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Latest Comments by LoudTechie
Linux remains above macOS on the Steam Survey for January 2024
2 Feb 2024 at 2:21 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: constMy take on some of the arguments here:

1. Chromebooks are pretty much an US thing. I know no one who owns a Chromebook here in Germany and when I looked for their prices, I know why. You get a pretty good Business Laptop for the price of a cheap tablet with a bad keyboard.

2. Not so sure about the Appstore. I can see that for single player titles, but for multiplayer? I really don't know. My guess is Apple Users tend to prefer console gaming.
1. Chromebooks are also sold in Europe. Schools attempt to force them on students. My first dedicated school laptop was a Chromebook(and shit), my younger family members interact with unfortunate Chromebook using classrooms everyday. Yes, those things are hot garbage and for half the price I can get a superior machine in every way from the second hand market and 3 quarters the price I can get a superior machine new, but with enough pressure from teachers thousands of Chromebooks get leased every year.
(Sorry, for the rant. Chromebooks really frustrate me. They don't work well, they're being actively targeted at children, they're actively locking people in and they've shown me deep teacher computer illiteracy.)

2. The trick is much easier. The multiplayer games that get launched on Mac don't use store dependent hosting and rely on the user restrictions of MacOS to protect them against online cheating. This only works for the big studios, but the small studios couldn't afford to launch anything on MacOS anyway.

Flathub now has over one million active users
30 Jan 2024 at 2:59 pm UTC

Quoting: razze
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: razze
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: ElectricPrism
Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps
Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.
I've long thought that one of the most potentially important things about Flatpaks is about closed, mostly non-game software. That stuff can't be packaged by your distro, so the ability for vendors to build their stuff in a fairly easy, pretty solid, distro-agnostic way could go a long way towards reducing complaints about Linux fragmentation.
It is this! Flatpak shouldn't be used to replace the distributuion software. The reason why is that it is tightly integrated and you will have security updates and bug reports you can send to your distro. The vast majority if Flatpaks are not officially packaged by the upstream project, and cannot be easily verified they haven't been messed with.
Why can't they be verified? And how can you verify a distro package?
The answer is(ofcourse) multiple ways.
The GNU, Linux, bsd, FOSS, etc. security model is build heavily on source code availability and subsequent peer review.
One way to verify is with reproducible builds. Build a package the advised way and hash it and compare it to the hash of the binary package.

A second way is with signature checks. This could work given that you've a party that you trust to produce a trustworthy indication of which developers produce trustworthy proprietary code. This is uncommon under developers of FOSS associated projects(self selecting), so there aren't a lot of tools for it. Also it is hard to generalize, because that trust is a lot more variable in a world of a thousand distros than one Microsoft/Sony/Apple.
This is how basic distro security works. The distro maintainer signs their package and you check if the signature matches theirs. This doesn't work, because distro maintainers have no way to distinguish modified proprietary packages from non-modified ones and because they simply never trust proprietary packages.

A third way is with self compiling and source code checks(this is how the distro maintainers do it themselves).
So flathub is at least doing 1. And 3 is done but by the app author. I'm very unsure if distro maintainers actually do it, tbh I don't believe that.
Flathub doesn't do 1, because they've nothing to compare the hash against. They only got the binary package provided by the uploader who may or may not be the developer and to fit into a flatpak the binary file probably had to be different anyway.

The app author does indeed number 3, but that doesn't help, because they can't scalable proof they're the author(s) to flathub, he isn't necessarily a trusted actor and nobody else can check their work.
Explanations of the statements in the summary:
The spoilers are examples.
"they can't scalable proof they're the author(s) to flathub"
It's really easy to claim you wrote a piece of software when you didn't. It's even easier to claim you wrote software with an arbitrary name when you didn't.
Spoiler, click me
"I wrote Photoshop here you got it and no it's not a cracked version of photoshop with a cryptominer embedded in it. Why would you even think that?"
"He isn't necessarily a trusted actor"
If the author can compile and read their program without it raising alarms to them it means they think it does what they want, but if they want malicious things it's still an issue.
Spoiler, click me
"I wrote a cool app that allows you to achieve Nirvana and no it isn't just a random yellow circle generator with ransomware embedded in it. Why would you even think that?".
This is why people want verified code in the first place.
"nobody else can check their work"
The fact that the author of a program can compile and read a program doesn't mean it's not a virus. The fact that someone else can compile and read a program without concluding that it's a virus means it at least has been hidden well and indicates that it's not virus.
Spoiler, click me
"I wrote a cool app that allows you to achieve Nirvana and no it isn't just a random yellow circle generator with ransomware embedded in it. No you can't see what it's doing."

