Iirc, tasks requiring elevated permissions wasn’t the main complaint, maybe just one of the most vocal ones.

Even with good hardware, it was not optimized for performance in general. This was amplified by the fact they also marketed Vista as having a wide range of older hardware support, which resulted in many users upgrading from XP only to have their performance absolutely tank. I think there was even a lawsuit because of how they marketed some devices as, “Vista ready.”

Regardless, Vista was still better than Windows 8.

Sadly, I believe you’re correct on that… sigh…

$500,000 is nothing to billionaires, or even people who make hundreds of millions a year. It’s a lot to average folks like us, but to them it’s the equivalent of going to the casino with money they can afford to blow.

But I do think you’re right about passing it on to the greater fool. They bet it’ll be the next hot product, regardless if they know it sucks or not. Then some bigger bag of money will come in and buy it up, thinking they’ll be able to somehow milk a sustainable profit out of it. You’d think by now that VCs would be smarter about the boom and bust of tech startups, but alas…

Iirc, didn’t the article say that was one of many hypothetical scenarios they try to plan accordingly for? Like you said, it’s been awhile since it came out, so I could easily be wrong. I imagine it won’t be a problem any time soon, though. There are always desperate people, and simply changing policy to allow rehiring people that had previously been fired/quit would open eligible candidate pools back up.

Or, y’know, they could just make working there not be miserable.

I’ve been using a Steam Deck for almost a year damn near daily with maybe 1 OS crash that was largely due to a very unstable game. How is ArchLinux unstable, exactly?

This is the correct interpretation and the crux of the matter in Valve’s view. Why should they be forced to allow other retailers to sell Steam keys at whatever price they want, effectively taking money out of Valve’s pockets, when it’s Steam providing all of the actual services for said key to function?

This should not be confused with gray market key resellers, by the way (e.g. G2A, Kinguin, etc) . Those aren’t the same as retailers like Fanatical or GreenManGaming.

There was another case in 2021 that originated this complaint and some of these plaintiffs in the 2024 case actually broke off from that one to start this one. We’ll see what evidence they actually end up bringing to court to argue their case and how legitimate it is. All I know, is this will likely end up with Valve stopping third-parties from selling steam keys entirely.

They’re only doing this because of the class action being brought against them. It’s cheaper to let this go to court than to try and settle tens of thousands of individual arbitrations. In fact, there are plenty of companies now reversing course and realizing how badly forcing arbitration can backfire.

Edit: For those unaware: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/video-game-giant-valve-hit-with-consumer-class-action-over-pricing-2024-08-12/

I guess the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen among all my peers and social networks contradicts those numbers, so we can agree to disagree. It’s easy to massage those stats, especially with the advent of bullshit jobs like “AI prompt engineer,” as an example.

Anyway, good luck to anyone that gets laid off. Shit sucks regardless, and that was really my main original point.

Oh for sure, it’s just that lots of folks want pure WFH so they can live wherever they want, especially since the cost of living near these companies tend to be stupid expensive. So while hybrid is better than nothing, it still greatly reduces flexibility in that regard.

I should clarify that I was referring to the US. And I have to also disagree it’s voracious for all tech workers, that’s why I said depending on your specialty within the IT field. Hell, there was just a post on the r/cybersecurity subreddit the other day with hundreds of comments agreeing that it’s not a great time right now in the US. It hasn’t just been FAANG companies laying off tech workers, it’s been all over:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilsayegh/2024/08/19/the-great-tech-reset-unpacking-the-layoff-surge-of-2024/

These are not isolated incidents. According to Layoffs.fyi, 384 tech companies have laid off more than 124,000 employees in 2024, adding to the 428,449 tech workers who lost their jobs in 2022 and 2023.

That’s over 500,000 tech workers in just under 3 years. A huge chunk of job postings for IT jobs are just ghost jobs, meaning they’re perpetually posted without actually ever intending to fill that slot. There are lots of reasons why companies do this, but that’s off topic and lots of articles already cover the topic, e.g. https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/07/15/the-ghost-jobs-haunting-your-career-search/

Anyway, hopefully this slump recovers soon.

This is just Amazon’s way of cutting employees without having to pay severances/unemployment. Those workers looking for new 100% WFH jobs are in for a rude awakening. The market is not what it was a couple of years ago. Tons of companies have moved back to onsite or a hybrid model, requiring 1-2 days in office per week.

And if you’re in IT, good luck. Thousands of IT layoffs this year alone, so there’s a lot of competition in that field, depending on your specialty. My job forced us back to a 3 days in-office per week policy about a year ago, but we were getting a new director who promised more flexibility, so I decided to just passively look for jobs here and there versus really trying. I now wish I had focused more aggressively on looking. Ah well, 'least I still have a relatively reasonable job, which is more than many can say.

Anyway, good luck to them. Fuck these parasitic C Suites and fuck this corporate and governmental anti-WFH movement.

I was super annoyed when they first took away the links. “Pages are more dependably available now,” is such a lazy excuse. Storing the cached content probably wasn’t even that expensive for them, as it didn’t retain anything beyond basic html and text. Their shitty AI-centric web search was likely the main reason for getting rid of it.

I mean, sure, but if it detects something and there’s no reason to suspect it’s necessarily cancerous, then I’d hope doctors would recommend just keeping an eye on it and possibly scheduling periodic checkups to ensure it doesn’t continue growing. No competent doctor is going to recommend invasive surgery right off the bat.

Talk to your primary doctor if they can get you a referral for an MRI. Insurance loves to try and deny MRIs, so I think a referral is probably required due to how expensive they are. IMO, they should be included in annual physicals since it’s one of the only (if not the only) ways to detect brain tumors early, which is critical given how difficult it is to treat brain tumors and the earlier the better.

This isn’t always the case, technically. Dental can be considered for normal health insurance if it’s directly impacting your health (like an emergency surgery). That being said, your insurance may fight the shit out of this and will still most likely require you to list your dental insurance as the primary for billing.

Checking for prostate cancer is super easy now and doesn’t even require a finger in your bum. It’s a simple blood test that is far more accurate than the traditional manual method. I get one done every time I have a physical since they just add it on to the other stuff they check my blood for.

Yeah, this dataset seems very incomplete/limited. I’d also argue that the US probably doesn’t have over 5000, as many of these vendors have their “own DC” that’s just hoteled inside the same giant multi-building complex.

I don’t think Pokemon is first-party since that IP and the dev studios fall under The Pokemon Company, whereas games like Mario and Zelda are developed by studios within Nintendo itself. I could be wrong.

Edit: I just looked it up, and yep, Nintendo only owns 33% of The Pokemon Company.

Yeah, games like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart, Luigi’s Mansion, etc. are fun as hell and very polished. I can’t think of a single first-party Nintendo game that’s released riddled with bugs in recent memory, whereas the rest of the industry can’t say the same, excepting Sony’s first-party games.

He’d dismiss the sarcasm and make it genuine, “Yes, Timmy, we really are very impressed. Good job, Billy!”