No, it's not a monopoly, it's simply the best place to buy games. There's plenty of healthy competition, but Valve has won over the hearts and minds of players but being amazing at selling games. This includes fighting for consumers' rights with generous refund policies, something previously unheard of with software. It used to be that all you needed to know about software purchases was "no refunds," but now you can buy a game, try it out, and if it doesn't run well on your PC or if you just don't like it, you can return it. Nobody else has even tried to offer that kind of service. Does no one remember Steam's early competitors like Direct2Drive, who would charge their customers an extra "download fee" on a game you paid for if you wanted to re-download the game? Of course you don't, because they don't exist anymore... not because of any shady tactics, but because Steam was simply better.

The last thing I want out of a map is a "conversational experience,"

The conversation I want is:
ME: "Show me the map."
MAP: "Here."

u b from Gen-LB: Lawn Booters

and like instant gra

...if there are only toothless penalties on the plutocrats who lie and cheat, the data will useless. They like to hide the reasons they cut staff to keep investors from knowing what's really going on.

Another way to say this: any bill that actually punishes slimy plutocrats will likely never pass.

Neutron capture is not usually considered fusion.

Climate change is a long term problem. We will still need energy sources in 2040.

That's one of the selling points of thorium cycles, that it's more difficult to use to make weapons grade materials. Note "more difficult" may not mean "completely impossible."

That would be highly-enriched uranium ("HEU"), not thorium

Our generation might not like it, but if our kids get used to it, insects are a great food source. Same phylum as crabs.

Depends on what kind of radiation. Betavoltaics convert beta radiation, but most of the nuclear power sources we talk about don't emit betas (energetic electrons). There are also alphavoltaic devices, but so far these tend to degrade due to radiation damage, so they have only limited lifetime. Actual nuclear reactors emit neutrons and fission fragments, which tend to radiation degrade anything nearby.

I'll say! Commercial devices (using tritium as the source) are in the microwatt range.

Not yet flying on space missions, but the tech is getting better. I wrote a review on this a while back: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ab...

95% of countries have agreed to not swipe land. It's the 5% that cause all the headaches.

All Elon's solutions somehow involve space:

Back itches? His satellite emits a laser beam on the itchy part via an app.

Federal budget deficit? Fund Elon's asteroid mining bots to bring precious metals back to pay down the debt.

Lonely? His .20c "WarpShip" will take you to those green Orion babes. Double-Dee's are a 30% markup. 3-breasts are +60%.

> Yes, by all means, let's take our biggest mistake and make it a global problem.

Warming is already a global problem. When enough side-effects kick enough nations, they'll start to care and cooperate.

> Well, since this is going to cost money, it wont happen. Period.

Putting ocean sprayers on say 1 in 10 container ships is relatively cheap.

You know it would be dirt simple for Musk to lubricate them to have his rockets selected for contracts.

"What's all this extra stuff?"

Vendor: "Nah, nothing."