ah, my bad, that was two different responses, only the first line was directed at you.

i’ve edited the response to be clearer.

edit: for clarity

That’s a lot of assumptions about the poster but I can see how you got there.

Below is a response to the idea of supremacy in general, not a response to @[email protected]

That seems like a particularly stupid and relatively indefensible hill to die on, but I suppose if you are going to plant a supremacist flag, you haven’t really used well reasoned arguments to get there in the first place.

Why not just go with “I disagree with them to such a degree that I wish them and any like them, dead” ?

No need to base it on utterly and stupidly false claims.

how did you get to supremacist from that? genuine question

That’s one of the reasons why you get delayed or cancelled, over-budget projects that go nowhere. ( another big one is corruption and general financial shenanigans ).

if you throw a lot of money at a problem/project that doesn’t have reasonable management and competent understanding of where that money could work efficiently then you’re asking for trouble.

Destinating more resources to that quickens and makes better that process, though, incentivating people to work on it and test it.

That is charmingly naive, in my experience.

I’m not saying more money wouldn’t help, I’m saying throwing money at it isn’t generally a stand-alone solution, which is what i think the person you were replying to was trying to say.

It’s similar in that you presented a position that was not backed up by a reasonable interpretation of the data you also provided.

What you did was different, in that is was a brief misunderstanding of the wording rather than a fundamental misunderstanding of causation and correlation.

it didn’t seem defensive as much as dismissive.

Honestly i could have just been reading tone in your response that wasn’t there, i get that wrong more often than i would like, if so i apologise.

The gist you actually provided was “you are doing a bad thing and I’m disappointed in you, smh” and then proceeded to do something very similar followed by a non-apology.

I actually agree with your point but it’s still a shitty way to do it.

That’s exactly my point, you are taking the stance that people didn’t buy alan wake because it wasn’t on steam, to a degree that’s true, i’m saying that i think a larger proportion didn’t buy it specifically because it was on EGS.

If it were released as a game you could buy and play sans-platform, then i’d agree with you. It’d certainly see less sales than a steam release, because steam is where everyone is.

My stance is basically if you remove steam entirely, Standalone Sales > EGS. Add steam back in and you get Steam > Standalone > EGS

Think in terms of food, you’re basically saying the it’s the fault of the 3.5 star monopolistic countrywide chain fast food place that nobody want’s to eat at the recently health-inspection-failing 1 star food-poisoning cafe.

Is there a monopoly, sure, is the competition so bad people avoid it regardless of the monopoly, also yes.

If you were using something like GOG as an example, i’d fully agree with you, but EGS has seemingly infinite funds and they still managed to release something so bad nobody wants to use it, even for “free” games.

It’s not even just the platform, epic as a company have a reputation, so they have to also overcome that, which they have not.

That’s a terrifying amount of power that people aren’t bothered by

Historically there’s been no need to be worried, generally, i agree that’s not ideal, but again name a viable comparable alternative.

even though we’re talking about company that’s smug about selling gambling to children.

You mean as opposed to the company that actually lost a class action regarding loot boxes in their game targeted at children?

You aren’t even wrong about this but “People don’t buy games from this company who famously lost a lawsuit regarding gambling targeted at kids because this other company who also do sketchy kids gambling things are …better at PR?” isn’t a convincing argument.

Everyone should be better at this, but they aren’t.

I will preface this with : I have many games that are not in steam that I play regularly, I understand this isn’t the norm, I have zero paid games in EGS and outside of checking the platform I never use it.

Alan wake on EGS is a terrible example to support your claim.

It’s like being upset that a fancy new car hasn’t recouped costs when it’s only available in 4 custom made dealers that are only open half the time and the manufacturer refuses to allow it to be sold in all the places people normally buy cars.

Sure, that is certainly a choice but it’s a choice that would have been part of the risk assessment before the money was sunk.

Steam does have a monopoly, because it works and there isn’t anything better.

There is a bit of resistance to switching, most game libraries are in steam because it’s been the best option for a very long time.

If EGS worked well and epic (outside of unreal engine) wasn’t such a shitshow the platform would be fine.

It’s doesn’t and they aren’t so it’s not.

It can’t compete on features, support or stability so it tried exclusivity, that hasn’t worked out for them.

Steam has its own shit, sure, that percentage is some apple level monopolist bullshit.

Name a comparable, viable alternative?

So a deflection and a personal attack rather than an actual answer, that explains a lot.

I’ll just assume yes and save us both some back and forth.

No need for a follow up non-reply , i won’t see it.

… just to be clear, you think “South East Asia” refers to it’s location relative to europe and not it’s relative location to the rough centre of Asia ?

So, south america is called that because it’s … south of europe ?

Not sure how versed/willing you are to selfhost but I’ve heard good things about tube archivist.

There are also a bunch of ui’s for yt-dlp, though i can’t vouch for quality.

It’s somewhat of a catch, that’s generally how monopolistic moats work but you really shouldn’t be relying on google as a backup service for obscure videos you wish to keep.

I’ve no idea of the amount of lectures, guides, documentaries and other non-entertainment media that is available exclusively on youtube, but again it isn’t an archiving service.

They can, will and have deleted whole channels for various reasons, most of which were bullshit, if you find something you absolutely have to keep, download it.

