This doesn't seem high to me at all. You buy the game, try it for an hour, feel kind of meh on it or even just see a different game you think you'd like even more, and hit the refund button. If anything, I'm surprised it's only ~12%.
I wish I knew about this last week. I spent way too long trying out MinIO alternatives before getting SeaweedFS to work, but it is overkill for my purposes.
> What is the point of freedom if you have a joyless existence?
> no one is making you install anti-cheat software
You don't see the irony here? You don't see the trillion dollar corporations dangling "joy" in front of us and conditioning access to it on acceptance of their bullshit non-negotiable take it or leave it contracts where "we own your computer now" is a clause?
The powerful choice is to reject the silly binary choice they offer you and take a third option. Refuse their deal and refuse your so called "joyless" existence.
Enjoy your games while also keeping control of your computer. If they try to usurp control of your computer, stop them from doing so. Only malware would try that, treat them accordingly. If you must associate with cheaters and pirates in order to acquire the necessary technology and know-how, then so be it.
It's the same thing with DRM, it's the same thing with ads, it's the same thing with pretty much everything. They give you some bullshit choices, but you can take a third option because you own the machine. That's the power they would take away from you.
> If they try to usurp control of your computer, stop them from doing so.
But anti-cheat software is not doing this? You are free to do whatever you want on your computer as long as it doesn't interfere with the game process. Most, if not all, anti-cheats will also not do anything when the game isn't open.
Some games (including Rust) give you the choice to play with no anti-cheat, too. You'll only be able to play on servers that allow players to join with no anti-cheat but you are not blocked from the game.
I would be more worried about computing becoming more phone-centric where Apple and Google are in control of what you can and cannot do.
> You are free to do whatever you want on your computer as long as
You are not free. "Your" computer is not actually yours. It doesn't do what you want.
> Most, if not all, anti-cheats will also not do anything when the game isn't open.
Stop believing this. For god's sake I just posted an example of a corporation that thought it was perfectly justified in hacking their customers and stealing their browser passwords. There is no line they wouldn't cross.
They could be doing literally anything and you know it. There's no way for you to know unless you reverse engineer the software, and if you try they are only too happy to label you a cheater and permaban your account or whatever it is that they do.
> I would be more worried about computing becoming more phone-centric where Apple and Google are in control of what you can and cannot do.
This is the exact same issue.
Apple, Google, Disney, Netflix, Hollywood, the games industry, the copyright industry, all the governments the world over are all battling for control over our machines.
This anticheating nonsense is just the tutorial boss.
> They could be doing literally anything and you know it. There's no way for you to know unless you reverse engineer the software
Literally anything you run on your computer (running Windows) can take screenshots of your desktop, pull passwords saved in your browser, etc. without running in kernel mode. Even applications that aren't running as Administrator.
That was never in dispute. The point is they cannot be trusted. Not even the "but they wouldn't do that" argument is valid: they would and they have.
Knowing and accepting these risks is a big reason why we run Linux with free and open source software sourced from trusted software repositories.
We put effort into this because we want to control everything that happens on our machines, so that we are not affected by stupid nonsense like that.
Recall what I said in my original comment:
> You want their nonsense absolutely contained and isolated, not deep in your kernel.
We don't want unknown uncontrollable proprietary idiocy running on our computers, least of all in kernel mode.
Ideally that stuff would not even exist to begin with, but since it does we move on to the next best thing: containing and isolating it to the fullest extent. The ideal setup is a VFIO configuration where the host is a Linux system where we have full control and the virtual machine is fully isolated and controlled.
As such we really don't need idiotic "anticheat" software taking issue with perfectly good technologies like virtual machines and hypervisors. Cheaters are using this stuff? I don't care. Just accept it.
It's not clear what freedom you are sacrificing. Nobody is forcing you to play those games. If you don't want to let them run their anti cheat system, don't do it. This is not some unavoidable measure.
This has nothing at all to do with whether you are "forced" to do anything. Anyone who wants to play games should be able to do so without some abusive anticheat taking over their machine.
It doesn't matter what's written in their silly EULAs which nobody reads. I couldn't care less if it ruins the games or costs them billions in profits. You are morally justified in defeating their silly anticheat nonsense in order to enjoy games on your terms without them pwning your computer. You are only morally wrong if you actually cheat.
And it's not at all some "strange hill to die on". This is a fundamental computing freedom issue. It's about who owns the keys to the machine. It's the exact same issue Android users face when they install GrapheneOS only to discover their bank doesn't support it just because it's not owned by Google. In my opinion this should be literally illegal.
"abusive", "silly", "couldn't care less", "nonsense", "literally illegal". I don't think you'll find many people want to join your cause if you are this aggressive.
