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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/03/britai...

"another respected data journalist, John Burn-Murdoch, calculated that without London, the UK would be poorer, in terms of GDP per capita, than even the poorest US state, Mississippi."


Yes, it's true that the UK economy is very London-centric, but the original poster was talking about the UK as a whole vs the US as a whole. (The flip side of this is that the figures would look better if you compared London to a major US city.)

None of this changes the fact that US software engineering salaries are a poor comparison to use to illustrate wealth disparities between the US and other countries, as they are an outlier.


Where were the police and regulations when Boeing's products killed hundreds of people? Last time I checked, nobody among top management went to prison for that.

That's what "too big to fail" corporations can get you: failed products, anti-competitive environment, regulatory capture, no responsibility.

Getting fined for a few (hundred) million dollars is not responsibility, it's chump change for multi-trillion dollar corporations.


You can have "global business" that aren't "too big to fail". If anything, if you're pro-competition, blindly buying local has the same anti-competitive effects, because you're protecting the local firm from competition from elsewhere.

I agree with you: let's just buy our next 747's from the nearest mom-and-pop aviation shop!

>Do you truly expect any steam games to have anything like a root kit that’d exfiltrate your credentials?

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/steam-game-mo...

"Downfall, a fan expansion for the popular Slay the Spire indie strategy game, was breached on Christmas Day to push Epsilon information stealer malware using the Steam update system.

Once installed on a compromised computer, the malware will collect cookies and saved passwords and credit cards from web browsers (Google Chrome, Yandex, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Brave, Vivaldi), as well as Steam and Discord info.

It will also look for documents containing 'password' in the filenames and for more credentials, including the local Windows login and Telegram."


That's not a steam game, that's a user mod (read: random binary downloaded from the internet and executed). Also, it doesn't need kernel level access to do any of that stuff, it can get by just fine with normal application level permissions.

This is no different to downloading a random binary off the internet and being surprised it's malicious.



I've been wondering is how long before we get a 'PC-console' dedicated gaming device, there's certain aspects where PC is falling into the gravity well of the console model. Whether that's the technical aspects like how far you can lock down for security (and who's security) or DRM, whether people only want a nice front end, whether everything should be managed by a defacto 'good' platform holder versus allowing companies to do their own thing (clients or commerce). At some point such a thing looks like a more expensive ultra-pro console.

Then that has to be balanced against the freedom aspect where people want flexibility to build a workstation how they want and do what they want on it, and expecting it all to work (windows games being supported on non-windows is a more common issue now). PC casts the broadest net and catches a lot of different desires, similar with how high-end and low-end seem to be splitting over the past ~5 years rather than being a continuous spectrum I wonder if there will be distinct types of PC for gaming (eg set models like the old Commodore Amiga) or if trying to resist splits does more harm than good.


Speaking for myself, I would never buy such a thing. The reason I game on PC is because I need a decent PC for work anyway, so building one that can also game is cheaper than buying a console.

If I was really concerned about security I'd sooner dual boot into a second OS that had nothing on it, than buy a second box just to game on.


Yep, a lot of this comes down to "who's security" and what everyone can take as a foundation to build trust upon, or what their thresholds are


That's what "steam deck" is. A dedicated gaming device that is still also a general purpose computer that you have full control over.


Even on the face of it this sounds too far fetched.

If he's in it for the mission, and not for the money, then surely you can't claim that there aren't companies with a more meaningful mission than blogging?

And if there are, could it be that he can't get hired there? He's been literally offered money to leave and he's struggling financially, but he doesn't.


I think it just never hit close to home for you to matter. A developer I know had it happen to him.

A startup raised $25M squarely off his open source work and they've donated to him a grand total of $250, i.e. 0.001% of the value. He was pissed.


I've read some of the threads, and it appears that Discord and X are not the end of it.

Apparently, this same CM also runs Godot's Github account: some people have reportedly been banned on Github as well, and if that's true, having non-technical activists run your Github account is wild to me.

There have also been reports that some developers who are Titanium level backers (i.e. at least $100 monthly) of the Godot engine have been banned as well.


I’m not a regular backer, but I have been banned from the GitHub, so technically I can’t download a open-source project :)


Paternity testing is illegal in France. Attempting to verify a very basic fact that your child is indeed yours is criminal. So is outsourcing it to other (even neighboring) countries. If French customs intercept DNA samples or results in the mail, the perpetrators can face up to a year in prison and a €15,000 fine.


