Yet another thing we have entire books and movie series about what will go wrong, and probably how. Yet somehow a way will be found to make it go wrong in exactly those ways.

As the customer, which in a practical sense is the only perspective that matters to me day-to-day, Epic offers me nothing close to what Steam or GOG can give me. Hell, even EA's and Ubisofts launchers were more useful since they at least had exclusives. All Epic has is Fortnite and for someone like myself that doesn't care for that kind of game, there is no reason to even consider their platform for anything.

And given my recent switch away from Windows and to Linux full time on my gaming PC to put a further wedge between me and the things Microsoft has been doing with Windows that I don't like that is a good thing given Epics history of embracing things that will never work as smoothly on Linux as Steam games do with Proton or GOG's native Linux options do.

The world of mobile phones is a real world example of what we avoided on the PC back in the day when the IBM BIOS got reverse engineered, allowing for someone to put out an IBM compatible PC without having to pay the tithe to big blue first. Not that IBM didn't do their level best to put those efforts in the ground with their lawyers and the courts as soon as they found out about it. Thankfully the legal system of the time didn't allow that to happen.

It has been pretty depressing to me that the tech literate have been so easily lulled into accepting such things in the name of "cool toys" and "security" virtually everywhere in modern life besides the PC/laptop/server spaces.

Phones, TV set top boxes, smart TVs, IoT gear. They are all a cesspit of locked down propitiatory and gate kept gardens where nothing happens without the gardens keeper getting a cut and having final say over everything.

This sort of control and gatekeeping from the likes of Google, Apple, and Qualcomm was not something that was hard to see coming a mile away, yet we all collectively let it happen anyway.

People need to stop holding Jobs up as some deity of tech. He was a marketing and hype man that was in the right place at the right time and knew how to take advantage of that luck. Nothing more, nothing less. It is equally possible his leadership style would have squandered the opportunities Apple has had since his death had it been him and not Cook in charge.

By any metric other than "line must always go up" Apple is doing just fine.

"Oh no, they haven't found another multi hundred billion dollar product to release since the iPhone, even though there are no signs that the iPhone won't continue to be a very profitable business for years and years to come...better go dig up Steve jobs, shove a stick up his back, magic his corpse back to life, and beg him to save the shareholders profit margins", the horror.

This sort of thing is why I dislike legislation that mandates the use of something very specific. Things change and it is better to create laws that don’t become outdated as fast as tech tends to.

"Your honor, we actually operate 5 different app stores.....that all just so happen to be called the same thing, share the same backend infrastructure, etc. With what you end up being able to see device side depending on device metadata. But they are 5 different stores, we swear"...... /s

Or something like that.

If it ends up being OK for a company like OpenAI to commit copyright infringement to train their AI models it should be OK for John/Jane Doe to pirate software for private use.

But that would never happen. Almost like the whole of copyright has been perverted into a scam.

When do the alcoholics get to sue the bars/pubs for "forcing" them to walk through the door and order a drink?

Another good thing falls to the whims of lack of personal responsibility, parenting, and Helen (won't someone think of the children?!) Lovejoy syndrome. Now the predators will just continue to do there thing in a darker hole that is even harder to find.

And Mexico was going to pay for that southern boarder wall...

I care less WHY they stole the food. I just find it distasteful when the cops post these "look how bad ass we are" social media posts. Crime, no matter why it was committed, should not be used as someones time to celebrate or the special time before the trial to convince the public that the suspect is guilty via Facebook,etc. Least of all by the group of people who do the arresting.

Snowden is a textbook example of why organizations should not be allowed to police themselves or control the avenues of reporting misconduct.

There should be a memorial to him in DC. Ruined his life to tell the people what their elected officials are doing with all of the power we grant them.

But no, to save face, ego, etc we drove him into the willing arms of Putin to be able to use as a propaganda tool so he wouldn’t be killed for daring to speak truth to power.

Support for prosecuting him did untold damage to my opinion of Obama.

Jokes on my employer, I have been effectively working less than 3 days a week in active hours actually doing something productive beyond meetings and forced chit chat for years.

Most employers in my experience care far more about the appearance of working than they do actually working. Once you realize this it is amazing how little actual work you need to do to make them happy.