More on topic, I agree that you should be allowed to do with your computer what you want. That includes defeating their anti-cheat measures. Your computer, your rules. In return, they can refuse to support you or ban them from their servers. Their stuff, their rules.
But this idea that you are entitled to tell them they have to provide you with a version that does not have their anti-cheat measures, that is pretty far out there. That is where most people will stop following your reasoning.
> I don't think you'll find many people want to join your cause if you are this aggressive.
If I come off as aggressive, it's only because of my exasperation due to people sacrificing freedom for video games of all things. Online games that will be dead after a couple years. What a colossal waste.
Anyway, I'm no politician. I'm actually very close to giving up on these so called "causes", precisely because people refuse to listen. There's no point. Being polite doesn't make them listen. Nobody listened to Stallman. Threaten their convenience, their fun and games, and they're gone.
If they won't listen, then they deserve the consequences. One day all the corporations and authorities will start turning the screws on them. Only then will they start caring about this stuff. Nobody will listen to them either.
> But this idea that you are entitled to tell them they have to provide you with a version that does not have their anti-cheat measures, that is pretty far out there.
The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero. You could have zero fraud by ramping up the requirements before you trust someone enough to transact with them. That will result in very few purchases though. Decreases profits. So what they do is they let it happen and eat the costs. Fraud isn't a crime, it's an expense. Accounted for.
The optimal amount of crime is non-zero. You could virtually eliminate crime by implementing an orwellian dystopia where everybody is surveilled at all times. Nobody actually wants to endure such a subhuman existence though, so we're forced to accept the risk of crime. Tolerating some amount of crime is the price of our basic human dignity.
Same logic generalizes to online games. The optimal amount of cheating is non-zero. They could eliminate it by taking the computer away from us. That's an affront to our dignity as the owners of the machines. So we have to tolerate some cheating in order to keep our dignity.
These considerations are accounted for in society as a whole. It's no different here.
Sales tax varies by state/county/city. It is generally not cost-effective to have each individual store label all their products with local sales taxes applied.
I see this excuse all the time, but why not? This calculation does not need to happen more often than the product prices are adjusted. There's no difference in effort between labeling something "$5.52+tax" and labeling it "$6".
The difference is where the product is labeled. Is it labeled nationally like Arizona Iced Tea? Is it labeled at a regional bottling facility? Or is it labeled at the store itself? And what about when tax rates change, you gonna go pull all the labels off everything in the whole store and update them?
Most of this could be resolved by not putting the prices on the products themselves, but that isn't as good of an experience for the shopper.
> Most of this could be resolved by not putting the prices on the products themselves
That is already often the case. Prices are usually on the shelves not on the product itself at many stores. And when purchasing online there is no reason that the sales tax couldn't be included in the listed price.
Also sellers could just charge the same price everywhere and take the sales tax out of the revenue.
Valetudo is the best out there. I rooted my Roborock, and connected it my home assistant. It's super useful without having to send data to the cloud. The only thing is the developers are severely limited by how many vacuums they can support. I recently bought a Dreame X50 and it's still not supported.
It is, unless you take Musk's hype about Starship as fact. With rockets that are actually potentially available the best price is $1500/kg to LEO, so either they're presuming the whole setup weighs in at 3-4 tons (which is less than the shielding alone) or that they can get it launched for a few orders of magnitude less than what's on the market now (and they do say they assume $30/kg).
Wireless temperature monitor
Sync module for some Blink cameras
2 smart plugs
Roomba
5 smart lights
RPi 3
3 of the smart lights I currently don't need and and so aren't actually connected. That leaves 8 connected 2.4 GHz devices.
On 5 GHz I've got 16 devices:
Amazon Fire Stick
iPad
Printer
Echo Show
Apple Watch
Surface Pro 4
iMac
Nintendo Switch
EV charger
Mac Studio
A smart plug
Google Home Mini
Echo Dot
RPi 4
Kindle
iPhone
The iMac and the Surface Pro 4 are almost never turned on, and the printer is also most of the time. That leaves 13 regularly connected 5 GHz devices.
That's a total of 21 devices usually connected on my WiFi, right what the article says is average. :-)
Smartphone, laptop, tablet, watch - that's 4 already. And this isn't just counting personal devices. Include TV, streaming stick, game console, printers, bulbs, plugs, speakers, doorbell, security cameras, thermostat and you'll hit that number pretty quick.
There are 16 devices on my WiFi right now and I would've though I was above average. I have a bunch of weird stuff like 3 Raspberry Pis that most households would not have, but I don't have most of the stuff you listed.
I guess I am less "connected" than the average American. Can't say I feel like I am missing out, though.
Most of your mobile devices are doing background tasks. It’s not typically high bandwidth stuff, but they are connected even when you aren’t using them.
reply