I unironically had a screening interview with a recruiter that asked “If you were creating a startup, would you use microservices?”. She didn’t like that my answer was “It depends, I don’t have enough information to answer”.

It looks nice, but you have to sign up for an account to use a terminal app? This is really getting ridiculous

“Oh, he uses FOSS, that’s even worse. Put him on the commie watch list”

Came here to say this, but I was delayed by having to clean my cargo target folder.

Honestly, this article is pretty bad at explaining the problem here. It’s clear that other websites will try to track you, but the important part of this incognito drama is this:

The plaintiffs also accused Google of taking Chrome users’ private browsing activity and then associating it with their already-existing user profiles.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/google-agrees-to-settle-in-chrome-incognito-mode-class-action-lawsuit/

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100% code coverage, integration tests passing. Deploys to prod. NullPointerException at 3am

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

There’s some evidence that he read Atlas Shrugged, which is about a poor executive who “suffers” under increasing government regulation. It’s like a bible for CEOs

Well, it’s winter, so that’s like 4pm to start coding

He wrote a techno optimist manifesto that reads like a proto fascist manifesto. In fact, he cites Marinetti as an inspiration, who was founder of the futurist movement, and later author of the fascist manifesto and a close supporter of Mussolini, so no surprise I guess. He enforces ideas that this century is just a bad rerun of the previous.

https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-religion-of-techno-optimism

Sony also has an MFN, not sure about Xbox: https://tryhardguides.com/epic-games-ceo-says-sony-is-the-reason-they-cant-lower-prices/

The real reason Epic hasn’t sued Sony is because they’re an Epic shareholder

How do you compare it with other platforms if it’s exclusive to EGS? For timed exclusives, it would mean the price would have to go UP on EGS when the Steam version launches, which seems like pretty dumb marketing honestly.

I know I’m playing devil’s advocate defending Epic and publishers, but I don’t see how defending rent extracting monopolies is any better.

The price is the same because of a Most Favored Nations clause in Steam’s ToS. Publishers have to sell it at the same or higher price on other platforms to keep their product on Steam, which is the lion’s share of the market. This is part of the accusation in the lawsuit: https://programming.dev/comment/5159579

Now you could argue that even if it were removed, publishers would still sell at the same price and keep the extra profit, but that’s just hypothetical at this point.

I love the theme for it, but was expecting an actual city builder, as advertised in the description. Instead, it’s a pretty boring puzzle game with pretty graphics, very unrelated to something like Cities Skylines. I am hoping something like this with more in depth management comes up in the future.

I do like ‘cozy’ building games like Townscaper and Dorfromantik but they aren’t advertised as city builders, and the puzzle elements in Dorfromantik don’t get in the way of building pretty stuff as much as in Terra Nil.

“Wow, personalized ads? That’s brilliant! Let’s patent it” said an Activision exec who had been in cryogenic sleep since 1995

Yeah, I’m going to reserve my excitement for when I see gameplay footage or actually play it. Quake Champions looked really good in the beginning and then it ran like an internal pre-alpha. Tribes Ascend had so many OP hitscan weapons on release you thought you were playing Call of Duty. Waning general interest in “boomer shooters” and disastrous releases make these games more nostalgic memories than interesting future games in my mind.

Thanks. So TLDR:

1. PMFN (Platform Most-Favored-Nations clause): Valve forces publishers to price games on other platforms at the same price or higher than Steam. This is an anticompetitive monopoly because publishers can’t sell the game at lower prices on platforms with a lower cut than 30%, which would improve competitiveness. Very valid point
2. Keys that publishers can sell on other storefronts are limited. This point is moot. The fact that Steam allows you to activate a product that was purchased elsewhere and then use their infrastructure to download the game is way more than they have to do. They can completely make the rules here as this is basically a free service that you get from Valve.
3. Some murky points about Valve policing review bombing that isn’t explained properly.

I’m also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn’t gain any traction apart from the free games).

I’ve tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn’t get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.

And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don’t like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.

Pros: Easier to learn (belt mechanics are a bit clearer). Belts have a Z axis which allows for even more spaghetti! Progression feels faster since you already start out with builder drones. Graphics are absolutely amazing. Multiple planets are pretty cool.

Cons: there are no trains. Logistics stations kinda ruin the late game since it makes factory planning much easier

I wouldn’t be surprised if the board is just doing what ChatGPT tells them to.