t3rmit3 @ t3rmit3 @beehaw.org

He / They

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2 yr. ago

I get called a Luddite (which honestly makes me preen) at work because I am very skeptical of new technology ever being fundamentally different than some already-extant tool. Almost everything billed as new is just an iteration on something you already have, or if you don't have, don't need.

SaaS and I/PaaS has been a horrible shift in the industry, because it takes a truth (that most orgs don't have the people or expertise needed to run large-scale environments and the tools needed to support and secure them), and entrenches that in policy by handing the money you could be spending training people to do it, to another org, further shrinking that knowledgebase in the industry. It was bad enough when that signing-over of core responsibilities was happening with small IT companies via MSPs (who were only ever supposed to be "IT for non-IT companies"), but *aaS has pushed that to mid and even large companies.

It was supposed to help IT professionals do their jobs, but the reality is that it's just another money extraction tool, and job-destroyer.

I think it's honestly a toss-up at this point. There's enough material in space right now to cause a Kessler Syndrome localized to certain orbits, so even if launch doesn't become impossible, certain functions like LEO broadband internet sats could be. No country is being careful enough to actually avert a Kessler event.

I'd say if we continue deployment of these low-altitude micro-satellite "constellations" as we are currently, a Kessler event on some scale seems likely in the next 10-15 years. Less if some idiot makes one with low-visibility and radar-absorbent/ deflecting materials or design, for their stupid anti-ICBM project.

I just got a Framework 16 about a year ago, and I'm not worried. I LOVE my fw, and I don't think you'll be disappointed. But I think the other commenters have the right of it, they're probably leaning into either a tablet or a handheld game console.

This is a great example of how even someone without the platform of someone like Kdot himself can still use their opportunities for activism. Don't let rich fucks like Trump live in a little bubble; if they want to be able to come out and watch a football game, they should be confronted with uncomfortable truths.

There’s a difference between having a monopoly and abusing it

Sure, but whether Valve fits the definition is debatable. Being highly dominant does not automatically make something a monopoly. At best you could call it an imperfect monopoly/ imperfect competition, because substitutes absolutely do exist, but they're not mostly close enough to be truly competitive. It's also important to factor in that 4/5 of the largest games on PC are not even on Steam at all: Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and League of Legends. PUBG is the only one of the top-5 that's on Steam.

Valve runs a couple of online casinos that target children specifically

I'm interested in which of their games that have loot crates you think are targeted specifically at children? Basically all of their games, but especially their games with loot crates, tend to be targeted towards adults. Hell, TF2 came out in 2007, which is 18 years ago, so no one who is a child today was even alive when it came out. It's mostly elder to mid-Millennials. You can dislike loot boxes (I do), but don't try to paint Valve like they're Roblox or Epic Games.

everyone else missed the moment to start competing and Valve gained monopoly unopposed.

Other platforms were around before Steam was fully dominant, but they tended to be focused on the creators' first-party games, and excluded other publishers and titles from using their platform. Desura and Central/Impulse both had decently large user bases. Stardock Central actually preceded Steam's release, but was overtaken because Stardock was mostly just using it for its own games, but also billing the service more as a way to unify your physical and digital libraries, and to provide patches and whatnot, whereas Steam went all-in on digital-only.

because it’s impossible to move people who amassed content libraries over the years

Yes, but this is sadly just the natural reality of digital sales. Because you are buying a license, it's not trivial from a company's perspective to make those portable, and the company you're moving the license to is then having to host your content without ever actually receiving the money for it, which isn't super appealing. GOG actually tried this for a while(GOG Connect), where you could essentially redeem your Steam games to your GOG account, but they realized it wasn't worth it (especially since there isn't game parity on the 2, so most people have to keep Steam anyways).

You’re ignoring all of the warning signs because they didn’t screw you over yet.

I must have missed where I said Valve would never do something bad? But yes, I don't believe in condemning someone for what they might do in the future, preemptively. If and when Valve goes darkside (probably when Gabe dies, and it ends up under new management), they should be condemned. Acting as though they're bad just because they're dominant in the market is silly, though; they didn't get there through anti-competitive business practices, they got there through others failing to do better.

M$ did hella shady, monopolistic stuff (patent theft, market manipulation, very likely corporate espionage, and certainly most visibly prefferential treatment of their own software ecosystem and sabotage of third party software on their platforms) to create and enforce market dominance. Unless Valve has been doing something I'm unaware of to kill other platforms, they're not really similar situations.

It might be. It hasn't been tested in court.

I lean towards 'no' because I do not see moves on their part to actively attack other distributors, but I admit I have not done research on this subject.

Based purely on having used many other distribution platforms, I think they (Valve) just legitimately have the best service currently. Everyone else either kinda sucking (GOG, as much as I love them), or really sucking (EGS, Origin, UPlay, etc), and losing to you in the market, doesn't make you a monopoly.

