Aceticon

@Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is the world more volatile now or is it just the abundance of news?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a big Economic Supercycle which lasts about 100 years, or around 3 generations.

  We’re now at the most painfull point of that supercycle, when wealth has accumulated in too few hands as has real power, inequality has exploded, social mobility has crashed and growth has ground to a halt, so the elites have switched from capturing most of Economic Growth to pillaging existing wealth from the rest of the population - a handful of people are fine, most people are getting poorer and young people most definitelly don’t have the opportunity to “be anything you want”.

  All this, of course, translates into social discontent, increased autoritarianism from those in power in order to keep said power (just notice the fast growing desire from widespread surveillance amongst mainstream politicians as well as the increase in anti-demostration legislation in supposedly Democratic nations) and political movements subsidized by the elites (i.e. the populist Far Right) that scapegoat foreigners (immigrants, “interference” from other nations) for the pain that most people are feeling so that they’re not punishing the local elites for their pillaging and the way they mismanage the country.

  All this in turn translates into more wars: if you’re scapegoating foreigners for the pains in your country and/or there is not enough economic growth for the elites to grow more wealthy, then it’s only natural to go to war with other nations, either to “punish” them for their “fault” in the pain of the population or to take their shit to make the local elites richer.

  Naturally, when people are discontent and have no real hope to change the way the place they live in is managed or they live somewhere that keeps getting attacked by foreign military because their elites want to steal your shit, a lot of them turn into “extremists”. Also a lot of things which are pretty natural and democratic things to do start getting painted as “extremism” by the mass media owned by the above mentioned elites and/or made illegal by said elites (when directly in power) or the politicians they bought.

  And then most of this shit feeds around into reduced Economic growth, so less of it for the elites to capture, hence the elites pillaging even more, propagandize the “foreign enemy” even more, push even more for Far-Right parties and reduced democratic rights even more.

  Social flows from Economic and Economic flows from social.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Bear hugs?!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fappucino⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  So, both technically and rhetorically a wanker.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The most unrealistic part of Odyssey is the journey taking 20 years⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Looks like the good old “Didn’t took a right at the crossroads and continued forward instead and then kept on insisting ‘I know the way’” driving problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hell yeah.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So libraries have turned in to dens of Hookers & Blow?!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is AOC a big deal? She just speaks common sense and calls out absurdity. Have we really gone that far off the rails where we don't do it ourselves?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Hard-right even.

  We’re I live, Portugal, the policies of the Democrats are closest to those of a local party called Iniciativa Liberal (Liberal Initiative) who are considered Far-Right ultra Neoliberal (and were started by people with A LOT of money rather than being a naturally growing movement).

  In most of Europe the mainstream parties (whether they used to be center-left or center-right) nowadays are Neoliberal, but the version of that ideology of the US Democract Party is harder than even the old center-right mainstream in Europe (which is how even an EU under a majority of the EPP - which are the EU level group of such parties - is still a lot more pro-consumer than the Democrats, though things have been getting worse).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Miyamoto: Games based on developers’ personal interests resonate around the world, not those aiming for global appeal | VGC⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the same kind of advice that used to float in the Tech Startup world before it became dominated by money men and frauds: the best project is one that scratches and itch you have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Starvation Wages' at Giant US Corporations Force Workers to Seek Taxpayer-Funded Aid⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In Britain they call their version of this shit “Working Poor”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Teserract may be opensource, but adding myself would feel disingenuous⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re to the left of Kissinger, you’re a “leftist” to the kind of people who think secret shadowban lists which are dynamically fetched from an external server are a good thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Former Valve writer says PlayStation killing physical discs is no conspiracy: "You, the consumer, have made your choice, and the choice is for digital"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Download the offline installer and now you have possession.

  Further, because GOG enforces no DRM or mandatory sign-ins, so that means that you also have control over that copy of the game - you can install it and play it however and whenever you see fit.

  For GOG games were you downloaded and kept the offline installer, the only way that the righsholder has of stopping you from installing and playing that game is to sue you, which is:

  • Almost certainly not worth it for then due to the cost of taking somebody to court for it versus what they would gain if they won.
  • They actually have to have an actual legal basis for unilateraly changing the licensing agreement with you and hence be allowed to block you from continuing with the activity you have a license for (installing and running that game), which they almost certainly do not have in pretty much the whole World since EULAs aren’t valid there (they’re considered an attempt at, after a sale is completed, forcing unilateral changes to the implicit contract which is the sale, so have no legal validity)

  With other stores they can just force the store to take down the game and now it’s up to YOU to sue THEM to get restitution and the “not worth it” is now something that goes against you (unless you have access to a Small Claims Court in the jurisdiction you’re in, are you really going to sue them for a 50 bucks game?)

