That’s sad to see. Granted, I haven’t played Rec Room in ages, but when I still played VR it really felt like a great and safe playground for all ages. But yeah, I really often asked myself “how do they even make money?”, as basically there was nothing really serious that cost money. A fear I had is that they sold my info or telemetry, but never too much.

It’s nice that they chose to shutter things down rather than to enforce sustainability through scummy tactics.

I know of at least one that pretty much uses scummy tactics to keep things afloat, so it’s heartwarming, although also a bit heartbreaking, to see that they would not let things go to shit and instead take the high road. Kudos to them and I wish the best for the team.

I mean, antitheists, a subgroup of atheism, are exactly that: people who are very vocal about their disdain regarding religion. And sadly often the vocal minority is seen as the majority.

I don’t think that systemd is really bending the knee too hard on this one. Actually, I think this move is actually a great way to render any sort of age verification, when using systemd, inert. Because, let’s think about it: it’s an optional field, in a JSON file that NEEDS to be editable at all times. If a distro decides to implement any serious age verification, it will have to store the data, namely the date of birth, somewhere. The /home folder would be wrong, as the user could edit that at all times. The userdb on the other hand can be restricted, meaning that the user can only edit it with user privileges. So if a government questions the seriousness of this verification method, distros can just claim that it is the administrative duty of the parent to prevent their children accessing things they shouldn’t, and that the Linux kernel itself provides the proper tool to do it without constant supervision. Yet systemd cannot enforce any stricter rules because service users, especially root, are not real people and thus cannot have any age verification. The only solution would be to tie these accounts to a person. This would cause an outrage at companies, considering that this role would most likely be the CEO or CIO, and if that device is stolen their identity could be linked to a crime, and I doubt any police station would bother trying to retrieve that laptop.

So this change will most likely be the maximum systemd can do without breaking distros for corporations, while at the same time allow classic Linux users, who most likely give themselves admin rights, a way to render any verification null and void by editing this optional field on their own.

EDIT: Also, being mad at an organisation trying to meet the laws in order to be usable will solve nothing. As you said yourself: a strong stance is needed. So complaining about systemd and trying to make them revert it will do nothing, because there will always be someone who bends the knee. If you want to do something, organize or join a protest and go to the streets, show that the law is for the people, not to be used as an oppression tool.

I mean, the introduction of the date of birth field is obviously done to make it easy for distros to comply with age verification by simply saving the birth date and nothing else.

As for the other fields: what use would it have to have such info at OS level? What application would use these fields and how? I mean, some fields, like the ‘location’ one, already are pretty useless, as, for example, the ‘location’ field doesn’t seem to bhave any firm consensus on how it should be formatted. Even the documentation lists both “Berlin, Germany” as well as “Basement, Room 3a” as valid values.

So I doubt not introducing such fields has any sort of political agenda to it, but just raises the question on why such fields would be useful to begin with.

That is a valid point. Of course it still would be rather anonymised, but it could always be a ‘frog in the pot’ type situation, where most drastic changes are introduced very slowly. My main concern at the end of the day is how much info will be required to be given to services and how much data will be actually stored. If it’s anonymised, then I don’t see much of a threat. If a service requires me to fully identify for an age check, that’s an entirely different thing, especially considering the last of Discord’s data leaks.

I find that move extremely funny, since it’s purely made for sensationalism and nothing else. I mean, if you hate how systems implemented age verification, then why don’t you remove its identity verification too, i.e. also optional fields for stuff like your address an e-mail that most users don’t even fill out.

There is no mechanism verifying what birth date you type in - you can type whatever date you want and systems doesn’t care.

I’d say no matter where you stand with age verification, this is the best solution to handle the situation. After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways. There is no real knowing how other systems are checking ages, and there is AFAIK no real government mandated rules on how it is verified. They could make you scan your ID’s front, back, nuclear composition and dietary preferences and give you a result that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a proper age verification procedure.

If the government wants to introduce age verification, they have to do it themselves - build an API that handles the age verification, similar to how the digital ID in Germany works, as an example. If they want proper age verification, they also have to take the blame themselves if things go wrong.

Apparently so, in 2022. However they seemed to have released a DLC for Opus Magnum about a month ago, so make of that what you will.

In Amerika gab es Sowas ähnliches. War erst einmal sehr klein und wurde nur populär sobald der Preis unwirtschaftlich wurde. Resultat war, dass jegliche Entscheidung nur zum Verlust von Mitglieder (sowohl Kinos als auch Kunden) geführt hat und am Ende die Firma dicht gemacht hat.

