Having it open source, does not make it good. I think I’d prioritise making it fun, try to.make a profit, and then open sourcing it. I don’t think having it open source will help you sell copies… you might sell less. Make your money first, have a feasible business strategy, so you don’t go bust. Then try to keep the game alive vis open sourcing it.

Swing alignment to Evil. Prepare a Children of the Corn adventure, themed to fit the particular patron.

Due to its proprietary nature, finding software that can properly read those files can be tricky.

LibreOffice is the usual go-to for folks wanting an office suite, that respects privacy, and FOSS. It can read docx files, but it can mess up formatting. Still, for many it’s the preferred choice. It’s got the best reputation.

Now if formatting REALLY matters, take a look at OnlyOffice. It handles those MS formats so much better. It’s not a bad suite, but it’s hard to beat the good reputation Libreoffice has gained.

Each to their own preferences. Some of these sources disagree with each other, and that’s a good thing. The worst place to belong, is within an echo chamber. Always think for yourself, and try to understand where others are coming from (why they came to the conclusions they did).

As for Louis… honestly, I prefer his tempo. It feels more genuine, less like he’s putting on a show for the camera. In the tech world, take Craft Computing, LTT, or Jays2Cents as examples. All have gone on record to admitting to putting on a show, changing how they talk, etc, while on camera. If Louis is putting on a show, I gotta admit, I’m impressed. Hats off to the guy.

Personally, I like Techlore, NBTV, Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, Luis Rossmann, The Hated One, The PC Security Channel, ThioJoe, and (sometimes) Linux oriented channels like The Linux Experiment do some good privacy/security stuff too.

You might have better luck with Jellyfin, than Plex. Plex uses online authentication tools, which is used for not just user, but server management. In contrast, Jellyfin can be ran completely locally.

Now one thing to note is that neither solution will properly detect your media files properly. You’d need to manually input file details. Usually these servers would do a quick online search, to detect that your movie is what it is. You could import this data, but you’d need an internet connection to acquire it. If you do not mind all that busy work, then you should be fine.

Now the remote… honestly, no idea. I’m pretty sure Android TV has a button remapper app, which might help… Do modern Chromecasts use Android TV? I haven’t used them since their second generation. Best do some research yourself, or wait for another reply.

It applies to most business.

1. You give a positive face to the market you’re in (Game Pass, Phil Spencer, pro-dev vibe, etc).
2. You buy chunks of the market (Activ-Bliz-King is a massive chunk), while saying it’s good for the industry.
3. You squeeze the company of its IP, while bleeding the market dry of money. All of which kills, or at least hurts that market.

Right now, Micro$oft is in the Extend phase.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Yeah, YT is the last holdout for me. It’s literally the only Google service I willingly sign up for. I’ve tried Piped/Invidious, but they don’t match YTs quality.

any technical solution short of DRM is provably impractical and unworkable.

Don’t give them ideas.

Sadly, yes. A Proton team member on Reddit confirmed it a couple years back:

Folder/label names are visible to the server (for filters and other reasons) as are email metadata. Message and attachment contents are encrypted and not visible to the server.

https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/hxomoy/are_mail_folderstags_encrypted_or_private/fzc6wry/

Do note that this is ONLY true for Mail. Calendar, and Drive does encrypt folders/label names.

Tutanota. I used to use Proton, but they don’t encrypt folder names, which is a deal breaker. Tutanota does, and they’re also a privacy respecting, reputable, decent service.

Adguard Home. I find it to be more feature complete, compared to Pi-Hole. Nicer GUI, more options, built in DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS, better client controls & detection, more domain information, better domain list blocking, and so on.

I moved from NextDNS, to Adguard Home. All self hosted, and accessed with a reverse proxy.

Did you get this sorted? I know the following works on 11, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it worked on 10.

First unplug the Ethernet cable, and when it asks for WiFi, press “Shift + F10”. In the opened command prompt type “OOBE\BYPASSNRO”. This will make the installer go to the legacy OOBE (Out Of Box Experience). Finish setup, before finally connecting to the internet. Don’t worry you’re not doing anything dangerous. It’s a simple registry edit.

Other than the FairPhone, which you already mentioned, nothing really matches all criteria.

I’d give a nod to the Pixel line, though. Google already offers 5 years of software updates, and the next line is rumoured to get 7. Plus Google allows Custom ROM support, which makes it a fan favourite in the privacy community. Granted it’s not as repairable as the FairPhone, and it’s not as eco-friendly, but it’s decent enough.

It doesn’t really work like that.

They’re literally junk, that’s there to collect your data, while also sometimes charging you for the privilege. It’s snake oil. VPNs CAN help play geo-restricted games/content, and hide your IP from malicious gamers (eg: Dead by Daylight is known to leak your IP, to those you’re playing with), but beyond that… yeah, no. Any benefits you’re getting is placebo. If anything it’ll be worse, due to the added latency of hitting the VPN server, then going to the games server.

If you must use one, at least look at a VPN that’s privacy respecting. Something like ProtonVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe, or IVPN.

There’s a couple of ways to block it.

1. Via an application Firewall, which will run on your PC. Safing’s Portmaster works on both Linux and Windows. Objective-See’s LuLu is a good Mac option. Both of these tools are free and open source.

2. If you know Unity’s IPs, you could block it in your firewall. I’m guessing you do not. Though, with a little work, it can be done.

3. If you can’t do either, you could at the very least block it at the DNS level. This will stop the software getting those IPs. It doesn’t really work if the IPs are already baked into the software, but that is incredibly unlikely in games. A great configurable DNS provider is NextDNS. If you have the know how to self-host a Pi-Hole or Adguard Home are great options.

There’s also ways to analyse that traffic, which I won’t go into here.

Lying about collecting that data, because they do (and I block it). Not lying, but backtracking on everything else.

It’s one of the better options.

For a start, even if you run it stock, it’s somewhat on par with the iPhone (depending who you ask). You’re trusting one company with your data, Google. You’re not trusting Google AND Samsung, or Google AND Huawai. It’s just Google. Plus Google does offer good security, so your data/device is pretty secure. In comparison to Samsungs Knox… while better than a lot of other Android security stuff, is kinda bad.

Though, the real privacy win for the Pixel, is it DOES allow you to modify it. You can remove Google’s version of Android, and change to Calyx or Graphine OS. Both of which are fantastic options, that allow you to really lock things down.