Aceticon
@Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on 1 day ago:
They’ve longed lobbied for anti-circumvention legislation and the corrupt politicians in the US and the rest of the World (with the EU Comission as a notable mention) have made sure it was implemented everywhere, exactly to avoid such a future.
The entire rotten edifice of Intellectual Property in the present day is literally the product of decades of corrupt politicians stealing more and more from the Public Domain to extend and protect this entirelly artificial kind of “property” for the benefit of the ultra-rich.
I was there in the 90s when this corrupt destruction of the “commons” started limiting what could be done in the Digital domain and saw how Techies lost, which is how we ended up with two decades of every more and ever more enshittified “closed garden” setups for all kinds of digital things.
Without shit like anti-circumvention legislation run of the mill people would have easy access in their friendly corner store to China-made devices doing things like what you describe or, for example, break out of Apple’s closed garden.
- Comment on Copper 1 day ago:
If you’re a Mathematical prodigy you either become a Quant making mathematical models for Price and Risk of Over The Counter (so, not sold in a Market) derivatives or, if you have good salesmanship skills, a Trader of such financial instruments.
None of this brings any actual improvement to Mankind but it sure pays well (more the latter than the former) since the way our Economic System is structured and as a side-effect of unbalancing the playing field to make sure the wealthy get ever more wealthy, Money is the thing that makes the most Money, and even just a tiny slice of such flows is far more monetarilly rewarding than almost all other forms of creation or discovery.
- Comment on Killing ownership is the method, killing the secondary market is the objective. 4 days ago:
Alternativelly, multiple subgroups within the power elites can support the same things for different reasons.
It’s perfectly logical that, for example, intrusive tracking under the excuse of Age Checks “to protect the children” is supported by the Pedophiles because it helps them detected early and suppress attempts to change the very system which gives them immunity for their crimes, non-Pedophile people in positions of power support it for very similar reasons only they just want to stay in power because they like power or because of the money and priviledges they get from their position in that system and big companies selling media to users support it because it lets them more strongly bind copies of that media to specific users hence people can’t share it (for example, two sibblings in the same house using the same device can’t share a single copy of a game) so those companies sell more copies hence make more money.
Reducing most people’s choices can serve different stakeholders who have different desires and often do so for different reasons.
Trying to come up with a Theory of Everything for it is excessivelly reductionist and even simplistic - just because it’s easier to get one’s mind around a “they’re all the same” explanation than around something like what I’m putting forward, doesn’t mean the former is the right explanation.
- Comment on Killing ownership is the method, killing the secondary market is the objective. 4 days ago:
This is about removing any and all ownership rights of buyers.
Not just of selling you copy second hand but also things like lending (even to your own family), gifting and even playing it in a different device
Mandatory Age Checks on the device also helps with stopying lending even to members of your family that live with you and use the same device to play the game: if the hardware (with the excuse of Age Checking) identifies the user, then the copy can be bound to a specific person in a specific devive rather than the device alone, so for example two siblings in the same household need to buy two copies to play it even at different times rather than just one copy as the “age check” identifies the user and only allows a specific user for a specific copy.
The fewer rights buyers de facto have, the more copies publishers sell as users can’t get the games by alternative legal means, and whilst at first there might be some backlash from taking those rights away, in my experience not only are most gamers sheeple or at best dogs that bark a lot but don’t bite, but usually they over time get used to not having those rights (especially as new, younger people, who grew up without having had them become gamers), so pretty much all backlash from taking those rights away eventually dissapears and those companies end up making more money than before.
- Comment on It's not about physical vs digital games, it's about ownership 4 days ago:
It’s about who controls it.
Because if one side controls it and does something with it they’re not legally entitled to do do, they still get away with it if it’s not worth it for the other side, even being in the right, to take it to Court.
So if you have in your hands the files for the installer for a game which doesn’t do phone-home validations and you’ve actually explicity rented it for a limited time yet carried on using it past that point, the other side would have to take you to Court to stop it, and in the absence of a streamlined and very cheap Judicial process to do so for that kind of thing (like there is for things like loans) it’s generally not worth it for them because it costs more than they gain.
