I think it will greatly depend on: 1. What device it is and who the manufacturer is 2. The country where it came from 3. The country it is currently in

Those 3 things will play a big role in how this all plays out.

A company like Valve may not behave like Nintendo would for a warranty claim like this. The European Union may have strict laws that protect customers regardless where the device was bought, if it’s there and it’s sold there, it’s treated like it was bought there (not saying that is how it is or Valve is better than Nintendo for these; just possibilities).

I thought like you and looked into setting up Tor to cover all outgoing connections, and it seemed possible last I checked years ago, but the connections are too slow for it to make any real sense to replace why most people opt for a VPN.

Your computer is hopping through multiple computers to create a hopefully secure tunnel that hides your true identity over Tor.

But when you think of using this for downloading something like a torrent, your speed is cut by every connection in this layered network. Your speeds are lowered just because it’s having to go from you in the Netherlands, connecting to some computer in Egypt, connecting to some computer in Idaho, US, and then connecting to the file’s location in the UK. This is also not taking into account the different speeds of each connection, where your connection may be a Gb in speed at home, but Idaho’s connection may be 100 Kb speed which contributes to a much slower download.

Whereas a VPN connects you from the Netherlands to a server, maybe even one in the Netherlands, and then to the UK. This server almost always has a guaranteed high speed attached to it and is always available to you at your choosing and minimizes the speed drop due to hopping.

Tor was designed mainly for information to be shared in as anonymized of a possibility as possible. Hence why it’s always connected to a web browser and not acts as a service that covers all outgoing and incoming connections for your entire computer. It is best used for someone in a restrictive place like North Korea to write up a news article or blog post to share text quickly and securely. The added benefit is that it reduces the leakage of identity of you because you’re not paying for it with something that can tie back to you. And some Tor browsers are portable, so there’s no need to go through the process of installation which can be restrictive or throw a red flag.

It’s generally seen as discourteous to use Tor for downloading large files as well because you’re negatively impacting the network for others who rely on this service by further lowering the speed of the connection. And many people know whistleblowers use Tor, so it can be a literal life and death situation for someone who depends on as fast of a connection over Tor than you to get some free movies.

A VPN is great when you need a specific location too. When you use it for something like Netflix, you’re using it because Netflix blocked your region from watching a specific show, usually. So Netflix won’t let you see Rick and Morty in the Netherlands, but they will show it to someone in the UK. If you use Tor, never mind the slow, awful performance of such a stream, you’re not guaranteed to get a connection to the UK in Tor. Tor is randomly deciding how to route your connection for you. You may come out the other end in the US and have an even more restrictive catalogue to choose from.

If I’m reporting on something the US government is doing, I may want people to know I’m in the US, but not know my actual location, so I’m coming from South Carolina but I’ll make it look like I’m in New York instead. Or I may want to throw someone off entirely and the VPN will ensure I’m choosing something way off course like a server in South Africa. Something I specifically know I am choosing and not depending on a random hop at the service’s choice.

The other important part of this are the computers in between your connection. It’s not a secret that various American alphabet agencies have Tor nodes set up. You may be unlucky enough one day to have the entry and exit nodes in your connection be FBI computers capturing everything about your connection for that day and you’d not necessarily know it. But you get a VPN that’s been around for years and has an established track record in another country where the US is unlikely to be and you can be a little more assured that your information is safe from US authorities. Mostly safe, but the risk is still there in some capacity, to be accurate.

Edit: made a few corrections for accuracy sake

Hopefully they get hit with a massive lawsuit and lose 😊

Just another reason I don’t want another console. Fuck these assholes.

My hype was already at a low for GTA VI and I found that it could get lower.

I don’t think anyone can give you an answer yet since the game has not officially released so no one has played to say whether it’s a good game or not, let alone if it’s worth the price they want.

A VPN is kind of like sending a letter through the post office using someone else’s address. Like if you put the grocery store’s address on it and then stuck it in with their outgoing mail.

It gets your letter there and the post office doesn’t know your actual address, they think it came from the grocery store. Likewise, the person receiving your letter thinks it came from the grocery store too.

And the VPN handles it in reverse by taking a letter from that person and even though it gets to the grocery store, it gets delivered directly to you and no one else except you and the grocery store know that’s not actually your real address.