That being said, the process of downloading, archiving and curating content on anything more than a trivial scale can be much more involved than it seems, especially if you want backups/redundancy.

I’ve never been a big youtube user so my opinion on this is coloured by the fact that i don’t have that much invested in the platform.

Literally any other form of entertainment.

Though the statement was to stop using it, not replace it.

Uhg, the self-serving know it all liberal who answers their own questions and thinks they’re 100% correct is a big part of the unpopularity of Democrats and a huge enabling factor for Trump.

Self-serving applies to almost everyone, especially in politics, that’s not a “left” specific trait.

Answering your own questions is annoying in a scenario where the side being asked the question will respond with an actual and coherent answer.

I’m not cherry-picking here, spin up almost any “debate” you’d consider “left vs right” (in the US at least) and consider how much of that is being done in good faith.

They both agreed that Mexican migration is the largest population migrating… But that point wasn’t acknowledged by the liberal, because they had something else to say…

According to your own edit 55% of illegal immigration is from Mexico, so that means 45% of immigration is not from mexico, perhaps the point being made is that if you look in to the percentage of raids per community it’s probably not 55% mexican.

That doesn’t refute or ignore the mexican percentage being what it is, it points out the apparent disparity in enforcement, which is probably the point.

…yep, and the liberal media thinks this comic is a great point in favour of their righteousness - when it’s EXACTLY why they lost, and why Republicans become more extreme. They just get so sick of the smug badgering that they just want to troll and annoy the left, to the point they’ll vote for Trump and his loose knit-wit antics.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume “they” in “they just get so sick” includes you, i could be wrong however.

Having said that, i don’t disagree that not being able to appeal to a larger base was a major contributing factor in why they lost, at least in my opinion.

They lacked a coherent strategy and relied far too much on people understanding that the other side were grifters, a plan which ultimately worked so poorly that you now get elon musk as de-facto president.

But i will also acknowledge the difficulty in appealing to a base of people who include literal neo nazi’s, standard bigots, people willing to join an insurrection and pretty much anyone who wholeheartedly subscribes to the current republican regime.

There are people in the middle ground, the (largely white) people systematically left behind by the system over many years.

Unfortunately such people are easy pickings for a groups of grifters with appealing soundbites and a proven track record of either not following through at all, or following through to the detriment of the people they are supposed to be serving.

The systems in place aren’t designed to help these people, they are designed to give them just enough hope to keep them working.

Running on a platform of nice sounding lies is easier when you don’t actually have to follow through.

If you have to become the party of nice sounding lies to appeal to enough of the voter base to gain power, is that a victory ?

No wonder Trump’s popularity with minorities increased. Maybe listen to the working class masses for a change, and accept they don’t pay attention to the same barage of identity politics the ivory tower does. Nor do they have the same class interests as that liberal elite.

Agreed, though they do in fact have shared interests it’s just not apparent from the messaging.

[EDIT: Mexico makes up 55% of illegal migration. European countries aren’t even in the top 10 list of countries of origin. America is a downgrade for most Europeans, that lady’s smugness is unearned because if we’re going by the stats, India and Asia are the next largest problem areas.]

See the first point above.

You’ve pointed out why the statements made by the lady are correct in both a technical and literal perspective.

If you are seeing smugness here, that’s indicative of who you are, for better or worse.

Ah, that tracks.

I’ll wait and see if they reply, maybe it’s something else.

I don’t think anti-trump is a strict requirement.

Not publicly and directly messaging a known rapist and convicted felon to let him know you think he’s doing a good job “standing up for the little guy” would probably suffice.

Preferring a theoretical instance of a person over a contrived (though admittedly occasionally real) example makes for a good soundbite, not necessarily a real option though.

Or more succinctly, a literal trump loving person who is also accepting is a unicorn with some serious cognitive dissonance.

A “radical” leftist who is also a shitty person is a real thing that can exist.

Comparisons between real things and imaginary things, aren’t good comparisons.

Edit : where did “stealing habit” come from I can’t find any reference anywhere else? Genuine question, I may have missed it.

It is, as well as being 3/4 of the provided usages and a large proportion of the examples.

TIL

I shouldn’t have anything to hide, but I’m part of a group the current fascist leadership in government want’s to eradicate, so hide I shall.

I agree and i think a lot of people who espouse “nothing to hide” as an approach haven’t actually thought it all the way through.

Then there’s the fascists, dictators, oligarchs and other all around shitbags who just want the control.

That said, I also feel like people acting like the remote server they are connected to is tracking what you do on it as some kind of surprise is so stupid. “Facebook is keeping track of the pictures I uploaded to it!!!” There’s a lot of stuff to complain about Facebook, google, or whoever, but them tracking stuff you send to them willingly isn’t one of them.

This always surprises me, i originally thought it was because people didn’t understand how these things work or how capitalist companies work.

More and more it seems like people don’t care until it affects them, which is somewhat understandable, it takes effort to care about this stuff and a lot of people will never be directly affected by the consequences.

What i do still think is that the general population has no idea the extent of what can be done with all of the information they are volunteering.

That’s very slowly changing but the usages of the data are also increasing at a much more rapid pace than before.