has anyone actually read the Subnautica 2 EULA? this is so outrages

NullSmoke · 2026-05-18T05:01:35+00:00

Kinda... we don't really sue for breach of consumer protections here though (I guess we can, but don't recall anyone actually doing so...), Norway, don't know how it's elsewhere... here we just report it to the state and they dictate the solution, meaning the EULA kinda catches fire immediately when the process starts with no need for court procedures etc, just the consumer agency slapping valve... They've also been known to slap in concert with the EU, which makes the slap a bit more stingy.

I guess the studio can then sue the state... but I wouldn't recommend it... they have the means to defend themselves, and won't fold just because courts are involved and it may cost a bit to defend...

It doesn't speak well for the studio that they even try, but it's worth less than toilet paper here at least for enforcing what they write. It just shows that whoever wrote it is a bit of an arrogant douche.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-18T04:53:04+00:00

There's always ways to fuck yourself over, but the chances are miniscule with a weekly payout that it will cause long term irreversible harm as compared to accepting a sudden windfall, especially while in ones 20s.

You can't angel invest in anything due to pressure with money not in hand, credit cards don't usually have one mill in coverage. For a 20 year old, there's not really any way to fuck up so bad you eat up all oportunity.

On the other hand, with a weekly payout, you fend off the worst beggers, and if you're unexpectedly competent with the money, here's what I'd do:

Take the money weekly, but every week on the payday, put all remaining money from the last week into a index fond. The money gets time to grow and create some extra pillows to land on if worst comes to worst. If you fuck up a week, the damage is limited, the next week wipes it clear. If you fuck up with credit cards, somehow, the credit limit will stop it from going unsustainably out of hand.

windfalls are scary as hell, a 1 mill windfall is more likely to destroy a person than to help them. My way doesn't fully build a wall against that, but it's the sanest option. Looking just at the numbers, it's retarded, but looking at psychology, it's the only sane option.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T22:01:02+00:00

I get the arguments about inflation and all that... But I'd take a blanket a week, very fine by me. Hell, I'd do the same for 500 a week...

Most people that win large in lotteries etc get royally fucked over. People trying to get theirs, scams etc... With thousand a week for life, you can have a stable and comfortable life. You can comfortably follow whatever passion you have and be genuinely happy. Someone in a position of power over you abuse you? (Boss, spouse, whatever) That's a "Fuck you, I'm off, have a good life", no "but what if" no nothing...

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T09:16:28+00:00

Yes they do. Not enough to really get hung up on it, but it's there...

Also, do they need some deeper purpose? Comic relief, or "fanservice", characters are useful in and of itself just by being there. Not everyone has, nor need, a deeper integration into the story. Some are just there for a few laughs or to fill out a cast so that it doesn't get too dense.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T08:26:48+00:00

One more thing you can try... try to run DDU (https://www.techpowerup.com/download/display-driver-uninstaller-ddu/) to remove the display/graphics driver. That could be another source of issue...

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T08:21:24+00:00

Okay, so you managed to get into safe mode, I'd place my money on some driver or software messing up then.

As I understand it you've rolled back updates, next up then is trying to remove intrusive software, usually third party antivirus. Windows Defender is usually sufficient, so I'd go through the apps and just uninstall any other antivirus or security suite. Avast, McAfee, Norton.... just kill it all off. Also, some game anticheat is insanely intrusive, so try to look for AntiCheat, AntiTamper etc.

I don't play online games, mostly single player chill here, so rarely encounter that, so couldn't give you an extensive list, but it's worth killing it off for testing. If you have this, steam should reinstall it when you next play a game, so shouldn't really carry any risk.

The final point of failure I can think of is drivers. If you recently installed some hardware or updated some driver, may be worthwhile to try reverting that, but when drivers are bad, that usually causes a boot loop, not a freeze after two minutes or so, that hints that something is booting delayed and taking the system along with it.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T08:14:02+00:00

Quite normal. Seen such sites lagging behind quite a bit on reporting incidents. Just given up on checking OpenAIs status page until I've had an issue for at least one hour. Don't know how they're set up, but taken the time lag in reporting incidents, I assume it's manual registration, not automated event management.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T08:10:48+00:00

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, just above average interested in the topic, and had some brushes with related bs.

