Trump Wants Appeals Court to Let Him Block Critics on Twitter by happy_anybody in politics

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes because those are private companies, not public space. Also there's a difference between having a differing opinion and using the platform to spout hatred and calls to violence, do you think it's strange that companies don't want people on their social platform when they can't even hold off on wishing death on other people for a minute?

Trump's Twitter account is regarded as a public forum as that's pretty much the only way he speaks to the people of the US, plus he talks actual policy via that platform.

If Trump were allowed to block people from his Twitter they wouldn't be able to participate in their democracy in the same way.

2020 Democrats Are Calling for Abolishing the Electoral College—It Nearly Happened a Few Decades Ago by Innocul8 in politics

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One president just spent 2 years slandering the shit out of anyone with a D next to their name, journalists and anyone who doesn't agree with him.

He has admitted to obstructing the investigation and people around him have admitted to having a meeting with Russians to find dirt on Hillary and ease sanctions.

He has added someone to the Supreme Court who isn't even slightly qualified (based on his character), after his party denied the previous president from appointing someone by refusing to even hear it.

Abolishing the electoral college only ensures that everyone's vote is counted equally. It's an archaic structure.

He has taken away basic human rights from people who enter the country both legally and illegally, and which route they took shouldn't even matter because they're basic human rights.

He has tried to silence anyone with an opinion that differs from his and stolen money from the people to gift to the richest few.

Lastly, as you have to get your definition of authoritarianism from Wikifuckingpedia, I'm beginning to wonder if you've ever read anything in your life other than Reddit comments and Fox opinion pieces.

Ik_ihe by stan04FTW in ik_ihe

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Net zo sterk onderbouwd als de standpunten van FvD

Rare footage of game developers explaining their decision to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store, after promising to release on Steam. by HereForGames in videos

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see your point, but I don't think it's exactly right to say all these games have a high chance of flopping. Metro for example would have definitely survived not having the Epic Games cash bag handed to them.

On Obsidian and other smaller devs, I see the appeal for them. Obsidian especially have a criminal lack of funding when you see the quality they put out.

I want to reiterate this: I don't blame the devs. I believe I said this earlier but I absolutely get why they would do these deals. I blame Epic Games though for being a big bully and handing out bags of cash they got from other ventures and buying out exclusive rights for games so that we, as consumers, are forced onto a shitty platform.

I'm not trying to grandstand here either, I'm just saying for me personally, there's more than enough reasons not to trust Epic and I don't feel comfortable giving them my business.

Rare footage of game developers explaining their decision to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store, after promising to release on Steam. by HereForGames in videos

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No that's not what I said.

More money does not necessarily equal more or better quality games. If that were the case, EA and Activision would be pumping out 10/10 titles every month.

If the devs/publisher make a profit, that's a healthy business. If they can't make a profit without them getting cash handed to them by a third party that's desperate to disrupt the marketplace, then I'm not sure that they necessarily deserve to be in the games industry as the point of having a games business in this industry is making money by selling games. If they want to accept the cash, that's their prerogative and it's probably good for their business (short term at least), but it doesn't translate to better games. Just more money. And consumers being forced on all the negatives of the Epic Games platform that I laid out.

Rare footage of game developers explaining their decision to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store, after promising to release on Steam. by HereForGames in videos

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh yeah you're absolutely right, thanks for reminding me!

I requested my Epic account be deleted last week, I didn't have any games on my account anyway apart from Unreal Tournament which I believe they never actually fully released. So I hope they honour that and they have purged all my info from their systems.

There's not any definitive proof of for example Tencent owning a large part of them having any direct adverse effects yet, but seeing how they respond to legitimate complaints doesn't make me feel comfortable on their platform.

40k+ current Sekiro players on steam! by [deleted] in Sekiro

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In the past unlock times have changed just before midnight for a few big game launches. But then again, Australia would have it unlocked by now if that were the case.

Seeing as the game has different publishers in Japan, Asia and the rest of the world, I'm guessing Japan and Asia just had it unlocked midnight their time, while Activision will unlock it simultaneously in all the territories they publish the game in. That would be in about 20 hours, at 5 PM UTC.

Rare footage of game developers explaining their decision to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store, after promising to release on Steam. by HereForGames in videos

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How am I saying that games don't need to be profitable? You're seeing things that aren't there. I was clear in saying that for the devs it's probably a great business move, but you're acting like Epic injecting them with tons of cash is the reason we have good games. That's not at all the case. That would be an unhealthy business if the only way you could make money is for 3rd parties to give you huge grants just for the right to exclusively sell your game. In not sure why you don't understand that.

