Quoting: ArehandoroI have the Moonlander from ZSA, it cost me less, equally configurable, ergonomic and more portable. It would be a no brained for anyone willing to pay that money on a keyboard.

I must be blind then, because when I look up the moonlander, it's base cost is about $80 more than the Launch

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Quoting: dpanterA full sized version with numpad and maybe extra macro keys would be lovely. The numpad is not optional to me.

It probably doesn't completely solve your need, but one of the videos on the store page shows them setting up a keypad on one of the 4 layers of keys that can be setup..... those layers can be toggled too, not necessarily requiring that you hold down a Fn key.

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Quoting: iiariWonder why they're all leaving now... Perhaps Canonical isn't moving as fast as some would like to sell out and have a big payday for some who have been there a long time and they're tired of waiting? Perhaps Canonical is downgrading desktop as a priority? Who knows...

I can't speak for every tech job, but generally, if you want (or need) a pay increase or need to push forward in your skillsets and career it means a job change. Most jobs only hand out cost-of-living wage increases yearly (unless you get a promotion). Even then, depending on the direction of the company, there may not be many opportunities for an engineer to grow their skillsets if they stay at the same company.

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Quoting: GuestSaw this one coming. I hope Github doesn't get hate for this like they did with Youtube-dl. Github are not to blame for this, they have no choice but to comply with the awful DMCA

So, that's no actually true. I'll have to dig up the appropriate video, but a particular Business Lawyer clarified the DMCA provisions relating to takedowns. There is no requirement to takedown content from a DMCA request. All that provision does is protect the platform owner from liability on both sides. Basically, it protects hosts from being "caught in the middle" of a copyright dispute and facing a lawsuit from the organization requesting the takedown and from the users affected by the takedown.

But, as can be seen with a recent copyright case between Cox Communications and Sony Music, if a company doesn't actually comply with the DMCA takedown, they lose the immunity to lawsuits.... making them liable for an infringement by their users.

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Quoting: ChuckaluphagusThe reviews for X4 upon its initial release were ... well, bad, frankly. Has it improved enough with updates that it's fun to play?

Since that's a very subjective question, I should give context: Freespace 2 (FS2Open) is still my top space sim of all time; I've recently been playing a ton of the original Everspace in an attempt to beat final ending before delving into Everspace 2; I loved every single Wing Commander game back in the day; and I think I-War and I-War 2 deserved much more acclaim than they got.

Can anyone here currently playing X4 give an opinion?

If FS2, Everspace, and Wing Commander are your primary enjoyments in Space Sims (I.E. Combat), you may want to avoid the X Series. The X Series is more "open world" than those games and you generally cannot "one man army" the game, you actually have to build up reputation, funds, etc to build a fleet. The game is more a hybrid Simulation and RTS game. Also, you can pilot every ship you step on from the smallest fighter/scout to the largest capital ship.

I didn't play at launch, I got the game after Split Vendetta (first DLC) launched. The game has been among the most fun I've had in a long time. Add in the extensive amount of mods for the game on Nexus Mods and Steam Workshop - the game has tons of possibilities.

TL;DR - the game is far more expansive and complex than games like FreeSpace 2, Everspace, X-Wing, Wing Commander, etc and is not solely focused on combat.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: kerossinGoogle is great at coming up with new tech solutions and running systems at a global scale but boy do they suck at supporting their customers. We've seen this countless on YouTube with dubious DMCA claims taking down channels and only after a big enough uproar do things get looked at by someone at Google.

At this rate Google will make the owner of https://killedbygoogle.com/ bankrupt because of constantly having to upgrade the hosting plan to accommodate all the dead Google projects lol.

Also, Liam makes a good point about relying on one provider for a lot of things. While it is convenient having one account but the risk of losing everything is too high. At the very least moving your email to a different provider might be good enough since email is used as a recovery method for most services so you could also lose access to other non-Google accounts if Google decides to terminate your account.

Not trying to defend Google here (I have no love for them) but the problem on Youtube is the DMCA itself and not Google/YouTube. As a provider you are not allowed to judge if a DMCA request is valid or fraudulent, you have to obey the request at all times.

