Quoting: SamsaiSo, if the citizens are unhappy, they should know well who to send their complaints.

You have no idea how people work, do you?
They will only see that they suffer due to sanctions of the West. Because that's what they are being told - and most do not have the knowledge, desire or possibility to get "better" information in Russia/Belarus.
So they won't be hating on their government, they'll be hating on the West.

Sanctions ultimately only increase the support for their government.
It's still the right thing to do as it might be the only thing to bring regimes to their knees besides violence, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking we'll make any friends that way in affected regions.

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Wait, what... Valve releases a GAME?!
Let me celebrate with a song:


This is a triumph.
I'm making a note here, huge success!

It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

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Quoting: anewsonkind of amazing how many problems HOTAS systems have relative to how expensive they are.. I had a Saitek x52 for Elite Dangerous and it had countless problems with not a ton of use.

When I took mine apart (after the problems started, in an attempt to fix it/see what's going on), I immediately saw how incredibly shoddy the internal manufacturing was.
Glue everywhere, and despite that parts just hanging about kind of loose, sensitive parts just exposed to the elements. It explained a lot about why it broke so quickly, but also raised tons of questions about the expensive pricing point.

My guess would be that only the most expensive variants have any chance at longevity (hoping that some of that money goes into more than shoddy manufacturing), but of course only make sense to purchase if I was using it a lot more.

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After my Thrustmaster stick broke, I tried to play the game once with mouse & keyboard, but... it's just not the same. Kinda works, but you really miss all those buttons on/around the stick.
And it wasn't even a cheap one - still broke after not even two years and no usage outside of X4.

Now I'm extremely hesitant to buy a new one as it would still be pretty much the only game (well, that and Elite: Dangerous) I'd use it with.

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Quoting: KimmoKMIt does seem to run fine with Proton.

Yup, no problems, already multiple hours in.
But you do need a beefy PC for this one (I'd expect slightly higher requirements than for the native version).

But for those like me who don't want to wait, Proton works just fine.
The videos, too! So none of that weird test screen stuff.

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Quoting: anewsonI suppose if I'd turned out to be a psycho it would have been a grim warning sign.

Don't fret. There's still time

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Quoting: GuestOne is also assuming that it's only the dev that has access. Even polkit has recently had a severe exploit found that could quite easily give someone root access, something it was never designed to do. So it's not just worrying about the dev doing bad things, it's worrying that someone else can get into your system and do bad things as a result of an inherently bad security design.

If a game is popular enough, then I'm sure it becomes a target - not just for cheaters, but if the rewards of finding a security vulnerability are gaining unrestricted access to systems that includes credit card information, banking details, personal information, etc, then you can bet a lot of "bad people" will be putting a good deal of effort into finding some security hole that they can exploit.

Sure, but that is true for everything.
Didn't Intel itself have some of these security risks found (and fixed) recently?

As soon as you use a computer accessing/using online services, you should be aware that NOTHING you do with it or on it will ever be 100% safe.
People who you don't trust CAN target you, if they so desire, always, it's just a matter of incentive and resources. There is nothing you can do to entirely prevent it, so doing more than a reasonable minimum becomes a waste of time for the vast majority of people (as most people are not valuable targets).
If you really wanted full privacy, your only solution would be to not exist online or digitally in any shape, way or form. Good luck with that...

With all of that in mind, one thing you can decide is who you will or won't trust (knowing full well that they themselves could become victims of attacks).
So if I really wanted to play Fortnite (I sure don't) I'd just roll with it as I trust the developers to not try and build a psychological profile of me while trying to prevent cheating.

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Quoting: ShmerlBut no, they can't already do it, unless you let them. So this logic is garbage, becasue they imply that you should let them.

You have to let them if you want to use their software. That's the situation. If anyone likes it or not or if it should be done or not is beyond the point.

So, assuming that someone is a player of Fortnite, they already let them and so the devs already have access. Someone who isn't a Fortnite player (or other similar games) isn't bothered by any of this anyway.

Quoting: BlackBloodRumThe are big differences being:

1) With user level privileges (on Linux, without SUDO enabled) they can only collect info on the current user and that users related processes (things that user has access to). Other users and their information are safe.
2) When the game stops, the spying stops so long as its process is ended.
3) We can write apparmor or SELinux profiles or put it in other sandboxes to limit the information it has.
4) When a kernel module is involved, it has access to everything.
5) You can't sandbox it.
6) A kernel module starts up when your kernel starts, it stops when your kernel stops, so it is basically active the entire time you use your computer.

1) Completely irrelevant for 99% of people. I don't know if I've even seen people sharing PCs with different people using different accounts in the last 15+ years and I've been living in 3 different countries and seen lots of homes (I'd say)...
2) So? If the game devs wanted to find out something about you, they could do it while the game is running, including information not only pertaining to the game. Little need for spyware to run permanently unless remote access was the goal.
3) That's the hoops I was talking about.
4-6) Yes, but as I wrote, all of that doesn't really let you do more to gain personal information about a user. Most of that was already possible before. Albeit involving more work, but if someone really wanted to, they could.

The entire thing comes down to a trust problem. Do you trust a dev not to do "bad things" with access you give them?
If so, you can give them access.
If not, no technicality is ever going to make you "feel safe" unless you manage to run the entire thing sandboxed (not sure if possible and/or performance impact for games).

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Quoting: ShmerlHear that? These idiots are claiming that their increasing spying on your is OK because they already could spy on you. With this kind of garbage logic, there is no end to it.

Except that's no garbage logic, but 100% correct.
It is exceedingly easy to spy on users already, with only user level privileges. It's how a lot of malware works already.
There are a few things (but really not much) that you'd actually need root or kernel level access for. But all of them are related to more under-the-hood stuff (like how they are trying to catch cheaters by inspecting processes, etc.).
Practically none of them are related to what people would generally call privacy (as in, personal data, habits, etc.) - as you can already get that data if you so wanted.

At least that is the situation on Windows. Remember those cases of games that would basically erase your disk on uninstallation? Those had just normal rights. If you can do that, you can do pretty much anything related to user data.
I expect it would be somewhat more difficult on Linux, but I'm not certain.

So, sorry, but the "they're spying on you" argument is bollocks.
"They" can already spy on you - if that happens or not or to what degree isn't up to you, it's up to them and/or your trust in them. If you give them the last bit of access more or not doesn't really matter much in reality.

I remember that outrage with some kind of ad service installed in games that would make calls to a webserver to see if an ad was successful. The tech illiterate media and the poor people believing it railed against that thing. "They can store your IP!"... like... yeah, everything you make a call to over the internet can do that. And assign even more data to it, if they so desire. This isn't new. Or outrageous.

TL;DR: The privacy train has left the station a long time ago. If you really do care about the privacy of your data (most people don't, and I include myself here), you'll have to jump through significant hoops to achieve a high level of it. Saying that kernel access would change a whole lot about the situation seems between ill-informed and dishonest to me.

All of that is a bit of a tangent, though. You are right that an AI inspecting what's happening on a server would indeed solve the problem, but I'll eat some cold fries if that ever happens. I hate cold fries.

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For the price of two great indie games, you can buy a DLC with a bunch of small additions.

What a steal!

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