In your home, someone could force themselves in, force you to vote for someone and verify you did so.
With anonymous voting at a polling place, sure someone could force you to go there, but since the vote itself is anonymous (and there’s people around to check it is), they would never be able to verify that you indeed voted X or Y way. It’s also why most countries ban taking pictures of your vote; no proving to anyone how you voted!
This is a very typically American point of view, which tends to lump a lot of people together as “liberal” despite this internationally not being the norm at all.
Here’s a definition of liberalism:
Liberalism is a political philosophy and ideology that emphasizes individual rights, liberties, and limited government. It promotes ideas like free markets, free trade, and social equality, while often advocating for a strong emphasis on individual autonomy and civil liberties.
Note specifically how it says individual rights. The idea with liberalism is that if everyone is similarly unrestrained by the government, and has the same civil liberties, there is an even playing field in which individuals can personally grow and excel. This neatly links together with the liberal belief in a free market, free trade, etc…
A strict liberal idealogy will also adopt several progressive policies w.r.t. civil liberties, like gay rights (as this causes social equality -> level playing field for competition). But liberalism is still a strictly capitalist idealogy, with a strong emphasis on the free market and free trade.
Generally, this individualistic approach to rights is considered socially progressive and economically right-wing. And we see that this is the case in most countries around the world, e.g. Australia’s liberal party or the Dutch VVD. The Dutch VVD is a good example to look at here, they are considered very firmly right-wing, but their party platform most closely matches to that of the DNC. In the US, the two major parties are both righg-wing, one is a moderately progressive right-wing party (with some left-wingers in there, but they aren’t very influential w.r.t. party policy because it’s such a small minority) and the other is a conservative/authoritarian right-wing party.
Because both parties sit firmly on the right of the spectrum, they’ve come to distinguish themselves on social policy rather than economic policy. They’ve remapped the progressive-conservative axis on the left-right axis and called it a day. But in most countries, these axes are very much distinct. Here’s the “political compass” for the Netherlands for example:
Note how there are only two fairly fringe parties to the right of the VVD. Also it’s interesting to note here that the PVV (the “far-right” party with the bird symbol near the bottom) isn’t even all that far right. Their economic policies aren’t actually all that focused on free market dynamics, and they do promote certain social policies. But their hardline immigration stance pushes them very firmly in the conservative camp. And although there’s certainly a correlation between left-progressive and right-conservative, there are still major differences between the parties along this diagonal axis.
Generally, actual left-wing people (be they progressive or conservative) don’t like being lumped in with liberals, because they don’t focus on as much on individual freedom but rather on collective freedom and on policies that benefit the collective. Hence their insistence on actually looking at the full political spectrum rather than the simplified/reducted version of it.
You’re not wrong that people in the US tend to call liberals “left-wing”, but it’s a very reductive, American perspective not shared by political scientists or the rest of the world.
That’s a pretty fair point, though I assume a spare powerbank would solve the problem nearly as well (albeit slower and with a cable).
Screwdrivers are pretty entry-level tools though.
I’ve never had one of those actually work…
Why the fuck did he sign it
Clearly the train didn’t yield properly, time to ban trains.
Also, since they’ve been bombing nuclear facilities I can guarantee you that they have boat loads of very shitty (radioactive) chemicals laying around there which with these bombings now will also be spread around everywhere
So far no radiation was detected, so perhaps it was stored more securely (or somewhere else).
Yes, that is the big thing many people are missing. Valve takes a 0% cut from Steam keys sold outside of their platform. The 30% does not apply.
The only rule Valve sets out here is that you don’t sell those Steam keys for less on other storefronts. Which imo seems fair enough if Valve is doing the distribution and asking for nothing in return.
The big sticking point is whether the 30% cut isn’t too high in the first place.
What? That wording isn’t even relevant to the case. That’s just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes on Steam. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations). It’s similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense.
Wolfire’s case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam).
Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.
But that is what the policy is about. Steam doesn’t have a price parity policy regarding general game sales.
It is true. Valve does not enforce price parity for non Steam keys. Here is an example where the dev says that they are offering a better price on EGS because of the better cut:
https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/
Pretty clear example of the same game having a lower base price on Epic than on Steam.
Wolfire claiming Valve does this is something different from Valve actually doing it, and that’s where the dispute lies. According to Valve, Wolfire’s explanation of the price parity policy is incorrect.
Here’s the policy itself: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. **It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. **
The policy is pretty leanient regarding the “worse deal” aspect. You’re allowed to have a sale on one platform but not on Steam, as long as you offer “something similar” at a different moment to Steam users too.
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
Even if you violate this policy, Valve will still sell your game, they may just stop providing you with Steam keys to sell.
I don’t see Wolfire winning this tbh.
So it’s just a coincidence that no neighboring country has threatened them with outright military invasion since they got nukes?
I mean, haven’t they?
And when has Iran ever threatened to use a bomb against Israel?
The IAEA cites several officials that have stated that Iran is able to manufacture nuclear weapons, and pundits on state tv have threatened Israel with total destruction and “annihilation”. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together. They’re overt threats, but threats nonetheless.
The Soviets didn’t just keep expanding across Europe, precisely because the US had the bomb to hold them in check.
This ignores the many proxy wars the US and USSR fought in many regions. I wouldn’t necessarily call that very stabilizing. Meanwhile the theory that wars won’t be declared between nuclear powers is actively being tested by several states at the moment, prodding and probing nuclear-capable alliances to test where the boundary lies.
Results achieved in the past do not guarantee success in the future.
As much as I agree that Israel is a destabilizing force and that you have their MO fairly spot on, Israel doesn’t seem to be using its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent for invasion. They don’t have to, they have significant conventional forces with US backing, making invasion nigh-impossible anyway. That’s how it went in the past at least with the various regional wars.
I’m not sure an Iranian bomb would stabilize much if anything. Israel sees it as a direct existential threat and will stop at nothing to prevent or disable such a weapon. Iran has also repeatedly threatened to use it on Israel offensively, which doesn’t really bode well for peace either. Suppose Iran does lob a bomb at Israel, how would they respond? Or what if Israel strikes first? I don’t trust either party to be reasonable and responsible here tbh.
Iran can’t use the weapon to threaten Israel as you say, because it’d be an empty threat. Iran can’t nuke Israel without getting nuked right back. Israel knows this, so they can continue their expansions just fine.
MAD doctrine prevents nuclear wars from breaking out, but as we have been seeing recently it doesn’t prevent conventional wars.
I think they did briefly mentioned they improved the sticks, but they never clarified what exactly.
I’m tempted to say that although many of these are gaming icons, they’re not PC-exclusive so they’re not really PC-gaming specific mascot material. Most of these characters are playable on consoles too.
I guess this makes MMORPGs and RTS games prime candidates, like a character from Runescape, Starcraft or WoW. Or perhaps something that shows off modding, like the Thomas the Tank Engine dragon (even if the game isn’t PC exclusive).
The Kerbals from KSP could be mascot material too. Dwarf Fortress would be an option too. Or what about a guest from Roller Coaster Tycoon 1/2?
Even sitting on a couch moves your phone more than simply laying on a table. They can use accelerometer data to determine how, if at all, it moved.
They likely have the data to show it didn’t move at all. Eg it wasn’t on your person.
Iran doesn’t even have nukes yet.
You expressly can’t do this. This is why there’s a voting booth and observers who make sure you’re alone in the booth. And after you fill out the ballot, it gets folded inward and placed in a box that is closed off until election day is over. There’s no way to verify who you voted for, as your name isn’t on the ballot.