You’re not really dependent on EGS just because of the free games; neither in the sense of drugs nor as in you build an infrastructure on it, like with other software. Let’s say you’re a student and get Microsoft products for free. You wrote applications for Windows, you create office documents. Later, Microsoft charges for new versions (since you’re no longer a student). Now you have the choice: keep using unsupported software which is a security risk; pay up; or migrate everything you have created over the years, which will take a long time. You have become dependent on the vendor.

With games, who gives a damn? It’s not like Little Nightmares 2 replaced Little Nightmares. I just keep that version. They’re completely different things. No more free games with EGS? Okay, now what? I’ll just keep using what I have. There is no lock-in effect. This is all just a promotion for their shop like a free ride voucher for a theme park where they hope you spend money on other stuff as well. Or basically any loss-leader anywhere, just that it’s not sold under price, but actually given away for free.

There’s a good reason the free games are so far down on their website, they want you to scroll all the way down and look at their stuff so that you maybe buy something. Which is fine by me, I actually even bought something there once (shouldn’t have, game was way below expectations, but that’s on me).

So yeah they’re not giving stuff out because they’re good. But it’s also not nefarious. Just really lazy and I guess more expensive in the long run.

Imagine having Fortnite money and all you can deliver is the EGS. Yeah free games are cool I guess but it’s like the laziest approach regarding actually engineering and developing a solution

Same is true for games on Steam if the developer decides not to use Steam integration (some features like achievements are ok I think). For example Noita doesn’t need Steam running, you can just copy the folder to another machine AFAIK

also there are Steam emulators

Agreed. But he’s also an abrasive know-it-all. A modicum of social skills and respect goes a long way towards making others accept your pet projects.

This isn’t what I get when reading bug reports he interacts in. Yeah, sometimes he asks if something can’t be done another way – but he seems also very open to new ideas. I rather think that this opinion of him is very selective, there are cases where he comes off as smug, but I never got the impression this is the majority of cases.

I wasn’t talking about the protocol, I was talking about the implementation: PulseAudio is a crashy, unstable POS. I can’t count the number of hours this turd made me waste, until PipeWire came along.

PipeWire for audio couldn’t exist nowadays without PulseAudio though, in fact it was originally created as “PulseAudio for Video”; Pulse exposed a lot of bugs in the lower levels of the Linux audio stack. And I do agree that PipeWire is better than PulseAudio. But it’s important to see it in the context of the time it was created in, and Linux audio back then was certainly different. OSS was actually something a significant amount of people used…

Prohibition and the war on drugs sure worked out well when they were implemented. Surely this time …

This isn’t about making it legal, but about requiring age verification. To bring it closer to your example: stores shouldn’t check your she when buying booze, selling to everyone because if minors don’t get it there, they’ll get moonshine somewhere else, which is worse.

My point was not only that aspect, but also about the fact that input and output of the task is information. And while information itself can be a “product” or be provided as a service, in most cases, it’s not.

But anyhow, I feel like I’m overexplaining myself over a term I said wasn’t good.

Think that’s called NATing

With administrative, I meant that IT is a about information flow - defining rules how data is consumed, transformed and ultimately output. These by definition of a classic business I’d see as administrative.

I agree the wording isn’t good, and I didn’t mean it as in “anyone working in IT is just performing administrative tasks”, but rather that the field of IT is traditionally more of an enabler of other businesses.

The mechanic is usually the actual worker - you run a repair shop - but his spare parts management is an administrative task, and nowadays usually implemented by an IT solution.

At least in some cases, it might just be wholesome advice. The fact that you have “a job” and a whole different persona from that and they’re two separate things that sometimes intertwine probably brings you closer to us in administrative tasks (in the end, IT is by definition always something administrative rather than actually productive) than me as in an IT guy with an influencer. Because ultimately, your actual identity is your job, and by conclusion, your whole life is performative, which sounds REALLY exhausting

I mean if you’re going for the piracy route, you never used streaming services or bought physical media anyways and the whole discussion is moot.

Well with your DVDs the “HD resolution” question is easily answered: you don’t get HD resolution. Weird comparison there. Especially since you complain about Disney+ not going beyond 480p in your specific case - so why buy DVDs with the same shitty resolution?

While I generally agree here, resolution isn’t everything, bitrate also plays a role, and some content in streaming services has been compressed rather badly so that you get artifacts that you don’t have on DVDs. A DVD will certainly look better than 480p streaming content despite a much older codec which light only exists as a reason for an upsell.

I think the way to go is a Homeserver (could even be a raspberry pi) where you can somewhat secure your storage with appropriate redundancy.

And how would you get stuff onto your homeserver legally?

The “don’t break userspace” is a kernel rule. It’s ok to break userspace within (like on library upgrades). The equivalent for Linux would be breaking kernel space, which they do… very often. It’s the reason DKMS exists and why Nvidia can be such a hassle

Wow way to make assumptions huh

It’s a fountain pen

Imagine installing Arch without having to bindmount dev, proc and sys smh my head

PREDICTABO

Stronger compartmentalization

Ok, I don’t really know why I wrote all that because it was pretty clear from context you know the difference. Hopefully it helps others.

For me, Mullvad isn’t an option because they don’t have port forwarding anymore.

Tailscale is a VPN in the classic sense, I e. to build a secure network over an insecure one. Mullvad is a service to hide your public IP address and switch from having to trust your ISP to having to trust Mullvad.

I too have a subscription to one of the latter services, but I always find them sketchy

Fewer

Have you seen a man eating his own head?