In a highly simplified way:
- Think of Windows as an electricity provider with their own specially shaped wall socket.
- Linux is also an electricity provider with a differently shaped wall socket.
- In this metaphor Wine is just some guys providing an adaptor that makes the electricity of the Linux electricity provider available in a wall socket that has the same shape as the Windows provider’s.
Wine isn’t breaking Windows copyright because it doesn’t copy any of the Windows internals: instead it provides the contact points with the right “shape” for programs which were made to work in Windows to connect to to get their needs fullfilled, and then internally Wine does its own thing which is mainly using the Linux under it to do the heavy lifting.
Mind you, this simplification seriously understates just how complicate it is to implement what was implemented in Wine because the Windows interface is a lot more that just the shape of a wall socket.
I did the same transition a couple of months ago (the Windows to Pop! OS one, not the desktop environment one) and even though I’m a gamer (something which has stopped me from moving to Linux on the main usage of my home desktop since the late 90s - were I’ve usually had it on dual boot but not used it that much) am very happy with it.
I’ve actually been familiar with Linux since way back in the Slackware times, but only now have I started using as my main desktop.
I do think it’s getting to be the Year Of Linux On The Desktop for a lot more people than ever before thanks to the aligned forces of Windows “all your computerz belongz to us” 11, software as a system with general enshittification and just how much easier it is to game on Linux thanks mainly to Valve and the steady, unrelentless, stream of improvements being done by the Wine devs.
You can also get a Celeron-based (for example with a N100) fanless mini-pc meant for use as DIY routers like these and install something like pfSense on it.
Personally my really old router still does what I need so I’m leaving it be, though I’ve replaced my media box and my NAS with a similar device running Lubuntu but can’t really make it also be the router since it only has 1 ethernet port.
Somebody who is not a software developer or is a junior one who only ever worked in one or two major projects and got lucky (really depends on the country and the industry) might believe it.
It’s hardly unusual for people who only ever worked in one place to think everything is like that, and some of those do get lucky (not all software development environments out there are like the US Tech Industry) and end up right after Uni in a place with some good senior techies that make sure environments are properly set up.
Also in-house development in industries were software is mission critical and new versions breaking Production might result in massive losses or death (for example, Finance) always have proper Testing and Staging environments - you don’t really want to lose millions of dollars (possibly hundreds of millions if unlucky) by having all the traders in a Trading Floor twidling their thumbs because somebody didn’t do, before pushing to Production, proper integration testing in Staging of some comms protocol changes done for two different systems.
If their priorities were to track customers, incentivise game integration with their store (i.e. gamemaker lock-in) and the possibility of taking games away from customers, all like Steam does, they would not maintain that glaring backdoor for all those priorities that is letting customers download full installers that they can keep and which do not check back with the store on install.
I’m sure that they would like the advantage of tying people (both gamers and gamemakers) to their store, yet clearly they’re not forcing that as Steam does, so what they’re prioritizing (in other words, their priority) is clearly not that.
Given that their unique selling proposition is “no DRM” or more broadly “customer freedom to use the games they bought”, it makes sense that that is GOG’s overriding priority, even if they would also like all the (for a store) nice side-effects of built-in DRM and phone-home installers like Steam’s.
The funny bit is that the example from the video requires a companion device in order to actually have something to send, since it doesn’t have a keyboard or microphone, and the natural companion device for that in a mobile situation would be … an Android or iPhone.
That said, it would also work paired with a tablet and maybe it can just be paired with a bluetooth keyboard (the hardware in it - specifically the ESP32 - has bluetooth support built-in, so it depends on the software)
Mind you, this is only a limitation from this specific implementation (which is basically a gadget for electronics hobbyists hence no built-in keyboard), not from the LoRa stuff itself.
Legitimate Interest is an attempt at working around the GDPR using a loophole in the ruling meant to permit processing of data in situations such as when a business has a trading relationship with a client.
However the legal clarification from the EU Commission says: “Your company/organisation must also check that by pursuing its legitimate interests the rights and freedoms of those individuals are not seriously impacted, otherwise your company/organisation cannot rely on grounds of legitimate interest as a justification for processing the data and another legal ground must be found.” (see here) and there is a “right to privacy” in EU law.
