In light of Germany and Italy essentially being the only two EU member states against the suspension of trade with Israel - to be expected since they are the second and third biggest arms traders with Israel, respectively - would an internal boycot of their goods be something feasible to do to put pressure on them to change how they vote? Since they care about their profit given their arms trade with Israel, let's hit them right there.

What does everyone think?

A few days ago I made a post here inquiring as to why startmail addresses couldn't be used on steam, and what people thought I should/could do.

In the end after some suggestions, I opened a support ticket with steam asking why startmail was not supported, and in the end managed to convince them to support it as a valid email address (unless it gets abused - more on that later). For the record, here is my entire back-and-forth with them:

Me on Feb 13 @ 10:35am

Dear Steam Support,

I recently changed my email provider to startmail.com, but when I try to update it in my steam account to this address I get an error that its not valid or unsupported.

Since startmail.com is a paid service based in Europe, I would like clarification on why it is not supported by steam, and hopefully have it added to the valid email providers for steam.

The fact that its a paid service means scammers/people trying to abuse it is unlikely (it costs around 60 euro a year), so I really think there should be no issue accepting it as an email address.

I would really appreciate having this issue resolved so that I can change my email address to my new one, and close my previous email account eventually.

Thank you in advance, [My name]

Steam on Feb 14 @ 6:27pm

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

The email address you're trying to use on your Steam account is not currently valid for use with Steam. Typically this is because the email service has been identified as offering disposable emails, but it may also be because the email address domain or domain suffix has been marked as prohibited for use with Steam for one of a number of reasons.

At this time Steam does not offer an option to bypass this restriction. Please select a different address on a different domain/service to use with your Steam account.

Steam Support [Steam Support Person A's Name]

Me on Feb 14 @ 6:44pm

You are correct that they offer disposable addresses, but they have the format @use.startmail.com

The main address looks like @startmail.com

Is there any possibility of having a team look into this, and blacklist the disposable format but allow the regular format (of which you can only have a single address, like your main email).

Besides, gmail (which is my current address) also allows for creating disposable addresses: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/techtips/how-to-create-a-disposable-email-address-with-gmail/

I think many people, myself included, would like to move away from big tech companies such as microsoft (hotmail) and google (gmail) and so would appreciate your consideration on the matter.

Many thanks, [My name]

Steam on Feb 16 @ 5:44am

Sorry about the previous message. We misunderstood your issue.

Anyway, we're unable to do your request, but we can help you update the email address on the account.

Please provide your new email address. Once we have your alternate address, we will update the account.

Steam Support [Steam Support Person B's Name]

Me on Feb 16 @ 7:56am

Hello, no worries.

I hope Im not misunderstanding your reply myself now, but as I understand it, you will manually change my account email to my new startmail address?

If that's the case, here it is:

my_email@startmail.com

Just in case I have not yet managed to convince you to whitelist the regular startmail addresses, here is an article discussing this from them: https://support.startmail.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007297457-Personal-Aliases

Note this paragraph: "Personal alias allows you to send and receive email at an email address different from your main StartMail account address. These email aliases end in @use.startmail.com instead of @startmail.com." (if address has use in it, is an alias, otherwise its the regular type)

Many thanks for your help. If I misunderstood what you need from me, I apologise, please clarify it for me.

Best regards, [My name]

Steam on Feb 17 @ 3:39am

Hello,

I'm sorry, it looks like our team provided some incorrect information that ended up being misleading.

Steam Support will occasionally manually allow single email addresses that use a personal domain, but large scale services like Startmail do not match what's intended for those cases. We're sorry the team provided false information above.

Your report will be passed on to Steam's developers, but please understand that Steam does not make decisions regarding email / domain viability lightly. When a domain is blocked, it's usually because that email service offers disposable or public email services which are by their very nature incompatible with Steam, or their requirements to sign up for a new email account are extremely permissive and thus allow wide scale misuse of emails on that service for hijacking, fraud, and even potentially illegal activity. Email services are only blocked from use with Steam after demonstrated, large scale misuse from users of that service.

