Comments by "k98killer" (@k98killer) on "Louis Rossmann" channel.

  1. Well, actually, they have been losing their anti-trust case, and their motion was denied that would have allowed them to combine individual arbitration actions against them into a class action to save money (since according to the previous SSA they had to pay the forced arbitration costs). This change means they no longer have to pay the arbitration costs and forces users to use courts instead. They also added a sneaky "you consent to this if you didn't delete your account before this was updated" provision to try to force the tens of thousands of ongoing individual arbitration cases into a class action lawsuit. There is nothing admirable about this. Edit: originally stated they lost the case and an appeal, but corrected to state they have been losing motions in the initial case which has been ongoing for over a year now.
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  2. There's nothing noble about them trying to force 30k individual arbitration cases into a class action to save them money on the heels of their loss in the anti-trust case.
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  3.  @de4dbutdre4ming  Internal email between Steam employees that surfaced during the Wolfire suit: "We wouldn't be okay with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they don't use Steam keys." The case is still ongoing over a year later, so I was incorrect in my statement that they lost the case, but this, along with other internal communications brought out during discovery, evidences a monopolistic practice that is the basis for Steam's more recent legal troubles. It is not just Steam keys -- they used their market dominance to pressure game publishers not to sell the same game on other stores at lower prices even without providing Steam keys.
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  4.  @asain3586  Sounds like you don't actually know anything about the case. I recommend you alleviate your ignorance on the topic. The fact that they lost the case shows that they were engaging in practices that had the effect of fixing prices higher for consumers in violation of anti-trust laws.
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  5.  @de4dbutdre4ming  I might be misremembering, but my understanding is that Steam won the part of the case dealing with Steam keys but lost the part of the case dealing with pricing of games in other market places. I'll double check.
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  6. This sounds like how the flugaloo starts.
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  7.  See the Light  in 2008-2009, the Fed printed $16 trillion and lent it to companies all over the world owned by or indebted to Fed officials. No reckonning -- the story was buried. At this point, I'm half hoping for a revolution to break out so we can finally rid ourselves of these fucking greedy banksters and return the nation to the people.
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  8. There's nothing noble about them trying to force 30k individual arbitration cases into a class action to save them money on the heels of their loss in the anti-trust case.
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  9.  @Rr-j4x  Steam's terms for selling through their system required that game devs/publishers could not sell the same games they published on Steam for a lower price elsewhere. This artificially fixed prices on competing game marketplaces higher than they otherwise would have been had the anti-competition policy not been in effect. As a result, anyone who has bought games has a claim against Steam for artificially elevating prices paid for games.
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  10.  @WombatDave  depends on what you mean by "continuing to use the service". If simply not deleting your account is "continuing to use the service" even without logging in or downloading a game/update or synchronizing user data to the Steam cloud, then there is not much "use" going on there, so it would likely not hold up. Passivity is not action, and "continuing to use the service" is an action.
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  11. Amazon is a shit company by their own admission. They can't engineer their way out of a paper bag, so why expect anything good from them?
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  12. Florida largely does not suck if your stay away from Miami, but if you like the haterville riots-in-the-streets vibe, Miami might be exactly what you're looking for. Electricity is somewhat expensive because the grid has been rebuilt a bunch of times and is hurricane grade at this point, but we have international ports and lots of farm land, so the cost of living is fairly low over all.
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  13. Do I smell a class action lawsuit?
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  14. The main value of Amazon Prime at this point is the video streaming catalogue for their shitty Fire TV dongles.
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  15. I was under the impression that WS Bets bought a bunch of call options to cause market makers to delta hedge, effectively increasing buying pressure by up to 100x the investments of the autists.
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  16.  @benjyyx  They literally lost a court case. Your head is so far up your own ass you can probably see out through your mouth.
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  17.  @yucinalo  no, the updated SSA explicitly states that all future conflicts will be resolved using the courts in their preferred jurisdiction (it was a specific city, but I don't remember the name).
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  18. If Intel faulters and AMD takes a breather, maybe RISC catches up to x86-64.
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  19. Sometimes, people wonder about the purpose and meaning of life. Imo, this is what it's all about: cat videos on the Internet.
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  20. I have the Moto G Stylus, and it is also quite good -- I consider it a strict upgrade over the more expensive Moto G5+ that it replaced. I'm very happy with it, meanwhile one of my materialist friends has broken his Surface Duo and gotten his repair request turned down because he keeps buying expensive phones and breaking them -- he still sings the praises of a phone that is literally broken and cost him 9 times what my phone cost me.
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  21. We should all start sending Terms of Service Provision to these companies. "Provision of services constitutes acceptance of these terms."
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  22. "CP Wiki" omega laul. That would have been terrible.
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  23. My dad operates an accounting firm and asked me to write some software to replace QuickBooks, so that's a project I hope to complete sometime next year.
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  24. I have an idea for a satire: a world in which every product has the tiniest embedded SOC possible that still requires firmware, e.g. a disconnectded EPROM; each item, whether a handbag or a pack of socks or something else, comes with a Terms of Service agreement that says "if you touch this item, you agree to these terms" and then requires monthly blood donations for the benefit of the corporation. In this world, there are starving nudists and people who justify the "sacrifices" they make for their products with the way Big Corp brings the "rain" through the branded sky dome sprinklers.
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  25. A few of my friends run a 501(c)(3) that organizes a yearly tech conference and hardware soldering workshops at tech events. Every year, they design new badges and SAOs based upon available hardware supply chains, and they check all the PCB manufacturing and electronic assembly options. They told me that American PCB manufacturers only produce medical/aerospace grade boards at 20-100x the price of appropriate quality PCBs from Chinese manufacturers. The grade of device required for these low-end products meant primarily for teaching the basics of electronic assembly/repair in a fun way is not fungible with aerospace grade. Thus, it is entirely accurate to say that these currently cannot be manufactured in America. If Trump and DC collectively wanted to actually reshore manufacturing, the tariffa would have been announced with a scheduled rollout and tax incentives for investment into American manufacturing, e.g. a 10% tax on capital gains, dividends, and intrrest income from investing in this sector.
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  26. This is why the license system I developed for the software products I am working on do not require activation servers but instead use digital signatures. Since the user's identity is important for branding outputs of the software I am working on, baking it into the license and committing to it with a digital signature means that licenses will not be shared between users, and it means I will be able to easily distribute an evaluation license, but this strategy might not work for other types of software products.
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  27. Fuck that awful city. Go somewhere that doesn't abuse you.
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  28. I have a similar kind of deal with airplanes: since TSA has searched my bags every single time I've taken a flight and patted me down half the time, I won't get on a plane anymore. Easy for someone else who hasn't been harassed as much to say "oh, just give up on that because it is more convenient to fly". Fuck that.
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  29.  @TheMonkeyButte  the double chop and twist gestures are very useful in a variety of situations. For example, if your fingers are wet from rain when getting out of the car at night and you need to see where you dropped your car key or house key, a quick double chop is all it takes when more expensive phones make it impossible without first getting somewhere dry to unlock your phone.
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  30. We need a new law requiring that firmware source code must be made available to customers as part of the sale. If people cannot use the items they buy, then it is consumer fraud.
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  31. This is insane. Such a terrible design, and the only purpose it serves is parasitism.
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  32. Down with surveillance capitalism. * gets on the list next to Rosmann *
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