I would. Not only would I do so voluntarily, but I also support STRONG consumer protection laws that would force any product or software or copyright or patent into public domain the instant it’s been unavailable for sale for 3 or more years or has gone without update for 5 years.

Our public domain and consumer protections are pathetic, and should be vigorously bolstered and defended.

Kagi is awesome. I strongly recommend giving them a try.

I hope to god they get hit with false police report charges.

And then there is Firefox, which isn’t evil at all. Lets not settle for any level of evil.

So… barely a tap on the wrist… and after his SECOND violation, no less.

You are correct.

Remember kids, the singular is semite, not semete. Hence, sem_i_tic, with an i.

I thought it was okay. It fizzled out pretty quickly for me as it felt half-baked and overly "gamey", which kept breaking the immersion illusion for me. I never did finish it. But I started over when Phantom Liberty dropped last week and it feels soooo much better. The immersion doesn't feel like it's being killed by a thousand cuts... everything feels more natural and believable now. It still has it's gamey moments, but they are a lot less obvious now.

For me it went from a 6/10 to 9/10.

UE5 is great. Honestly, it would have been the better choice even before Unity decided to curb-stomp their entire community and customer base.

But then, what did we expect after Unity merged with a company known for malware. Predatory practices are their whole business model.

Me too!

I've been 29 for over a decade.

This is pretty basic math. Just think about Monopoly (yes, the board game).

Housing is a finite resource. You can buy it or you can rent it. When you buy, you build equity. When you rent, it's pure expenditure.

So what happens when nobody can buy? They are forced to rent. Demand for rentals rises, which allows landlords to raise their rents.

So how does someone with very deep pockets turn this to their advantage?

First, starting one metropolitan area at a time, you buy up everything you can. If you coordinate with other investors, all the better. The goal is to strangle supply for buyers and prevent anyone who can't pay cash upfront from making a purchase. When people are unable to buy, they are forced to rent. So supply is down for buyers but demand is up for renters. Renters also aren't building equity, when means it is perpetually more difficult for them to buy in the future as long as they kept away from the equity opportunity. So you now control the entire regional market on both the supply side and the demand side.

But what if you have more rental property than people willing to pay your asking price? Do you lower your prices? First of all, that rarely happens - because as an investor, you target places that already have lower supply than natural demand. If you have to occasionally let a property go unoccupied for a few months, it's still no biggie... you keep those prices high and do not, under any circumstances, devalue the market (for your own sake as well as your investment cronies). To avoid accusations of collusion and price fixing, you farm out your rates to a third party service that all your cronies also use: RealPage. It's not collusion or price fixing if you use a middleman, right? So now you are making bank on rental rates that will see a full return on your (higher than the properties value) investment in 15 years or less.

This has been going on for well over a decade, and these "investors" are now printing money on some of their earliest purchases, with no intention of EVER putting anything back on the market.

TL;DR; Buy all the supply, force plebes to rent, control the prices, profit. Just like Monopoly.

I'm waiting to see how this shakes out. I think all products should be self-serviceable and parts, tools, and documentation should be readily available.

What bothers me about the EU legislation is that it's worded in a way that implies someone like my mom (who can barely USE an iPhone, let alone service one) should be able to replace her own batteries. That will very likely result in product designs that are bulkier, heavier, more fragile, and less resistant to the environment (water, dust, etc)... e.g. snap-in batteries. That is not a future I want.

I have no problem opening a phone, tablet, or laptop and replacing the battery now... you just need the right tools and a little technical competency. The only thing I want is for companies to be prohibited from throwing up artificial barriers to self-service, like invalidating my warranty, disabling OS features or activating nags, or withholding parts, specs, or information.

Microsoft did go on the record saying that pulling Call of Duty from Steam was a mistake. Given that they also release their own exclusives on Steam, it's clear they understand that, even if Valve takes a 30% cut, not releasing on Steam is almost as bad as not releasing your game at all.