Fair enough, as I said, I really am not informed enough to make any commentary myself, just seemed apropos to bring up that it’s a simultaneous conversation happening over there.

tries to correct someone’s typo

uses “game” where “genre” was meant

:p

There was just a thread on the privacy community about how Linux has a similar machine-id that could be used to identify and track you.

Far from a Linux power user, so I don’t know the veracity of that claim or how far it goes, and at least it isn’t tied directly to a company that you know is tracking you. Just pointing out that Linux generally seems to have a similar machine-id it presents to browsers with a lot of information that could be used to identify you.

If the game itself was enjoyable enough that you kept playing it, that doesn’t reach the threshold of “so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle” imo. Would you really expect your money back from a movie just because you didn’t like the ending? That’s wild to me.

A bad ending can absolutely restrospectively destroy the experience of an otherwise good story.

Not to the point of deserving a refund, totally disagree. At what point do you draw a line? Should someone who hated the Game of Thrones ending get a refund for the years of subscription they paid to watch the rest of the show?

I don’t think not liking a piece of media you bought as much as you thought you would deserves a refund when you’ve already consumed all or nearly all of the media. You’ve received a service and used a product at that point, you should pay for it.

How is the principle different?

You paid for the product. You used the product. You didn’t dislike the product so much that you didn’t finish it. Seems pretty analogous to me.

Things being different doesn’t automatically make them incomparable, this is literally how all analogies work.

I don’t think that’s a good reason for a refund, honestly. If you go to a restaurant or a movie, most places won’t give you your money back if you finished the meal or movie. If you finished it, you should pay for it… if it really is so bad you feel you should get your money back on principle, you know before the end of the meal/film. This just feels like an excuse to be a cheapskate.

I know this is gonna sound like petty old guy complaints, but by God the save file sizes can be ridiculous! I have a smallish system drive that’s just for the OS, mainly, and have games and media installed on a few other chunky ones. I never bothered changing save file locations, because… save files, they don’t take up that much space, I’ve still got ~40GB or so to spare on the system drive, may as well leave it. Flash forward a few months after 3 of us have been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and I’m getting errors because there isn’t enough room on the system drive. Take a look on TreeSize for the culprit, and there’s BG3 taking up over 20GB of save files!

I get that it’s ultimately on me for not managing files better, but I honestly never even thought of save files eating up tens of GB of storage.

One thing about it, the game feels so different whether you’re playing the stealthy, slow, hack and snipe type or the balls out melee build or whatever in between. They really got the mechanics dialed in by the end, it’s nice to be able to have such different experiences in actual gameplay.

Full ninja builds are a blast. I went pure swords and throwing knives. Double jump + air dash along with Shinobi sprint and the auto cloaking perk while crouch sprinting + the relic perk that breaks combat when you cloak makes you a ridiculously mobile hit and run machine. Your mitigation by the end when mid air is guaranteed at 90% strength, so you’re taking nearly no damage as you leap into combat. Pop your sandy, slice and dice, Shinobi sprint back out. It almost trivializes a lot of the game, but it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a combat game in a long time.

Or if you prefer guns, all that mid air mitigation and air dashing + air kerenzikov is deadly.

Generally time slows when you’re targeting something in scan mode. If there’s nothing to target near the reticle, time moves normal.

It can be a little finicky detecting sometimes.

What do you mean by memory stuff? The brain dance investigations?

Don’t sweat it and just use a guide, they aren’t really a major part of the game beyond maybe 3 story missions?

If you mean hacking, just go with a sandevistan no hacking melee build. The game feels very different when you play it as a pure (no) hack n slash.

The perk and cyberware combos that let you have near constant ~90% mitigation strength guaranteed midair is just nuts. Throw in the mid air kerenzikov and you’re practically a little flying angry cyber hornet.

Honestly, in 2026 do you really think this won’t be subverted?

VPN to countries that don’t require identification. Done.

Kids have been buying accounts for years now. It isn’t new. See: WoW. This isn’t anything new, just a new market for it.

lol regarding holding anyone legally responsible. Good luck is all I can say. The US doesn’t prosecute firearms owners who claim a stolen gun that was involved in a crime, only in very clear (and especially stupid) cases. No chance this happens with social media accounts. Just none, on any wide scale.