They aren't required to obey any DMCA requests, there are no direct legal ramifications to ignoring DMCA requests. That said, if those requests ARE valid and they refuse to follow them, then Google/YouTube becomes liable in a civil suite for any damages. All DMCA does is remove liability for lawsuits/damages for copyright violations.

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So, to be fair to Google, after reading about the Sony Music lawsuit against Cox Communications over Cox not enforcing its DMCA policy, I can't blame Google for how they handle this. The whole of how DMCA works is complete crap. Basically, as was seen in the lawsuit against Cox (who is appealing), they didn't completely enforce their DMCA policy against their customers and as such lost the immunity that the DMCA gives them. As such, a Jury found Cox liable for Music piracy by their customers and, as of now, Sony Music has been awarded 1 billion dollars in damages that Cox must pay.

Basically, the way it's written, you either submit to crappy DMCA requests or you face huge liabilities :facepalm:.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyHuh. Well, I guess if the allegation is true, that Valve's secret contracts involve making developers not sell their games cheaper anywhere else as a condition of being able to sell on Steam, that's kind of anti-competitive in that it stops other stores from trying to gain market share by underselling Steam. And if you foreclose on the whole concept of competition on price, that's likely to be bad for consumers.

Given the high hurdles in US antitrust law, even if the allegation is true that might well not be enough for Valve to actually lose the lawsuit, as noted by EagleDelta etc. But it's still a practice I'd find somewhat annoying--sure, you can understand why they'd want to do it, but then it's easy to understand why any company would do any anti-competitive practice . . . no company wants to be successfully competed against.

Of course if it ain't true then the filers are just assholes. And whether it's true or not, the filers could have questionable motivations and backing.

If you watch the video I linked, he talks about how MFNs are actually fairly standard across several industries. Additionally, without seeing the contracts, which I might add may require permission from the game developers to show, we only have the SteamWorks docs to go off. The video author noted that the contents there are not written in a way that constitutes an MFN. It's pretty much a "We don't know" right now.

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For anyone curious, here's a business lawyer's analysis of the lawsuit based on the document itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOEG5qmMQas

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Going to jump in with a few quick takeaways:

Remember that just because the lawsuit is filed, that doesn't mean it is valid nor that Valve is guilty. That's the purpose of any trial. As such, we probably shouldn't treat Valve as guilty unless that is determined to be so by a Judge or Jury in this Class Action. That said let's move on to the handful of things I keep seeing people bring up:

QuoteYou can't compete unless you're on Steam

I said this about Parler when they got kicked off AWS and I'll say it again here: No business has any sort of inherent "right" to be on the most used/most popular platform. There could be legal arguments made that this lawsuit is DOA simply because of how successful things like Battle.net are or games that aren't tied to an online store. Fortnite itself may be an example against the plaintiffs.

When there are examples of 10s of options beyond Steam that are successful (not the largest, mind you), the court is probably going to be hesitant to call it unfair as there is no inherent right for any business (or person) to have automatic access to the most popular option. Basically, you can't punish a business just for being successful/popular with customers.

QuoteMFNs violate Anti-Trust

So, I didn't realize this until a few months ago, but Anti-Trust generally is not geared towards protecting consumers, but ensuring competition is no stamped out. Here are a couple notes of what I learned listening to @HoegLaw and other lawyers:

• Monopolies are not illegal, using monopoly power to prevent competition is.


• Anti-Trust claims have a very, very high bar to achieve. It is generally hard to bring a Sherman Act claim against any company as you have to prove they are actively preventing competition.

This could be anti-competitive behavior, but the bar to prove that is very high. I'm no lawyer, so I won't make comment on the potential to succeed.

QuoteThey are doing this for consumers

Nope, absolutely they are not.

This Class Action is aiming at the way Steam is making pricing agreements with developers. So the platintiffs will be organizations like CDPR and Ubisoft, not the consumer. If anything, the success of a lawsuit like this would probably cause the cost of games to go up for consumers, not down.

In fact, there are groups of Class Action lawyers who just monitor situations like these looking for situations where they think a Class Action might succeed. A vast majority (it seems to me) of money coming from a Class Action goes to the lawyers who offered to file it in the first place, not to the actual plaintiffs :(

For more detailed information from an actual lawyer: https://www.youtube.com/c/HoegLaw/playlists

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