Women and men-only clubs have a lot of value. We have women only clubs at work because our industry is pretty male-centric, so getting women access to good female mentors is super important because they’re distributed across the company. Men can be good mentors for women too, sure, but anytime there’s a minority, it’s important to connect them to help them recognize and point out implicit biases. We have groups like that for racial minorities as well, and I think it’s great.

Men and women also bond differently, so having a gender-specific club can lower barriers to connecting and finding support. That’s true for other characteristics as well, like sexual and gender identity, race (I’m a huge fan of our black chamber of commerce in our predominantly white area), age, etc.

We should embrace and celebrate our differences, not try to hide them away. Let everyone have their own club, and maintain rules against intolerance as well.

And where are the weapons?

I guess more propaganda and not intent?

The intent seems pretty clear to me: leave Israel so Israel ceases to exist. They’re not saying, “we’ll kill you wherever you flee,” that would be genocide, they’re saying, “as long as the Israeli state exists, we will attack it and make life suck for everyone who chooses to stay.”

I think if they had the chance, they’d make good on that threat.

I never claimed the propaganda was a nothing burger, I claimed it’s directed at the Israeli state, not Israelis or Jews themselves. Even if Israel were completely secular, there would still be opposition, because Muslim extremists don’t care what religion occupies the Holy Land, as long as it’s not Muslim, it is the same.

The regime will immediately start rebuilding their nuclear program if they remain in power. The infrastructure helps keep the regime in power.

Agreed 100%, which is why Israel’s strike is dumb. The power proper solution is regime change, and giving the people there a reason to support their government isn’t the way to achieve that.

But that’s still tens of thousands dead and Libya is still in a mess today.

Unfortunately, I think that’s the best possible outcome in Iran. Iran used to be prosperous when they were friendly with the west, and I’d love for them to do so again. But that can only happen with a regime change.

I think all of the other ways have been tried

The JCPOA was a step in the right direction, a D we should’ve followed it up with trade deals. IMO, the best way to fight against extremism is through prosperity and trade, so we should be making very attractive deals with countries in exchange for not having or eliminating nuclear weapons (prosperity in exchange for peace). Unfortunately, that’s impossible with Trump in power, and I doubt Iran’s leadership is interested after the US broke the trade deal.

I don’t think hate is ever legitimate.

Eh, I think it’s reasonable to hate someone who is actively trying to kill you, your loved ones, or trying to ruin your life. That doesn’t justify murder or anything, but I certainly wouldn’t fault someone in that situation.

Iranians are encourages to regularly chant “death to Israel” regularly. I don’t feel comfortable trusting that it’s just propaganda and there’s no intent there.

There is intent behind the propaganda, but it’s not to genocide Israelis or Jews, it’s to destroy the Israeli state.

I understand why Israel is doing everything they can to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. It’s life or death for them.

Agreed, and I think the same is true for Iran as well. They’re a regional and global pariah, and a nuclear weapon would do a lot to protect the regime. I don’t think Iran should ever have a nuclear weapon, but I also don’t think Israel should be allowed to just destroy their infrastructure.

I had an Iranian coworker, and they said Iran just needs a strong push and it’ll splinter, since there are many powerful groups that dislike the current regime. I hope that’s what happens with this offensive by Israel, but that doesn’t mean I support Israel’s attack here. I think there are other ways to weaken Iran, and I’d prefer to go that route instead of killing innocents.

This hatred of Israel isn’t good for other countries in the middle east.

Agreed. But it will absolutely continue while Israel controls Jerusalem and Palestinians don’t have a country. And Israel currently isn’t willing to budge on either.

I agree with everything you said, my point is merely that Iran and Israel aren’t interested in genocide, though what Israel is doing in Gaza certainly comes close.

I agree with everything you said, my point is merely that Iran and Israel aren’t interested in genocide, though what Israel is doing in Gaza certainly comes close.

No, the innocents in this case would be anyone who lived with or near the target, so their family and neighbors. It’s not like they sent in snipers to take out the one target, they sent bombs, and bombs have collateral damage.

might get you banned

I’d be better off for it then. If a power hungry mod cares more about their feels than the truth, then that’s a community I don’t want to be a part of.

And yeah, Iran, like most majority Muslim countries, wants Israel out of the Holy Land for religious reasons, and politically, they don’t want strong western influence in the region. Israel likewise wants to retain control of the Holy Land and maintain western allies to help keep them secure. Both sides have legitimate reasons to hate the other, and, neither side seems interested in murdering everyone on the other side, they just want their religious and political objectives met, which consists solely of control over the Holy Land.

And yeah, of course Israel wants peace, their objectives are met by holding that territory. The problem is that most Muslim-majority countries don’t see Israel as legitimate, because it was created arbitrarily by western powers by taking land away from Muslims.

Maybe the next generation will think differently. At least I hope.

I hope so too, on both sides. Israel needs to accept that Palestinians deserve self-rule, and Palestinians need to accept that Israel has that same right. The boundaries will need some changes, but hopefully there’s a resolution that’s acceptable to most people on both sides.

I think both Iran and Israel are guilty of atrocities, and Israel has been worse recently in their treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I don’t think either amounts to genocide, since genocide has the intent of eliminating a race from existence (e.g. Jews in the Holocaust). I don’t think Israel wants to eliminate Palestinians (the people), they just want to eliminate Palestine (the country). I don’t think Iran wants to eliminate Jews or Israelis, they want to eliminate Israel (the country).

