Yes, but they are almost never exercised unless it involves legal requirements - Valve’s ideals are very much “We will not bother anyone unless we have to”, which is nice for people who want to forge spaces but sucks when people show up to be shitheads.
Can’t help a whole lot of people as a dead person.
Valve’s hands-off philosophy with almost all of their social components is one of those massive double-edged swords, as anyone who trades steam items will tell you as well.
It allows anyone to take charge in participation, but that’s EVERYONE, including those who enjoy belittling others, which sucks.
There is a rational reason for it - some types of software expect Ubuntu during their installation and usage (especially game server panels for some reason), and I’d imagine they wouldn’t work properly if Mint was closer to Debian than Ubuntu.
I’ve found Mint to be more stable compared to my Ubuntu installations because the Mint team doesn’t include the fluff and bad design decisions when making releases.
(Like never requiring snap)
The way anti-fingerprinting techniques work is by making you as much of a background digital character as possible. A privacy conscious user spoofing location and network traffic data on AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile is going to be far less likely to be singled out compared to customers on some bespoke cell network.
You should try to fake your traffic on a standard phone network (Using something like GrapheneOS with more granular control) to simply appear like another faceless data point rather than a “paranoid privacy user who bought this subscription for the privacy people”, because that traffic will raise eyebrows much quicker.
Ahead of the curve, never bought one :3
If you want my two cents, Mint’s default Desktop Environment (Cinnamon) is far more windows-like compared to Ubuntu, and Mint includes more quality of life applications for less tech savvy people compared to Ubuntu out of the box. (Mainly graphical apps for updates, backups, disk management, etc…)
I first tried Ubuntu when I was starting my Linux journey, but it didn’t really click until I used Mint. Save yourself some pain and go for Mint first :)
Edit: Also, Ubuntu contains ads for things like their “Ubuntu Pro” update service, and they’re known to commit some tomfuckery when it comes to installing apps and compatibility (see Snap Controversy)
The feds have already pulled a similar stunt with another manufacturer+software combo. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield#Distribution_and_usage)
The only thing that makes this smell legit is the fact that it is a provider and probably only eSIMs. But even then, this is not very good opsec to be deliberately using a marketed product that will likely have an identifier for their cell traffic. Graphene works as well as it does because it runs of pre-existing hardware to be more inconspicuous.
Could be a honeypot.
A removable physical or electronic SIM on a system that has full control of inbound or outbound traffic (linux phone) would still be a whole lot better than nothing. Imagine having a switch to reliably sever any heartbeat signals between the tower and the device at any time.
I’ll do you one better. Murders have been committed using data purchased from brokers: https://www.wired.com/story/minnesota-lawmaker-shootings-people-search-data-brokers/
GrapheneOS already runs google play services in a sandbox that doesn’t have core access to the device’s functionality (you can lie about giving apps storage access or location data, for example), and because you already have alternatives to ad-based services (CoMaps, Thunderbird, etc…) you should be safe from telemetry often hidden inside of popular apps like Google Maps.
Nothing’s bulletproof, of course, but the difference with GrapheneOS is that you can see what’s going on, grant permissions selectively to certain apps, or opt out entirely by only installing F-droid apps or using Graphene’s FOSS suite. You don’t have pre-baked telemetry at all, so nothing for them to harvest.
:rofl: why would they? All that is already for sale, pally. Find a data broker, fork over twenty bucks, and all that info is fair game. Hell, fire up a TOR client, find a data breach that contains your device’s MAC address or static IP, pay five or ten bucks, and same deal, but now I can drain your credit card.
Don’t like it? Well the data comes from somewhere, unregulated floodgates of data collection to be bought, resold and scrutinized (or stolen). Nothing to hide, eh?
I’ve been hooked on The Finals for my destruction shooter fix, since the development team (Embark Studios) is mostly composed of ex-DICE employees. Their upcoming game Arc Raiders also looks pretty good.
Edit: typo fix
Fair, EA abandonware is pretty good. Anything currently actively being developed (2010s onward) is not worth playing.
It’s crossplay, so it’s harder to directly estimate, but using SteamDB (so not counting being matchmade with console players) roughly 15-20k playing at any given time.
Hop on the finals, my man, it’s made by ex-DICE employees.
Haven’t bought an EA game ever. I think I’m already ahead of the curve XD
Their handheld? I think it’ll sell worse than the steamdeck clones.