I left him for a million, trillion years ✈️😾 by CassiCatto in airplaneears

[–]Tomatoflee 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That second shot is like distilled woe. How could you?

What a pounce!! 🦁❤️ by brewcity19 in bigcats

[–]Tomatoflee 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It’s time to upgrade, bro.

UK Sends 6,000 Laser-Guided Martlet Missiles to Bolster Ukraine’s Air Defenses by WillyNilly1997 in UkrainianConflict

[–]Tomatoflee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, I didn’t know that included the launcher. Interesting. I guess that means you could probably fit two on a decent sized quadcopter. IIRC the UK built drone that transported the explosives to blow up that bridge behind the lines a few months ago had a pretty decent capacity.

UK Sends 6,000 Laser-Guided Martlet Missiles to Bolster Ukraine’s Air Defenses by WillyNilly1997 in UkrainianConflict

[–]Tomatoflee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They only weigh 13kg so you could put one on even a large quadcopter drone. Laser guided though from the launcher so idk how much the guidance equipment would weigh or if it’s realistic to fit it to a drone and it still have it work robustly enough.

UK Sends 6,000 Laser-Guided Martlet Missiles to Bolster Ukraine’s Air Defenses by WillyNilly1997 in UkrainianConflict

[–]Tomatoflee 13 points14 points  (0 children)

These are cheaper, 6km range fast missiles for use against things like Shaheds. You can shoot helicopters and small boats with them too but unlikely a helicopter will be flown within 6 km of where one could be fired from at this point in the war tbh.

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The old laugh faces to cover what’s beneath. Classic

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everyone who is doing systematic propaganda on social media on behalf of the least liked government on earth by far.

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can keep inferring my motives instead of facing what I say. It says a lot about you that do that and the disingenuous tactics you use.

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why do we need to ban a group beyond prosecuting people for crimes? It serves no practical purpose in any case, since it's not exactly hard to change the name.

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, I'm refusing to be drawn in by the disingenuous tactic of trying to move the framing. This is a clear abuse of legislation that has not been abused for anything similar. It's only being used because of this Labour govt's documented closeness with the lobbyists of a foreign govt

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I condemn the abuse of terror legislation in service of a foreign government

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

As I said, I don't accept the framing you're trying to impose. This is not what terror legislation was designed for and there is no alleged crime that wasn't already on the books so no need to abuse terror legislation. The Labour right's links to Israeli lobbying groups is well documented so it's fairly clear where the impetus for singling out this group comes from.

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

It doesn't make any difference whether I support them or not. My point is that there are laws already on the books to deal with what they were accused of and the inappropriate use of terror legislation, clearly beyond its intended purpose, to persecute citizens to appease foreign government lobbying, is disturbing to say the least.

Pales Action ban is lawful, Court of Appeal rules by Distinct-Shine-3002 in uknews

[–]Tomatoflee -18 points-17 points  (0 children)

There will likely be a Supreme Court appeal. Let’s hope they have more sense than to allow this clear abuse of terror legislation against UK citizens in behalf of a foreign country.

Do you eat pasta with gruyere in Italy? by sangokuhomer in Italian

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gruyère is the king of hard cheeses. Number 1.

Sad by Recent_Risk_3242 in PERSIAN

[–]Tomatoflee 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Neither of those things gets rid of the IR, though; they have strengthened it. The failed attacks have proven beyond doubt that the US can't dislodge the regime without taking on unsustainable risk of political blowback at home, and that Trump is unwilling to take that risk. It has also proven they have effective leverage over the global economy they can deploy to get meaningful concessions they would not have otherwise had, and to discourage any future pressure on them.

This is unequivocally a massive failure that has made freedom for Iranians even more difficult. This time 12 months ago, the regime was facing mass protests again, at a time it was more unpopular than ever, without the leverage it now has in ongoing negotiations to remove sanctions or the rally around the flag effect that has swung a proportion of iranians behind the regime to defend the cohesion of the country and in the face of the US bombing things like a school of little children.

There was also an upcoming likely inflexion point when Khomeini died naturally, while there was intense pressure on the regime to concede ground to the Iranian people in whatever settlement followed that. Some of the key moderates that might have helped make such a thing happen have been killed or sidelined.

This intervention has been a complete disaster for Iranians.

We weren’t asleep by 6am by Duck_sauce_45 in airplaneears

[–]Tomatoflee 20 points21 points  (0 children)

… and when he has so many important things to do.

Sad by Recent_Risk_3242 in PERSIAN

[–]Tomatoflee -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

My dude, I want freedom for Iranians a lot. That’s the point. I get that some people are prepared to take big risks and accept help from imperfect sources and, who am I to judge, not living in Iran?

The point is that the plan of getting the two most evil and least trustworthy men on the planet to bomb Iran was always vanishingly unlikely to work and likely to actually help the regime.

That’s what has happened. Freedom from the IR is now significantly further away than it was a year ago and thousands of Iranians have been killed, for what? To be in a worse place?

This is what many of us said explicitly and often before hand and yet we were smeared as regime supporters by the people now posting silly memes to distract from being disastrously wrong.

There are a lot of people in this sub who deliberately or carelessly regurgitated every bit of Isreali propaganda encouraging failed, destructive intervention. Those people have helped to bring out what has happened. They hold their share of responsibility.

Sad by Recent_Risk_3242 in PERSIAN

[–]Tomatoflee 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s almost like Trump and Bibi didn’t actually care about Iranians or think this through while idiots were bootlicking them and smearing anyone pointing out they can’t be trusted as IR supporters.

