Complete Das Schwarze Auge (role playing system) Adventure compilations. There are individual documents floating about, but most seem not be available.

I’d say it’s more like your hairdresser tracking how long you are in their store and what haircut you get- but you do you!

I’m not married to the analogy, just totally flabbergasted that “Using your own software on your own computer when and how you see fit without being watched” appears to be a slightly controversial aspiration for no (to me) apparent reason. Evidently I’m missing something, not explaining myself very clearly or both.

I run all my games in Linux and everything but Steam goes via Lutris which I configured to, by default, launch them inside a Firejail sandbox with no network access (plus a bunch of other security related limitations) something which I can override for specific games if needed.

That sounds like a neat setup! And no messing around with firewall rules either. I’ll have to look into it.

That’s the thing, though. I respect the analogy, but the equivalent here would be if the game was also checking your drive for other games, for financial apps, scanning your browser’s cookies to see which sites you visit, etc.

If, while playing a singleplayer game, they’re recording what actions you take within that singleplayer game, it’s understandable some people wouldn’t even want that - but I also don’t see that as nearly so invasive as other data travesties. Worse, highlighting it here feels like a “cry wolf” situation where you’d desensitize people to the most harmful privacy breaches.

Again, I don’t doubt that you do not see it as an incredibly invasive thing. I’m lamenting that you (and many) don’t.
You’re doing something on your computer. Locally. In your own time. With a thing that is - ostensibly - yours. Why is it even remotely acceptable that some corporate entity is watching you over your shoulder while you do it? I’m running out of words to express how nuts this seems to me.

I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible analogy. In the gaming scenario, Ubisoft is collecting the data on their own product usage

Well, in the corporate software-as-a-service insane troll logic hellscape in which we live that could indeed make sense. Mind you, that’s not meant to be a rant against you but against the fact that this train of thought has indeed been completely normalized.
In the fantasy world of the past into which I’d like to go back to live happily it is precisely not Ubisoft’s product. It’s mine. I bought it - none of what I do with it is any of Ubisoft’s business. The business transaction has been concluded. If they want to know what I do with my game then they can ask me nicely about it. I’ll certainly not allow them to install a proverbial camera over the executable.

It’s not a good analogy, I agree, but I’m too angry to come up with a better one right now.

Based on the article text, it’s only citing things like how long you play. I thought most games collected telemetry like this?

A commonplace travesty is still a travesty and metadata is still data. If my hairdresser asked me “Hey, in addition to me cutting your hair and you giving me money I’d also like you to constantly keep me updated on your sleep schedule, your vacation plans, marital status changes and the myriad of other things that can be directly gleaned from aggregate timeline data - all the other hairdressers have started doing it as well!”, I’d likely look at them incredulously for a few seconds while silently imagining stabbing them with their own scissors.

Calling it “telemetry” has somehow normalized it over the past decades, I suppose? I just don’t understand how anyone could ever accept this as normal.

In the age of distributed databases and the dark web and the block chain and federation surely we can figure out a way to archive media that doesn’t put people or organisations at risk of litigation

That limits and gatekeeps access to an enormous degree. The IA wants to be useful to everyone, not just the tiny fraction of the world population savvy enough to use the internet for more than opening a browser and a chat client.

don’t institutionalise the perpetration of rights violations?

Counterpoint: The perpetration of this kind of rights violation precisely needs to be normalized to the point of meaninglessness. Intellectual property can either go away top-down (which considering the way things went over the past century is never going to happen) or it can go away bottom up - it has to be flaunted and disregarded by everybody via continued large-scale disobedience.

Or, of course, it could just never go away.

What’s that got to do with anything? What does account age have to do with anything or are you just unnecessarily flexing to make yourself feel special?

That’s like some 30 year old going up to a 13 year old and flexing because of where they are in life. It’s just…pointless.

Look at it this way: You just entered a clubhouse. Nobody there knows you. You have not yet put any time or work into maintaining the club or into establishing your credentials and social status among the members. After entering, you immediately make a controversial (and arguably badly-researched) statement.

Would you not expect to be much less likely to get away with a stunt like this than a long-established club member?

I still don’t see the big deal, takes seconds to drag them into the bin and move on.

When you recall that, as a person who knows what a browser is, you’ll likely be in the global minority, you’ll realize it’s a tremendous deal.
And don’t even pretend that running an Android phone without a GooglePlay store is easy :P

There are far bigger problems that they should be going after - irreplaceable batteries, locked bootloader, lack of root access on a device you own would be three of the biggest ones.

You will find that all those issues, in the end, come down to the same anti-trust problem - single companies being allowed too much control and too much vertical integration. Regulating small issues away piecemeal is pointless when the question “Why should a single entity even be allowed to, at the same time, control OS development, browser development, package management gatekeeping and thousands of other different things?” looms in the background.

If users are too stupid/lazy to change defaults that’s on them.

Nothing of what’s written about in the article is “on the user”.

Japan’s antitrust watchdog has ordered Google to stop pressuring smartphone makers to promote its apps like Google Search and Chrome. (…) The recent order issued on Tuesday follows an investigation that began in October 2023. The JFTC found that Google required at least six Android phone makers to preinstall its search engine and Chrome browser, and show them on the home screen. These conditions were tied to licensing the Google Play Store, which is essential for selling Android phones in Japan. According to Nikkei Asia, around 80% of Android phones sold in Japan were affected.
Japan also said Google offered ad revenue-sharing deals to some manufacturers and telecom operators. In return, these companies agreed not to preinstall rival apps or search services. This, the watchdog said, reduced competition and limited user choice.

I often reply under Japanese posts, and I always assume users will use a translator as I do, but maybe in the context of a Japanese this may look rude?

Can’t speak for others (obviously, as this is about individual etiquette perceptions) but I would consider it to be polite to only enter conversations with unknown parties in languages that the parties have shown to be capable of speaking and understanding.
Using a new language entering a conversation would therefore signal either familiarity (“I know they understand me”) or rudeness (“I don’t care if they understand me”) to me, I suppose.