Funny but the only game I own on Steam is the Doom/Doom2 full collection. It is 50 years old, gets new maps daily from many different dev's. I play on the free UZDoom engine which is as good as most today. I play the original BG and BG2 quite often, they are old as well. Beyond BG3 I've not found too many compelling new games. I use Steam for Demo's and to see what is new. I buy on GoG and Itch.

Good idea. Given that most of the games I play on GOG are emulated anyways, I might as well be playing them on Linux.

if you don't have an offline installer you didn't "buy" a game you leased it for an indeterminate period. I've been on steam for a long time, but I don't support a platform with money if I can't play my game at my cabin with no net. Granted Steam has some offline ability but it is flaky and doesn't work for all titles.

By your logic Gaming owes itself to MicroSloth and we should all support that crap. The only thing Valve gives back is that which is required by the various licenses, and they have made a good living off OSS.
All this aside I still love and play HL often.

other countries such as ? easy to quote nothing...

Lord no. The system needs reworking. The LEO's (law enforcement officers) should submit the request and justification to a third party, just like search warrants, who should then provide the data. This kind of tool needs centralized authority and security. But humans are crap, so even with watchers some will abuse the system.

I'd mod you up if I hadn't posted already. A simple check and balance system would make Flock a great resource and stop the abuses. I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere but if you had just cause, the ability to do a city or state wide search for a vehicle by plate number is amazing and could save lives.

There are in excess of 800k Police/Sheriff/Highway Patrol officers in the US. 50 doing bad things or even 500 is a very tiny percentage. Look at other professions and plot the sizable percentage that go rogue. I wonder what the % of CEO/CIO that commit fraud and embezzle is. Cops that go bad SHOULD be nailed to the wall, but quit painting everyone the same color as the crooks.
On another note Flock is a great tool provided it is strongly regulated. What they are doing today is crap. You need a writ or a warrant to get info on anyone...

FT or Field Training is 12 months AFTER a 14-18 week boot camp academy. You can be let go for any reason during your FT. That seems like a fairly robust training and guidance period. What other countries are you referring to ? All police in the world operate with "qualified immunity" not would not be possible to do the job without i.t

It is a nice thought but nothing more than that. Not even enough for a bad cup of coffee each.

Would you buy AI-generated music pressed on vinyl? Would it sound "more authentic"?

"We know that people uniquely trust Google Earth" Anyone who trusts ANYTHING Gurgle puts out is foolish. Everything Gurgle does is for profit.

He was pretty good in Adaptation. I forgot that he actually played twins, that's always a fun schtick.

Anthropic's new AI will be called Roberto, after the criminally insane manbot from Futurama.

"I was made by a team of evil scientists trying to make an insane robot, but obviously they FAILED!" -Roberto

It's so refreshing to find a search result from an old web site maintained by a real person. It's like drowning in quicksand and suddenly feeling solid ground beneath your feet.

The other day I actually got a search result from everything2.com... Great feeling.

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the film passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer...