Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. As the saying goes: "better the devil you know". China can at least so far be relied upon to not shoot itself in the foot (and take the whole word with it). The same cannot be said of other great powers like the US (under Trump, for more reasons than I'm willing to list here) and Russia (with Putin's completely harebrained invasion of Ukraine). China can prove me wrong any time by invading Taiwan, but I still hope they don't. Of course, if we try to keep them away from advanced chip technology, that would be further motivation to invade (although TSMC is unlikely to survive an invasion - even if it did survive the actual conflict, it would probably be destroyed or evacuated to avoid it falling into Chinese hands? But I don't want to see the hardware prices after such an event).
> If China goes to war, it's probably going to be because their economy is in tatters.
Well, they probably also have to factor in whether invading Taiwan is likely to improve that situation, and I would argue that it's not - China is currently exporting stuff all over the world, so economic sanctions would be very painful for them. And there are lots of countries who would like to have a slice of the manufacturing that China is currently hogging...
China has planned out the invasion/reclamation of Taiwan in 2027. They held true to their Hong Kong timeline, not sure why this would be any different.
I have read the WHO [0] report and the conclusion is "possibly to likely" about the zoonotic origin of Covid, so no there isn't conclusive report how it came to be.
> If there is a cover up it is to hide incompetence.
Which is my point to GP's "reliable" argument. China is not reliable and has its own interests at play just like the US or any other state for that matter, regardless of its international partnerships. It does want to project itself as "reliable" - that I can't deny.
Yes we do. We also (despite theories stating the contrary) know that the current climate change is caused by us burning too many fossil fuels, that the utility of vaccines preventing deadly diseases outweighs any rare side effects, that airlines are not involved in a secret conspiracy of releasing chemicals (all airlines at the same time and only in certain meteorological conditions), and that the earth is roughly spherical.
You should avoid agreeing with the narcissists that always use false equivalence, whataboutism, and goal post shifting the second you call them out.
You are allowing them to define a ridiculous standard by agreeing with them that not only is it in fact “two evils” but what qualifies as evil. They’ll tell you…always only when called out, mind you…all and any meddling (also something they will then define with the same kind of falls equivalence loop) is evils, when that is simply not true, not is any kind of effort to influence the same thing as actual meddling, not us it always evil.
I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point, the narcissistic personality or their little zombies in most cases will constantly shift and change things all to avoid you from being able to get a clear focus on the truth, something their explosively allergic to.
As an American child of the Empire with global perspective and very high access perspective, there is no other entity besides the cabal that controls the USA and acts flying its banner; that is more deadly, more meddling, more conniving, more evil, more supremacist, and more vile.
Given it's an internet forum, and people here can be anyone around the world, I understand your intent but people over index on the threat that ofc feels closer, rather than the threat that's significantly farther away.
But in general if you ask folks in south east Asia you will find they are likely to be more concerned with China than US except this maddening Oil Crisis.
Although I think people now are very afraid/wary of both evils.
The US govt should think why people in all parts of the world including US itself feel just if not more threatened by them, than China and other evils we have floating around.
I would like to hope my American friends didn't vote for this madness or maybe they did I have read DHH's tweets.
The main actors threatening (and delivering) a hot war are China, and by proxy, Russia. The Ukraine war is absolutely and transparently enabled by China, who is also trying to actively destabilize the EU and the US in order to make its conquest of Taiwan more likely.
Yes, the US has an idiot in charge who is threatening these things in response, too. However, unlike China, the electorate does not support him. His election is also almost certainly due to aggressive campaigns to destabilize the US internally for this exact purpose.
>However, unlike China, the electorate does not support him. His election is also almost certainly due to aggressive campaigns to destabilize the US internally for this exact purpose.
What are you claiming here?
That China hacked the voting systems enough to swing the election? I know of no good evidence of this.
