Thank you.

Also thanks for mentioning NymVPN - it looks an interesting replacement for Mullvad.

Two points:

• Danegeld refers to paying the Vikings not to raid your lands, something that has nothing to do with Colonization
• Groups of have been invading other groups of people’s land and taking their shit long before Europe had enough technological dominance for it’s nations to do it to other people outside Europe.

Tribalism and all the shit that comes with it (including the whole “steal from and kill the other tribe for the good of your own tribe”) is way older than “Europe” as a collection of nations and seems to be and inherent human trait.

American style “liberalism” (aka Neoliberalism) is exactly the opposite of that:

• Everything must be behind a money-gate (everything must be private, nothing public) and only if you have enough money can you pass such a gate
• Unless you’re born on the right side of the gate or from parents with enough money, you can only get the money to pass most money-gates (even just the ones for food and for shelter) by working for the people with enough money to pass ownership-of-means-of-production & land-ownership money-gates.

It’s a structure to heavilly reduce freedom in the most important aspects of one’s life including things necessary for survival (like food and shelter), not to increase it, so it’s the very opposite of increasing Liberty or Freedom.

I reckon that’s the kind of “Liberalism” (which is the only one with political power anywhere in the World at the moment as far as I can tell, since there sure aren’t any politicians in power anywhere which both claim to be Liberal and are against core liberty-reducing legislation such as Private Land Ownership) that the previous poster is talking about.

Mainstream politicians out there who call themselves “Liberal” are 100% liars and frauds.

That’s exactly what concerns me.

I would love to find a No Logs VPN with anonymous payments outside the legal jurisdiction of at least the US, UK and EU.

I mean, even the fucking Nederland which used to be pretty pro-personal rights is now a member of the 14-eyes.

You clearly have never owned a business if you think the very legal system which makes that company a legal entity with all the rights it entails (i.e. they’re registered there) can’t force them to do whatever the local laws say they have to do.

They can literally strike that company down of the Company Register and seize its assets because a company did not obey a lawful court order there (such as one from an Information Court).

The rest of your post is even more ignorant bollocks. This is not Privacy Legislation, this is Surveillance Legislation: the stuff that enables and backs the giant civil society surveillance systems revealed by Snowden, not the stuff that makes it a bit harder for Google to know what kinds of Porn you watch.

I’m seriously worried about what’s going on around this.

There is quite the push here for people to move to VPNs under the legals jurisdiction of surveillance heavy states, not just the US and UK but also places like Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands which are British Overseas Territories with the same laws as Britain except were they passed specific local legislation that overrides British Law.

We’re talking about places with Information Courts which issue secret mass surveillance orders to companies based in or operating there and it doesn’t mater if that VPN is no logs because for all you know they’ve been forced to install realtime surveillance equipment/software and they can’t even tell you because BY THE LAW OF WERE THEY OPERATE if they did so they would end up in jail.

I would expect that the kind of people who would leave Mullvad because one of it’s owners is a far-right nutter are also the kind of people who don’t want everything they do and say tracked by the likes of the US or UK.

Further, the push is pervasive. For example https://vpn.techlore.tech/ is supposed to help you choose a good VPN, only if you look at those VPNs based in British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, BVI) they’re listed as “Not 14-eyes” which that’s bullshit - I was actually curious and went and look at how Legislation works in Gibraltar and, as I wrote above, they have the same as in Britain except were they wrote their own legislation that overrides British legislation, which means that (unless somebody can point me out the legislation in Gibraltar that overrides it), the very same legislation that support the mass surveillance activities in Britain as a member of not only the “14-eyes” international surveillance agreements but the actual “5-eyes” one, applies to Gibraltar and hence to the likes of IVPN.

Frankly, looking for a replacement for Mullvad whilst having some awareness of the mass surveillance shit in supposedly democratic nations is scary as fuck, since most VPNs, for all their (possibly theatrical) “No logs” and whatnot, are actually in places with Information Courts which can issue secret court orders forcing them to install mass surveillance equipment.

Absolutely, if all you care about is avoiding lawyer letters because of pirating stuff, any “No Logs” VPN will probably do, but if you’re worried about the rise of the Far-Right then it makes sense that you’re not into there being a real risk that all you’re doing over your supposedly “No logs” VPN is in fact being logged directly into NSA or GCHQ systems (in the kind of country whose governments think being a leftwinger is “extremism” or even “terrorism”),

IVPN is based in Gibraltar, which is a British Overseas Territory and whose laws are the same as Britain except were Gribraltar passed their own laws to override it.

Unless proven otherwise (by finding actual laws passed in Gibraltar to block it) treat any VPN based in Gibraltar as being subjected to the same kind of secret mass surveillance orders from Information Courts as those based in Britain.