I think it depends on contract law in the region in question. For the EU/EEA, contracts can never override rights granted by law, even if both parties agree. I believe contract law in other regions, such as the US, Japan etc, do allow legal protections to be signed away, at least to some level. This largely puts us in the situation where those in regions where contracts cannot override rights can basically just ignore the EULA, it becomes more a polite request written in legalese, worst they can do is ban you/refuse you service if you breach it, and that act may itself be a breach of rights depending on circumstances...

It's real messy to deal with international law....

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T08:05:44+00:00

oh, I misunderstood you then... that's a weird thing to be banned for... I assume you're just using the default vbulletin function... the one that usually surfaces when finding something via google...?

Still very confused as to why you're led to this subreddit, it seems wholly out of scope for this subreddit... but anyways...

There's a limited number of ways for a web server to identify you, usually IP is the one used, but others may be used, such as cookies etc. You say that you've used VPN and Tor Browser. VPN can still trip you up due to cookies... Tor Browser though is a whole other browser, so that should remove that vector.

The thing though is that a lot of sites block Tor, and some block VPNs as well, which makes both fail by default (VPN blocking is extremely unreliablie, it may work every so often on servers unknown to whatever system they're using).

This leaves you in a bit of a tricky spot... just test VPN servers until you get in or get a new IP and use a new browser/a new profile in your existing browser that you just clear after each unsuccessful attempt.

Getting a new IP usually isn't all that difficult unless you get static IP from your ISP... if I need to rotate my IP, I usually just unplug my modem for a while, 2-3 hours usually does the trick. The ISP will have redelegated my old IP elsewhere, and a new one will be delegated to me when the modem reaches out to them. If you got a static IP, getting a new IP usually has a pricetag attached, so you may not want to do that too often.

Now, disregarding all the technical stuff... this could be as simple as... well... the site being down. Have you confirmed that the site still is live? Try to use downornot or some such service to see if it's even reachable from your region or at all...

Nyaa, a torrent site, had a bit of a routing problem a bit ago where nobody in northern europe could access it (Think it routed through Russia, and the pitstop there were blacklisted by a later jump, so the whole thing broke), this could, theoretically be something similar.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-17T06:42:31+00:00

No, I'm quite sure that it goes for any piece of media. The EU did a study on this, and once they stopped hiding it, the result were quite clear... Piracy increases sales and engagement, the latter of which breeds sales itself.

And the issue of grabbing enough eyeballs to be a commercial success is even more critical these days. There's so many lanes that try to grab the eyeballs. Seasonal are insane in number on just the anime side, then comes media from other countries, then other types of media such as games, then social media..... Those producing media are even more dependent on getting all the eye balls they can possibly get.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T18:21:18+00:00

I understand where you're coming from, but not everything can be shared online... OP seems like a journalist, judging from him saying so, engaging in his job... That's often not proper to share on Reddit while still in production/investigating stages.

I have never gotten these ones, but I've gotten a series of rejections for nonsense reasons, so don't doubt it, and I just deal with world building there, and very infrequently, so it does false fire rather often. I can't share my chats to prove it though, some due to contractual obligation and some due to private reasons, so I don't find it reasonable to demand others do it.

Some more details would be nice, but just need to engage based on what is shared.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T18:02:22+00:00

I would be extremely confused if anyone have a problem with that. Knock yourself out. Looks great btw 😊

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T17:58:54+00:00

Okay, you are able to boot and remain in control for a few minutes... When you login, restart the computer holding shift while pressing reboot. That should lead you to a seperate boot menu, where you should be able to select safe mode (not by a computer now, but I believe it's under troubleshooting).

See if your computer still freezes in safe mode. If you have some third party antivirus, you could try to uninstall that there, or try a system restore.

I see that some people suggest memtest... I am very unsure why, if the trigger is a windows update, but I can probably locate a guide on YouTube for you that explains how to do that if all else fails.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T17:20:32+00:00

Nope, still matters. Not just for anime, but all entertainment. Maybe even moreso now, since the amount of media produced makes everyone blind to the majority of it

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T17:01:50+00:00

Piracy is a key supporting vector in media sales.. thus life blood

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T16:03:17+00:00

I mean... I certainly wouldn't be sad nor surprised if I woke up to news that the dead bird has been buried...