Similarly, if they control if and when you can install and run a game (which is possible even if you have the physical media - all it takes is for the game to have phone-home DRM that checks if you’re authorized) and they stop you from using it, even if you’re in the right with zero doubts (so, there was no clear upfront information that you were paying for a unilaterally revokable license and you live in a jurisdiction where Justice isn’t a joke, like Germany, so the unilaterally imposition of further contractual conditions after the sale - i.e. EULAs - aren’t at all valid), it’s generally not worth it to take it to Court to force the other side to restore you access to the game or compensate you (a few euros) for it because it costs more than you get back from it.
Holding physical media is highly correlated with controlling it, but (as per my example above) in a World of always on Internet access were phone-home DRM is easy to have, it’s no guarantee at all of actually controlling it - you might have the bytes in the stablest imaginable storage medium in your hands and you still don’t control it because you can’t actually access the game without external authorization - and that in practice means that you can get shafted even though you’re entirely in the right as long as the monetary amount you being shafted out of isn’t too large.
Converselly, whilst digital distribution is highly correlated with not controlling it, as stores like GOG show it’s perfectly possibly to sell games digitally in such a way that you get control of it (if you want - you have to actually download GOGs offline installers)
- Comment on Hideo Kojima ‘really sad’ about PlayStation killing discs, ‘frightened’ for future of ownership 4 days ago:
Well, you see, Ju$tice is expensive and unreliable.
So the decision of about using the Justice System for enforcing one’s rights isn’t purelly “am I likely to win”, it’s also about “is it worth it bringing it to Court”, which is especially important when the damages one is entitled to get are low (like the price of a game).
At which point “who controls the thing under dispute”, which is theoretically unimportant in a perfect Justice System, becomes the main deciding factor.
Maybe an example will make it clear:
- You have a game which the publisher wants to take it away from you. They’re actually in their right to do so: you actually read through and accepted BEFORE PURCHASING (this is important in jurisdiction which aren’t legal jokes, unlike the US) a set of terms and conditions that gave them that right and it was clearly that this wasn’t a sale but a time limited licensing. However you have the actual installer for a single player game (in your computer, physical disk, whatever), totally free to install, no phone-home DRM authorization check. They have to actually take you to court to force you to delete that game from your system and destroy all copies. This is a $50 game. Are they really going to do it for a $50 game?!
- Similarly but reversed: you bought a physical disk with a game, it cost $50, it has phone-home DRM to install and to run. You didn’t agreed to anything before the purchase and you’re in a legal jurisdiction (such as Germany) which is not a joke so the implicit rights from a sale cannot be altered unilaterally post sale by a forced imposition of contract terms (i.e. EULAs aren’t valid). You’re in the right yet they block you from installing or running that game. To get back what you’re entitled to or compensation (all of $50) you have to take them to court. Are you really going to do it for a $50 game?!
Anyways, the point I’m making here is that well before a Court of Law actually goes through the whole thing and determines who is in the Right and orders a certain action in favor of and/or compensation for the injured side, de facto the outcome often decided by the actual stakeholders deciding “is it worth it taking this to court?” and in a system where Justice has costs (the bigger the costs the more that’s the case) “who controls it” is pretty much the single biggest factor in that decision. In simple terms, unless there is some kind of streamlined Judicial process for that kind of case (like there is around things like loans) bringing a case to court to force the side in control of something to act in a certain way with it is only worth it for large monetary amounts, and generally the price of a game is below that.
- Comment on End of an era? 1 week ago:
Back in the era of physical media PC games too could be bought and sold used (though only some: it really boiled down to whether it used phone-home DRM or not, something which in the PC world was all over the place).
But yeah, you were right that console games could be bought and sold used in a much more standardized way, whilst that wasn’t really a value proposition in the PC were such possibility was not at all a standard feature of PC games and it wasn’t really reliably supported in the broader ecosystem (for example, with game store not buying back used PC games as they often did for console games).
Naturally, as a unique value proposition (vs PC games) used as bait to get users inside the console walled garden in earlier days, this feature was taken away from users.
