I air gap my shit

that’s an interesting claim, how do you use online multiplayer games and discord while “air gapped”?

and again, your “tangible benefit” is rendered largely moot by the fact that you can absolutely get around kernel anticheat. All it really does is keep the skids releasing free cheats on UnknownCheats and MPGH out.

“I’m OK with companies using incredibly shitty, intrusive software practices because I don’t think they’ll affect me personally” is such a shit take for so many reasons, to name a few:

1. giving software kernel access, especially when it does not or should not need kernel access, is a security risk, and does open the door for malicious actors to take advantage of vulnerabilities even if the software is not malicious in and of itself

2. occasionally, intensively intrusive programs like this do break things unintentionally, which can lead to all sorts of fun issues. StarForce DRM is a good example from years past.

3. just because you do not have anything on your PC that you consider sensitive, does not mean that applies to everyone.

4. Kernel level anticheat can be bypassed. It’s usually not cheap/easy, but it can and has been done. Meaning, for all of the above concessions you make, there is no real benefit.

these are just the few I can think of immediately.

Yeah, I have a Steam Deck, and it’s literally just a PC in the form factor of a Switch. It has a BIOS menu, you can install Windows on it (but you really shouldn’t), you can install a different flavor of Linux (I recommend Bazzite) – you can even install and play pirated Windows games through Proton, more or less fine, though you have to work for it a bit more.

They developed Proton so that they could get Windows games working on the Deck, and the reason they didn’t make the Deck run Windows is they wanted greater control over the OS than Windows affords. Proton has benefited all gamers on Linux. More recently, they’ve officially partnered with Arch as of a few days ago (which is what SteamOS is built on): https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/the-arch-linux-team-is-now-working-directly-with-valve-steamos-and-arch-should-both-benefit-greatly

and just to gush a bit more: the Deck is the only thing I can remember pre-ordering in the last 10 years and being genuinely happy that I did.

y’know, whenever people started getting snippy about pronouns, I often said I was just going to start calling them an “it”.

I never thought ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶o̶n̶e̶ something would want that.

If you want a really good 4X game, try Stellaris. It’s where I went after 1000+ hours of Civ 5 (and coming to Civ 6 to be disappointed by it, played only like 80 hours), and I’ve been ̶t̶e̶r̶r̶o̶r̶i̶z̶i̶n̶g̶ liberating the galaxy ever since. I especially like the additional nuances to diplomacy, which are further enhanced by mods – Civ’s AI has always been a bit ham-fisted.

This is your daily reminder that Firefox and its derivatives exist and should be used wherever possible if you care about Google not having a monopoly over the internet. There’s even a Firefox-based version of Discord called Datcord.

dating in general

the tags I used work fine for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lots of people use bofa! >!bofa deez nuts!<

It’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say!

Superliminal.

in my experience, the sooner you accept that life is terrible and full of pain and misery, the sooner you cease to be surprised by it being terrible and full of pain and misery.

tl;dr “this might as well happen, I guess”

honorable mention for the legend of tile fucker

god bless you, you gloriously weird fucker