The trick of flathub is twofold:
A. they render verification of lesser importance by placing the program in a sandbox, so that if it's malicious it can only inflict harm through direct user interaction.
and
B. they use the second method to try and become that one party for providing trusted proprietary code
(this is better verification than it looks, because if the market comes to agree with them that they're such a trusted provider, they will start providing unscalable verfication and proof of ownership through by flathub trusted actors(lawyers, judges, investigators and notaries)).

Also the way flatpak works allows for a 4th method of verification that used to only comfortably work with foss applications, which I forgot to provide.
Logging
By keeping track of what a program is doing one can catch generic malware and/or reverse engineer any form of software.
This is actively battled by both malware and proprietary authors by obfuscating what the software is doing, but flatpak puts enough restrictions on how the software may function that de-obfuscating and logging behavior becomes a lot easier.

A distro maintainer has to do 3 at a certain level, because getting something to work with a package manager means obtaining a full list of relevant dependencies and declaring them in the package.
If the source code is available compiling it on a bare system is really the fastest way of doing this(unless the original programmers have kept track of all the dependencies, but that's very rare).
Also self compiling is more normal under people with programming skills(like distro maintainers) than you might think. Ask Linux_rocks or any of the old timers on this forum. Gentoo used to require self compilation of everything and had still thousands of users.
Having said that after two or three layers of downstream most packages have the full list and compiling is still more work than copying, so you're right that not all of them use method 3 all the time.

Also my excuses for the long post.
I wasn't fully certain what exactly you meant with your post, so I provided all the information and explanation needed for all the interpretations I could come up with.

Flathub now has over one million active users
29 Jan 2024 at 7:29 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: hardpenguinI went from a flatpak vocal sceptic to a regular user and supporter. I like having that much non-free modern software at hand. Can't find where I can support flathub monetarily though. The repo maintainers deserve our full support.
While I don't agree with you about parties spreading non-free software in desktop GNU/Linux deserving full support, here's the donation link of flathub https://flathub.org/donate [External Link] for those who agree with you.
Unfortunately there will always be non-free software. While the ultimate idea of RMS was that even games would be open source, and in essence you'd just pay for the graphics / sounds assets is great, only a few projects have made that a reality (like OpenMW, the Doom engines, etc.)
I think of Flathub more of a solution for the various package formats. But as I said earlier, flatpaks aren't always made by the upstream project (like Firefox is, but Discord is not) and using some of these can be bad, as people can modify things to put up there.

This is also why the various GUIs for flatpak have warnings on the page.
True there will always be proprietary software, but
A. That doesn't mean I'm a fan of actively paying for distributing it. If proprietary is so profitable as is often claimed those writing it can pay someone to distribute it from their profits.
B. That doesn't mean it has to come this close to home as to be spread through the software stores in desktop Linux systems.

I don't think flatpack will serve as a fix for package standard proliferation. I think it will just add another package format.(xkcd 927)
My experience with standardization is as such. Only large parties can instantiate a standard. Large consumers tend to prefer open standards, large sellers tend to prefer proprietary standards.
That having said I think flatpack will bring something good.
I expect that much like SElinux it will strengthen the GNU/Linux reputation of being really secure and that this time the security will be useful for more parties than large organizations with a clear hierarchy and taking software freedoms.
The key take away here is that flatpak is an OPEN standard, vs Snap, which only Ubuntu can run a 'store'. There is definitely a time and place for 'paid' apps, like say Steam has for Games. Though in all honesty, there are so many open source programs out there that would be perfectly fine to replace proprietary stuff (like office suites, for example).
Oh, I agree with the the statement that it will snap snap.
I just don't think it will(or should) make a dent in package proliferation, because it won't do anything to .deb, .rpf, appimage, etc.
Also we're having a miscommunication and that is my fault.
I use the term free, but I didn't mean free as in 0 cost, but free as in freedom(basically open source).
Inkscape has long been unknown to many Linux users paid software, just also open source. If you wanted to obtain it from the Microsoft store you had to pay a small fee to a central party defending the goals of the developers(including paying them directly, but not only that) the SFC.
Paid software has its place inside the ecosystem and I have nothing against distributing and helping paid software.
I argued that helping distribute non-open source software was something I can't actively

