yeah it feels like the sort of thing that will go sideways easily, I get the "optimistic" angle who doesn't love strong men being removed from power, but it seems more like a recipe for civil war that we're forced to be heavily involved in
will all of the military and paramilitary forces there suddenly become to compliant? will other nations try to turn it into a proxy war to drag the us down possibly as payback for Ukraine?
maybe everyone moves on I have no idea, I'd personally rather just not be involved
Yeah, im sorry. Valve is the last company people should be focusing for this type of behavior. All the other AAA game companies use these mechanics to deliberate manipulate players. IMHO valve doesn't use predatory practices to keep this stuff going.
Just because they weren’t the first mover into predatory practices doesn’t mean they can’t say no to said practices. Each actor has agency to make their own operating and business decisions. Is Valve the worst of the lot? Absolutely not. But it was still their choice to implement.
What makes Valve special is that they were the first mover on those practices like lootboxes, gamepasses... but they never pushed it as far as the competition where it became predatory.
They have a track record of not engaging in these practices. It might be true that someday, we will get the wrong people in leadership positions at Valve that would entertain this behavior, but so far I don't think its going to happen. Valve has been time and time again, on the side of sane thinking around these topics. So IMHO your concern isn't really warranted as of yet.
How much of the video did you watch? I'm not aware of other game companies that enable 3rd party integrations into their item systems. This isn't just "lootboxes bad" - it's Valve profiting from actual gambling happening on external sites.
If you want to see how bad this really is, take a look at AAA games like call of duty where they dynamically alter in game loot mechanics to get people to purchase in game items.
Value is chump change in this department. They allow the practice of purchasing loot boxes and items but don't analyze and manipulate behaviors. Valve is the least bad actor in this department.
I watched half the video and found it pretty biased compared to whats happening in the industry right now.
I feel this argument of Valve deliberately profiting off of gambling not really the whole story. I certainly dont think that Valve designed there systems to encourage gambling. More like they wanted a way to bring in money to develop other areas of their platform so they can make it better, which they did. And in many cases are putting players first. Players developed bad behaviors around purchasing in-game and trading items and have chosen to indulge in the behavior. 3rd parties have rose up around a unhealthy need that IMHO is not Valves doing. And most importantly, since I was around when these systems went into place, allowing me to see what was happening, this kind of player behavior developed over time. I don't think Valve deliberately encouraged it.
The entire gaming industry is burning down before our eyes because of AAA greed and you guys are choosing to focus on the one company thats fighting against it. Im not getting it.
> call of duty where they dynamically alter in game loot mechanics to get people to purchase in game items.
[Citation needed]
> I certainly dont think that Valve designed there systems to encourage gambling
Cases are literally slot machines.
> [section about third-party websites] I don't think Valve deliberately encouraged it.
OK, but they continue to allow it (through poor enforcement of their own ToS), and it continues to generate them obscene amounts of money?
> you guys are choosing to focus on the one company thats fighting against it.
Yes, we should let the billion dollar company get away with shovelling gambling to children.
Also, frankly speaking, other AAAs are less predatory with gambling. Fortnite, CoD, and VALORANT to pick some examples, are all just simple purchases from a store. Yes, they have issues with FOMO, and bullying for not buying skins [0], but oh my god, it isn't allowing children to literally do sports gambling (and I should know, I've actively gambled on esports while underage via CS, and I know people that have lost $600+ while underage on CS gambling).
I'm choosing not to place the blame on them as I don't see it as something they can control. And I trust Valve to do the right thing over most any large game studio out there. The history of reputation and actions matter. I think you want to to try and skew the narrative based on you own particular bias. The situation is much bigger than what you are making it out to be.
What do you mean they can’t control it? They could stop gambling tomorrow by disabling trading and disabling case openings. Valve already appear to be preparing for the latter to happen via regulation with the “Armory” feature in CS, which follows Fortnite & other major AAA titles.
(Oh, talking about Valve electing to engage in scummy behaviour, the “X-ray” feature is a classic example of them deliberately subverting regulation against loot boxes.)
If you want to bring up the “let the free market be the free market” angle, I’d at least be amenable to it.
But pretending as if they’re innocent passengers, and that they have no idea what is going on it ludicrous. Don’t baby a billion dollar company.
(I have skin the game too. If Valve blocked trading, I’d lose $400 worth of value in my skins. I’d still rather not support gambling, especially the type that is so incredibly unregulated.)
since Anthropic is one of the only companies using the Bun Runtime, not just the bundler like most do, they want to make sure the runtime stays the focus. This is good for both companies and us tbh since they wont switch focus to whats popular at the moment
Dogwood bushes and Rose of Sharon grow rather quickly and make a nice "green screen". They lose some of their coverage in the winter, though, so you way want to mix in a row of evergreens for good measure.
Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Columnaris'. Grows quite fast, at the rate of 8 in to 1 ft per year and stays green in the winter. We have a regulation regarding fence height. Whoever wants a higher fence uses this tree, it can grow up to 40 feet.
I can't get past this comment without noting how invasive and aggressive spreading rose of sharon is, I'm constantly pulling out new growth due to my neighbor's plant. What a headache.