Valve [Steam Support Person C's Name]

Me on Feb 17 @ 7:16am

Very well, however please pass on the following information to your team as well, which can be easily verified from startmail's own page and may be helpful in making a decision:

"their requirements to sign up for a new email account are extremely permissive and thus allow wide scale misuse of emails on that service for hijacking, fraud, and even potentially illegal activity."

As mentioned, startmail is a paid service. It costs about 60 euro a year to create an account. Thats not exactly permissive, certainly not more so than gmail for example.

"Email services are only blocked from use with Steam after demonstrated, large scale misuse from users of that service."

Again, as mentioned in my previous replies and the information available on their own page, they have 2 email formats - not unlike gmail with their '+ email addresses'. The @startmail.com is the main one, of which you can ONLY have one, and the aliases which are probably what your team determined might lead to abuse, have the format @use.startmail.com. It would be a terrific resolution if steam could start allowing the single main addresses (@startmail.com) and blocking only the alias addresses (@use.startmail.com).

https://www.startmail.com/pricing/ (Payment details required on account creation, and the not exactly inexpensive prices of the service)

Again, thank you for taking time to speak with me about this, and for forwarding to your developers for conaideration.

Steam on Feb 19 @ 1:47am

It looks like Steam's developers have decided to open access to startmail. This has been done despite their disposable email service which is not compatible with how Steam expects its users maintain their email account with Steam. The service will be monitored and blocked again if further misuse is detected.

Valve [Steam Support Person C's Name]

Me on Feb 19 @ 2:44am

Thats great to hear! I hate to repeat myself like a broken record, but in the interest of protecting every steam user, as well as the continued allowance of startmail, please only allow the @startmail.com addresses and BLOCK the @use.startmail.com addresses (alias format).

Once again, thank you for your patience, understanding, and consideration in this issue. I will now close my ticket if able to, otherwise please do feel free to close it for me.

[My name]

I haven't checked if they actually blocked the @use.startmail.com address format, but I successfully changed my steam email to my main @startmail.com address. Hopefully they go through with blocking the aliases, and keep the regular address format as valid.

A few days ago I made a post here inquiring as to why startmail addresses couldn't be used on steam, and what people thought I should/could do.

In the end after some suggestions, I opened a support ticket with steam asking why startmail was not supported, and in the end managed to convince them to support it as a valid email address (unless it gets abused - more on that later). For the record, here is my entire back-and-forth with them:

Me on Feb 13 @ 10:35am

Dear Steam Support,

I recently changed my email provider to startmail.com, but when I try to update it in my steam account to this address I get an error that its not valid or unsupported.

Since startmail.com is a paid service based in Europe, I would like clarification on why it is not supported by steam, and hopefully have it added to the valid email providers for steam.

The fact that its a paid service means scammers/people trying to abuse it is unlikely (it costs around 60 euro a year), so I really think there should be no issue accepting it as an email address.

I would really appreciate having this issue resolved so that I can change my email address to my new one, and close my previous email account eventually.

Thank you in advance, [My name]

Steam on Feb 14 @ 6:27pm

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

The email address you're trying to use on your Steam account is not currently valid for use with Steam. Typically this is because the email service has been identified as offering disposable emails, but it may also be because the email address domain or domain suffix has been marked as prohibited for use with Steam for one of a number of reasons.

At this time Steam does not offer an option to bypass this restriction. Please select a different address on a different domain/service to use with your Steam account.

Steam Support [Steam Support Person A's Name]

Me on Feb 14 @ 6:44pm

You are correct that they offer disposable addresses, but they have the format @use.startmail.com

The main address looks like @startmail.com

Is there any possibility of having a team look into this, and blacklist the disposable format but allow the regular format (of which you can only have a single address, like your main email).

Besides, gmail (which is my current address) also allows for creating disposable addresses: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/techtips/how-to-create-a-disposable-email-address-with-gmail/

I think many people, myself included, would like to move away from big tech companies such as microsoft (hotmail) and google (gmail) and so would appreciate your consideration on the matter.

