Seems like SecuROM won’t install from playing singleplayer:
https://www.gog.com/forum/fear_series/gogs_blatant_lies_regarding_securom_in_fear/page4

The very same.

They’re lobbying the EU for backdoors in e2ee so they can sell their tech stack to scan all our private communication. https://www.thorn.org/solutions/for-platforms/

Ah yes, the scanner software company Thorn that’s trying to lobby chat control into existence in the EU. Sorry but I don’t trust them or their surveys.

That said, spreading deepfakes of others without their consent is obviously wrong.

Nevermind, it’s been abandoned by the company that contributed the most to it.
https://lwn.net/Articles/882460/

I haven’t tried it myself but there is libreoffice online
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/
https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/

Their site works fine without allowing javascript, that way it turns into quite a simple thing too!

A favourite of mine on that theme is from Boondock Saints (1999)

Now we must all fear evil men.
But there is another kind of evil.
Which we must fear. Most.
And that is the indifference of good men.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwIJ9pRWBpo

EU is forcing some consumer friendly requirements from 20 June 2025 onwards which I imagine will give you a wider availability of models with five years of updates. Should give some incitement for the companies to join in.
https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

Ecodesign requirements will apply to mobile phones and tablets put on the EU market from 20 June 2025 onwards, including:

1. resistance to accidental drops or scratches and protection from dust and water
2. sufficiently durable batteries which can withstand at least 800 charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their initial capacity
3. rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
4. availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
5. non-discriminatory access for professional repairers to any software or firmware needed for the replacement

This is not a community where I can do that. Sorry.

Obsidian Entertainment has gone from Fallout: New Vegas where you were free to kill anyone, even at the cost of disrupting main quests, to Outer Worlds where most of that freedom is still intact to Avowed where the freedom to do evil choices is either taken from you (npcs not reacting to being shot in the face) or having no impact (npcs ignoring your stealing of money and food in the tavern).

I agree with your thought that it’s a directorial choice, not attention to detail, but it’s one that goes in the complete opposite direction of what the studio is known for.

I use an 8bitdo SN30 Pro + 8Bitdo Smartphone Clip together with emulators on my phone to enjoy Gameboy, SNES and PSX, I’ve also tried emulating some newer consoles but my phone is a bit weak for that.
There’s a ton of great controllers to turn your phone into a proper gaming device, I chose the 8Bitdo because I can also use it with my computer over Bluetooth.
But if that isn’t a consideration then I would probably go for one of those that has passthrough USB-C Charging so you can charge both controller and phone while playing.

Before I got the controller I mostly played Gameboy Pokemon games on my phone.

Does that mean that you consider the temporary loss of her voice the same harm as if she would’ve lost access permanently?
Do keep in mind I do not believe the banning to be ok either - but I’d rather have a company where the human factor sometimes fails that can properly undo their mistake and apologize than something like Meta where you cannot even get in touch with a human if something gets flagged.
The extreme of a company that never does a mistake would of course be the best but that’s never going to happen.

I hope for the self hosted solution that @[email protected] mentioned to become reality, both for people like Joyce and because it would be a step towards self hosted voice assistants for those of us that refuse to use cloud based ones.

When I first asked Sophia Noel, a company representative, about the incident, she directed me to the company’s prohibited use policy.

There are rules against threatening child safety, engaging in illegal behavior, providing medical advice, impersonating others, interfering with elections, and more.
But there’s nothing specifically about inappropriate language. I asked Noel about this, and she said that Joyce’s remark was most likely interpreted as a threat.

[…]

Joyce doesn’t hold a grudge—and her experience is far from universal.
Jules uses the same technology, but he hasn’t received any warnings about his language—even though a comedy routine he performs using his voice clone contains plenty of curse words, says his wife, Maria.
He opened a recent set by yelling “Fuck you guys!” at the audience—his way of ensuring they don’t give him any pity laughs, he joked.
That comedy set is even promoted on the ElevenLabs website.

Blank says language like that used by Joyce is no longer restricted.
“There is no specific swear ban that I know of,” says Noel.
That’s just as well.

And then she got an apology and got her account reinstated by ElevenLabs.

Reason I went or self-hosting Forgejo is to know it when federation comes along for real.
I’d love being able to federate my self-hosted Forgejo with my friends self-hosted Forgejo servers.
https://forgejo.org/2025-01-monthly-update/#federation

I’m a big fan of using https:// in Mull on my Android, and in Firefox on my PC.
Never been a fan of installing more apps then necessary.

If I had a ps1 I wanted to use then I would look at FreePSXBoot and UniROM - https://github.com/brad-lin/FreePSXBoot

SnappyMail seem to be a fork of Rainloop and both Rainloop and Snappymail appear to allow multiple providers - https://snappymail.eu/
Cypht seems to be a similar solution where you selfhost a webserver that acts as a web client to external email providers - https://www.cypht.org/documentation/
I find nothing about push notifications for either of those solutions though, and I’m not sure about how much the webclients cache.

Now that we’re adding more dystopian books to the thread I’d like to shout out to Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye. It’s more of a totalitarian state similar to 1984 but has an aspect of truth drugs, a hot topic back then, and thought criminalization.

Some developers make gog users second rate citizens, some don’t publish on gog at all. I wouldn’t call it a sinking ship though, later years they’ve had more big name games such as Baldur’s Gate 3 than before.

Also, if gog shuts down tomorrow I can still install all my games from the installers on my network share, something I can’t say about steam.

I am very happy about Proton/SteamOS and how they assist in making games playable on Linux. I hope the SteamOS devices become popular enough that developers stop trying to shut Linux out.

I’m not looking forward to what will happen with Steam when Gabe is no longer around though.
Having one big marketplace/launcher might be comfy right now but that can turn into a nightmare quickly when there’s a new owner in town.

Personally I’m trying to buy any game I can on gog.com instead of Steam. Both to get my own offline installers and to ensure not all my eggs (games) are in one basket. I launch more games from Lutris then Steam today.