corbin

@corbin@infosec.pub

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corbin OP ,

Valve has avoided many of the same anti-consumer moves as other tech and gaming giants, likely due to its smaller size, status as a non-public company, and the long-time leadership of Gabe Newell and other executives. Valve won't stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.

Valve is not immune to enshittification, and it has already happened on some level with minimal current Mac support, facilitating gambling through item trades, etc.

corbin OP ,

No exclusivity for games

Valve doesn't need to pay for exclusivity because it already dominates the market. There are many games that are effectively Steam exclusives because they are not available through other methods on PC. Half-Life 2 received a lot of criticism at launch for requiring Steam.

They purposefully made SteamOS open source so that other companies can easily release portable PC gaming products

SteamOS is open source, but you need a license to use the Steam brand, and Valve doesn't allow that. One company tried to make a handheld console with SteamOS, but it can't be legally bundled with the hardware: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033161/ayaneo-next-lite-steam-deck-competitor-steamos

That said, who knows what happens when he dies?

Yes, that's the point of the article. If you need one specific person to stay alive for something to continue functioning well, you don't have a business, you have the British monarchy.

corbin OP ,

Whether or not the exclusivity deal is between the publisher and the store or just the publisher doesn’t make a difference for the consumer. There’s no functional difference between Counter Strike 2 requiring Steam and Fortnite requiring the Epic launcher except that gamers are used to Steam.

corbin OP ,

It's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Apple very obviously doesn't want the Mac gaming ecosystem to exist in the same capacity as Windows and Linux, but Valve also has an obligation to its customers using Macs to keep the service running well.

corbin OP ,

I meant more that the Steam client needs to be fully functional on modern macOS. Dropping older operating systems is more justifiable, but does still add to the picture of Valve not treating Mac owners all that well.

corbin OP ,

The issue is Steam and Valve being held up as the ‘one good company’, when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Valve does many of the same practices as Epic, EA, etc., but there’s a double standard with Valve because it’s the default experience. The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.

corbin OP ,

It seems pretty well established at this point that AI training models don't respect copyright.

corbin OP ,

I mentioned in the article that 5G home internet is not a solution for everyone. The reliability varies significantly by location and network quality—some people have no issues, for others it's unusable. It's not a perfect solution that will fix the US' infrastructure problems, but in the meantime it is making a difference for some people.

corbin OP ,

I would like to see more collective action, but it's also incredibly difficult to put your housing situation on the line when the US (and most states) does not give you a functional backup. As you said, it's capitalism at work.

corbin OP ,

What was discredited?

corbin OP ,

Yeah, Hindenburg isn’t like a team of journalists or anything, but if they cited other sources in their report and it seems to be pretty accurate. If there were big issues then Opera should have been able to point them out, and that didn’t happen.

corbin OP ,

I mean, yeah, just leaving it at “china bad” is still xenophobia. Tech companies in the US and other countries can be just as shady.

corbin OP ,

RISC-V is also really exciting, yeah. I'm curious if it will have to go through the same slow progression in form factors that we saw with ARM (first embedded, then phones, then tablets, etc.) or if we'll get high-performance RISC hardware more quickly.

corbin OP ,

I don’t know if those useful features are the main reasons VPNs are used, though. There’s evidence they are used often for bypassing blocked sites (like VPN downloads jumping in Russia recently), most of the other advertised privacy and security benefits are questionable. Most of them don’t advertise torrenting/piracy because that’s a legal gray area.

corbin ,

How about users make decisions for themselves and block Threads if they want?

corbin ,

Public Mastodon posts are already indexed by search engines.

corbin ,

If I am on Mastodon, there is nothing that Threads can collect from me that they can not get already. My posts are public, Meta or anyone else doesn’t need permission to look at them.

The only risk is if I am sending direct messages to someone on Threads from Mastodon, then obviously Meta has a copy. ActivityPub is not E2E encrypted, you shouldn’t be using it for private communication at all, the threat model is the same between Threads and any other Mastodon server.

corbin ,

I’m okay with Threads federating because there are a some people I know who won’t use Mastodon but will use Threads, and I would like to talk to them without downloading Threads. That’s probably true for most of the people supporting it, or they just think it should be up to individuals instead of the admin making unilateral decisions about who you’re allowed to talk with.

Threads joining would also introduce a far wider group of people to Fedi that isn’t just “nerds who like Linux and/or programming”, which is the bulk of people using Mastodon (and Lemmy, for that matter) right now. I’m not really concerned about EEE because there will always be a huge chunk of people using the FOSS platforms.

corbin OP ,

Super Tux Cart is always a good time

corbin ,

I had some fun going in 2018 with friends, but it definitely felt like a theme park with lines everywhere for demos. Maybe there’s room for something to take its place focused on those demos or community events, rather than announcements that most visitors couldn’t attend anyway.

corbin ,

Or just an RSS reader, every channel has an RSS feed

corbin ,

I made a PWA that can quickly remove tracking variables called Link Cleaner. If you install it through Chrome or another Chromium browser on Android, it shows up as a share target, so you can share links to Link Cleaner and then share again to the intended target.

corbin ,

When you’re in Chrome or another browser, there’s an install option in the main overflow (three dots) menu.

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