Lets not deflect the blame away from the political forces which have been subverting Democracy for decades.

Go look at the Chat Control vote in the EU Parliament: it wasn’t the Far-Right that voted for that shit (well, at least not in my country), it was the big “moderate” “center” parties that voted for it whilst the rest voted against it.

The push for authoritarianism is coming from the well-entrenched, big, mainstream, neoliberal parties, the very people who believed the Power of Money should not have to obey the Power of the Democratically Elected State (using slogans like “Do not interfere in the Free Market” to justify having Money as as the top Power).

(Notice how in the US the Democrats are and have been for decades just as much into widespread civil society surveillance and zero privacy as the Republicans)

Mainstream, Neoliberal parties are the people who have shifted Democracy in most of the West towards Oligarchy, with billionaires and even trillionaires holding immense real power.

In most of the West the return of Fascists to politics is still pretty recent and as they’re not the ones entrenched in power, it’s not actually in their interests for widespread civil society surveillance to be in place since such mechanisms are meant to detect and stop challenges to those in power, not to put fringe movements in power.

Are you sure about that?

Think about it: only the people of a single one of all participant countries will end up happy (because their team won it) whilst everybody else will end up unhappy (because their team lost).

Granted, there are a few cases of a bit of happiness, like for the people of Cape Verde, without actually winning it but following unexpected very good positions, but those are a minority and tend towards smaller countries (which usually don’t have enough population to have enough World-class players even if they’re football-crazy, hence why any good result is a surprise).

I would say that logically, all in all at the end of it big single sport world cups like this generally end up with far more people unhappy because of it than the people which are happy.

Download the offline installer and now you have possession.

Further, because GOG enforces no DRM or mandatory sign-ins, so that means that you also have control over that copy of the game - you can install it and play it however and whenever you see fit.

For GOG games were you downloaded and kept the offline installer, the only way that the rightsholder has of stopping you from installing and playing that game is to sue you, which is:

• Almost certainly not worth it for then due to the cost of taking somebody to court for it versus what they would gain if they won.
• They actually have to have an actual legal basis for unilateraly changing the licensing agreement with you and hence be allowed to block you from continuing with the activity you have a license for (installing and running that game), which they almost certainly do not have in pretty much the whole World since EULAs aren’t valid there (they’re considered an attempt at, after a sale is completed, forcing unilateral changes to the implicit contract which is the sale, so have no legal validity)

With other stores they can just force the store to take down the game and now it’s up to YOU to sue THEM to get restitution and the “not worth it” is now something that goes against you (unless you have access to a Small Claims Court in the jurisdiction you’re in, are you really going to sue them for a 50 bucks game?)

In fact, physical media is worse than digital GOG games, because the former can have phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins so you have possession but not control.

PS: However if the point you were making was about resale, then it’s a valid point. Mind you, physical media with phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins can also be de facto unsellable if that’s what the game maker wants.

How about you and your strawman find a room, since you seem really into it.

Is there a Near-Darwin Award?

At some point years ago I did some online test and it turned out my English language vocabulary was somewhere in the top 0.01% or something like that.

Which is kinda ridiculous because I’m not a native English speaker.

I think it’s the result of years of lots and lots of reading things in English: books, newspapers, magazines, even online.

Then on top of that I moved to Britain, which did wonders for learning the local slang of at least the part of it were I lived and even meant some words I learned I only really know them in English (for example, terms used in professional Finance) because I learned them in English, not in my native language.

Also, a lot of the most supposedly sophisticated words are basically the Latin or Greek words barelly changed (sometimes not at all) or technical terms that originated in the dominant language at the time that tech was invented, so they’re pretty much the same in all languages I know (so, say, the word “heliocentric” is pretty much the same in my native Portuguese, in Spanish, French, English and so on) so for things like scientific and technical terms having a good vocabulary is mostly language agnostic.

How much difference does it make for your life?

What’s the fraction of your time you spend in it?

How long do you have to work to earn the money to pay for it?

As I see it, those are the kind of question which dictate how much time one should spend in trying to figure out the best option for something.

Trying to figure out the best cost/quality option in, say, soap or discardable plates for a party, is seldom worth it versus spending time figuring out, say, what’s the best house or car to buy or even just a good sofa for you living room or mattress for your bed.

And yeah, plenty of people won’t spend anywhere as much time researching even a purchase they’re going to spend the next 30 years paying for (the house), which IMHO is pretty sad - if something will cost you tens of thousands of hours of your life to pay for (by working to earn the money to pay for it), spending many hours of your time in making totally sure you’re getting the right one is the wisest way of going about it.

So, it’s totally logical for casual gamers to invest in their game purchasing decisions the same time and care as they do for, say, their soap purchases, and it’s logical for people who spend many hours a week playing games to care a lot more about finding the best games for what’s probably their main form of entertainment.