Flathub now has over one million active users
29 Jan 2024 at 4:52 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: hardpenguinI went from a flatpak vocal sceptic to a regular user and supporter. I like having that much non-free modern software at hand. Can't find where I can support flathub monetarily though. The repo maintainers deserve our full support.
While I don't agree with you about parties spreading non-free software in desktop GNU/Linux deserving full support, here's the donation link of flathub https://flathub.org/donate [External Link] for those who agree with you.
Unfortunately there will always be non-free software. While the ultimate idea of RMS was that even games would be open source, and in essence you'd just pay for the graphics / sounds assets is great, only a few projects have made that a reality (like OpenMW, the Doom engines, etc.)
I think of Flathub more of a solution for the various package formats. But as I said earlier, flatpaks aren't always made by the upstream project (like Firefox is, but Discord is not) and using some of these can be bad, as people can modify things to put up there.

This is also why the various GUIs for flatpak have warnings on the page.
True there will always be proprietary software, but
A. That doesn't mean I'm a fan of actively paying for distributing it. If proprietary is so profitable as is often claimed those writing it can pay someone to distribute it from their profits.
B. That doesn't mean it has to come this close to home as to be spread through the software stores in desktop Linux systems.

I don't think flatpack will serve as a fix for package standard proliferation. I think it will just add another package format.(xkcd 927)
My experience with standardization is as such. Only large parties can instantiate a standard. Large consumers tend to prefer open standards, large sellers tend to prefer proprietary standards.
That having said I think flatpack will bring something good.
I expect that much like SElinux it will strengthen the GNU/Linux reputation of being really secure and that this time the security will be useful for more parties than large organizations with a clear hierarchy and taking software freedoms.

The original SteamOS-like Linux distro HoloISO now dead, replaced with immutable version
29 Jan 2024 at 2:08 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: pbI wonder what's keeping Valve from just officially releasing SteamOS for general use.
The same what keeps Microsoft from releasing the Windows source code and Google from releasing google play services, they like the control it gives them.
Also it places them in a position to negotiate with patent holders and DRM companies.

Flathub now has over one million active users
29 Jan 2024 at 10:43 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: hardpenguinI went from a flatpak vocal sceptic to a regular user and supporter. I like having that much non-free modern software at hand. Can't find where I can support flathub monetarily though. The repo maintainers deserve our full support.
While I don't agree with you about parties spreading non-free software in desktop GNU/Linux deserving full support, here's the donation link of flathub https://flathub.org/donate [External Link] for those who agree with you.

Flathub now has over one million active users
28 Jan 2024 at 9:53 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: CruelAngelQuick and extremly dirty math:

There are 8 billion ppl out there, lets say 4 billion of them have access to internet on a PC, and Linux has a 2% user base, that means 80 million ppl useing Linux. If that is true, then comparatively the 1 million users of Flathub is suprisingly low.
not everyone has an computer, we have a bunch of people who are slaves, un employeed, have an low income/live in a country where everything is freaking expensive, hell some people barely have even water of food.
i saw the number of people who had windows computer some time ago and it was about 1.5 billions , agains 2.3 of android devices.
a few time later i saw the number 1.8billion of windows computers against 3 billions android devices, iOS is arround 700 million or 1 bi.
(the reason why i quoted the number of windows and android devices twice is because the first number was from the same date, the cecound 1.8 bi, 3bi is from different dates so its hard to compare)

if we count the linux marketshare as 1~2% then, microsoft is suppose to have betwen 45 and 90 more people than that.
in other words, linux may have something arround 20 or 40 millions of users.

lets make another guess:
according to statcounter, windows has 72.79%, linux 3.82%, chromeOS 2.42% and there is 4.61% of unknow devices, lets assume they are linux devices for the sake of being optimistic, lets also count chromeOS, if those 72.79% are windows devices, ahd those 10,85% count as linux...
assuming we have 1.8 billions of windows computers out there, this means: 268 millions.
i doubt that is the real number.
an more likely scenario, those 4.61% are windows devices that for some reason didnt got count.
that means: 77,4% of marketshare for windows (1.8 bi devices) 6.24% of marketshare for linux (145 millions of devices)
now, looking at it, that is an impressive number, if we ignore chromebook, about 88 million people are tech savy enough to swap the OS that came with their computer.

