Eh, Steam is kind of like the liberal democratic US empire. It may be evil in a lot of ways but it could actually be a LOT worse. We may actually historically be very lucky to have had a non-shittificationmaxxing games platform for a couple decades, just like we were lowkey lucky that the world was briefly ruled by a somewhat democratic country.. Enjoy both while they last, may not be around long.
> the liberal democratic US empire. It may be evil in a lot of ways
May be? It's absolutely evil in a lot of ways. It's an active participant in multiple genocides at the moment. And has been for a long time.
I guess it could be worse, but being stuck laboring under Saruman's orcs and pointing at Mordor and going "At least we aren't over there" isn't exactly a defense of the situation.
Steam is also a child gambling company that sells loot boxes to kids but it could be a lot worse. From the perspective of someone getting ripped off it doesn't matter whether it was Gaben who scammed you, but he and his empire could still be a lot worse overall.
You're allowed to say what you just said in that post without getting taken away at night and your family never talking about you again. Or a drone taking you out while you sleep. Palantir logs all our comments and it would be trivially easy for them if there weren't still some lingering democratic handrails holding them back.
You're also typing on a computer on HN, so you're a "beneficiary of the empire" regardless of where you live. As someone who apparently reads leftist theory you should know to look at the big picture on world-historical questions rather than getting emotional, like the people who say USSR was just as evil as WW2 Germany because it also killed gormillions of people.
Democracy in the US is dying and may not last another generation. It was something that helped imperial workers and limited the power of the ruling elite, like unions. Unions, like democracy as a whole, are dying. Unions were also corrupt and complicit in imperialist war crimes during the Cold war. Unions in the West have always been connected to labor aristocracy and imperialism. That said, unions as a whole are still a good thing. We should still mourn the decline of labor unions and miss the days when they kept the elite in check and allowed so many working people to live a decent life.
Steam is also likely to become an ordinary ripoff company one day soon. I will miss this historical aberration among pure ripoff services. Just like I will miss being able to vote and dissent without drones zapping me.
> You're allowed to say what you just said in that post without getting taken away at night and your family never talking about you again. Or a drone taking you out while you sleep. Palantir logs all our comments and it would be trivially easy for them if there weren't still some lingering democratic handrails holding them back.
I don't live in the US. The US is not going to start a war with my country to kill some random internet commenter for criticising them, even if they could identify me. They certainly will arrest Americans for speaking out[1], but although the domestic situation is becoming even worse than it already was, it was never anything like your propaganda would have you believe. The American government slaughtered students for protesting the Vietnam War[2] and yet the brainwashed masses can't stop boasting about how free their country is, it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.
You don't need to read leftist theory to be opposed to American imperialism, you simply need to not be American, or else be a non-nationalist American with a conscience (exceedingly rare, I am aware). I do understand that it is difficult for American commenters to conceive that they could be speaking to someone who is not American, given the usual belief that the US is the center of the universe.
> also typing on a computer on HN, so you're a "beneficiary of the empire" regardless of where you live
Speaking of which, "computers/the internet wouldn't have been invented if not for the US" is a classically arrogant American thing to say.
Now you're just straw manning, and misrepresenting history, Kent State led to a huge increase in protests and troop mutinies which forced the US to leave Vietnam. If the US was fascist it would have sent tanks into the streets and dropped nukes.
Also misquoting me at the end, my point is you must be connected to the global tech economy which is still dominated by US capital, but go on and larp if you want.
You assumed I'm American I can assume you are too. Your manufactured fatalist narrative seems to suggest people to larp instead of using democratic methods to resist the far right, that thinking has been been heavily pushed by the elites on social media in the US to discredit and disorganize the left.
I think we're also historically lucky that China is ruled by the CPC, whatever you dislike about them it could be much worse, a few historical accidents going differently and it could just as easily be a Han fascist government invading all its neighbors. Be grateful for what you have before it's gone. Steam is one of the last unshittified apps remaining in existence.
> Kent State led to a huge increase in protests and troop mutinies which forced the US to leave Vietnam.
This is not my understanding of the matter. Apparently only 11% of Americans were in support of the students, with the majority supporting the troops. Granted, my source for this is the Wikipedia article, which I am well aware of the deficiencies of. If you have recommended reading that suggests Kent State was significantly influential on the outcome of future protests and US withdrawal, I'm open to it.
