hedgehog @ hedgehog @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

Even if you fall asleep early (like 20:00 tomorrow) then that’s likely fine - if you get up 8 hours later that’s 04:00, which might be a bit early but shouldn’t mean you’re too tired to finish your day. And most likely you’ll get a bit more sleep than that and get up at 6ish.

Fight Club for 5E is on Android as well.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lionsden.fc5&pli=1

“High” is Lossless - 16-bit, 44.1 kHz (aka CD Quality). It used to be called “HiFi.”

“Low” has two options (for me at least): 96 or 320 kbps (AAC).

“Max” is HiRes and MQA.

HiRes is anything better than High, up to 24-bit / 192 kHz. Some (many?) HiRes songs are 24-bit / 44.1 kHz.

MQA is older and worse than HiRes and I don’t recall hearing good things about it.

Re number 2, is that true even if you disable Automix?

Conversation recording actually needs to meet a much higher standard than video recording, thanks to wiretapping laws. Many Ring camera deployments result in illegal recordings (e.g., of neighbors) because of this.

You don’t have to send over the frame to fix it a bit, just less information. Minimize the info needed. One thing you can do is occlude to determine which entities should be rendered. Even applied, they could still get an advantage - being able to see an entire character instead of just the exposed part of their foot - but it would at least limit it more.

Steam’s 2FA is just a different TOTP algorithm, it’s just a pain to extract it. However, once you do, there are TOTP apps that support it - Bitwarden (with premium) and Yubikey Authenticator.

Here’s a guide - note that as far as I can tell this site is not owned by Yubico but is just a random person who put up some Yubikey guides. However I did something similar over a couple years ago - pretty sure I used the same tool that’s recommended - and my Steam account hasn’t been hacked yet.

Gonna take a couple guesses here.

1. Given that they’re upgrading from a 5 year old phone (that wasn’t the flagship when it was released) that’s still getting iOS updates and that no Android phone has historically had a similar guaranteed amount of support (and currently only the Pixel 8 is rumored to offer more) they might want to be able to keep their next phone for 5+ years.
2. Third party iOS apps are still generally better than third party Android apps and they might value the improved experience.
3. They might not want to deal with manufacturer installed bloatware.
4. They might otherwise be invested in the Apple ecosystem - AirPods, Apple Watch, MacBook, etc.
5. They might want updates ASAP (instead of getting it months or weeks later).
6. They might not want to think so hard about which Android phone to buy.
7. They likely don’t value the advantages Android has over iOS (more customizable, earlier features, actual file system browsing, etc.) as highly as the advantages iOS has.
8. They might not want to learn a new mobile OS, and they might value the consistency and simplicity of iOS.

Pixels are the best phones to use for Graphene OS. You could also install some other degoogled Android distro, like LineageOS.

Writing a single line of code for Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or Google means you don’t have any morals? That’s a pretty extreme stance. Are you at least consistent about it? Let’s see.

By your logic, if a person has ever purchased anything from, viewed an ad served by, or used a service or product created by any of those companies, they’re part of the problem and unworthy of your respect. After all, their actions have increased their value even more directly than a developer’s actions did - and unlike the developer, they didn’t get paid for it.

Do you apply that logic to every other for-profit corporations, just these, or some subset of them? Are nonprofits safe? Is it just developers that you have a problem with? What about product managers, scrum masters, engineering managers, HR? What about Apple storefront employees, Amazon warehouse employees, Amazon delivery drivers, Customer Service for Netflix, or content moderators for Meta?

All my apes, gone!

Per the article, it will be playable on M1 iPads and Macs, so hopefully a single purchase will cover you across all three device types.

It isn't. If it were, that would mean that in practice, board members act to maximize shareholder value because they are legally obligated to do so, and that simply isn't true.

In practice, board members and C-suite employees are incentivized to maximize shareholder value. They are not legally obligated to do so.

Fiduciary duty is a legal requirement, meaning that if you don't fulfill your fiduciary duty, you're liable. But nobody has been successfully sued for not maximizing shareholder value when their actions were in line with the business judgment rule ("made (1) in good faith, (2) with the care that a reasonably prudent person would use, and (3) with the reasonable belief that the director is acting in the best interests of the corporation"). Successful lawsuits regarding breach of fiduciary duty (in the context of corporate law) require the defendant to have acted with gross negligence, in bad faith, or to have had an undisclosed conflict of interest.

The closest instance of legal precedent that I know of (aside from "" of course) that eBay v. Newmark (Craigslist), which Max Kennerly took as meaning that corporations are legally required to maximize profits. In this case, Craigslist was found to have violated their fiduciary duties to eBay because Craigslist, in Max's words, "tried to protect the frugal, community-centric corporate culture that was a hallmark for their success."

