The FBI is a good analogy for the political choices Americans have between Democrats and Republicans. They are completely non-ideological. It's just about power and control over the population. We need to get our rights back somehow.
I support this. The United States is too crowded. I don't want to compete with all these new people for housing. American citizens really need to begin advocating for themselves. For their material interests.
As a European, I also support this. Natives should not have to compete with all these new people for housing. Real Americans really need to begin advocating for themselves. For their material interests.
I don't want every square inch of my country to be city; and if you look on google maps, most of the land in the US is already either used for farming, cities, or not suitable for either.
That's a reasonable opinion for one to have, but it can coexist with humane timeframes for changing laws over time. Not grandfathering people already here for a change in policy of this magnitude -- this is inhumane.
Also consider that these "new people" are assets to our economy. They're tax payers, many are highly educated, and their presence over the last hundred years is the exact reason you have the privilege of being in a wealthy country. Seriously, how do people think the US became what it is?
Will sending these people away improve our economy? Because I doubt it. I mean, we've been doing mass deportations right?
Well... has the economy improved for you? Has your life gotten better after we dumped a few tens of billions into ICE? Because I'm still waiting.
When will that chicken come home to roost, do you think? I'd like to know so I can make a note of it and inevitably tell you "I told you so" when that day rolls around.
Maybe it'll be around the same time we get those tax refund checks from all the money DOGE saved.
"They're tax payers, many are highly educated," yes they have more purchasing power the day they arrive than I do after 4 generations.
That's not right and toxic for social cohesion. Your immigrant class should not be wealthier or have superior earning power to the native population. That's like a sociological time bomb.
Bought PGA Tour 2k21 for $50. In October the servers shut down completely neutering the game. I think you're allowed to play a few courses still. But the career mode, which is why I originally bought the game, was completely turned off. Mind you that career mode had zero Internet needed features. It's like a sports franchise mode.
So good on this bill. 2K should rot for deprecating a game I bought for $50 only 5 years ago.
> I think you're allowed to play a few courses still. But the career mode, which is why I originally bought the game, was completely turned off. Mind you that career mode had zero Internet needed features.
I suspect this is the same as IO Interactive's "Hitman: World of Assassination".
99% of the game is single player. The game allows you to unlock additional things in the game (different starting locations in a level, more equipment).
But, if you play the game offline, all of that progression is completely blocked off.
I guess what happened is the progression ties to the saving, which is heavily coupled to online syncing. And so the logic is like `if (offline) { useSafeMode() }`. But it's so lame.
But you knew exactly what you were buying. It’s not hidden to you that an internet connection is required when you buy the game. Game developers are generally pretty terrible and do a lot of really shady things to extract value from their players. But that one isn’t one. The terms are clearly stated before your purchase
I’d debate that there are “clearly stated terms” when the result is completely unpredictable, will it work for 10 years or 3 hours? Reading the terms you have no idea.
The original sin is selling a product that has an ongoing cost for a fixed price without creating an ongoing trust to pay those costs.
Imagine I had a gas station that sold all you can use gasoline for a car for 4k. Then I sell a bunch of memberships and pay myself then go bankrupt. That’s straight up fraud.
Which is the sensible thing to do. There are a lot of local games available, if people don’t like online requirements just look at the rest of the massive catalog of games available
But for players to make such a decision in an informed manner they need to actually know the deal they are getting into with modern games and contrary to your original assertion it is far from clear now.
If a game says clearly a constant internet connection is required, I don’t see how you would expect it to work when their servers are down. It would indeed be nicer if they would provide a local experience, but is it really something that should be enforced through regulations? That feels very wrong to me. I personally dislike EA business model and wouldn’t engage with it, I think it’s a pretty shitty corporation. But when buying diablo games where a connection is required, even if I always only play them solo, at no point do I have expectations I will be able to continue playing if servers are shut down. The deal is clear from the get go, I can decide to engage or not. There a lots of other games to play if I care more about local experience.
The arguments to “stop killing games” feel very entitled to me and the slogans disingenuous
If the TOS said the game would be destroyed in 5 years I would not have made the purchase. You're making my point. Why didn't the TOS tell me the plan?
