Also state owned is only really useful for infrastructure, where it doesn’t make sense to have multiple providers and monopolies are easily attainable. Like roads, rails, electricity, internet backbone infrastructure and providers, social media, etc. Democracy is the currently best way we know of managing monopolies.

For other stuff, you probably want employee owned democratic collectives. You would still have competition on the market, but its ordinary people that have the say. This would give more power to the people enthused about the tech and long term success, then all the short term gains.

No, publicly traded. One of the first steps to enshittyfication.

Its a bit old, but the last reports for DA:O on wine look good: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=33926

I don’t remember that. AFAIK Larian has not made, and will not make any DLC for BG3.

What do you mean?

Yeah, but we are talking 2000-2005 or so.

I wasn’t that much a fan of the skins and found the interface of winamp very small and fiddly.

The milkdrop plugin however was rather nice though.

Maybe someone can explain to me why Winamp is still so popular?

I have used Winamp 2, 3 and 5 around 2000ish, and it was a fine player, but nothing really special. After Winamp I think I switched to MediaMonkey, which IMO was easier to manage my music collection. Then I used VirtualDJ, which supported cross fading between music with synchronized beats. I think I also used foobar2000 a bit.

Winamp was an okayish player, but there was much more powerful software around at that time. It this just nostalgics or is there really something that people miss today that Winamp provided or still provides?

I would wish if some standard mod download, update and collection API would be established, then having multiple mod sites where everything works slightly different, some mods are exclusive and you might have to pay each service separately for a fast download.

I have a lifetime premium nexus account, so I was there when the enshittyfication started, before it was great, now I see that newcomers have it more difficult there. But I am not sure that multiple competing mod sites will be better, because there is no standard API yet.

I would be willing to pay one provider, which pays for hosting and also gives some to the creators, but then I want to have full and convenient access to all mods.

Steam has a long history of breaking mods, by forcing game (and mod) updates.

Users and Developers have to actively work around that on Steam.

But while GOG doesn’t force updates, they also could do a better job and allowing fresh installs of old versions.

So you can play a racing game in your car, while letting the autopilot kill you.

And so that the manufacturer can sell you a new car, so that you can play newer games.

The woman said that she helped him rob her, so I assume that where her cards.

This story is so odd, that I would be disappointed it is was just about acquiring laptops to resale them later.

Yes. Meat is expensive, and should be expensive.

However meat replacement products cost even more, but they should be cheaper, because they are cheaper to produce.

Diary free ice cream is more expensive. Cow milk is cheaper than oat milk.

This isn’t just about not eating meat or animal products, this is the whole “vegan lifestyle” food that is unreasonable more expensive.

Like buying more expensive vegan salt or sugar instead of normal one.

And if you don’t do that, you are not a “true vegan™”. And the vegan police will come and get you!

“Oh, the pepper you just ate was fertilized by pig manure, sorry you aren’t vegan anymore. You should have bought the more expensive vegan pepper.”

You can accept that they are making a better choice, but then you have to accept that you’re making a worse choice.

No, people don’t dislike vegans or vegetarians because of their choices, they dislike them because they lord their, what they think “better” choice over others. And create in- and out- groups via labeling.

Being vegan or vegetarian means that you have to spend more money in the store to buy food, because meat is heavily subsidized compared to vegetarian options. Also, because being vegan/vegetarian is not the default, many products are overpriced.

Another point is that a healthy and varied diet using only vegan or vegetarian food doesn’t come so natural, so you have to research this more, which means you have to spend time, which again is a commodity.

So it is not just about good or bad, it is also about privilege and class. So people should not go around making statements about other people making “worse” choices.

Currently being vegan or vegetarian is a choice of privilege. An healthy and varied diet becomes more difficult and expensive, when you start removing dishes from your pallet.

So it becomes coupled with a status symbol, instead of being the default way. As long as people call themselves “vegan” or “vegetarian” because of their choice (people being vegan or vegetarian because of mental or medical issues, is different case), they highlight that status over “normal” people.

If people are just not eating meat or animal products for whatever reason, without trying to use labels like “vegan” or “vegetarian” to highlight their status, then that is fine and a personal choice.

Creating societal change, to make vegan or vegetarian the default position, will also lessen the status of the vegans and vegetarians, that use those labels as such. So they have incentives to not produce a political or societal change.

Vegans & vegetarians should go on protests and lobby to make vegan food cheaper and easier than meat, so that it becomes the default. If they don’t do that, and still call themselves vegan/vegetarian then that might imply that it is all about showing their status, and people don’t like that.

Consumer choice is a privilege and not about creating an effective societal/political movement. They should not be used as a status symbol.

(Disclaimer: I eat meat and animal products very infrequently, only when my body demands it. I am also thankful for all vegans and vegetarians, because they gave us more interesting options in stores and restaurants.)

“next-generation PC” whatever that means.

I do hope that there never will be a next generation of PCs, i am quite happy with my old-gen Ship-of-Theseus-PC, where I occasionally replace some parts.

Well said!

There are other games, where you play the bad guys, like Payday. Now I am not knowledgeable enough about the Helldivers or Payday lore, so I cannot compare if similar points can be made there. For all I know Payday could be a group of freedom fighters against a militaristic fascist police state.

Or are there any other games of that genre, where you play the bad guys, and it is made more clear on which side you are on?

SuSE Linux 6.0 I believe. Its been a while and I was very young then…

Here is the problem: Even paying will not get you out of ads any longer. You bought a TV, well the manufacturer will show additional ads on it. You paid for Windows or a Mac, well Apple or Microsoft will advertise additional services on it, same with Android (Google services) or IPhone.

Just spending money to be ad free is no longer enough, because companies try to find ways to extract even more money (or information to sell others) from you, now that you have proven to have some. Either be it additional subscriptions or vendor lock in. They never have enough money, they just want all of it.

So to live ad free, you have to avoid using any product with profit interest or research every company you deal with on what its incentives are, which is very hard or impossible for many people.

Here is a tip though, try to find hardware that comes without bundled software, and find open source software to use it with.

Same. I don’t even remember what ship I ordered.

I liked the game, when it was advertised as a moddable singleplayer game with drop-in drop-out co-op. As well as moddable multiplayer you can host yourself.

Now, I don’t have any interest it whatever that cluster fuck has become.

Do you really want auto-updates for your games, or actually just want updates-on-demand? Or just a notification with a button to update the game?

Personally I dislike Steams auto updates, because I want decide when a game should be updated. I might have mods installed, only mobile internet or a myriad other reasons not to be forced to download and apply an update right at that moment and instead just play the old version.

For saves, I normally just use syncthing. I have regularly issues with GOG and Steam cloud saves, and syncthing works well enough,