Indeed. In Germany, it's generally legal to see in people's windows, legal for them to do whatever they want in their windows (you can't file a complaint someone is naked in their apartment with the curtains open - they will just tell you not to look if you don't want to see it) and illegal to record in other people's windows.
Illegal recording is a pretty good rule actually. Almost every party I've been to has a rule against filming dance floors, although in German law it's only illegal to publish a recording "of" a person. The flip side to illegal recording is that it's effectively legal to do silly things without worrying it'll haunt you forever, and that's pretty cool. Note the relatively relaxed attitude to things like public nudity (which is only legal in certain places as I understand it, but still). Almost every Berlin party I've ever been to has a rule against filming.
I do not think it's a good rule because it means you can't set up any sort of security camera that can see off your property. No dashcams to accurately point the blame for the accident. And unless you have a very high mounting point you can't even point them at your own property because they'll catch other things.
Shutters don't work unless you have a very high vantage point. Consider the most forgiving camera I have--pointing west from not very far from the east edge of my property, it's angled such that the top of the frame is horizontal and the edge of the frame is parallel to the house. The maximum range I would realistically want to see a face is about halfway across my property from the location of the camera. Put a shutter to cut off the neighbor and I also cut off the head of someone approaching my front door. To make it work the camera would need to be at least 12' in the air--which would mean fastening it to air.
Fancier cameras can have filters on the motion sensor (which I wish I had--mine wasted too much recording time on the wind moving a tree), but you can't exclude the area.
Everything you can see through a window *from public property*. Or from other people's private property with their permission. If they have to enter your property to see it they need a warrant.
"thankfully" you can record your neighbors without their permission or knowing? You kinda sound like a creep, hopefully you're already known to the cops as a pervert.
You are a victim of the Nirvana fallacy [1]: "Europe is better than Turkey in terms of freedom of speech, but since neither is perfect, they are equally bad."
The US is not that exceptional nor principled. The concept of "freedom of speech" is absolute when Republicans want to say Republican things, but it's a "national security issue" when Muslims make too much noise. When sexual minorities want to speak, the priority is to "protect family values" instead. Corporations have "freedom of speech", but TikTok boosting black-green-red flags isn't protected speech, but an agent of the enemy corrupting the youth.
European countries have their own dogmas and hypocrisy, only draw the line at different topics (especially where everyone had their grandparents traumatized in a war started by the Grok's favorite character).
Could you give examples of when a U.S. citizens speech rights were legally taken away? Lets go with one of your examples of "When sexual minorities want to speak". Please elaborate.
None of the examples you gave are actually examples of speech being restricted. Its people (sometimes politicians) freely voicing their opinions on others speech, that is not restriction.
Literally in the last week, the Supreme Court ruled that books featuring gay couples need to be opt-out in schools. They've quite literally taken the stance that someone literally just seeing the existence of a gay couple in a children's picture book is a violation of their freedom.
> They've quite literally taken the stance that someone literally just seeing the existence of a gay couple in a children's picture book is a violation of their freedom.
No.
They've taken the stance that parents get to decide what books their kids see.
Other parents are free to make a different decision.
Do you really think that there's a "right" to force others to read books that you choose?
> They've taken the stance that parents get to decide what books their kids see.
So why draw the line at books depicting gay couples, rather than literally all books? Because this has nothing to do with the ban, except for being a “family-friendly” bullshit justification.
That's not how the Supreme Court works. They are selective about the cases they hear. Especially looking at a 6-3 ruling with this court it's clear to see this was an ideological selection.
Yes, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court who chose to hear it instead of choosing not to hear it. That is ultimately why they ruled on the case.
Given that, it really does seem that the court ruled 6-3 in favor of the plaintiffs who are trying to draw a line around gay couples because the court is trying to draw a line around gay couples.
Other parents making a different decision doesn't matter if the schools find it virtually impossible to have these books because of the logistical requirements of allowing kids to leave the classroom every time certain books are read.
> Do you really think that there's a "right" to force others to read books that you choose?
Do I really think that public schools have a right to assign reading of certain books for classes? Is this even a real question? How do you think English classes work?
Do you even know what you are talking about? Do you know how many journalists are in prison in Turkey? "Restricting speech", whatever that means, is nowhere near as putting journalists, mayors, and citizens in prison for "insulting" the president or for saying things that the president and his shills do not like.
It would help to read the article we're discussing.
> Journalist posted a fake image online of the interior minister holding a sign that read “I hate freedom of opinion” and was subsequently handed a seven-month suspended prison sentence. A woman who posted images of politicians with painted-on Hitler mustaches and called a minister a terrorist was fined about $690.
It's probably useless to answer, but you are not addressing the question, which was about whether there are actually journalists in prison in the EU or not (there are not) whereas imprisonment of journalists in Turkey is an occupational hazard.
I've given you the most direct example anyone can give, a journalist that was legally handed a prison sentence for basic speech. There are more cases in other EU countries in the article, just read.
> merge it with a company created out of thin air for 20bil.
> have a third company buy it.
put it back on the market for 1.5 trillion.
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