Meanwhile scummy Amazon are lowering user privileges on their Kindle products, and by that I mean taking away user control on devices that you already own. See this analysis of the latest issue:

https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/index.php?title=Amazon_Kindle_removes_download_feature_of_purchased_books [External Link]

Have you taken away the ability to share links, Liam (seeing as I can't see the link button in comments any more)?

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The more games do this sort of thing, the less I'm willing to tolerate that type of game, and I vote with my cash, i.e. I avoid buying P2P games with anti-cheat. Prior to Steam offering Proton support of Windows titles, I also avoided buying any Windows titles and mostly bought native-Linux titles.

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Whenever you get conditions forced upon people, people will do their best to subvert those conditions. I've done it myself on occasion. e.g. My bank forcing me to pay in a certain amount per month to ensure I get access to specific benefits (so I juggle money in and out from another account). If I was an EA Developer, I'd make a meaningless update, taking zero effort, run the build job and upload the new, almost-identical version of the game (and probably call the update a performance update, or bug-fixing update).

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I liked the earlier version of Die in the Dungeon, in which I played hours of the demo. When the core game was radically altered in the new demo, I didn't like it as much.

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Nice bundle, grabbed a bunch of titles and used my 5% coupon for even more savings.

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Regarding the earlier comment about Linux phones not being ready to use as a daily driver, I feel that this isn't the case. Here's some of my experience on this:

Droidian, Ubuntu Touch, and SailfishOS each provide good interfaces for touchscreen phone use. All the basic functionality is available: Camera, Phone Calls, SMS Messaging, Internet Browsing, Media Players, Photo Gallery, Calendar, Contacts Manager, Local Weather, Ebook Readers, Calculator, and other basic software.

A lot of Android apps are just web-apps and can be replaced by engaging with a website rather than an app. As such you don't need to install certain Android apps to have access to that functionality.

But there is also something known as Waydroid. Waydroid can run Android (AOSP) inside a container on top of the Linux phone OS. This means you *can* install regular Android Apps onto a Linux phone (i.e. the OSes I listed above) and use most of them. For instance, I've installed the "Open Camera" Android App on Ubuntu Touch and Droidian, and then used that Android Camera App to take photos on a Linux phone. You won't be able to run every Android App like this, but plenty work just fine.

As such, I feel that this functionality is certainly good enough for many people to use as a daily driver (particularly if that person is already good at using Linux, on the desktop).

Oh, one more thing: Having Linux on a mobile phone gives you a lot of advantages compared to Android. You can use partitions how you'd like (e.g. SD cards), you can "rsync" files from your computer to your phone. You can "ssh" into your phone from your home network. You can run bash and python scripts, use the phone as a proper desktop (connected to a monitor over usb-c). You can run lots of desktop Linux software on the phone (e.g. desktop Thunderbird, desktop Firefox), or terminal Linux software (e.g. sshfs, nmap, tcpdump, wget).

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One of the main problems I see with Chromium-based browsers is Google leading the direction of the core programming. Recently, Google turned off Manifest version 2 Browser Extension Support inside Chromium/Chrome, and implemented their Manifest version 3 instead. With Manifest version 2, tracker and advert blocking extensions such as uBlock Origin, Ghostery, PrivacyBadger could work properly and block trackers and adverts. Now that Manifest version 3 is in place, these extensions are practically useless and all the adverts and tracking goes through unimpeded. So long personal privacy!

There are 'solutions' to this Manifest version 3 problem...

Use a Firefox or Firefox-based browser such as LibreWolf [External Link], WaterFox, Floorp [External Link], Mullvad browser [External Link]. Use Brave browser [External Link] which implements some tracker-blocking capabilities as part of the browser (rather than as an extension).

Also using DNS tracker blocking, e.g. NextDNS [External Link], Quad-9, Pi-Hole [External Link], AdGuard Home [External Link] (e.g. running on a Raspberry Pi).

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This device reminds me of the Nokia Linux mobile phones - The N900 [External Link] running Maemo Linux and the N9 [External Link] running Meego Linux. Those phones came out at approximately the same time as the first Android [External Link] and Apple phones. They were doing really well and a hit with users, and had capabilities above Android and Apple phones of that era. However Steve Elop (who used to work for Microsoft) was taken on at Nokia as the new CEO, and he pushed Windows phones as the prime directive. This split up the company, ruining Nokia going forward, and the wonderfully-capable Linux phones got abandoned. Windows phones ended up failing and competing poorly against Apple and Android devices. Nokia became a shell of its former self. A splinter-group of ex-Nokia staff put together the Jolla company and have Linux phones running their own SailfishOS [External Link] (but they are way behind the tech giants Apple and Google).

In recent years I have become better informed about the privacy invasions which Big Tech companies (Apple, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, etc) are inflicting on society. Apple and Google's phones are designed to snoop on users and collect loads of information. Each person gets profiled, targeted, and ultimately manipulated. I go out of my way to prevent data collection, to conserve my privacy. (There are lots of ways to do this, e.g. Using Firefox or Brave browser, using Ublock Origin tracker blocking, using privacy search engines [External Link]/not Google search, using Linux desktop, and using Degoogled Phones.)

Currently I run a selection of custom firmwares on Android phones. Some firmwares are replacing Android with Linux. Some firmwares replace 'stock' Android (as provided by the phone manufacturer) with AOSP firmwares (Android Open Source Project, the base operating system before Google adds their spying proprietary components).

Some Linux firmwares (that can be used on specific Android phones): Droidian [External Link], Ubuntu Touch [External Link], SailfishOS, PostmarketOS.

Some decent degoogled Android operating systems: GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, LineageOS [External Link], e/OS (E Foundation), DivestOS [External Link], LMODroid.

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Yeah, good titles. Got them all already.

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This demonstrates the gaming community placing value on traditional story-rich, micro-transaction-free, well-crafted content rather than the slop that the gaming industry tries to shove down customers' throats.

Gaming industry management are to blame. Rather than making "the best game they can" they focus on customer retention, invasive data telemetry feeding into analytics, and milking whales for extra money.

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