> my point is you must be connected to the global tech economy which is still dominated by US capital
I work for a bootstrapped Turkish startup with no outside capital, American or otherwise, but try again :) or is America, center of the universe as it is, responsible for the existence of all tech economies everywhere?
> Your manufactured fatalist narrative seems to suggest people to larp instead of using democratic methods to resist the far right,
Uh, my what? What? I'm simply disputing the irritating claim that we're oh-so-lucky to have had benevolent American overlords and how it could've been much worse. I honestly don't know if it could've been much worse. At a certain threshold of outright evilness, you get the entire world uniting against you, as Germany saw. America manages to perfectly straddle the line such that it can be the most optimally amount of evil and still get away with it unchecked for centuries. Internally, it committed the degree of atrocities that inspired the Nazis -- Lebensraum is rebranded Manifest Destiny, and the Jim Crow laws were studied as the blueprint for by-the-books legalised discrimination against Jews, but externally, it managed diplomacy much better, conducting just the right frequency of invasions with just the right propaganda massaging not to find itself at war with everyone at once.
For whatever it's worth, I agree that we're lucky to have Valve/Steam for all its faults. It is a flawed company that could be much worse. I don't know why you felt the need to relate it to America.
We have to normalize being on silent all the time and making people wait hours for a response. Return to the primordial monkey of 1800s-era high-latency comms.
At first, some people will be offended. "Why didn't you let me ping and buzz you and interrupt you all day? You didn't respond immediately each time :'((". Some people with unrealistic expectations may even stop talking to you entirely.
But eventually (years maybe) they will get overwhelmed too. No one can handle this madness indefinitely. I've seen giga-texters get broken down and turn into lazy texters like me, or at least learn to tolerate my long response intervals and recognize it as a coping mechanism rather than rudeness.
I am notoriously "bad" at texting. My phone's on silent almost 95% of the time, I don't even have a smartphone so the only way to get to me wirelessly is to call or text.
I got really into sending mail last year, specifically postcards.
I have a list of ~10 people I would consider "close", immediate family and good friends, and 5 or 6 more tertiary contacts. I travel fairly frequently, so I had plenty of opportunities for sending postcards. I send cards for obscure holidays just because. The physical process of hand-writing messages is so therapeutic for me. I've probably sent ~250 postcards in the last year and a half.
I have received... 3 physical responses. It has been extremely disappointing, but I continue to send mail because I enjoy the process of writing the cards, and the knowledge that people probably appreciate the mail makes me feel good, so at least I get a little out of it myself.
My mom will occasionally text to say she liked the postcard, but has never bothered to send one back to me.
I would be delighted if more people chose to communicate slowly.
I like this. I don't know what postcard etiquette is, but when I send a postcard it's just to show that I'm thinking of someone while I'm traveling. If the recipient doesn't travel or finds other ways to express that they're thinking or me while traveling (souvenir, etc) I'd consider that social contract fulfilled.
I haven’t sent a postcard in years but I always thought it was a signal that I am having a great time but also you are important enough to me that I want to include you in the only way I can. I certainly never expected a direct response but hoped I might receive a postcard from that friend at some unexpected future time.
I've told people this for years. The mode of communication reflects the urgency. If you text me, expect a response on the order of 3+ days. If you call, and I recognize the number, it will be more urgent. If I DON'T recognize it, it goes to voicemail and back in the 3+ days queue. If you show up at my door, it is immediate. Even with my wife, she will text while I'm at the grocery to pick up some extra food items, and it doesn't necessarily come through or I'm on silent. I'll get home, and she'll ask where the food is, and I ask why she didn't call if it was timely. I just do NOT check my texts that often, it isn't because I'm deliberately ignoring anyone.
That's funny, I take the exact opposite approach. I prioritize interactions based on how much commitment I expect they'll require, with lesser commitment getting more priority. So a text message I'll usually answer right away. An email or some written reply that requires some redaction I'll postpone to when I can take the time for a thoughtful response. A ring on my buzzer, if I'm not expecting anything or anyone, I'll always ignore; I can't let any dumbass passing by the front of my building rope me into a pointless conversation.