Ich sehe hier nichts wirklich anderes. Ich bezweifle, dass die Leute das überteuerte Essen dort kaufen, besonders da dieses wahrscheinlich noch teurer werden würde, um dennoch die Leihgebühren zu bezahlen, was zur gleichen Abwärtsspirale führt.

Ich sehe im Kino als Geschäft in den heutigen Tagen eigentlich wenig Hoffnung. Eventuell würde es mehr Sinn machen, ältere und eher Nichenfilme zu zeigen statt Blockbuster und entsprechend damit nur ein kleines Publikum anzusprechen. Gewinn wäre dadurch eher in Grenzen, aber ich glaube, dass die Inhaber, die sowas machen würden, eher das aus der Leidenschaft statt Profitgier machen würden.

I feel like the issue addressed here also exists in other games with multiplayer as well. It’s hard, if not nigh impossible to break the mould on an established structure - there just isn’t any room to fit in, and any deviation will cause some ire. However, I feel a good community should also be willing to counteract this problem, ideally by doing a fresh start, and shake things up. It’s also a great way to shake things up by picking roles one usually doesn’t pick, or do unconventional builds - anything to make this adventure actually refreshing. That way you allow the newcomer to find a place, even if it’s just for a one shot play.

How does posteo compare to mailbox.org?

I know that this is most likely bait, but it’s fun to address this topic.

The problem is the base of the arguments. Often flat earth theories disregard theories we see as proven, based on empirical evidence, and form their own theories, which have flaws that people “globers” see as authorities in the field (e.g. scientists, scholars) can point out in a reasonable manner. However, these flaws are often disregarded due to paranoia, claiming these people are also part of the conspiracy, or are brainwashed by it.

This leads to a disjointed thinking process. One side cannot think like the other due to different bases in logic, so any classic arguments are fruitless to convince the other. Hostility ensues due to frustration.

It’s similar to people who suffer from psychosis. There is no point in arguing traditionally, and the only way to help them is through processes like the LEAP method, in order to help them connect to a more grounded reality, if that is even possible.

ich stimme zu, dass die immer herrschende Erreichbarkeit schon sehrblästig sein kann. Aber dann wiederum ist das nicht ein Problem des Telefons selber, sondern unsere Gesellschaft, die stetig auf Geschwindigkeit getrimmt ist. Sobald man sich selbst entschleunigt ist auch die stetige Erreichbarkeit kein Problem - man kann ja immer zurückrufen, oder den AB benutzen.

Alternatively also VOLT, perhaps? It doesn’t hurt to fight for a more unified EU.

For the problems you encountered: the refresh rate can be set in the monitor settings. If you can’t go any higher, then there might be a problem with your graphics drivers. It is also important to add that Pop!OS is based on Ubuntu, which can take ages to implement modern changes. For Gaming I would generally recommend a rolling release distro, maybe it be OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Fedora, etc… Otherwise you might not get the cutting edge tech that you need.

As for Tetr.io: it seems to be a problem with Vulcan, namely that improperly configured drivers will use the iGPU by default. How do you install/run that game?

Translation for those not speaking German:

Hooray, the butter is gone!

Goering in his speech in Hamburg: Ore has always strengthened a nation, butter and lard only made it fat at best.

So, I’ve tried it with my T14 Gen1 (which, as I just found out is already 6 years old… Yeowza), and honestly… It’s pretty hard to get the keyboard out of that one already.

It’s nothing like I remember with older models, where you can take off the keyboard out by itself and slot a new one in, but now you need to pry off the mouse buttons of the trackpad, loosen screws under it and pry the keyboard forward to be able to get it out. The mouse buttons are also attached to it, which makes even more anxiety-inducing to get it out.

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they removed the function overall in the most recent models, seeing as how it is with this model already.

My old work place used to buy refurbushed ThinkPads, and they slid rather easily by sliding a switch. I have one of the more recent models (also refurbished) at home as well, I’ll try to see if it’s still the same.

Huh, TIL. I guess the image is just clickbait then.

The only thing that comes to mind is that undersea cables are often under attack by sharks.

I think the reason is just the history behind FPSs, where companies used that genre to show off the engine’s capabilities. Although I feel that trend has ended quite a bit ago, especially considering how Ultrakill became such a huge success and using the low poly aspect to their advantage, as it allows a much more hectic gameplay without much performance loss during the gameplay.