Btw im completely ignoring dualbooters, and im considering that the number of windows device is fixed, wich probably inst the case , linux growing in share generally means either an dual booter or someone who stoped using windows wich we should substract from the 1.8 bi.

being more realistic now, i think the most likely scenario is 1.8 billions of computers (not windows computers), 74,4% of marketshare for windows (or more likely stat counter is broken) so we have... ok im tired of math...
1.3 billions of windows devices against 112 millions of linux devices (68 million install by thenselves the rest are chromebooks)
Also not everyone who uses faltpack, uses flathub.
In the end flathub is just one repo.
The biggest one yes, but not the only one.

Flathub now has over one million active users
27 Jan 2024 at 8:52 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: razze
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: ElectricPrism
Flathub has served just about 1.6 billion downloads, has over 2,400 apps
Very impressive, congratulations to @all. The quality of FOSS on the store is great, and while predicting the future is hard -- I am modestly optimistic about their efforts to make a commercial area of the store someday.
I've long thought that one of the most potentially important things about Flatpaks is about closed, mostly non-game software. That stuff can't be packaged by your distro, so the ability for vendors to build their stuff in a fairly easy, pretty solid, distro-agnostic way could go a long way towards reducing complaints about Linux fragmentation.
It is this! Flatpak shouldn't be used to replace the distributuion software. The reason why is that it is tightly integrated and you will have security updates and bug reports you can send to your distro. The vast majority if Flatpaks are not officially packaged by the upstream project, and cannot be easily verified they haven't been messed with.
Why can't they be verified? And how can you verify a distro package?
The answer is(ofcourse) multiple ways.
The GNU, Linux, bsd, FOSS, etc. security model is build heavily on source code availability and subsequent peer review.
One way to verify is with reproducible builds. Build a package the advised way and hash it and compare it to the hash of the binary package.

A second way is with signature checks. This could work given that you've a party that you trust to produce a trustworthy indication of which developers produce trustworthy proprietary code. This is uncommon under developers of FOSS associated projects(self selecting), so there aren't a lot of tools for it. Also it is hard to generalize, because that trust is a lot more variable in a world of a thousand distros than one Microsoft/Sony/Apple.
This is how basic distro security works. The distro maintainer signs their package and you check if the signature matches theirs. This doesn't work, because distro maintainers have no way to distinguish modified proprietary packages from non-modified ones and because they simply never trust proprietary packages.

A third way is with self compiling and source code checks(this is how the distro maintainers do it themselves).

MONSTER HUNTER RISE adds new DRM that breaks it on Steam Deck (UPDATED)
22 Jan 2024 at 11:32 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest
Quoting: LoudTechie
Quoting: GuestSure they can sue Russia or Russians. To this day (funny enough) Russia keeps upholding Western copyright (Belarus doesn't though) which is why alot of Russians remain scared to just blatantly rip off Western brands. Besides, if Capcom gets sued they'll likely force Enigma or whoever to pay them back/will take their business away. So it doesn't matter.
Ever heard of Sci-Hub it prevails to this day, because Russia doesn't.
Quoting: GuestReally? Then how did Germany threaten the US? or other US allies like South Korea?
By annexing SudetenLand which was part of a country the allies promised to protect specifically from german agression.
Even attacking Poland and France(all U.S allies) wasn't enough to get specific USA soldiers on their doorstep sinking US ships and trying to ally with its enemies(Mexico and Japan) were needed to get that.

Quoting: GuestSure there's a site for it, but the dominant discourse in the West is not about sanctioning Israel or its products. Indeed, we have seen how Western countries have pulled out of Russia, while the scale of the genocide in Israel is much greater. The fact that everyone seems to be okay with it is rather concerning, and that there is a double standard about it.
The companies pulling back is an effect of government pressure not social pressure, which is fully motivated by governmental fear. The western governements believe Israel won't target them(because they're its only allies in hostile world) and aren't convinced that the much stronger Russian government with more allies can be held in check that way.
I can't go to school without passing a protest for sanctions for Israel, I can do that without passing a Russia sanction protest.

