DarthYoshiBoy

joined 1 year ago
[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 5 points 5 months ago

I accidentally misclicked this article and reported it as spam while I was trying to report some prescription drug spam. Hopefully it's not adversely affected. I wish there was an Undo on that action.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 7 points 5 months ago

Just as an FYI, Steam has some granularity for privacy settings, your profile can be private while your friends list is not. Steam defaults profiles to private since 2018 and as I recall I had to go and open mine back up after they made that change in 2018 (I enjoy having SteamDB able to give me some analytics on my account, which it cannot do while things are private, so I took my stuff public.) I believe that they made that change retroactive to some degree else I could have continued using SteamDB without having had to change anything in my profile which worked before the change.

I just sicced SteamHistory on a Steam account that I use for managing some dedicated servers I host, I've never futzed with the privacy settings on that account, but it does have a single friend that I set up so one of the server admins could find the account, and SteamHistory is completely unaware of that fact. It shows that the account has 0 friends and I was able to confirm that this is not the case from the perspective of that account.

You (or your friends) can check your privacy settings for Steam at https://steamcommunity.com/my/edit/settings

That said, and you did touch on this OP, nothing on the Internet should be considered private, even in the best cases it's still data that you don't have 100% control over and you should assume that it COULD be public at any time because that scenario is always only one data breach away. If you're not comfortable with your data being known by others, you should not put it on the internet in any form under any circumstances; privacy settings will not save you.

TL;DR: It seems that whatever means SteamHistory is using, they are bound by the limitations of the Steam Privacy settings, so if your stalkers were able to figure out where your account moved via SteamHistory, it's probably because your friends do not have 100% of their stuff set private or because someone inside your circle of trust is giving the stalkers an inside scoop.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 5 points 5 months ago

In today's earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson says he has been playing the next Battlefield game with the development team and it will be a "tremendous live service."

"a tremendous live service" said Wilson, "...but a fairly terrible gaming experience." 😁

Honestly, I think he may be right with his statement in so much as he was using Webster's second definition for tremendous.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The existence of one premier dominant platform is called a fucking monopoly.

Read the first sentence of the Cornell Law Legal Dictionary:

A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market.

Restraint of Competition links to the FTC doc that defines what that is in a page titled "Monopolization defined" and it offers a two pronged test which is exactly what I've been saying all this time, they have to be the leader in their market which they have to have "gained or maintained through improper conduct."

Your lay interpretation informed by feelings that it's bad we have a market leader (and even there I'm giving you a huge gimmie because Google Play, GOG, EGS, Xbox, UPlay, and Amazon Games all exist and sell PC games in a digital storefront entirely absent Steam, and for stores that aren't absent Steam, as I noted before even games sold for use on Steam may not net Valve any revenue thanks to the ability of devs to sell their keys directly) is just not the correct interpretation for whether Steam is a monopoly. EA alone made almost as much revenue in 2023 as Valve did, which isn't an apples to apples comparison since EA does business a lot of places, but they're just one of a lot of big fish who don't always put money in Valve's pockets in the Digital PC Games Distribution market. Many devs sell their games as Steam keys on Amazon, GameStop, Newegg, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and all the others I linked before and Valve gets nothing (Excepting maybe a freeloading user) from those sales.

Out of curiosity I went to check out my account to see what I had bought "from Valve" vs "not from Valve" on Steam and it turns out that I own 1724 games on Steam. We can break that down in the transaction history, but I'm not going to go line by line to figure out which are DLC and which are games so this next part won't add up to 1724, but I'm providing the number to give some context for the remaining numbers so it doesn't just look like most of my transactions are MTX or something silly where Steam is actually getting something. I think it is illuminating to show that I have only made 718 purchases through Steam, I have been gifted 70 games, and I have 209 transactions which were indicated to be "Complimentary" where most seem to be DLC but there are a few games in that mix, so let's be charitable and give Valve the whole lot those as sales even though they were likely nothing of the sort. I have in my transaction history 1152 transactions that are listed as "Retail" which is Steam's way of showing that I didn't get the game or DLC from them. In 16 years of using Steam, Valve has charitably gotten a cut of 997 interactions, while I have given Steam 0% of a transaction 1152 times. That means that Valve has gotten a cut for only 47% of the content that they provide me at the absolutely most charitable interpretation of the data. So far as my account is concerned, if they're monopolizing the market, they're doing a terrible job of it by letting everyone else out there take the majority of the money while bearing none of the costs for Steam's infrastructure and development.

