Epic paid people for exclusivity in an attempt to force the customer to use its shitty platform. The free games are just bribes to try to get us to use it. And it’s still not working very well for them.
Nobody would have complained (well ok, some would have, but few) if they just tried to make a better store than steam and get people to use it that way.
They could still do the free games as a bribe, to get people to check out the store, but the store would actually need to not be garbage. The exclusivity payments really rankled people though.
It works sort of this way in D&D too (and I suspect Pathfinder 1e since it’s just D&D slightly modified).
The thing is the scroll’s cost is based on its spell level x caster level. Usually you craft the scroll at minimum caster level for that spell, but they can be made up to the crafter’s caster level. It just increases the price…a lot.
Had Donald Trump been the U.S. president hosting this week’s APEC meetings, I have no doubt that the headline from the event would have been unchanged. It would have been: “He’s a dictator.”...
They might if they joined a real party instead of a troupe cosplaying as politicians.
You want change, you join one of the real parties and fight to become a candidate in that party and gain enough influence to shift party policy.
If everyone that did the third party nonsense did that, there might be enough support in a real party to start changing things and maybe eventually make third parties viable instead of just a performative game.
And people have been playing with third party nonsense since the beginning of the country pretty much. It doesn’t work because of our voting system, it’s never worked. In the history of the country, no third party candidate for president has ever come close to getting enough electoral votes to win. The highest ever was Theodore Roosevelt, and he got 88 out of a necessary 256 to win, barely a third of the needed number.
More notably, the most successful third parties overall, with Roosevelt’s Progressive (Bull Moose) party excluded, have largely been regressive, such as the American Independents with George Wallace, the Dixiecrats with Strom Thurmond, th Constitutional Union AND Lecompton Democratic in the 1860 election… Progressive third parties do not have a good track record, probably because it’s a lot easier to get people to vote for a lost cause if they’re doing it out of hate than it is if they actually want to improve things.
Bernie and AOC and others are being a fuckton more successful than third party candidates have been for the entire history of the nation.
They definitely need more support to overcome the entrenched forces against them, though. That’s why they need people like us to support progressive candidates in primaries, and we need more people like them willing to do the hard work of getting into the democratic party and changing it from within.
Now, in a small election in a district where another party has a realistic chance, great! Vote that way. But most places aren’t like that.
And don’t forget voting third party when they have no chance can cause great harm. I would have thought the election of 2000 would’ve been enough to sear that into all our minds forever.
You could turn invisibility on and off as you like and there would be no time limit. Your clothes would turn invisible too, and you could decide whether the items you are holding would be visible or not....
As others have said, invisibility versus teleportation is way too lopsided in favor of teleportation. Even if we’re talking perfect ‘you cannot be detected unless you bump into something or otherwise reveal your own presence’ invisibility, it’s still not good enough to compete with teleportation. Especially with S-tier teleportation like described there.
You’d have to really beef up the invisibility side to make it more fair. Maybe instead of just invisibility, go full incorporeal, with the ability to have gravity affect you (or not affect you) however you want, relative to whatever reference frame you want (be very careful with this) and the ability to make any part of yourself incorporeal or corporeal without it being all of you. Even then, I’d have a bit of a hard time picking this over teleporting.
Or go with the Invisible Woman’s powerset, that’d be a pretty solid other option versus that teleportation. At that point I would actually have a hard time choosing, cause that is some nice teleportation, but Sue Storm’s powers are pretty high tier as well.
There’s a huge difference with the Prime Directive - although I think it can be horrible too.
The Federation doesn’t go around leaving super advanced technology to be found and abused by primitives everywhere. When the Ancients ascended, they just left everything behind, for good or ill, and then refused to interfere when others found their old stuff and used it.
The Ancients meanwhile not only did that, but also abandoned friends and allies, like the Asgard. They could’ve fixed the Asgard genetic problem, and pre-ascension, they’d been allies, but despite that they were just ‘nah, fuck y’all, we’re out.’
Hold you for 24 hours to see if anyone reports a crime and describes you as the perpetrator.
When no one does, find a crime which seems plausible for you, and where they’ve gotten a description that could possibly fit you.
Interrogate you about it, giving you your lawyer of course. Assuming you do not have a solid alibi for that particular crime, there’s a real chance you’ll be charged and eventually convicted.
If you do have a solid alibi, they might keep looking for other crimes to charge you with, or they might give up.
If they give up, they’re likely to charge you with something related to wasting their time, for which you will at minimum have to pay a fine.
‘Nobody would create anything’ is an absolute lie that we’ve been fed, simply another part of the capitalist brainwashing propaganda.
The truth is people love to create stuff for the sake of it, and many people will create things even when it costs them time and money, because they enjoy it. The only thing that would be necessary for them to create things prolifically would be to ensure their ability to live and work without having to worry about ‘making a living’ or having to ‘earn’ enough money to live, and people would be producing tons of content.
