No idea what Steam has to say, but I’ve played more games for longer than Steam has been around, so here’s a guess of mine in no particular order:

• Skyrim
• Morrowind
• Fallout (3, NV, 4, London combined)
• Ultima II
• Doom II
• Grim Fandango

We don’t.

We really really don’t.

Consider the attack that Israel carried out this fall by detonating walkie-talkies and pagers. This wasn’t just some illicit code in the firmware or hardware, they managed to hijack the supply chain and hide literal bombs in commercially-produced handheld devices!

Bottom line: If you do not directly control the production chain from chip design and fab to end-user software, you can never be sure.

40 years ago, the legendary Ken Thompsonand Dennis Ritchie accepted the Turing Award for creating Unix. Thompson’s acceptance speech Reflections on Trusting Trust pointed out this same fundamental security flaw.

I encourage everyone to read the article, and spread it as widely as possible. It is terrifying and accurate, nearly half a century later.

Regardless, my point was more to do with whether someone with only $50 to spare a month is truly in a position to invest in anything or whether they might be better off saving it for a rainy day or something like that.

True enough, but short-term or non-locked-in investments are available to most people.

If OP doesn’t have the starting funds to buy an investment vehicle of some sort, then they could put it into a zero-fee savings account and vigorously ignore it. This is, in fact, your rainy day fund.

Then when they have scrounged up the appropriate amount (likely $500 or $1k), they can buy a guaranteed investment certificate or the like, and get better interest rates while they continue to put money into their account.

When the term is up, they can buy a bigger one with their new savings. This way, they have both an emergency fund, and the starting point for a life of investing towards retirement, if nothing else.

(Of course your later point - if they’re struggling to eat - is still true as well.)

Absolutely 100% yes yes yes.

Compounding is your friend. You can play with the values all you want, but this calculator showed me that if you deposited $50/month at 5%/year compounded annually, you’d end up making >$1800 in profit over ten years. Realistically, you should be able to get a better rate and shorter compounding periods once you’ve passed the threshold amount for a mutual fund or GIC.

And that’s assuming you never increase your deposits.

Realistically, whenever you get a raise you should assign some of it to increasing your monthly payments. Your goal should be to increase your payments faster than inflation. Get a $2/hr raise? That’ll probably add $250/month to your paycheque after taxes. You should be able to squirrel away $25/month from that at least.

Here’s a great piece of advice from The Wealthy Barber (Canadian financial dude): Pay yourself first. See if you can get your investment amount taken directly off your pay, and then you’ll never see it, thus be tempted to spend it.

His other advice is to set a goal of 10% of your income to invest for retirement. Seems like a lot, but it’s doable for most people who are talking about investing anything, like you.

Remember: The biggest factor in how much you make from investments over time is how early you invest. Invest now. Invest regularly.

Pet insurance is a good thing for people with a large number of animals - particularly rescue animal boarding.

For most people though, no.

None.

Because I hate people.

Insecure, contrarian, infantile.

The answer to your second point is simple.

Meta’s properties (FB, Insta) have something that most other social networks are lacking: A network of real-world family and friends.

Twitter, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, Tiktok, and the rest all tend to have communities built from the platform’s population, based on shared interests. Meanwhile, FB is the platform that you use to connect with your oddball uncle and high school friends from way back. That’s the sunk cost that makes it so much harder to leave than the strangers on reddit who share your love of lime jello.

Net Neutrality was a major principle of the Internet but that is under attack, particularly in the US[…]

Not really focused on the US. Every nation, every corporation, every venal special interest group is fighting against net neutrality.

“The internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.”

From a very primitive perspective, this is true. Many of the infrastructure protocols (DNS, BGP, etc.) that the internet sits on are designed to be resilient and fault tolerant. Block access to a DNS server, and the system will find another one. Usually. Depending on circumstances.

Firewalling an entire country is incredibly difficult. From a technical point of view, the GFoC is only modestly successful. It blocks casual and accidental access to the ‘outside world’ just fine, but for the determined operator there are absolutely ways around it - VPNs, cellular networks, satellite relays, you name it.

But do you want to risk having the police show up at your door with orders to kill on sight?

This is fundamentally no different than content filtering in a typical office. From my work computer, I can’t get to porn sites. If I really wanted to, I could find a way - but the odds are pretty good that HR would be at my desk with termination papers and a security escort out of the building.

He has rallied support for massively reforming the American Healthcare system…

I would disagree with this. Nobody is talking about health care reform. People are talking about destroying an economic system that creates billionaires, and also about destroying the billionaires themselves. This hasn’t been a call for reform, it’s a call to arms.

The scariest thing is that people are beginning to accept that the system has always been rigged, and there is no other way to fix it.

Saint Nicolas of Myra was absolutely a real person who was famous for secret gift-giving.

His legacy created the idea of Santa Claus around the world. Millions - possibly billions of people around the world get presents from Santa Claus (or Sinterklaas, etc.) every year.

If you accept Santa Claus as a deeply-rooted part of western folklore, then not only did he exist in the 4th century, but he exists today just as surely.

Step #1: Log out. Log out on your phone, desktop, or wherever you access reddit from.

Step #2: Delete whatever apps you used.

The way to get off of reddit is to get off of reddit. I found that as long as I was logged in, I couldn’t help but contribute - so I logged out and stopped.

Six months later I went back, vandalized my posts and comments, and then deleted my accounts.

I’m gone. I’m done. The divorce is final.

In Canada, it’s easily A&W.

The only people I know who hand wash their undies are wearing expensive lace. Thongs and normal underwear are fairly resilient. Cold water washing helps, as does either tumble drying or hanging. You can also use the drlicates cycle on your washer, and get a lingerie bag.

In addition to the comments from others, it’s worth remembering that a lot of their humour is timeless. Shakespeare made drag jokes. The handsome cabin boy is as old as sailing.

Basically, taboo is funny - and these subjects have been taboo for most of human history.

This is the way.

Curiously, most uncensored Japanese porn sounds like ‘normal’ (e.g. American) porn, and censored porn sounds like kinky torture.

Look at the programs, check the pre-reqs, and apply.

My wife is defending her (terminal) Master’s thesis in two days, at the age of 58. It took five years and was a hard slog with a full-time job, but she managed.

Finished Fallout London last week.

This morning I finished replaying Grim Fandango for about the 12th time.