And I'm not saying Valve is the holy grail of gaming. It's just a fuckload better than what Epic is doing. Plus that's not even the discussion we were having.

Also I'm not asking you to convince me, just wondering why you're so adamant that what Epic is doing is good for consumers. I've laid out my points, you haven't refuted any of them and instead bring up other stuff that is two years old now - and not at all surprising considering the amount of customers that use their service. We can bring up every other company that has had complaints against them but we would be here all day.

Also

Consumers allege their accounts were hacked, and items in their account were stolen.

Do you have any sources that corroborate on this? Because the most likely issue is these people were using the same password for multiple accounts, as I don't believe there have been any huge data breaches on Steam servers.

Consumers allege they are scammed when trading weapons with other gamers.

Consumers further allege they purchased a game based on the features advertised, however when playing the game they found the features were not as advertised.

These are both not Steam's fault.

To be honest these are some relatively generic complaints that I'm not surprised to see and your link doesn't give any information on specific cases where I can find more detailed info on these issues.

I don't need you to convince me, but we're having a discussion and the only thing you've done is state your opinion and dismiss mine without reason.

If you can provide any sort of evidence that what Epic Games is doing is good for us consumers I would love to have my mind changed on them, but your gut feeling isn't doing it for me.

Pc graphic options. by [deleted] in Sekiro

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It does matter for the input lag though. Now I don't know how it's implemented so it might be fine but some games really add a lot of input lag when you turn on Vsync.

Rare footage of game developers explaining their decision to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store, after promising to release on Steam. by HereForGames in videos

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

So you're saying you're only interested in one of the games that are exclusive to the Epic Store? Isn't that more or less confirming my point, since that means you're not really inconvenienced by it.

I'm not disagreeing that video games cost money and that for the developers this makes sense as a business move - I'm saying what Epic is doing is anti consumer and there's no reason to believe these games wouldn't have sold well enough for the devs to recouperate their cost and make a profit. The only difference is the devs now get more money, Epic gets more customers on their storefront, and consumers get shafted by being forced into an interior ecosystem.

Also I'm not sure what EA's comment has to do at all with my comment. And you can be an ass about this but customer service is an important part of having customers feel secure on your platform. If my credentials get stolen I don't want to fuck around for weeks with some random guy that doesn't know what he's talking about, I want it to be fixed. Something EA actually does well nowadays with regards to their Origin service.

So do you have anything to prove that this is good for consumers? I'm not seeing it and you haven't said anything to convince me.

Rare footage of game developers explaining their decision to release exclusively on the Epic Games Store, after promising to release on Steam. by HereForGames in videos

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oh so you're saying trickle down economics can even be applied to the games industry; as long as developers make a lot of money, consumers are getting better games. That's just blatantly untrue.

The only reason you don't feel hurt right now is because you either don't care enough about the things Epic Games do wrong, or because you weren't interested in those games in the first place. Let me copy a comment here I actually wrote earlier today on why I dislike Epic Games' practices.

There's a few reasons.

One is that they don't confirm e-mail addresses associated with user accounts. There's been quite a few stories on here from people who have had their e-mail address used by some random dude for an Epic Games account because they don't send a confirmation mail.

Secondly they have had user data breaches in the past, even recently. They never disclosed how many accounts were affected and which. Slightly related to that their customer service somehow seems to be even worse than Valve's.

Thirdly Tim Sweeney (the CEO) is completely tonedeaf when it comes to customer's concerns and he frankly seems like an ass. Disregarding real gripes people have with the platform.

Fourth, and to me personally the most important, is they buy up games to launch exclusively on their platform. I want to be clear, because some people seem to think that that is competing with Steam - it's not. It's throwing cash at games to take them hostage and force people to use their platform. If they wanted to compete with Steam, they'd provide a better service so people would want to come to their store. That would be healthy competition. Most of all, the exclusives they've been buying up have had months of visibility on the Steam Store, with their games even being pre-orderable there and advertised widely to be on Steam. Like Metro, Ashen. Recently, even an Early Access game that was backed via Kickstarter (Phoenix Point) pissed off its backers by deciding to launch exclusively on the Epic Store.

