Agent.X7 wrote on Oct 23, 2020, 11:58:

Dash wrote on Oct 23, 2020, 09:17:
Oh. Just had a thought to add.


The streamers are paying the publishers and dev in 'exposure'. Because isn't that something some try to fob off on artists?

Totally not the same.
When people say they are going to pay an artist in exposure, they are trying to get the artists to give them something for free or at a deeply discounted price.

Streamers have already purchased the game. The publisher already has their money, and NOW they are getting free advertisement as well. That this douche thinks the STREAMER should be paying for.

I honestly think music should work this way as well. Instead of beating down any creator who dares use their music, artists should be glad for the free advertisement. Jesus, look at Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. All of the sudden they are raking in cash again from a 40 year old song because some random on a longboard used it in his video and it went viral.

That's not really how it works, though.
Would whatever 40 year old you're referring to have gone viral without the music? Probably not.

With streamers, would they have any value without the games? No, none. So I do understand why the people that made the games get frustrated at some person making significantly more by playing the game than he or she did by making it. Remove the streamer, and the game still exists and makes some money. Remove the game, and the streamer is working at Subway.

jdreyer wrote on Oct 21, 2020, 15:27:

Mr. Tact wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 19:42:

HorrorScope wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 16:17:
Right and Amazon is the best at what they do. Bell Labs was once upon a time as well.

And Bell Labs' parent company was forced to break up... which in the long run was a good thing. It forced telecommunications competition which completely changed the long distance calling business -- mostly for the better.

The cost of calling overseas dropped from $3 per minute down to 10 cents. That's terrible! (For the telecoms).

Red?
You've gone to the dark side?

VaranDragon wrote on Oct 21, 2020, 09:53:
From what I've been told by my (very few) New Zealand online friends, apparently it is a very nice place to live.

One of the best. Which is why they make immigrating there so difficult. If you don't fit a need you can't come in. They have the economy to support their amount of residents, but they're not really growing rapidly. They're stable and happy.

Which is why it was a big deal when Peter Thiel paid his way to citizenship there. It made people angry. GabeN would probably do the same.

Which contrasts with the US approach to immigration, as well. We are a growth economy. In order to grow, we need the best and brightest. This whole H1B thing angers me to no end because it encourages the best and brightest to contribute to, or start, corporations in their home country, instead of in the US, meaning the growth happens there, not here.

Total-Khaos wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 20:59:

RedEye9 wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 20:50:
That's the only way Amazon can make a profit.
Well that, and the fact that their 8TB drives are really only 7.45tb after formatting.
They're nothing but a bunch of cheats.

Yup. Never buy anything advertised as OEM from Amazon either. I can't count the number of times I've bought OEM advertised goods on Amazon only to be shipped the cheaper non-OEM product. These are for products that say fulfilled and shipped by Amazon as well. If you don't notice, you're getting completely ripped off. Someone really needs to start investigating their business practices as a whole.

Fulfilled and shipped doesn't mean anything. It needs to be sold by. And even then, due to comingled inventory, it is no guarantee, but it's the closest.
Fulfilled and shipped just means the shady guy running a business out of the basement of his parents' house in Staten Island is paying Amazon to do all the logistics.

zcaa0g wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 13:06:
Another brilliant move? Her using the phrase "3 chambers of government" is all it took to know she was and is a moron. It's not shocking you like her though given that fact that she's a moron.

Could be worse:

Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

Got cutoff writing that.

Amazon is absolutely the best example of why no one can compete. Amazon's biggest competitor is Walmart, but Walmart can't truly compete. FOr one thing, Walmart is bogged down by corporate politics, and by hundreds of stores with huge rents and huge salaries.

Beyond that, though, Amazon is a tech company. Amazon has AWS, which is its most profitable business. AWS funds its retail, to a large extent. This gives Amazon the capability to lower prices dramatically and ensure no one can beat them. Amazon doesn't need a profit on any single item, or really any item, in its retail business, because of AWS. Walmart, meanwhile, does. It does badly.

Even from a marketplace perspective, it's hard to compete. Some stores, retailer or marketplace, have found niches Amazon can't really fit. But otherwise? If you're going to sell something, wouldn't you want it on Amazon, first and foremost, since it has far more daily users to tap into?

Google is kind of the same. If you start a new search engine, you need to figure out how to monetize it. If you don't want to run ads, or targeted ads, you're quite limited. Google, meanwhile, has so much data about us that it's running ads everywhere. Its search business exists for its ads, so it doesn't really need to make money serving you search results, because it serves you ads around it. They can invest those ad dollars into improvements in search, that someone without those dollars cannot.

They're just so far ahead. They have the most money. They're the only place consumers want to be. And they're who partners couldn't survive without prioritizing.

HorrorScope wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 16:17:

Solemn-Philosopher wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 13:13:
While I am all for government oversight on big businesses and potential abuses, I feel like Google is more popular because it is in fact one of the best search engines. I've tried others on many occasions and they just aren't as good at giving back decent results. If anything, I would prefer they look into their Youtube management. There seems to be more problems there.

Right and Amazon is the best at what they do. Bell Labs was once upon a time as well.

Yup. At some point, it is impossible for anyone to become better, because the incumbent can simply outspend them. This is particularly true in areas where there are enormous financial barriers to entry.

Other good, arguably better, search engines exist. They can't make a dent on Google because Google can outspend them, in every category, by thousands to 1. No amount of scrappiness can overcome that.

The big concern here is China.