So supposedly that nearly endless list of “partners” (read: advert providers, trackers and other assorted businesses who make money from breaking people’s privacy) cannot use legitimate interest to track you as that would break your right to privacy.
That said, in practice they probably do, and until they get fined hard they’ll keep on doing it, so as others said, don’t used a Chrome-based browser and use a good Ad Blocker add-on.
Yeah, hence the last paragraph of my comment.
I can see how it can indirectly used in ways that harm somebody, just wanted to point out it’s unlikelly to be reporting drivers to the police if only because there’s no money and some risk for them in doing it.
Mind you, if the police does some kind of agreement with them were they’re paid for it and are immune to liability for misreporting, I can see rental companies doing it.
I’m very happy that I live in Europe, not the US.
You can’t be punished for it because that “evidence” was not correctly collected.
Also in your specific example and depending on the country, for them to report you on that would be a false accusation which means they’re the ones that could get into trouble if you go after them (basically any costs you incurred because of it would be on them).
(IANAL, so take this with a pinch)
It’s probably too much trouble for them to actually report it to the police (if they do it automatically, they run the risk I mention and they’re not going to spend the money manually reviewing it) - there is risk and cost involved with nothing in it for them.
That said, they could still pass it on to some entities other than the police (such as insurers) and good luck for you to prove it and show the damage it caused you. In the EU you could request them all the data they had on you which would possibly be enough to catch them, but outside it, it really depends.
I lived in the UK not that long ago and I lived and live elsewhere in Europe.
It really is a bigger problem in the UK than most of Europe, probably because it apes the US so hard and somehow combines some of its worst shit with their very own local shit (classism, very low social mobility, entrenched ancient elites, post-imperial hangover and other) rather than combining qualities.
It’s mainly Anglon-Saxon countries that are speed running the rise of Fascism, not most of the World.
I used to be a lot more pro direct Democracy until I went through the whole Brexit thing whilst living in Britain.
One look at the polls over there right now on the question “Is Britain better outside the EU” compared to what it was back at the time of the vote, should answer just how well informed the voting decision of a large percentage of people was back when they did cast their vote.
Looking around after that, I started noticing how most people will not abstain when they fell they’re not well informed enough to make a decision but instead tend to feel they have to make a choice even though they’re ill-informed (or worse, have no clue they’re ill-informed), plus if there is one thing the Leave Vote in Britain showed me is that ill-informed voters are way easier to push to make a certain choice purelly with appeal-to-emotion and other manipulative non-rational “arguments” than the well informed.
Representative Democracy has massive problems, but at least those people do it as their work (so do have the time to dive into issues and have easier access to experts), and I suspect that most of the problems of it can be solved or ameliorated by improving the process of selecting representatives and maximizing the independence of the Judiciary Pillar of Democracy (you see the worse kind of stuff in places with Justice Systems which aren’t independent or are weak, and/or voting systems mathematically rigged to promote a Power Duopoly by giving more representatives to larger parties).
Even better, the EU Parliament is elected by Proportional Vote, so it’s one of the most democratic institutions in the World, even beating most national parliaments in Europe (most of which have some kind of electoral circles system that gives more representatives per-vote to large parties than smaller parties).
Having lived in various countries in Europe including over a decade in the UK, my theory is three fold:
- It already started with a system were power is dynastic (not just because of the monarchy and an unelected 2nd chamber were many members inherit their position but also because it has a well-entrenched system of private schools which tie to elite universites and from there to political, media, corporate and judiciary to positions) were there used to be some level of noblesse oblige (the duty of the upper classes toward “their lessers”) which is now completelly gone: the UK copied the “everybody for themselves” spirit from the US (but not the “go getter spirit”) into a system which was already incredibly stratified into classes and riddled with priviledge, so it basically ended up just being used by the rich scions of the rich to tell themselves their wealth is due to personal merit and from which it “logically” follows that the poverty of the poor is due to them being lazy and the rest of of the population should just do as they’re told by such clearly superior people.