You can dismiss the fact that there is a historical record of Steam often not being the cheapest place to buy a game, or you can claim that just because there is a dominant player we defacto have a monopoly, or any of the other insane claims you've made but the fact is that there isn't a finding of law anywhere stating that Steam is a monopoly and it's unlikely there ever will be because they just don't meet the standard defined even if you cut down the market to the slimmest possible framing.

Unfortunately, we have clearly reached an impasse where you refuse to acknowledge statements of fact as written and will just "blah blah blah" away inconvenient facts, so I suppose this is where we part ways. Hopefully the next time we meet will bear better fruit.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

Which you seem to take for a granted, but won't provide even a theoretical for how that might have happened here?

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

Here, it's easy:

Then courts ask if that leading position was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident.

Does not in fact say:

Then courts ask if that monopoly was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident.

The standard has multiple prongs. You might have "monopoly power" without in fact being a monopoly because being a monopoly requires meeting a legal standard where being the in the leading position of a market is not the singular qualifier.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

The documents you picked are telling you, being a monopoly and doing harm are separate questions. The ability comes first, and that ability comes directly from market dominance.

This is not at all what those documents say, they state unequivocally that a monopoly has to create unfair conditions for competition AND they have to be dominant in their market. A company that creates unfair conditions for competition in their market is not a monopoly, a company that is dominant in their market is not a monopoly, it is both conditions combined that make a monopoly.

When Steam excludes a game, for any reason, that game usually sells a lot less.

Yeah, you're right, it was unfair of Steam to exclude Alan Wake 2 and cause them to lose all those sales. ಠ_ಠ

for most sales, the price on Steam is the price.

The entirety of the isthereanydeal.com website and their history for almost every game in the database proves that this is false, are we not going to require facts in this discussion any longer?

‘Poor sales are your own fault for not selling through the one store that matters,’

YES!!! FUCKING YES! If you choose to exclude the premier dominant platform that your product might appeal to, that is YOUR FAULT! Nobody owes you sales when you choose to do dumb things.

By your logic

Nothing sensible ever follows these words.

In your case you couldn't be more correct. Touché sir.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

Pointing out which meaning applies is how definitions work. One is enough.

So which is it? Because the only one that might apply is the last and that one has a complicated legal meaning that is multiple parts of which you only seem to care about a single part: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 3 points 6 months ago

I was going to get to this but my last comment ran over the 5000 character limit and had to be trimmed back. I was just going to drop it, but on reflection it is important to drive the distinction home, so here it is:

It is a dead simple fact that Steam’s market share is real fuckin’ high. So high that everyone else barely counts. We have a word for that.

We have a word for that.

Yeah. We do. That word is dominance. It is not monopoly because monopoly has qualifiers beyond dominance.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 3 points 6 months ago (11 children)

First things first, you cherry picked the one thing from my link that supports your position intentionally ignoring that it is a single prong in a standard that has several. Second, I'm glad you brought the FTC link, because they also do not agree with your stance if you bring the whole context from your own link into the conversation:

As a first step, courts ask if the firm has "monopoly power" in any market. This requires in-depth study of the products sold by the leading firm, and any alternative products consumers may turn to if the firm attempted to raise prices. Then courts ask if that leading position was gained or maintained through improper conduct—that is, something other than merely having a better product, superior management or historic accident. Here courts evaluate the anticompetitive effects of the conduct and its procompetitive justifications.