Quoting: GuestI agree, war is bad. But what exactly is special about Europe that "war on its doorstep" would warrant such a response, but would not warrant a similar response in Gaza? Also there was "war on its doorstep" back in 1999 when Belgrade was bombed, but I didn't see such a response either - there was no boycott of US goods/companies in response. To me it seems kinda of like people use this as a justification for their own racist beliefs.
The Gaza case is, because Israel has so many enemies that if it were to leak its war to the West it would get decimated by its neighbors also there is a sea inbetween.
Back than the government send soldiers. Got a bunch of war crimes on its name. Sued and protested. Which resulted in the effects mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Criticism_of_the_campaign(I [External Link] wasn't born yet I remember nothing) and seeded current distrust among NATO allies(my government still questions the loyalty of the british, since then.

Quoting: GuestIf what you say is true - you want to explain the US 900 military bases worldwide?
They "trust" the USA not to attack them, because of all these bases they would be hard pressed if their allies turned on them.
This trust doesn't range far though, due to the memories of the Iraq war the US security services had to release most of their evidence of Russian troop collecting at the border before the rest believed them.
Also due to internal protest most western nations(who haven't been USSR members) have expelled american bases from their borders(,which is the scary part).

Also yes the west is a bunch of imperialistic prics. That's why the fear argument works. I get that on the news everyday.

This official sanctions aren't a moral choice they're a choice of fear. They're the political expedient alternative on war. Does that mean the West never fights wars: no, but the more they fear you the less they want an open confrontation and work in sanctions. Western propaganda claims the moral high ground, but the choices its government makes are based on fear and greed not morality and although the choices the people make are sometimes based on morality 99 percent of the time it's self interest.
You keep thinking the Western governments need a moral excuse to sanction Russia. When national security comes into play they don't. All they need is a selfish excuse, so no this isn't even a justification this is just western panic football.

Did Donald J. Trump give any excuse to sanction China, besides "they're too rich and powerful" not that I remember. Did he do it anyway certainly. Why do you think Russia is different is being too brave not enough excuse to get cut down by those in power.
Scihub is hosted in Kazakhstan and started by a Kazakh citizen. Also, is Scihub the only pirate organization? Last I recall, Piratebay is still up and running in Sweden and they even had a Pirate Party!

Annexing Sudentenland was 85 years ago. What does that have to do with Germany now that it warrants US spying, particularly spying on their Chancellors like Merkel?

Russia wouldn't target them either though, if they didn't provoke Russia. Russia was trying to integrate into Western Europe since Soviet times! Its part of the reason it gave up the Soviet Union. It even wanted to join NATO at one point lol. Russia was took weak in the 90's and 2000's when NATO was expanding and Belgrade was getting bombed to do anything. Russia was too weak to not be a threat, why bomb Belgrade then? Why expand NATO if not to reject Russia.

Yes, you can't pass an "anti-Israel" protest because that's the "new big thing". If you recall when the Ukraine war started, I couldn't go to the grocery store without seeing pro-Ukrainia/anti-Russian protests. Everything Russian was getting banned, even Russian cats. Don't see that happening to Israel, despite protests.

Gaza would get decimated? Israel is having trouble capturing and holding a small piece of land with like 10k guys. Plus the sea means that many countries could be able to deliver contraband to Gaza to support the fight should it leak. But it hasn't happened

Ah you weren't born, but speak authoritatively on matters you don't understand. Got it. The British, just do what the Americans tell them to do. But bombing Belgrade was none European business. I mean if we are talking warcrimes, should we talk about European warcrimes in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan? Should we start bombing Europe in response?

Who would be hard pressed if who turned on who? The point is this - the US acts like an imperial power - like Ancient Rome or even the British Empire - with bases and soldiers in far flung territories. These "allies" can mostly do what they want as long as they observe US Imperial policy.

