Well, the electoral college isn’t actually FPTP, it’s even worse than that.

Yeah. Tbh, I always wondered why programming languages weren’t translated.

I know CS is all about english, but at least the default builtin functions of programming languages could get translated (as well as APIs that care about themselves).

Like, I can’t say I don’t like it this way (since I’m a native english speaker), but I still wonder what if you could translate code.

Variables could cause problems (more work with translation or hard to understand if not translated). But still - programming languages have no declentions and syntax is simpler so it shouldn’t even compare to “real” languages with regards to difficulty of implementation.

You forgot a million switches for each “partner”. More like prostitution.

Tenacity is a telemetry-free fork of Audacity for a start

If there is no IP then why would you bother creating or inventing?

People would. Companies, not so much.

That couldn’t have been the point.

Companies use (read: abuse) IP to keep an artificial, government-sanctioned monopoly they use to extract money from users. Add to that skins, microtransactions, lootboxes, yearly releases and all the other vilest shit you can find in a modern videogame and you’ll see it isn’t about the studio staying afloat - it’s abuit the publisher raking in the $$$.

People who are creatives take it as a point of pride when their work is spread, remade and remixed. What they do not like is if that remaking and remixing is done by a soulless company in the vilest and most soulless way to generate profits. Oh, and except for thise with the best deals, IP stays with the company.

It’s not about cratives “not being paid enough” so they need IP protection - it’s the very same companies whose IP is protected who don’t pay their workers enough. IP doesn’t bring money to workers directly nor does it protect workers from anything since again - the IPs are owned by the studio/publisher.

Call it “personal feelings”, but it’s how the world works.

Civil disobedience is a good thing and it should have no “consequences” to think about. At least in a democratic society, which Academia isn’t on multiple levels.

Additionally, a well-meaning and functioning state would make those making these threats think about consequences of punishing free speech exercised in a civil manner.

Monetary devaluation is the only thing that gives any thin-veiled justificstion for price increases. Anything not covered by the inflation calculator is greed.

Well, WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. They are a large player, so they are under a bunch of scrutiny.

But at the end of the day, WhatsApp clearly states it takes all this information. They only claim to keep your messages end-to-end encrypted.

I wonder if this applies to text messages only, or to things like voice memos, images/videos, gifs, etc. as well.

WhatsApp doesn’t let you send documents if you don’t give it full access to your files. Sure, maybe they pinky-promise don’t do anything but this is Facebook we’re talking about.

The same caveat goes for photos and videos - you can’t even send a photo if you don’t give it the camera permission and gallery access, something it clearly doesn’t need just to send a single picture.

Additionally, WhatsApp loads previews of websites. Sure, on the privacy violations list that’s pretty low-priority but I’d still like to not have a link contacted before I can take my 3 seconds to look at it and decide wether it’s worth clicking. Especially since a lot of my contacts send obvious scams (“send this message to 10 contacts for a chance to win a free iPhone” type bullshit mostly).

Revoking WhatsApp’s contacts permission will not show peoples’ nicknames - it will only ahow numbers. Yet you have to give yourself a nickname on WhatsApp, so they clearly have some interest in your contacts. Otherwise they wouldn’t block it outright when it’s an already implemented feature to show nicknames for numbers not in the contact list.

All quite suspicious if you ask me. Although I don’t work in cyber security so it’s clearly just incoherent rambing from me.

AFIAK privacy laws are still the same as before we left the EU

I can confirm

Depends. According to the GDPR for any processing of PII you need consent from the data subject or a reasonable basis why you have to act upon the data (your servers communicating with an IP adress is neccesary for your service to function). Saving the adress isn’t, so you need consent or other legislation under which you’re required to store it that trumps the GDPR. That’s the so-called “overriding legitimate interest”. It doesn’t mean “interest = money”, “data = money” therefore “data retention = overruling legitimate interest”.

Keeping leaked data or scraping it from public sources is still problematic since you do nees consent.

If you’re approached as a 3rd party by someone with data who sells them to you you are obliged to make sure the data you’re given has been aquired with consent. Often times checks aren’t in place, and ultimately, if you’re given “bad data” by the intermediary you cab always claim they kenw they should’ve notified you but didn’t.

If you’re scraping leaks, well, there’s no one between you and the data subject who can take the fall. You’ve knowingly collected “bad data” unilaterally.

Yup, it affects all chromium browsers AFAIK

A question: What is preventing the site using one huge cookie for all purposes, thus preventing fully functional use of the site without also enabling all other forms of tracking?

Is such a strategy really feasible? Adding legislation that a game has to be made operable in a reasonable manner after the publisher discontinues support for it in no way influences this strategy.

If someone wanted to do such elaborate botnet defamation attacks in hopes of getting the game playable on 3rd party servers they could’ve done that already without legislation.

Bots making the game unplayable is a problem, but opening the servers in general would help the problem as private servers can implement harsher requirements for players than official ones usually do, opting to rather make a huge bot-filled cesspool as you’ve already said.

However, this proposal isn’t a general “all games must have FOSS self-hostable servers” proposal. It’s just a “if you kill a game it still has to be alive afterwards” proposal. Whether publishers open servers or not before they shut theirs down is their decision without the proposal as much as it is with it.

Since the game is at EOL it cannot generate any profits

Releasing server side source code opens up a route for abusing the game studio making the game

If, as you said, as the game is EOL it doesn’t make profits, then it can’t cause losses either. Otherwise it’d have to be kept alive.

Since if some 3rd part wants to profit off of running private servers of that game, all they have to do is make a flood of bots in-game and on the game’s communication platforms (eg discord servers, communities on Reddit or even Lemmy)

Uh… If they’re 3rd-party servers then hosting isn’t paid for by the publisher. Additionally, game publishers don’t pay for hosting of Discord/Reddit/Lemmy communities. And even if they did if the game is EOL they’d axe that too if it induces any cost.

This coupled with finding as many in-game exploits as possible can drive up costs enough to bankrupt the studio.

It absolutely can’t. The game is DEAD. It causes no profits or losses. Nothing aboit the game matters to the publisher anymore except for brand/reputation for a possible sequel.

forcing them to release server side source code, which the corpos can then grab and monetize the crap out of

Nothing explicitly forces release of source code, any reasonable server application wpuld suffice, open-source or otherwise.

The “corpos” usually make the games. The monetization concern is minimal since a server for a game isn’t anything a corporation couldn’t make on its own if it wanted, nor is it something groundbreaking.

Since the bot flood can be made nigh untraceable by having them operate out of an unfriendly state (say, Russia or China)

The bots would attack servers nit owned or operated by/for the publisher.

and there’s no studio acquisition necessary to get server side code, this would be a perfect extortion method that’d fly under the radar of antitrust legislation

What does any of this have to do with antitrust legislation? If anything, this would curb the publisher’s monopoly over the game servers although that in and of itself isn’t even an illegal monopoly.

Making a “allow 3rd party servers” update and a basic server application wouldn’t hurt an indie studio much. For beheamoths it isn’t even a drop in the ocean.

The GDPR was enacted in 2016 and came into effect in 2018. The UK left the EU in 2020.

I don’t think they repealed it. And besides, it applies to EU citizens regardless.

Everyone else’s laws are more or less the same.

The EU and UK have almost identical privacy laws - the GDPR, so Germany having exceptional privacy laws doesn’t hold up. As far as other privacy laws go I think France has a lead on Germany with approximately the same population, so privacy law can’t be the main consideration.

They could’ve just said “Rank the features from one to three accordibg to how much you like it”. This seems unneccessarily more confusing. It isn’t all that cobfusing, but it is an odd way to formulate the question.