Tried God Of War, lost patience after 30 minutes - too much of a “guided experience” for my taste.

Picked up Valheim again for my 6(?)th run of it and only lost patience with it maybe a month (in real time) later.

Been doing Saelig since (got it as a promo from GoG) but now have so much money in that game and such a steady way to make more that it’s not really fun anymore.

Just updated Songs Of Syx to v0.71 and preparing for a new run on that.

I’ve been gaming for almost 4 decades, originally in a ZX Spectrum and after than mostly on the PC (tried modern consoles with the WII, but found it a bit meh).

For me the modern AAA gaming experience is seldom as much fun as some Indie games out there and AAA games now tend to have much less replayability: AAA games in the last 1 or 2 decades mainly have fixed game areas with fixed and reasonably simple game rules so once I’ve seen it and done it I tend to still remember how it was for many years after playing it, so the exploration fun isn’t there anymore in a new run (in my experience it takes maybe a decade before I can come back to the best such games and have fun with it again) whilst many Indie games have procedurally generated playing fields and/or complex enough game rules that after I’ve played so much of it that I got fed up, it takes me a lot less time to have fun in a new run.

Even supposedly great games like Red Dead Redemption II turned out to, for me, be engaging and interesting for far less time than things like, say Terraria - sure, the former starts a lot more impressive, but the fun goes down a lot faster whilst the latter just keeps throwing challanges at you. Also having played it until you’re fed up, some months later Terraria is fun again for another run, whilst if you go back to it a year later, for RDR II you quickly remember what’s were in the game area and how to go around doing stuff, so the “discovery” part of fun isn’t there anymore (this especially so for the story: it’s really only interesting once)

Mind you, there are actually older AAA games for which this doesn’t apply. For example, I can still go back to the Sims 3, start a new game and it will be fun for quite a while.

I think that the problem with modern AAA games is that far too much was invested into glitzy visuals and a heavilly curated game area (not just visually but even things like scripted events) and not enough in engaging game play, plus I get the impression that game play tends to be low complexity so as to be accessible to more people, and for me after 4 decades as a gamer, simpler game rules are usually boring unless the interact in complex ways. Further, all that curating (read, “tight control”) of the game experience goes against a great source of fun in games - emergent gameplay (how the interaction between game rules and between them and the game environment can create varied and complex situations that need different solutions) - something which, IMHO, is part of the reason why in some games multiplayer is a lot of fun when singleplayer is not (humans are great at creating the novel and unexpected) and which works especially well with game with tons of things which interact with each other and with procedurally generated game spaces.

I did indeed miss that part.

Thanks for pointing it out.

You can get infinite Revenue by giving everybody $2 if they give you $1 dollar.

Such a company could proudly claim to have 1 billion sales and $1 billion dollars in revenue whilst not mentioning the “small detail” that they took $1 billion in losses to make those sales - which is pretty much what you’re doing there for SpaceX.

When judging an investment, which is what we’re doing here when talking about their IPO, what maters is profit, not revenue.

Literally almost the entire infrastructure of Starlink has to be “rebuilt” every 8 -10 years, because that’s how long their latest generation (v3) satellites last in average before they deorbit due to the air drag at low orbit or their electronics fail due to the higher radiation in Earth’s orbit

Their business model hasn’t even been proven to be profitable outside niche markets where they’re the only solution for Internet and there are enough people/companies who can afford and are willing to pay a big enough premium for that service that it offsets Starlink’s costs of having to manufacture and launching replacement for their satellites, all of which invariably die after about 10 years.

My personal version involves “Go to sleep” vs “Read just one more chapter of the book I’m currently reading”.

You raise a good point: with all online game stores, including GOG, if you don’t have the game installer in your system you risk losing it because of some licensing reasons.

So to fully protect yourself from that risk with GOG you have to download the game offline installers.

The difference in this between GOG and other stores is that:

• GOG actually has offline installers and makes it easy for you to get them (either from their web pages or, as explained by somebody else below, using software that connects to their systems and just fetches them automatically)
• GOG enforces that games sold via their store do not have DRM and cannot require networking access to install or run

For all their games GOG makes available the tools for you to protect yourself from losing games due to the store having to pull them door or going bankrupt, plus makes sure they won’t stop working (at least for single player mode) at some point due to some 3rd party switching their servers off, but you still have to do your part.

The other stores don’t even give you that option or protection. I mean, sometimes for some games you can make it happen (for example some game installers can be copied from the Steam cache and later used and the game run without Steam), just not reliably, not seamlessly and you’re not told upfront for which ones that works, so you don’t get to make an informed purchasing decision if you care about still being able to play a game a decade from now.

Unlike the others GOG give you the option and the guarantee that it works, the rest if up to you.