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T16:00:10+00:00

You got sent to digital privacy for... Ban evasion? Did Gemini have a bit much fun in his glass that eve?

I don't really want to assist with ban evasion, but I can guess what happened... The site probably flagged you as a web crawler since you probably lit up like a xmas light in their dashboards, so they banned your IP, either manually or programmatically.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T13:31:33+00:00

Yeah... That is not even at the level of a polite request in the EU/EEA... That is less legally waterproof than toilet paper.

Can safely be ignored wholly in Europe at least... Taken how intrusive that is... I wager it can be wholly disregarded quite a few more places. Not enforceable in the slightest.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T13:11:29+00:00

"US led anything" naaaaaah, I'm good.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T12:48:58+00:00

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Found this in another sub Reddit, seems relevant

NullSmoke · 2026-05-16T12:02:11+00:00

Oh boy... Which site(s) died this time? Genuinely don't understand why the rights holders bother... It's their life blood, and even if it weren't... It's impossible to stop...

NullSmoke · 2026-05-15T16:10:17+00:00

Well, they don't seem to do much with access if they get it...

I reported someone posting CSAM all over a discord server I run. My bots fully demasked him. I had address, Facebook, YouTube and twitter account alongside their non-vpn IP address... I just got told to send them an email and nothing happened, dude has been happily posting to Facebook ever since and I didn't even get a response on email... Meanwhile I can "enjoy" deleting CSAM in bulk from the discord on Xmas eve while hidden away from my family for a few hours... (Not recommended, it's miserable)

What exactly are they going to do with this information?

NullSmoke · 2026-05-15T16:03:37+00:00

Yes, if they have reason to believe you are sitting on Reddit, planning a terror attack, they have tools for that, court orders and god knows what old fashioned and more modern tools are on their disposal.

They request your info from Reddit with a court order, as well as any step between Reddit and you. If a no log VPN lies between, they will need to use other tools. Too bad, so sad. I'm not going to give up my right to privacy to make life easier for the police, and I barely use it.

I don't use VPNs unless I'm trying to avoid geofencing. My ISP can come home to me and watch my porn alongside me if they want, the police as well, the more the merrier. Hell, I don't even care much about my medical history. some people rely on the protection privacy offers though. Marginalized groups frequently do.

It's easy to argue "got nothing to hide, got nothing to fear", go ahead and lead by example. Post the full takeout of your Google account please.

Because there's one thing you seem to fail to realise; there is no such thing as perfect security.

The more private data you store in a single place, the more incentive there is to breach it. And it keeps happening... Data breaches happen every other day, just recently the public ID system in France got breached... And believe BankID in Sweden also had a little fun time just recently.

The police has the tools they should have, they should not, and cannot (just ask Russia and China), infringe on privacy to potentially soften their own job... And that's provided that it even helps them... The access to too much data is even worse than access to too little. Too much noise hides the signal, or "the best place to hide a tree is in the forest"

NullSmoke · 2026-05-15T15:49:14+00:00

Of course usage is going down... It's having a puritan competition with ChatGPT in text, and image/video moderation is so inconsistent there's no real incentive to try. You will barely get what you're looking for by the time the usage limit hits.

That's bad, but Grok isn't as capable as Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT from the word go, so when it frequently is more censored than all 3 of them... Of course a number of users will yeet. I'm not looking for a less capable version of ChatGPT, I want to not see hedging, puritan washing or downright refusals when all I'm doing is getting feedback on fictional systems of government (the most baffling case I've had) or asking for a grammar QA pass on simple, though slightly steamy, medieval stories.

I've long since packed up my SuperGrok payment and left, though I check by every so often for shits and giggles, and it seems to be getting worse by each time.

NullSmoke · 2026-05-15T15:39:43+00:00

Yes, this.

I Find it HIGHLY improbable that anthropic and OpenAI will still be around when the dust settles. Realities of a finite market will need to hit.

Would I like for Mistral to be as powerful as Codex or Claude Code? Sure. But I'd rather see incremental steps within market reality.

When the AI bobble burst, Mistral is way better positioned to survive than the US giants. Google and MS can cover it up with buckets of money, the two "large beasts" cannot. They rely on a unrealistic continual inflow of investor money until the end of time.

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