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Quoting: Purple Library Guy...none of the politicians care if it works or ever will work. They just care that nobody can claim they voted against protecting children; whether the measure would actually do that, or have any effect whatsoever, is irrelevant--the only thing that matters is how their political opponents could frame it.

It's funny that you say this, because I watched a thing a couple of weeks ago comparing politicians and businessmen... Then general gist was that most politicians ask "What needs to be done", followed-up by "And how will this affect me in the polls". Businessmen on the other hand, usually ask "What needs to be done", followed-up by a command to "Get it done" (regardless of how it makes them look). The argument was that Trump falls into the latter camp, which I think is pretty accurate when you consider how he approaches some of America's problems.

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Quoting: elmapulwhat about legacy software? what about legacy operating systems or software that only run properly on legacy operating systems?
what about live-cds? will secure boot be forced uppon us?
and what about content that have a different age rating depending on your region?
there is a reason why we have CERO, ESBR, PEGI, etc.

the definitons of what an certain age group can or cant see vary from country to country, some countries are more liberal with sexually sugesitve content targeted at an younger age, but not for violence, others are the opposite, how the hell they will enforce that?

Clearly the people that wrote up this law don't even understand what an operating system is. Otherwise they would have realised that operating systems aren't actually tied to a single person. So my guess is that they never thought of anything beyond their phone.

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I wonder if GOG has tried to payroll the devs like these that are already doing this work...? Is it too obvious? Or, are they using all different tools and thus would not be a good fit? Or, is GOG embarassed about the current state of the code? 🫤

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Quoting: F.UltraDoesn't change the fact the the roadmap was designed before Spotity was involved and thus again shows that you are wrong in your assumption that the DMA was instigated by Spotify.

a) Please provide as source for said roadmap. b) I said like Spotify. c) Again: Stop inventing statements! I never claimed the DMA was instigated by Spotify.

Quoting: F.UltraThere are no payment procession regulation and "they" are not the legislators ("they" are the Apple customers who decides to distribute their apps on the Apple Appstore but use a different payment option for in-app purchases even if that payment processor takes a higher cut than Apple).

I'm perfectly aware that "they" are Apple's business "partners". Any other reading you imagined.

Quoting: F.Ultraedit: FYI here is the text of Article 5(7) of the DMA that covers app store payment options:

7. The gatekeeper shall not require end users to use, or business users to use, to offer, or to interoperate with, an identification service, a web browser engine or a payment service, or technical services that support the provision of payment services, such as payment systems for in-app purchases, of that gatekeeper in the context of services provided by the business users using that gatekeeper’s core platform services.

Note the complete absence of any mentioning of a cut or even a definition of what a cut should or should not be.

[Article 5, Obligations for gatekeepers](https://www.eu-digital-markets-act.com/Digital_Markets_Act_Article_5.html#:~:text=7.%20The%20gatekeeper%20shall%20not%20require%20end,users%20using%20that%20gatekeeper's%20core%20platform%20services.)

Because it's not necessary & would've been stupid - as I have said. The effect is still the same: Businesses are allowed to use their payment processors & avoid Apple fees, i.e. would work as intended. Except it's not - because Apple still wants their fees & as such the process is still ongoing. Again: How can that be? (Emphasised so that you stop ignoring it)

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Quoting: nullzeroI've actually sent them an email since I was also interested in the official answer for it

Thanks for getting those details!

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Nice! But I'm not spending almost 400 bucks to have an enjoyable game (and no, mods cannot bypass this, because they need certain DLCs to work)...

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Clearly the Chinese always disrupt the metrics, there's no way Linux losing almost half of its users overnight (also because it didn't double overnight as well, even with the Win10 EOL noise).

And China, even with their push for Linux, still doesn't seem to make a dent with the consumers, maybe because multiplayer games with kernel anticheats...

