There are a lot of issues with your post imo.

First, cash is going away, soon. Sweden has done it years ago. Europe is now playing catch up.

Second, a universal digital currency will remove all system heterogeneity. Yes money is already digitalised, but across several proprietary environments. I can and have set up several accounts across several banks so my spending cannot be fully tracked by a single corporate entity. This will be moot once everyone has to use the same harmonized system.

Third, one of the sponsors of the universal European currency has been caught talking about time limited digital currency. As in, spend your money or it just disintegrates after a set amount of time. Which really destroyed a lot of trust in the endeavour

To the surprise of no one, it’s just a matter of time until local accounts in personal windows editions are removed entirely.

Especially as a new linux convert I would say wait a bit before switching to an immutable distro. They have their advantages but the concept probably feels pretty alien for most windows users, where you can install whatever and it just works. I’ve been a long time Nobara user and it’s pretty good, especially considering it’s basically just one guy maintaining it. But it does break on updates from time to time. My personal recommendation after getting used to linux would be opensuse tumbleweed. It’s constantly updated but never breaks. You generally don’t need a gaming centric distro, especially if you’re rocking an AMD card.

They’ve been around a bit now. Everyone seems to be pretty satisfied. Desktop app could use some improvements, which is already on their roadmap

I’m curious to see how the combat mechanics will be accepted. Reads like Mass Effect in a high fantasy setting. Could be cool, but at the same time, Dragon Age fans will come to expect something more strategic.

I think that take is short sighted. Because the next obvious step to “no right to online anonymity” is “online anonymity is illegal”, and it’s pretty obvious we’re headed that way. In that case, courts can make it pretty fucking hard to protect your right to privacy.

I started it as well. Had weird sound issues that I had to fix by downgrading my system sample rate. It looks and feels amazing now that it works.

Money transfer platforms are even worse than chat apps in terms of how acceptance dictates usefulness. You might convince a couple of friends to use xmpp instead of whatsapp. But its near impossible to get major outlets to integrate new payment methods. Especially if that platform advocates privacy and therefore doesn’t offer a return on invest based on user data. I don’t think we’re gonna see true alternatives without government regulation, and even then…

fighting over the little money that most younger gamers have to spend

That’s where the money is tho. Presents, pocket money, paychecks that don’t need to go to rent and utilities. Everything I had I put into games when I was a kid. Sure I do have more money now, but I also have exponentially more bills to pay. My dad is retired and is pirating left and right cuz he can’t afford gaming. Also, kids don’t inform themselves before buying. They’re much more prone to ads, social pressure, etc… Adults don’t care if a game is 5 years old, which incidentally can be bought for a fraction of the initial price.

Strictly speaking, if being trackable is an issue for you, you shouldn’t run around with bluetooth enabled in the first place. And incidentally, no BT means no find my device either.

The characters are great. It’s not BG3 obviously, but there’s enough depth there. Like I said, it’s on the level of a goofy action movie plot from 20 years ago. No ones gonna get an oscar but you’ll be entertained nonetheless.

It has a lot of Doom-like exploration for new gear and other goodies. Also a handful optional bosses which are pretty hard to beat. But the shooting revolves around basically 3 weapon types (magic types in this case): a DMR, an SMG and a shotgun. The variations thereof don’t feel different enough and the feedback lacks kick, so the shooting doesn’t feel very meaty. It’s still solid enough, but the story is definitely what carried me through the 20ish hours of the game.

I just finished Immortals of Aveum. I really liked the story. Felt like an early 2000 science fiction action movie. It’s gorgeous looking but the shooting didn’t have enough oomph to be really fun, so I stopped playing after the credits rolled. Didn’t feel the need to 100% it.

I would still recommend turning wifi off when leaving home for privacy reasons (which can easily be automated). The process to identify if a network is trusted or not requires a handshake. So leaving wifi on makes you trackable by the wifi network operators and the apps on your phone with access to your wifi, wether you connect a network or not.

I second disroot. Been happy with their service.

I played a resist durge and I get the feeling I saw like at least 80% of the game. I might do a murder hobo illithid run at some point, where I drag all my origin companions to the dark side. But another 100 hour run just to see the remaining 20%… I don’t know, seems like work.

Couldn’t participate in these threads for a while, because it would have been the same game over and over again. But now I’m finally free! I beat Baldurs Gate 3 with a 150+ hours resist dark urge run.

I started Immortals of Aveum as a palate cleanser. Pretty decent FPS with a cool story and lots of secrets.

Let’s see what europes e2ee ban will bring. Proton is one of the “high risk” services mentioned in the bills debate. Might not be too long before you have to host your own mail server if you want privacy in europe.

Privacy matters most in the individual case, with people who know you.

That statement is subjective at best. My friends and coworkers knowing where I live certainly isn’t my concern. In today’s day and age privacy enthusiasts are definitely more scared of corpos and governments.

isn’t worth it yet.

You’re thinking too small. Just in the context of the e2ee ban planned in europe, think what you could do. The new law is set to scan all your messages before/after sending for specific keywords. Imagine you get automatically flagged and now an AI is scanning all your pictures for locations and contacts and what not. Just the thought that might be technically possible is scary as hell.

I tried switching from Fennec to Mull a couple years ago, but every third site broke with it. So I reinstalled Fennec.