The US security services felt embarrassed about the fiasco in Afghanistan and so were seeking any opportunity to "redeem" themselves, thus they "released proofs" and got lucky. 2021/2022, wasn't the first time Russia built up troops on their borders and then nothing happened. The Pentagon Papers seemed to indicate it was sheer luck on the part of the US intelligence to get it right this time lol

Fear of what though? If they didn't expand NATO, Russia would not attack. If they didn't supply Ukraine with arms and instead encouraged diplomacy (which even France and the UK admitted they didn't), Ukraine would be more willing to negotiate and not go and start a civil war in East Ukraine.
The pirate bay doesn't run in Sweden anymore. All three of its founders have been prosecuted and its Swedish servers have been seized.
Now it hops automated from provider to provider. Which means there're still active measures to seize the servers of whoever is hosting it now.
The last one in court was a reverse proxy provider in Norway I think.
As of Ski-hub. Sorry, my info is outdated. Until 2018 the hosting provider was Russian, but according to wikipedia after signing some copyright treaty Russia expelled it, which is a treaty Russia temporary ignored 4 years later as a reaction to western sanctions, which on itself isn't really that bad, but it doesn't really grand a lot of trust in Russia's regulatory stability to see a new treaty disappear within 4 years.
Also something I forgot to mention western propaganda focuses primary on Russian "cyber criminals"(unsuable hackers protected by the mighty hand of Russia). Russia only recently found a counter to that western propaganda: publishing their own "western cyber criminals" discoveries(latest Kaspary findings). For the record both parties speak the truth it's just that they use their channels to amplify the story that suits them.
Quoting: GuestAnnexing Sudentenland was 85 years ago. What does that have to do with Germany now that it warrants US spying, particularly spying on their Chancellors like Merkel?
Sorry, I misunderstood that one I thought you meant to comment on my WWII comment.
Western governments trust each other just barely and find spying less bad than military employment, so they all spy on each other until they become actively hostile. In that same period the Danish was spying on the US government. They actually accept the same behavior from others(as long there is no serious political tension). A dutch group of concerned civillians once uncovered an entire Russian spying operation and the dutch government just reacted with something like "yeah, irritating isn't it." Russia has attempted multiple assisinations within western borders and the heaviest they've reacted to that is sentencing one guy(not a diplomat) to prison.
Quoting: GuestAh you weren't born, but speak authoritatively on matters you don't understand. Got it. The British, just do what the Americans tell them to do. But bombing Belgrade was none European business. I mean if we are talking warcrimes, should we talk about European warcrimes in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan? Should we start bombing Europe in response?
It's why I cite sources in such cases.
Also that was my point they commited war crimes and didn't like the point. They didn't react to war crimes. That wouldn't be self serving.
Europe did and does commit tons of war crimes. It's not a moral paragon. I've been clear about that. They do things out of self interest.
"Should we start bombing Europe in response." That's exactly what Europe fears and why they react that way. It makes sense to Europe, but Europe doesn't want to be bombed, so Europe tries to project a threat.
Also the West has attacked very few countries as reaction to a confirmed war crime(the closest I can come up with is Iraq, but the "evidence" was fake so that doesn't count). Most of the time that is just sanctions if that even happens.

True the US acts like an imperial power, but it's acting like that far from its allies or under conditions controlled by them where they wouldn't wipe a tear if something happened there.
"who turns on who"
The US allies turn on the US if the US turns on its allies. Although you're right about most of them in their lack of power. France is Nuclear armed state, thus refuses to play a lot of ball in the NATO(refusing to submit to US command, maintaining its own nuclear weapon program. Also the moment the allies of US turn on it all its enemies will see this as weakness of the USA and than they find out that they've stored important equipment in safe places like Syria, Turkey and The South Chines/Japanese sea.

As to the US intelligence comment.
The point wasn't that they were such an amazing intelligence service. The point is that the rest of the West refused to act until they saw serious proof and even then reluctantly.

"fear of what"
A. Expanding NATO is really, really profitable. It causes an influx of cheap labor, food and military training terrains.
B. The greedy west wants these porfits and as long it believes it has the military power to do as such it will keep doing that.
C. This sometimes means they have to retaliate against a retaliating Russia.
In conclusion Russia is scary, but not "don't ever trigger" scary, so sometimes greed is stronger.

MONSTER HUNTER RISE adds new DRM that breaks it on Steam Deck (UPDATED)
22 Jan 2024 at 9:53 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: LoudTechieA westerner can sue a western government who's illegally spying on them and have a real chance of winning.
Uhhh . . . how real?
https://privacyfirst.nl/en/articles/lawsuit-against-dutch-state-against-illegal-data-espionage/ [External Link]
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/federal-court-rules-government-broke-the-law-by-spying-on-millions-of-americans-credits-edward-snowden/ [External Link]