Perhaps a more correct way of saying it is - "they"(and that's not just US who wants this) want a stable trading partner, because Russia has goods and resources we want to buy, and we have goods and services we want to sell to them.
>>There's a reason they stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America
And that is for the exact reason I mentioned above. With a democracy it's just much easier to make sure the government is alligned with you(look at American meddling in UK politics), with a tsar like Putin it's not, because at this point he's beyond bribery or red carpets rolled out for him. So sure, for now anyone with any kind of position of power will tell you that they would support democracy in Russia - because then there is hope normal trading relationships could be restored and money made.
This isn't an excuse for it btw - I'm just stating the fact that US especially will pursue their own interest first and foremost, if democracy furthers those then they will support it, if it doesn't then they will not.
> Perhaps a more correct way of saying it is - "they"(and that's not just US who wants this) want a stable trading partner, because Russia has goods and resources we want to buy, and we have goods and services we want to sell to them.
I would say that's partly true, but Russia doesn't have much you can't get elsewhere, other than maybe oil? Not having to fight wars with russia seems to be the overarching goal (proxy, cold or any other type of 'war').
> This isn't an excuse for it btw - I'm just stating the fact that US especially will pursue their own interest first and foremost, if democracy furthers those then they will support it, if it doesn't then they will not.
Yes, as it should. I don't know why people expect the US to be some beacon of global morality or democracy. First and foremost, the people of the US expect their government to protect their security and economic prosperity, we don't car as much about our "image".
>> I don't know why people expect the US to be some beacon of global morality or democracy
I think I can answer that - because growing up(not in the US) United States of America were that paragon of well, everything. Everyone wanted to move there eventually, everything about US was the best, best books, films, technology, women(yes, I know), jobs, sights, cities etc etc. For better or worse America has managed to inspire millions of kids around the globe to see it as the best country in the world. Like, US were the good guys in every situation. If you heard about US going to war with someone, it was because they were right and the other side was wrong. And then we grew up and realized that most of it was just a lie.
>>we don't car as much about our "image".
Respectfully, if there is one thing that America does well it's caring about its image - the soft projection of power by export of its culture is one thing that no other country has been able to replicate anywhere near as well, maybe except for Japan.
>>but Russia doesn't have much you can't get elsewhere, other than maybe oil
You can get everything anywhere, but the point is that Russia has certain resources that it produces in huge quantities and cheaply. They are a leading producer of nickel, which obviously is incredibly important in various industries. They are the main producer of palladium, platinum, and one of the biggest producers of gold and diamonds. Plus they produce and export huge quantities of wood and coal. Obviously all of those things can be obtained elsewhere, but there is a reason why countries have been buying those things from Russia - they have a lot of it and they sell it cheap.
> Respectfully, if there is one thing that America does well it's caring about its image - the soft projection of power by export of its culture is one thing that no other country has been able to replicate anywhere near as well, maybe except for Japan.
Image and and projection of power are not the same thing. The anticipation of a threat is what projection of power is. As far as the soft project of power and diplomatic reputation, that is just our government taking the path of least resistance. The american people themselves not only couldn't care less (with the exception of the more educated/urban populace), the majority can't even tell you what our government is up to overseas or why they should about people in Europe or elsewhere think badly of the US. You're seeing trump insult our closet ally Canada and dismantling NATO, I'd wager 60% of Americans neither care about that, nor if they were educated on the subject in detail would they care.
Of course we want the world to like us, everyone wants to be liked. But like anyone else, security and wealth are more desirable than being liked. But even if money and security aren't at stake, other countries are just so far away both physically and in relation to the day to day lives of americans, it just doesn't register as a big deal if the whole of Europe hates america for example. As far as I'm personally aware, most of Europe has been hating America for a long time anyways? At least after 9/11.
The reason things like racism, social equality,etc.. are so talked about in America vs Europe is that Americans don't care if the world thinks negatively about us. Europe has all those problems, sometimes worse depending on the country, but Europeans care a lot about their image. I'd say China, Russia, and a few other countries I can think of have similar sentiment about foreign image of their country. We all keep having a negative image of China being a totalitarian nightmare or whatever, but the people love their country and approve of their government, couldn't care less what some westerners think of them.
> And then we grew up and realized that most of it was just a lie.
I think that's just our intel and diplomatic services working really well. You thought America was made up of better people than elsewhere, but you found out we're just humans that want the same things and have the same priorities as everyone else. i wouldn't say most of that is a lie though, even now under trump's nightmarish administration, America is still the best place to migrate to, the best place to prosper economically and seek education, to be tread equally and enjoy a decent quality of life -- for most of the world that is. I think japan and korean entertainment is getting really good, but the US is still the best. The national parks of the US and the national wilderness is second to none, I'd even call it the best feature of America.
Where the US fell short of your expectation is around things like freedom, liberty and democracy, the US did a lot of things under the guise of spreading those things, but in reality it was always for geopolitical and strategic reasons.