Many thanks, [My name]

Steam on Feb 16 @ 5:44am

Sorry about the previous message. We misunderstood your issue.

Anyway, we're unable to do your request, but we can help you update the email address on the account.

Please provide your new email address. Once we have your alternate address, we will update the account.

Steam Support [Steam Support Person B's Name]

Me on Feb 16 @ 7:56am

Hello, no worries.

I hope Im not misunderstanding your reply myself now, but as I understand it, you will manually change my account email to my new startmail address?

If that's the case, here it is:

my_email@startmail.com

Just in case I have not yet managed to convince you to whitelist the regular startmail addresses, here is an article discussing this from them: https://support.startmail.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007297457-Personal-Aliases

Note this paragraph: "Personal alias allows you to send and receive email at an email address different from your main StartMail account address. These email aliases end in @use.startmail.com instead of @startmail.com." (if address has use in it, is an alias, otherwise its the regular type)

Many thanks for your help. If I misunderstood what you need from me, I apologise, please clarify it for me.

Best regards, [My name]

Steam on Feb 17 @ 3:39am

Hello,

I'm sorry, it looks like our team provided some incorrect information that ended up being misleading.

Steam Support will occasionally manually allow single email addresses that use a personal domain, but large scale services like Startmail do not match what's intended for those cases. We're sorry the team provided false information above.

Your report will be passed on to Steam's developers, but please understand that Steam does not make decisions regarding email / domain viability lightly. When a domain is blocked, it's usually because that email service offers disposable or public email services which are by their very nature incompatible with Steam, or their requirements to sign up for a new email account are extremely permissive and thus allow wide scale misuse of emails on that service for hijacking, fraud, and even potentially illegal activity. Email services are only blocked from use with Steam after demonstrated, large scale misuse from users of that service.

Valve [Steam Support Person C's Name]

Me on Feb 17 @ 7:16am

Very well, however please pass on the following information to your team as well, which can be easily verified from startmail's own page and may be helpful in making a decision:

"their requirements to sign up for a new email account are extremely permissive and thus allow wide scale misuse of emails on that service for hijacking, fraud, and even potentially illegal activity."

As mentioned, startmail is a paid service. It costs about 60 euro a year to create an account. Thats not exactly permissive, certainly not more so than gmail for example.

"Email services are only blocked from use with Steam after demonstrated, large scale misuse from users of that service."

Again, as mentioned in my previous replies and the information available on their own page, they have 2 email formats - not unlike gmail with their '+ email addresses'. The @startmail.com is the main one, of which you can ONLY have one, and the aliases which are probably what your team determined might lead to abuse, have the format @use.startmail.com. It would be a terrific resolution if steam could start allowing the single main addresses (@startmail.com) and blocking only the alias addresses (@use.startmail.com).

https://www.startmail.com/pricing/ (Payment details required on account creation, and the not exactly inexpensive prices of the service)

Again, thank you for taking time to speak with me about this, and for forwarding to your developers for conaideration.

Steam on Feb 19 @ 1:47am

It looks like Steam's developers have decided to open access to startmail. This has been done despite their disposable email service which is not compatible with how Steam expects its users maintain their email account with Steam. The service will be monitored and blocked again if further misuse is detected.

Valve [Steam Support Person C's Name]

Me on Feb 19 @ 2:44am

Thats great to hear! I hate to repeat myself like a broken record, but in the interest of protecting every steam user, as well as the continued allowance of startmail, please only allow the @startmail.com addresses and BLOCK the @use.startmail.com addresses (alias format).

Once again, thank you for your patience, understanding, and consideration in this issue. I will now close my ticket if able to, otherwise please do feel free to close it for me.

[My name]

I haven't checked if they actually blocked the @use.startmail.com address format, but I successfully changed my steam email to my main @startmail.com address. Hopefully they go through with blocking the aliases, and keep the regular address format as valid.