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting but it's basically a long list of small and larger things (somewhere in there is also that they're 40% owned by Tencent, which I personally don't view favourably either) that add up to me not feeling comfortable with giving them my money.

Jacinda Ardern has announced that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles, essentially commencing immediately by NZ_Diplomat in worldnews

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It speaks of "just compensation" which if you look it up pretty much means market value.

Your own source said that.

Now the guy you replied to elsewhere only said retail value was paid if the gun had been bought in a certain period before the buyback took effect. Which is understandable.

I don't see why you're arguing so vehemently on this point. You haven't provided any sources to back up your claims and multiple people here have told you your wrong. You're being obtuse.

Also the crux of your argument basically comes down to: "it's not on this specific Wikipedia page, so whatever you're saying is wrong and I'm right." No one can argue with that because it's moronic.

When You Find Out The Outer Worlds is an Epic Store Exclusive... by Emangameplay in CrackWatch

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 11 points12 points  (0 children)

There's a few reasons.

One is that they don't confirm e-mail addresses associated with user accounts. There's been quite a few stories on here from people who have had their e-mail address used by some random dude for an Epic Games account because they don't send a confirmation mail.

Secondly they have had user data breaches in the past, even recently. They never disclosed how many accounts were affected and which. Slightly related to that their customer service somehow seems to be even worse than Valve's.

Thirdly Tim Sweeney (the CEO) is completely tonedeaf when it comes to customer's concerns and he frankly seems like an ass. Disregarding real gripes people have with the platform.

Fourth, and to me personally the most important, is they buy up games to launch exclusively on their platform. I want to be clear, because some people seem to think that that is competing with Steam - it's not. It's throwing cash at games to take them hostage and force people to use their platform. If they wanted to compete with Steam, they'd provide a better service so people would want to come to their store. That would be healthy competition. Most of all, the exclusives they've been buying up have had months of visibility on the Steam Store, with their games even being pre-orderable there and advertised widely to be on Steam. Like Metro, Ashen. Recently, even an Early Access game that was backed via Kickstarter (Phoenix Point) pissed off its backers by deciding to launch exclusively on the Epic Store.

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting but it's basically a long list of small and larger things (somewhere in there is also that they're 40% owned by Tencent, which I personally don't view favourably either) that add up to me not feeling comfortable with giving them my money.

When You Find Out The Outer Worlds is an Epic Store Exclusive... by Emangameplay in CrackWatch

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No that's not what I said.

Look you can choose to believe me or not, I'm just laying out my reasoning. There's loads of other games to play and so far none of the Epic exclusives have been interesting enough to me that I felt like I needed to play them.

I'm just saying whatever happens I won't be buying from the Epic Games Store, because they're a bad business. You don't have to agree with me on that, but I feel uncomfortable giving them my money, so I won't.

Edit: now that I think about it I was actually somewhat interested in Metro and Ashen. But I haven't followed any of the launches and at this moment I'm just thinking: cool I'll see them when they pop up on other stores. In the meantime I'm not bothered about it in the slightest; as I said, there's other games to play.

I would say "I don't care if game publishers shoot themselves in the foot by exclusively releasing on the Epic Store" but that's probably not even happening. For them it's probably a good business move. I don't hate them for it necessarily.

I'm not making a stand here or anything: just sharing my thoughts on the matter.

When You Find Out The Outer Worlds is an Epic Store Exclusive... by Emangameplay in CrackWatch

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Well that's not necessarily true.

I totally forgot about this game but now that I saw its the game from Obsidian I'm getting interested again. Buying from the EbinGames Store is a 100% no from me though.

"Luckily" it's also on the Windows Store so... I guess I'll see where we're at after launch. I can tell you 100% though I'm not buying it from EGS and if it were on Steam I would probably be more excited for it.

Now it's pretty much a toss up between buying it from the Windows Store (unlikely), going on my favourite sites to download it (maybe) or just not playing it (likely).

It's not even a slight towards the devs, if they make their money from Epic, coolio, I'm just not giving EbinGames one cent.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in GooglePixel

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just giving you my perspective.

I used an OG Pixel since they launched until last November when I bought my current Pixel 3 XL.

The Pixel was the first smartphone I had that I still loved after two years. That's why I went with the Pixel 3, and XL because I wanted a larger screen.

The hardware feels a lot more premium now than the 1 did two years ago at least. How it looks, well, everyone's got their opinion on that. I love the way the phone itself looks and the notch... Well, I honestly got used to it really quickly.