  In fact, physical media is worse than digital GOG games, because the former can have phone-home DRM or mandatory sign-ins so you have possession but not control.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alternative medicine⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  How about you and your strawman find a room, since you see really into it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alternative medicine⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Is there a Near-Darwin Award?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is negative voltage?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In simple terms, a Voltage is the difference in the electric potential between two points or in other words, a difference in how much electrons are attracted to one point by comparison to how much electrons are attracted to another.

  So technically you can’t actually have a Voltage with just one point.

  So why do you hear Voltage mentioned as being a characteristic that can be measured at one point of a circuit?

  Well, in practice what it’s done in practice in Electronics is for example to treat one side of the power source as being the reference to measure voltage (say, the negative side of the battery) - which we the call Ground - and then we can say there is a “voltage” at any point in the circuit as a shortcut for the difference in electric potential between that point of the circuit and the one we conventioned as being the reference one.

  (Notice how when using a Voltimeter or a Multimeter in Voltage mode to measure the voltage you need to used TWO probes and are told to put the black probe on a Ground line)

  So because this reference point when measuring the different in electric potentials between two points is a convention, it’s perfectly possible to use a different convention so that some or even all “voltage” values we negative.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"We're all in this together"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just avoid like the plague brands that sponsor World Cups.

  I’ve been doing it since the last one in Qatar and am doing it for the current one too.

  As it so happens, a happy side effect is often that not consuming products of those brands (which are invariably large brands) means you produce less disposable stuff and/or consume more local products. You even end up saving money because you either stop consuming something that you don’t actually need or you replace it with a store brand, and those are cheaper.

  Win-win-win.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I could feel his pain and immediately gave him $5⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I reckon a nice cold beer would’ve been a better charitable donation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨He was no friend to the middle class⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In my experience in my own country as well as living in other countries (none of which the US, but I believe it equally applies), leftwing policies (universal schooling, worker rights) built the middle class and the Neoliberals (which are generally the two major parties in a country) have been destroying it since Reagan’s days.

  For me this was especially obvious in the UK were almost every single pro-people thing (National Health Service, Social Security, Public Housing) dated back to the post-War years of Labour Party government and every single one of then had been under attack since Thatcher’s day including during governments of New Labour (the Labour party after the Neoliberal faction took it over, most obviously with Tony Blair whom Thatcher called “my greatest achievement”).

  I think the UK is especially applicable here because it’s the country in Europe that, at least for the last 2 or 3 decades most apes the US (in the bad things, rather than good things).

  All this to say that I don’t expect ANY American politicians who has managed to hold to power for so long as Mitch Mcconnell to be anything else than a middle class destroying Neoliberal, no matter what political party they come from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Xbox and PlayStation flounder, Steam is reportedly having another record year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Look, with things like the Goldberg Emulator almost all games that use the Steam API can work without Steam.

  The main practical differences between Steam and GOG is are:

  • You need to have certain technical skills to work around Steam’s (often very weak) locking. Not crazy high (basically how to navigate a filesystem), but some.
  • In Steam you do NOT know at the time of the purchase if that will actually work or not (games heavily integrated with the Steam API still won’t work with the Emulator) or if the game has or not further DRM, so you CANNOT make an informed purchasing decision in terms of “will I still have access to these games in the future no matter what”.
  • You know for certain that games in GOG have no DRM, theirs or from the publisher’s, because CONTRACTUALLY GOG forces the publishers to not have DRM in their games to sell via GOG.

  Personally I buy tons of games from GOG and only a handful from Steam because I do value the certainty that if I have the hardware and OS for it (or an emulator), I can still have fun with those games 10 or 20 years in the future. Then again I’ve been gaming for almost 4 decades hence have enough experience with getting to a point were I miss a game that was fun but can’t run it anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Xbox and PlayStation flounder, Steam is reportedly having another record year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And you can get a crack for most DRM out there (nowadays, even Denuvo).

  That’s make it any less a DRM.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Xbox and PlayStation flounder, Steam is reportedly having another record year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can do this right now with the Goldberg Emulator, but it doesn’t work well for games which are deeply integrated with Steam’s API (for example, to do things like Cloud Saves).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Xbox and PlayStation flounder, Steam is reportedly having another record year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And Gabe can have a accident or a heart attack tomorrow and die and then it ain’t a benevolent autocrat that controls your game collection anymore …

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ve longed lobbied for anti-circumvention legislation and the corrupt politicians in the US and the rest of the World (with the EU Comission as a notable mention) have made sure it was implemented everywhere, exactly to avoid such a future.

  The entire rotten edifice of Intellectual Property in the present day is literally the product of decades of corrupt politicians stealing more and more from the Public Domain to extend and protect this entirelly artificial kind of “property” for the benefit of the ultra-rich.

