sp3ctr4l

No problem!

Wonderful username btw, haha.

In case people missed or are unaware of the context:

https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/2024/doj-google-must-divest-chrome-possibly-android-google-fires-back

https://www.howtogeek.com/united-states-doj-google-android-chrome-split/

The DoJ recently (before Trump got elected) won an anti-trust lawsuit against Google, and the lawsuit is currently in the stage of haggling over the extent of the penalty actions taken against Google as a result.

One of the things the DoJ is pushing for is breaking off not only Chrome but also Android from Google to just leave Google with its search stuff.

This is like splitting up Bell from decades ago.

What Google is doing right now is strategic positioning to be able to argue that Android can’t be split off from Google without causing them too much pain, and by making Android more and more dependent on, and nonfunctional without being under the same corporate ownership.

This is a powerplay to try to not be broken up so hard by the anti-trust lawsuit they already lost.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2020)

The actual penalty ruling is expected to come down by August 2025… unless the Trump admin fucks with it, somehow they… haven’t seemed to yet notice or care that this lawsuit is going on, despite Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, having a literal front row seat at Trump’s inauguration.

Completely off topic, but I first read that as ‘DNA’, did a double take.

At this point, an announcement that whoever is in charge of all DNA continuing to work just stepped down or got fired… wouldn’t really seem that out of character for this timeline.

Valve runs a couple of online casinos that target children specifically, not sure we should be arguing who’s worse here.

I agree with the sentiment of this… MTX/lootbox shenanigans are a bad, harmful practice that should be much more heavily restrained…

But that has nothing to do with being a monopoly.

At this point, its a widespread industry problem.

You’d address that with regulation, but not on the basis of Steam being a de facto monopoly, instead based on some kind of consumer protection regulation.

… But Trump and Elon are blowing all of that up, so, probably not gonna happen anytime soon.

Valve skims 10-30% of an insanely large volume of transactions and should be held to a much higher standard.

10 - 30 % really isn’t that unreasonable compared to a lot of existing comptetitors… though I guess we’ll see how their ongoing lawsuit around that ends up.

Either way, this also doesn’t make or not make them a monopoly, unless you or the ongoing lawsuit can prove that a 30% is functionally an outsized monopoly rent, wildly out of step with the rest of the industry.

If this is instead roughly in line with the rest of the industry, you’d again need to address this with some other legislation that spans the whole industry, not specifically targeting Steam as a monopoly.

The word for a market dominated by only a few very large players is oligopoly, not… polyopoly.

Not saying you’re saying that, just saying.

…

As to the etymology…

Its derives from Greek.

A monopoly has one (mono) influential seller for many (poly) consumers.

An oligopoly has a few, wealthy (oligo, as in oligarch, oligarchy) sellers for many (poly) consumers.

Importantly, in Greek, poly is closely related to polis, meaning basically ‘all of the people/citizens’.

This is also where English gets ‘Politics’ from.

…

Also, I wrote a whole other comment, but the mere existence of any competitors, no matter how small… doesn’t mean you aren’t a monopoly.

Its just means you aren’t a perfect monopoly, which basically never exists in real life, outside of public utilities.

If the rubric for ‘is it a monopoly?’ was ‘do any competitors exist?’, then basically no company that’s ever been broken up or regulated for being a monopoly was actually a monopoly.

A lot of people seem to think that a monopoly has a much, much more direct and literal definition than it actually does.

The definition the FTC uses is:

Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

That is how that term is used here: a “monopolist” is a firm with significant and durable market power.

Courts look at the firm’s market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.

Some courts have required much higher percentages.

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined

I have a bachelor’s in Econ.

The people that run and advise the FTC have PhDs.

(Well, at least untill Elon and Trump put the fucking Shark Tank guy in charge, or something like that.)

Generally speaking, a monopolist is a single entity that has captured a huge chunk of an otherwise varying and well differentiated market, if your market is closer to the theoretical (ie, not real) idea of perfect competition, or if you’re talking about a consolidated market with only a few major players, the monopolist has at least 50% of the market, though, depending on other factors, that line may be drawn at up to 75% ish.

Different specific situations, regions, laws, etc. establish differing specific criteria… but the idea is not that a monopolist is defined by being literally 100% of the market.

That situation would specifically be referred to as a ‘perfect monopoly’, and like ‘perfect competition’, is basically theoretical only, or a situation where you’re looking at something like a local public utility or some kind of government/state entity.

In actual mainstream academic and legal usage though, a monopoly is a single entity in the market has a very outsized market share when compared to any other market participant, such that its actions alone can very significantly affect all other market participants.

…

Now… when it comes to Steam… a whole lot of the arguement is ‘what is and is not the market, what constitutes its boundaries?’

