I was trying to do this recently and learned that, I guess certain bluray drives have been identified as compromised by the powers that be. As a result newer bluray disks ship with a list of those drives, and when your drive’s firmware sees that it is on the list, it will refuse to open the disk. I have an old bd drive from ~2008 that was ~60% effective at ripping my library.

I also tried my best to use fully open source tools in combination with an up-to-date KEYDB.CFG, but never had as much success as just using makemkv.

The most extreme route I found is to refer to makemkv’s list of drives that can have their firmware flashed to prevent it from refusing to read a disk. I haven’t gone that route, but would definitely consider it if I was looking for a drive.

WoW, it’ll never be close.

But more recently, Rimworld, Deep Rock Galactic, Golf With Your Friends, Sea of Thieves, the Witcher.

Those poor chimps…well, someone’s gotta know how to operate the thing.

These same commenters will make fun of reddit and twitter for always being cynical and rage fueled.

Either way, just remember to support artists when you can. Bandcamp Friday is one of the best ways I know of to fund artists in exchange for FLACs that you can legally listen to however you want to.

But I was a broke student in the heydays of torrenting, so I’m not judging using any means necessary to listen to music.

deleted by creator

Is it better or worse than letting the game have absolute root access? Because that’ll no doubt be what Denuvo goes with next…

Tell me you stopped reading my comment mid-sentence without telling me.

Idk if you’ve played the game, but you regularly have to deal with pretty harsh realities of those times.

OP isn’t wrong, though. RDR2 does a good job of putting you in the shoes of someone 125y ago (as much as a real time simulation projected on a 2D surface can), after all, someone 125y ago wasn’t thinking “man, these times sure have some harsh realities”, it was just the world they knew.

While I don’t think the writers intended the takeaway to be “look how much better life was in the wild west”, they did intend to give some perspective on what “freedom” meant to people in the US 125y ago. And how something things have changed while others have stayed exactly the same.

Yes, this was the main theme of the game. To Arthur and the rest of their camp, they are the embodiment of the American dream: living off the land, doing whatever they want, working hard to succeed, living a simple life. They see “civilization” and the justice system that comes with it as a false promise, taking freedoms away to somehow guarantee more freedom. And they see the industrial revolution as creating the largest gangs of them all, but calling them “corporations”. So big that they can pay pinkertons to bully workers, while also paying the law to look the other way.

RDR2 really is a work of art. It’s not 100% historically accurate, it’s “the lie that makes us see the truth”.

The most fun part of this isn’t whether it was the first to do this, but perhaps the worst take that any games journalist has ever had in history:

The game’s control setup is its most terrifying element. The left analog stick moves you forward, back, and strafes right and left, while the right analog stick turns you and can be used to look up and down.

GameSpot review of Alien Resurrection from 2000

Of all the unprecendented things happening these days, this is not one of them. This is standard issue, 100y-old Red Scare garbage. Liberalism scares tyrants, so they always try this strat, and it’s always bound to lose.

I admit I am misusing the term “cartel” here, given that it refers to a group of independent interests acting cooperatively, not a single entity. And legally recognized corporations already attempt to form cartels whenever possible, which is the entire purpose of anti-trust law.

And I agree that govt legislations each have their own definitions for what constitutes a “corporation”, but it’s the same for “marriage”. Yet we wouldn’t say marriage only exists if you have a govt.

I don’t think it’s useful or interesting to end the discussion at “a govt defines a corporation, therefore a corporation doesn’t exist without a govt”. Because I maintain that if the US govt disappeared, all the entities you currently consider “US-based corporations” would not disappear. Similarly, corporations currently operate internationally in many different countries with many different legislative requirements and many different definitions of “corporation”. Yet we don’t think of them as existing exclusively in the context of any one of those countries.

A corporation can never do that - government laws set out very clearly who controls what

Corporations do have infighting, and Hostile Takeovers do happen, and we are in agreement that ONLY reason they’re not bloodier is because of governments enforcing their laws. But also, I shouldn’t have made “cartel” analagous to “corporation”, since the analogy for a cartel civil war would be multiple businesses or corporations having a falling out.

But we also already have a sordid history of US “corporations” operating outside the laws of other countries, oftentimes with the help of the US military. So how do we square that circle?

But you understand that everything you linked are examples of why a govt can’t actually print infinitely and can’t just pay interest to rich people…right?

Also it’s a red flag to me that all of your sources are youtube videos.

The purpose of government securities is not to fund spending but to give the rich a safe place to park their capital with interest.

You have a source on this? I find it difficult to believe that it is ever a good idea to just take out a loan for the sake of making the interest payments. Especially using public funds, that sounds pretty close to embezzlement.

Rather, a country’s budget should always make use of debt, because its reputation has value and should be invested, not left sitting on the table.

There’s no formal structure, shares or board meetings

This is an arbitrary list of things and I don’t agree that all corporations have all of these, but I guarantee most cartels have a formal structure, a clear description of ownership, and what qualifies as board of leaders. Most wouldn’t be able to function without it.

sometimes they do just descend into civil war

They compete with rival cartels in all the same ways corporations would if they could (or already do when they can get away with it).

They’re businesses

I’m curious why you’re willing to call them businesses but not corporations.

Corporations try to all the time. It’s only through an effective use of law that they don’t. And lately, it hasn’t been very effective.

But also a government can’t print “unlimited currency”. Eventually it would be worthless. They are effectively only permitted to print currency proportional to what their creditors allow.

Drug cartels do all the things any corporation would happily do without laws to restrict them. So I don’t see any distinction and I don’t believe a govt is necessary for a corporation to exist. Just like with any other crime by any other citizen, a govt uses its monopoly on violence to prevent corporations from doing harm.

On the one hand, murder is bad, but on the other hand I am full of hate and fear…

What concerns me is the implicit association people will make between him and FOSS, and anything they believe about one will carry to the other.

I have to assume there are already people who hear “Linux” and think “ugh, I wouldn’t touch that with a 10ft pole because I don’t want anything to do with Pewdiepie”. Similarly, if he says something dumb next week, and half his audience abandons him, they’ll likely have a negative outlook on FOSS going forward.

Either way, I don’t believe FOSS’ staying power comes from meteoric rises following a fad, it comes from a natural immunity to enshittification over time. On the scale of a few of decades, FOSS seems like it’s struggling against proprietary solutions. But just like the general concept of political democracy, I think on the scale of centuries it will become the clear, time-tested, least-bad option. But I digress.