And again, pretty easy to AI generate an ID these days… kids were doing this in the 70s and it was way, way harder back then.

And this is at the cost of mandatory handing of IDs to big tech that will inevitably leak. Are you comfortable posting a picture of your ID right here? If not, you should be no more comfortable handing your ID to Facebook.

I’m not willing up give up my right to privacy because someone else is a shitty parent, sorry. I’ll subvert it because it’s unethical.

A) It’s very unlikely to actually stop kids from accessing social media. VPN’s, purchasing blackmarket accounts that have already been verified, classic fake ID’s (in the age of AI generated images, no less). So they’ll just keep building profiles for them anyway (it’s already known they do this now for people not actually signed up with social media, their trackers are all over the web and it’s easy to build a profile without concerted effort against it). Why do we always think “this time for sure forcing abstinence will work!”? It never does.

B) In addition to not actually stopping building profiles on kids, it now hands them a goldmine of information on adults. Mandates it, even. Data leaks are going to get a lot more “fun”…

It’s not at all comparable. If I go into a library and get a book on fixing cars, the librarian doesn’t follow me around suggesting Joe Rogan.

Most people access their libraries via digital platforms like Libby as well these days. Unless you’re just going full Luddite and we’re just saying no digital access to anything at all.

I don’t see the value in the data being greater than the cost of administrating a patchwork of varied regulations across the globe.

This is a very strange position from someone posting in this community. You don’t think, even assuming no ill intentions, there’s any security risk in allowing big tech to access, and likely store, official identification? Data leaks happen all the time. If you wouldn’t publicly post your identification information, you should see the value in that data.

Easy block.

You may have a more personalized experience, but the front door of Youtube is… nauseating.

Is that really a good reason for banning its use for kids? Again, this is like shutting off library access because the stuff presented at the front is slop… my library presents slop at the front door, I don’t think that should stop kids from going inside.

I’d also point out at least my library doesn’t do any age verification or ID checks either.

Anyway, I cheer for any friction added to these tech companies because they are doing so much harm, so anything to slow them down.

I think this is cutting off your nose to spite your face though when it allows… mandates, rather, a huge collection of data. I’m not so sure big tech is really against this… early iterations of code to verify age were said to not store any data, but auditors found that to not be the case. That was walked back, but I find it very unlikely they won’t just do it again when there’s less scrutiny.

Especially since kids are likely going to just get on through backdoors anyway, we’ve likely done very little to stop data collection on them while handing them most adults on a silver platter. That’s in no way a score for the little guy.

I’m totally on board with fucking tech companies, I just don’t think this does it while simultaneously it fucks us.

I would love to see a platform curated with high quality content.

Nebula. It isn’t perfect, and it needs more creators, but that’s the closest I’ve come.

“Hey mom and dad can I use ‘historyTube’” “Absolutely!”. Easy.

Well, not if it’s banned as social media, that’s the issue.

Traditional Broadcasters have some standards.

Broadcasters did because they had laws restricting their content. Cable very much did not.

Think about the experience of going into a library or bookstore vs. YouTube, the content mix is not comparable.

My experience is that the stuff pushed by most libraries as their hot new items, things to read, general recommendations, are pretty much slop. Romantasy slop is a big genre all its own.

Which isn’t to say people can’t enjoy it, but it really isn’t much better than YouTube slop.

The algorithms , content scale, and access is another world.

Now that, I agree is an issue, but that’s just as true for adults as we’ve seen. I’d have less issue restricting how algorithms are pushed than mandatory ID… it would benefit all of society, not just kids, and it’s actually a positive improvement on privacy since it disincentivizes profile building.

Holy shit, that’s slimy even by their standards. It’s like they’re begging to be pirated lol.

The only real excuse for digital only is DRM free

And cheapness. Steam has always gotten away with this because it’s just plain cheap. Their distribution costs are way, way less per game and it’s easier for them to pass on savings, which I think is a big part of how they can push games for so cheap compared to most phyical media sources.