BlueTemplar

IMHO online 'friendships' are dangerous in this context : they would fill part of the need for socialization, thus making you more complacent in not trying to seek out 'real' friendships.

Not to mention the time sink and addiction issues with some of the MMOs.

The End Times went legacy mode :

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/magog_a_search_engine_for_...

Could be using time links and/or commenting too much.

"dad jeans" ?

Wero is just a layer on top of the already working SEPA.

(And a layer that is potentially worse than Visa / MasterCard, as long as it's only implemented on Google / Apple smartphones.)

It's not just transaction fees, since Patreon succeeds while Flattr (2.0) failed.

Wait, isn't fossil based on sqlite ?

Or does fossil itself still have the same issues ?

It is concerning to me that there are now international (Western ?) guidelines[1] (2016) and conventions that don't seem to realise the consequences of taking a hard stance on the combination of three of their points :

- a child is any person under the age of 18 years

- including non-explicit sexual activities

- any material that visually depicts a child [engaged in those]

Am I missing something, or have they 'criminalised' a quite large chunk of art ?!?

[1] https://ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Terminology-gui...

Then we have these guidelines embedded in automated systems (sometimes with people as 'cogs'), add a pinch of pressure by puritans in power of various stripes, and a decade later we end up with payment networks forcing platforms to kick out artists even when what they are doing is not illegal in their respective jurisdictions !

That doesn't make sense : Signal is slightly older (both 2014), and was end-to-end encrypted from the start, while Matrix only got it officially in 2020 ?

Isn't it more that they have different use-cases : Matrix is PC-first, while Signal (and Telegram, WhatsApp) are mobile-first, to the point of requiring a phone number ?

It cannot be the worst when it's not one.

Seems like it was only newly introduced for Australians wanting to access Discord (not-)servers (and/or channels) declaring themselves 18+ only.

Wait, isn't in that movie... what was it called... ah ! «Brazil»

That's a bad analogy, more like :

Printing Press <=> The Internet

but

Social Media <=> Some specific forms of (mostly centralized) publishing

Out of all of those, only Instagram is on the list (or I have heard has complied despite not being on it).

You seem to be confusing messaging software and social media ?

Do (the others than Instagram) have an algorithmic feed, or (effectively) do not work without making an account ?

I guess that there's also Discord (that isn't on the list but has still complied) that is in an awkward in-between ?

(IMHO both Instagram and Discord ought to be banned anyway, for everyone, because they're deep web platforms that are owned by Meta/Tencent, and are therefore a threat to the open web and liberal democracy.)

Them being platforms is most of the issue. Protocols (like Mastodon or PeerTube), not platforms.

Logging IP addresses for use by law enforcement started in like 2004.

I remember ISPs and Web cafés complaining quite a lot.

But I guess you mean on the client software side itself ?

Normalizing ID and ID uploading (instead of banning it) is really what makes this bad.

A good law would just have completely banned these platforms from the country. (Even the Canadian Kik, because freeware, therefore closed source, therefore a platform.

EDIT : Looks like it's instead the Australian Kick, The Register had it wrong ? Same deal. (Especially with its owners having a gambling background.))

I wish the EU would be bold enough to do this, especially with Trump's bullying, but I have already been disappointed in the past, despite the situation clearly calling for strong actions like these...

Discord might not be officially included, but they still complied.

«Big Tech» is a bad term to use IMHO, but if you do, why wouldn't it cover Discord(/Tencent) or even Telegram ?

No, about half of them (mostly) aren't : Reddit, YouTube, Twitch...

(That's also not what «walled garden» means. You're thinking about «deep web».)

You say it's a LOT, but it's about the same cost as a much much shorter USB 4.0 cable. (Granted, it also has to be able to carry 240W.)

So should HDCP. And DMCA. And platforms. And DRM in general.

But this is basically asking for the USA to give up on their soft power (Hollywood, and over the Internet). It's something to aim for, but is still going to take decades.

And you have to be careful about what might fill the power void (China, Russia...)

Oh - were they already tradeable ?

Steam isn't always-on DRM. For instance Valve's own games don't have any.

Their worst failure is allowing games with Denuvo on their store.

I'm not sure what you mean ?

We have been using 3-4 controllers on the Steam Deck lately : Steam Controller, Xbox One gamepad, Switch 1 Joy Pads (together or separate).

There are some quirks with the first time game setup sometimes, but we've never noticed any issues after that ?

Is that the same Battlefields that removed support for private servers ?

Your comparisons are a mess.

"Casual player" is very poorly defined.

You are comparing concurrent players with unique players (IIRC half a billion for Fortnite ?)

"Many millions" hardly means anything when you use it to cover 3 orders of magnitude.

And so on and so forth...

There is more than a single kind of Steam DRM (before even mentioning all the 3rd parties they allow) :

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/how_to_run_steam_games_off...

You mean compared to the PS3, one of the strong points of which was also having a Blu-Ray drive ?

Didn't Gabe Newell basically confirm 13 years ago already that they were aiming for that ?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

It's still worse than useless :

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-killed-my-job-transla...