I’d imagine it’s a way to sift normal users that might turn into power users, so they stay in Google’s controlled environment. Or, since apparently Google can modify programs in the Play Store if they so desire, maybe it’s a way to increase the chance the user will keep using approved backdoors/tojans/spywares. Either way, I can’t recommend enough for people to use vanilla phones, and have some cheap, second hand one just for stuff you can’t use without Google Play.

Just checked it.

For the empty spaces in the carousel, you could use this:

And the platform_specific_tag is what appears in their links when you open their pages and that, from what I can observe, is specific to where they activate in.

For example, in Jurassic World Evolution and Electrician Simulator, the tag is the epic/ part of the link.

For Overcooked 2 and The Outer Worlds, it’s gog/.

And though it should work without the /, maybe better keep it, as the lack thereof may trigger false positives, like if Legacy of Kain for GOG is available, but you block legacy results in case you want nothing from Legacy Games, you won’t see Legacy of Kain due to its name appearing in the link.

I usually go directly to https://gaming.amazon.com/home?filter=Game so I’ll need to check the all tab too.

Maybe this?

It’s the filter that is the least dependent on div blocks’ structure that I can think, and unless Amazon changes either (or both) their links format and how they list stuff, at most I think you’d need to change the tw-block part every once in a while, as such bigger sites seem to change the divs’ names some times.

None - all are multi-platform.

Deep Down Dungeons, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Quest of Dungeons and Tyrant’s Blessing are turb-based RPGs, and Tyrant’s Blessing specifically is a tactical RPG.

My recommendations:

• Anodyne (Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets)
• Chloe Playtime (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Codemancer (Itchio | Itchio)
• Dandara (Google Play)
• Deep Down Dungeons (Google Play)
• Defense Zone 2 (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Downwell (Google Play)
• Final Fantasy VI (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Final Fantasy VII (Google Play)
• Ittle Dew (Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets)
• Jack Quest (Google Play)
• Lost in Dungeon (Google Play | Itchio)
• LYNE (Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets | Itchio)
• Metal Slug (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Metal Slug 2 (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Metal Slug 3 (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Metal Slug 4 (Google Play)
• Metal Slug X (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Quest of Dungeons (Amazon Appstore | Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets | Itchio)
• Tallowmere (Google Play | Itchio | Steam (free DLC for paid game; comes with an APK))
• The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince (Google Play)
• Tyrant’s Blessing (Google Play)
• VVVVVV (Google Play | Itchio | GitHub (though code is FOSS, assets aren’t and you get from the paid version))

So untrustworthy company is even more centralizing now?

Sadly I couldn’t think of a better way yet. 😔

Though not due to piracy, I also end up with a lot of repeated, redundant and/or unwanted files, so I’m often having to delete them.

Not ideal, but what I do is to load all musics onto VLC, open the list view (Ctrl L on Linux), let the list fully load, sort by song name and check what appears repeated or that I don’t want for other reasons. It also helps if the songs are metadata-rich, such as the ones bought from Bandcamp and ITunes (not Apple Music), so it’s easier to differentiate them (given this community, I have no clue how/where from yours are). And lastly, there’s a little plugin I found a while back that helps a bunch, vlc-delete, which adds the option to delete the currently playing file, and that, at least in the Linux version, benefits from motor memory since it can be executed with a quick succession of 2 Alt shortcuts.

But what if you try to navigate through the archived pages? The lack of direct links is something that also happens in some Microsoft pages, but some times Internet Archive manages to archive such pages anyways.

Not familiar with LG’s site so I don’t have any links quickly available. But if it helps, and if you know the link or roughly where in the site the file was, maybe you could try checking Internet Archive, Archive Today, or, if the site has an Australian equivalent, the Australian Web Archive / Trove? Don’t know other page-archiving alternatives, but if you do, I would also suggest checking on them.

For finding content creators on alternative services, maybe use Grayjay for Android? It aggregates multiple services into a single, mostly concise UI, and when you do a search, Grayjay can search all services at once. Also recently it added a recommended tab, which should help finding new channels on the go.

Whether it’s a rage-click community, a community made for an agenda, or both, I don’t know, but in either cases, I wouldn’t see as surprising for the mods in such a community to be very trigger-happy. Best you can do, I think, is to block communities and individuals with such a profile, and to recommend others to not engaging (remember to explain why if you do it, btw).

Mint seems decent all around. No cutting edges nor it’s specialized in any areas, but it’s a jack of all trades, and rather stable.

The Royal Spanish Academy’s dictionary, most likely. While I can easily have conversations in Spanish, the similarities with my mother language every once in a while make me get words confused, specially in conjugation (why does B and V need to sound so similar…). I’ve had it for a while, and although it was a bit pricey, it has saved me quite a few times from awkward mix ups. Also bonus points for working completely offline (looking at you, Yomiwa dictionary…), and having no problems being sideloaded into vanilla Android systems.

Also great for finding channels in alternative services, and even more so since Google breaks Youtube’s compatibility to 3rd party tools every once in a while.

Safest measure, from what I understand, is to completely replace the system for a vanilla one - that is, without any software from Google or related - and then install alternatives unrelated to the datahoarding companies.

[Copypasta of the other repost] While I know the situation described in the article can set a precedent, the title feels misleading at best, given the article describes a single case, and not (yet) a widespread practice.

On the joke, define “sane”. 😬

On a serious note, I think there are valid reasons to have several VMs other than “I was bored”. In my case, for example, I have a total of 7 VMs, where 2 are miscellaneous systems to test things out, 2 are for stuff that I can’t normally run on Linux, 2 are offline VMs for language dictionaries, and 1 is a BlissOS VM with Google programs in case I can’t/don’t want to use my phone.