Really need to start calculating settlements like this as a function of profits. Otherwise this is just factored in as a business cost and does not actually apply as a consequence.
$135 million may seem like a lot to regular people, but it’s not for Google. If we are letting these tacit monopolies stay in place, then the kid gloves at least need to come off when they’re being dealt with. Scale up consequences so they are appropriate for the size of the corporation.
This is exactly why this shit constantly annoys me. Steam is not unique in how they handle their store. If you don’t want to pay Valve a fee as a dev, then don’t put your game on Steam. No one is forced to do that.
Now, you will lose many sales. But a service being popular does not make it a monopoly. Other stores exist, and are even discussed in the article. All of them have some similar method of getting add-ons. Steam’s happens to be very easy – again, that doesn’t make it anti-competitive.
Also: the fact that this is about “PC monopoly” and “Microsoft” is not mentioned is just… wild. And sad.
Xero is publicly traded. Generally it’s shareholders wanting endless return that pushes every company to enshittify. The specifics of the company matter less if they have public shareholders.
Valve is extremely unique in that it is absolutely giant by value but not publicly traded. For now.
I totally agree it’s just vibes. I’m sorry if I suggested otherwise, but most of my point is about audio being subjective.
If everything is subjective, then some people will like tape.
I totally agree that CD should be better.
I really wasn’t trying to make a point, except that a simple search shows that the debate about VHS vs CD exists.
I don’t think it comes down to either one being objectively better.
This is why the debate still exists:
There is no analog audio format that can rival a 32bit 96KHz PWM recording, and that’s not even the best digital recording available
Analog audio is not sampled. By definition, it includes more data than any sampled version.
Now, the benefits of the sampling in terms of reducing format noise or similar are (subjectively) up for debate.
Totally agree with things sounding better if you introduce noise. I suspect it has to do with sampling, and maybe is not well understood.
Fun fact: if you add some hisses and pops and a little bit of compression to CD audio before playing it, some people (me included) will say it sounds better.
Exactly. It is subjective. It’s not about right or wrong.
I think there are things (like above) where the measurements are misguided. But at the end of the day, even that doesn’t matter.
Agreed. Main issue is “better” is subjective and doesn’t always mean the same thing to different people.
I have dabbled in other tape formats, and one thing stands out to me about the compact cassette (not VHS): most people used them in the car, where conditions were bad for cassette storage. Car cassette players also tended to have poorer quality mechanisms and heads. As a result, many people remember the format being bad, when in fact, it was more about their use case. A quality home cassette deck with a quality cassette (e.g. type II or chrome) stored in the right conditions is capable of extremely good results.
Not sure if there is something similar with VHS audio, though. Very different format. I just know there is a debate, but it could be entirely bogus.
There’s a weird debate about the audio quality on VHS. Under the right conditions (right tape, right player, right source) it could be shockingly good – perhaps even better than CD audio, despite not being remembered terribly fondly.
If you really want to wow the ladies, be the one guy with a music collection on VHS.
This was my thought. When he invades Iceland everyone will reference the part of this speech about use of force and realize it only applied to Greenland.
Textbook definition of a solution searching for a problem.
This. Corporations on paper should have consequences like a person. In practice, they can do whatever they want, because the US Government worships capitalism. More so than the people.
Citizens United was a tipping point. If corporations are people and can give without limit to political campaigns, then only corporate choices will win. The others won’t even make the ballot. It is 100% a fix.
Was there democracy before Citizens United? Maybe. Certainly more than now.
A better question is how many more leopards need to eat faces before ANY Republicans grow either a brain or a spine.
I think it’s an astronomical number. Bigly.
Not even the tiniest of violins for this one. I hope these bootlickers live in fear for the rest of their lives.
They are a good example that simply being human does not necessarily give you humanity, and they should all be absolutely ashamed.
Peggle. As a grown ass person I still play it at least once every couple of weeks. Stupid fun when you don’t want to pay too much attention.
This this this. Show me a conservative that a) can understand that different people are affected by different things at different times, b) that people in government need to accept (a), and c) that they aren’t the main character, and I’ll show you Half Life 3.
They literally control all the government. And they still couldn’t govern.
If the roles were reversed, I can’t even imagine the right wing media backlash.
I’ll take cherrypicking for $500, Alex
Yeah, no argument there. But I would argue companies do that kind of thing already for various reasons (many having to do with taxes).
Overall, I don’t think it’s a good argument against regulation to say “let’s regulate less because people will cheat”. People will always cheat.