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I stand corrected. Duh moment

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what about legacy software? what about legacy operating systems or software that only run properly on legacy operating systems?
what about live-cds? will secure boot be forced uppon us?
and what about content that have a different age rating depending on your region?
there is a reason why we have CERO, ESBR, PEGI, etc.

the definitons of what an certain age group can or cant see vary from country to country, some countries are more liberal with sexually sugesitve content targeted at an younger age, but not for violence, others are the opposite, how the hell they will enforce that?

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I saw the Steam Controller 2 graphic and got excited thinking it was a release announcement. 😞

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Quoting: GustyGhostI was kind of right:

I wouldn't take a known, massive outlier entry to be a proof one way or the other. I'd agree if in the month after the rebound (so April) we still see a decline.

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Hm, yeah, having a decky loader / millennium plugin or a steamgriddb's sgdboop-like function would be perfect.

Also makes it easier in case I need to restore my Desktop Mode controller.

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Sorry for that but for me it seems that US is turning itself a kind of rich new North Korea, government surveillance, no freedom, imposed religion, beliefs and who is against will have their heads chopped off, very dystopian...
I hope you guys get back your power and put off the f..ing lobbyists out of government they're cancer to your country.
😤

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Quoting: GustyGhostWhat system is it emulating?

Are they, again, abusing the world 'emulator' when in fact DREAMM is an engine reimplementation.

Genuine question. They don't really detail much on their site.

From the FAQ it sounds like they are doing a mini Wine, implementing just enough the get the games running, and running that in an x86 emulator?

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Leave it to California to come up with some of the worst ideas.

And to everyone saying, "This isn't so bad, I can accept this," remember, this legislation is not the end, it is the beginning!

To quote Benjamin Franklin: Those who would exchange essential liberties for a little temporary safety will have neither liberty nor safety.

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In the big picture this contributes to stuff that may well work out to being some kind of slippery slope. In the specific case, and indeed most specific cases in this sort of domain, none of the politicians care if it works or ever will work. They just care that nobody can claim they voted against protecting children; whether the measure would actually do that, or have any effect whatsoever, is irrelevant--the only thing that matters is how their political opponents could frame it.

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"Star Wars Episode I: Racer" this game is lots of fun!

" "an AI-hater, and will never intentionally use any AI-generated or written code in DREAMM"."

good! insert the meme here, except that, unlike in the meme, it dont make sense to be the vilain saying that.

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one big drawback with the steam survey is that the outcome depends on the choosen participants in the survey.
So it will most likely always be hard to know the full extent of the real percentage of linux users on steam.
Because less linux participants doesn't equate less people using linux at that very moment in time.
As others have stated i can fully imagine linux mint users ditching it for windows 10.
Some pc users will always need that corporation because everything outside it is unknown and scary.

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Quoting: Alia5

Quoting: JarmerI'm not a huge controller user (only on deck) so I'm wondering: isn't this just recreating the steam community layouts feature? Why not just utilize that?

Author of SteamInputDB here

Well, the community features of Steam are not really that great - And have been not that great for ~10 years...
The filter and sorting options especially.

Additionally, it's not really that obvious to some people when it comes to sharing specific configs on third party platforms like Reddit / Discord, etc.

The website is at the current stage what I would consider the absolute bare minimum viable product.
Just imagine what it could be in a few months from now with proper and more direct SteamClient integration and community features Steam lacks

As someone who plays only on my Steam Deck, this tool is a godsend already. Just being able to filter by the controller I'm using RIGHT NOW rather than "any controller that's attached to my Steam account" is immense. It's so frustrating to go to the Steam Community layout for controller configs and the first 7 entries are for an Xbox controller, a Dualsense controller, and a Dualshock 4, before finally finding Steam Deck, WHILE ON MY STEAM DECK.

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Taiwan Province gets an increase, but not Hong Kong (and Macau)? I wonder what makes them less impacted. Maybe direct from the mainland parts?

