Scaled

While I fundamentally agree with the concern about unions raising costs in a market where most titles cannot absorb them, GTA/Rockstar definitely can. Especially since the union is fighting for basic quality of life like no crunch instead of (for now at least) increased pay. I am generally not prounion but crunch -- especially at studios that are guaranteed to be profitable (GTA) -- needs to be curbed.

My first AAA game industry boss said to me only 10% of people make it 10 years in games. This has been, if anything, optimistic, with there being a sharp drop-off at 2~5 years.

(And in indie it's way worse, it's more like 1% making it one year)

It's really surprising how much cheaper colo becomes if you have an even vaguely predictable workload. And you don't have to be a major customer, either -- the data centers will happily sell you single U's or a couple U's, even on a monthly basis if you ask, making it perfectly viable for startups or advanced personal projects.

And if they do, you can walk over there too and ask a human why in person. (Or just call the NOC)

One of the greatest cyber security mysteries of our time. Regardless of what actually happened, I hope the author is okay. (The story implied to me that the author was forced to post that, or was disappeared and the website was changed by someone else)

Filed last year, but I don't think previously shared.

I have spoken to others in my field and we all have good chargeback rates.

The problem is the VIRP/BRAM requirements push adult content into using only a handful of acquiring banks, and thus there is insufficient competition to get them to lower rates since where else you gonna go?

I applied to stripe recentlyish as an adult game project with excellent processing history and very low chargeback rate and got denied.

I've seen the chargeback rates, they are low. Consider that most adult consumers are repeat purchasers (subscribing to their favorite artist/dev/performer). They do not want to get banned for a chargeback and lose out on content! Most adult content creators also have friendly voluntary refund policy when requested. So chargeback rates are very low in adult.

Meanwhile other industries like travel have crazy high chargeback rates. This is because it is notorious for a no refund policy / locking customers into purchases months in advance... and then people just chargeback instead of accepting a consumer hostile no refund policy. So travel ends up having high chargebacks... and yet has minimal trouble getting processing.

They're also attacking games and artwork -- gotta make sure those pixels consent, too. Sigh...

Just FYI, the high rate of fraud is FUD. I am in the field, have a very good chargeback rate, and still cannot secure card processing at fair terms. The processors I have spoken to know chargeback rates are low, but it's a rigged system designed to extract maximal revenue by middlemen.

Never upload your ID. If that means not developing for a platform, don't develop for that platform.

Parental controls on device are a better solution that work today and don't carry a risk of data breach.

The army of middlemen with their hands out is the worst part, where you also have fees paid to the merchant bank, the iso/payment service provider, and a chain of agents. In disfavored industries like adult content, this can reach 15% or more, plus thousands in annual "high risk" fees (even if chargeback rate is good). It's a huge anticompetitive racket, and the sooner US can shake off Visa/MasterCard, the better off we'll be.

The biggest problem IMO is discoverability. I need an easy way to find open source projects that are on scattered servers. GitHub project search is limited to GitHub.

Yes, that's how parental filters already work. They use a combination of rta tags and external data to block pages. Even works with Google safe search, firewall devices, etc. The rta ecosystem is already built out and viable.

On the topic of operating costs, the annual "high risk" credit card fees just went up to nearly $2k/year. High risk in quotes because even if you have stellar charge back rates you still get hit with it (did you know the charge back rate for adult is way, way less than the chargeback rate for travel?). The card networks have something called virp/bram, which is basically designed to force adult merchants into paying these absurd fees and limiting the banks they can work with to the most predatory ones. It's a huge antitrust issue that results in higher consumer prices but unfortunately no one is litigating yet

And after those laws, VPN to a free country and download local models. Never give in to the panopticon.

Another good option is Restic, since snapshots let you go back in time. That is useful in case you accidentally delete/break something and you're not quite fast enough to restore from backup before the next cron runs.

A lot of people blaming the poster, but I can say I've seen the same thing on completely opt-in lists that aren't doing anything shady. Reality is if you're only sending one email to your list a year, even when people want to receive it, it becomes really hard to send it to gmail. Especially if you're not using a shared IP with other senders. Gmail basically forces you to send messages on a quarterly (or better) cadence, even if you have nothing to say because otherwise it forgets who you are. I am convinced Google has a vested interest in making it hard to send newsletters and product announcements so companies will use their advertising products instead.

Society is a bit fatigued of big tech companies making their various accounts essential and then locking people out of them without any due process.

I got my account verification locked for this and I wasn't even using third party clients. Discord and their AI moderation is rubbish.

I need the dragon pet... someone add it to open code / pi, please!

If you're a US citizen, I believe they can seize your device indefinitely, and detain you for up to two days. They are required to let you eventually back into the country though.

(If you're not a citizen, all bets are off)

Well, we can certainly disagree about the harms (fingerprinting) and slippery slopeness (AV started for porn, but we all knew it wasn't going to stop there)

But to get to the meat of your question, trust is lost through betrayal. Organizations have been deciding unpopular policies without consulting their users, or having meaningful methods for users to opt out or push back. For a long time, users assumed open source would be the last bastion of privacy and user freedom, and then were shocked when those values were not actually shared by maintainers.

The paternalistic perspective that the organization knows users hate something but push it anyway is always going to lose trust. That practice needs to stop, and instead consider how open source can treat the user base as important stakeholders.

Yeah, that is ABSOLUTELY a lie.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to include links as a new user but Pornbiz posted an article showing AV lost them 90% of traffic. There's a BBC article where researchers found AV compliant sites were decimated on their top traffic ranking on Similarweb. And I working in the industry saw our traffic drop by 99.9% during our AV test.

Users don't use VPN, they certainly don't upload ID... they just go to noncompliant sites. Don't believe UK government's gaslighting.