That China changed voters' minds enough to swing the election? But then "the electorate does not support him" does not follow. If I change your voting choice using some kind of non-coercive persuasion such as by making an argument, your support for your new choice is still genuine support. It doesn't matter if my argument was good quality or not, what my country of origin is, or even whether I lied about my motives in making the argument.
Jeez, I had to search because this is baffling to me but alas, there it is:
> Gigabyte's UEFI firmware leverages WPBT to drop an executable—specifically GigabyteUpdateService.exe—into the Windows %SystemRoot%\system32\ directory during the early stages of the boot process. This executable automatically connects to the internet to download and install Gigabyte's auto-update application, often referred to as the "APP Center".
I think the fault is entirely on Microsoft for allowing the abuse. I do remember back in the older windows that the driver that auto installs was always the bare basic thing to make the device work. If you wanted the whole support you had to go and download or install from disc.
This does not make sense to me. It's likely the exact same scenario where the software is delivered using windows driver infra structure for the chipset.
That is not how gdpr works. If you have a legitimate reason to hold the data. You can. Ensuring people have access to purchases is a very legitimate reason.
Is there evidence that European courts have sided with that? “We’re holding onto all your data indefinitely just in case you log in again several years from now” seems to be the antithesis of GDPR and I can’t discern the difference between that and what you’re suggesting.
I believe EU has dug their own hole here. And the best move would be to pass more legislation to explicitly require the retention (and transfer, ideally) of purchased digital goods.
> Is there evidence that European courts have sided with that?
Is there evidence of the contrary? Maybe any store can just delete your personal data right after charging your card and claim GDPR prevents them from shipping your product.
Silly arguments work both ways. You just picked the one that confirms your bias.
GDPR under no circumstances forces processors to delete everything, it defines legitimate interest. Retaining a person's purchases is as legitimate as it gets so the data can be retained for as long as the purchase is valid. And the license itself isn't even the user's personal data, it's just a license, so Sony could give the option to export that license to be used later - even in a cryptographically secure format that can only work if e.g. the account is created with the same email address. If they delete the personal data and throw out the baby with the water, it's not GDPR forcing them to do it.
It's like the cookie banner all over again. This law never, ever required a cookie banner.
The big companies are master in malicious compliance that benefit them, and let them blame the EU for it.
Rules of thumbs, international billion dollars company should be assumed to be the ones being the bad guys until proven otherwise. They have lost the benefit of the doubt decades ago.
Because if enough idiots do it, stupid managers think it's the standard. The EU Commission is unlikely to know anything about their website, it's made by some department that blindly follows a manager's order that just looked at what others did and copied it.
We could all have used the DNT header as a bypass when the GPDR came out, and you can still use cookies for non tracking purposes without any banner.
So the EU commission put out a rule that you say has been widely misunderstood and implemented via malicious compliance. Where is the EU statement and education on this? Why aren’t they louder in explaining this isn’t what they wanted? And they allow their own websites to do the very thing that they supposedly don’t want?
Do you maybe want to reconsider? Perhaps instead companies are putting in a good faith effort to comply. I have been invoked in discussions around legal compliance of all sorts of regulation and trust me: no one has ever ever expressed “let’s do some terrible thing because we disagree with regulation”. It’s conspiratorial thinking.
The general council (lawyers) at companies are making the decisions around cookies banners and the like, not the folks trying to make money. Regardless of how you might interpret the law and requirements around GDPR, the legal profession as a whole seems to think the crap we live with today is necessary. If it isn’t, it’s on the EU technocrats to clarify in communications, written rules, and on their own damn website what it is supposed to look like.
And clearly, you think billion-dollar companies making dark patterns, ignoring web standards and choosing to track people left and right are less to blame the inconvenience of a banner (that warns you they do) than the people trying to protect your privacy and did it imperfectly.
I have made enought web sites and app that don't have a banner to know it's perfectly possible, even today.
I have implemented DNT support and know it was a great solution before it was taken away.