Sure, and that’s because:

1. Nobody bothered competing with them for years
2. Those that did eventually compete didn’t get anywhere near feature parity

I think EGS and GOG could get most of Steam’s features with 2-3 years of solid development effort, but instead EGS whines about Steam having unfair market share and GOG just refuses to innovate on their client.

That’s not Valve’s fault, what is in their control is whether they use their market position to kill off competitors, and they don’t do that.

That, or perhaps high ranking Iranian general.

Why would they do that? Then there’d be noone to work the mines…

But there is competition in PC gaming, GOGA, EGS, and Prime (and others) exist. One player being dominant isn’t an issue if that player isn’t being anticompetitive.

The closest thing I’ve seen is the policy that you can’t sell for less than on Steam, while allowing for sales to happen separately from on Steam. Publishers can even generate keys for free and sell them without any profit sharing elsewhere, and customers can still use those keys on Steam.

EGS is acting more like a monopoly than Steam and undercuts Steam on fees, Prime bundles its services, and Microsoft has an inexpensive subscription for unlimited games, yet Steam is still more popular. Why? People prefer Steam’s service, and publishers are willing to pay a premium to sell on Steam, all without anticompetitive behavior.

Valve is a shining example of how to handle having a commanding market share: they invest in their products so customers want to stay.

A store charging 30% has zero impact on the end user if the price is the same, which it is in many cases. And popular titles pay 20%, not 30%.

The moment their monopoly is self perpetuating is the moment we no longer are in a free market

That depends on your definition of “self-perpetuating”.

To me, it’s only problematic if Valve is anticompetitive, such as paying for exclusives (like Epic does), preventing cross-play, or charging a subscription or something for users to keep having access to their games.

Just having a better product isn’t anticompetitive though. I’ve laid out my requirements for a viable competitor, and I’m sure other gamers have their own. If a competitor wants our business, they need to meet our requirements.

Is it that they exist at all? That there are too many of them? That they’re unskippable?

Yes, and they’re in the middle of the video. And they spy on my internet use to manipulate me through targeted ads.

If you were Chief Ad Engineer at YouTube, how would you structure the ads system?

There should be more ways to avoid them. I don’t use YouTube enough to justify a premium sub, but I would be interested in paying either for specific channels or watch time.

Tubular

I get 100 down, 50 up, which is the max for my ISP. They’re putting in fiber this year or next, so I’ll probably upgrade once that happens.

Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired

Well yeah, because EGS sucks.

If you look at Steam’s competitors, none of them are really developing their feature set. So even if customers were dissatisfied w/ Steam, who is actively trying to earn their business?

aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options?

Sure, I’d love it if another platform stepped up to actually compete w/ Steam.

My expectations are fairly low: it needs to work well on Linux. Heroic largely resolves that for EGS and GOG, but I’m not particularly interested in supporting a platform that only works because some community project has done the work for them. So if GOG supported Galaxy on Linux as a first class citizen, I’d probably still use Heroic, but I’d buy a lot more games from them. But as it stands, GOG is one update away from blocking access to my games through a launcher, and dealing w/ WINE/Proton directly is a pain. EGS is so far away from what I care about that I don’t think they could ever earn my business, but who knows, maybe they’ll surprise me.

But the fact that we’re even having this discussion is a testament to Steam’s success. Heroic probably wouldn’t be a thing w/o Valve’s investment into Proton/WINE, so GOG/EGS wouldn’t even be a consideration for me at all. But since that work was done, I now have more options. I’ve played some GOG and EGS games through Heroic, so it’s not even theoretical, they are realistic alternatives.

It’s important to note that at every turn, Valve has earned my trust. When games are pulled from their store, owners of those games still have access (e.g. I bought Rocket League on Steam, and when they went EGS exclusive, I still had the old version of the game). They have a solid refund policy, and they have gone out of their way to make things more pleasant for their customers. Even if they didn’t have a dominant market position, I’d probably still choose them just based on the user experience. So yeah, not having a realistic alternative isn’t great, but I don’t think it’s because of anything nefarious Valve has done, but instead lack of interest by their competitors.

PC gamers aren’t “stuck with Steam,” they very much have options. And Steam is likely way better than whatever Battle.net would’ve become, so I’m quite happy with how things turned out.

And yeah, Valve was quite lucky in nailing the timing, however, that was also a very conscious choice since they filled a need they saw. Valve is perhaps the best company you could ask for to have such a dominant position, pretty much any other company would’ve resulted in a way worse situation for gamers.

It was proposed, but Blizzard rejected it:

Schreier reports in the book that a few years before Steam launched, a group of employees pitched the company on a plan “to turn Battle.net into a digital store for a variety of PC games.”

Battle.net basically approached the same problem as Steam but from the multiplayer side, whereas Steam approached from the distribution side.

Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly.

I wouldn’t put it like that. They support Linux to safeguard against Microsoft pushing their monopoly, and they did seem to be gearing up to do just that. Epic had similar concerns, hence the lawsuits against Google and Apple.

All of this is pointless for most of the

How is Linux support pointless? Having more options to play your games is a good thing! I don’t think Heroic would’ve had as much of an impact w/o Valve’s investment into Proton/WINE, and that gives customers a choice on which platform to buy and play their games on. It also allowed for the Steam OS market, and competitors are absolutely welcome to create their own spin with their own store, they just don’t for whatever reason.

Downloading and updating games, for me, is actually the least important part of what Steam offers. I care far more about Linux support (I was a Linux user before I was a Steam user), Steam Input (Steam Deck, and I prefer controller on PC), and consolidating sales to one store. Whether I need to launch it separately or whatever isn’t a big deal.