If I am unable or unwilling to purchase a game (lack of funds, ethical concerns, etc) and I cannot pirate it or get it heavily discounted then I do something very simple and efficient.

I just don’t play it. There are heaps of great games out there, new and old, that I can put my time into instead.

Many of the games that pack Denuvo these days are AAA trash that I wouldn’t play anyway.

The scummyness of this company knows no bounds.

The primary reason I moved to iPhones was because I got absolutely sick and tired of my android phones being abandoned by the manufacturer after a year. I’m sure it is better these days, but those earlier days of extremely slow Carrier-based updates completely ruined my trust and I know I’m not the only one.

I put some of the blame on retailers as well. Retail stores just don’t want to carry inventory anymore, especially tech-focused ones with many of those just turning into glorified showrooms. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard some version of: “Sorry, we don’t have that in stock but we can bring it in for you.”

We needed a short length of garden hose here for the house so I went to two hardware stores and one garden centre looking for one. Nothing. Not even in their dedicated gardening sections. I had to order it off Amazon. A goddamn garden hose.

Amazon has done a lot of damage for sure but retail is suffering from several self-inflicted wounds too. Home Depot, for example, is a multi-billion dollar corporation and even they have a weaker retail presence now. That’s not Amazon’s fault.

My decision to stop playing online games a few years ago continues to prove that it was a good choice. The games industry in general is going to shit but online games in particular are in race to the bottom of greed, malice, and contempt.

Anything to help them take on Nvidia and stay competitive is a good move. However, I wish they would also announce a recommitment to driver and software stability. I had to move to Nvidia for my workstation rig after having constant stability issues with numerous AMD cards across multiple builds. I can handle a few rough edges or performance that isn’t top-of-the-line but I can’t put up with constant crashes ad driver timeout errors. It’s annoying in games and devastating when I’m working.

I wish their GPU line received even a portion of the polish and care that their CPU line did.

Steam needs to offer refunds when a game does this - at the publisher’s expense. They should put it right into their ToS for game publishers that want to sell on the platform.

Meh. They had plenty of time to move to Firefox but they ignored all the warnings.

I love how they’re asking him gently as if he’s a toddler having a tantrum and not the criminally liable fascist he actually is.

Large amounts of greed, corruption, and complacency.

The new software is able to detect if the hood is open and, if so, will display a warning to the driver to alert them to stop their vehicle and secure the hood

This should not be legal. They should be forced to recall vehicles and replace the faulty part instead of kindly asking drivers to pull over when the part fails.

The shit this company gets away with is astounding.

And this is why most users should not be opting in to preview updates.

All of this just to give rich shareholders even more money.

Microsoft is constantly experimenting with how far they can push users into a corner and get away with it. There might be a day when Microsoft caves and releases a Windows that is more like what we wanted, but I imagine it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. We have not yet seen the worst MS has to offer force upon us.

Valve is still a private company. If they ever made an IPO then they would be screwed.

Because they will. They literally will.

Adobe is one of the most awful, insidious, evil corporations in the software space and they have done absolutely nothing to claw back even a tiny shred of good faith.

This gives warm and fuzzy feelings.

Good time to drop a reminder that Affinity’s tools are 50% off right now and are buy-once software.

• and X has threatened to take them to court to seek the return of the funds plus interest

Doubt it. Call their bluff. They’d lose so much more to legal/court fees than they’d ever get back. X is just looking for a quick cash injection.

The problem isn’t the clarity of the terms.

The problem is that we all know they are lying and don’t believe a word they say.

I’ll be watching this curiously from a safe distance for now. I am interested in a new platform without AI, but this stinks of early-stage enshitification.

Almost nothing. I don’t like how loud they are.

It’ll be another half-baked, rushed-out-the-door-to-please-shareholders assistant that doesn’t do anything anybody wants.

So basically Siri as usual.

Nothing a bit of paper/cardboard and a strip of tape can’t fix.

Round #451 of telling people to stop using Spotify and consider one of the many, better alternatives.

Not surprising. They archive information that powerful people would rather we forget.

Just what the cash-strapped people of the world want - more monthly fees.

Those happen in the volcano lair

New AI technology promises to-

Hmm, where have I heard this before…

The perfect powerhouse chip to handle the iPad’s cut-down OS and half-baked apps because Apple refuses to take the iPad’s software seriously.

What a clown.

They will if there is enough demand for 'em.

I was just talking to my dad about this the other day and I told him that it was only a matter of time before the US government goes after Chinese EV’s at the request of the US auto lobby.

I didn’t think it would be this soon, though. Hurray for more garbage EV’s for $50,000+

You are not wrong, but there are other services that are just as convenient and for less money. Spotify knows they are the “default” music streaming platform and they are exploiting that.

Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don’t treat artists (as much) like trash.

And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.

Late-stage capitalism going full steam ahead.

His commitment to pissing away his wealth is pretty hard core.

My phone knows my age, my account(s) know my age, the phone maker knows my age, so please for the love of the gods stop removing my cusses. It should damn well know that I have almost never intentionally typed “ducking” and yet I often correct words to "fucking"enough to be able to learn some basic usage patterns. I’m 30 years old, stop “correcting” my text like I’m 5.

Also some really obvious words are constantly “corrected”. My phone will not let me start a sentence with “We’ll”. It will, without fail, change it to “Well” and I have to fix it.

I’ve been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.

I’m very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.

Like when tech companies forced “Cloud” everything upon us in the early 2010’s, and then the digital home assistant craze that followed after.

These things are not meant for us. Sure some people will enjoy or benefit from them in some way, but their primary function is to appease shareholders and investors and drum up cash. It’s why seemingly every company is desperately looking for ways to shoehorn “AI” into their products even if it’s completely nonsensical.