Your definition only meets one portion of the FTC standard, which is why my comment addressed how Valve fails to meet any of the points of the standard beyond the dominant market position. YES STEAM IS MARKET DOMINANT, BUT NO THEY ARE NOT A MONOPOLY BECAUSE THEY DON'T MEET ANY OTHER PORTION OF THE STANDARD.

But Valve obviously has power.

To do what? PC is an open platform that they don't control.

Valve has the ability to do these things.

To make people raise prices or exclude competitors? Again, how or where?

Their competitors don’t.

Epic is LITERALLY excluding competitors right now for a bunch of titles, other competitors have done likewise until they recognized that customers didn't like it and decided that it wasn't in their best interest to do so.

Steam’s market share is so high, they could do whatever they want, whether or not they ever do.

Not to beat a dead horse, but how? They literally have no control over PC users beyond that which they've earned from being the best of MANY options, so how could they possibly parlay that into a power they could use to exert force over consumers or developers? Unless they did something that made them into not the best option, they have competition from every angle including from their direct competitors at Microsoft whose platform (as of March 2024) houses 96.67% of their customers with Windows being the dominant OS for Steam users by an absurd amount. There's incredible danger for Steam to try and pull anything anti-competitive because they literally live in the house that their competition built.

We are talking about a long-awaited critical darling of a game, and we are talking about how its sales blow, specifically because it’s not on Steam. Yes, it has sales, but it doesn’t have enough sales, unless it goes through this one store. Defending the store’s practices will not change that. Defending the conditions that led here will not change that.

You seem to imply that Steam being a monopoly has caused Remedy to suffer poor sales. However, we have the following problems there:

A) Steam fails to meet the legal definition of a monopoly. Just full stop. You attempt to take singular statements from a legal concept that by design has multiple prongs (specifically because we do not choose to harm companies who do no competitive wrong and come to their dominant position through the art of their craft being superior), but that's just willfully misunderstanding the concept of a monopoly.

and

B) A developer choosing to launch their game on the Evercade Vs and failing to see the sorts of sales numbers they might expect on Sony Playstation/Microsoft Xbox/Nintendo Switch is hardly a justification to claim that the game did poorly because Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo are a oligopoly. The dev CHOSE to launch on a shittier platform, one that doesn't offer all the things that the current market expects. The devs are going to see lesser sales as a result, that's just how it works, they weren't harmed by a monopoly effect, they were harmed by their poor market choices.

It is a dead simple fact that Steam’s market share is real fuckin’ high. So high that everyone else barely counts. We have a word for that.

See, I think your problem may be that you think market share aside, all other things are equal, which is simply not the case. By your logic I should be able to offer you a nice shiny and new Evercade Vs in exchange for your Playstation 5 because it's only the market share that makes it so that the Evercade has less games to play? It's only natural where Steam is bringing more to the table, it has more customers as a result. EGS offers a pale shadow of what a consumer gets from Steam, so why should they count as much? Who owes them that? They need to get on that level if they want that credit due. They currently matter about as much as the effort they're putting into competing, which I'll agree isn't much, but is hardly relevant here.

[–] DarthYoshiBoy@kbin.social 3 points 6 months ago (14 children)

Except, legally in the US where Valve is based, you've got 0 legs to stand on.

Valve does dominate the market they're in, but they do so without creating an unreasonable restraint of competition in that market. They are dominant by providing the best product, not because they have unfair business practices which burden the competition. Like I said, Valve will literally allow game makers to go and take 100% of every sale they make (assuming they can process payments for free) while still allowing them to use the platform Valve have built and pay to maintain so long as they'll pay Valve a cut for the copies that are sold directly through the Steam store. Valve allows their competition to sell games that package said competition's stores inside of those games. Every EA or Ubisoft game comes with the competitor's store bundled in. They create tools that allow their competitors games to run on platforms that the competition doesn't want to bother with and they give them away. HOW IS ANY OF THAT AN UNREASONABLE RESTRAINT ON COMPETITION?

