Chozo

And they say that a HEEEEERO COULD SAVE US

Yep. Just normal, AliBaba sunglasses.

That’s because Reddit bans VPN IP addresses. You still have an IP address when using a VPN, and VPN IPs aren’t exactly secret information. Reddit blocks all the VPNs they know of with an ever-updating blacklist.

VPNs prevent the site from attaching an IP address to the site visit

While this is a popular selling point that VPN providers like to advertise, it’s pretty misleading in terms of what this actually means with regards to tracking. Realistically, this does almost nothing to prevent sites from tracking you. They don’t see you at your home IP as “John Smith” and see you on your VPN as “Hans Schneider”, instead they see you at your home IP as “John Smith” and on your VPN as “still John Smith, but either traveling in Germany or using a European VPN”.

Advertisers have tens of thousands of individual data points on nearly every single person who uses the internet at all for any purpose. All a VPN does is obfuscate ONE data point. That’s less than 1% effectiveness at hiding your identity from advertisers. A VPN does basically nothing against all the other fingerprinting methods advertisers have.

Think of using a VPN like speaking into a walkie-talkie: your voice comes out at a different location, but if the person on the other end already knows what your voice sounds like, then they still know who you are, just not necessarily where you are. Unless you’re taking other efforts to mask your voice, the walkie-talkie isn’t protecting your identity in any way. Likewise with a VPN, if you go to the same sites from the same devices and log into the same accounts and otherwise engage in the same online behavior, the VPN is only hiding where you are, but it’s still trivially easy for an advertiser to determine who you are.

This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, because VPN providers harp on this idea so hard in their advertisements that it tricks people into thinking VPNs are capable of things that they just simply are not.

The problem is that reddit and others can instantaneously put your years-long effort behind a paywall. I’m not joking. Look at these:

Those aren’t paywalls.

meanwhile i’m using VPNs in browser’s incognito mode to not be tracked

That’s not what a VPN or incognito modes do.

Reddit sucks for a number of reasons, but your internet literacy also kinda sucks.

They email me a new puzzle every single day. Like, fuck off with that shit, you are a job board and nothing more, start fucking acting like one.

Yeah, I was gonna say, that’s like a single Netflix subscription for the year these days. That’s not a lot at all.

This has Ken M energy and I love it.

It’s a moot point when the disc, alone, does not guarantee a playable game.

I want to be mad about this, but I own a PS5 with a disc drive and dozens of games, and none of them are physical. I can’t run the game off the disc and still need the available storage space to run it (and often doesn’t contain a full/completed version of the game), so the disc is just an extra step that gets in the way.

It’s like this every time a new GTA comes out.

You know that even if you paid that ridiculous amount, it still wouldn’t be the last time they try to get money out of you, either.

I just noticed it has a SID chip for ringtones. I’m sold.

Or maybe it’s because “audiophile-grade” isn’t an actual thing.

What do you need 5G for with a phone like this, though? It’s explicitly not a media-consumption device.

Where will you take those goalposts next?

^ That was rhetorical.

It’ll sound like a low rumbling of bubble wrap shifting across the lands.

Oh, so now we’re at the “pachinko isn’t gambling because you have to go across the street to get cash for your prizes” argument. Knew we’d eventually get there.

You see, in Japan, pachinko parlors are “technically” not gambling because you exchange your winnings for cheap toys, similar to exchanging tickets at the Chuck E Cheese counter. Except there’s a store directly across the street from the pachinko parlor that buys those toys for, well wouldn’t you know it, the exact amount of your winnings!

And since it’s “not gambling” in the eyes of the law, it’s not damaging, right?

https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article-abstract/49/suppl_1/i17/105541

Conclusion. This study revealed that the prevalence of pathological gambling, especially among men, was much higher in Japan than in other countries. Pachinko was very popular and was strongly suggested to have contributed to this heightened prevalence.

Oof.

Yes, it’s still gambling even if you have to access a grey market to obtain fiat currency. Why? Because obtaining fiat currency isn’t a defining factor of gambling.

Where will you take those goalposts next?

If it’s gambling, loot boxes should be items of value, redeemable for cash, correct? And Valve should be the one providing that cash, as they are the child casino, correct?

Yes, that’s literally how the Steam marketplace works. Where am I losing you?

Holy shit, Gabe’s really got you by the balls, eh. We’ve reached the “actually lootboxes aren’t gambling” arc.

Insane, the lengths some will go to defend shitty behavior from shitty billionaires.