Phone calls don't fit neatly into this scheme because they demand a lot of attention, but it's easy to get out of one if you realize it's not something critical. I generally pick up and the moment I get the slightest whiff of spam, I just hang up.
The current trend seems to be switching the priority order of calls and texts among many of us. I feel like a call should be scheduled, preferably 3+ days out, and preferably with an agenda attached. (Same rules I feel about any sort of meeting.) But a direct text (non-group chat, just to me) is a priority. Group chats get that 1-2 days middle ground.
I know that's the trend, but it is backwards to me. Like UDP vs TCP. If you need an immediate answer for something, why send a one-way communication where you have no idea whether the person on the other end A) received it, and B) acted on it. A 15 second phone call accomplishes this, whereas if I text you it could be hours, unless you immediately respond.
Most text message apps have real time read receipts for A and "actively writing" indicators that imply some of B. (The things that we invented for "instant messaging" decades ago are finally mostly back in vogue in text messaging.) Text messages have "reactions" like Thumbs Up that very quickly say "I will action this shortly." For me that's more TCP, the classic ACK receipt then action.
A 15 second phone call probably goes straight to my voicemail and there's no read receipts if I have read the voicemail transcription yet, much less tried to listen to it. It might be hours until I'm in a quiet enough space to try to listen to it, because I don't carry headphones with me most of the time, don't listen to speakerphone in public, and the "phone speaker" on an iPhone is generally hard to hear for me, no matter how I awkwardly position the phone. The transcriptions are usually not good enough to action directly so I do usually need to do that dance of find a way to listen to it. Calls to me are a UDP hole with fewer acknowledgements and a lot of inconvenience.
Unless you've prescheduled a call with me, in which case maybe I do answer and maybe it is quick enough to be a 15 second phone call. But the easiest way to schedule that call with me is going to be to text me "Hey can I call in an hour about X?" and I'll ACK it soon after, and probably then likely spend 45 minutes looking for a quiet place to take a private phone call.
But, yeah, different perspectives for different sorts of people. Phone calls are taxing to me and the real world is a loud place and I don't carry headphones and I like to control the environment in which I try to answer a phone call, but also I find finding such quiet environments stressful enough to want to schedule them ahead of time.
If it is an emergency, it is a voice call. It is both immediate and conveys urgency. If it is something that you need to talk through, it is a scheduled voice call. Asynchronous communications may demonstrate respect for a person's time since it does not (need to) interrupt them in the moment, but the inefficiency results in a disrespectful waste of time for bidirectional conversations.
If it is something where you need a simple response by the end of the day, it is a text. If it requires a lengthy response, email. Never expect a lengthy response by the end of the day, or for it to be handled on devices with terrible input methods (like phones).
Anything that isn't covered by those scenarios will be largely dependent on the person.
If it's an emergency I want it in text first because I read faster than I listen to voicemails, and can do so in more spaces/contexts/environments (say, at a loud concert or eating in a restaurant), and I trust a person to write the message better than the voicemail system will transcribe a call. Certain emergency keywords sent in a text will especially alert me faster than a call would. (I have call notifications as practically turned off as possible in current operating systems [way too much phone call spam], but a measured set of notification levels for text notifications.)
I think even for emergency situations the relationship between voice calls and text messages is flipping. Text messages are immediate and can convey urgency. Phone calls are for private, quiet spaces, which take time to find (or schedule). With the death of the private phone booths in public spaces, phone calls are inconvenient to take almost everywhere now outside of one's home, but urgent text messages can be read and even acted upon just about anywhere.
Why are we talking about voicemails in the context of emergencies? If it was an emergency, I'm calling every number I have for someone until they pickup or enough time has passed that I write them off as a flake and find the next person on the list who might be able to help with whatever it is.
I think that's what I'm complaining about, too, but again from a just slightly different perspective. In an emergency I also don't want to take time to "call every number I have for someone". I don't want to worry about safe calling hours or people that prescreen every call/make every call go to voicemail (including myself). I'd much prefer to send a much faster, single text message and they either get it or they don't, and often there's a quick read receipt if they do get it.
Phone calls have so much ceremony and ritual and take so much time to play phone tag, and every single part of that, especially the phone tag, has gotten so much worse because of spammers. Phone calls just don't feel reliable anymore. It's easier to assume you are more likely to hit someone's voicemail than reach them many hours of the day. It's easier to assume people don't even check their voicemail in some cases, because they expect a text message if it was important.
