I think quarantine is only for confirmed suspected infected items. Windows will move it and prevent any use of items until you confirm you want them, at which point they are just regular files and folders.

That actually does sound like what I remember. Maybe I was thinking about something else.

I did hear about something called “Controlled Access” a while back. It looks like it might be an option that could work in certain situations.

I’m not entirely sure about AMD but NVIDIA certainly seems keen on the AI market to the point that they don’t really care about the consumer gaming market anymore.

To be honest I stopped following PC hardware altogether because things were so stagnant

That’s exactly what happened to me as well.

It’s not exciting at all to pay attention to mediocre launches of expensive products. The GPU in my gaming PC is several generations old at this point but I don’t really care. There are still plenty of good games that will run fine on it and I’m just going to hold tight. There are games that I still have yet to purchase that will run fine on my hardware. I’m not going to give my money to terribly optimized games or games that require high-end hardware.

The more expensive PC gaming becomes the more high-end hardware doesn’t really matter. I think developers and publishers know that they need to target the average consumer because they need to sell volume on these games. If the average gamer is playing on older and/or lower end hardware then they need to service that market. There aren’t enough 4090 buyers to sell the volume they need to make money. Hell, at these prices I’m not sure there are even enough 4070 or even 4060 level buyers to do that. Tons of people lost interest and aren’t buying into this even if you still see posts online of people purchasing new GPUs.

I waited out the crypto market and I don’t have problems waiting longer.

I can’t give a ton of advice but I have done well in avoiding things like viruses through a combination of making sure that I always try and get torrents from more well-known and trusted sources and also by running Linux. I’m sure I have been previously saved simply due to running Linux.

It’s been a while since I have used Windows as a main OS so forgive me if it doesn’t work like this but I do remember Windows Defender having the ability to quarantine folders. Is it possible to quarantine your torrent downloads folder and scan it before you run anything that’s been downloaded? Even if that works it’s obviously not foolproof and will only prevent you from being infected by things that are caught in the scan, but it’s at least better than nothing.

Call me whatever, but Valve does so much for Linux gaming that when I do buy games I make sure to get them through Steam. Between Proton and the Steam Deck it seems like Valve is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Linux gaming is in a great place right now and Valve deserves a lot of credit.

They also have Steam Input which is incredible. The customization and control you have over your experience is insane.

Epic Games on the other hand can’t even be bothered to support Linux properly. Valve earns their cut.

But it’s not complely free shipping. It’s $140/year free shipping.

That’s the thing. The more expensive Prime gets the more people who do pay for it feel locked in.

People end up feeling like they need to do more and more shopping on Amazon in order to justify that steep yearly subscription cost. Dumping Amazon completely is more effort than simply shifting more of your shopping over to Amazon. This causes people to get more and more locked in and comfortable with using Amazon for the vast majority of their online shopping.

The other side of that coin is once you do drop Amazon Prime you realize that Amazon isn’t irreplaceable. It’s fairly easy to avoid them if you are willing to compromise a little.

You got hit with a bunch of down votes but it’s not incredibly hard to avoid Amazon, it’s just a little less convenient. Of course, it’s going to depend and vary based on where you are located.