Except, if you actually read the case notes, it's clear that the issue wasn't that Craigslist wasn't maximizing their profits, but that they were diluting the percentage of stocked owned and flexibility of selling those stocks of other stockholders. The issue wasn't that Craigslist wanted to spend half their profits supporting charities or anything like that - no, it was that they were trying to artificially limit, thus directly devaluing, the shares they had already sold. In other words, I agree that this was a case about minority shareholder oppression as opposed to being an edict to maximize profits / shareholder value.

And other than people threatening legal action, the most recent case we have (other than eBay v. NewMark) in favor of shareholder primacy is 124 years old - Dodge v. Ford. But the opposite is true:

Shareholder primacy is clearly unenforceable on its own term because the business judgment rule would defeat any claims based on a failure to maximize profit. 40 Corporate managers formulate business strategy. A rule‒sanction is antithetical to the core concept of the business judgment rule. In over one hundred years of corporate law, there is not a case where a state supreme court imposed liability for breach of fiduciary duty on the specific ground that the board, in managing operational matters, failed to maximize shareholder profit, though it made the decision informedly, disinterestedly, and in good faith.41 That case does not exist. In fact, many cases show just the opposite. Courts have held that shareholders cannot challenge a board’s decision on the specific grounds that, for example: the company paid its employees too much; 42 it failed to pursue a profit opportunity;43 it did not maximize the settlement amount in a negotiation;44 it failed to lawfully avoid taxes.45 There are classic textbook cases where courts have rejected attempts of shareholders to interfere with the board’s decisions on the argument that their views of business or strategy would have maximized shareholder value.46

The belief that a corporation is legally obligated to maximize shareholder value isn't just wrong; it also:

• Implies that no other model is feasible
• Removes accountability for the negative effects of such policy from the people who are responsible for perpetuating them
• Reinforces the fallacy that this should be resolved through legislation
• Completely disregards that fiduciary duty to a company includes several other stakeholders: employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, the environment

Thanks for sharing that!

Steam’s “price parity rule” is a policy that ensures that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website.

IMO, it's reasonable to say "If you want to sell Steam keys off Steam, you need to follow our pricing rules," but it is not reasonable to say "If you want to sell your game, sans keys, off Steam, you have to follow our pricing rules to keep selling on Steam." You're talking about the former here, right? Or does that mean that the following situation is prohibited:

• Your game is listed at $50 on Steam
• You sell keys from your own site for $50
• You sell your game directly from your site for $40

and if so, that the mitigation is to either stop selling Steam keys entirely or to raise the price on your own site to $50?

That's somewhere in between the two but I dislike it. I suspect it's more legally murky, too, like tied selling.

The article briefly talks about the latter (emphasis mine):

Wolfire's David Rosen expanded on that accusation in a recent blog post, saying that Valve threatened to "remove [Wolfire's game] Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website, without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM."

However, it also says "Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this 'parity' rule only applies to the 'free' Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms. Valve hasn't responded to a request for comment on this story." I wonder if the lack of comment was because of Wolfire's lawsuit?

I'm also now curious if the reason for Steam saying that was related to the in-between situation I talked about above.

@Kecessa@sh.itjust.works shared this ArsTechnica article from 2022 that covers an update on that lawsuit - I haven't seen anything more recent. In it, Wolfire makes the same claim, in court, that they'd already made in their blog post, which was sufficient to convince the judge to re-open their case.

The ruling [to re-open the case] makes particular note of “a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that ‘it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].’” The amended suit also alleges that “this experience is not unique to Wolfire,” which could factor into the developer’s proposed class-action complaint.

Hopefully we'll hear more about that soon.

Yes, that's much more credible - thank you for sharing that. This part in particular is concerning:

The ruling makes particular note of "a Steam account manager [who] informed Plaintiff Wolfire that 'it would delist any games available for sale at a lower price elsewhere, whether or not using Steam keys [emphasis in original complaint].'" The amended suit also alleges that "this experience is not unique to Wolfire," which could factor into the developer's proposed class-action complaint.

I wasn't able to find any instances of Steam actually de-listing a game because it was listed cheaper elsewhere, but a credible threat to do so is almost as bad (possibly worse, really, since such a threat hints that Steam might have used other underhanded tactics when dealing with game devs). I wasn't able to find any more recent news on the case, but hopefully we'll learn if the issue was that particular Account Manager + lack of oversight or something more.

“People like me” meaning “People who cite their sources and investigating claims before making them?” Yes, I can understand why you might find it difficult to convince “people like me” to believe something that’s trivially shown to be false.

All of that is true, but it doesn't contradict my point. Fiduciary duty isn't a duty to maximize shareholder value.

it’s a real thing, they have a duty to grow infinitely or the sroxk price will crash

This isn't a thing.

Here's another article explaining why and how it isn't a thing, and also why people like you think it is.

Your best sources are a tweet by a competitor and a 2.5 year old lawsuit filed because of that tweet? Excuse me for maintaining my skepticism.

Do you have a source for that claim that doesn’t reference the sale of Steam keys specifically?