Most of the services Google kills are also because they “fizzled out”. If you scroll through the Killed by Google site, a lot of the stuff listed there were test apps or small-scale experiments that most people never heard about or cared to try, like all the apps under Area 120. There are a few high-profile examples (Reader, Stadia, etc) but they’re definitely not the majority, same as Mozilla.

Apple discontinued its own Apple Pay Later service in favor of just integrating third-party payment services, like Affirm: https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/17/apple-pay-later-united-states-ending/

Even if official support isn’t possible past a certain point (Google and Samsung are pushing 7+ years, fwiw), all phones need to have a bootloader unlock mechanism for unofficial support past that point. LineageOS or mobile Linux with some broken functionality is still better than nothing.

If you want to beat inflation, dump the money in a high-yield savings account, or a 401k, or a stock index, or any of the other options that have something resembling banking protection/regulation. There are so many better options than a speculative investment that you lose entirely with a social engineering attack or a SIM swap.

Bitcoin’s value is significantly more volatile than the US Dollar.

Firefox is faster than Chromium in many benchmarks, depending on the OS: https://arewefastyet.com/win10/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60

Google worked on Privacy Sandbox/Topics API/FLoC for at least five years, and it couldn’t get something that advertisers, regulators, and users could all agree on, so it’s just falling back to the thing that worked (but has next to zero privacy protections). Sigh.

That’s a whole lot of link rot about to happen.

Nothing specific, just that Chocolately is what I’ve used the most over the years and seems to be pretty reliable.

I’m sure a lot of people on Lemmy can figure out package managers, but I wanted to try writing a guide more aimed at beginners that can be shared with people trying to figure out yt-dlp. I only found one other guide like this outside of random Reddit threads and comments, and it was pretty long and technical.

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If you like this article, please consider following the site on Mastodon/Fedi, email, or RSS. It helps me get information like this out to a wider audience :)

If you like this article, please consider following the site on Mastodon/Fedi, email, or RSS. It helps me get information like this out to a wider audience :)

Yeah, the destructive editing and lack of a content aware fill is made me stop using it and go back to Photoshop. Krita also seems more usable these days in the FOSS world. The name is a lot easier to fix than those missing features, though.

The issue is Steam and Valve being held up as the ‘one good company’, when there are plenty of examples to the contrary. Valve does many of the same practices as Epic, EA, etc., but there’s a double standard with Valve because it’s the default experience. The inevitable decline of Steam is going to be much worse after people spent a decade giving it a free pass on lesser issues.

Whether or not the exclusivity deal is between the publisher and the store or just the publisher doesn’t make a difference for the consumer. There’s no functional difference between Counter Strike 2 requiring Steam and Fortnite requiring the Epic launcher except that gamers are used to Steam.

I meant more that the Steam client needs to be fully functional on modern macOS. Dropping older operating systems is more justifiable, but does still add to the picture of Valve not treating Mac owners all that well.

No exclusivity for games

Valve doesn’t need to pay for exclusivity because it already dominates the market. There are many games that are effectively Steam exclusives because they are not available through other methods on PC. Half-Life 2 received a lot of criticism at launch for requiring Steam.

They purposefully made SteamOS open source so that other companies can easily release portable PC gaming products

SteamOS is open source, but you need a license to use the Steam brand, and Valve doesn’t allow that. One company tried to make a handheld console with SteamOS, but it can’t be legally bundled with the hardware: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033161/ayaneo-next-lite-steam-deck-competitor-steamos

That said, who knows what happens when he dies?

Yes, that’s the point of the article. If you need one specific person to stay alive for something to continue functioning well, you don’t have a business, you have the British monarchy.

It’s a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B. Apple very obviously doesn’t want the Mac gaming ecosystem to exist in the same capacity as Windows and Linux, but Valve also has an obligation to its customers using Macs to keep the service running well.

Valve has avoided many of the same anti-consumer moves as other tech and gaming giants, likely due to its smaller size, status as a non-public company, and the long-time leadership of Gabe Newell and other executives. Valve won’t stay that way forever—the company is not immune to the pressures of capitalism, and there are already examples of anti-consumer behavior.

Valve is not immune to enshittification, and it has already happened on some level with minimal current Mac support, facilitating gambling through item trades, etc.

I would like to see more collective action, but it’s also incredibly difficult to put your housing situation on the line when the US (and most states) does not give you a functional backup. As you said, it’s capitalism at work.