I have worked with enough clients to know why they chose the banner anyway.
Unlike you I actually read the law, and worked at implementing it. Including with and without a banner.
So I have to conclude you are not an honest actor in this debate, and you are clearly angry as well.
You bet I am angry. I am tired of people defending a law by saying “that’s not what it was meant to do!” As if the intent matters one bit. What matters is the result of the law. And the result of this regulation is to make the web universally crappier than it was before. It did basically nothing to improve things in the real world.
In practice most of the purposes you'd encounter in the wild are directly linked to user activity, so account deletion means most of the reasons to keep it disappear.
You still need to keep it if there's a law saying that you need to have that data, of course, but that's the exception.
No need to wait for the courts’ opinions: controllers must keep the data for a limited amount of time (which can be something like “3 years after the last connection”) under GDPR article 5(1)e.
"kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed"
Keeping "account X purchased game Y" forever is necessary for the purpose of tracking ownership.
Based on how big companies typically behave, I assume that they are storing a metric buttload of other data on their users, which is not necessary for that purpose, and which they aren't inclined to separate out.
This is just like the cookie popup nonsense. You don't have to ask for permission to store necessary cookies. Cookie popups are ubiquitous because sites would rather bother every single visitor so that they can store unnecessary cookies.
> Personal data shall be: kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed. (..)
Note that this does not say "it must be stored for a limited amount of time" - it says "no longer than necessary".
Your basic account data (such as username and password, or an email for password recovery) is still necessary to log in to the platform and make use of your purchases. As long as there is no clear indication that the user will never log in again (such as due to death, or because they explicitly deleted their account), it would be reasonable to keep it around.
On the other hand, it may make sense to delete some data. For example, it may make sense to store your full name and address info to make checkout more convenient. If a user hasn't bought stuff in a while, it makes sense to delete it and have them re-enter it in the future.
There might be a bit of a gray space for things like game achievements (especially when there's a public profile) or savefile backups, but reading it as "you MUST delete all digital purchases because GDPR" is just not true.
I'd consider keeping the other personal data to be still easily justifiable, as you might want to support various account recovery options. And the odds that a user forgot their password only increases for old accounts.
5(1)c seems far more relevant than e. “Data minimization” is what’s relevant here. And the article is sufficiently vague that the onus is on companies to decide what is absolutely minimal - that includes, implicitly, removing inactive accounts. Unless the courts have made a judgement to the contrary.
They look fantastic but I am on the opposite end. The kinesys 360 pro I use now made me enjoy keyboards a bit more. I love all the extra buttons and tbh, would like even some more. Feels like a spaceship.
Same, I designed & built my own 108-key keyboard (no numpad, just a shitload of keys) and it's lovely. I'm very slowly binding functions to all the extras. https://jfloren.net/b/2024/10/23/0
They're not. The tide changed once gaming became a mainstream activity and a common item on lots of households. Most people want to play the same games. In Brazil there are play stations that never saw any other game other than FIFA whatever year. And people will be happy to pay the subscription to keep doing that. Sony loves those people more than anyone that was loyal before because we are too demanding.
If you don't think Playstation and Xbox are dying I would suggest looking at their performance and statements from the past 24 months.
Xbox hardware sales down 30%, 5% on services and revenue.
Sony PlayStation operating revenue is down -41%.
These are not healthy businesses, and the future looks even more bleak.
Years away from new hardware sales, and the franchise front is desperately bad - which means when hardware eventually does land, the drivers to buy them don't look like they are going to be there.
I'd love to bet against you on these businesses dying.
I don't know if they're dying. I don't know (or care) enough to figure out. Not having a disc kills it for me for sure.
The ps5 sold very well very fast during the pandemic, which could explain why now that the seas are rough the sales slumped.
If PS and Xbox become abandoned and cause game studios start focusing on PCs again I think it would be a good outcome. But that is just me wishing on a star.
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