This is rage inducing.
Imagine if your car dealer was allowed to confiscate your car on a dubious claim such as “it doesn’t meet the latest emissions standards,” but not even telling you that.
Google needs to be fined twice the value of the apps that it stole from it’s paying customers.
“Tesla has a new feature that will disable your seat controls if you keep messing with them”
https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/31/22911072/tesla-seat-controls-disable-lock-out-brose
This is so stupid. Why would a company put this much effort to lock down the seat controls, as if they didn’t already exist without limits on every other car? Not even with a toggle? These companies are really trying to destroy the “cars = freedom” association.
They get disabled for 5 minutes, probably to give the motors time to cool down.
Phew, that makes a lot more sense. I thought it permanently locked them
If the motors need to cool down, they need to rethink their motors.
Motors get hot and it’s quite reasonable to not include tons of cooling just so that you can adjust your seat for hours on end.
That said the implementation is still stupid as time isn’t the right measure to judge motor temperature, motor temperature is. Thermocouples cost fractions of a cent, the motors probably already include one or two as they already have smarts (being hooked up to the CAN bus and not straight voltage). Which would also take care of differing environmental temperatures as obviously the motors are worse at shedding heat when it’s scorching hot in the car.
So revolutionary
epic games tells us we can pull out of any purchase
Epic games is retarded.
I bought rdr when it releases in PC there, and oh wonder the pic port wasn’t good at the beginning.
Tried to get it to run for the hours, including the launcher update and stuff like that.
No luck, and no refund because I “played” for now than two hours…
Not that I’m really trying to defend Epic here, bust most stores with a two hour policy have a manual review process you can request, where you explain that your time spent was fiddle farting around trying to get it to work, no no avail.
Most of the time they make an exception.
Coz you bought their NFT dumb dumb…
It’s their accounts, you just have access to them. They can close the whole thing tomorrow.
I don’t even want to know what will happen when the valve guy retires. A publicly owned company that could just shut down tomorrow. Many gaming publishers are aware, having their own launchers. Are you?
I’m telling you, root server, self-hosted everything and FOSS. If you can’t do your things with that, it ain’t worth doing anyway.
It’s a private company. You can’t invest in them.
Valve is private, yes, but you can still invest into them if Gabe accepts your investment.
Because you trusted them.
Honestly, as somebody who really loved the early era of Android gaming, I’m really disappointed how ephemeral it all was between the Play Store delistings and the absolutely atrocious approach to backwards compatibility in the Android OS.
Seriously, I can’t run a 32 bit game on a 64 bit processor? How is that even a problem on newer phones?
They removed the 32-bit libraries from the system so they don’t have to be loaded, to save RAM.
They probably removed certain libraries that are used by 32 bit programs
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Apple probably does the same thing. You pay 20 bucks for an app that gets taken down from the store: does the next phone get it still?
Because god is dead and the devil thinks its funny.
So Google has no “app store” it’s a “rental lot” filled with a ton of malicious bullshit anyway.
Is there an easy and effective way out of their evil environment?
I bought a Pixel 8 Pro and installed GrapheneOS. No account signed in to the OS or Google play. You can run it completely Google free or run Google services in a sandbox mode with normal controllable permissions (alot of stuff uses Google services for push notifications and some other stuff.)
Use FOSS (Free Open Source Software) where possible, you can get a cheap domain name and cheap email hosting to move away from gmail.
You could go a step further, pick up a raspberry pi, and start self hosting some things to move away from Google apps.
It’s all pretty relatively simple these days, but you have to be open to learning at least a little bit (mostly the last part, gOS is basically one click install and some email hosts are about the same - but still.)
TLDR: Moving away from services you pay for with your data will require paying with your money or time, but it’s worth it.
This is the move, I’m still getting up to speed with Linux on my desktop before I get grapheneos on my cell. It’s damn intimidating.