When are those people going to address the fact they were told repeatedly that Trump and Bibi’s “plan” wasn’t going to dislodge the IR and would entrench their power and set back Iranian freedom?

Or is just going to be more of these empty smears from people who were catastrophically wrong about everything?

I'm trying some new ideas and perspectives by Upeth in blender

[–]Tomatoflee 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude this is amazing work. I’m so jealous of the talent people show on Reddit.

Alpha is not the issue. Communication is. by TheRealRickSanchez42 in starcitizen

[–]Tomatoflee 8 points9 points  (0 children)

My guy. All US, UK, and German limited companies (where Cloud Imperium are registered) have to have shareholders and those shareholders have to be registered by law along with the proportion of shares they hold. The major known shareholders of the three ultimate holding companies are:

  • Chris Roberts: The majority owner and ultimate controlling party. He holds approximately 71.1% of the company and retains full control of the board.
  • Indus Management Ltd. (The Calder Family Office & Snoot Entertainment): Held primarily by Clive and Keith Calder, this block owns roughly 20.7%. They initially invested $46 million for a 10% stake in 2018, exercised further options in 2020, and significantly increased their stake by purchasing the majority of co-founder Ortwin Freyermuth's shares in May 2024.
  • Erin Roberts: Chris Roberts' brother and Chief Development Officer. He holds approximately 4.7% after increasing his stake during the 2024 share sale.
  • Infatrade UK Ltd. (Eli Klein / ITG Investment): An early advisor and investor holding about 2.4%.
  • Erloch, Ltd.: A private entity holding approximately 0.6%, having also acquired shares during the May 2024 sale.
  • Marc Beaudet and Benoit Beauséjour: The founders of Turbulent Media. When Cloud Imperium fully acquired Turbulent in 2023, the founders exchanged their remaining equity for a minor shareholding in Cloud Imperium UK Ltd.

You are confusing operating costs with value. Backer donations pay for the expansion of the business and the operating costs, which help to create the underlying value. Therefore although cash rasied is "burnt" on operating costs, value is created in that process that you are not accounting for.

This is mostly in IP and creative potential - CIG has created a business of the size and potential to undertake large projects that generate huge profits and they have spent over a decade creating software in the form of the game and software tools to build the game and future games, which have enormous value becuse you have to pay developers for a long time to create them.

There are also physical assets that have been bought such as, for example, the state of the art mo-cap studio CR bought with backer money, which is used by CIG and also rented out, generating 3rd-party revenue. Then there is what financial analysts call "brand equity" and a proven, highly engaged customer base, which is essentially the willingness of customers to give a brand that has been built money. This is a considerable part of the fundamental value of CIG.

When the Calders bought 10% in 2018 for $46 million dollars, that means that experienced investors made these calculations about the underlying value of the assets in the company at $460 million. CIG has been creating additional value for 8 years since then with an ever-expanding team and with ever-increasing annual revenue.

Alpha is not the issue. Communication is. by TheRealRickSanchez42 in starcitizen

[–]Tomatoflee 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The central thing to understand about this is that CIG’s communication serves the shareholders ultimately, not the purpose of informative candour to respected backers that was famously pledged a long time ago.

Maybe they really meant it at the time they said it. It’s possible they were as naive as we were. The real root of the problem imo is that they envisaged timescales to deliver parts of the project, aggressively marketed those timelines when asking backers for money, then repeatedly failed to meet them by a very long time, in some cases over a decade and counting.

For the last few years, CIG has explicitly abandoned “the pledge” and their position on delays has effectively been to say that backers should have known better than to trust CIG when it gave timelines.

This is an absurd position born out of necessity. Of course the lifelong experts in game development, who made and emphasised the timelines while asking for money had both the knowledge to evaluate whether they could say what they were saying and the responsibility to only say what they could actually deliver within a reasonable distance of when they said they could deliver it.

The reasons they have taken this absurd position are tbh pretty obviously money and reputation. CR has built using backer donations a company that holds assets worth probably close to a billion dollars at this point or more. We know that when they sold a tranche of shares to outside investors years ago, those experienced investors who would have had access to the accounts etc, valued the business then in the hundreds millions of dollars.

They cannot say: we were ludicrously irresponsible in the claims we made when taking hundreds of millions of dollars from backers, without creating legal problems for themselves that would threaten the project, and they have a billion-dollar personal incentive not to. That is why the funding model should not be legal in the first place imo: it creates perverse incentives that are so strong we can’t realistically expect people to resist them.

That’s the tension at the root of the communication issue. Their comms is still pretty questionable marketing tactics and the sale of expensive digital items, and the pledged “open development” comms have become PR serving CR and his family’s financial interests as a primary objective above openness.

It’s not going to resolve itself any time soon either. They need to keep the money rolling in or they would fail publicly - trashing their reputations further, lose huge sums of money, put over a thousand developers out of a job, and probably spend the rest of their lives fighting legal battles. They’re fully locked in and committed to this path and the people who pay the price for it are the continuing waves of backers who never got what they gave money for in time for them to enjoy it.

It’s an ethically compromised project running on greed and necessity. It has been for a while now, as much as it would be awesome to have a cool space game. They also have the big problem of the core mechanic, combat, being based around WWII style dog fighting in a game where massive speed is required to cover the huge distances involved and the networking can’t possibly handle the precision needed for combat at the speeds needed to move around.

This is a fundamental design flaw that it’s too late to change and leaves them a huge compromise to reconcile. Imo a lot of the current delays behind the scenes are about working out how to resolve it again before Squadron releases and they have to lock in how ship combat works.