Hey everyone. I recently created and started transitioning to my Startmail email address. I'm changing emails for all my accounts bit by bit, as new emails get forwarded to my new inbox from my old gmail (which I plan on leaving as is with forwarding for about a year). Just now I decided to update my steam email. I first created an alias from startmail's aliases UI, but steam didnt like that. It specifically gave me this message:

It appears you've entered a disposable email address, or are using an email provider that cannot be used on Steam. Please provide a different email address.

So then I decided to add my regular startmail address, but I got the exact same message.

How can I deal with this? Ideally I would love to contact them and explain and request that they allow startmail (I mean, its a paid service so unlikely people will be generating multiple email addresses - as for aliases, they could just disallow the @use.startmail.com addresses, which are the aliases).

What do you guys think is my best bet for this issue?

Hello everybody! One of the last google software I use is my gmail, mainly since I've had it for so long and migrating seems daunting. It's time however.

I do eventually want to self-host my own email, possibly with something like this: https://docker-mailserver.github.io/docker-mailserver/latest/

But to do that I'd need to set up and maintain stability on a home lab for a short time first, something I can't do yet because of my living arrangements, which means self-hosted email may be a few years away.

In the mean time, I looked at https://www.startmail.com/ and https://tuta.com/secure-email (since tuta is very highly recommended on lemmy). Sadly, while tuta sounds great, it has the deal breaker (for me) that I can only use their clients.

That's why I'm leaning more towards startmail, though of course I'll take advantage of the 7 day free trial before committing to it.

Meanwhile, is there anything else that you can recommend which is:

• an EU company
• privacy and customer first
• crucially can be used with Thunderbird
• that will save me 59.88 Euro a year
• That allows for the creation of folders in the Inbox (I use this constantly for organisation)

A very big bonus would be if I could somehow import my gmail emails to it, in a sensible manner, like I see startmail offering to do. CalDAV support would also be really nice.

Also, I'm thinking for about a year I keep both gmail and whatever I switch to, while having gmail forward everything to the new one, so that I make sure everything has been migrated over there.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: While looking at reviews for various services, I came across a video offering a startmail discount link, so I can now get it at 29.94 Euro for the first year. This makes it a lot more attractive even if I don't stick with it for more than a year, but I would still love to hear your suggestions or thoughts :)

Edit: since i found that discount link from the video, i decided to try startmail. Im still on the 7 day trial (just meaning i havent been billed yet), but so far i really like it. Ive already started changing my apps/services/websites emails to aliases i set up (the unlimited aliases of startmail are a godsend in this regard), and the importing tool they have really easily copied my gmail emails/folders over to the startmail account. From there, it was a simple matter of moving the folders from the resultant gmail folder to my actual SM inbox where i wanted them, adding the account to thunderbird, and re-setting up the rules for the SM account in Thunderbird. Id still love to hear all your suggestions in case I do decide SM isnt what i need, but so far it seems like its a winner

Ive noticed several posts here linking to politico articles, which I find strange for this community given their history and affiliations.

To everyone reading, just give the wiki page on them a read, follow the references cited in it, and make up your own mind on whether you want to trust it as a source for EU news.

To everyone who posts their articles in here, I hope its just because you weren't aware of all this, rather than anything else.

Hello again guys.

I'd like to be able to mute discord notification sounds in addition to toggling off the dunst popup (the latter of which I already have working) but I cant seem to be able to find a way to do so, and control it through the sxhkd keybind.

Here is my keybind to disable notifications:

# Toggle notifications on/off
super + shift + comma
	sh -c 'if dunstctl is-paused | grep -q "true"; then dunstctl set-paused false; notify-send -t 2500 "Notifications enabled"; else notify-send -t 2500 "Notifications disabled"; sleep 2.5; dunstctl set-paused true; fi'

However even after I toggle notifications off, I still hear the discord pings which frankly is annoying when I'm trying to concentrate on something, or watching a movie or whatever.

Anyone have any idea how to do this without breaking too much of my setup haha?

Thanks in advance as always, and of course if you need more info do ask.

Hello everyone, I've had an issue with discord on Arch Linux for a long time, but only now had the time to document the error (had to photograph it with phone and transcribe it).

Its a weird one, buckle up.

