I remember buying cartridges and discs, being stupidly excited when I learned about modchips and CFWs and my first programming adventure was automating the conversion of PS1 discs to PSP PBPs to play my favorites on the go - POPstation and PALNinja, won't forget those names ever x)
Nowadays? You aquire a license to a timed product that eventually evaporates and leaves behind a memory, that you will never be able to share with the next generation.
You end up buying into hype because you are (made) unable to see the alternatives - namely, the indies and small-scale studios, because certain players simply play with an unfair advantage.
Most of gaming is now an "opportunity" - a revenue opportunity, a calculated business descision based off stats and metrics...not passion and the desire to make something that sticks. Soulless, heartless, cobbled together and these days partially AI generated crap floods storefronts - and because newer generations literally do not know better, they are gobbled up and bought. Pokémon ZA, the new CoD BO, the yearly FiFa. You can probably think of a few yourself also.
This, together with how the internet was one escapism in itself, is the reason for my pure "digital depression".
And I feel entirely, utterly and most definitively powerless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_YSYDUUZQ8
And now, add ontop the recent GrapheneOS posts; France is trying their damndest, and they are a four hour drive away from me. Anti-Privacy meassures are becoming more vulgar and, dare I say, "open and direct". It's starting to not be hidden behind "Fight terrorists!" or "Save the children!" acts anymore; its blatant, obvious, on the nose. And the only people profiting from it are either rich people who will become richer, or the people who have been playing unfair from the getgo anyway; they just get more or other opportunities. A scammer isn't affected or hurt by those laws - but someone who just wishes to protect themselves a little, is.
Working in IT has given me both the blessing and curse of "knowing what's up". I know how the whole stack from the low-level hardware to the high-level software is composed, how things scale in a network or even across a wide area network via clouds - and also, how those networks tie into applications on end-users.
Everything from how device manufacturers directly control device access through binary, proprietary blobs that are loaded as firmware by the kernel and executed verbatim at the most volunerable layer to how "verified and secure" applications on 1st party app stores are actually loaded with additional software to harvest and spy on data and usage. Perhaps a service like Posthog was not ment to be used for such, but any service like it that can send performance or usage metrics, behavioural patterns or other forms of telemetry, quietly runs without the end-user seing it. Because why would they pop a debugger, gawk at a tcpdump output or, heaven forbid, run a firewall in their network that can do real-time traffic analysis? ISPs give them a modem, access point, router and gateway in one device and make setup seamless; but actually put literal black boxes into customer homes. Look at all the CVEs hitting those devices these days - or, how Google kept collecting logs and telemetry from disabled Nest devices. Sure, too unsafe to connect to the internet, but safe enough to still act as a data collection agent; a rich man's Telegraf alternative ((Telegraf = metrics collector, Go, by InfluxData)).
I want to change the world but I can't: I have to work, to pay my rent, to pay my internet, to be able to have a bed so I can go to work. So I can buy food and utilities so I can survive, so I can go to work.
This system sucks, is unbalanced and urgently needs a rebalance patch but... that will never happen.
Crazy, hot take. At the rate things are going here, I am convinced that we may become even more "aggressive" than China. And they have the whole GFW (which, at least I heared, was built by the US company CISCO, ironically enough - however, that's really just heresay).
I really don't know where we're headed - I am both curious (and morbidly so...) and also scared. After all, I used to run a furry community, where the number ONE aspect was to interact and socialize with people under pseudonyms, different names and different settings to escape from the real world to either overcome mental challenges or to just "have a different live for a little while". Sure, there are furries I wish I could say a few things to...and offer them a knuckle sandwhich while I am at it... but I remember that community, that was the first to accept me and my nerdy, introvertedness, very fondly.
And this is dying. Hard.
I wonder, where is the next escape after the previous places have been "closed down"? The internet was one, gaming was another, the anonymity of protecting your privacy was also one. But they are being destroyed one piece at a time, one bill at a time, one software update a day.
Years ago I joked that Japan was probably the safest place because they had a habbit of keeping to themselves and being more focused on national interests. Well that sure aged like ... something.
I just don't want to feel all this pressure and stress anymore. Pressure from having a *very* broad understanding of the whole tech-stack behind most of this and stress from constantly keeping my eyes out and virtually double-taking whenever I move. Should I create this account? - Ah, let me grab an alias, and a generated password, and store it in my password manager. Should I put my whole network on a VPN? - Well this will mean I pay in speed and quality, and some online games won't work anymore so I have to add a whitelist...but what if that whitelist ends up being leaky? Should I invest more in "hidden services" or "eepsites"? - Well sure, but doing that via my phone is a pain in the arse and there is not really a convenient way of finding things "just like that".
You see? Even I want convenience, but I - and others - have to pay for it. And this constant stress of evaluating options, pros and cons and keeping up with the news to properly disable AI stuff and avoid tracking, keeping the tracker-blocking-enabled software like Piped and Brave updated as much as I can whilst also being concious which websites I randomly visit or browse by and shoeing every cookie banner whilst knowing full well that it takes but a simple `Cookie: ...` header.
When I was a kid and played Drakengard or Crash Bandicoot, all I worried about was keeping my discs in order and clean, my controllers hygienic and ensuring the cables didn't get messed up. When carrying my Gameboy, I only had one or two games with me. When syncing music to my MP3 player or iPod, I had to deliberately pick and choose what went on there. When I had a PSP, my universe was as big as my MemoryStick Pro Duo (yep, I remember that name still). But when I got home from school or a hospital trip, I would just dash out of the house, to my friend and we would either LARP or talk random crap, play cards or shared a controller for some Sly Cooper. Or perhaps we grabbed our Beyblades and had fun.
Yeah... having fun... Here I am installing BastilleBSD with Tor, I2Pd, Route-DNS (or ControlD; haven't decided yet), paying my ass out for homelab hardware to selfhost anything from Audiobookshelf to Timelineize and beyond to claw back my privacy, independence and alike.
I am sad. Often lonely. Sometimes full of desires (at times just to have someone here to talk, other times just to have the fun bedtime things others have and at other times all I want is to escape or immerse myself somewhere or in something).
A psychic wreck, fucked in the brain by the stress and pressure with no cure in sight.
...vent over.
When I finish my OPNSense based setup, I plan to document i in a project and make a guide for it. And it has... a perculiar name that hasn't left me the moment it got in my head:
Good bye, internet.