If you define it as just ‘PC video games’, then sure Steam likely is an effective monopoly.

But if you define it as ‘all digital games’, then no, not even close, the Google Play Store and Apple Store are responsible for far more digital game downloads than Steam, way waaay more games are mobile games than PC games, if you go by yearly or monthly downloads, or market share.

It gets even more complicated with cross platform games.

Ultimately, it would be up to a lawsuit, lawyers, judges, industry experts, to argue all of the specifics of exactly whether or not its legally valid to formally classify Steam as a monopoly that would need to be broken up or penalized or regulated in some way, and a huge part of that legal battle would be based around differing definitions of what exactly Steam is a monopoly if, and whether those precise definitions are valid.

…

‘Other options exist for consumers’ or ‘they don’t have a perfect monopoly’ is not a valid arguement against Steam being a monopoly if Steam facilitates 85% of PC game sales, and the other 15% is split up between 10 or so other digital store fronts.

If that is your rubric for ‘what is the market’, then yeah, Steam is a monopoly.

But, if your rubric is ‘all digital games’, then no, Steam is just a large player in a market with other larger players, other slightly smaller players, and many other very small players.

…

Beyond that, a huge part of legally being determined to be a monopoly is unethical/illegal behavior of the ‘monopolist’ being used to obtain or maintain their monopoly.

In Steam’s case… I think that would be pretty hard to substantiate, its more so just that Steam had the idea first, expanded upon it quite a lot, and no one really bothered to try to compete with them on the same level untill basically the Epic store, fairly recently.

I worked at a large import export firm based out of Seattle a decade ago. All of their internal and external accounting ultimately relied on COBOL as well.

A single guy maintained it all… he also wrote it all, originally. Got back from the Vietnam war, learned COBOL with his GI Bill, went to work for this company, stayed for his whole life.

He kept telling the board that they needed to find a replacement, or three, for him, when he retired.

They did not, at least not before he retired, and I left several months later due to every system I relied on to do my work breaking down after he left.

=D

I am sure you mean ‘It’s sad that’, but the typo of ‘dad’ also works: lots of people want a big strong paternal father figure to make all the hard decisions, bear all the responsibility, be unquestioningly respected.

Its also the same impulse for deference to an omnipotent, infallible sky-daddy God.

Many, many tradtional, religious conservatives have been and still are defined by submission to and preservation of a hierarchy of father figures throughout all of society.

Can you put a liuqin in there?

A simplified explanation is:

Bazzite itself is immutable, but then on top of that base layer, its a customized version of Fedora, via DistroBox, which itself mostly is mutable, and allows for you to set up other DistroBox instances pretty easily.

Bazzite’s system updater utility updates both the underlying Bazzite core, and all of the DistroBox instances running on top of it.

99.9 % of the time there is no reason to mess with the immutable core bazzite stuff, but the distrobox containers built on top of it? You can do whatever you want.

Also if you do fuck up the Bazzite core, you can fairly easily roll it back and reset it without losing your existing files, without having to re-image the whole SteamDeck.

As far as the non desktop mode, actual SteamDeck mode experience? Seems the same in terms of game performance, but it is easier to add things like DeckyLoader and EmuDeck and what not, as that base Fedora instance comes with a bunch of utilities that help you install and set them up.

EDIT: I am almost certainly not 100% technically correct in some way here, but I think this is generally accurate.

I run bazzite on a deck as well, and the main reason is because I can actually use it as a pc without as much hassle from SteamOS really wanting to be read only.

If I want to set up say, a dev environment, from git sources, and all the required libraries to compile things, bazzite comes with distrobox so it’s not too hard set that up… whereas SteamOS will blow up all of that when it updates, even after you turn read only mode off.

…

That and the AUR sucks, lol.

Ok so…

I have bazzite on a steam deck.

It works extremely well!

But… say I want to set up… Unity, or Godot, or Bevy, or something that doesn’t have a flatpak or appimage.

If I am understanding this right…

The actual base OS is basically a custom version of an immutable/atomic Fedora 41 variant, and I should not fuck with that.

The system update terminal?

I should only run ublue ujust commands in it, not yum, not dnf, not rpm-ostree.

When I want to install something not flatpak or app imagified, things like all the requirements for compiling code …

For that, I should be using the ‘fedora’ container… as the current fedora container is actually what allows for that level of tinkering with… or if something only actually lists its sources and dependencies in debian based os’s, just set it up in a debian distrobox container… right?

Wrong?

He should just mail her back an expired head of lettuce.

Its only a matter of time.

I just set up Nobara.

Shockingly straightforward.

Entire install process was very simple, with a GUI, then a neat little post install app that gives you another very straightforward GUI for running your first batch of system updates.

