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Comment Re: What exactly is "Steam" anyway? (Score 1) 162

I think one valid complaint is the use of DRMs.

I am in every way anti-DRM, but it's ubiquitous. A lot of publishers won't publish on GOG for this reason. I agree that Epic is arguing in bad faith. The enemy of my enemy is convenient, nothing more, so I am not delusional about Epic but I still enjoy their actions.

They are basically throwing money to become relevant enough that they can be profitable without having to throw money. If that ever happens, you can be sure that there will be no more free games.

TBH I usually forget to go look at the free games they are typically so underwhelming, though there have been some legitimate greats too.

Meanwhile Steam is sustainable and superior on features.

There are only two features of Steam beyond buying installing games which I care about, and one of them sucks. I like that it handles updates for me, but that is also the bad one, because practically none of the updates are differential. I want them to make that easier so that publishers actually do it. I know that it requires significant support from publishers when they use packed data files, but even that is something that could be addressed. (If the files are compressed individually instead of using compressed archives, then binary patches are feasible.) The other feature is Proton. Anything else including friends, achievements, and even reviews is all optional to me. I enjoy some of those features, but I would still use Steam without them.

Comment Re: So this is actual profit (Score 0) 111

And ammo. Yeah some people have thousands of rounds of ammo. The military has millions of rounds, and enough men to go with them to effectively utilize suppressive fire. If you do get in an old-fashioned firefight with soldiers they can simply outbullet you if for some reason they don't have an armed backpack drone. Which by the way they totally do.

Comment Re: 4.3% (Score 0) 111

You get that the unemployment rate is literally designed to be a falsehood because it stops counting people when they have been unemployed for a while, right? The methodology used for it has no concept of who is looking for work at all, it's based on a fundamentally bogus assumption that people who haven't found any for long enough aren't looking.

Comment Re: I think it's more than slavery (Score 1) 111

If people don't buy stuff eventually the corporation collapses. The principals can make a profit before then, but repeat this enough times and the whole boat sinks as it happens to too many major employers at once. Hence too big to fail, which is of course the result of failure to enforce antitrust law.

Comment Re:Illegal search applies here (Score 1) 202

Excellent post, just a couple of comments.

A previous administration attempted to force asylum seekers to wait their turn for a hearing outside the country.

Which is really, really stupid. It just makes them some other country's problem, and no other country should be willing to put up with it.

First, it's interesting that Nikkos said "a previous administration", without naming it. It was, of course, Trump 1.0.

Second, international treaties on refugees don't require a country to accept every refugee and there are multiple examples where nations have made agreements that modify which county must handle asylum claims. For example, the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement specifies that asylum seekers must make their asylum claim in whichever country they arrive in first. If the US and Mexico had a similar agreement, then refugees could not enter from Mexico at all. Trump tried to get Mexico to sign a Safe Third Country agreement, but Mexico refused -- and it probably would have been invalid anyway, since Mexico might not satisfy the requirements of a "safe" country under the US law that authorizes the signing of Safe Third Country agreements.

Instead, Trump signed the "Migrant Protection Protocols" agreement with Mexico, which was the "remain in place" agreement. You said that no other country should be willing to put up with it, but Mexico did formally agree to it, though only to avoid tariffs. Of course, Mexico has declined to renew the protocols in Trump 2.0 (though Trump announced they had, which Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately denied -- Trump's habit of unilaterally announcing that an agreement has been reached obviously doesn't really work).

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why countries might agree to various limitations on asylum processes to manage refugee volumes, and these agreements are often perfectly valid under international and national law. Trump, of course, doesn't care about legality, or humanity, only what he can get away with.

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