There are two kinds of freedom, negative and positive liberty. US has a lot of negative liberties, they dictate little in what you can or cannot do, but is lacking in positive liberty, they don’t support you very well to do what you want to do.

While Europe might have less negative liberty, their generally better social welfare system grants people more positive freedom.

Sure it isn’t a good system, but it is the one we have. And if you have concrete improvement ideas, it would be interesting to hear.

I mean, where ever we set the age limit for instance voting to 14, some 10 or 9 year old will feel disenfranchised. We could remove it completely and let toddlers vote. What would the consequences of that be? I have no idea!

The reason is to protect the physically or mentally weak from the strong while also having rules that are easy to follow and to enforce, that don’t require psyche exams, which depend on the examiner.

Age might not be a good metric of evaluating maturity, but it is the best and most practically useful we have. (I use “maturity” here as having reached certain physically and mental level where they can operate, think and decide independent, and the risk of being manipulated is low.)

Because age is not a good metric, that means that we have false positives and false negatives on a maturity tests based on age, which we need to balance. And I would rather have more false negatives (wrongly ascertained immaturity) than false positives (wrongly ascertained maturity).

If someone comes up with a better and still practical maturity test, that would be interesting. “Solutions” like every citizen has to do a yearly physical and mental exam in order to keep their rights as an adult, seem much to harsh and easily manipulatable. Especially around blurry lines like disabilities.

Wherever certain thing needs a maturity test or not and where that should be, I cannot say. Just if the age limit is too high, then mental decline will raise the false positives, which would be bad as well.

Nobody? That was a general statement, sorry if that was unclear formulated. I just see many people that first set a label for themselves and then try to fit into it, instead of just doing what ever they want and just use them as a short hand to explain themselves.

Yes, and labels suck. Don’t limit your yourself involuntarily just to fit into one.

The achievement enabling is part of the script extender

Right, they saying “We are just following the law.” as if that was an apolitical statement. While they still get to choose whom laws to follow by deciding where to make business, which are political decisions.

As you see with Twitter or starlink, they decided to be do business in Brazil, but when the country actually have laws against uncontrolled mass propaganda and hate speech, they are suddenly against the law, and do not try to stop or limit doing their business there, when they do not want or can’t abide by these laws.

AAAA games are clearly inferior to AAAAXY games.

Or you get a message at 3 am the next day, where they apologize that they didn’t made it, but that they will deliver sometime between 8 and 22 that day.

E2E is just one part of the puzzle, you got to have a open source P2P or federated architecture as well, otherwise you have to trust a nebulous company or person intrinsically. People change and companies can be bought, but you will be stuck with their platform in order to contact your acquaintances, and changing that means loosing your contacts.

That is why the DMA is important. But you will be even better off just directly choosing a chat platform, where the users are in control.

Yeah, the whole article is a bit fishy:

In addition to generating clean electricity, the new ITO-silver window coating creates a cooling effect by allowing only the visible part of the light spectrum to pass inside. Other parts of the spectrum are reflected outside.

So how would a room actively cool down, when you let only the visible light spectrum inside? Sure it might not get as hot as if you let all light inside, but it will also not get colder.

Nothing about mod support or releasing the toolkit, like they did in DA:O.

• Just as some Firefox users like Firefox, many Chrome users enjoy what they have too. They don’t want to lose that.

Do you have some source for that? IIUC, you mean that more Chrome users like Chrome than Firefox users like Firefox, right?

IT guys will stop using it…

No, they will not, if they didn’t already. Because convenience it key.

The browser war is over, and humans lost, corporations won. Google and other huge corporations control the biggest websites and most of the access to content on the internet.

They just need to make it inconvenient to use ad-blocking browsers.

They built their business on advertiser gambling, which seem to be flawed concept, because they keep on squeezing that tube for every penny more and more, in a race to the bottom.

But they are still in control of both browers and content so they have options to keep squeezing more.

So you want to use a ad blocker? Well, the browser that supports them might not be white listed (anymore) by the bot detector, and you have to solve captchas on every site you visit, until you come to your senses and use a browser, where ad blocking is no longer possible.

Oh, and all that is ok, because of “security”. Because letting the users be in control of their devices and applications is “in-secure”. They are just doing that to protect you from spam and scams, just trust them! Trust them, because they don’t trust you!

That is how capitalism works, privatize earning and nationalize losses.

Capitalism needs the deep pockets of the government to not collapse into itself.

Sure, it is largely the fanbase, however I also think that the game industry seems to sometimes do somewhat of a “woke-washing”, meaning opically supporting the LGBTQIA movement because of financial, shitstorm-prevention or other reasons than just wanting to create more diverse and inclusive games.

For instance I like Hogwarts Legacy, but it also takes place in the Victorian era, and it seems to project the modern tolerant society ideals onto the wizarding world of that time.

Depicting the society as inclusive and diverse is somewhat history revisionist. If you play as a non-binary or trans person at that time, then you should have to deal with prejudice and marginalization, otherwise it is just “woke-wash” the history.

So, IMO there are some cases, especially in historic (fantasy) games, where injecting modern ideals and standards might not fit or needs to be better addressed, than just let it be cosmetic.

They shouldn’t do a halfhearted job.

Well… cults with an exit are just groups of people.

Apple looks more like a cult, similar to Scientology. Linux user as well.

I would be careful about assuming knowledge based on age. Young people might use technology without understanding it, and old people might understand it and don’t want to use it.

Technology needs to be regulated, and I would not trust people with profit incentives to do so.

IMO, it is always important to investigate if a regulation wants to prevent a real issue or if they just mention some populist reasons for doing whatever they want.

But to install from local storage, you first download or fetch a storage medium from a remote location with the file on it. There isn’t that much of a difference IMO.

I would not call it side-loading when I download a file and then install it on the same device. Because that is how it has always worked. I never before heard people describing downloading and executing a setup.exe as “side-loading”.