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I've actually sent them an email since I was also interested in the official answer for it, hope its not an issue. (Their answer is the unquoted > part)

1) They say the keys expire 90 days after the bundle starts. So if you have not redeemed, gifted, or exchanged when the expiration is getting close, do they warn you in any way? Or do they just silently expire?

> 1. We will have reminder emails in place for soon-to-expire keys in your library, at least a week in advance. We're discussing partial credit for the Exchange if we've verified you own the game, but this is still a work in progress, and not something I can speak to definitively before the current collections will expire.

2) If you have not synced your Steam library, and redeem, you can get a Steam key for something you already own. Do unused keys expire after the 90 days, or just keys that have not been redeemed/gifted?

> 2. All unredeemed keys expire at 90 days after a collection has launched. It's important to redeem keys ASAP, and not just reveal them. However, while revealing the key will help avoid them from expiring immediately at the 90-day mark, we cannot guarantee they will be redeemable past that point, and cannot offer replacements if our partners disable unredeemed batches of keys.

3) If you choose to gift a key, it prompts for an email address, which seems reasonable. Does the recipient get a key, or do they need to have/create a digiphile account first (like humblebundle requires for using gift links)? Has anyone sent a "gift" to themselves? I've seen random grumblings that gifting wasn't working, but I took it with a grain of salt.

> 3. The recipient of a gift will need to create a Digiphile account in order to receive it. Gifting works without any issues, but we do sometimes see people not receive the gift email; however, this mostly appears to boil down to email domain issues, or emails being marked as spam. We can reverse gifts if you experience any issues, or they time out and are returned automatically after 7 days. Self-gifting isn't possible at this time. Alternatively, you can click the "Redeem on Steam" option to reveal a key and manually send it to the recipient.

4) [ADDED BY ME] Concerning this is the Steam account link mandatory or just for to activate the exchange/gifting ability

> 4. Having a linked Steam account is mandatory for purchasing Game Collections, as well as a one-time sync to verify your Steam level (bot and fraud protection). You do not have to sync you Steam library, as this is only used for the Exchange feature.

EDIT: Added missing emphasis in bold from the original email response

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Or they updated:
Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit 6.62% +4.29%
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 2.59% -3.98%

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California, über alles
California, über alles
Über alles, California
Über alles, California

That song is just as relevant today as it was back in the day. Now it's just Gavin Newsom instead of Jerry Brown and Trump instead of Carter. While Jerry Brown would've been better than Reagan (or either Bush) and Gavin Newsom is better than Trump (or Ron DeSantis). He's not the savior that petty liberals make him out to be. If this bill makes it to his desk and he then signs it into law, it's just as bad as him not granting Sirhan Sirhan (an innocent man) parole. That's on top of him annoying California progressives on other issues too.

If Trump power does actually go 'way, my probable vote for Gavin Newsom in 2028 will be only as an anti-right vote. Not any actual support for him. Leftists can't abstain and only vote on proposals anymore, I fear. It's become just like 1932 Germany, where abstaining was as bad as apathy.

Also, age verification on an OS level is stupid. It's annoying period, but if it's gonna be required, then it should just be an online only thing.

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So technically anything with an operating system - your console, smartwatch, television and even fridge or modem / router for example - needs you to verify your age? What a silly concept!

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: JarmerIf all they're doing by this idiotic law is making a new checkbox that says "are you over 18?" then 🤣

Even that would be a risk. It would signal to law makers that the idea works and that they just need to change the requirements for how age is checked.

signal what? If you are American the government already knows 100% about you thanks to Palantir so whatever this is, I highly doubt that it is some nefarious scheme. It is dump and idiotic and it should be abolished, but IMHO not some shadow tactic, that game we already lost.

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Quoting: eggrole

Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe modern "free market" is a market that actively promotes rentiers. Smith would have hated it.

Yes, that is what I was saying. I don't like to argue semantics as people call things capitalist and socialist (or any other -ism or -ists these days) when they have little understanding of the roots of the words. I argue that we don't have capitalism today in the USA (or the west in general) and we have a system much closer to socialism.