The whole "we're the good guys" thing was well intended but came with fine print of "So long as it's in our best interest". All in all the US treated the world better than the USSR, colonial powers of Europe, Ottomans and all the other empires preceding the US. In Korea, the US fought to assist south korea, to contain China. Vietnam had the exact reason (contain China/communism), but a false narrative was given to the public, but still, it was done to assist the southern vietnamese government, in Kuwait, the US kicked out Sadam to assist the Kuwaiti government. Even in the 2003 Iraq war, the US leadership naively expected Iraqis to welcome them for freeing them from Saddam's tyranny (and tbf, many did!), both Iraq and Afghanistan were not for oil or flexing muscles but as part of a strategy to stabilize the region (but again -- false narrative was given to the public). I don't want to make this post longer than I should, but all in all, and with a historical perspective, there has never been a more benevolent and well intentioned country wielding power to invade and decimate any opposition like the US.
I think your experience is similar to kids growing up and finding out their parents are just regular people with many faults. But I think intent matters a lot.
> Obviously all of those things can be obtained elsewhere, but there is a reason why countries have been buying those things from Russia - they have a lot of it and they sell it cheap.
The US has never relied on them at least. Every time western europe relies on russia for trade it comes back to bite them. I don't think they have anything that is so rare that you need them for it. Ukraine for example exports so much wheat/grain that there is a real concern of global famine if they were to cease exporting. Taiwan has semiconductors, China has dominated rare earth mineral extraction/exporting. Even the US doesn't have much in terms of trade leverage on the supply side of things.
>>Why would BBC want to teach their methods in Russia?
Why does US benefit from every kid on the planet being able to name the avengers and instantly recognize Coca-Cola cans?
I'm not saying this is some grand conspiracy orchestrated by the elites - but projecting your power by making sure everyone is aligned with you ideologically and culturally helps long term, both in making allies and in avoiding wars.
"Following years of scandals, we performed our own checks to see if the platform had cleaned up its act. As a test, we attempted to set up an account under the name ‘Jeffrey Epstein’…only to see the name was taken, along with 900+ variations.
Many were Jeffrey Epstein fan accounts, including “JeffEpsteinSupporter” which had earned multiple badges for spending time in kid’s games. Other Jeff Epstein accounts had the usernames “@igruum_minors” [I groom minors], and “@RavpeTinyK1dsJE” [rape tiny kids].
We attempted to set up a Roblox account under the name of another notorious pedophile to see if Roblox had any up-front pedophile screening: Earl Brian Bradley was indicted on 471 charges of molesting, raping and exploiting 103 children. The username was taken, along with multiple variants like earlbrianbradley69.
After we found a username, we listed our age as “under 13” to see if children are being exposed to adult content. By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called “Adult Studios” with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors.
We tracked some of the members of “Adult Studios” and easily found 38 Roblox groups – one with 103,000 members – openly soliciting sexual favors and trading child pornography."
No but look how hard they try and now they have a feature they can wiggle around with if something bad happens. It's theater as always with stuff like this. There is just no way of doing it without real inconvenience for every user. Inconvenience really hurts the bottom line...
There's no cheap way of doing it without inconvenience for every user. Rather than age checks, they could just remove the CSAE distribution groups, appropriately moderate abusive conduct, and so on. HN has basically no restrictions whatsoever, and it's hardly a hive of scum and villainy: it's not fundamentally difficult to accomplish this, you just have to put the work in.
As other kids say, two things can be true at the same time. And not lasting five minutes in a CoD lobby is going to be my new heuristic for picking friends. I don’t really need to know someone who isn’t bothered by that shit.
It depends what time of the day you log in too. I'm in the GMT time zone, I can literally see a comment go from +20 upvotes in the morning to negative numbers when Americans start waking up. It really shifts your perspective of the site too, because comments move down or even disappear based on the number of votes.
I would strongly encourage everyone to read HN with `showdead` enabled (it's in your profile page). There aren't actually all that many downvoted comments, and while mosts are low-level trolling, even with `showdead` you see them at the end of the parent thread and they are greyed out, so it's not all that distracting. But being able to see some of the things that get downvoted / killed unjustly (and then vouch & upvote them) is how you get a better HN.
You can "vouch" for them, which makes them non-dead (and upvotable again). But, yes, it does have some karma limit - I'm not sure if the specifics are documented anywhere, the FAQ just says "small karma threshold".
I mean that's just a bad assumption no matter how anyone looks at it - if you created an array for 8 devices then just stop adding to it when you reach 8. The "a user will never have more than 8 gamepads" is a bad assumption because the logical question then is "what if they do" and the answer even back in the day would have been "the game will crash" which isn't how any code should be written. Stop processing at 8 if you are so sure there will never be more than 8, but have the most basic sanity checks.
Back in the days of manually setting IRQs enough of them were used by the system that no, you couldn't use 8 gamepads. Assuming you could even connect them.
(I think this game is probably past those times but not by much)
I specifically checked if DirectInput from DirectX 5 already supports/provides USB HID devices, and it does! Granted, even then it was unlikely to encounter 8 USB devices, let alone HID devices in particular.
