Similarly, you using any Android phone with any Android ROM benefits Google indirectly, because it advertises their OS. And because it may support the development of AOSP, which of course is beneficial for Google.

Or you accessing any website that uses any google services for anything benefits Google indirectly, because it’s traffic for them, even if no valuable data is gathered.

Virtually anything you do is likely to benefit mega corporations like Google. It’s almost impossible to live a reasonably good life without benefitting them. It’s about finding a balance and cutting their benefits to the point where they’re unsustainable long-term.

Are you sure it won’t apply? As far as I understand, it’ll apply to all devices with Google services installed. Which includes most ROMs, as well as non-Google ROMs after you manually install gapps. Is my understanding off?

There have been at least 2 more CEO killings recently. But mainstream media is deliberately not reporting on it, because it’d likely lead to even more. Don’t forget everything is owned and managed by the same groups of people.

A good number of that is 3D artists. Try making a highly detailed 3D model in Blender. Now imagine a game like GTA V has thousands of those, but even more detailed. This is one of the major reasons why AAA are taking longer and longer to produce. At the same time, game systems and mechanics are simplified to cut costs.

I’ve worked in the video game industry for a couple years and have been credited in several games. This number may actually be higher.

It may sound crazy, but there’s a lot of people working on AAA games, usually most of them completely unrelated to game dev. Marketing, public relations, translators, 3D graphics artists, sound designers, orchestra performers, motion capture stuntmen, voice actors. Probably a few dozen managers, who have never even seen the game. Hell, some companies even credit IT staff in the game’s credits.

That’s already a whole bunch of teams. It’s also important to mention that many third-party contractors will often be skipped from the credits. QA is very commonly outsourced (to poorer countries like Romania or Serbia) and rarely gets into the credits. You may only see 5-10 names, while in reality it was at least 100. This is true for several other fields, though mostly non-game-related, e.g., localization, promotial material, merchandise.

I won’t disclose in what capacity, but in the past I have worked on several of Blizzard’s titles for a few months and I’m not credited anywhere. Just like at least a couple hundred other people. Not necessarily saying I should be - it was never mentioned or promised. Just highlighting that the real number of staff that worked on the game (or adjacent to the game) may be above 10k.

Some things are - on purpose - made easy to misuse and - by design - accessible to people, who are likely to misuse them. All this money, this supposedly cutting edge technology, and reporting to the police, but they aren’t able to tell when a child is at risk and report it as well?

Smells like bullshit to me. More like they don’t care. I’m not so sure children should even be allowed to use chatbots in the first place. Or only allowed to use versions specifically trained for interactions with children. But of course - banning children from accessing youtube and wikipedia is a much more pressing concern.

OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice. This is a different suite entirely. Might be better for people coming from MS Office, since it looks practically identical. Also supports opening multiple files as tabs.

It’s very likely that no amount of negative feedback will change anything. Why not waste some of their time anyway? Write to them, call them, spread the word. This is the only thing we can do. Even if it goes through regardless - at the very least we can make it as unpleasant as possible.

Two things especially worth noting from the article.

If you have a non-Google build of Android on your phone, none of this applies.

This means that at least GrapheneOS will be unaffected for now. Other ROMs without gapps will be unaffected only as long as you don’t install gapps. Since Graphene has a sandbox for them, I’m assuming it’ll be fine. That is, unless Google decides to lock the bootloader entirely.

In September 2026, Google plans to launch this feature in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. The next step is still hazy, but Google is targeting 2027 to expand the verification requirements globally.

So most users worldwide still have at least 1.5 years until it’s implemented. Plenty of time to get a Pixel and install Graphene on it. Or to figure out some other plan.

Don’t get me wrong - this is insane, unreasonable and horrible news for everyone. We should push back as hard as physically possible against it. However, at the very least we still have some time to figure things out before the policy rolls out.

(…) it was all avoidable.

It really wasn’t. Everything in American politics for long years has been leading to this point. It was always bound to happen, sooner or later. Sure, by choosing another president you could have potentially delayed it by a few years. But later it would have happened anyway. This is not a ‘Trump issue’. This is a ‘USA issue’.

I think Americans are the only ones who haven’t seen this coming. And I don’t mean that in a hostile way. Your education system has been sabotaged for decades, so it’s no wonder the people are uninformed and ignorant to what’s going on. The only ones to blame are the psychopathic politicians and billionaires who deliberately made this happen over the last 200 years.

(…) if Russia can’t even win against Ukraine how would they ever fight against the EU, our army is both larger and much better equipped then Ukraine.

The problem is, the EU isn’t united nearly enough to fight a war together. If, for instance, Russia attacks, it’ll be mostly Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia defending. Maybe Romania too, and maybe with some support from the rest of the EU. As it stands right now, the EU is divided on many issues, with some countries (notably Hungary) intentionally sabotaging it from the inside.

Even if - and that’s a big if - all or at least most of EU member states can come to agreement and cooperate in a conflict, our militaries aren’t very well prepared to work together. This would require years of cross-border military drills between all of the member states. Especially considering the fact that the vast majority of all EU soldiers have never seen any real combat. Russia may be losing a lot of soldiers in Ukraine. But those who survive become extremely valuable assets for the military, since real world combat experience is infinitely more useful than textbooks or casual training exercises.

That’s a great question! I’ll be happy to help you count the lights. I see five lights.

This symbolizes the fact that for the last five hundred years white people have been victims of genocide in South Africa.

Would you like to learn more?