> It makes celebrities of people like Andrew Tate

Legacy Media made celebrities out of people far worse than Tate decades before Youtube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mesrine

Media's propensity to do so has been lampooned before as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Born_Killers

Tagline: "Media made them superstars"

> and is a primary enabler of fringe belief bubbles.

Oh? It's not like anyone's ever seen conspiracy theory programs on TV before Youtube. Heck, if someone re-rendered some of those with AI to use Alex Jones' voice, even his viewers might not be able to tell the difference.


Experience and age have diminishing returns.

Biden's been hands-on in his domain for over 50 years, yet "quick" is definitely not the word that comes to most people's mind when they think of him nowadays.


Actually quick is definitely something that comes to mind. Quick in politics is of course relative, but the speed with which he has enacted major changes (for example marijuana legalization) is pretty quick in the realm of politics when congress is of the other party.


He’s barely able to read a teleprompter, not too confident that Biden himself enacted those changes.


We've had nearly 4 years with no scandals and emerged from the pandemic with the best economic recovery of any country, and despite having no margin to spare in Congress, master legislator Joe Biden has secured massive climate change, infrastructure, and gun control bills, not to mention he's ended our two decade war in Afghanistan and overseen the fastest wage growth of the two lowest income quintiles seen in modern history.

And every time people actually watch him speak (not just a selected clip), there's weeks of coverage about how alive JB seems, not recognizing that all evidence points to that being typical.


> We've had nearly 4 years with no scandals

This isn't the flex you think it is. When the media is lapping out of your hand like a 6 week old puppy instead of doing their fifth estate job, of course there are no scandals.

> and gun control bills,

You mean stripping Americans of their constitutional rights.

> not to mention he's ended our two decade war in Afghanistan.

Which was an unmitigated disaster.

> and overseen the fastest wage growth of the two lowest income quintiles seen in modern history.

Hello inflation.


>> and gun control bills

> You mean stripping Americans of their constitutional rights.

Not that I disagree with you, but when posters like modriano engage in political/partisan commentary on HN, I find it more productive to merely downvote and flag their comments rather than replying and getting engaged in a war.

A dead post makes quite the impression, as this sort of political commentary just generally defeats the quality of discourse on HN (which, you must admit, is much better than many other platforms, and I'd like to try to preserve it as long as possible).


> Biden's been hands-on in his domain for over 50 years, yet "quick" is definitely not the word that comes to most people's mind when they think of him nowadays.

Please don't post flamebaity political tangents on HN.

> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


It’s a counterpoint anyone can identify with. One can interpret it uncharitably as flame bait if one wants to, but it need not be. It could have been Reagan in his second term, but some may not know who he was. Or Lee Smolin.


This is objectively false. It is not a counterpoint, because it's not an argument. It's an extremely subjective claim that is highly contentious (like jedberg's sibling comment[1]), definitely not something that "anyone can identify with" (as the vast majority of people do not know Joe Biden and instead view him through one of a small number of extremely skewed lenses) and clearly in the realm of "off-topic flamebait" that is not appropriate on HN.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40394477


I’d avoid the Reagan or other comparison as well even if I have medical evidence for their decline as you see with Reagan. In this specific case of Biden there’s not even that so it’s purely a political opinion and it’s definitely bait for flame even if not intended as such.


I don't know if that makes a significant difference for that purpose.

It's not like places where weddings take place are conspicuous enough that you couldn't tell the difference between them and a normal govt agency, and it's not like people don't know it is a very bad idea to sign documents where they do not even understand a single word.

The paper trail of a vanilla (let alone international) marriage is already big enough that I doubt criminals would want that, unless they have corrupt officials assisting them, which is a problem these measures do not address.


> it's not like people don't know it is a very bad idea to sign documents where they do not even understand a single word

The laws are there for people who may feel like they don’t have much choice in the matter. And yes lying to officials that you did in fact have a choice and are totally doing this of your own free will and yes of course you understand the document you’re signing is a big part of it.

This is similar to how some pregnancy related health clinics have things like “Sign the sample cup with blue pen if all good, use the red pen if you’re being forced to be here”


> This is similar to how some pregnancy related health clinics have things like “Sign the sample cup with blue pen if all good, use the red pen if you’re being forced to be here”

Oh, neat, I'd ever heard of that before.


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