Yeah like it’s fine if you’re Meta (Facebook) and you pirate books to train AI, but if you say it’s for human knowledge, so that a poor person in a third world country who might pull in $100 a month can still have access to books and music… they figure it’s worth it if a bunch of spoiled Americans can also get it for free, as long as they seed.

It isn’t.

There’s an Ars Technica article published yesterday or the day before about the book metadata scraping, and a representative for AA came right out and said they deliberately violate copyright law in most countries.

They believe, apparently, that collecting information is more valuable than being legal. In that case, they were ordered by a court to delete the data they scraped and they were not expected to comply (and have not done so). The .org suspension was thought to be related to that. Apparently it is not.

To clarify, Legendary doesn’t have any DLC. It bundles the DLC content from the OG Xbox 360 games (minus one that they lost the source code to). So ME2 and ME3 had a bunch of DLC that was just a gun or an armour, that’s why they claim so many. Shepard doesn’t actually get those guns and suits of armour, he has to buy them. But yeah, it’s all integrated. If you get the ME1 part, you’re getting the asteroid mission. If you get the ME2 part, you get all the guns and armour but it’s distributed throughout the galaxy to various vendors. And all the extra loyalty missions (like Kasumi’s memory one, and the Legion one) and the one with the stupid hovercraft nobody likes, are just included.

Source: I played it on Xbox (where it’s been going on sale for $6 a lot lately, not bad for ~80-100 hours of content! Ending still sucks though, pick a path and hope for the best).

I support this notion.

That said, everything’s getting more expensive, everything’s going up but my paycheck, and asking someone to spend more on the same product is kind of a big ask in this economy.

It’s still worth asking and I support you asking. 100%.

Here’s a fun fact about Japan: Sony used the PlayStation 3 to push Blu-ray (at launch it was like half the cost of the cheapest standalone Blu-ray player, so you could reasonably buy a PS3 and just play Blu-rays on it, plus it also played games). They used the PS2 to support DVD. But, what about the PS1? In the US, it only played CDs. In Japan, it played VCDs, which were a failed format that never took off in the West. If you had a Pro Action Replay (most notable for cheating, and letting you play burned games), you could enable the VCD playback. VCD was just MPEG-1 on CD. 70 minutes of video. Lower quality than VHS, but no need to rewind! It wasn’t hard at all to make VCDs on a computer as long as you had the digital video. Easier said than done then! The first time I watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was on (burned) VCD! (I’ve since bought it on DVD and Blu-ray. Before JK Rowling went off the deep end. I am so sorry. We didn’t know she was crazy then!)

Actually, PSP also pushed a video format, the MiniDisc movie format, whatever that was. That did make its way to the US, but it didn’t do very well there. I don’t know how well it did in Japan.

Sony could have just made a good video game system — and they did. But they did not stop there. They pushed movies in a way that didn’t feel like they were piling on features and cheapening it all like Xbox does. I actually am an Xbox gamer, but I was a PlayStation guy first…

Vic’s ending never really sat well with me. He didn’t face a reckoning for his actions. He just got benched. Then he hears sirens, gets up, goes to the window, and wishes he was back on the streets. Everyone else got a more satisfying ending.

I’m not sure if Vic should have went out in a blaze of glory, but he should have been taken down by a gang or cartel or something. Or the bikers. I felt like he got an easy way out and it shouldn’t have been that way.

Shane’s ending was just wild.

Such a great show otherwise. And semi-spawned Sons of Anarchy (SoA creator Kurt Sutter was a staff writer on The Shield; the two shows are not formally connected. However, Mayans MC is connected to Sons and the Mayans featured in The Shield.

A reversible one supports both USB-A and USB-C. Mac/iPhone user so I only need USB-C, but USB-A is useful for some things (also, I do have a 4-port USB-A hub on my desk so I could use it via that).

Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Lexar-128GB-JumpDrive-Type-C-LJDD400128G-BNQNU/dp/B0BWLHFGV8

You can save $8 or so by picking the 128GB one, but that gets you half the storage. The 256GB one is the sweet spot price-wise here.

You just want to look out for “USB 3.2” or “USB 3 Gen 2” or something like that. It’s the fastest you’ll get with a flash drive, and about all the speed you need out of a flash drive.

If you’re looking for a lot more storage, you don’t want a flash drive, you want a portable SSD. Same thing but a little bigger and typically uses a cable to connect. Typically it’s USB-C to USB-C, but you could find a USB-C to USB-A cable just as well. Samsung T9 is the newest, Samsung T7 is just as good IMO, I got my 2TB T7 for around $120 on Black Friday a few years ago.

Mass Effect?

Spoilers for the beginning of Mass Effect 2 (because the trilogy is meant to be played back-to-back-to-back, and that’s how it’s sold now, as a Legendary Edition that bundles them up as one product).

That’s a unique take on ED-E. To my eyes, it’s phonetically Eddie, but other regions could see it differently, and you’re right, it’s a robot so it doesn’t much matter.

Boone and ED-E is an overpowered combination due to the way their perks synergise. But not everyone plays for power. Veronica is a great choice too. I like the one you pick up in a bar, “Rose of Sharon Cassidy”. Or just Cass. I think that’s the one. She has one of the coolest ending cards, too (referring to the epilogue slideshow at the end, not a spoiler!). There are a few requisites to get her best card, though — male courier and NCR ending, IIRC.

The first two DLC are kinda shit. The first one, Dead Money, was divisive for its stealth mechanic. It’s kind of broken. It’s either too easy or too hard depending on your style and experience. Honest Hearts was just not good. But the four DLC’s have a story that is worth experiencing and that’s the order to do them in. Third is Old World Blues which is probably the best Fallout DLC to date. Lonesome Road is just pretty, with a choice at the end with far reaching implications. So save that adventure for when you’re sure who you want to side with at the end!

New Vegas is objectively the best Fallout game. It’s not my favorite, but it’s the one I respect the most as a game. 3 was more fun to me, but it was kinda dumb at times. 4 was even more fun, but it was downright stupid.

Steam has its own DRM, in addition to DRM added by the manufacturer. So at the very least it’s going to ask Valve if you’re authorized to run the software. Whereas GOG doesn’t do that. (Steam can also make backup installers.)

Get the games from GOG wherever possible. No DRM and easy to use installers.

You should support them, but if you don’t, their installers are still DRM free and easy to install from! Also if the game is bigger than 4.3GB they break it up so you just keep inserting the next disc.