  I was there in the 90s when this corrupt destruction of the “commons” started limiting what could be done in the Digital domain and saw how Techies lost, which is how we ended up with two decades of every more and ever more enshittified “closed garden” setups for all kinds of digital things.

  Without shit like anti-circumvention legislation run of the mill people would have easy access in their friendly corner store to China-made devices doing things like what you describe or, for example, break out of Apple’s closed garden.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Copper⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re a Mathematical prodigy you either become a Quant making mathematical models for Price and Risk of Over The Counter (so, not sold in a Market) derivatives or, if you have good salesmanship skills, a Trader of such financial instruments.

  None of this brings any actual improvement to Mankind but it sure pays well (more the latter than the former) since the way our Economic System is structured and as a side-effect of unbalancing the playing field to make sure the wealthy get ever more wealthy, Money is the thing that makes the most Money, and even just a tiny slice of such flows is far more monetarilly rewarding than almost all other forms of creation or discovery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Killing ownership is the method, killing the secondary market is the objective.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Alternativelly, multiple subgroups within the power elites can support the same things for different reasons.

  It’s perfectly logical that, for example, intrusive tracking under the excuse of Age Checks “to protect the children” is supported by the Pedophiles because it helps them detected early and suppress attempts to change the very system which gives them immunity for their crimes, non-Pedophile people in positions of power support it for very similar reasons only they just want to stay in power because they like power or because of the money and priviledges they get from their position in that system and big companies selling media to users support it because it lets them more strongly bind copies of that media to specific users hence people can’t share it (for example, two sibblings in the same house using the same device can’t share a single copy of a game) so those companies sell more copies hence make more money.

  Reducing most people’s choices can serve different stakeholders who have different desires and often do so for different reasons.

  Trying to come up with a Theory of Everything for it is excessivelly reductionist and even simplistic - just because it’s easier to get one’s mind around a “they’re all the same” explanation than around something like what I’m putting forward, doesn’t mean the former is the right explanation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Killing ownership is the method, killing the secondary market is the objective.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is about removing any and all ownership rights of buyers.

  Not just of selling you copy second hand but also things like lending (even to your own family), gifting and even playing it in a different device

  Mandatory Age Checks on the device also helps with stopying lending even to members of your family that live with you and use the same device to play the game: if the hardware (with the excuse of Age Checking) identifies the user, then the copy can be bound to a specific person in a specific devive rather than the device alone, so for example two siblings in the same household need to buy two copies to play it even at different times rather than just one copy as the “age check” identifies the user and only allows a specific user for a specific copy.

  The fewer rights buyers de facto have, the more copies publishers sell as users can’t get the games by alternative legal means, and whilst at first there might be some backlash from taking those rights away, in my experience not only are most gamers sheeple or at best dogs that bark a lot but don’t bite, but usually they over time get used to not having those rights (especially as new, younger people, who grew up without having had them become gamers), so pretty much all backlash from taking those rights away eventually dissapears and those companies end up making more money than before.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's not about physical vs digital games, it's about ownership⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s about who controls it.

  Because if one side controls it and does something with it they’re not legally entitled to do do, they still get away with it if it’s not worth it for the other side, even being in the right, to take it to Court.

  So if you have in your hands the files for the installer for a game which doesn’t do phone-home validations and you’ve actually explicity rented it for a limited time yet carried on using it past that point, the other side would have to take you to Court to stop it, and in the absence of a streamlined and very cheap Judicial process to do so for that kind of thing (like there is for things like loans) it’s generally not worth it for them because it costs more than they gain.

  Similarly, if they control if and when you can install and run a game (which is possible even if you have the physical media - all it takes is for the game to have phone-home DRM that checks if you’re authorized) and they stop you from using it, even if you’re in the right with zero doubts (so, there was no clear upfront information that you were paying for a unilaterally revokable license and you live in a jurisdiction where Justice isn’t a joke, like Germany, so the unilaterally imposition of further contractual conditions after the sale - i.e. EULAs - aren’t at all valid), it’s generally not worth it to take it to Court to force the other side to restore you access to the game or compensate you (a few euros) for it because it costs more than you get back from it.

  Holding physical media is highly correlated with controlling it, but (as per my example above) in a World of always on Internet access were phone-home DRM is easy to have, it’s no guarantee at all of actually controlling it - you might have the bytes in the stablest imaginable storage medium in your hands and you still don’t control it because you can’t actually access the game without external authorization - and that in practice means that you can get shafted even though you’re entirely in the right as long as the monetary amount you being shafted out of isn’t too large.

  Converselly, whilst digital distribution is highly correlated with not controlling it, as stores like GOG show it’s perfectly possibly to sell games digitally in such a way that you get control of it (if you want - you have to actually download GOGs offline installers)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hideo Kojima ‘really sad’ about PlayStation killing discs, ‘frightened’ for future of ownership⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you see, Ju$tice is expensive and unreliable.

