If I want something new I use gnooks. Their recommendations are usually spot on with my tastes. The secret to reading is immediate access. I got an ereader and that multiplied my interest in reading. Without it I wouldn’t read as much as I do.
I do. I track my reading on Storygraph because it motivates me and helps me keep up the habit when I hit a slump or end up with some uninspiring piece. I don’t have to fumble for a new book to read because all recommendations and interests are neatly registered and organized. My progress is tracked and I can celebrate my success. I also have a huge library of digital books, over 2 thousand. By tracking I can keep a log of what I have and haven’t read. Sometimes, after a long while, you forget the names of specific books in series, or where you were last off in a particular author’s collection, etc. It helps with it all. But I don’t connect or share that with anyone. Nor do I feel the need to push it on anyone. Friends and acquaintances are not that into reading as I am and they see no use for a social network about books, and I don’t want nosy strangers rummaging though my reading history.
If they were Ubisoft, Sony, Nintendo or any other shitty company they could block access to the Steam account or ban it outright, cutting me off a library with hundreds of games. Hopefully, Valve is not like that yet. So, yes. I trust they wouldn’t do anything fucky when they notice that I’m connecting my Steam account to a device, theoretically, blocked in my region. But there’s some really intrusive shit you could do to prevent access or force it to be a piracy only machine.
I mention it because I remember some friends tried to grey import a PS5 and the device soft locked them when the IP didn’t match the region they chose. And Nintendo has done way worse, up to outright destroying accounts.
The Deck is not sold in most parts of the world. This includes certain parts of Asia, Latin america, Australia, some European countries, and most of Africa. Essentially, if you’re not from the US, Canada, China or western Europe, buying a Deck directly from Valve is impossible. Import and distribution is also an impossibility. Region locking it still one of Valve’s biggest hurdles.
So, to acquire one I have to pay an overhead to a reseller willing to sell it to me, foot the import bill, the local tariff, pay the courier, and at the end of all the device will be under no guarantee, support or protection. I have to pay more for a device that Valve could decide to block, the only reason I’d still do it is because I trust they won’t. But they could if they wanted to.
I’m tired of waiting for valve and soon will be getting one on the grey market.
No, you see. One of the requisites of jokes is that they have to be funny. Because I assure you, OC isn’t joking.
Gotta love techno maniacs, suggesting implanting a microchip on your child is somehow a reasonable suggestion. Have people heard of keys? buttons? hell, even Bluetooth tags?
If the kid is old enough to stay at home alone for a few hours, they’re probably old enough to have and operate a key and push a couple of buttons on a touchscreen or tablet.
Reduce, reuse, recycle!
Does he use two condoms at the same time to avoid pregnancies? Same principle.
From your own sources:
Section 84 of the Canadian Criminal Code
prohibited weapon means
(a) a knife that has a blade that opens automatically by gravity or centrifugal force or by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife, or
Or in other words, legal context matters, and this only applies in Canada, and only to knives who are intended to act as and be used as weapons. Not to kitchen knives. Idiots like you need to start using your head to actually think and not try to construct this stupid gotcha attempts.
Also, the entire section 86 is about firearms and the prohibited weapons is just there so prosecutors and judges can make ad-hoc decisions. So, as the law has proven: no, leaving a kitchen knife on a counter top or using WiFi without passwords do not make you accessory to crimes.
That’s decidedly not how the world works. There are no laws mandating kitchen knives to be locked. And there are no laws mandating to lock down network connections. At all instances a judge would have to determine whether you were aware that a crime was being committed and willfully or by criminal negligence facilitated its occurrence.
That’s not how anything works. If you leave a knife unattended on a counter and a murderer picks it up and kills someone you are not an accessory to murder. Even if it was indeed your knife.
Except they get it wrong all the time. People who have never pirated a single thing still receive ISP notices all the time.
They never mentioned that the IP they found sharing the pirated movie might as well no longer belong to the current subscriber and that proving the link between the subscriber and the IP would’ve been a major privacy issue. As a subscriber you don’t own the connection, much less the IP address. I guess they just never got to a point where that had to be argued.
The fact that they arrived at this by purely legal logic is surprising to me. They never even touched on the fact that IP is not ID. Not all but some ISPs assign IP dynamically, many persons can hold an IP over a relatively short period of time. They sent this letters to the ISPs and considered some imaginary person served a notice. Then they wanted the judge to fail against, imaginary people who they didn’t know who they were. I don’t even know what kind of precedent or case they wanted to make here. Are they going to send the routers to jail?
Awesome, Valve still won’t take my money even at full price.