Every time you look at the app, they share the time you’re seeing with every other user, it’s a privacy nightmare!

They’re just being passive aggressive. “I know the way… but I’m sure as fuck not showing you, scrub.”

I’m not going to purchase the document to find out, and the abstract doesn’t really cover it, but I’m curious what the methodology was here. I seriously doubt that piracy is that prevalent. It’s possible that people are upset with certain companies and aim to pirate their games, and the fact that those companies are the same ones that use Denuvo is happenstance. It’s also possible that they’re using total downloads of pirated copies vs. total sales as their statistic, which is misleading, because I’d wager the majority of folks who pirate the game would not have purchased it if it wasn’t available to download for free.

I’d also be curious if the price of the game was a factor; I imagine more people are looking to pirate a game priced at $70 than one priced at $40, for example.

Really, there’s too many factors to consider here and I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to say how many folks who pirated a given game actually would have purchased it.

The Harris-Walz campaign is specifically amplifying his hometown roots in their own messaging… It’s how they want us to view him. I’d say it’d be more biased if the article painted him as nothing but a seasoned politician.

is it possible to lose the de jure right to install the game in that way due to licensing issues on GOG’s end

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that no, you can’t. When you buy the game, you’ve obtained a perpetual license to install and play that game, similar to what you’d have if you bought the game on a disk. You can lose your ability to download the game, that isn’t guaranteed to be unlimited or perpetual, but installing it via the installer you downloaded, and playing it once you do, are forever. (This is in contrast to something like Steam, where you rely on their servers granting you permission to install the game, and that permission can be revoked.)

Clearly they won’t hesitate to wipe Palestine out completely, so are they, really?

I mean maybe if you hadn’t been milking Skyrim for 13 fucking years, expectations wouldn’t be so unreasonably high, would they?

This is a weird patent; it seems to be describing something more akin to Pokemon Home than an actual in-game mechanic, but then the references talk about the pokemon storage system, so who knows?

Hi - I’m a Linux newbie.

I don’t tell other Linux users that I use linux because it almost always leads to a bunch of questions that I don’t know the answer to. So let me assure you, that awkwardness is on both sides of that conversation you’re describing.

It’s not like I’m sitting here actively supporting the genocide. I’ve been speaking out against Israel since this conflict started. Look, here I am being critical of Israel 10 months ago.

But I’m going to level with you - if I was going to choose a single issue to base my vote on, it wouldn’t be this. It would be climate change. I’d throw in my cap with whomever had the most decisive, immediate plan to cut fossil fuels and major pollutants, enact climate-friendly policies, and put 100% of our budget and focus into reversing as much of the damage we’ve caused as possible, because I think that’s a much bigger issue than Gaza, or Ukraine, or anything else.

Compared to that, which is a global problem, I think any individual nation’s conflicts are pretty trivial. It trumps genocide, it trumps fascism, it trumps everything.

If Trump and the GOP have their way, there won’t be another election cycle. Maybe you need to think beyond this one, too.

99% Hitler

Well, I guess this conversation is 99% over, then.

Where along the DNC’s journey to the right do you hop off? Is it never?

When we have a viable progressive candidate. Until then, I’m going to continue being a pragmatist and vote for the candidate that I think is better among those who have a chance to win, rather than waste my vote trying to make an idealistic point.

Even if it were the case that both were exactly identical, then you’d have to admit that your vote won’t matter for Palestine, and you should base it on other factors, so why don’t you tell me which of Trump’s policies you’re okay with having in exchange for the opportunity to take the idealistic stance in this election?

We can sit here and quote conflicting sources at each other all night, and it’s clear that neither of us is going to sway the other, so we probably should just shake hands and agree to disagree, but fuck it, I’m not doing anything else, so I’ll start. Here’s one. Okay, your turn.

I’m so sick of this horrible take. You do realize that, of the two candidates who have a chance to win this election, neither are good for Palestine, but one is worse, right? It’s not like Donald Fucking Trump is out there campaigning on cutting off arms to Israel and supporting Palestine.

You give me an actual viable candidate who has a chance of actually winning an election in the US and I’ll give them my vote, but right now, what’re you proposing? Voting third party? Why, exactly? Do you only value “taking a stand”, or are you actually trying to do what’s in everyone’s best interest?

The problem is really that republicans keep putting up the worst possible candidates and policies. If the choice was “A sort of bad candidate or another sort of bad candidate”, we’d all happily vote third party and if the slightly-worse-but-not-appreciably-so candidate won as a result, it wouldn’t be a huge hurdle and over a few election cycles we could maybe effect change.

Instead, in that scenario, it leads to Trump and Project 2025 and I’d love to hear your explanation of how that helps us get progressive candidates into office, because I just don’t see it.

I’m a “single issue voter” and that “single issue” is that I don’t want another Trump presidency, so I’ll vote strategically to prevent that from happening, even if I’d much rather have someone else.

It’ll certainly expand their reputation, but not in a good way.

The answer can be found by looking at how most of the commercial open source products are monetized. Software hosting and technical support are quite lucrative if the software is valuable.

This only applies to some software, though, no? Like, let’s say a group of folks make a game or something, and release it as FOSS. Assuming they’re not hobbyists, and this is their career, how are they covering costs and making a living on that?

How do content creators get paid?

Largely through sponsorships, I think, right? Sponsorships and crowdfunding, but both of those require some measure of notoriety. It’s an unfortunate case where you have to spend a lot of effort doing it effectively unpaid until you get a following large enough to bring in sponsorship money or ad revenue or donations. Or you need to be a pretty woman who’s willing to monetize that, that seems to have a much lower barrier to entry.

Out of curiosity, under this system, how do the people writing the software get paid? Are they all dependent on donations?

The enshitification is progressing nicely!