Hell yeah. You’ll get there! Trust me, it’s WAYYYYYYY more user friendly than it used to be 😂
It’s the same as Steam, you sign the contract called “ User Agreement” that has a section on how you don’t own the games. It’s legal and nothing you can do about it. User Agreement also forbids you from suing Valve Corporation, so anyone who wants to own games from SteM legally cannot.
Whatever I sign doesn’t make it any less illegal to falsely advertise your services.
If I hire a pool cleaner and they shit in my pool it isn’t my fault that ‘I didn’t read the pool-shitting clause buried in fine print on the 138th page of the agreement’. Shitting in pools is the antithesis of a pool cleaning service.
Advertisers and marketers they know this, stop helping them.
not all games on steam have steam drm, thats an option that devs decide to use or not. Valve gives it as an option, blame the dev if they choose to use it.
Valve’s games also include DRM, Valve will still be blamed. Valve doesn’t care about their games, TF2 community comes into mind when they sent Cease and Desist. No, do not defend them for it because you also would agree with Nintendo’s stance on this issue.
Valve will never be the good guys, only remember as the bad guys.
you didnt use valve as the sole dev however, changing your entire argument. you blamed steam as an entire platform when the actual answer is that its dev specific, hell theres a fucking wiki that tells you which games on steam dont have DRM. you blanketed an entire platform with a statement that isnt even fully true. im not even saying valve is the good guy, this shit isn’t black and white, im just here not trying to pedal actual lies
All Valves games are DRM, you can not download the games without Steam Client. No, using the alternative method because the User Agreement doesn’t allow it. Valve never allows games to be installed without permission by them.
That’s the very definition of DRM, a company saying they don’t allow you to install games without consent.
t’s the same as Steam, you sign the contract called “ User Agreement” that has a section on how you don’t own the games
this is what you said,
Steam is a platform, that host various games, some with DRM, some without DRM
Valve is a dev, their games have DRM. Just because Valves games have drm, doesnt make that all games on steam have DRM. You painted an entire platform as DRM when it isn’t. it’s one thing to say that Valve theirselves puts drm in their games, its a completely different statement to blanket all of steam to be drm, when thats a completely false statement.
For example, go get someones steam copy of witcher 3, youll quickly find out that it itself has no drm, despite coming from steam, and not the GOG version.
Again, the very definition of DRM is Valve approval of:
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Your account
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Your money
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The requirements laid out in the Steam User agreement
You do not own the game, you don’t own the Steam Client, you don’t own the account and buying doesn’t offer refunds for real money. THE WHOLE THING IS VALVE CORPORATE LEGAL TERF. You can never get Steam exclusive games outside of Steam.
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You decided to use as an example the only company known to not overstep in this regard. Steam has historically refunded in full the cost of games that have been withdrawn. It’s likely the agreements for these are part of the requirements of publishers rather than the platform itself, as well as the reasons to withdraw them.
That’s absolutely correct, they’re also excellent when it comes to lending games to other people. OTOH Valve is fighting its way through the whole European appeal chain to prevent having to allow customers to resell their games. They’re going to lose, it’s just a matter of time.
Very shortsighted article calling repeatedly the GDPR a “crazy” law.
Not only that. If you buy an app, you are at the mercy of it’s creator. If they decide they want to fill it with ads and tracking, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t rollback updates, you can’t install an older version from the play store. If they decide to remove it from the store, you won’t be able to install it any more.
The “best” thing is when someone makes legitimately the best application for its purpose (arguably the only good application for it), so you convince your friends to use it because it’s so useful, and then they cram it full of ads and bloat and make it borderline unusable, but your friends won’t switch to a different app (or even leave the app altogether) because it’s the only way they know how to do the thing
I’m talking about the 5e Companion app on Android. Anyone know any good alternatives? It used to be so good, but then they started adding Unearthed Arcana garbage to it, which almost entirely sucks ass, and when UA gets officially added, they have to add the official version separately because some people have already used the UA version to make characters. I want so badly to switch away from it, but I can’t find any good free alternatives that have all of the content from 5e.