If you doubt this, you’re not paying enough attention. People create amazing stuff without even hope of being paid. I have read hundreds of fanfics - some poorly written, some very well written - that never made money and never could make money. They were written because the writer wanted to tell a story with characters they loved. I have seen vast amounts of fanart, again, made with no hope of obtaining money. Especially before things like Patreon - these days you can make some money making fanart, which artists resort to because they have to, but every artist I’ve ever talked to hates the part of their life they have to devote to the ‘business’ side of things. Most early webcomics had no way of making money. Even today, most webcomics do not make money - most are simply made by creators that want to share their story and art.
In the gaming world, mods - free, unpaid mods - have been around for ages, and many of them are as amazing or even moreso than professionally made games. A very tiny minority of mod creators manage to turn a successful mod creation into a job in the industry, but the vast majority do this simply because they want to and enjoy making a thing people will appreciate.
Movies are about the only field I haven’t seen a plethora of freely made stuff in, and that’s probably a personal experience thing. I know there’s some.
Overall, I guarantee we would not see less things created as long as we allow creative people to use whatever they want and do not force them to toil for their survival, to have to monetize everything or else lose their standard of living. We would see rather an explosion of new creations, just like we saw when the internet rose to prominence and people started doing this kind of thing and posting it publicly. Only we would see it at an even greater scale.
While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
To be fair, for most games which you actually choose to continue playing, enjoyment per hour must be at or above a certain threshold otherwise you’d stop playing.
I’ve put in 2000+ hours on Civilization IV, Stellaris, and Skyrim, and 1000+ on several other titles. So, since I could quite happily never purchase another game again, and simply play those games until I die, let’s use them as our baseline for what the cost should be, shall we? Assuming they cost $120 each (maybe a little low on Stellaris when you count all the DLC, and definitely high on Civ IV) I’ve played each of them for about 2,000 hours…that means I should expect to pay $0.06 per hour. Heck, let’s be generous! Let’s count Stellaris, with ALL of its DLC, at the price it currently is, without being on sale (except for one that’s at 10% off. I’ve bought most of the DLC on various sales of at least 30% off, but let’s try pricing all games as though they cost this much. That’s about $335. Which still comes out to $0.16 an hour. Not bad, I’ll take it!
Granted, since most games don’t hold me for 2,000 hours, most games aren’t going to get that much out of me. I sometimes buy new games at a $60 to $70 price point. So, the average game would have to hold me for 375 hours in order to make the same amount I pay for it now. Which means in my entire Steam library, there are a mere 12 games that would reach that threshold of getting equal or greater than the $60 I’m willing to occasionally pay these days.
I’m all for it! Most of my games would drop considerably in price, even at $0.16 an hour!
I am so so divided on if I should vote for biden or not. I wanna vote third party to at least do something or should I just stay home and protest and advocate where I can? Thoughts?
If you actually want to do something other than choose between the two options presented by the two major parties on election day, then your ONLY real option is to get involved in the process at a MUCH deeper level.
That starts with voting in primaries…and voting for lesser elections…but it also involves actually getting involved with one of the two major parties at a local level and doing more. Supporting candidates you like from the ground up, perhaps even running as a candidate for some minor office if there’s not enough competition, attending meetings and otherwise getting genuinely involved with the political process.
Because voting third party in the US on election day has no more meaning than not voting at all. Third parties are not viable in the US system, and never will be. The choice will always be between two at that point, so the only way to improve is to get into it earlier in the process.
If you don’t do that, then all you can do is pick between Republican and Democrat and that’s it. Doing anything else is not participating, it’s pretending to participate. It’s showing up to a game of poker and declaring your 2 aces as blackjack. You’re not playing the game that’s being played if you do that.
Oh, my point was the relationship is so close you might as well not make the distinction. Money does buy happiness, simple as that. Just as I would simply say that the heater warms me up.
Yep. I have not and will not give epic store money because they didn’t try to make a better product.
In fact they attacked me as a customer, in essence, by offering a worse product but then paying for exclusivity on various games. And in exchange they try to bribe me with free games.
Well, I’ll take the bribes, as I try to remember to collect my free games each week, but I’m not giving them money.
This is stupidity. If you want to wonder, wonder about the many things we humans still do not understand. If you wonder enough, you may be motivated enough to actually learn about the field, then genuinely discover something.
That’s one of those paradoxes with human behavior around problems. If you put in effort to resolve the problem before it becomes significant, either no one notices, or they claim your effort was unnecessary because it wasn’t a problem in the first place.
Y2K bugs are a great example. Lots of effort, time, and money was spent ahead of time to prevent it from becoming a problem…and you get people claiming the whole thing was just nothing to be worried about at all and the expense was pointless.
These days I imagine a database of ads can be built up. Every time a new ad appears, it could well be in the database within a day. Then within 5 or 10 frames, the ad could be detected and the database would know exactly how long to skip forward.
The President is the Commander in Chief - he could override all those decisions on who to promote, theoretically. At least that’s how I understand it.
If they have a smart group that is actually planning this, that group could then vet a bunch of other people that their data suggests would be more amenable to their agenda and present a list of alternate promotions to the Republican president, which he could then order the military to make happen.
Pentagon officials have been frustrated for months over an Alabama senator’s blockade of more than 300 senior military nominations. But after the Marine Corps chief was hospitalized over the weekend, that frustration is turning into rage....
