I think that was Facemash, by Zuck & friends. It got shut down pretty fast. But it probably did ignite the idea that became facebook.
Does tell us something about the inventors mindset though. OTOH, if we were all judged by our filthy college year minds…
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I hear ya… I’m going straight to hell 
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Yes, and that is why we and a group of like minded individuals share loyalty cards. Why should we all sign up when just one of us has to and about seven or eight other people can also get use from it.
So far this week “I” have bought with a loyalty card discount, using cash, everything from feminine hygiene products to hardware supplies to vegan certified ready to eat meals to lots of meat products… I’d love to see what their algorithims make of that?
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Yeah, to me Facebook (along with others of its kind, like MySpace or the German StudiVZ) was basically creepy on day one.
The idea of sharing that amount of personal data, along with making the site at the same time a platform for advertising, a news medium, and a communication medium was bound to lead to problems.
And it did.
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Since my Reverb’s sudden death, I was intrigued to try Pico 4 too, since on paper its specs are darn good for the price.
Got it yesterday, and have to say I am impressed with resolution, pancake lenses and the build quality also. But, I am still learning the ropes and trying to find settings to run DCS with Virtual Desktop. So far not so good results, I am a bit affraid this would require top of the line GPU, CPU and Wifi (oh dear).
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I think there are a few interesting aspects of this:
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You buy their stuff, you support their business. So by buying something from one Meta company (Oculus) you kinda support Facebook, for example.
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In my special case the thing I am doing is not tied to money. That still kinda supports them since I provide them with some data (my email address, the games I play, and some other usage statistics).
But that’s basically something I already lived with, since I have been an Oculus user for years already. They already have all that data and won’t get a whole lot more I guess. -
This is maybe a naive thought, but shareholders are nervous creatures. The company does already notice that there are some users that only do the absolute minimum with Meta, and don’t use Facebook, Whattsapp or others of their services at all. That sends a message of disapproval. It might have a long term effect (or not).
Based on #1 I would not buy another headset from them. And I don’t buy anything from their store.
Part of my dilemma is that I don’t know how much value I want to assign to my personal data and Meta’s presumed usage of them.
Edit: and of course how much I value the continued use of my headset.
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What you’ve described is the great paradox of technology, convenience vs risk.
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Thanks for that. I’m not on FB so that is all a mystery to me.
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I’m lucky in that I got a bit of an inheritance just as the 4080 was being released - though I still chose the cheapest one that I could from a company I trusted to do a decent job of it.
My Pico 4 DCS World performance is pretty great over Virtual Desktop wireless. So far, that and Gun Club VR are the only things I’ve bought from the Pico store, and as I originally got it solely for PCVR I can’t see me buying anything else from it.
I tell you what, SkyrimVR is awesome with the Pico 4 & 4080 - just blew me away after my previous trials and tribulations with that title. Even played it without mods and was starting to wonder about whether I really needed them (of course I did! 
).
I haven’t done any testing with DCS settings, though, so the smooth running is still on the same ones I used for my Index/Quest 2 and 2080Ti. tbh that card ran DCS quite well, albeit at lowish settings (but always highest textures).
*edited for a gazillion typos - these days I type much faster than I can think
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After some tinkering and learning how to use Virtual Desktop it is all good now. DCS is running smoothly albeit only in ultra mode. Old 5GHz wlan seems to be up to the job after all. It turns out that someone in local network was realtime editing huge files on remote server, which caused very serious lag spikes in my VD session . We were able to find a balance between working and gaming after all.
Thanks for the tip on SkyrimVR, I think I saw discussion about how awesome with some modding. It could be right next in the queue after completing Alyx first.
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Well…one can always do what I did…three easy steps:
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Remove everything from your FB account and unfriend everybody (except my wife, my son and our cats…yes, they have an account and I don’t dare unfriend them…Rule #1 of the Internet-Don’t F with Cats.)
-
Emigrate to another country…preferably above the Arctic Circle.
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Establish several email accounts; one for each major part of your life; business, family & friends, flight simming, on liner shopping, learning the language of your new county, etc.
Then you are in a good position to get a Meta account. As was previously mentioned, you can set the attached email account with as much / little info as you like. I’m pretty sure that if I have an address listed, it’s back stateside which I am definitely not.
Regardless, Meta didn’t seem to want much info…yeah it made me tell them how many pictures had a fire hydrant …but other than that…
(Step 2 above is optional but I recommend it. Ha de bra!)
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THAT was an interesting? documentary.
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I just wanted to thank you for recommending the Skyrim VR. I had put off even trying it because of many negative reviews (mostly about the vanilla game). Now I saw it on sale and pulled the trigger, and haven’t had any regrets. Of course the graphics are old and VR controls feel like afterthought, but still it is something special to be inside the Skyrim world. I guess I will have to check out some mods to address those issues. I haven’t even completed the original Skyrim, so why not do it in VR 
.
Have to also give honorable mention to my other VR game acquisition Arizona Sunshine, for which I had quite low expectations and was thus positively surprised 
. It was quite funny to have a zombie surprise attack me from behind, so I instinctively unloaded both dual wielding pistol magazines into its face 
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