Gold.

Indeed. Any online store can go under or enshittify.

If you want to stay safe with GOG, download the offline installers for your games and archive them. If you don’t you’re running the risk of losing some or all of it.

The rule “best avoid situations where you give power to some big company (for whom you as an individual customer are basically a nameless bacteria) over something you care about” is general, not Steam specific.

Fortunatelly GOG has DRM-free offline installers available for download as standard, Steam does not make that option available - at best you can copy and zip existing installations of Steam games and hope for the best (some will work, some will not), and that is a “hack” rather than official supported.

The point being that Steam could make something like DRM-free (or at least phone-home-DRM-free) offline installers available - at least for games whose developers/publishers are willing - and mark that as a feature in the game page in their store for those games, but they have chosen not to do so and remain steadfast in that choice: they purposefully keep customers dependent on them of enjoy their purchases and we’re all expected to just trust them, now and forever.

As I said, 4 decades in gaming and Tech have taught me you can’t trust large companies forever.

The idea that being a “slut” is a character flaw is seriously backwards prudish moralistic shit that’s so long in the tooth that it’s the kind of shit you would hear in 50s.

Her husband is dead, so if she’s fucking other people, there isn’t even the ethical and moral consideration of by doing so she might (unless they were open with each other about it) be betraying a person she had commited to be faithful to, because that person is no more and is not going to get hurt by it.

So the whole thing is some fucked up regressive crap for moralist types with the social age of a child, even before one looks into the sexism of such last century moralism being mainly applied to women and seldom to men.

Billionaire fanboyism has got to be the stupidest most sheepish behaviour imaginable - possibly even worse than looking up to celebrities who are famous for being famous - because billionaires are literally hoarding money which could be way more useful to just about everybody else in the World.

Mind you, at least before Elon’s Nazi Reveal people still had an excuse (if seriously flimsy and mainly self-deluded, considering his earlier “tunnel submarine pedo comments” bullshit), but at this point everybody into Tech should’ve already learned the lesson.

however 20 years are more than enough time to catch up

I suggest you read about the Network Effect in markets.

It’s not at all easy to reverse the market share of a business which benefits from a dominant market position in a market were such effects are strong, even when they turn complete shit (example: Twitter), which Valve hasn’t.

PS: A “20 years made no difference” example: Microsoft and Windows, with which a literally free product - Linux - competes.

Yeah, well, somebody is going to inherit his share of ownership, and even if he goes out of his way and sets up a Foundation for the purpose of preserving the founder’s strategical vision for the company that will inherit his share, such Foundations tend to over time end up subverted and doing the very opposite of what the founder would’ve wanted.

Great customer friendly companies turning to shit when the founder dies is the kind of thing that happens all the time.

Best avoid situations were your shit is hostage to the whims of a big company for whom you as an individual customer are irrelevant.

I avoid buying from Steam and prefer GOG when I can because I don’t really want to have continued access to my games collection be dependent on Gabe eating his veggies, avoiding saturated fats and doing at least a 30m walk a day to keep the risk of a heart attack low and look both ways before he crosses a road so as not to be run over by a car.

In almost 4 decades as a gamer and a techie I’ve seen plenty of good companies turn into evil companies and start to leverage whatever dependencies customers had on them to pretty much blackmail them into paying more, sometimes after the founders died, others when the founders cashed out or just lost interest in managing the company’s direction and yet others because they were evil all along and just hid it whilst they built their customer base - enshittification isn’t a XXI century thing, what’s XXI century about it is that many companies nowadays already have it as part of their mid and long term strategy from the start.

Best avoid situations where you give power to some big company (for whom you as an individual customer are basically a nameless bacteria) over something you care about, unless you have no other choice, even if at the moment they’re basically a benevolent dictatorship.

Better safe than sorry.

I personally know a person who was charged and convicted of the Crime of Libel (in what for my country was an incredibly speedy legal process) for accusing a local politician of Corruption.

Curiously, about a decade later said politician was convicted for Corruption. Lets just say it only happened because that Libel conviction really pissed of that person who had time, brains and no fear of their professional life being affected, so they worked tirelessly behind the curtains to push an earlier report into “irregularities” in his City Hall all the way into and as a case against him, including digging evidence even from abroad and having to threaten with exposure in the Press at least 3 public prosecutors who on different occasions were quietly holding the case so that it didn’t get to court before the deadlines for prosecution expired (and even then that politician actually got away with a number of crimes because the deadlines for prosecution did expired for those). In fact that was the first politician ever in my country convicted of Corruption.

Libel having been made a Crime in my country (which is quite unusual in the World) was done exactly so that people can be punished for openly accusing the powerful of malfeasance without the powerful having to bare the costs for a civil court case and actually prove damages (so it mainly helps politicians in the big parties who have the connections to get the local Public Prosecutions Office to take the case to court) and that’s exactly how it has been used.

By an amazing coincidence my country is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and last I checked was the one most behind in implementing the EU advised anti-Corruption measures.

Well, for merely commissioners that moved from the commission to those positions, the first example that comes to my mind is the head of the EU Commission during the 2008 Crash and it’s aftermath, who went to Goldman Sachs afterwards and is still there today as a non-executive president.

