Imagine “roko’s basilisk”, but extended into an entire philosophy. It’s the idea that “we” need to anything and everything to create the inevitable ultimate super-ai, as fast as possible. Climate change, wars, exploitation, suffering? None of that matters compared to the benefits humanity stands to gain when the ultimate super-ai goes online
I don’t think that has been the case for at least a full console generation, maybe more.
Look at the rise and fall of pre-order goodies to get a rough estimate of when publishers really, really wanted you to buy the game day 1 (and when it stopped mattering as much)
any sufficiently advanced incompetence (elon musk) is indistinguishable from malice
the DDG browser can setup a “fake vpn” tracking blocker for your entire phone. Last I checked certain apps were excluded by default as the tech is quite new and some apps don’t work right with it. It’ll then give you an overview of how many tracking attempts it blocks for each app.
I haven’t played in a few years but this is how I remember the system working: RDO matches people into separate lobbies based on what version of the game they’re running and this check is done by hashing one or more files in the install directory. By adding junk data to one of those files you more or less guarantee that you’ll only ever encounter other people who have the same junk data added. It’s basically the dark souls password system with extra steps.