Barbarian

Barbarian , vor 13 Stunden

They can have a little bit of sea, as a treat(y).

Omfg, this line killed me xD

Barbarian , vor 3 Tagen

Here is an excellent video explaining why international EU train routes are so overwhelmingly terrible.

The problem isn't really investment: it's interoperability, regulations protecting train passengers like flight passengers not existing, and national train companies hoarding their data like hissing gremlins to force users onto their terrible apps/websites.

Barbarian , vor 5 Tagen

How do you ever solve a problem if you don't acknowledge it exists?

I'm not from the US, but live in a country that is a US ally with a lot of military bases. The US election effects us. The fact the DNC is fielding an old age pensioner who should be sitting comfortably in a retirement home complaining about the birds obstructing his view against an equally old fascist is deeply worrying.

Barbarian , vor 21 Tagen

While most people are understandably pumped about the accession talks withs Ukraine, I think I can speak for the majority of Romanians when I say that this is an amazing step towards safety and security for Moldova. Our little brother deserves more than just being used as a political battleground by Russia.

Barbarian , vor 21 Tagen

Belarus revealed the plans at the beginning of the war to go into Moldova right after Ukraine, so yes. That was exactly the plan

Barbarian , vor 25 Tagen (Bearbeitet vor 25 Tagen)

Are the concepts of freedom and working towards collective good so mutually exclusive?

Not necessarily, and I also disagree with the commenter above that without the USA suddenly the world would be singing kumbaya.

The problem was dictators seizing power in turbulent times. In Russia, Stalin abolished the soviets (A.K.A worker's councils, kinda like mega unions) in the Soviet union. I think that says a lot.

In Romania (I'm a bit better equipped to talk about this one), things were a bit different.

The original communist government (1945) was essentially a Russian puppet state that drained the wealth of Romania via war reparations. Stalinist purges happened often during this period.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Romania got a degree of independence and things were actually looking up. Society in general (infant mortality, gender equality, literacy, standard of living, etc) were all improving rapidly without Russia draining us and making decisions for us, and we didn't have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later. This was a period marked by political battles between the liberal communists and the Stalinist communists for control, with Stalinists commiting some pretty horrible atrocities (if you want nightmare fuel for some reason, look up the Pitesti experiment).

Then, 1965, Ceacescu took power. During his early years, he actually looked like a liberal (EDIT: Just to be clear: I mean a liberal communist. This means more individual freedom for citizens in a communist economy). He allowed some emigration, some free speech, and even spoke out about the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. This, at the start, did not look like a typical authoritarian communist state. Unfortunately, Inspired by the "amazing" society of North Korea in 1971, he started to make changes in the structure of society to be more like it, which included an expanded Securitate. 2 years later, harsh austerity policies to repay foreign loans led to a massive drop in living conditions, which led to riots, which led to crackdowns. Things rapidly spiralled, and the Securitate were given more and more power to keep control.

This then became the police state that everybody thinks of when they think of communism. A combination of too much power in 1 person's hands, an authoritarian imperialist overlord (Russia), and rising backlash against dropping living conditions.

Barbarian , vor 24 Tagen

No, I'm not talking about the 1936 constitution. I meant specifically the disempowerment of local and union soviets.

I'm no expert on Russian history, so I may be misinformed about this, but as far as I understand it he put in place a series of reforms that stripped power from the local level and empowered the central committee.

Barbarian , vor 25 Tagen

Imo, it moreso proves that poverty causes desperation, desperation causes people to be way more susceptible to political extremism.

I don't think this has anything to do with the GDR except for the fact that it left east Germany in poverty.

Barbarian , vor 27 Tagen

Linux from Scratch and Gentoo are also pathways to abilities some would call... unnatural

Barbarian , vor 27 Tagen

Honest question: isn't OSx considered the OS of choice for video and music editing?

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

It was near impossible to have an opinion contrary to the popular one

You're wrong, and you should feel dumb and embarrassed for having a wrong opinion! Come on everyone, dogpile him! /s

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

It's a well known fact that advertising never works and is a waste of money. That's why the entire industry died 80 years ago, and nobody ever published an ad ever again.

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

Considering Ronald McDonald was a character primarily aimed at young children, I don't think they were mentally capable of having personal responsibility at that age.

As for the parents who were pestered to buy happy meals by their children, there's like 50 ways to answer this question. I personally think that in a mentally healthy adult, personal responsibility is a factor, but it's not the only one and is balanced by social conditioning, genetic predispositions, mood in the moment, and a ton more factors.

The children who for one reason or another were brought up eating fast food are conditioned both socially and biologically to eat fast food, and breaking out of that addiction (as with any other addiction) can be very difficult, and is more complex than doing the equivalent of saying "git gud scrub".

Wow, that turned into a wall of text, sorry.

Tl;dr: it's way more complex than just "personal responsibility".

Barbarian , vor einem Monat (Bearbeitet vor einem Monat)

Just googled their latest 2 releases to compare. Sims 4: For Rent, a cash-grab low-effort Sims DLC, doesn't have microtransactions while Counterstrike 2 does.

EDIT: Neither does their last full game release, EA Sports WRC. Their upcoming game, F1 24 looks like it's absolutely riddled with mtx though.

Barbarian , vor einem Monat (Bearbeitet vor einem Monat)

EA has released way more games with no games-as-service stuff in them than Valve in the past decade.

To be fair, EA has released way more games, period. This is across every category. Valve is primarily a digital marketplace company that sometimes makes a game, and has been for a long time.

Also, I didn't include EA as publisher, because it would drastically change the conversation. It's not part of Valve's overall business strategy (again, because they're primarily a marketplace company now) so it's not apples to apples. They simply don't publish externally developed games, because why would they when they run Steam?

Barbarian , vor einem Monat (Bearbeitet vor einem Monat)

by any reasonable metric you choose Valve is at best as deeply invested in MTX

Completely agree with this. I honestly believe the best apples-to-apples metric is to look at their most popular games and compare the mtx across them, in which case Valve doesn't exactly come across as good in the comparison.

In terms of publishing, with the exception of Aperture Hand Lab (basically a little tech demo), they haven't published any third party developer's game since 2010. For the purposes of this conversation, I think it's fair to count EA subsidiaries as EA.

When you make no games you make no MTX

Absolutely, this was the counterpoint I was trying to make about the raw "number of games" argument.

EDIT: Oh, I see the misunderstanding! I mean "published" as "financially backed the development, advertising and releasing of the game", not "published to their storefront". Same word with multiple meanings can be a major source of misunderstandings.

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

That's actually the name of it. Stands for World Rally Championship.

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

It absolutely does in Sweden where it's become much harder and more expensive to buy a Tesla, and there's a possibility you won't be able to get a valid license plate due to sympathy strikes.

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

At least the article says that EV sales overall are flat, not increasing or decreasing.

Barbarian , vor einem Monat

They have leverage now. Previously the deal was Moldova provides food & utilities in exchange for Transnistria keeping the power plants running. Now that Moldova is linked up with the EU electrical grid, they're in a position to play hardball without the risk of Transnistria plunging the country into darkness.

Barbarian , vor 2 Monaten

Not true. First of all, Europe is not a monolith. Romania is extremely different from the Netherlands. Romania is, by some metrics, more car-centric than the US.

Secondly, even in countries that are trying to make progress towards a less car-centric environment, different cities are moving at different speeds.

Barbarian , vor 2 Monaten

Of course, we have pigs running the police and government. Super standard :))