What is worse for the American people? Having Google, Facebook, et al, be as big and obnoxious as they are, or having them be split up, and a Chinese competitor fill the void by not being split, therefore having all the economic power of the old entities and being able to squash the new entities?

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 15:02:
I would like to see zero agenda in Google and FB. It's not good for anyone, regardless of political affiliation nor social stances.

I find that, usually, people claiming there's an agenda confuse having an agenda with adhering to the TOS.

PhysicalEd wrote on Oct 20, 2020, 13:42:
Blue, if you want to see a great show about older people, check out "The Kominsky Method" https://www.netflix.com/title/80201680 yeah, it's Chuck Lorrey but really it's totally sympathetic to its characters, and Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin are brilliant. Especially IMO Alan Arkin who has always been a favorite of mine. Sadly he is not returning for Season 3. But hey, he's 86, he deserves some time off!

Agreed. Chuck Lorre creates largely unwatchable TV, but this show is great.
Didn't know Arkin wasn't coming back. The show will take a hit, but it also felt like he filmed 90% of his Season 2 scenes in a single day, all alone, possibly in a car. He was always on the phone, rarely with other actors.

Kxmode wrote on Oct 19, 2020, 13:50:
The number of people convinced COVID-19 is a scam/lie/hoax/alien conspiracy is sobering and frightening. History is rife with people with crazy ideas, but never has there been a point in human history where they've had a microphone as big as the Internet to spread their noise on something as big as a pandemic. All I can say is misinformation is a weapon of mass destruction. One can only hope those of sound mind outnumber the insane.

You've repeatedly said that you don't care about politics, because politics are the kingdom of man and you live in the kingdom of God (no need to correct, I'm paraphrasing your scripture from memory and know it's off.)

But the COVID-19 scam/lie/conspiracy is a political problem.

Perhaps you're more impacted by politics than you've repeatedly claimed?

Ozmodan wrote on Oct 19, 2020, 14:54:
I like Nextdoor and appreciate the way they keep the site clean. Anything Facebook puts out is poison to me anymore since they cannot stomach any viewpoints that don't coincide with theirs. I had a very nonpolitical post on FB that had an attached not based on facts note attached to it when I know there are proven facts that support my viewpoint. Ridiculous censorship if you ask me.

What was this post? Because I've yet to see one they take down that actually does have facts supporting it. Usually, it's "facts" from someone like Zero Hedge or Charlie Kirk or Project Vertitas or some anti-vax doctor that's concerned about Demon Sperm.

And, given that Facebook has been proven to bend over backwards for Trump, this whole "they don't like politics they don't agree with" gibberish needs to stop. You aren't a victim of Facebook. At any given time, 3 of the top 10 most shared posts on Facebook come from Fox News, Usually 2 or 3 are Ben Shapiro, and 1 or 2 are that Dan Bongino lunatic.

If Facebook was trying to quiet conservative views, amplifying conservative articles is an odd way to do so.

How would you write a law to apply only to them? And where do you draw the line? Does this apply to Facebook? How about reddit? How about Voat or Parler? How about 4chan? How about Bluesnews?

Should Blue be liable for every time Cutter tells someone to kill themselves? He's done it a few times. If someone sees it before a mod takes it down, is Blue liable for any damages?

According to the woman nodding behind Trump last night, we're the ones responsible for school shootings. I think. Hard to tell...

https://twitter.com/MayraJoli/status/1158715965804294144

Yesterday, the Idiot in Chief retweeted an article from the Babylon Bee, which is a satirical website, as fact.

Today, he's defending it, still convinced it's fact.

How can anyone say this man is mentally fit and a proper judge of information to lead our nation?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1317044556328730625

jdreyer wrote on Oct 15, 2020, 16:45:

MrBone wrote on Oct 15, 2020, 12:26:
Sounds fun. Hopefully there are some red-eyed zealots running around for us to blast into oblivion. The train idea is very intriguing.

I didn't see any shooting, but maybe you can throw anti-vaxxers off the train while it's moving.

Did that qualify as a threat?

GothicWizard wrote on Oct 15, 2020, 14:45:
Infamous tech quotes?

This year Linux will take over as the main PC OS and be the primary gaming OS too!

-Every Linux fanboi, every yr. since ~1996

Linux on desktops in 1996 <1%
Today ~2%

Any day now I am sure.

Listen, can you show me another desktop OS that has doubled its share in that time?
I rest my case!

Frans and kxmode have done such amazing work. Thank you, guys.

No "bad apps" here, either.

I have an iPhone for work, though it hasn't been powered in months. Hate them. They've finally moved a bit beyond a hideously ugly grid of multicolored icons as their interface, but I still feel locked into something that I can't make work best for me. Instead, it's made to work best for everyone. What works best for everyone is unlikely to work best for me, specifically. In that way, it's the Justin Bieber of tech - designed for as broad a reach as humanly possible.

Even Android often pisses me off by not being as customizable as I'd like. Why can't I customize my own "share" menu, Android? Why must you constantly serve me a seemingly randomly generated one instead of allowing me to at least pin contacts. Why can't I prevent anything from ever taking me to the Store? Clicking a link in Gmail and sending me to the Store to download an app I don't want is in no way more convenient than sending me to the website.

Still, Apple does customization worse.

RedEye9 wrote on Oct 13, 2020, 12:45:

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Oct 13, 2020, 12:34:
so is this something i need to get they guy who washes my car for xmass?

I went all out this year and bought my wife a new dishwashing sponge for xmas.

You fool. It isn't 2010. This year you buy her an Oculus 2 and Vacuum Simulator with the Dishwashing expansion.