BladeFederation

I hear you and I'll take (finally) a classic3D DK over yet another Mario. But it's still weird.

The fact that it exists might, even if uncommon. It was already in question for many developers due to the bad press and minimal effect on sales.

That being said, as someone who works in IT, please don't use a hypervisor to run pirated software if you have absolutely anything important or of note on your computer. You shouldn't even run your an admin account as your daily driver on Windows. MAYBE if you have a separate computer just for gaming and disconnect it from the internet. Maybe. There are other things to play or pirate though.

Yes. Running it in browser is far better than not using one at all. But third party is significantly safer, since your browser is trusted with a LOT already.

I mean it'll have been 10 years soon for a flagship 3D title. Obviously they're going hard on the spinoffs but it's never been this long for main titles.

That would include not installing Nvidia drivers though, no?

I'm not Muslim, though I do have some general knowledge of their teachings. I don't think that this is a topic that can be answered only with scripture, since it was not directly addressed. You pretty much covered the two schools of thought in the topic.

But consider this: Jesus (considered by most Muslims to be a prophet) says in Matthew 23:23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."

You see, based on the above, my perspective is that if you are using (any) scripture to justify an action, you're probably doing religion wrong. Personally, I agree with the Muslim idea that knowledge should not be hidden, I think it's an important addendum to simply "not lying". I don't believe in intellectual property as a concept. But...someone or many someones did work for many hours on the end product.

Is paywalling, say, GTA V "hiding knowledge"? I believe in game preservation and all that, but ultimately, no, that's a little silly to say. It's a luxury. An extra thing we do for entertainment, not to better oneself. Is it WRONG to pirate? I don't personally think so (I'm subscribed to the piracy sub) but it's certainly suspect, and at the end of the day we shouldn't be spending too much time on luxuries anyway.

Has the government banned an educational book, or perhaps it simply isn't sold in your region? I would have a hard time condemning that from any perspective, and I think the author of the book in most cases would encourage you to pirate, because they want you to have the knowledge within.

There was a book I was reading about personal internet privacy, and within, he mentioned that many people pirated earlier versions of the book. The author said basically "I can't stop you from pirating the book. Maybe you can't afford it. Maybe you don't trust the value without seeing it first. Just know that I am considering not updating a new edition because I am getting less and less sales. If it ever becomes not worth it, then resources like this will not exist."

At the end of the day, that's what it's about. If you respect the work being done and want more of it, you should pay for it, if possible. If you want more things like that thing, you should pay for it. If you want to prevent further degeneration of art into lowest common denominator slop, you should pay for it.

There are times where pirating (or similar things like adblockers) may be more moral than not doing it. YouTube has a lot of important knowledge that should not be gate kept, but Google is a very immoral company, and so are companies that advertise heavily. Ad blocking is the moral thing, as well as the best from a privacy and security perspective, even the FBI recommends using them. So at the end of the day, it's a complicated topic, but you should consider "what would Allah do in my situation?" If good people create something with their hard work, he would reward them. If it is avoiding association with bad people by pirating, or finding a way to bring knowledge and wisdom to the masses, maybe he'd pirate.

I dont think piracy is that bad, and I don't have qualms about not giving money to mega corporations, especially for content that rarely makes them or the actual creators money years after release. But if you're really worried about morality, the question should not be "is it THAT bad?", it should be "what is the moral line of action in this situation?"

In most cases, for that you're looking at refurbished. Which I am a proponent of, it is a tried and true method to get a deal. But it comes with its own risks and limited warranties.

The chipset has benchmarked really well, mostly just the thermal throttling that you alluded to, and that will limit what workflows you can accomplish to a certain extent, which can also be said about 8 GB RAM.

But again that's not who is buying the machine. It's the best value for a general use machine out there. It will excel at that, and have longevity due to how good the chipset is when not throttled, build quality, and because macOS is both lighter and more optimized.

Yep I also am a Linux truther. But some people are too scared to make the jump/to try to install an operating system themselves, or need specific programs that aren't on Linux. And for those people, I'm not going to recommend them a Windows laptop in almost any situation because it just doesn't make sense anymore at almost any price point. We're even breaking into Chromebook price range here, and Chromebooks are going UP in price across the board.

I'm well aware lol, I just don't have the specs memorized, I just remember it was a gen newer than the M2.

I'm not going to disagree with most if what you said, but I'll simply say this: look at what it costs for a new Windows laptop these days. Look at the chip set. Look at the build quality. If you can get me even ONE of those two things that matches the Neo for 500 dollars, let me know. This isn't even mentioning how garbage Windows has become. You can get higher RAM easy...but Windows needs 16 GB minimum to do jack shit, 32 GB is more realistic to do anything interesting. My work M2 Macbook with 8 GB RAM feels about the same or better as my (newer) work Dell with an i7 32 GB RAM.

That's why the Neo is such a big deal. Am I going to buy it? No. I'm a tech enthusiast with various needs, and prefer desktops & Linux when I'm at home. Would I recommend it to a large amount of people? Yes.

Interesting, are their really no other major differences than the container images? Have you ran into any additional hurdles with the atomic experience? You may have convinced me to try Bazzite or SecureBlue.

That's certainly possible. It's hard to know for sure how it will look in practice, or if they will even attempt to enforce it in the first place. So many laws are "feel good" laws where nobody wants to say they're against protecting the children but nobody actually gives a shit about.

That does seem to be the intention, to hold companies liable, I just dont see how that would possibly work. Similar situations have happened with DMCA copyright stuff. Some foreign pirate sites were fined by the American government, and the sites literally told them to fuck off.

And what if some countries create laws that state you cannot recklessly gather users' personal information? Who do you obey? Do you pay a fine no matter what? Are you banned in one country? How would that be enforced?

Not only do I fundamentally disagree with what they're trying to do, it simply doesn't make sense in the first place, nor does their implementation.

I agree with you that there have been a lot of reactionary takes to this news. But I do think that many if not all Linux distributions can choose to ignore it, yes. I think it's inherently unenforceable. How is California supposed to have say over a random guy in the Netherlands who makes a distro? Even a distros based in California should be able to put a disclaimer that this OS is not to be used in the state of California. Maybe make a California version with age verification at worst. And then everyone will proceed to use the non age verification version because what is the government going to do? Kick in every door and manually check if your computer OS is in compliance? Even if they went to that extent (they won't), what is the criteria for criminally charging someone? What if you are just visiting California, do you have to reinstall your OS for a few days?