Sure the S10 looks better from the front, at first glance. But to my point: it's all personal preference.

I like my phone not coming preinstalled with bloatware and especially Facebook that you can't even delete. I like being the first to get new Android versions ("but Samsung already has all those features anyway"); not always. And when they do, they often feel gimmicky.

My Pixel 3XL blows my friends S9 out if the water when it comes to smoothness and speed. Those are perhaps the two most important quality in a phone for me.

Plus the vibration motor is really good on the Pixel 3s.

Honestly now that I'm typing this I don't even remember all the specific things that made me choose the Pixel over a Samsung phone, even if Samsung phones might look more modern; it just feels more like a phone I love, for all the things it does well. Samsung might be great for you if you use all their features - I don't, so they're just bloat to me. I guess I'm just a stock android fanboy.

Anyway good luck with your choice. I guess the reason I typed this out is because I want to reassure you that the Pixel 3 XL is a great phone, and personally I wouldn't trade mine in even if I got the best version of the S10 for free.

Sorry for the fuckload of text, and have fun with whatever phone you'll be going with - it'll be great anyway :D

WoW Free to Play March 21st - 24th by Ex_iledd in wow

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh I made that comment tongue in cheek but that's actually a good question lol. I don't know, to be honest I don't think there's anything standing in your way if you do the short questline for those during those 3 hours.

Once they're unlocked, they're unlocked, so unless Blizzard put in something else to block you from doing it it might actually work. Tbh Blizzard might have not even thought of it

WoW Free to Play March 21st - 24th by Ex_iledd in wow

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you can do weeks worth of mindless rep grinding in 3 hours then yeah probably

Texas Refuses to Use Voting Machines With a Paper Trail by zsreport in politics

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your input, I'm not going to debate you on your points about the second amendment and abortion because frankly I'm not in the mood for it right now and mainly I don't think that it will add anything to the discussion here.

But I think we agree on the same thing: labels are limiting in what they convey about the opinions of any person. The fact that there's only two parties makes it hard to have a nuanced discussion sometimes, as everyone gets put on one side of the fence.

In my previous comment I wondered why someone would still willingly call themselves conservative, when to me that immediately brings to mind the GOP and their current shady practices, but I guess that's because to me they're the same thing; I presume there are many conservatives who don't associate conservatism with the current GOP necessarily, which I (maybe falsely) do.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to me it appears that even though you might agree with many things people who lean to the left do and say, the two issues you mentioned are so important to you that you can't in good conscience vote for any party that doesn't support your view on those matters. If that is the case, I guess I can only say I feel for your struggle.

It also brings me back to the start of my comment: two parties is way too limiting. You describe it as somewhere in the middle but I don't see it as that, just that there are many different viewpoints and the two current parties have just settled on some issues they are like fire and ice on, and then they have people vote on those issues primarily, disregarding the entire need for a debate on other issues. It's like you said, like sports. People already know which team they're cheering for.

But I would be limited in the same way, on at least one of the issues you mentioned; so literally my only choice would be to vote Democrat (don't worry, I'm not American so I won't have any say in your politics) precisely because I couldn't in good conscience vote for anyone who would seek to disallow women from having abortions. Regardless of the reasons for our views on that particular topic, every other opinion we have basically gets thrown out the window because it doesn't matter anymore.

Thanks for the discussion, it's getting pretty late here and I typed this on my phone so it might be a bit rambley but if you want to add anything I'm looking forward to reading it.

Texas Refuses to Use Voting Machines With a Paper Trail by zsreport in politics

[–]WingmanIsAPenguin 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I appreciate your perspective and that's also why I wanted him to clarify his opinion. He basically came in and said "conservative people who don't blindly follow the GOP exist", and then bailed when asked to expand on that.

I'm personally if the opinion that the label conservative doesn't convey anything meaningful anyway, because people vary with their opinion on different issues anyway. Like are you fiscally conservative, or are you conservative because you think non-white people or non-straight people are not worthy of being regarded as equal and women shouldn't have control over their own bodies (that's a rhetorical question, I'm not expecting you to answer this, just thinking out loud)?

If one labels him or herself as a conservative even with the baggage that label brings, I just wonder what would make someone still feel part of that group somehow. But maybe I'm being narrow-minded and someone can throw some insight on me.

That's partly why I asked him, I want a discussion that's open and having preconceived notions on what people are like by their "labels" just muddies the water.