Apple is a bit like Microsoft in that regard. Their browser (safari) is so tightly integrated into their operating system that removing it is basically impossible. Due to that, they can use/abuse it for basic functionality like a pdf reader instead of creating a separate app for it.

Android, on the other hand, doesn’t even have a real default browser. While Chrome ships as the default since android 4, it’s basically just the app tacked on top. Since PDF readers on android existed before Chrome became the default, Google was never really bothered with including a build in PDF reader in their browser. It simply wasn’t necessary. And since most browser depend on chromium, which lacks this functionality, they don’t have it either.

Firefox on Android has the option to open PDFs, so if you want it, that would be an option. It isn’t a limitation of the operating system, Google simply couldn’t be bothered and most others just use copy + past on Chrome.

You are definetly in a bubble, even if its a pretty big one. Owning a pc is pretty much a prerequisite for going into comp-science or working in IT.

Out of all the 30 odd people I know of at my workplace, one other apart from me has a gaming pc, and two others have consoles. The rest doesn’t play any games at all.

There is nothing that Valve could change about this with the current way games are licensed.

All your Steam account is is a collection of lifetime leasing contracts between you and the seller. Steam already forces third parties to give you liftime access even if the game is pulled from the store page, but that contract gets voided once one of the two parties ceases to exist, be it the buyer or the studio that sells the game.

Legally binding the games to your account instead of you also isn’t possible since in most countries you either have to be a real person or a registered entity to form contracts.

I’d be somewhat ok with Kernel anticheat if they would work, but the simple truth is that they do nothing of value. COD has Kernel anticheat with Riccochet and is flooded with cheaters. Valorant has only slightly less cause riot updates Vanguard more often.

But guess what, it usually takes 1-2 days for new cheats to reach the relevant forums, maybe a few days more until they are more widely aviable. At most cheaters have to spend another 5€ every 6 months, but that’s it. They don’t care, the amount of money spent on accounts every other month is already way higher.

The only two things anticheat like vanguard protects you from is script kiddies that google “valorant cheat .exe” and Linux only players. And the former could just as well be filtered out without Kernel level.

Live service and always online are two entirely different things, and the former isn’t inherently malicious, unlike the latter.

I’d, for example, consider all Paradox grand strategy games as live service with major updates dropping once or twice a year (followed by like twenty bugfix patches cause they fuck up every time, but that’s besides the point). Sure, every major update comes with a new dlc that isn’t exactly cheap, but you also get a lot of free content with each release. All their major titles are entirely different games now than they were at the 1.0 release.

What ubisoft does is just a tacked on battle pass that gets a few worthless items/skins so they can call it live service and have a justification for their always online verification model. That’s purely an anti piracy measure that fucks legitimate players more than pirates.

While it does look really cool, I already know that a lot of people will struggle with motion sickness.

It’s a fast paced game and while the trailer suggests that you can stay stationary for a bit, it still shows a lot of fast sprints and dodges every so often. Doing this movement with a controller will absolutely fuck up your entire sense of balance and direction.

I will still check it out, but it looks a bit like the doom VR game that was a great concept but was limited by reality.

In a dorm its legal but may be against your contract.

At school/work you probably aren’t officially allowed to charge your devices, so it’s theft.

Even if you are allowed to charge your phone at work, they technically may have to meter it and tax it as additional benefits depending on your country.

The mod. Palworld should be distinct enough in gameplay and monster design that any lawsuit would fail.

Nah, that one’s legit. Nintendo does a lot of fucked up claims, but this is a 1 to 1 ripoff of their IP and models.

Games that are sold on GOG are usually also DRM free on steam. Sometimes the steamworks DRM is required, but that’s so easy to trick that the games can still be considered DRM free.

The only thing GOG does is pre-filtering for DRM free only.

Other posts about this topic have similar claims. No idea who started the idea, but it gets mentioned a lot that ticking a box is all that’s required

Exactly, no one knows, but here we are on the 7th article saying Google is slowing down Firefox on purpose. That’s the least likely option by far. That would get them into multiple anti consumer and anti monopoly lawsuits while probably breaching their contract with FF at the same time. Alphabets board of advisors isn’t run by Elon musk, they know pretty much what they can get away with and wouldn’t be stupid enough to try something this big while they are already beeing monitored by the EU.

It’s a standard timeout function without any context. Most likely thing is that it tries to load an ad and if that doesn’t work in these 5 seconds, then the anti adblock popup is displayed. If you don’t use an adblock, the site loads instantly cause the ad is detected. If you use ublock, you see neither the ad nor the popup, so everything that’s left is a 5 seconds timeout.

While it definitely is shady coding, it’s an anti adblock “feature” caused by incompetent design and not an anti Firefox thing.

What does it matter what store the game was bought on?

• Marginally worse UI/UX (could be improved a bit by now, I haven’t used it for over a year)

• Way harsher build in DRM

• No proper offline mode. Its an opt-in feature you better have enabled while your connection worked and even then you have to reconnect every other day

• No controller support. I start the Epic launcher over Steam so Epic games get the Steam controller support

• No mod support

• No forums and communities (I know a lot of people don’t need these, but still a missing feature for others)

• no community reviews, you better belive what the paid critics tell you

That is true for all the community driven stuff like forums and mods, but laying the groundwork and including basic features would’ve been easier when starting from scratch.

Tbh it sounds like you didn’t search for the website, but just put the term itch.io into the search box. Special characters like a dot get completely ignored in the search, so you searched for “itch io username” which will give massively different results depending on the username.

If you search for the site properly by using site:itch.io then Google will only show you results from that site and nothing else.

Lots of complaints about the Google results often come down to user errors.

1. Google is the standard. I’d argue that more than 50% of the population doesn’t know what a browser or a search engine is. They put their question into whatever textbox they find in chrome and Google gives them their answers.

2. There are no better alternatives for the general userbase. Other search engines are better for your privacy and may give better results if you know how to use extended search parameters, but very few people even care about all that. Google is the search engine that will give you the best result if you just type in your question.