BlueTemplar

"Break the law" is too weak of a term since it includes routing around the monetary systems overseen by incompetent / corrupt / totalitarian governments.

That last example postdates Bitcoin, and even Bitcoin entering public consciousness (in 2011), so why bring it up ?

'stable'coins are a lie though. They just hide the risk, they do not make it go away. (At least bank accounts are insured up to a certain amount.)

If you think that 'teenager' is too old (which I am skeptical about, considering the current popularity of Roblox), replace by 'kid'.

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More complications, more points of failure.

It's certainly possible that Valve is not being truthful about the lottery. (Would that be illegal for them to do ?)

Concert/game tickets are in a extremely different situation. SM doesn't become completely worthless past a certain (near, known) date.

Imagine buying the SM for a teenager in your family that doesn't have a Steam Account yet.

One issue here is that one, very important for the future of Valve, type of target customer here is first time Steam users : teens without a console nor a (gaming) PC. April 2026 is already going to be a problem for them.

(Though I guess someone in their family can enter the lottery for them.)

> If you know MSRP

Giving a list price would make no sense in the case of an auction, in fact would be misleading, (maybe even illegal ??), and not just because of these issues.

Most people would bid the maximum that they can justify. That's like saying that only scalpers take part in auctions (easy counter example : eBay).

Which is pretty much what they did :

> You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27th 2026.

Already was there on the leaked 2022 list.

Doesn't seem like it :

> I’ve now been once. Everything is off the record, but I’ll just say that it is nothing like the ordinary conference where there are keynote lecturers you barely get to meet (if at all), or where you listen to some pre-packaged lecture.

> There are no speeches, presentations, panels, or anything like that. Everything is geared around small-group discussions with 6-10 people in a session or a lunch/dinner. You repeatedly find yourself in deep conversations about life/death/family/career issues with a handful of other people who happen to have great professional accomplishments (although none of that is even mentioned). The experience was both intense (lots of intense conversations) and refreshing (i.e., no hierarchy or status-signaling).

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/02/16/hey-i-got-...

EDIT : or maybe it's more complex than that :

https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-private-dialog-...

I have only had the minimum of time to look into it, so far I only found his own vague justification, his wife supposedly(?) being part of Open AI, a multimedia platform he made then maybe or maybe not un/ethically provided the data of it to Ubisoft, him supposedly lobbying against section 230, and even more vague accusations of 'Zionism'.

> a free software license alone does not empower users to be truly free if they lack the expertise to exercise those freedoms

This is a bullshit argument, and I'm surprised that people aware enough of these issues would try to push it.

Closed (or online-only) software prevents not only the end user from modifying it, but also 'unlicensed' hackers that the end user can ask for help.

See the "right to repair" movement as a very close example. The possibility of an 'ecosystem' of middlemen like these, matters !

The use of black boxes like neural networks is already effectively illegal in some governments for this very reason.

Oh yeah, plenty of that, even scientists and thinkers were tempted, we had plenty of details even before the 'files', thanks to Maxwell's phone book :

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/i-called-everyo...

No, I'm upset that he took money from the Kremlin and hosted a show on Russia Today. (At least it was before 2014 I guess...)

How is it far off if it's already used like this, just on the side of submitters ?

No, exposing Western corruption is all well and good, but the problem is that at some point Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia.

How is this different from flat earth / creationist papers citing other flat earth / creationist papers ?

But then, assuming we are fine with this state of things with LLMs :

why would it be upon them to submit in English, when instead reviewers and readers can themselves use a LLM translator to read the paper ?

And then, Einstein was a « citizen scientist », wasn't he ?

OP is talking about developing an alternative to Overleaf. But they are still trying to do it inside a browser !

Assange became a Russian asset *while* in a whistleblowing-related job.

(And he is also the reason why Snowden ended up in Russia. Though it's possible that the flight plan they had was still the best one in that situation.)

It's likely to be an age thing too. Were you in hacker-related spaces when the Snowden scandal happened ?

(I expect a much higher than average share of people in academia also part of these spaces.)

But what's the point ?

To end up with yet another shitty (because running inside a browser, in particular its interface) web app ?

Why not focus efforts into making a proper program (you know, with IBM menu bars and keyboard shortcuts), but with collaborative tools too ?

The takedown is (also ? first and foremost ??)'against' Patreon, a USA company.

So is HTML and XML and bbcode...

The question is more why Markdown is slowly but surely outcompeting them.

Yeah, that trend came up in search, hence my confusion. Thanks.

That's what churches are (also) for. (A synonym of 'church' is 'gathering'.)