I think we have different definitions of "emergency" if a text message that they may or may not see any time soon is an acceptable solution.
If it is an actual emergency, I need to know that they have received the communication in real time. I'm never leaving someone a voicemail in an emergency situation.
I think it is possibly more we have a different sense of "received the communication and feedback to the communication in real time" and the kinds of feedback we get from the medium. Text messages give immediate feedback quicker when they are received. Especially iMessage and/or RCS you have read receipts and "quick reactions" and "someone is typing bubbles" to text messages for very immediate feedback. If you have enough people in your life that never answer phone calls, the phone is a much slower way to get in touch with someone and it is missing all sorts of useful quick feedback (did it go to voicemail because they are in a bathroom or a loud concert or did it go to voicemail because they are screening calls after 30 spam calls a day got to be too much for them? did they hear the voicemail or hopefully see a transcript of it? are they going to call back or are they going to not see it for another three days or do they not pay attention to voicemail at all and just expect a text?), most of which additional messaging gets moved to text channels today among many of my friends. ("Can I call you in like twenty minutes?" is a somewhat common text message to and from some of my friends who always text before a call.) In a real emergency you should text me to try to call me before you call me if you want the likeliest results that I will pick up any phone call, but most of the time it is probably just faster to include a headline in the text itself and save us both the time and emotional roller coaster of also making a call.
In an emergency, I can often text 15-20 people in the time it takes to try to get a phone call through to a single person. (Especially with the multiplying effects of copy and paste and group chats.) I'm still probably going to follow up with a bunch of people by phone calls after the texts go out, but most of that will be by request ("can you call me when you get a chance?" texts) for details or shared emotion bonding after the key points are already distributed (and possibly some emergency conditions better).
Someone has been trying to hack into my MSFT account for years. I constantly get the notifications. I can not see where they are trying from (unlike some other services that give you info about failed login attempts) nor add more security measures. I worry one day I will accidentally hit "Approve" or they will guess the 6 digit code they have tried thousands of times.
The fun part is that you can't disable OneDrive. No matter how many times I turn it off it always keeps turning OneDrive back on to put my private data in the cloud for the attackers. Of course I can't block the methods that are obviously under attack either.
And the lack of a login history view means I have no way to know if they were successful yet. Support has never been good (for legitimate users) and is basically non-existent with AI now.
You can disable the email you use publicly as a login email.
I would recommend you look at some other guides before you do this but the gist is My Account > Your Account > Manage Account Information.
Then you can add a new email that you do not share as your primary login email, and disable login from the email you use to send emails.
I have about a dozen email aliases associated with my Microsoft account. On the "Your info" page, under "Account info", one of them is described as "The email address you use to sign in to your Microsoft Account".
However, I can use any of them to initiate a login attempt. I have my account set to passwordless, I don't know if that is relevant (every login attempt triggers an MFA prompt).
If I click on "Edit account info" I am taken to a page where I can choose which address in the "Primary", but given that ANY of the aliases can be used to intiate a sign-in, I don't see any benefit in changing that.
EDIT: I wasn't being adventurous enough. The option to change which aliases can be used to sign in is under (surprisingly) "Sign-in preferences".
In my defence, that page wasn't loading properly in Firefox with all my privacy add-ons enabled. I was able to access it in Edge.
EDIT2: I've changed my primary alias to a newly created one. If I am still able to sign in OK in a couple of days, I will disable the old primary for sign-in. I hope I don't live to regret this!
Re Onedrive, as someone who left windows ages ago: Why not just create folders outside your user home? Create some junctions from the inside. Then onedrive gets to sync only your desktop wallpaper and any random stuf apps drop in there, and your real data is safe outside its reach.
The correct thing to do in this scenario is to create a new random login alias on your Microsoft account, make it the primary login alias, and disable login for the all other e-mails tied to the account.
Those login attempts which trigger 2fa app does not generate a log entry if unsuccessful. Only attempts with username/password does. For some strange reason.
So there is no way to flag them as malicious and if you accidentally accept, then it’s already too late.
I know they’re always changing things but I’m 99% sure one drive can be disabled with a checkbox either in “turn windows features on or off” or via group policy editor.
