Personally, I cancelled Netflix due to a drought of content I actually wanted to watch and things disappearing from it with no notice. This combined with releasing shows weekly or one ‘part’ now and another in a month (so I have to stay subscribed) made it so it couldn’t compete with piracy anymore.

parents can be morons so don’t give them that excuse.

I promise you that they will still find a way to fuck it up. Badly.

Think about how many additional phones you could buy each year if you cancelled your Netflix subscription and didn’t eat as much avocado on toast.

In the case of online magazine equivalents though I really don’t get it. What is there to sell off? Shouldn’t any potential long term profits be priced in at the point they get bought out? If the company has tangible assets like offices, couldn’t they just sell those without firing anyone and have people work from home?

Oh god no! The tangible assets like buildings and land only increase in value, you don’t get rid of those. You sell it to a holding company and lease it back to the original company for a profit (and probably several other companies who want space, too).

You then strip operations down to the bare minimum. A couple of writers at most and they’re only really there to make sure the automated AI article generator doesn’t accidentally publish a napalm recipe or some shit. You want to run it with as few people as possible to still generate enough content to run ads. Utilise your fanbase to submit content that you can run ads on because they’ll do it for free or a chance to win a t-shirt or some shit. No fans? No problem! Rip everything off relevant subreddits or other sites doing the exact same thing. Make up unsourced slop to piss people off because it generates engagement like you wouldn’t believe. More eyeballs, more ad revenue.

And you make damn sure that the company never makes a profit on paper so you don’t have to pay the relevant taxes. You made $50k more than you expected? Better pay a consultant (you) $40k to find out why. Then increase that rent by $15k.

It’s very easy, if a game doesn’t have invasive data thieving anticheat, then it will run on Linux, otherwise it won’t.

Can you be clearer about this? The majority of games I play on PC are online multiplayer.

So I’d need to check that site for every game I want to play? Presumably if there isn’t a user report for whatever distro I’m using (how do you go about choosing one? Guessing from your comment that some work better with certain components than others) the only option is to buy the game in the hope of it working whilst preparing for X hours of faffing about to get it to work?

Protondb also looks to be focused on Steam, I’m guessing it’s like MacOS where if it’s a game not on Steam then you’re shit out of luck if there isn’t a Linux specific version?

Gaming on Linux is better than it ever has been, but there are some games that just won’t run on Linux.

Is there any way of telling which ones will and won’t run on Linux? How does running them on Linux differ from Windows?

Avoid Nvidia graphics due to driver complexities.

Well, I’m fucked if that’s the case as both my machines have Nvidia GPUs.

I think more people, myself included, would be willing to consider Linux we weren’t met with people being complete assholes when asking for help or direction.

As ever, no negative consequences at all for Discord.

They’re not but there’s no recourse for it.

A major roadblock would be making it user friendly enough for the average person to be able to use it as well as an online help community that doesn’t treat newcomers like shit.

These ads for VPNs are starting to get over the top.

What’s infuriating about this is there already exists forms of ID to verify your right to work in the UK and people employing people without the documentation to prove their right to work in the UK don’t give a shit whether they have the correct documentation.

This is a complete waste of time and money which can be better spent elsewhere.

The United States meddling in the affairs of South American countries? What an entirely precedented state of affairs.

Hang on, so I need to upload government ID and/or a selfie in order to access “adult material” in order to protect kids but Meta trying to bait men with pictures of girls under the age of consent is perfectly fine? What the fuck is happening?

Shocked that they haven’t already had ads.

Has anyone used a smart fridge? I’m struggling to think of what features I’d actually end up using.

Depends on where you live, I suppose. Where I am, you can’t have someone hook up their phone to a bluetooth speaking to play the world’s most tame Spotify playlist but they will absolutely have the radio on at all times.

“This is Lars Ulrich, the drummer of Metallica. This month he was planning to install a gold plated shark tank bar beside his pool, but thanks to people like you downloading his music, he must now wait a few months before he can afford it.”

But seriously, why do they even bother with labels then?

Labels provide the upfront capital for things like recording studios, distribution (traditionally, less so nowadays when there’s not a physical product to distribute), publicity, marketing, live shows, etc in exchange for a percentage and usually with a contract that the artist will make X many albums with them.

Although things are slowly changing, you are unlikely to be doing huge tours at sold out venues and getting your songs played on the radio unless you have the substantial money to do so in the first place.

Have you tried gaming on a plane before?

Yeah, it’s why I asked lol