but ask those same people whether facebook should be allowed to collect and use all that data, and people will generally say ‘no’.

I reckon this is a really good game, and it’s great to see it on GOG.

Missing features always feels bad though, even if those features are not important. (The multiplayer modes are ok, but the playerbase isn’t there anymore anyway. I never used snapmap at all.) But it’s kind of a philosophical thing. Missing features just make it feel like a worse. But on the other hand GOG does have one cool feature compared to the previous release: DRM free. Not as visible, but perhaps more important.

(I still probably won’t buy it on GOG though, because I don’t love the game so much that I need a second copy.)

I’d try this, but I don’t know what address to email them at. All of the support / contact instructions are a labyrinth of automated systems, with the fallback option of using the ‘community forum’. Google doesn’t seem to want anyone to contact them for any reason.

I thought that too at first, which is why I tried every other available option first. But that theory is disproven by the fact that the first attempt with the number told me that the given number was not registered to the account (and so I still couldn’t log in). Clearly they were comparing the entered number to something they already had.

I’m not suggesting that we ignore the problems. I’m suggesting that we don’t let trivial things, such as playing a computer game poorly, distract us from the problems. This post is not an example of behaviour that needs to be confronted.

Maybe; but either way it means he gets to have more air-time and head-space.

Being disliked for someone trivial, such as being bad at a computer game, doesn’t really translate across to more important things. So that reputational damage is shallow and unimportant, but maintaining his position as being newsworthy is powerful and useful to Musk. So I agree with the other guy: better to not fuel these discussions about trivial junk. If you want to keep talking about Musk, then stick to stuff that matters.

Mozilla’s recent blog posts explicitly highlight that they are investing in ads for short-term revenue growth. So when they go on to remove the ToS statement about not selling user data, that suggests to me that their strategy is in fact to collect and sell user data.

Perhaps they aren’t doing that yet, but signs are pointing in that direction. So that does make me reluctant to share any data with them.

Making porting gog to linux a priority which has by far the smallest market share for computer gaming is the dumbest thing anyone in this thread is saying

Building a bridge across the river is totally stupid, because no one crosses that river to get to where they are going.

Building a house on that hill is dumb, because no one lives there.

Creating that new type of device is a waste of time, because no one has ever bought one like that.

…

You see the point, right? Not that I’m trying to give business advice. I’m just saying that these things aren’t necessarily as stupid as you seem to think.

I don’t think it is reasonable to expect every individual to become a privacy / legal expert. I think people should have reasonable protections and assurances given to them without needing to study the details of everything they do on a case-by-case basis.

We have laws about what food can and cannot be sold - so that individuals don’t have to personally test and monitor every product for safety. Privacy & data could be done like that too.

The Orange Box 2; featuring Half Life 3, Team Fortress 3, and Portal 3.

Civ is a bit exploitative in that they deliberately release a half-arsed base product with glaring flaws, charging big $$$ for it; and then release a chain of expansion packs to flesh it out and make it complete.

I was on the beta team for Civ 5; and it was a real eye-opener to see that this is a deliberate strategy. It isn’t just that games are hard to get right. They deliberately hold back to squeeze more cash out. I haven’t bought any civ game since then.

But yeah, I agree that it isn’t the same type of exploitation as gambling.

I reckon Lemmy is actually pretty good. I wouldn’t know if the mobile apps are good, because I don’t use those - but for me the core functionality of Lemmy on my computer is smooth and functional. I don’t see any obvious low-hanging-fruit.

Fair enough. Thanks for the info.

The winapps link in my post says it is a hard-fork of the one you linked to (and my one has updates as recent as yesterday). So it isn’t abandoned.

Is there a reason why you’ve suggested qeumu in particular for the VM? (winapps suggests two different VM options)

I’ve never heard of OnlyOffice before. The wikipedia page seems to imply that they are web-apps; and the OnlyOffice website talks about pricing for businesses and personal severs or something, listing team collaboration features. So I’m not yet entirely sure exactly what OnlyOffice is - but I suspect it isn’t really what I’m looking for.

Maybe so, but then there’s still Excel and OneNote.

Regarding OneNote in particular, I’m not using that for any collaborative work; but I do have extensive notes and useful past work there. I reckon OneNote is pretty good - but I regret using it now because of the lock-in effect. And there doesn’t seem to be any Linux analogue at all. (What I need is xournal++ integrated into Joplin. I sometimes fantasize about trying to hack that together myself; but that’s just a dream really.)

I haven’t bothered to try it myself, but my internet sleuthing tells me that the latest versions don’t work.

I’d be happy enough to move to Libre Office exclusively; except that I need to be able to collaborate with others who are using MS Office - and that’s a battle I don’t really want to fight right now.

In my experience winapps doesn’t work well enough to use for work. I had almost constant issues with it.

That’s a disappointing to hear - but it’s exactly the experience I hoped to avoid myself by asking about it. So thank you!

Your setup for getting nice *nix stuff on Windows sounds good, but for me it isn’t so much that I want to use *nix stuff but rather that I want to avoid Windows stuff. For example, today I got a popup notification from Microsoft suggesting that I should install an xbox app. … I said ‘no’, and quickly disabled those kinds of suggestions. Easy - except that I’ve disabled various ‘suggestions’ in Windows countless times. Its a constant chore keeping up with new anti-features constantly being added. So that’s really what I’m trying to avoid.

I’d prefer not to rely on browser based versions if I can help it. (I don’t like having a weird hybrid of browser UI and app UI. Also, the browser versions are not as responsive, and are not feature-complete.)