If by "thousands of virus" you mean software shipped by default in Windows, then I agree with you. Everything feels so sluggish on Windows 11 compared to any Linux distribution even if you run it on an HDD... it's ridiculous.
Apple has never really cared about games unless it's on the iPhone or iPad. It's worked out well for them though. Mobile gaming is a $100 billion dollar market, PC gaming and console gaming are each about half that.
They stumbled into the perfect spot with the iPhone, then IAP sweetened it.
Since they found money they support it. But in the process they’ve really destroyed gaming on the platform unless you want casino games or candy crush/clash of clans things designed to extract money and show another ad every 12 seconds.
Yeah they show Resident Evil VIII and Assassins Creed Whatever but they don’t sell much. And the race to free IAPs created mean good games can’t sell even at a single $2 purchase.
Apple Arcade is the only sanctuary. I haven’t heard good things from the dev side, and it’s 80%+ old games from before things were destroyed or IAP riddled games with the IAPs removed, at times not even rebalanced.
I use it because it’s about all that’s left. But iPhone gaming is a shadow of what we had in the early years.
And at this point there is no competition left. The smart phone ate everything. And as far as I know Android games are in the same mess.
Comparing mobile games to PC and console games is like comparing film buffs to someone who only watches the latest summer blockbuster. They are technically the same on some level, but so different that they really shouldn't be considered the same category.
Well sure it worked out great for Apple. By preventing users from sideloading emulators or playing real games, you force them to purchase gambling apps and low-quality slopware to entertain themselves. "Real world" game developers like Nintendo outright gave up on iOS/mobile gaming because it wasn't a comparable gaming experience.
A good example of this is the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, which were so lazily ported that most fans advocate for pirating the originals instead. Why should anyone pay $14.99 for the bad version of FFVI?
In good faith, you can't really say "[x] is shit" if you don't have an usual setup; X11 is no longer the default on most distros. Even when I was also using it, it never crashed.
I don't know whether your GPU is older than mine or not but I have the RX 7700XTX. Maybe it had a software defect...
That's good to hear. When I was troubleshooting this, I kept seeing forum posts screaming about how they're sticking to X11 cause Wayland is bad. Uh, idk idc, ship has sailed already.
> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.
Lol, what? One of the biggest company on Earth is being pictured as a victim for creating services that siphon data out of half the planet's people? Don't take it personally but I can't fathom how you think this is FREE. It's literally the most lucrative business there is and it's only going to get worse—and not for them.
I couldn't have said it better. I don't understand what they solve.
We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock. Switzerland is not part of SEPA but IBAN is used so it is trivial to send payments to foreign accounts that have an IBAN.
I always say that the day Trump decides to block Visa/MasterCard outside the US is the day we get instant payments and finally get rid of cards.
In Germany we have free instant SEPA transfers. What Wero solves is that you can send money without giving your IBAN number, which at least in Germany can be used to take money from your account.
So you get standardized payment system where you scan a QR code or NFC tag with your bank app and the payment goes through IBAN and the system shows an approval of payment.
It's called SEPA direct debit. For some reason people don't want to use their web bank to pay for things, so what you usually do is you do a SEPA direct debit contract and the company takes the money from your account every month.
Switzerland since last summer, but banks aren't forced to expose the feature to retail customers yet, at least not for free. We could have had that 15 years ago if our government wasn't so afraid of upsetting the banking lobbies.
> We need instant, free SEPA transfers around the clock.
We have? SCT inst has been rolled out almost everywhere
> Switzerland is not part of SEPA
We definitely are. Transfers in EUR from/to CH IBANs use SEPA rails. CHF accounts can also send or receive EUR transparently (usually at a bad FX rate, but it just works).
> I don't understand what they solve. [...]
> I always say that the day Trump decides to block Visa/MasterCard outside the US is the day we get instant payments and finally get rid of cards.
You answered your own question. We need pan-European payments systems on top of the existing banking infrastructure. Payments and transfers aren't the same thing. By moving to mobile wallets with QR code and NFC payments, this opens up interoperability beyond Europe too.
> We have? SCT inst has been rolled out almost everywhere
That is true; I should have said "EEA" or "countries supporting IBAN".
> We definitely are. Transfers in EUR from/to CH IBANs use SEPA rails. CHF accounts can also send or receive EUR transparently (usually at a bad FX rate, but it just works).
Yes, which is exactly my point. We need it to work for CHF as well. Instant payments are not the norm and in fact UBS is charging for it.
> You answered your own question. We need pan-European payments systems on top of the existing banking infrastructure. Payments and transfers aren't the same thing. By moving to mobile wallets with QR code and NFC payments, this opens up interoperability beyond Europe too.
A payment should be a bank transfer. Anything more complicated is just something that is to be exploited by middle-men.
This is a false dichotomy. You can have very cheap transaction fees, Pix is state-run and probably operates at a loss, with merchant fees as low as 0.2~0.3%. In comparison the cheapest card payment under the EEA interchange cap is probably slightly above 0.5% when you add scheme fees and PSP costs.
However businesses do require payment systems and not just barebones bank transfers. Except for high trust, low volume transactions such as buying a car, paying your rent...
> A payment should be a bank transfer. Anything more complicated is just something that is to be exploited by middle-men.
I disagree with that. Payments (especially online and contactless ones) should have some form of buyer protection, chargeback and a way to handle fraudulent transaction, lost / stolen cards, etc.
Maybe that's changes by country, but here bank transfers are basically final and can not be cancelled or recalled. Why would a bank cover your losses from their profits?
Which has zero incentive to side with the other party. You pay by bank transfer, once the money is on the merchant's account, why would their bank ever agree to a refund in case of dispute? Now it's between you and the merchant, good luck with filing police reports and court claims especially abroad.
The most common scams nowadays involve social engineering to make people log into their online banking and transfer money, specifically because there's no way to revert transactions. The victims are typically 100% liable as they accept and authorize these.
Visa and MasterCard are basically redundant except for international transactions. We already mostly use QR code payments, which is a semi-open standard and somewhat vendor agnostic(with caveats). It works internationally.
Japan has it's own card companies, and payment systems. Recently, some train lines have started adding support for Visa, but trust me that if you use it in rush hour you will be considered a knob head by everyone behind you as contactless is much slower than the native cards and can't keep up with a fast walking pace. Of course part of the problem here is Sony being greedy and making the international adoption of Felicia hard, but it's complicated.
The cards are most useful for tourists, and the best argument to introduce cards is international compatability. But international interop doesn't have to look like this, it's just how the playing field ended up looking.
Last, Visa and MasterCard are both known for being strict on what goods and services they are happy accepting, and it's not ok that so much power is consolidated in two entities in one country.
I'm not an expert on payment systems, but when I see the large scale advertisements Visa especially are pulling off in Tokyo I see a foreign company trying to disrupt and gain market share while not really benefiting locals who do have mostly moved beyond the need for card payment. I.e my reaction isn't "yay, finally Visa is here too save me" it's "oh no, how will they disrupt and destroy"
Via: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24452-eu-might-enforce-goog... which specifically quotes the law that should forbid such approach (Article 6(4) DMA) - so EU initiative and engineers consciously and intentionality breaking EU law in the prototype that is supposed to be replicated later.
Alcohol was always an important cultural symbol (drinking wine as a Christian, for example). This is not the case for tobacco, especially highly artificial one.
Tobacco is inherently bad for one's surrounding as well.
Correct, and since the UK has an Established Church, and does not recognise “freedom of religion” as understood in the USA, banning tobacco entirely is reasonable.
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