And the alternative to Lemmy is what? Viewing the same content of fifteen years reposted by a bot every once in a while, and having your discussion subverted by bad faith actors and bots?

I definitely don’t feel like using Reddit much anymore. Most of my time is spent in a particular programming subreddit to answer such fruitful questions as ‘what is a function’ next to master thesis-worthy posts, which is entertaining I guess.

Reddit said a long time ago there were no plans to change availability of the HTML version of the website, and I suppose now there are plans driven by unscrupulous shareholder interests.

The lion’s share of people are still on that platform, and those should be slowly nudged away from that burning garbage heap. It would be both tragic and hilarious at the same time if the mention of Lemmy caused the platform to ban you instantly.

Chinese propaganda slop. Nothing substantial to see here. I don’t even know why this is not immediately deleted by mods.

You can practically feel the enshittification drip through your screen when you attempt to use VMWare Workstation for free (which they technically allow you to do).

They make you enter address and identification data when you try to download it. However, they don’t actually check whether any of that data is sound, so you can state your location is 42069 Jackoff Ville on the far side of the moon. Ask me how I know.

Oh yeah, starting your post with

I set up a web-facing server for this niche group so I can provide unpaid tech support at 4am

is definitely on every normal user’s mind at all times.

The missing undertone here, which is present in about every issue involving Windows 11 ever since it was released, is the corporate enshittification, the unerring fatigue of normal users of avoidance to

go the fuck away from this cursed idiocy,

and last but not least people like you going ‘hmm yes but akshually’ in sort-of-defense-but-not-really of the deliberately malicious and billion-dollar company.

We have been conditioned to view people that criticize the corporatism in this Western society with the same lens as we used to conspiracy theorists. You need to call this out as propaganda wherever you see it. The people who cannot describe the price of a supermarket banana or bread are not your friends.

Look at it this way: A normal dude with bad hair and questionable social intelligence isn’t getting up in the morning and deciding to fuck with a million or more users by making their computers unbootable. There is only good intentions. Sometimes the Lennart Poetterings fuck up - but we will send three long-haired dudes with funny glasses to your place to fix your tank for free, as you did.

Whereas with Shitmicro Operating System, they have continually demonstrated that they’re here to sell you ads and make everything so much shittier like you would not have believed twenty years ago.

The negotiation needs to happen first - a compliant host port cannot just send 12V. Heck, even 5V at 5A depending on available power, the limit for PD, cannot just happen. A compliant USB-PD power supply is not supposed to deliver any power until an actual negotiation, or specific pull-down resistors on the device CC1/2 are detected.

Of course not all USB-C ports are compliant. USB-A is essentially a hardwired 5V at (your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine-the-spec-is-nonsense)A, and some transit systems like buses I have found and tested to just hardwire USB-C to provide 5V with no negotiation either. Maybe those had host-side resistors advertising any particular amperage (you can draw up to 3A at 5V ONLY depending on CC1/2 pull-up resistors with no further negotiation), but I wouldn’t count on it.

Also, you can’t really directly short VBUS to D+/-, since there are CC/SBU pins inbetween. On the host side, CC is either pulled up to VBUS (with a huge resistor) or tied to some IC, that might be able to detect bad conditions (though I have no experience here). On the device side, CC is either pulled-down with another big resistor, or tied to another IC. There are opportunities to detect errors and go into protection states, but that might not be the case depending on the ICs they’re using. SBU is supposed to be left floating or unconnected at the start.