For privacy, this is great at protecting you from websites you don’t want knowing your real IP address which can reveal things like your exact location in the world, say Facebook. You want to use Facebook to talk to granny but you don’t want Facebook knowing your real public IP.

Some people also use them for tricking websites into thinking they are elsewhere. When you subscribe to a VPN service, they often show you different servers around the world and you can choose to appear like you’re in the UK even though you’re in the US. A site like Netflix may show Rick and Morty only to UK residents so you use a VPN to trick them into showing you shows like that.

Starfield. I mean, I didn’t really, really enjoy it, but it was fun to me. It has issues I can’t overlook, like wish we had more factions and more NPC settlements. Player created settlements do not fill that void no matter what they add to the game. Hundreds of systems and only like 5/6 of them have major settlements that you can visit for actual quests. Aligning with the pirates is cool but then you’re only left with the Spacers as the only true enemy faction which sucks. I hate going to some world and there being friendly pirates. I wanted a firefight, not walk around and hear NPCs talk about being tough.

Bonus is Crackdown, the newest one with Terry Crews. I’m a big fan of the first game and semi liked the second, but the newest felt like a better return to the original without the dumb zombie invasion. Wish we had more gangs and all that. But open world mayhem as a supercharged cop is so much fun to me that I still go back and play the original in an emulator.

Hell no, fuck Windows 10 too. It’s what started a lot of the bullshit we’re dealing with today.

I do too, but even with it disabled, I still don’t open some messages.

Just opening it is enough even if the other person doesn’t know you did.

OP is referring to a “girl” who is “fit” and is known to “repack” things.

If you still don’t know, Google the words in quotes.

Is there a link on an official government website for this? Anyone can create one of these Microsoft questionnaires so it’s important people know this is legitimate especially since this is just asking for personal information

We should for better privacy. But like most things, it’s the convenience that stops most of us.

They mention these may not work and a solution

(Some people have issue connecting. LEMON is investigating. For now, use Firefox or change your DNS server)

It looks like they’re no longer updating it and directing people to Lemon now over at Link: lemon-manuals.la or lemon-manuals.org.ua

Sometimes, but sometimes it’s the opposite.

I’ve had a lot of comments about me being unattractive. But I remember one woman at work many years ago who told my friend she would fuck me and that is something I remind myself of when I think I’m unattractive.

Plex was good for music for me until it started acting weirdly a few months ago. It started scanning my library nonstop and running my hard drives on full speed for days before I eventually caught it.

I was told it was the agent from Plex but changing that out didn’t fix the issue so I moved my stuff off there and have been working with Navidrome instead.

I have tried it but having Plex handle the out-of-home routing for me securely is a great feature Jellyfin doesn’t have but doesn’t for obvious reasons and I justify that as why I pay Plex. I have thoughts and better knowledge now about how to properly implement it, but I’m not sure I want to rebuild my current setup that just works with very minimal upkeep.

That and I am on someone else’s Plex server who updates it much more than I do. Mine just supplements theirs with stuff they don’t have and one-offs I’ve wanted and found. I’d still be using Plex even if I did rebuild with Jellyfin today.

But if these price increases keep coming, I may make the switch. It’s tempting to shell out the money for the lifetime membership, but I don’t have faith in companies, including Plex, to keep up their end of the deal on these things.

Mac still has it. You may have to specifically enable it but my MacBook has it (just got a new M5 2026 model MacBook Pro a few weeks ago that does it when I turn it on; I restored from a Time Machine backup so it may have carried over from my previous MacBook). In Windows, on Windows 10 and 11, you had to enable it too. I used to enable it because I enjoyed hearing it on start.

Which is funny because I do use Mint and can confirm that one has it too because I hear it when turning on my gaming PC.

Well he’s wrong because all console games eventually come to PC one way or another. He’s just ensuring they won’t be coming first under their control.

With situations like this, I’ve found it best to switch to another OS and try their disk format utility. Sometimes I’ve had this issue on Linux and fixed it on Windows, issue on Windows and fixed on Linux, issue on Windows and fixed on macOS, etc.

If you have another computer other than Windows, give it a shot. On Linux, try gparted and if on macOS, try Disk Utility.

Try formatting to any format and then try formatting to your desired format. You may find that it works that way.