Of course we know, because we don't see the source tree to the next GTA game posted anywhere, do we?

Steam offers developers the option to sell their own Steam keys. In theory, that lets developers use all of Steam's infrastructure services without paying - Steam doesn't take a cut of those sales. Essentially the only condition is that they don't offer those keys on better terms than for Steam buyers.

That's basically the exact opposite of abusing your market power. To the degree you can do better than Steam, with help of a third party or not, they let you keep Steam's share accordingly.

The small game developers I've talked with have all said that Steam is by no means a replacement for a marketing budget. Random indies on steam don't get noticed, as a rule.

So the main leaked info is email addresses? All the other information mentioned is public in Sweden, as far as I know. Well, apart from the fact that the victims use municipal trash services, I guess.

Yeah I don't know if that's worth 1.5 Bitcoin, extortionists.

I often wonder in such cases if the extortionists weren't scammed themselves. Buying access to exploits, tools, collection and laundering infrastructure etc. and being told it's a surefire way to get rich quick.

Swedish criminal gangs have been gaining especial notoriety lately, because they've started recruiting kids around 14 for assassination jobs on each other.

People, including the kids, think it's because the court system can't convict kids that young, so they get off with less punishment.

But it's not. The actual reason is that kids are easy to manipulate. Even a little older, you'd struggle to find even one 18 year old who could be convinced becoming a gang assassin was a cool idea.

And that's the mechanism at work here too. Hey kids, wanna work for Peter Thiel's totalitarian fever dream? It'll be cool and all, like, cyberpunk and stuff! Except you'll be on the winning side!

Really? You can't?

If your scheme was implemented, there would be a fantastic incentive to find ways to listen to your own music, even worse than today. Because not only would you make a ton of money on it, but you have to be quick about it because the service would be bankrupt by next month. Terminal looting phase.

You seem to think such things are easy to detect and filter out if you set your mind to it. Meanwhile, the whole web is practically breaking down - because it isn't easy.

Obviously, in that scheme Spotify would have to charge per streamed song too, and that would cause monthly payments to drop straight into the toilet. Neither Spotify or the record companies are that stupid.

Spotify's incentive is to keep people subscribed, and keep the record companies on board. For a decade, they were actually the best at fighting spam/fraud by a mile. (Then they fired the guy who did most of the spam-fighting for them. Worth noting here that the record companies actually own a huge chunk of Spotify).

For keeping people subscribed, Spotify's incentives are actually quite aligned with rights owners: they want the subscription model which collects most revenue. If a $1000 monthly subscription would make them more money, they would do that. If a $1 subscription would make them more money, they would do that (and indeed, that's closer to what the subscription costs in some parts of the world). If a pay-per listen model would bring in more revenue (lol) they'd do that too.

But for keeping record companies aboard, Spotify has a huge problem. Because no matter what Spotify does, the rights owners incentives are to cry bloody murder and fling shit, all the while pulling shit like this (you notice the beneficiary is a superstar who's also an industry bigwig? Somehow, he's not the one getting sued, funny that).

Spotify didn't set it up that way, the record companies did. Now some record companies are finding out maybe it would have been better to let the money follow the user (so that your listens don't affect where anyone else's subscription fees go), but now Spotify has adapted - likely with sweetheart deals with heavily playlisted background music providers - and resists change.

The scandal was that Tidal did not use bots. They likely used an SQL INSERT statement instead, bypassing the need for that. And the beneficiaries were the owners of the service - or rather, a few of them. They screwed over everyone else on the platform with their little stunt, including their celebrity friends.

Does "too lazy" include no budget for a domain name before the proof of concept is complete? Let's Encrypt doesn't work unless you buy a domain name and keep it renewed. To satisfy a DNS-01 challenge, you need to host the domain's DNS at a provider with an API that an ACME client can use. To satisfy an HTTP-01 challenge, you need to be on an ISP that allows incoming connections on port 80. A lot of home ISPs block inbound port 80 because they use carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) or want to upsell business-class service or both. Nor does HTTP-01 work for wildcard certificates.

poor people have more babies than wealthy people (Elon excluded)

Make that "Elon's fertility doctor". Or maybe "the guy carrying the sperm sample". There's no honor among eugenicists, why would there be?

"You wholeheartedly disagree" with the facts. If your theory was right, that it was that we suddenly decided to culturally devalue motherhood (never mind the question of why we would suddenly do that, I guess it's some sort of conspiracy), then why is it a global phenomenon, as OP points out? Why did Koreans, Finns and Chileans suddenly decide to devalue motherhood and stop letting little girls play with dolls at the same time?

"Represent our culture" eh? What is our culture then, in your opinion? I don't see many people with this attitude join Morris dancing groups, to put it like that. Or string quartets. If you do any culture at all it's usually some bizarre caricature version of the past with viking metal music etc.
And that's the best case. Worst case, it seems like you think "our Western culture" is about breeding and dominating, and complaining that you can't recruit enough women to your breeding and dominating project. In that case, why would you care if only some very distant cousins of you do the breeding and dominating after you're gone? Your culture will go on.

Unless the complaining is an essential part of it?

One word: rent.

If I pay on one site, every single other site still has ads. So this locks me into the viewpoints preferred by the curator of one site and to the production values that one site's business model enables.