foggenbooty

I want to state for the record that I was one who boycotted MW2 and stuck to my guns. I have not bought a single CoD game since. I played Warzone (free) with friends when it was new, until it became a bloated mess that highly incentivized buying CoD.

I am not the norm. That boycott was a total failure and in one swoop the publishers knew they could call our bluff. As gaming has branched out and become a household staple there is no such thing as "gamers" anymore as a tech savvy class. We are just regular people. Regular people are dumb and easily manipulated.

I'm just happy to see the rise of indy PC gaming because we now have actual good games to choose from and I never have to support the AAA clowns again.

I'm very similar to you. It's the principal of the thing. For me you either use Steam as a launcher, because it's a good experience that actually adds value to my games, or you have no launcher. I do not want launchers within launchers. I do not want a weird online account I will never use to come up every time the launcher I forgot existed times out. I don't want to take 10 minutes each new game to figure out how to play with a friend. I want to install this smoothly on my Steam Deck. It's not a good experience and it's not to my benefit.

There's just something slimy about corporations trying to suck more out of you with absolutely zero value, in fact negative value in return. That's advertisments, that's lainchers, that's DRM, microtransactions, etc. All exist to the detriment of the customer and they ask you to pay for the privilege. Once you notice that you start to get a little crazy like you mentioned and avoid the insult at all costs.

Because the Republicans tied aid to Ukraine to the Tik Tok ban. Democrats were forced to vote for it to continue to prevent the fall of a country fighting off an invasion.

Oh man, that sucks. I can't say I've ever had performance issues due to steam, but my hardware is better. I wonder what it would be doing to chew up resources?

I can understand that, but Valve is very customer focused, which is why people love them. It's sad to say but these days most companies are not. Bad support, bad products, bad policies, etc most companies will try to give the shittiest passable product while spending big on marketing to grow.

Valve has had excellent support, innovative and niche products, and very pro-customer policies. Gabe's often repeated quote on why people pirate is upheld within his company and it's how they succeed.

I firmly believe that their success is due to their private ownership and his vision. If he were to sell or pass away, I would immediately stop trusting valve and look at them with a lot more scrutiny to see if they are changing for the worse, but for now he has earned my trust.

I totally get preferring GOG or systems that don't require launches. Trust me. I never buy Rockstar or EA games because their lainchers are so anonying. Steam just works so well that I see their launcher as a benefit and not an annoyance. That's just me though. Anyway, that some perspective from a Valve fan.

And this article is all about CTV, a privately owned news organization that is struggling. Polievre has said multiple times that he's going to gut the CBC, leaving Canadians with no good source for reporting.

It's going to be a very sad day when we have to turn to the BBC for world news and Post Media (American owned) for local.

I largely agree with what your saying that fast food should be saved for travel or times where the time/convenience is necessary, but can you go into your rationing example? I'm having trouble visualizing a situation where I would need to ration the food I have at home and instead of replenishing it would buy more expensive fast food meals.

As far back as I can remember they've used these warming trays to keep items that were previously grilled warm until someone orders them. This is pretty much required for fast food with the volumes and wait time people expect, otherwise you'd be waiting 5+min for your burger.

You think Trump won't be friendly towards Russia? It's almost a done deal that he will backstab Ukraine.

I hate to fall into conspiracy theories, but even if Russia doesn't outright own Trump, they're easily able to manipulate him by catering to his ego. Trump has mentioned many times that he likes Putin.

Thank you for specifying that you're not technical, that helps. Your idea doesn't make a lot of sense since you have a misunderstanding of how the Internet works, and at which levels the problems occur.

The first layer of the "Internet" is physical infrastructure. The router you mention, the ISPs you connect to, etc. All they do is move data around the world, mostly without a care to what that data is, and they do it VERY effectively. Apart from pricing or service you might not like, there is no need to replace this part of the Internet because it is by far the most expensive and complex component, and has little to do with the problems you lament. Setting your own version of this up would be vastly inferior, more expensive, and very unreliable.

The second part of the Internet is the protocols and standards used to get this data around on the physical fibre and wires that the ISPs have laid down. Again, these protocols are time tested, mostly content agnostic, and highly compatible. Things like routing protocols, HTTP, DNS, etc are all open and free to use.

The third part of the Internet is the millions of servers that actually hold the content. This could be web servers that show you the web page you're browsing on, servers that orchestrate instant messaging, the backend to your apps, etc. This is what you seem to have the biggest issue with and it's also the easiest (relatively) to replace.

So, now that the basics are down, let's discuss what you want to do. You want to have your own Internet that's seperate from the one you see. You could do this as simply as getting some people together who are like minded, making some web servers to host the things you want like a Wikipedia clone, email server, what have you, and then and then use a DNS server that only resolves your new servers and does not return results from the broader Internet. Think of a DNS server like a phonebook for computers. If you make an exclusive friends club and print your own phone book and pass it around, but forbid anyone from ever looking at the local white or yellow pages, your little group is all they'll know but they can still use the existing telephone system.

Most protocols are encrypted these days, so your DNS and web browsing can be fairly anonymous if everyone conforms to a set of standards. If you want more you could set this whole thing up over a system of VPNs.

Long story short is, big mesh routers are just a bad idea for so many reasons that I haven't even gotten into like RF spectrum use and maintenance. You're better off participating in small corners of the existing Internet you enjoy (like Lemmy or other alternative sites) and ignoring the rest. If for some reason you really felt you wanted to make a Dark Web 2.0 for like minded people it can be done, but I wouldn't start by cutting the cable to your ISP.

I feel bad writing such a short reply considering all the work you put into yours, but thank you for your understanding and the conversation. You're very well spoken :)

Fair. It comes down to which definition of abnormal you jump to. Merriam Webster gives two possible definitons:

1. deviating from the normal or average
2. often : unusual in an unwelcome or problematic way

I always though of it as #1, but this whole thread has taught me that most others see it as #2, so it's not the best word for me to use in this case.