There is one other thing that could be done…but won’t be.
Qui tacet consentire videtur ubi loqui debuit ac potuit.“He who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.”
If they simply decided to adopt a silence gives consent rule for the Senate’s role of advice and consent for all appointments, they would no longer be able to obstruct by simply holding off on things. The senate could still deny consent by voting against a candidate and explicitly not confirming them, but doing nothing would automatically become consent and pass unopposed.
This is what Obama should have done with Merrick Garland, not to mention all those other federal judge appointments. Simply go ‘okay, you’re not voting on it, which means you’re silent, which means you consent. All appointments approved!’
Edit: Although truthfully the idea that the Senate needs to confirm every military promotion is so insanely stupid that I can’t understand how it’s ever become the standard. The only reason Tuberville can do this is because these promotions are usually passed behind the scenes with unanimous consent - he can’t actually block them…he can just make them be voted on. And yet, the volume of promotions means that simply voting on them would take up all of the Senate’s time. The Senate really should only need to confirm the highest levels, not every single promotion in the entire military.
A federal judge in Florida indicated Wednesday that she may delay the start of the classified documents trial of Donald Trump, pointing to the other criminal cases the former president is facing as well as the mounds of evidence his attorneys need to review....
This is absolutely untrue. Trump doesn’t deserve his trial delayed, but it is absolutely the case that sometimes people who are actually innocent need more time for their defense to be prepared, and this idea shouldn’t be perpetuated in general as it can bias potential jurors.
I donate to the Mozilla foundation, and I love Firefox a ton. But I can’t seem to like the UI by installing a theme, and when I change it to look better the browser slows to a crawl. Does it really matter all that much if I use Chromium?...
The important factor here as far as what an individual uses is the tracked metrics. When a browser looks at a website, it identifies itself and its engine. Therefore actually using an engine other than Chromium is important because it goes into use stats across all websites the individual visits.
And like with all collective endeavors, while an individual contribution is insignificant, the whole is made up of those individual contributions. It also only takes a few percentage points of users for a business to in theory want to avoid excluding those users and thus keep them developing for multiple browsers.
French President Emmanuel Macron looked to cement his legacy, and take on political opponents, with the inauguration on Monday of a monument to the French language deep in far-right heartland....
Valve rocks (sh.itjust.works)
Anon plays DnD (sh.itjust.works)
Biden Skillfully Handled Xi Jinping’s U.S. Visit in Ways Trump Simply Never Could (www.thedailybeast.com)
Had Donald Trump been the U.S. president hosting this week’s APEC meetings, I have no doubt that the headline from the event would have been unchanged. It would have been: “He’s a dictator.”...
Would you choose invisibility or teleportation?
You could turn invisibility on and off as you like and there would be no time limit. Your clothes would turn invisible too, and you could decide whether the items you are holding would be visible or not....
Who is the cruelest fictional villain?
I’m not just talking cruelty in terms of their goals, but also how they went about achieving their goals
What could happen if you would just walk into a police station and say: I want to turn myself in and I take the 5th.
Of course without committing a crime before and without saying anything else.
You'll have to be quicker than that (startrek.website)
Once a pirate, always a pirate (discuss.tchncs.de)
GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour (www.forbes.com)
While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
Electorialism (tempted to vote biden) (slrpnk.net)
I am so so divided on if I should vote for biden or not. I wanna vote third party to at least do something or should I just stay home and protest and advocate where I can? Thoughts?
I'm not asking to be rich. (lemmy.world)
Epic Games Admits In Court That Its PC Store Still Isn't Profitable (kotaku.com)
The company behind Fortnite is currently in a legal fight against Google over in-app fees
Don't ask your phone and enjoy wondering 🧠 (fed.dyne.org)
#aggxi
The problem solver [workchronicles] (startrek.website)
That explains it (files.mastodon.social)
YouTube's plan backfires, people are installing better ad blockers (www.androidauthority.com)
Tuberville Scoffs at Military Leaders Working 20 Hours a Day: ‘I Did That for Years’ – As a Football Coach (www.mediaite.com)
What did Canada do? (startrek.website)
‘This is outrageous’: Pentagon officials furious over Tuberville holds after top Marine hospitalized (www.politico.com)
Pentagon officials have been frustrated for months over an Alabama senator’s blockade of more than 300 senior military nominations. But after the Marine Corps chief was hospitalized over the weekend, that frustration is turning into rage....
Judge indicates she may delay Trump trial on charges he hid classified documents at Mar-a-Lago (apnews.com)
A federal judge in Florida indicated Wednesday that she may delay the start of the classified documents trial of Donald Trump, pointing to the other criminal cases the former president is facing as well as the mounds of evidence his attorneys need to review....
How much does it really matter to use firefox?
I donate to the Mozilla foundation, and I love Firefox a ton. But I can’t seem to like the UI by installing a theme, and when I change it to look better the browser slows to a crawl. Does it really matter all that much if I use Chromium?...
Macron opposes gender-inclusive spelling as he inaugurates language museum (www.france24.com)
French President Emmanuel Macron looked to cement his legacy, and take on political opponents, with the inauguration on Monday of a monument to the French language deep in far-right heartland....