"Here you go guys, you so obviously don't understand what the audience wants. How about you give us a cut of the sales you make on your games via our platform and we'll let you install your platform on our customer's PCs? How unreasonable and diabolical of us to cut down the competition by letting gamers see what an open sewage pipe of fetid scum they'd be dealing with in our absence. BWAH HA HAH HAH! We have constrained the competition by our cunning craft of having a better product. Truly we are monsters from HELL! HAIL GABEN!" -Valve, The monopolists 🙄

Steam is the antithesis of anticompetitive, they're not the single seller of any good beyond "Valve Games" of which there are now 22(?) among millions of PC games, and they don't generally dictate prices in the market; which is the succinct way of saying that they don't live up to any portion of the legal standard for what constitutes a monopoly. Give me something factual that implicates Valve as a monopoly or get out of here with this nonsense.

 

I'm looking for something that I could run locally and turn loose on a collection of videos to get a quick list of tags for each piece of content.

e.g. A video of a cat playing in a front yard on a sunny day would generate a collection of tags like ["Cat", "Grass", "Sidewalk", "Sunny", "Flower", "Dirt"] or a video of children playing on a playground would generate ["Child", "Slide", "Swing", "Seesaw", "Kids"]

There seem to be a number of online products that will do this sort of thing for YouTube videos or allow you to upload content to their cloud for analysis (and often for a decent price) but I don't want to run everything through the internet as it seems like I'd spend more time uploading stuff than it'd be worth the bother.

It seems like OpenCV might be capable of doing something like this, but I haven't found anyone speaking of its use without having to first train your own model which would probably reduce the effectiveness of this approach as I'd have to go tag all my own content first to teach the model how to do it?

 

I have a USB-C hub that has an NVMe slot built in and offers USB-PD power passthrough. My intention had been to use that hub to dual boot Windows from a 2TB NVMe so I could run native Gamepass and Genshin Impact on my Steam Deck, while keeping the majority of that drive formatted to share games between SteamOS and Windows, but it seems that any time the device changes power states the NVMe drive is disconnected and reconnected as part of the process.

This is problematic enough when I start Windows from the NVMe SSD in the enclosure connected to power, things work fine until the Steam Deck reaches full charge and the USB-PD is renegotiated so as to run things from the charger rather than continually topping up the battery. Windows dies immediately because the disk briefly goes away and comes right back. So fine, I just don't start my Deck with the hub connected unless the Steam Deck is fully topped off and problem solved?

That's all fine and well, but it becomes unbearable when I use my fancy 120w charging brick that offers multiple USB ports to power/charge multiple devices which charger renegotiates every device plugged in whenever any device is added, removed, or changes power states. If my Kindle Fire hits full charge while I'm playing on my deck, the connection to the NVMe storage is killed and anything with files open from the drive takes a dump. This happens in Windows and in SteamOS.

I've used the same NVMe drive in several different external enclosures hooked up via USB-A, with several different USB chargers (all 65w or higher,) all through the same hub that has the NVMe slot built in, through a fancier Lenovo hub, and a through a cheap $20 number from Amazon; all of the hubs have USB-PD passthrough and no matter what the setup it seems like no drive will stay connected in any arrangement if the power delivery situation changes in any way.

The question then is this: What is responsible for this behavior?

Is the Steam Deck uniquely unable to keep data connections open while power delivery is renegotiated, are all 3 of the hubs I have botching things and another hub would allow this behavior I desire, or is this normal for the USB spec and it's just not possible to have a reliable data connection going during a USB-PD state change? I've been unable to find any answers searching the Internet, so if you've got an authoritative source on the answer to my question, I'd love to see it and know if I should just give up on my dream or if there's a solution somewhere.

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