- Starting in the Thatcher years the Press in the UK was bough by a handfull of very rich people who don’t pay tax in the UK, most noteably Murdoch. That fully privatised and Press whose ownership was then heavilly concentrated, was then used for propagand purposes, pushing anything and everything to make the power of the state subservient to the power of money, mainly by removal of regulation and lowering of effective corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy (though the UK already had unique legal frameworks to allow the very wealthy to avoid all tax, most noteably the Non-Resident Tax Status) as well as views such as the above mentioned one that poverty is caused by laziness and being wealthy comes from merit.
- Being a de facto Two Party System due to a First Past The Post representative allocation system that makes it extremelly hard for a third option to rise to power (and on the rare occasions when they get close - about once every half a century - they’re quickly “put back in their place”), the extreme right in the UK, rather than try and gain power through the popular vote (as you see, for example in The Netherlands, where they float around the 15% mark) were they would require millions of votes to get power, have instead just infiltrated one of the power duopoly parties and thus only needed about 50k votes to take power (by outvoting other factions inside that party to elect their people as leaders). Once they dominated the Tory party, the First Past The Post system makes it extremelly hard to dislodge the party even though it has massivelly changed, and you even get effects like the other mainstream party of the Party Duopoly shifting its policies more towards the agenda that’s being set by the far right now in power.
Windows 2000 could run games (I should know: I kept being a gamer whilst using it for years) but in the early days with so many games designed for DOS that required direct low level access it was a problem. If I remember it correct one had to boot in DOS mode for those.
Eventually with DirectX that stopped being a problem (plus, again if I remember it correctly, OpenGL also became compatible with it).
The UK has always been a place were the power elites firmly believe they’re inherently superior and have a right to treat the plebes however they see fit (even the highly celebrated ending of slavery was quickly undone not long after by the - nowaydays never mentioned - invention of indentured servitude).
The post war period with the creation of social security, the National Health Service and a more broad spreading of prosperity was a blip, not a change in trend.
So yeah, no suprise that the toffs once again feel completelly free to treat the plebes as a different, lesser kind of being.
In this situation Google controls the whole setup and is not under any oversight from the customers (i.e. those using the VPN).
In that example of yours they would be a still active hacker whose prime source of income is hacking and who makes way more money from hacking than from said gigs for the “big corporations or the government” and who isn’t at all being directly whatched by their employers to make sure they don’t abuse the situation.
Would you give a know active black hat a gig doing penetration testing, which they can do from their own place using whatever they want with no oversight and were the possible profit they can make selling what they find in your systems vastly outweighs what you’re paying them?
Well, Google continues to have the profit motivation of selling people’s personal data, whilst the way black hats turn into white hats is that they can make more money (or at least safer) by helping to improve security rather than break it.
You don’t really hire an active black hat to do penetration testing into your system when they can make way more money selling what they’ll find in your system than what you’re paying them for said penetration testing.
The problem is that Google’s core business is still built-around using (and selling, though indirectly) people’s private data.
They’re 2 different things:
Exceptionally cheaper items are often inferior.
However there is also an irrational human behaviour of expecting the cheapest item (even just slightly so) in a range of otherwise similar choices to be inferior.
Whilst the first situation does have a Statistical backing (in that the so-called “too good to be true” situations more often than not are indeed so), the second - which is a much more general cognitive shortcut around pricing - does not (as you pointed out) have any real Statistical backing.
It’s Mathematics, specifically Statistics.
There is also a natural human psychological factor - demonstrated by Behavioural Economists with actual experiments - of when facing with multiple choices one is unfamiliar with presuming that the cheapest has some problem and going for the 2nd cheapest.
There is a lot of Free Market ideology shit, but this specific element actually goes against it (as in, it’s the opposite of how the homo economicus model behaves).
If you’re going to throw that stuff around at least inform yourself rather than parrot it as a mindless slogan.
This kind of thing just confirms how it’s really all about the Power elites keeping an eye out on the plebes trying to organise and change things so that they can kill any such things in the early stages.
Democracy was supposed to slowly bring Autocracies around to its way of doing things but instead what we’re seing is the very opposite of that.