At random times, discord crashes which causes my polybar to crash, as well as my sxhkd, which obviously means my computer is practically useless until I hard shutdown using the power button on my case. Whats weird is that sometimes it will go weeks without crashing, and other times it will crash frequently in a short time span (e.g. it crashed a couple times yesterday, and once today).

Here is the error as I photographed it:

And here it is after I manually copied it into a text editor (keep in mind I might have missed a character here or there because of this).

A JavaScript Error occurred in the main process

Uncaught exception:
Error: EROFS: read-only file system, write
	at writeSync (node:fs:923:3)
	at SyncWriteStream._write (node:internal/fs/sync._write_stream:275)
	at writeOrBuffer (node:internal/streams/writable:572:12)
	at _write (node:internal/streams/writable:501:10)
	at Writeable.write (node:internal/streams/writable:510:10)
	at console.value (node:internal/console/constructor:298:16)
	at console.warn (node:internal/console/constructor:405:26)
	at transport.writeFn (/opt/discord/resources/app.asar/node_modules/electron-log/src/node/transports/console.js:45:7)
	at transport (/opt/discord/resources/app.asar/node_modules/electron-log/src/node/transports/console.js:51:15)
	at Logger.processMessage (/opt/discord/resources/app.asar/node_modules/electron-log/src/core/Logger.js:175:11)

Anyone have any idea how I can troubleshoot this?

I also tried checking the following directory but it doesn't exist on my PC:

/opt/discord/resources/app.asar/node_modules/electron-log/src/core/

I only have the file /opt/discord/resources/app.asar So obviously something is going on there that shouldn't be happening.

I've got no idea how to troubleshoot node apps, so would appreciate any help from those of you who have those skills.

Thanks in advance! Please let me know if you need more info or need me to run commands and show you the output, and Ill do so.

Hello everyone!

I would like certain windows to remain in full screen even if another tiled/floating window is opened on the same workspace. I would also like the tiled/floating windows to remain above the full screen window so that they don't disappear if I click on the full screen window.

The primary use case for this is games such as Eve Online, where I use a number of external tools which may or may not spawn new windows over the game window (e.g. the Rift Intel tool, which spawns a new small floating window whenever someone writes in one of the intel channels you set Rift to monitor). I dont want it to exit full screen mode. If a tiled or floating window is opened on the same window then Eve also goes into tiled mode.

Reading up a little about this I came across the concept of layers in bspwm, but I'm not entirely sure if they fit for this use case. Here's an example of what I don't want to happen:

(The Hostile Reported popup window is from Rift and spawns wherever focus is)

Normally I have it be entirely fullscreen. I'd like to be able to interact with these and other popup windows in tiled/floating mode without pulling Eve out of fullscreen.

How can I begin to work on this? Of course if you would like more info please ask and I'll provide it.

Thanks in advance!

[SOLUTION (I think)] I had to add this rule for my Eve client:

bspc rule -a "steam_app_8500" state=fullscreen layer=below border=off focus=on

but also had to add this rule for the Rift Intel tool:

bspc rule -a "dev-nohus-rift-MainKt" state=floating layer=above

I guess this is the way to do it for any set of programs where you want one to keep its fullscreen status but have others above it

NOTE: This also applied the same behaviour to the eve launcher since the way steam proton works both the launcher and the clients have the same WM_CLASS. If anyone knows any way to distinguish them in bspwm please let me know. Here is what I get for each when running xprop:

$ xprop | grep -E 'CLASS|NAME'
_NET_WM_NAME(UTF8_STRING) = "EVE Launcher" WM_ICON_NAME(STRING) = "EVE Launcher" WM_NAME(STRING) = "EVE Launcher" WM_LOCALE_NAME(STRING) = "en_US.UTF-8" WM_CLASS(STRING) = "steam_app_8500", "steam_app_8500"
# Click on launcher

$ xprop | grep -E 'CLASS|NAME'
_NET_WM_NAME(UTF8_STRING) = "EVE" WM_ICON_NAME(STRING) = "EVE" WM_NAME(STRING) = "EVE" WM_LOCALE_NAME(STRING) = "en_US.UTF-8" WM_CLASS(STRING) = "steam_app_8500", "steam_app_8500"
# Click on client