If you read what top generals in various countries in the EU are saying(especially on the East side), their main concern is that Russia is making thousands of brand new tanks, cannons, support vehicles......and they are all going into storage. Very few are actually getting sent to Ukraine. If these guys are saying that large scale conflict with Russia seems almost inevitable within few years.....what qualifications do I have to disagree with them? Obviously I don't want this to be true - far from it.
I'm also curious, why would Russia continue to send thousands to their deaths while holding back supplies and stuff? Unless it's intentional to appear weaker than they are.
But I don't see how that would work, unless the US is intentionally witholding intel from their allies - the US, since the invention of spaceflight, has had spy sattelites trained at Russia and they would see large accumulations and transports of tanks and tank parts.
Ok I spent the last hour looking for this interview and I honestly can't find it - the closest I can get to the source is this article saying that Russia is building a strategic reserve of tanks:
But it's not the one I read which was literally a general saying "they are building tanks and not sending them to the front - why if not to fight with NATO eventually".
> Russian factories are working at full speed, producing new tanks and repairing those that have been dusty for years," writes "Le Figaro". The French daily refers to its sources and data from independent study groups. On the other hand, experts also point to the fact that this year the losses of the Russians have decreased - this year it was only 200 tanks. According to the newspaper, this may be due to the fact that the participation of these vehicles in the fighting at the front has been reduced. This, in turn, is the result of greater use of drones.
This actually strikes me as fairly plausible: it suggests that Russia has decided that tanks are not ideally suited for the current drone war in Ukraine. So they're continuing to ramp up production, but aren't (at this point) sending them to the front.
This doesn't necessarily mean that they have a long-term plan to invade NATO, however. I can think of many other scenarios where it would be in Russia's strategic interest to have a large modernized tank force in reserve.
>>For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.
There is no way for Steam to enable DRM on a copy of a game you made after you downloaded it from Steam. It's a weird argument to use really - once you copied the data elsewhere neither platform can do anything with it.
There are a few DRM-free Steam games but most devs on Steam enable the DRM. This isn't Steam's fault but Steam is holding the reins of that access. It works great now, so smooth you can't tell there's DRM. But at the end of the day most of my collection is at the whims of Valve.
I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires or shuffles off this mortal coil, and his replacement comes with a "fresh" revenue idea. He's a one of a kind visionary leader, it's not a sure thing that his successor is the same. I've been baited and switched so many times in the past few decades that it's hard to blindly trust any company for more than the very immediate future.
>I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires
From the couple documentaries I have seen over the years it already seems like he is basically retired, only working on things he is interested in like the brain interface stuff. I think as long as valve stays a private company the enshitification will be limited.
If the DRM is enabled, the game does a simple "Is the game available in the user's library?" and steams says yes or no.
If the game didn't have DRM enabled, no check is made. Copy the game folder elsewhere, without steam install and it should launch.
Devs can enable the DRM afterward, but your copy won't be locked.
But even then, if valve goes bad guy, the DRM is simple enough to be broken, and there is no double check or something preventing you from playing (unlike Denuvo which encrypts the game and has multiple separate checks for the DRM).
Yes (that's the point of a DRM), but like I said, the DRM is easily broken. Some games can also still use steam features when cracked (like joining lobbies, inviting friends, etc), and it's the same "crack" for every game (not withstanding other DRM the game may have).
With Valve, I'm more concerned of not being able to download the games if they go under, than the DRM on the games I have. Over time, the Steam DRM has also been more permissive than before, as I can now play my "family's" games and they can play mine.
Part of the apparently forgotten but huge amount of work that went into making digital storefront for games that people trust to work was that Valve publicly talked about verifying things such as a procedure to globally strip DRM from all games, in case Steam was to cease operations.
I mean I'm sure it will be true for as long as Gabe is in charge, the moment he steps away I think all bets are off, depending on who takes over after him.
>> when you buy a PC you can't just turn it on and play video games, especially not after Microsoft's shenanigans.
In like, what way? You can "just" boot up a new Windows PC, install some games and play them straight away. Do you mean the fact that you now have to log into a Microsoft account first? Because if yes - SteamOS also requires you to log in before you can use it.
Thanks for the correction. The experts think the builders were not slaves. Their life in the barracks was too good for slaves, and similarly were they treated in death (which was specially important there)
>>There's a reason they stole plenty of elections across Europe and Latin America
And that is for the exact reason I mentioned above. With a democracy it's just much easier to make sure the government is alligned with you(look at American meddling in UK politics), with a tsar like Putin it's not, because at this point he's beyond bribery or red carpets rolled out for him. So sure, for now anyone with any kind of position of power will tell you that they would support democracy in Russia - because then there is hope normal trading relationships could be restored and money made.
This isn't an excuse for it btw - I'm just stating the fact that US especially will pursue their own interest first and foremost, if democracy furthers those then they will support it, if it doesn't then they will not.
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