During his time in the Commission they were very pro-Finance in the way they handled the aftermath of the Crash with him personally pushing frequently for measures were EU money was used to unconditionally helped the interests of large Financial Industry companies, and Goldman Sachs is one of the largest companies and massively benefited from, amongst other things, near-defaulting Greek Treasuries being bought from the private sector by the EU, which subsequently forced the Greeks into Austerity to as much as possible pay those Treasuries.

There’s even a scandal with him were, whilst working at Goldman Sachs, he broke the EU rules on lobbying by using his access card to EU buildings - which he was entitled to have as an ex-Head of the Commission - to simply enter into those buildings and waltz over to the offices of sitting EU officials to lobby for Goldman Sachs. The EU ended up revoking his access privileges, the first and only time that has happened for an ex-EU Commissioner.

Legally there are no Corrupt EU Commissioners. To be deemed Corrupt there would have to be actual evidence of Corruption (such as recordings of meetings were they explicitly promised to use their power in a certain way, in exchange for some form of payment, which normally only the Police has powers to obtain), them being subsequently charged and a Court Of Law convicting them for the crime of Corruption.

None of them was ever just investigated for Corruption, much less convicted so pointing fingers at any one of the them explicitly and saying that they’re Corrupt would be Libel, which in my country (which by the way, is pretty Corrupt, with actual ex-government members convicted of Corruption) is an actual Crime prosecuted by the local Prosecution Office, not merely a civil lawsuit for damages.

So if I was to name names, I would be putting my head of the block for the Crime of Libel. Obviously I’m not going to do that.

What there is are various coincidences of EU Commissioners which acted in very positive ways towards certain industries and then after leaving the Commission went to work for those Industries making a lot of money, even thought they had no background in them (never before had worked in said Industries, no Educational training for said Industries).

Since the police never investigates it, all there are are such coincidences of commissioners ending up in gold plated gigs in the industries they helped whilst they were commissioners.

I’m not going to put my head of the nose for you by naming names (I’m not a Legal expert so don’t want to risk committing the Crime of Libel by doing so). I suggest you start by looking into were the EU commissioners during the 2008 Crash (during which the commission was very pro-Finance) ended up working afterwards.

True.

That is however a pretty hard and time consuming change, so to me it makes sense that in the meanwhile we take steps to reduce the harm caused by the system still in place, not least by cracking down hard on Corruption and Conflicts Of Interest and closing the legal loopholes that allow certain politicians to stay within the Law whilst purposefully using today the power they have been delegated to do favors for others who have promised them monetary payback for it tomorrow.

If you’re drowning now you don’t put all your hopes on the ship that might be coming but isn’t even visible yet.

Sounds like the problem is lack of enforcement of the existing laws rather than the existing laws being bad.

To provide an extreme example, just because there’s a wave of murders doesn’t mean murder should be made legal.

I believe the EU Parliament has to approve this so they can block it, and that’s elected by Proportional Vote and we all have MEPs there who, unlike national parliamentarians in countries without Proportional Vote (which are most of them) have to worry more about the public opinion in their nation turning against them.

So if this shit ever makes its way to the EU Parliament (were the EU Commission will try to make it pass quietly), contact your country’s MEPs and show you’re well aware of it.

Whilst I do not agree with the spirit of the message of the previous poster, I must point out that specifically the EU Comission - from were this came - is not elected but nominated, and the nomination is one big horse trading shit show several levels removed from voters, were everybody but the head of it is chosen by the Council Of Ministers (which only represents EU National Governments , not National Parliaments) so the whole thing is maybe slightly more “democratic” than nominations for the Chinese Politburo.

(If there is one thing that needs changing in the EU political structures, it’s the crooked, rotten shit show that’s the EU Commission).

That said, the EU Parliament which can stop most of this shit, is elected and it’s even via Proportional Vote so there is no mathematical rigging at all to make some votes count more than others (unlike in First Past The Post Power Duopoly countries like the US or Britain) and hence voting in the EU Election does matter.

Looks like somebody has been promised by one or more large Tech firms a very highly paid non-executive board membership, millionaire speech circuit engagement or gold plated “consulting” gig when their time in the Commission is over…

Mind you, by now that kind of exchange of “favours” is tradition for the members of the EU Commission.

Being prepared is why she lasted until she was 96 years old.

Everybody needs a goal to aim for, so I make sure to keep well away from reaching it so as not to lose it as a goal.

If it’s homemade (including the sauce) on thin crust of proper bread dough (again, homemade, without adding too much salt) and you’re generous and careful with the toppings (avoiding salty and/or highly processed stuff), the only inherently imbalanced thing is the cheese (which is excessive for something with such a high proportion of saturated fats).

Even the carbs in the pizza base if you go for thin crust are actually less than, for example, in a sandwish.

Then again, homemade pizza done from scratch including the sauce and the bread dough takes more than an hour to make, so people overwhelmingly buy pizza already make (or at least ready to bake), and then it’s loaded crap because you really can’t trust industrial food.

Also even for homemade there is a tendency to add as toppings tasty stuff like pepperoni, which is industrially made for example for preservation it’s loaded with either nitrites (which increases the risk of colon cancer) or salt (which increases the risk of cardio-vascular problems)

Lots of saturated fat on the cheese.

Beyond that with tin crust, homemade pizza tomato sauce (which is delish, by the way) and properly chosen and generously added toppings (avoid processed meats, especially with too much salt, and make the toppings be more by weight than everything else), it can be pretty healthy.

In the same spirit: “I’m a 2nd degree vegetarian because I only eat meat from herbivores”