I don't consider myself a fanatic, but I also don't define it the same way you do.

Everyone has beliefs they are not dissuadable from, so fanaticism as a concept loses is usefulness in describing abnormal devotion if you use it to also describe normal devotion.

"I am not okay with you killing my 3 year old child for fun" is a pretty universal position that people would take, and could not be budged from, for example. That doesn't make everyone fanatics.

You added "only" in there. You can compile a game for each OS natively (and many games do). Native in this context refers to the binary itself (ELF, EXE, bin, etc), and the OSes that can run it without using some kind of compatibility layer.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, and I also do not primarily blame Harris. If you look at my post and comment history, you'll see that I was backing her since the second Biden dropped.

She did make missteps wrt Gaza, but I think in retrospect it was probably too late for her by then anyways, given how long Biden stayed in, and how much damage he did.

The uncommitted movement was during state primaries, it wasn't supposed to be during the general as well. I think that it was coopted (or at least boosted) later on by right-wingers and Zionists to expressely hurt Dems, rather than just oppose their stance on Gaza.

At an individual level, I don't blame anyone who is Arab and could not bring themselves to vote for the party who was, even during the election, supplying weapons to kill their fellow countrymen and neighbors. I have a friend who is Palestinian, and he told me that he saw a clip in the background of a report on the "war" on CNN of a building being bombed, and it was an apartment building where one of his friends used to live. Just casually being demo'd on TV.

Now, Arabs voting for Trump is another matter entirely, and there is and never was any excuse for that.

That just means they'll rig them, not eliminate them. Basically all dictators still run elections, because their supporters "need" that veneer of legitimacy.

If the Green Party underperformed compared to past elections, absolutely. If you're asking whether I think the Green Party getting 0% is solely a function of their policies, then obviously no, because that would require ignoring the entire way our 2-party, FPTP system works.

I'm not a fan of the Green Party precisely because I do think they have bad candidate strategies, and often look down their noses at voters just like establishment Dems like Pelosi do, when people tell them they're losing for more reasons than just the FPTP system and Super PACs.

I'm all for people doing analysis of elections, and if you've seen some that indicate that GP actually functioned as a spoiler party this election, I'd be very interested to see it. I am, however, very wary of people throwing around "spoiler" as an accusation, because that's the exact thing that establishment politicians say to excuse their ignoring 3rd party platforms rather than adapting their own platforms to capture those voters.

If enough voters want something to tank your chances at winning, and you just ignore it, that is on you, not the voters.

and you weren’t

You do actually have to convince people of that, though (especially when you've been supplying bombs to the ethnic cleansers), and if you don't bother to show up then you won't get to be part of the debate.

This whole election was a near-perfect example of a "theirs to lose" team flubbing it.

The fact that Pelosi said after the election that their strategy wasn't the problem, is proof they can't win in this field anymore because they don't understand the stakes.

This instance doesn't have downvotes, and a lot of people upvote the article to boost visibility, not necessarily because they agree with whatever or whoever the article is about.

ShallowReveal

The Democratic Party are neoliberal. The party doesn't have an issue, by and large, with Capitalism. That's why you didn't hear salient discussions of economic justice from them.

Ground-level, Democratic voters are usually just as indoctrinated about Capitalism as Republicans, though that's changed somewhat in the last 4-5 years. But Socialism is still a dirty word for many of them, because pro-Capitalist propaganda is completely pervasive in the US.

Labour unions are made up of these exact ground-level voters (and obviously, not all or even a strong majority of union members are Democrats). It's tough to convince them that economic system change is necessary, because so many of them staunchly believe that Capitalism is the Great Uplifter, and that their ticket would come in if these rich people would just stop being so damn greedy.

Personally, I think unions and young voters will get on board with economic reform before the Democratic Party will, but that also leaves them no one at the Executive level to vote for, since the DNC will actively quash anyone who isn't on board with neoliberal economics.

Wrt economic vs social progressivism, I agree that we shouldn't have purity tests for working to dismantle Capitalism, but solidarity has to be two-way. Economics aren't unbiased, and it's very possible to make gains/ changes that benefit some groups and not others, especially in a system like ours that is already stratified along e.g. racial lines, economically. You don't want people who are going to abandon the movement the second they get what they want (having benefitted from the full force of the movement), and leave the rest to fend for themselves with a now diminished bargaining ability.

No lies were detected.

Bruh, your comment that I responded to, was itself a response to a comment (the one you said was "perfectly balanced"). That is what I am addressing in my comment.

Also, what do you mean "When did the Democrats enter into this at any point?" YOU BROUGHT THEM UP IN YOUR COMMENT THAT I RESPONDED TO!

a pretty sensible assessment of a portion of what cost the Democrats the election

Well one zio is now blocked. =)

Yeah, that was crazy. O_o

"Leftists can't organize! They're too busy doing massive, country-wide protest movements!"