anti-cheat wants to verify that you haven’t fucked with your system, there are ways to do that and EAC requires that your setup can credibly after attest to it.

Video going over the requirements (with timestamp): https://youtu.be/3Xi7m0CYk5s?t=7m39s

Source: https://onlineservices.epicgames.com/news/introducing-easy-anti-cheat-linux-v2

On Windows, we rely heavily on a kernel driver to protect the games. This driver isn’t always on, it starts when a game is launched and stops when the player exits. For EAC Linux v2 we will not leverage an equivalent kernel module, and instead we’ll take full advantage of existing Linux platform security features like measured boot, the kernel lockdown LSM, and IOMMU support, plus our own eBPF logic to maintain integrity and detect cheaters. These security features are not available on every distro and may require configuration changes to activate.

I agree with your sentiment though. But somehow, against all odds, the “programming is too hard” people landed on a solution that sounds pretty good to me.