Well, I feel I can't avoid semantics here. I've seen a lot of claims that what we have today is bad, but that's because it's somehow not capitalism, or not "real" capitalism, and if only we had the real thing all would be well. The addition that, since it's not capitalism, and some of the redistribution upwards is aided by government action, that must make it socialism is not something I've seen before but given the basic rationale it sort of follows. But the whole idea is very much a "no true Scotsman" argument. There has never been capitalism that didn't involve government action to privatize profits and socialize loss, so if we're going to say that kind of thing disqualifies a system as capitalism then there has never been any such thing as capitalism and we should never bother using the word again. Capitalism involved major government intervention from its very beginnings in England--the very workforce for capitalists was provided by the Enclosure movement, which drove masses of small farmers off their land, and passed a lot of draconian laws making it illegal for the resulting masses of poor people to either hunt or gather ("poaching") or hang around doing nothing ("loitering"); thus, they had to take paid employment. It was the first major wage work force. Government action has been a big part of capitalism ever since. ECON 101 and so on generally pretend, or at least talk as if, capitalist economics was just something that happened naturally by some sort of laws of nature, but it's a socially created thing like any other part of society--no more and no less than socialism or feudalism or whatever.

So I really think that calling what we have not capitalism because big boys get bailouts is a pretty strained bit of semantics, which leads to problems in calling anything capitalism. Big boys have almost always gotten bailouts throughout the history of capitalism.

As to socialism, the US has a really weird bit of semantics around that. For decades, anyone calling for government action of any kind in the US has been called a socialist, even though they clearly weren't. This would put them on the defensive, claiming not to be one and often backtracking from their positions. Then Bernie Sanders, doing some brilliant semantics, decided to just short-circuit the process and just own the label; he agreed to the US creeping redefinition of socialism as any kind of government action for the benefit of the people and just claimed to be one and challenged anyone to say why that was bad. So now in the US, the word "socialism" is used to describe what everyone else calls "social democracy" and the US used to call "New Deal liberalism". But that isn't what socialism actually is, certainly not what it's rooted in. And just "any use of government to benefit anybody" most definitely isn't socialism.

Socialism is a system in which the workers, either directly or through the government, own and control the means of production, rather than it being owned by private individuals. In theory, but not necessarily in practice, the goal of production under socialism is to improve the common good rather than to create profit. That's it, that's historically what socialism is that makes it not capitalism. The current system shows no trace of anything like that--to the contrary, stuff that used to be public keeps getting privatized.

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Further supporting my theory

Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit 2.59% -3.98%

Linux Mint, the newbie distro that all those starry-eyed Windows migrants were told to try out -3.98%.

They got frustrated or disappointed and promptly reinstalled Windows because the anticheat in their favorite Furry hero shooter refuses to support Linux.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThis issue is about Internet Censorship.

The mechanisms are being laid down to track and eliminate anyone who criticises a unpopular nation state. And to eliminate people's ability to share "upsetting footage" of things happening in the world.

This is also a war on the younger generation to raise them "jacked-in" to sharing everythign with "The Cloud" stored at your local AI Data Center and to fix Microsoft, pentagon contractor, loosing their grip on customers as their popularity has declined in the last decade.

Notice how various states across the globe are moving on this in lockstep.

Exactly. It doesn't matter if this law has no teeth and it's easily fooled. The law makers don't care and they never would care. What they care about, is getting the law on the books. After the law is on the books, that's when they start adding teeth.

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I was kind of right:

I'll be the one to say it:

Consider all those who got gassed up on the cyclical $NEW_WINDOWS bad streak who tried out Linux on their gaming computers, only to feel overwhelmed or burned or whatever by the differences (of which newbies will always make mountains out of mole hills) who then promptly return to the familiarity of Windows.

I suspect we'll see another small decrease next month too.

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Not quite as bad as their new government-approved 3D printer bill but hey, it's nice they're trying to give it competition.

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