That’s not what his video showed though. They don’t change the URL, they open another tab, which then overrides the cookie/session variable that is used to determine who the referrer is. It’s still scummy, but it doesn’t seem to be swapping links outright.

This gist of it from the WAN show was this:

• They were unaware that it was intentionally not looking for the best deals (thus, scamming the consumer)
• They stopped advertising Honey because of the referral hijacking
• A ton of creators knew about it, and had already dropped Honey (people just talked about it via DMs, not publicly)
• This all happened when YouTubers were getting shit on for even doing ads/sponsors, and they didn’t want to make a video that was basically “stop using this thing that saves you money because it takes my money” (see first point)

Nope, that’s a misconception/misinformation. That’s just for Steam Keys (i.e. you can’t sell Steam Keys cheaper than on Steam). Everything else is fair game.

Yeah, it’s also ignoring that the issue with Apple’s “30% cut” isn’t that they take 30% of game sales. It’s that they’re forcing you to use their payment processing service to put an app on the store, and then they take a 30% cut out of that, even though third-party payment processing providers take much smaller cuts than that.

Physical stores also took a 30% sales cut, because there’s value in getting people to see your product. It’s literally been the standard storefront cut for decades. Microsoft and Sony take the same cuts for their console sales/transactions.

Valve does a lot more for companies than just put eyes on their games, too. They’re pushing for Linux-compatibility with Proton, they provide you with networking libraries and infrastructure for multiplayer servers if you use SteamWorks, Steam will optionally update your game’s SDL libraries so you have up-to-date controller bindings, etc. It’s not like they’re sitting there twiddling their thumbs and taking 30% of your money for nothing.

I’d argue Microsoft and Sony do comparable work for devs on their platforms too.

The whole argument against the 30% cut is so fucking dumb.

People who genuinely believe game prices will get lowered if stores take a smaller cut are delusional. You can literally look at the Epic Game Store and see that it isn’t even remotely true. The only games on there that are cheaper than on Steam are the ones Epic invested in specifically to entice developers/gamers to use their services. The ones that don’t have exclusivity deals are the same as on Steam.

Edit: changed “take a cut” to “take a smaller cut”.

I feel like Trump’s probably going to axe whoever is finally tackling these monopolies, unfortunately.

The big problem with DNS-based ad-blocking is that it doesn’t prevent redirects. Sure, you’ll get redirected to a harmless blank page, but then you need to go back to the previous page. You don’t have that issue with uBlock.

Microsoft’s naming strategy is just the American Economics wheel from South Park, but with names on it. Of all the big tech companies, they are easily the fucking worst at naming shit.

That’s not Amazon’s fault.

That’s mostly the fault of consumers who buy from Amazon (and other e-tailors).

There’s quite a few retail stores that don’t keep inventory, even for common things. Staples comes to mind, where it feels like half their damn office items aren’t in stock, so you need to wait for them to have it brought in.

The problem is that those same retail stores can’t compete with Amazon’s shipping speed. It becomes a case of:

• I want to buy a thing, I need it fast, so I guess I’ll check my local retails stores
• My local retail stores don’t have it in stock, but I can order it and it’ll be there in 4-5 days
• I can just buy it off of Amazon at a comparable price, and have it tomorrow

It’s alright if they don’t want to carry inventory, but they need to have the shipping speeds to compete, otherwise there’s no reason for the consumer not to just buy it off of Amazon directly.

In this case, it seems like it’s the app makers themselves who are requiring the Play Store, though. Unless I’m misreading this, the developers are using the Integrity API to determine if the app was installed through “official channels” (in this case, the Play Store). Feels like people should be upset at the companies behind the apps, here.

Keep in my that “ingredients to a recipe” here refers to the literal physical ingredients, based on the context of the OP (where a sandwich shop owner can’t afford to pay for their cheese).

While you can’t copyright a recipe, you can patent the ingredients themselves, especially if you had a hand in doing R&D to create it. See PepsiCo sues four Indian farmers for using its patented Lay’s potatoes.

I think “common” here would refer to having to produce them, over the actual explicitness of the scene. Whether Mass Effect fades to black or not isn’t really the point when the voice actors still have to record the lines that play while the screen is dark.

Yeah, what they’re asking for is pretty standard stuff in other media. A friend of mine is an actor who played a scene where he had to shoot a masturbation scene. He was alone in a room with like 3-4 people: sound guy, camera guy, director, and I think the intimacy coach was there too.

Having a whole team watch you pretend to have sex is not okay, what the hell.

Wake me up when the “Congress” actually decides to take actions not just ask “questions” after the damage is done and money is made.

Right. Into Cryo-Sleep you go, then!

Same. Elden Ring’s biggest weakness is its open world, in my opinion. It makes the first playthrough great, but it makes subsequent playthroughs a chore. Especially when you’re aware that 90% of dungeons/side areas have completely worthless gear and runes. Your subsequent runs just end up being you riding Torrent for long stretches of time from point A to point B.

There’s also the Hollywood celebrities episode. Tom Cruise is canonically in space in South Park. You just wouldn’t really know why unless you saw the banned episodes.

Yeah. I legally owned most of the seasons of South Park. Then their parent company was sold to whoever owns Paramount+ and I can’t legally buy seasons anymore. I have to subscribe to Paramount+ instead. I’m just gonna pirate that shit.

While I agree with most of what you’re saying, it’s also stupid to blame Microsoft for breaking your computer if you forcefully uninstall the Windows store, despite the fact that it’s needed for parts of certain updates.

A lot of the “debloaters” have no fucking idea what they’re actually doing and are uninstalling/disabling critical parts of the OS so the task manager shows less RAM usage (because God forbid you actually use your damn RAM).

You don’t find it at all suspicious that they claim releasing backend code would make it less secure? What kind of security product is not open for inspection?

No, because Proton has 3rd party audits all the time and they share the results openly.

Probably wanted to bring it in line with the other perfumes. Rolling Sparks was completely busted lmao