corbin

@corbin@infosec.pub

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corbin OP ,

I’m not quite that young.

corbin OP ,

I didn't buy those adapters, I just used a computer that had a FireWire 400 port. I haven't found any evidence of those direct USB cables working with old iPods.

corbin ,

E15 is a different blend of fuel, it's not at all gas pumps and regular 87/89/91 octane level fuel is still available (because not all cars can use E15 like the sticker says). Sheetz stations sell it in my area around Raleigh, NC.

corbin ,

Revenue is not the same thing as profit. Storing nearly two decades of videos with global CDNs costs a lot of money.

corbin OP ,

Valve has avoided many of the same anti-consumer moves as other tech and gaming giants, likely due to its smaller size, status as a non-public company, and the long-time leadership of Gabe Newell and other executives. Valve won't stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.

Valve is not immune to enshittification, and it has already happened on some level with minimal current Mac support, facilitating gambling through item trades, etc.

corbin OP , (edited )

No exclusivity for games

Valve doesn't need to pay for exclusivity because it already dominates the market. There are many games that are effectively Steam exclusives because they are not available through other methods on PC. Half-Life 2 received a lot of criticism at launch for requiring Steam.

They purposefully made SteamOS open source so that other companies can easily release portable PC gaming products

SteamOS is open source, but you need a license to use the Steam brand, and Valve doesn't allow that. One company tried to make a handheld console with SteamOS, but it can't be legally bundled with the hardware: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033161/ayaneo-next-lite-steam-deck-competitor-steamos

That said, who knows what happens when he dies?

Yes, that's the point of the article. If you need one specific person to stay alive for something to continue functioning well, you don't have a business, you have the British monarchy.

corbin OP ,

Whether or not the exclusivity deal is between the publisher and the store or just the publisher doesn’t make a difference for the consumer. There’s no functional difference between Counter Strike 2 requiring Steam and Fortnite requiring the Epic launcher except that gamers are used to Steam.

corbin OP ,

It's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Apple very obviously doesn't want the Mac gaming ecosystem to exist in the same capacity as Windows and Linux, but Valve also has an obligation to its customers using Macs to keep the service running well.

corbin OP ,

I meant more that the Steam client needs to be fully functional on modern macOS. Dropping older operating systems is more justifiable, but does still add to the picture of Valve not treating Mac owners all that well.

corbin OP ,

The issue is Steam and Valve being held up as the ‘one good company’, when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Valve does many of the same practices as Epic, EA, etc., but there’s a double standard with Valve because it’s the default experience. The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.

corbin OP ,

There's a difference between Valve deciding to not make Mac games anymore and Valve leaving the Mac Steam client a slow and laggy mess on newer Macs. The former only affects people who want to play Valve games, the latter affects a lot more people.

corbin OP ,

Every other major application and service on Mac has ARM-native builds now, there's not really an excuse for Valve. It's especially silly when much of Steam is running through a Chromium engine, not machine code or anything else that might be difficult to port.

corbin OP ,

Also, every game launcher on Windows still puts games in the start menu.

corbin OP ,

Steam only being 32-bit isn’t improving compatibility, it’s being lazy. You can write code that works on both architectures for the best performance and compatibility across all PCs, like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office, etc.

corbin OP ,

The benefit is improved performance and a better user experience. The Chromium-based components of Steam (like the store) are slow in part because of that.

corbin OP ,

Yep, never tried to hide that.

corbin , (edited )

Revenue is not the same as income. Maintaining cross-platform apps and hosting nearly a decade of messages and media attachments is gonna eat into that. Also, Discord is in fact a private company.

corbin ,

That's not how hosting a platform works. The storage might be cheap per GB, but the database management for something on Discord's scale is a complicated and expensive feat of engineering: https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-stores-trillions-of-messages

Apple ( slrpnk.net )

I don't care if anyone has a Xiaomi, Oneplus, Samsung, etc. Each brand is using a modified version of Android, and they chose to be compatible with each other. But for example the "blue vs green bubble" drama is a thing specifically because of Apple locking their unsuspecting users into a closed ecosystem. And it sure isn't...

corbin ,

I mean, even those old iPhones have better software support than a lot of low-end/budget Android phones. The iPhone 11 still has iOS 17 and will probably get security patches for another year or two (assuming it gets dropped with iOS 18, maybe Apple will try pushing it another year).

corbin ,

"moisturize me"

corbin OP ,

It seems pretty well established at this point that AI training models don't respect copyright.

corbin OP ,

I mentioned in the article that 5G home internet is not a solution for everyone. The reliability varies significantly by location and network quality—some people have no issues, for others it's unusable. It's not a perfect solution that will fix the US' infrastructure problems, but in the meantime it is making a difference for some people.

corbin OP ,

I would like to see more collective action, but it's also incredibly difficult to put your housing situation on the line when the US (and most states) does not give you a functional backup. As you said, it's capitalism at work.

corbin ,

I mostly use Mastodon, but I 100% get it. The onboarding process is much easier with centralized services (no need for analogies to email), and more importantly, you're not at risk of losing half your follows/followers when server admins have a pissing match. As long as those friction points exist, there will be a market for centralized platforms.

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