well this sucks. i'm on my 4th LG TV because I can't stand the quality from other brands; but when the choice is ads vs picture quality, i'll take the inferior quality every single time. fuck ads.

modern as in stable, good UX, plug-and-play, and supporting features a modern chat client is expected to have with zero hassle.

the stuff needed to convince your mom to install it.

i seem to remember something similar. and blocking advertisers seems like it should be common law but i guess chrome killing adblockers takes predesence.

In July 2019 Wire raised $8.2m investment from Morpheus Ventures and others. On July 18 of the same month, 100% of the company's shares have been taken over by Wire Holdings Inc., Delaware, USA.

Should be noted that their canary was removed at the same time.

XMPP would be viable in theory but for whatever reason no one wants to build a modern client out of it.

there's deltachat for gpg - i love the concept, since your friends don't even need to have it installed in order for you to chat with them.

but i am forever stuck with telegram because i refuse to install software running on set-my-computer-on-fire-pls-Electron (which every single MODERN chat application does today, bar Telegram).

wire sold out years ago.

definitely the case for Valve. Corporate vultures will be all over it the second he's gone.

steam came at the exact right moment to prevent region locking regulations for online gaming. granted companies and special interests still want to de-globalize gaming for licensing cash, but that's never going to happen as long as steam is a monopoly. any company taking a cheap shot at steam such as epic or discord or EA can go suck it.

As long as Gaben is alive steam will be the good guy. Even if they charge 30%, and I thinm it's why things are actually pretty neat on steam on the consumer end, because they can either choose to bill the consumer or the developer, and I'm personally always pro-consumer first - albeit for small indie publishers they should (if they already don't have); a means to launch a company with their game and not give 30% to Valve and be kept from much needed resources to grow their business, much like Valve would benefit from such deals long-term if the developers do a good job and bring in a lot of buyers with their next title in the future. AAA companies is a whole different matter, no passion, no soul, just money-milking-bullshit, should charge them 50% to 70%! they get off easy with a measly 30%.

But yeah, as for the overall topic itself, I do not understand why anyone would want another netflix situation. I don't want 300 game libraries and accounts installed on my computer, eating up resources, time, and email space - if I could have just one, super convenient and nice place where all is collected and no foreseeable concern that it will suddenly go bankrupt and die and take my investments with it (like some of the game libraries already have). If that ever becomes the case (e.g. when Gaben dies one day), I'll be the first to sail the high seas out of spite and convenience. I'm fine with monopolies as long as they benefit the end-user first, like Valve.

nah, it's basically my experience with flatpak and snaps on ANY distro on ANY machine. the fact that everyone's moving to this crap is beyond me. Am I the only person on the planet that expects a modern computer to run snappier than a PC from early 2000? sure seems like it sometimes, especially when pretty much any software released since 2018 runs electron. Hell, now every manufacturer is moving to ARM like it's some revolutionary hardware - no, it just vastly improved energy usage AT THE EXPENSE OF PERFORMANCE. we might as well stick with what we have and just pump less energy into the damn thing and have the exact same results.

blimey.

I get the convenience; I do ...but it can't possibly be worth the sacrifices?? sigh.

the day of coders who knew what they were doing is long since gone. now it's just click and play frameworks to pump out garbage and oversaturate the ecosystem.

yes. they're "censoring" algorithms designed to create engagement=profit, which are causing massive harm to society. i don't see anything wrong with it at all. and like you, i'm on the fediverse because there isn't an algorithm, our exposure is curated by us, not by engagement-bot-5.

.se mirror still up and working. looks like it was just a DMCA on the main domains.

Since I started keeping up with all this locally, here is what has happened.

• About 20 years ago, there was a ring of realtors who would were actively manipulating the prices by buying and selling to themselves. They were caught eventually, but they had already caused the damage they set out to do, artificially hiking prices for their buildings.
• About 15 years ago, the government realized that people needs to take more loans for the economy to grow because when you get rid of taxes on the rich there isn't enough money pumped into the economy to make it grow. So they gave away thousands of social housing units to their friends (private entities) for free who then sold them back to the public.
• The landlords has since been running an "upgrading" scheme of apartments and houses all over the place with shitty things like a new fridge or a new and improved window or whatever have you, which allows them to increase the rent considerably outside of the limitations the law specifies. Of course this sounds like a bad idea because if you aren't renting to anyone you're losing money - but when the price of renting is 3 times the original price, it means they will still be profitable if they lose 1 in 3 renters. Not surprisingly, people have started to complain there is nowhere to live because of these conditions. The government isn't stepping in, because they need these people to buy properties rather than rent - forcing them to take loans, and bolstering the economy. It's why they started giving away apartments in the first place and causing this issue.
• As a response to demand though, and show of good fate, the government promises to build more houses. By giving contracts and money to private entities (their friends) to construct new homes. And to "fix the issue with cost", they promise a 20% discount on the price per unit to any buyers who invests into buying the apartment before it is finished construction. Naturally, the buyers of these houses and apartments immediately sell once the unit is finished, netting a 20%+ profit on their investment. Now suddenly there is a huge upswing of houses and apartments, none for rent of course, and average people can't afford to buy them. Investors though, they keep buying up everything, much of it is empty and not used, and sit on it for 3-5 years, and sell it to the next guy (or if they find the illusive average person who can suddenly afford it).

This is not to mention that the door was opened for american and chinese investors to buy up properties and land, shooting the average prices through the roof. Together with the government (of course a rightwing government has been in power for the past 20 years, causing all this to happen in their quest to privatize and let their friends milk tax money, reduce taxes on the rich, and balancing it out by forcing your average joe to take a massive housing loan), reducing the loans to just 3% to make them "affordable to average people", which further spikes prices upwards and it ain't coming down until something catastrophic happens.

i don't understand the question. what does it matter what they do with it when the point is to make housing affordable again, in a permanent way.

i'm so tired of this bullshit. all because of greed. the only real solution to all of this (without completely bricking the economy) would be "one family one home policy" (married/legal) made into law. no more landlords, no more nonsense. got 3 homes? too bad, time to sell. market oversaturated? well go the fuck down in price to the damn value you bought your houses for 20 years ago. own an apartment complex? too bad, it's now owned by the habitants council (those who actually live in it, like it actually works in many places). and make hotels the sole exception to the rule.

no more homelessness.

no more shelters.

no more trailer parks.

no more need for social housing.

no more assholes buying up property abroad and fucking the locals.

everyone's happy except the 0.001% landlords and market gamblers. who now have to get actual jobs. or have well paid jobs already and didn't need to sit on 4 houses because they got in early.

the problem is privatization for things that doesn't even make sense to privatize. if the cost of discovery is too high for a private entity then why are they the ones to supply it? they aren't actually doing anything but taking the foam from the top of what everyone else have collectively created. it's like the privatization of energy, a natural monopoly that literally runs into negative value through surplus. or the privatization of mandatory services that cannot be sustained at cost such as nation wide mail delivery. if it doesn't make sense the right choice is the only choice yet here we are lol.

what's wrong with MX? isn't it basically just a community version of debian stable?

this wasn't a problem with cashless infrastructure tho, this was a problem with monoculture. if the globe stopped using microsoft for gov and business, and instead threw their tax money towards open development; as in - the people, not microsoft, these kind of global issues wouldn't exist.

sounds like they rather spend that RND on pocket lining over contributing to software dev.