That isn’t sufficient for the people trying to pass these laws. They’re trying to get the government to enforce parental controls, not the parents. Those types of controls already essentially exist and yet they were deemed insufficient.

This is mostly because these people are not interested in protecting children, but rather shutting down anything they don’t like. The same way they tried to shut down abortion clinics by attempting to hold them to full blown hospital building standards. It wasn’t because it was unsafe, it was a way to harass the clinics they disapproved of.

I thought the same until someone shared some additional insights with me.

So basically for device verification to work, you have to prove to someone that you’re an adult, typically by linking your real ID. The problem comes from when you log in to a porn website and they try to determine you’re an adult by reaching out to that trusted 3rd party. Now even though the porn site doesn’t know who you are, only that you’re an adult, the ‘trusted verifier’ does know that you’ve visited the porn website. This makes that organization a huge security risk as it directly links your identity to visiting controversial websites.

Who would you really trust with that info? Corporation or government, both have major risks to collecting that info. What happens when FL bans porn and starts targeting people they know have accessed it via this database? What happens when LGBT info is labeled ‘adult only’ and requires this tech to access, creating a database of potential ‘undesirables’?

Once it’s created it’s absolutely positive that the data will be hacked and that the government will use this mechanism to target at risk groups.

The difference between this and in person ID checks is one of data persistence. Bars and such things just look at your ID, but don’t typically log it in a database. Compiling a persistent database of every ‘adults only’ only action is just too risky.

Also the app is probably built on a mountain of dependencies all of which have updates and security patches and bullshit. Delaying those updates for too long makes finally making a real update a nightmare, so you occasionally release updates just to keep up.

Steam is untouchable until Gaben dies. Then God help us all.

It’s weird how they can take the long view on some things and yet they will happily run a company into the ground for a 1% higher quarterly return.

Both sides are twisting words. Pirating truly isn’t stealing, but rather closer to unauthorized use. The word ‘steal’ is used because they want to imply that it’s the same thing as taking a physical thing that can be lost. It engenders a certain feeling that they’re wanting to invoke. Stealing sounds worse than unauthorized use. Doesn’t mean it’s not wrong to do, but it isn’t the sort of wrong that they’re implying.

Same. I originally got it for YT music. I don’t listen to as much music as I used to without a commute anymore, but my wife and I watch a ton of YouTube. And it’s mildly more difficult to block ads on the Roku too. I know pi holes exist, but my wife plays those freemium games that give you currency for watching ads and blocking all ads will break shit for her and then I have to fix it. Someone will tell me there’s an easy solve I’m sure, but honestly the subscription is just way easier and I really don’t mind paying. $16/mo for a family plan is 100% worth it to just not deal with all of that.

There’s a church near me with a very popular coffee shop and gift shop in it (they’re super close to the local park).

I just tend to think of it as the further enshittification of life. I’m not even that old and it’s super obvious how poorly most companies are actually run these days, including my own. It’s not that we’re doing more with less, it’s a global reduction in standards and expectations. Issues that used to be solved in a day now bounce between a dozen different departments staffed with either a handful of extremely overworked people, complete newbies, or clueless contractors. AI is just going to further cement the shitty new standard both inside and outside the company.

I had a legitimately enjoyable time playing through the story. The open world (at that point) was fun to explore. Then the entire game fell off a cliff as soon as I finished the main story content and tried to get into the ‘end game’. It’s clear they had no real plan for what to do with it and many of the decisions made the felt ok while leveling, did not scale at all with an end game loop.

Thanks! I'll give it a shot

They aren’t the ‘good guy’ but they are one of the few tech companies left that try to make money by selling a product people want to buy. Basically everyone else is just trying to screw people over or sell out to investors as soon as they can.

That’s not good, but it’s the way people understand and think businesses should be run, even though most modern companies no longer work that way.

Even if he doesn’t want to run it, doesn’t mean it has to be sold to another company. It can just keep on being a private company with a new handpicked leader. There’s no upside to selling for Gabe. After he passes however… all bets are off.

Valve is a private company and hasn’t been contaminated by modern, investor focused mindsets. Valve is a company that tries to earn a profit by selling a service people want to pay for. This is becoming increasingly rare with more and more companies focused on investor return rather providing goods and services in exchange for their profits.

I’m most anxious about what happens to valve post-gabe. You can bet there are tons and tons of crappy wall street types just drooling to ruin Steam for the rest of us.

Not really sure lemmy is all that much better from an outrage addict perspective, at least looking at All. Sure things are better if you curate your feed a bit, but that’s true on the other platforms as well.

I play almost exclusively on PC, and even there controls are pretty standardized. WASD movement, E typically to interact. R to reload (if relevant). Space to jump.

There’s no analogue to the steam controllers touchpad anywhere. What do I do with it? How do I use the back buttons effectively?

It’s all doable to learn of course, but it’s just a slightly too high barrier for most. I’ve got a steamdeck and honestly I never use the touchpads or the gyro, they just feel awkward so I stick with a mostly Xbox style setup.

It has a pretty significant learning curve and because you’re not at all familiar with the layout it’s hard to decide on a layout that works for you. That ‘more personal’ aspect is part of the problem, at least at first. It’s going to feel awkward no matter what, but without a consensus on how to use it, it gives me analysis paralysis trying to decide how to set it up.

Ya, I just want to get content. I don’t mind giving back to the community for it, but needing to figure out some sort of ‘system’ is too much. I’m not looking for a mini-game.

I hate the whole meta of private trackers. When I’ve joined a few in the past the whole focus on needing to keep up your ratio has been a larger barrier to downloading than leechers ever were on public trackers.

You can’t seed because several users have seedboxes with perfect connections and already have a billion-to-one ratio. I ‘theoretically’ have access to all this content, but I’m downloading ‘80’s workout video volume 7’ in the hopes that I can actually seed it for someone to get enough ratio to actually download something I wanted to watch.

I was on what.cd back when that was still a thing, I poorly chose my first few downloads and then never had enough ratio to download anything else ever again until I was finally kicked for inactivity.

Instead of actually fostering a working seed economy, most seem to just replicate a capitalist dystopia where a handful of users hog all the seed slots, earning more ratio credits than they could ever use while everyone else desperately tries to scrape together enough ratio to get something of value.

It’s a legit question. Are these yards more likely to result in additional home repairs due to destructive pests? I’m significantly less pro nature when that nature has destroyed my home by chewing wires, eating the wood from my support structure or causing leaks and water damage. I’ve dealt with rodents causing thousands of dollars in damage before and it completely sucks.