But uh if you’re just looking for an OS for a standard desktop PC, everything I’ve outlined in the above spoiler is not gonna be a problem, and you’ll likely have a very straightforward install process.

I’m also a fan of Nobara’s default UI… kind of a gnomeified KDE?

As well as its default apps, built in DeckyLoader and plugins for the Deck, ProtonPlus for runtime environments, and of course its built in kernel customizations/optimizations for to play vidya gaem.

Oh, and I went with Nobara over the default SteamOS because SteamOS on a Deck is a read only OS by default…

You can install flatpaks, but if you want to actually install new core packages, those will get wiped with a SteamOS update… or you have to use DistroBox… which may also get wiped on an update?

Not sure, but Nobara allowse to use the deck as both a Deck and a more standard desktop linux PC with more customizability… and not having to rely on the AUR, which I find incredibly frustrating.

Neither of the two articles are well sourced.

But you acted like yours was credible, until I presented another one, whereupon you admitted they are both equally valid.

That’s assuming that the random article you found is correct, the veracity of which I can’t verify any more than the interesting engineering article…

That is to say, you cannot verify either of these articles at all, ie, they are both of dubious legitimacy.

You accused someone of being racist based of an article you admit you cannot verify, posted a bunch of related research papers that indicate, sure, they’re trying to develop the thing your article claimed they did… but doesn’t indicate that they actually developed it.

…

I can link you a patent for a triangular shaped aircraft, listed as filed by a US Navy Scientist that claims to outline how to create an electromagnetic, gravity negating field around the craft.

That would not be evidence that the US Navy officially announced that they basically built a UFO, that it works, and there’s a video of it, all officially documented and released.

But to you, it would be, if China had done all those things.

…

I am not saying China certainly has or has not developed a hypersonic passenger liner.

I am saying your source for this claim is dubious.

I am saying that you believe(d?) it credulously, without any skepticism, got very hostile with people who doubted its claim less tactfully than I did, and now you admit you got hostile based on a claim that you now admit is dubious, and shifted the burden of proof from the article making the claim to the skeptic questioning it.

Again, this is the logic of a fanatic.

If we just pick which dubiously sourced claims we believe based on vibes, truth stops existing.

So, you just assumed a unsourced, unverified story is true because you have a bias in favor of China, and put the burden of proof onto the other person to disprove it, and are completely fine with calling the other person a ‘sad racist’, despite now admitting that the veracity of the claim they are skeptical of is in fact not well established.

This is the argument/personality style of a fanatic, a religious fundamentalist, a QAnon adherent, an Elon Musk simp.

This is how we got ‘the Trump assasination attempt was staged!’

Please stop posting trash tier misinformation as ‘technology news’, please stop jumping to ‘everyone who disagrees with me is rascist’, this level of unjustified vitriol only makes you appear manic.

So… then… you agree that this entire Interesting Engineering article you posted is wrong?

Are you going to apologize to Sarah Brown for calling her a ‘sad racist’ when she expressed doubt as to the veracity of the dubious article you posted?

Ok so 24+ hours later and I now see a few different websites I’ve never heard of before that basically have the same article as this:

https://scienceinfo.net/chinese-hypersonic-aircraft-prototype-reaches-mach-6-speed.html

Still no actual link to the apparently original source somewhere on some social media site.

Now whats being said is that this was a flight test that actually occured 3 years ago, and was classified until now.

And they do provide an image, and credit it to CAS (without an actual link, I still can’t find this on CAS’ english site, but again maybe they are still writing a proper English post?)

This is a test article, that doesn’t appear to have any intakes for scramjet. I think I can make out two small rocket bells inside the thing, but the image quality is very low.

It’s just a test article, launched by a rocket, that Inwould guesstimate to have a wingspan of about… 4 meters, ish?

This new article also mentions that Cui, the team lead, did not mention anything about the current status of the hypersonic passenger jet which this was a test article for.

So… this test article got up to mach 6.5, 3 years ago.

Absolutely nothing about whether or not a successful test flight of a passenger jet sized craft achieved hypersonic speeds with an air breathing turbo ramjet / scram jet or something like that.

Completely different than the originally report.

… This is why I wanted an actual source.

If this very poorly sourced article from this random, clickbait style website is more accurate than the OP article (another poorly sourced article from another clickbait style website) is more accurate, that would mean SCMP, and everyone in this thread saying China has built an air breathing hypersonic jet liner is wrong, and everyone saying that this is basically comparable to the X15 is correct.

(Differences being the X15 was carried up to 45 thousand feet by a B52 instead of a rocket, and the X15 was manned, and this test article is presumably unmanned.)