Personally I always thought that in the PC world the absence of this was balanced by games being a lot cheaper and even piracy for those for whom even so games weren’t cheap enough and in the long run, as we see, the “much cheaper” part is being way harder for PC publishers to try and undo (they’ve definitely tried of late, and IMHO it’s failing which is why AAA game publisher are bitching and moaning that their market share is falling) than the used console games market was, and the piracy part is even harder.
If there’s one think I learned early on in Tech as a professional already back in the 90s is that in the mid and long term sticking to open tech will save you from getting squeezed, both as a professional when choosing 3rd party tech stacks and as a consumer.
- Comment on End of an era? 1 week ago:
If you go by the definition of “console” than includes things like the ZX Spectrum or the Amiga, then you are partly correct as all home computing started with such “consoles” (and then there was a time when it’s pretty much all PCs, and then came the modern consoles which are the ones I was talking about).
- Comment on End of an era? 1 week ago:
Consoles were always a walled garden from the very start, very purposefully so, and those things tend to squeeze customers once captured with higher prices and, sooner or later, fully enshittify.
So when consoles originally appeared I just kept gaming on the PC because it was an open platform and the only console I ever had was a WII (the original one) because their controller was at the time innovative, and honestly it wasn’t really worth it.
Then, specifically for the PlayStation there’s Sony, who have a long track record of anti-consumer actions that started when their leadership stopped coming from the Engineering Division and started coming from their Media Division (after they bought a Movie studio in the US), from their electronics becoming locked down and restrictive for users (they’re the ones who came up with Blu-Ray, which was way more locked down to block copying than DVDs were) to the infamous shipping of music CDs with rootkits (the “Sony Rootkit” scandal)
So this increasing enshittification of the PlayStation isn’t at all surprising and suspect it will get even worse than this. Ultimately I think the PlayStation platform will simply die.
- Comment on She skipped groceries for a week to pay for that Little Caesars. 1 week ago:
There’s only so many space the “names of all steam engine trains in Britain in the 19th century” can occupy in one’s brain, so there’s plenty of room for old memes.
- Comment on She skipped groceries for a week to pay for that Little Caesars. 1 week ago:
And that’s even before they have to deal with parents who think their little precious child acting like an out of control chimp with rabbies in a classroom is absolutelly normal.
- Comment on And the good news is she got the job 1 week ago:
(Warning NSFW) “Backroom Casting Couch”
That said, the “porn job interview but there wasn’t really any job” is theatrics, as far as I know.
- Comment on And the good news is she got the job 1 week ago:
Sadly she got fucked in that interview and it turned out there wasn’t really a job.
- Comment on Peak HR 1 week ago:
Looking for “Time Travelling Senior Software Developer” …
- Comment on Single player games 1 week ago:
In my own experience, now in my 50s and having played games since my teens, including a long period of RPGs and FPS online, reaction times start dropping in your 30s.
It’s a tiny bit and you only really notice it when you’re operating near your limits (same for intelligence, by the way - if you’re using it near capacity, you’ll notice that your capabilities start falling at your mid 20s).
However, you can compensate it with experience, smarts and even wisdom - for example in FPS games you use the environment against other players, lead them into doing something predicable and get them then and/or prefer play styles that don’t depend on reaction speed.
It’s just a fact of life that physical and mental capacities do decay with age and far earlier than you seem to think, and whilst if you keep on using them it’s not that much, if you’re using them at a high enough level it’s noticeable if you pay attention as you can’t just reach the peaks you could reach before.
- Comment on Single player games 1 week ago:
Well, I’m in my 50s and the previous poster is totally right about reaction speed - there comes a point were your aim is as good as it gets, but so is the aim of the kids doing the same FPS 10h/day and they’re faster than you.
That said, with age comes experience (well, can come, if you’re trying - plenty of people age but don’t learn) so you can beat the kids with smarts and wisdom (things like leading them into situations which are traps, using the environment in your favor and, more generally, just playing in ways were your reaction speed doesn’t matter).
That said, I’ve been out of the FPS genre for a decade now. Like the previous poster I simply don’t get enough fun from a game if it’s low complexity, which tends to be the case for fast paced games that require fast and/or precise moves.