Ive tried rewriting the rule as such:

bspc rule -a "steam_app_8500:steam_app_8500:EVE" state=fullscreen layer=below

and also adding a rule for the launcher specifically (before the client rule):

bspc rule -a "steam_app_8500:steam_app_8500:EVE Launcher" state=tiled layer=normal

But the launcher still opens in fullscreen. The client however seems to be fine - it opens in fullscreen on the 'below' layer so when a new window is opened on the same workspace it isn't forced into tiled mode.

Hello everyone :)

I have this in a script which I call from my .zshrc:

#!/bin/zsh

# ~/.bin/check_last_update.sh

GREEN='\033[92m'
YELLOW='\033[93m'
RED='\033[91m'
RESET='\033[0m'

# Check if there are available updates for packages
num_packages_to_update=$(checkupdates | wc -l)

if (( num_packages_to_update >= 0 && num_packages_to_update <= 20 )); then
	echo -e "${GREEN}Available updates: $num_packages_to_update${RESET}" >> /dev/tty
elif (( num_packages_to_update > 20 && num_packages_to_update <= 50 )); then
	echo -e "${YELLOW}Available updates: $num_packages_to_update${RESET}" >> /dev/tty
else
	echo -e "${RED}Available updates: $num_packages_to_update${RESET}" >> /dev/tty
fi

# Kernel version check
running_kernel=$(uname -r)
installed_kernel=$(pacman -Q linux | awk '{print $2}' | cut -d '-' -f1 | cut -d '.' -f1,2,3)

running_kernel_base=$(echo "$running_kernel" | cut -d '-' -f1)

if [[ "$running_kernel_base" != "$installed_kernel" ]];
then
	echo -e "${RED}Kernel mismatch detected. Reboot recommended.${RESET}" >> /dev/tty
fi

It works, but when I open a new terminal it may take up to 2 seconds for the prompt to show up. Is there a way of speeding this up?

Would it be a good idea to perform the checks in the background every hour or so, maybe with a systemd timer or something, and cache the results (or possibly to make it even more efficient, just store a file somewhere out of the way containing the number of updates and if there is a kernel mismatch - maybe on separate lines so when I open a terminal I can easily query the file and get exactly what I need) so that when I open a new terminal instead of checking with the live repositories it checks the cached data? Also, I guess this would mean that if a package has become available for update after the last time the check script runs, then the number it tells me will be less than the actual number of available updates, right?

Thanks in advance!

Hello guys.

I'm trying to learn some more KiCAD and general electronics design from scratch by continuing my thesis project after I've submitted it and its all done, but by taking it to the next step and actually getting a PCB and soldering everything on. This is to get experience through the entire process from design to assembly.

Where I'm stuck is at creating the footprints for my components. I've watched a bunch of videos about the topic, but they all seem to be for boards with no header pins attached to them, or for pins that are vertical (perpendicular to the actual board). The two boards I have are breakout boards for a DS3231 RTC and an HM-10 BLE module, and they both have right-angle male header pins sticking out, which obviously made prototyping on a breadboard really easy, but I'm struggling with converting them to PCB.

Here are some photos to make it clearer:

HM-10:

DS3231:

I know one of my options is to desolder the right-angle header pins and add straight pins to them, but I'd like to avoid that so that I can easily use them in any future projects by simply disconnecting them from the eventual PCB and using them in a breadboard.

As such, I know that I would like there to be female headers on the final PCB, and ideally the female headers will also be at a right-angle so that the final PCB is a little more compact and there aren't just some boards sticking out from it.

So, after getting some measurements with my calipers, how can I translate them into the KiCAD footprint editor knowing the footprint should include the female right-angle header pins (which will of course extend the length of the modules beyond what I have currently measured), and also take their height into account so that they don't have any obstacles between them and the PCB as they are laying parallel to it?

I hope I made myself clear enough, but if not please feel free to ask me for any clarification.

Thanks in advance for any replies :)