  So the decision of about using the Justice System for enforcing one’s rights isn’t purelly “am I likely to win”, it’s also about “is it worth it bringing it to Court”, which is especially important when the damages one is entitled to get are low (like the price of a game).

  At which point “who controls the thing under dispute”, which is theoretically unimportant in a perfect Justice System, becomes the main deciding factor.

  Maybe an example will make it clear:

  • You have a game which the publisher wants to take it away from you. They’re actually in their right to do so: you actually read through and accepted BEFORE PURCHASING (this is important in jurisdiction which aren’t legal jokes, unlike the US) a set of terms and conditions that gave them that right and it was clearly that this wasn’t a sale but a time limited licensing. However you have the actual installer for a single player game (in your computer, physical disk, whatever), totally free to install, no phone-home DRM authorization check. They have to actually take you to court to force you to delete that game from your system and destroy all copies. This is a $50 game. Are they really going to do it for a $50 game?!
  • Similarly but reversed: you bought a physical disk with a game, it cost $50, it has phone-home DRM to install and to run. You didn’t agreed to anything before the purchase and you’re in a legal jurisdiction (such as Germany) which is not a joke so the implicit rights from a sale cannot be altered unilaterally post sale by a forced imposition of contract terms (i.e. EULAs aren’t valid). You’re in the right yet they block you from installing or running that game. To get back what you’re entitled to or compensation (all of $50) you have to take them to court. Are you really going to do it for a $50 game?!

  Anyways, the point I’m making here is that well before a Court of Law actually goes through the whole thing and determines who is in the Right and orders a certain action in favor of and/or compensation for the injured side, de facto the outcome often decided by the actual stakeholders deciding “is it worth it taking this to court?” and in a system where Justice has costs (the bigger the costs the more that’s the case) “who controls it” is pretty much the single biggest factor in that decision. In simple terms, unless there is some kind of streamlined Judicial process for that kind of case (like there is around things like loans) bringing a case to court to force the side in control of something to act in a certain way with it is only worth it for large monetary amounts, and generally the price of a game is below that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨End of an era?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Back in the era of physical media PC games too could be bought and sold used (though only some: it really boiled down to whether it used phone-home DRM or not, something which in the PC world was all over the place).

  But yeah, you were right that console games could be bought and sold used in a much more standardized way, whilst that wasn’t really a value proposition in the PC were such possibility was not at all a standard feature of PC games and it wasn’t really reliably supported in the broader ecosystem (for example, with game store not buying back used PC games as they often did for console games).

  Naturally, as a unique value proposition (vs PC games) used as bait to get users inside the console walled garden in earlier days, this feature was taken away from users.

  Personally I always thought that in the PC world the absence of this was balanced by games being a lot cheaper and even piracy for those for whom even so games weren’t cheap enough and in the long run, as we see, the “much cheaper” part is being way harder for PC publishers to try and undo (they’ve definitely tried of late, and IMHO it’s failing which is why AAA game publisher are bitching and moaning that their market share is falling) than the used console games market was, and the piracy part is even harder.

  If there’s one think I learned early on in Tech as a professional already back in the 90s is that in the mid and long term sticking to open tech will save you from getting squeezed, both as a professional when choosing 3rd party tech stacks and as a consumer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨End of an era?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you go by the definition of “console” than includes things like the ZX Spectrum or the Amiga, then you are partly correct as all home computing started with such “consoles” (and then there was a time when it’s pretty much all PCs, and then came the modern consoles which are the ones I was talking about).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨End of an era?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Consoles were always a walled garden from the very start, very purposefully so, and those things tend to squeeze customers once captured with higher prices and, sooner or later, fully enshittify.

  So when consoles originally appeared I just kept gaming on the PC because it was an open platform and the only console I ever had was a WII (the original one) because their controller was at the time innovative, and honestly it wasn’t really worth it.

  Then, specifically for the PlayStation there’s Sony, who have a long track record of anti-consumer actions that started when their leadership stopped coming from the Engineering Division and started coming from their Media Division (after they bought a Movie studio in the US), from their electronics becoming locked down and restrictive for users (they’re the ones who came up with Blu-Ray, which was way more locked down to block copying than DVDs were) to the infamous shipping of music CDs with rootkits (the “Sony Rootkit” scandal)

  So this increasing enshittification of the PlayStation isn’t at all surprising and suspect it will get even worse than this. Ultimately I think the PlayStation platform will simply die.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨She skipped groceries for a week to pay for that Little Caesars.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s only so many space the “names of all steam engine trains in Britain in the 19th century” can occupy in one’s brain, so there’s plenty of room for old memes.