- Comment on Single player games 1 week ago:
If I wanted to be the target of homophobic insults, I could just do it to myself in front of a mirror, though granted, I can’t really emulate the voice of a 12 year-old so it’s not quite the same experience bouquet.
Beyond that, multiplayer is almost like working - you’re supposed to relentless keep at it, on somebody else’s timings even if you’re in a guild: done it in EVE Online and WoW and, frankly, for the experience of work I have real-life were I actually get paid for it rather than the other way around.
The there’s the whole creepy monetisation shit - I’m not really interested in the constant sales pressure, especially when it’s “buy this or else you’re handickaped vs those who did” (EA is still in my shit list since they did it with a DLC in one of the older Battlefield titles), especially nowadays when I’ve managed to mainly remove advertising from my life.
So I just stopped doing multiplayer a decade ago and pretty much avoid it like the plague.
- Comment on Hbd 2 uu 2 weeks ago:
I think the corpse is still twitching.
We should have another round of explaining the joke just to be on the safe side!
- Comment on magic 2 weeks ago:
I’ve had that happen to some hiking boots once - one day their soles just turned to powder - but that was 2 decades after I got them and they had seen heavy use before that.
- Comment on Welcome to New York City 2 weeks ago:
I’ve cycled to work regularly in a couple of countries in Europe and do paid attention to that kind of thing were I didn’t.
In my experience there are ALWAYS assholes who for their own convenience will block the bike lane if they can get away with it. There might be more in some places and fewer in others, but they always exist - assholes fucking things up for the rest are a fact of life.
As I see it, the only solution for it is protected bike lanes were possible so that it’s simply impossible for a car to go there and where that’s not possible speedy and stern enforcement (the “there’s a tow truck there in 5 minutes top and the fines are painful” kind).
- Comment on Welcome to New York City 2 weeks ago:
That’s entirelly the mindset of the average car driver everywhere.
Were I am now, Portugal, when the police starts properly some rule of the road that’s regularly not obbeyed (like, say the no parking on sidewalks one or the no running red lights in the next 30s after it has turned from yellow one) those types start bitching and moaning about how the police are “hunting for fines” - in other words, admitting that they’re breaking the rules and claiming that the real problem is actually enforcing of the rules.
(By the way, unsurprisingly, Portugal is has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the whole of Europe).
- Comment on I mean does anybody really know how to play Chess? 2 weeks ago:
Read between the lines: they’re saying that you have to cheat to win.
- Comment on porch of geese 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, you’re right on that one. I’ve corrected it now.
- Comment on porch of geese 3 weeks ago:
And to the East, unless you’re a Flat Earther.
- Comment on porch of geese 3 weeks ago:
I know it’s a shitpost, but here’s an interesting piece of History:
- Back in the late 15th century, before Christopher Colombus officially discovered the Americas (more on that later), the Portuguese and the Spanish made a Treaty - the Treaty of Tordesillas - where they divided the World in half, each one getting one half of it.
- Whilst making the Treaty, the original proposal was that the dividing line (remember, this was before the first trip around the World) would be a North-South line, located 20 nautical miles East of the Cape Verde Islands (which are just East of the coast of Africa). With the Portuguese side being to the East of that line and the Spanish side to the West.
- The Portuguese refused that location and instead wanted that line 20,000 nautical miles East of the Cape Verder islands, which was what ended up in that Treaty.
- Where is now Brazil is to the East of that line, on the Portuguese side, and the rest of South America is to the West of that line, on the Spanish side
This is why the Portuguese and the Brazilians speak the same language, whilst the rest of South America speaks the same language as the Spanish.
- Comment on porch of geese 3 weeks ago:
Am Portuguese, can confirm.
- Comment on Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history 3 weeks ago:
Gotta find the $300 billion to pay reparations to Iran for Trump’s war from somewhere …
- Comment on bone 3 weeks ago:
Having a bone is perfectly normal for around half of humans.
Having two bones is not normal. Also for 3 bones, 4 bones and so on.
At around 206 bones it’s normal again.
- Comment on Pink Ranger 3 weeks ago:
Though luck in not popping out from the “right” vagina.
- Comment on Pink Ranger 3 weeks ago:
“My, oh my, what a husky deep voice you have Pink Ranger”