For all the problems the game has, the major thing they get right is the environment.

Almost every area looks more than great, some are industrial, luxurious, barren, creepy, outright hostile, or cozy, but they are usually always gorgeous.

The environments are what pushed me to keep giving the game a chance after the initial shock of not having a cohesive overworld.

I’ve flipped flopped my consensus about the game a couple times, but my conclusion is this…

Starfield is not going to be what you expected from Skyrim in space, at first. It will seem weird and claustrophobic and broken.

But if you give yourself a bit to acclimate to the world they’ve built, there is a surprisingly engaging game underneath.

I believe they’ve left most planets barren on purpose, so they can easily shove DLC wherever they want for the next 10 years.

“New facehugger planet, 20 hours of exciting quests and valuable loot! - $29.99”

That’s 100% going to happen.

It really is a big move, since it likely cost them millions in early sales.

I probably would have bought it already if I couldn’t find a crack, but now I can pirate and wait for a nice sale.

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

You can just click the checkbox for “Copy crack to install directory” to get the installer to do everything for you.

I’m not sure why that isn’t the default.

Do you keep the game if you get the “Deluxe Upgrade” on GamePass? Or do you have to keep paying the subscription if you want to play?

Which GPU did you get?

And also, the “early access” is just a way to get people to pay more for the game in the first week.

By all reasonable standards, the game has been fully released.

“Pre-ordering piracy”… What does that even mean?

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I don’t know why you’d want to rent the game if you’ve already got the cracked copy, but I would be surprised if the save files were any different between the two platforms.

I’m almost positive they’ve been developing an image recognition AI that will make slightly altering csam photos obsolete.

Here’s hoping.

Maybe 30 years ago.

But in the last 20 years there has been a lot of of funding towards prevention and researching a cure.

https://avac.org/project/resource-tracking/

An HIV vaccine has proven itself to be an extremely elusive target.

But with recent developments in biotechnology, it may not be much longer before we finally have get one.

And by they, you mean the right wind politicians in power.

The people who vote for them are constantly voting against their immediate interests.

If we had some sort of ranked choice, a lot of these one-issue voters might actually have a choice in their representation. Which would be good for all of us.

WinAeroTweaker will let you decide what junk you want to disable.

I mean, illegal online transactions are like the one place where crypto really shines.

Eh, I would support blocks on that. [Porn]

Okay, so lets build all the infrastructure and technology to block porn in the most effective way possible.

And I pinky winky promise to never use that technology to silence my political opponents.

Just think of the children.

And the thing is, there are open source internet browsers that can be written to avoid any browser checks that a law might require.

However, if Google’s browser DRM gets widely implemented, a browser-side content blocker would be effective, because all those open source browsers would be unable to access the wider web.

I think if Big Brother Browser with Google DRM is our future, we’re going to see people using 2 browsers as standard. They’ll have one “corporate” internet browser, for Instagram, Amazon, whatever. And one “free” browser for all the grey area stuff.

Twitter was already struggling with nearly unfettered access to every internet-connected user. (sans heavily censored countries)

If Musk cut off 25%-50% of users, the platform, which relies on eyeballs seeing advertisements, would certainly spiral into oblivion.

That is legitimately a problem.

For some reason, YouTube’s algorithm heavily favors extremist content if you show even a casual interest in related material.

It’s probably as simple as “shocking content gets more clicks”, but still, it’s not good for our society to have entertainment platforms recommending extremist views.

In the old days, you’d have to seek out this kind of fringe content on your own. And you’d get pushback from your community if you started talking nonsense.

Nowadays, my aunt is getting blasted with reptilian democrat stuff after showing an interest in typical conservative lady content years ago. And there is not much of a community left to help her out. The algorithms just amplify all the worst shit.

I don’t remember details but essentially it was decided (in some court, somewhere, i guess) that linking to illegally copied material was also illegal.

This proposed change has been discussed in congress, but big tech is fighting it hard, as it would make moderation of social media very expensive and/or restrictive. Basically, certain parties want to hold platforms legally responsible for the content they host, even if that content was posted by users.

It would make it nearly impossible to legally operate a FOSS platform like Lemmy. Fortunately for us, it’s one of the few areas where the interests align for both big tech and the common man.

IRC the new loophole became encoding the link to what ever you wanted to copy, for example as base64.

Base64 encoding is not a legal loophole, it’s a method to avoid automated content filters on platforms like Reddit and Discord. Encoding a link in base64 offers no legal protections.

Plex shares (I actually use an Emby share) are what streaming should have been after cable.

It’s the perfect service, everything all in one spot for a reasonable fee.

I’d pay up to $100 a month for that legally, but instead the studios want to bleed me dry.

So they get nothing.