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Cake day: October 19th, 2023

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  • NateNate60@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldWhat the hell Proton!
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    9 days ago

    The VPNs you characterise as “shitty” aren’t necessarily a bad choice; they’re cheaper than the legitimate privacy VPNs. Mullvad is famously 5€ per month, Proton is 4.49€ per month, but NordVPN is 3.09€, Surfshark is 2.19€, and PIA is 1.79€ per month.

    If you’re really just here to pretend you’re in another country (rather than privatemaxing) or hide your torrenting activity from your ISP, the cheaper options can be a perfectly legitimate choice.





  • You can donate books to the library, you know. They’re always looking for more copies of popular books and what they don’t add to their collection, they’ll resell them and use the money for more books.

    Paper books aren’t “waste” by any means as they are easily recycled.

    Most authors I’ve heard from (through their Internet posts) don’t mind libraries, but they’d rather you enjoy their books legitimately than pirate.




  • Here’s a DRM-free copy for sale:

    It’ll look like this:

    Once you buy this, it is truly yours. Nobody can take it away from you. You don’t have to agree to any EULA to read it. No account needed, no activation, no sign-up. You can even resell your copy if you want. There are no technical restrictions on it whatsoever. You can enjoy it any time of day, anywhere in the world, and there’s no need for an Internet connection.




  • This puts competitive pressure on Microsoft. Valve’s goal is to turn Steam OS into a legitimate competitor to Windows for gamers, and Microsoft should fear Valve’s success.

    Right now, Microsoft has no legitimate competitors in the PC gaming space. They are free to do anything they want to their OS and consumers have no choice but to tolerate it. If Microsoft say “watch these adverts”, consumers open their eyes. If Microsoft says “pay up”, they reach for their wallets. If Microsoft says “suck”, they kneel.

    If a competitor arises to Windows, then Microsoft will have to actually start worrying about losing customers to Steam OS. More importantly, every customer who switches to Steam OS is one who isn’t paying for Game Pass and one who isn’t buying games from the Microsoft Store and paying Microsoft their 30%.


  • Valve is not well meaning. No large for-profit company is ever well-meaning. It’s merely the case that Valve’s best interest happens to align with those of the consumer, and they have decided that their business model is going to be to win over consumers’ loyalty through goodwill rather than milking them for every penny they can get. And they are very successful at this, seeing that there has still not arisen any serious competitor to Steam. That’s entirely because consumers are loyal to the platform. Valve provides a good service, consumers reward them with loyalty. It’s not friendship, but it’s symbiotic, which is as close as you can get to friendship in the harsh world of business.