USSR tried to digitize economy (OGAS) under Khrushchev but project was killed by pen and paper bureaucrats scared for their jobs. They barely would have had the resources to set it up though. Chile under Allende tried a similar short-lived socialist computer economy project called Cybersyn before the coup.
Marx apologists often point out he did not believe Russia could bypass capitalism on its own, without help from more advanced socialist countries formed by revolutions in the industrialized West. He also said the cotton gin was the engine of revolution and new technology has to come first before a new social system. The well known failures of command economies aside, arguably it did work with the right policies, especially when compared to other developing countries, it just didn't grow as fast as Western capitalism. The USSR didn't so much collapse as it was shut down by decree bc the leaders looked at the numbers and decided to give up.
Maybe the hypothetical bossless corp will be accidentally created by capitalism as more and more management positions are eliminated to save money.
Hyperreality is a bogus concept altogether, inasmuch as it's supposed to be something new in human history that only happens because of computers. Prehistoric/ancient humans also had fashion trends and myths and symbols and deep context
computing merely spurred the conceptualization of hyperreality. the original impetus was more along the lines of societal imagery like media, wax museums, or theme parks (as mentioned in the article). computing is not seen in the seminal definition of a map overflowing its territory. this definition does align with integer overflow/underflow but isn't predicated upon the existence of those concepts. therefore the concept of hyperreality may be embodied in many contexts, both prior to and post the advent of computing.
> you can’t say some politician filled a country with immigrants from the third world.
You can absolutely say that, if it's true. As it stands, I don't know of country "filled with immigrants", so it's possible your edits are getting revoked for being incendiary hyperbole.
I'm also not aware of any politician described as racist in the first paragraph of their article. Can you indicate who you have in mind?
More realistically, controversies about racism and immigration are likely to be mentioned in a section of the given article, not in the first paragraph. That strikes me as a very fair way to handle it, which conveniently disarms accusations of bias against Wikipedia.
“Filled with immigrants” will always be a subjective term. Does it need to be 100% immigrants to count as “filled”? 50%? 25%?
Canadian residents, for example, as of 2021 [1], were 23% foreign-born, and further 2.5% non-permanent residents. In the five year period from 2016 to 2021, the number of foreign-born Canadians increased by 18% alone, which to me is significant growth. The number of non-permanent residents doubled from 2016 to 2021, and tripled again by July 2024 [2]. The share of third-generation+ Canadians, defined as those born in Canada to parents born in Canada, was 56% in 2021 [1]. When the 2026 census data is released next year, it’s estimated that number could be as low as 52%.
> “Filled with immigrants” will always be a subjective term.
An encyclopedia is no place for subjectivity. [1]
> Canadian residents,
I don't care. I'm not here to discuss immigration. We're talking about Wikipedia and its standards. You can like immigration or be against it, but it's not Wikipedia's job to allow you to express your opinion.
This feels rather hand wavy and reductive. The bar isn’t “Wikipedia is completely unbiased and objective” - that’s a fool’s errand, it can’t be done. But we still strive to account for biases and reach for objectivity as best we can, and there are situations where language (with its subjectivity taken into due consideration) and claims clearly are not an attempt at that.
Those aren’t the same thing. I’m saying that and I did not miss the point of your comment. You can’t just declare the opposite opinion invalid like that
Some racists built a village and it's doing well, therefore centuries of colonialism across continents was good? Is that sound logic?
So if Scientologists or some other cult built a potemkin village in Wyoming and pumped it with investment, and the town's balance sheets looked better than surrounding communities that didn't get their investment, you'd endorse the cult ideology too? Or at least denounce its critics?
There were many tech companies I've worked at where lifers got paid top dollar to sit around and do nothing. And had to be convinced to do any work or help you.
I remember non union non tech jobs where the entire workforce were lazy and useless too.
Seems like an American thing or a human thing. Not a union thing.
This. 100%. The absolute irony of techies getting paid big bucks while doing zero work, just posting on their phone on HN during the "workday", complaining about ... union fat cats getting paid too much and doing no work. Maybe there's actually some wisdom to it. like "Uh oh.. if the people at the bottom figured out their own scams and aren't working either.. this whole house of cards I'm on top of might collapse!"
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