Sigh… I’m getting tired of the Valve apologetics in every thread. They make good products, yes. They also abuse their market share to implement anticompetitive policies. The first doesn’t absolve them of the second.
Truth is, no one has any idea what it would look like if there were actual competition among the PC games platforms. Steam may be the best possible world, or maybe we don’t know what we’re missing.
To learn more about Steam’s anticompetitive practices:
Epic Games Store—which is trying to undercut steam at a 12% fee—still list games at the same price as on Steam because of Valve has strongarmed publishers into fixing the prices. If Epic is charging 18% less but Valve is stopping publishers from reducing the game cost by that much, how is that not blatantly anti-competitive and anti-consumer?
enshitifies
Oh good, you are familiar with Cory Doctorow. He has an article on how Amazon abuses their position using the exact same playbook Valve uses.
@pluralistic -- "Companies have 'near total managerial discretion' to lump business units together and group their profits and losses in bloated, undifferentiated balance-sheet items ... The SEC lets Amazon – and other gigantic companies – get away with a degree of secrecy that should disqualify it from offering stock to the public."
One set of rules, enforced for the little guy, ignored for the behemoth. As George Carlin said, "It's a big club, and you ain't in it."
"As Mitchell points you, it's not just Amazon that flouts this rule. We don't know how much money Google makes on Youtube, or how much Apple makes from the App Store (Apple told a federal judge that this number doesn't exist). Warren Buffett – with significant in hundreds of companies across dozens of markets – only breaks out seven segments of profit-and-loss for Berkshire Hathaway." Interesting reading on @pluralistic article on Amazon https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees
For the pro-monopoly crowd that absolutely dominated antitrust law from the Carter administration until 2020, Amazon presents a genuinely puzzling paradox: the company's monopoly power was never supposed to emerge, and if it did, it should have crumbled immediately.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A little-known and utterly wonderful thing in Reykjavík is the Recycled House, to the north east of the main city centre. It's a home and a public art exhibition of scrap wood and metal transformed into buildings with mythological themes and elements of witchcraft and tribalism. Eerie, but excellent.
I wrote about our chance encounter here on our website:
Found this doll in a crate full of similar items in a garage in Bernay. Doing the alt text for this was challenging, but seeing it for the first time was worse
The White House, in partnership with the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will reveal plans aimed at banning junk fees.
Shiny silvered brass from 1975.
A 2GHz local oscillator from some old 4GHz link transmitter.
Not a single circuit board in this unit. #GHz#surplus#junk#hamradio
While we are talking about Musk and Starlink, let's discuss the Kessler Syndrome.
Some evening not too long from now you may look up, and instead of the stars and a few Starlink satellite trains marching along, you might see a night sky filled with brilliant sparkles. You check the news and learn the International Space Station has been destroyed as well humanity's weather and other Earth observation satellites. What's happened?
@mastodonmigration space debris has been a problem everyone watched coming
"The problem of space junk adds up to around 200 tons of our trash. The clutter in Earth's orbit includes defunct spacecraft, spent rocket boosters and items discarded by astronauts such as gloves, wrenches and toothbrushes."
Here's another photo of how we used a Flipper Zero to broadcast spammy Bluetooth signals spoofing an AirTag to nearby devices. Using custom code from a researcher, we compiled the Flipper Zero firmware, and switched on Bluetooth to broadcast the signal.
The researcher said these popups can be used to bombard and flood nearby iPhones with junk and spoof popups, and potentially over a wide area.
The provenance of this cheap, resin figurine is unknown. It's been on top of a gray Rubbermaid storage tub under a tree in the back yard forever. I sent a snap last Spring to my sister who collects angel figurines, thinking she might have given it to Mom. Nope.
Guessing Mom picked it up at a yard sale. How did the angel lose its head and one wing, and how did it end up in that spot under the tree with a years-dead lawn mower?
This shot is not staged. It's a cropped picture I snapped in the driveway Saturday evening.
BIL edged and swept the driveway. It's been years! Before then, this plaque was half-in/half-out of a black plastic trash bag with other junk, sitting on this doormat. I've posted a shot of that before.
Last night, when I got back from taking sunset pics, I walked up on this and laughed, knowing exactly what I'd call the picture.
....and a cut and paste of an first time I posted the "Welcome" still life, April, 2023.
📷 "Welcome" April 1, 2023.
Mom bought this engraved metal plate at a yard sale some years ago—I was with her. Was it 50¢? Meant to be tacked up next to the front door but never was.
I found the plaque sticking half-out of a green trash bag at the head of the driveway in a pile of other junk.
Steam :: Introducing Steam Families (steamcommunity.com)
Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta....
White House announces new efforts to crack down on 'tens of billions' in junk fees (www.cnbc.com)
The White House, in partnership with the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will reveal plans aimed at banning junk fees.
What's some really unpopular opinion you have?
Most of the time when people say they have an unpopular opinion, it turns out it’s actually pretty popular....