I’m not criticizing the choice of C++. I just don’t want to look at the code because I don’t personally like the language.

Languages: C++

Yeah, hard pass on looking at that code base.

If we’re going fictional characters, then Havelock Vetinari from the Discworld novels.

What you’re saying is “inevitable” hasn’t happened for the entire 20+ years of Steam.

Something being “inevitable” by definition means it will eventually happen, but has not already occurred.

Steam’s monopoly is actually what’s holding PC gaming together.

“Steam good. Steam has monopoly. Therefore, monopoly good.”

Woof.

It can be a problem at other companies, but even worse than average at Valve by virtue of corporate structure. Both of these things can be true.

Fun fact: Former employees of Valve have said that is actually a huge problem in the organization and that its organizational structure seems to encourage bullying and high-school style “cliquishness” by design.

Well, they’re a game developer. And they own GOG. GOG as a subsidiary is a digital distributor of prepackaged digital content. Developing a system that allows people to find a digital item, pay for it, and then download it, is hilariously, vastly different than developing a compatibility layer for games developed for one operating system to run on another. Like…the former is straight up just basic web development. The latter is hardcore systems programming. They are worlds apart.

This is not “a prediction” - this is inevitably what’s going to happen.

Everyone here who has drank the Valve kool-aid and pretends like they can do no wrong is dangerously short-sighted. Steam’s virtual monopoly on PC gaming is a huge issue. You think Epic has a monopoly on the concept of “Store Exclusives?” Fucking spare me. It’s a matter of time before Steam locks in its own exclusives, kills Proton, and locks every. single. game. behind always online DRM.

If you want to distribute your new PC game, guess what? You don’t get to contract with both GOG and Steam. You don’t get to say your game is Linux compatible because it runs well in the Proton compatibility layer. Oh, and if you say “games could run on Linux before Proton!” then you’re deluding yourself by remembering a time when games were distributed with their own launcher and weren’t packed to the gills with platform specific code so that the game integrates seamlessly with a specific third-party launcher and its DRM tools. You bought a Steamdeck? Cool. The version of Arch it runs is no longer supported. You have to upgrade to “Windows for Steameck.” Yes, you have to pay for a fucking Windows license. Yes, it has fewer features than baseline Windows. No, it’s not less expensive.

You think what’s happening to YouTube is bad? Fucking strap in, boys. Welcome to digital content distribution in the age of unfettered capitalism. I wonder how many of you are gonna eat this shit up, huff lethal quantities of copium, and say it’s “not that bad” once it starts happening and you’re faced with either standing by your own stated convictions and giving up almost all PC gaming in general or bend the knee so you can get your precious Steam Library back. Probably most of you.

“My daughter Murph. I keep gettin’ older. She stays the same age.”

Also, I love how he had a son who just wanted to be a farmer and that meant that Matthew McConaughey’s character was justified in being totally emotionally disinterested in him, compared to his genius daughter. Seriously, at a certain point I think Nolan forgot he wrote this guy with two kids. His entire character was defined by his relationship with his daughter. Why even give him a son in the first place?

“quick call?”

“sure, I’ve got time for the two hour meeting this is going to be.”

Don’t Bother Reading

“I guess this is why real companies do regression testing.”

It’s an interesting idea, though, that one’s preference for a particular design or aesthetic, especially when that design or aesthetic is emblematic of a particular historical or cultural moment, is never wholly isolated to its visual or material components, but also innately tied to our memory and understanding of that moment. I personally don’t think you can extricate a particular aesthetic from the psychic background noise surrounding it. Our minds don’t work that way. It’s always forming these subconscious or unconscious connections, binding events and memory to abstract signifiers.

We don’t like the 90s aesthetic because it’s “better” or even attractive. I mean, nobody has wallpaper in their home with those pastel and neon triangles. Many of us like it because it reminds us of childhood, of not having responsibilities other than waking up early enough on Saturday to catch all your cartoons and of not complaining too much when you have to go visit your grandparents who can never remember your birthday and who always ask you how old you are this year, of finishing Super Mario on the SNES before your friend does so you can brag about being better at video games than him. It’s of a simpler time and place, because we were simpler. And it was, in retrospect, of an America briefly sandwiched between the end of the original “Forever War” that was the Cold War, and the beginning of the 20th Century’s new “Forever War,” that is the War on Terror.

Churchill was a master of historical non-fiction. Not “history books,” per se, but basically books about historical topics pertaining to England that interested him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_English-Speaking_Peoples. They were very popular during his day.

On reddit, there’s a subreddit called r/lrcast, which is the dedicated subreddit for the Limited Resources podcast. The primary purpose of the subreddit, however, is not to discuss the podcast, but to discuss the “limited” format of Magic: the Gathering, which constitutes draft and sealed. It’s a very difficult, very expensive format of Magic to play and is a niche subsection of an already fairly niche hobby.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about HTMX

I’ve only ever heard anything “bad” about HTMX and it was here on Lemmy, actually. I ran into someone who was absolutely certain that HTMX was unsafe by design because it leveraged HTML over the wire and was therefore susceptible to HTML injection attacks, specifically by injecting malicious scripts that could be ran from domains you didn’t control. I tried explaining that proper utilization of access-control headers innately prevented this because they worked on the browser level and couldn’t be intercepted or interfered with by HTML injection by design, but he kept insisting it was unsafe while refusing to elaborate. He was very wrong, of course, but also very confident.

I do a lot of systems and backend programming and HTMX is the only way I can actually be productive with frontend work when I have to do it. It’s so simple and straightforward.

This is the only actual explanation I’ve found for why numpy leverages its own implementation of what is in most languages a primitive data type, or a derivative of an integer.

I think there’s a difference between “python guidelines encourage” something and “this is a common coding pattern.” Yes, you can use try/except for flow control, but there’s a lot of people, myself included, who try to use that style sparingly.

it alleged that local developers cannot compete on Steam with international developers, because those do not have to apply the local regulations:

That’s not really contrary to the point, but orthogonal to it. Steam is outcompeting on the basis that it receives special privileges on the basis of its international status. It’s still outcompeting because of a resource advantage. But that advantage exists because domestic developers are disadvantaged by virtue of national regulations over domestic developers.

what is my opposition that doesn’t encompass a de facto defence of free market capitalism? The damage to the users. What about all the Vietnamese people losing access to Steam’s online features, which are arguably necessary nowadays for many games, especially multiplayer ones.

Your argument is the same kind of “consumer rights” argument that I’ve seen everywhere on the internet, because you are implying that there is material harm to the people of Vietnam caused by Steam’s banning. Which is a fairly specious argument. It’s the loss of a luxury item. No one is materially harmed by it. It’s not like Vietnam banned insulin. And while you may not use the same language, you are effectively saying that every consumer on the planet should have free access to the best products available for whatever “thing” they want. In this case, video games. It’s a de facto argument for free market economic policies.