I wish 5e.tools had a character sheet builder
On that note, I bought a GIF viewer app’s full version via in-app purchase and about a year later, they updated the app to have ads again regardless and my “full version no ads” app got ads again and now i had to buy a subscription per month to be “ad free” needless to say I uninstalled
Well you can always use https://blokada.org (version 5, which runs on your phone). It stops most ads.
i use Adblock dns
I set up a VPN tunnel to my home network and use pihole to block ads which worked on this app too, so that wasn’t a problem but the audacity to remove my paid-for full access was astoundingly awful
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Piracy is always justified. I don’t do it because I’m afraid of consequences and my fear of fucking up is greater than my desire to watch TV, but if you’re confident in your abilities, not only is it justified, it’s imperative. 50 cents out of every dollar you spend on media goes into a new boat for a semi-sentient suit and tie. Another 25 goes directly into the pocket of some politician. 24 goes to a company that provides the service of restricting access to that media. One cent is split between all the people who worked on it.
A “purchase” or “buy” option, especially when you get an invoice, should ALWAYS mean ownership of the product.
A “borrow” or “rent” option is one that you expect to have to return the product.
Google can’t have it both ways. They either sold people software or they rented it out. Since it was never advertised or marketed as the Google Play Rental Library, they should be forced to give people the products they paid for.
I am starting to reconsider how I obtain my stuff.
This is a good thing. I don’t know why modern business models for these companies seem to be intentionally anti-consumer, but people will find other ways to get what they are looking for. And if that means spending money with a more ethical company, or simply pirating, they’ll find the path of least resistance.
I used to spend hundreds on the Google Play Store, buying apps and music all the time. Then they started playing stupid games, and I haven’t spent a dollar on the Play Store in years. My money goes to someone else.
I lucked out last year and ended up scoring something like 1000 DVDs for cheeeeaap. Like $100 or something. I ripped them all (minus any duplicates I already owned) and put them on my NAS. No more worrying about ads, data mining, or even internet/service outages ruining my evening.
I did the same for all my CDs, and while we still do purchase CDs, they are way overpriced.
But purchasing digital music and movies has become harder since Google Play Music went away. It’s almost too much effort to try to buy digital content these days, and it makes no sense. I want to pay for content, but making it impossible just doesn’t work for anyone.
Amazon played their first ad for us on Prime Movies today… during a kid show no less. Just disgusting where things have ended up.
Yup, I’ve said it a million times, it needs to be made flatly illegal to use language that implies ownership if the company has any method of revoking your ownership of that product in the future. These threads always get the same libertarians that show up in discussions about non-functional slack fill saying “it’s not illegal, so what’s the problem?” The problem is that it isn’t illegal. Imagine if Toyota could come grab your car from your driveway, because even though you paid it off, subclause 74 of section G(2) says that the company retains the right to repossess property made by them at any time for any reason. You didn’t read a 200 page contract at the dealership when you bought the car, you just trusted that they wouldn’t fuck you. Toyota would get their ass reamed in court if they tried that, so why are Google and Microsoft and Sony and Steam allowed to do it?
As far as im concerned, the equivalent here, should be a raw downloadable file. Much like how music purchases work.
Anything other than that simply isn’t “buying”
I recall purchasing Photoshop for Android, before it became Lightroom for Android.
It was as close to the desktop Photoshop as you could get, and it wasn’t cheap.
Google (or adobe) took it out of the play store, effectively cutting customers off and preventing them from installing it on new devices.
Fortunately, I was rooted at the time and backed up the APK, which allowed me to use it for years longer and on newer devices. But the experience really had be second guessing whether I should keep “buying” apps on the play store.
There are quite a few other instances where games and apps I purchased simply disappeared. Such an unethical business model.
You don’t need root to extract apks.
And these companies think piracy is unjustified. No, it’s just holding out an umbrella in the rain.
Piracy is ALWAYS justified! These companies are dead set on robbing me blind. Well guess what: if I never spent a nickel, there’s nothing to rob me of! To the high seas!
