There was a time when we played almost all games solo, and it was still fun.

The "launcher" is a DRM-laden store that slams you with an endless stream of advertisements to buy more stuff. Huge, bloated, and annoying. It would be nice if the "launcher" was just that, and all the other stuff was optional, but... that's not how the world works.

Don't we know what happens to people working and living in space by having people working and living in space? People complain about experiments for the sake of attracting investors, this seems like it.

I will apologize when you tell me what vehicle does everything? If there was a vehicle for around 60k that holds six passengers and can move a full sized couch i would have bought it.

I dont see irony at all. This is an administration that threatens to come after anyone. People are scared to criticize them openly. This happens with any totalitarian regime.

I understand when Microsoft tries to adopt something from the Linux community. I do not understand how they imagine the typical Linux proponent (corporate or individual) would be interested in the reverse.

So Google put some spin on it, AKA lied...

Shocked, I am.

Cheating is a business. A pretty large one. People will pay entirely too much money for the ability to cheat in online games. Streamers and want to be YouTubers especially because viewers expect them to be able to carry on a conversation and parasocial bullshit while playing at top level

So you need ridiculously complex and sophisticated and unbreakable anti cheat to make online games playable with anyone but a small group of friends. And it isn't really practical to build a online game Community around the small group of friends who can't all game on the same night every night.

Do you have something that can operate above kernel level and that is difficult for professional engineers to break? It would be one thing if it was just hobbyists writing cheat software but it's been professionals for quite some time.

And if you want to have alternatives to Windows games are essential. That's what's going to start moving people away from windows.

Kind of Trumps the rest, pun intended. Europe could cheerfully look the other way at America bombing the shit out of a Middle Eastern country God knows they have before. And the tariffs wouldn't be expected to last past Trump's administration. More nuisance than anything else. Remember Tara tariffs are tax on the local population, Europe doesn't care if Trump raises inflation on American citizens. They know damn well that the factories aren't coming back.

So I think the main problem is the whole threatening to invade a NATO Ally in order to snag land from them. Land that they have to know some people here in the states are planning to use to launch an invasion.

It is strange to watch parts of Europe gradually realizing how batshit insane Americans are and then they're response to that isn't to try to get our Insanity under control before we start nuking people but to try to take advantage of it so that they can make a quick buck.

But I guess that's just how the Epstein class thinks.

On an open-source OS such as Linux or {Free,Open,Net}BSD, you can, if you want, write code that runs in kernel context. So you really can do anything you want with the hardware.

But I think most people understand that the OP meant more along the lines of running one's own apps that don't have anti-features like telemetry or ads or whatever.

I actually toned it down by not naming the specific politician.

My first computer was a Radio Shack Color Computer. It had no real OS as such; just a BASIC ROM. And if you were willing to write 6809 assembly language, as I was, you had absolute control over the hardware. There was no "OS" to mediate.

This is exactly right. And what's even sadder is that the USA is hurtling towards financial doom ($40T debt and going up by $2T/year; spending more to service the debt than on the military) so that we'll all get to "enjoy" living under the last remaining superpower of China. Really tough times ahead.

Additionally, Article 31 merely requires online platforms to provide a way for traders to communicate their contact info, and requires random checks to make sure they're doing it. It does not require any sort of vetting ore registration by the platform beyond making sure the online traders have put something up.

No, you are misinterpreting the DSA. It refers to "Providers of online platforms allowing consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders"

The "online platform" is the app store, not Android itself. This is explicitly defined in Article 3 of the DSA: "online platform’ means a hosting service that, at the request of a recipient of the service, stores and disseminates information to the public."

So if that's the reasoning Google's using, it's mistaken and/or a deliberate lie.

A study commissioned by an organization whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta could not possibly be even the teeny-tiniest bit self-serving.