I agree with this. The general population is hopeless, they will hand literally anything away for the least amount of friction. They are also profoundly ignorant.
The solution should be to provide the tools necessary to preserve as much agency using technology to people who want to. You should also keep in mind the middle tier technical people who need a bit of hand holding. But do not waste your time on the general public because they don't share or comprehend your goals.
No, they calculate in the fact of that lack of control into their purchase decision. They mostly didn't want that control in the first place. They just want to _______, for many things you can fill in the blank, including things like look good, appear classy, get high, get laid...
I respectfully disagree with "they calculate in the fact of that lack of control into their purchase decision".
The average person is not calculating anything but price, is it what everyone else is using, is it new etc. Very low level calculations. They aren't asking "can I install applications from outside the app store?". Etc.
The average person is also being constantly manipulated to believe things which are actively nefarious are actually good for them.
I don’t know if we can blame the average person when there is an entire class of people which have almost limitless resources, knowledge and means to execute their agenda. At some point we have to accept we are fighting against an evil and powerful enemy. And that the masses are high succeptible
It’s like being mad at the characters in lord of the rings for succumbing to the rings powers
Hrrm. It seems your original comment has been heavily edited.
> They aren't asking "can I install applications from outside the app store?"
I agree. They don't want to. They already can't begin to evaluate app trustworthiness and don't want to have to. And they shouldn't have to. Yet they live in a world where they do. So they lean on reputation, app store filtering, the legal system, and hope.
That's not what the parent was saying. Most people don't have any opinion whatsoever on sideloading. You can go confirm this for yourself by asking a Mac or PC owner how scary it is. Most of them will respond that they genuinely never thought about it, not that they're afraid to consider it. To these people, it's a normal feature of their device that you could never remove.
The parent is lamenting that people don't care about this technology - Client Side Scanning, hardware attestation, Push notification surveillance - all of it is enabled not because of fear, but apathy.
> And they shouldn't have to. Yet they live in a world where they do.
This is fearmongering logic that doesn't really defend the App Store. Putting your faith in a centralized software auditor also requires you to pay attention and stay abreast of scams. It's just a different exploit chain to deliver the same payloads: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
I do talk to computer users and they do fear making installations. Many of them have installed something that was adware or a virus, often without meaning to and regretted the results. I have been helping my family and extended family members fix their errors for a long time. This pushes them to big names with names to spoil.
I suspect that the GP is, as you write, lamenting the lack of attention to the topic.
> This is fearmongering logic that doesn't really defend the App Store
I agree it doesn't defend the app store. It wasn't about the app store at all. It is about the social problem of the persistent existence of people who choose to purposely do others harm. The problem for most people isn't the app store but those who attempt to get exploits and quasi-exploits into the app stores.
I also agree that you still have to be cautious when using the app stores. Are you claiming that the app store controls do nothing to reduce the presence of malicious apps in their stores? The article you link starts by noting that the app was removed the day after that post was made. That is exactly why people feel more comfortable using the app store.
> the app was removed the day after that post was made
LastPass has been downloaded in excess of 50 million times in the past 10 years. As many as 10,000 users could have installed the app and turned over their credentials to the trojan version in a 24 hour period. If your manual review takes a day to respond, it's already too late at Apple's scale.
> That is exactly why people feel more comfortable using the app store.
Then why does the App Store represent the minority of software sales on platforms like macOS, where users are given free reign to download whatever they want? It seems like users are overwhelmingly uncomfortable sticking to the App Store, if you take their actions and spending into account.
Apathy seems to be the best explainer here. Users don't care about security at all, they are just consuming whatever is put in front of them. That's why social engineering like LastPass works, and it's why you see people ignore systemic backdoor efforts like Client Side Scanning and Push notifications. They might be afraid of getting hacked, but it's plainly clear that none of them care enough to make a change in their lifestyle.
I would have expected Apple to catch that on review. That was a egregious failure and betrayal of trust on their part. I wonder if they took any responsibility for the consequences of their error.
I'd agree if you wrote that most users don't understand security at all, that users aren't really given the tools they need to maintain security, or that exploits are designed to target people's vulnerabilities. You seem to be blaming the victims of motivated (sometimes) advanced actors. Even serious engineers have been phished for NPM publishing access.
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