> Isn't the US supposed to be the birthplace of modern democracy?
I would not dare not mention the revolutions in England and in France. And before that some Greece city states, and definitely Rome. The US declaration of independence is just another point.
It's just not practical to organize a rally to save a niche cybersecurity program. People are busy protesting to protect Medicaid and keep themselves out of foreign gulags, they can't divert the attention to CVE.
I apologize for jumping in this convo with unrelated stuff but I was looking at my history and since I can't message you I just wanted to let you know years later how much your reply here resonates with me now. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18475792
Wow, that is a blast from the past. I don't recall my frame of mind in writing that, well. Hopefully it isn't quite as cynical as I feel the past few months. At least, hopefully that isn't the part that is resonating! :D
Unsure if anyone has made a game specifically for that. But there are plenty of intentionally unsecure servers (no VAC, or other anti-cheat) in games like counter strike for Hacker vs Hacker.
I think what the comment you are replying to are getting at is the fact that installing pip packages from the Internet and importing them in your python app is not that different from piping code from the Internet into your python executable. In both cases python code from the Internet will be executed with your user privileges from within Python. Unless you audit every python package you consume, you might as well accept a curl https://example.com | python installer too.
Not in my experience they don't. I use OVH and nfoservers and I've had an issue like this exactly once on both hosts.
On OVH one of my servers was hacked and running typical scripts that are run once that happens (port checking, common admin credentials, brute force attempts, etc)
They cut off all internet access to and from the server and sent me an alert stating what was happening and that I needed to VNC into the server, resolve the issue, and let them know how/why it happened and how I resolved the issue. Once that was done they just removed all the blocks on the server and we all went on our merry way.
Edit: To clarify the VNC console is on their site, not a remote connection.
I run the IPFS daemon on Hetzner, and it was trying to connect to local IPs because of some misconfiguration. They sent me an email saying my server was portscanning their LAN, and I should fix it and email them how I fixed it.
I didn't know what they were talking about so I replied saying that, they helped me shut down the local port connections and I never heard another complaint from them. There was no downtime or banning at any point.
I've bought a few games on Epic, and had no problems. The lack of junkware like on Steam is great – I can honestly browse the store knowing that every game is high quality (even if not necessarily in the genre I enjoy).
Achieveemnts not popping up helps focus on the actual game.
Cloud save, family sharing etc. are of marginal use for me and I imagine 99% of consumers outside the vocal minority.
Well, I was about to comment that the lack of cloud save is the absolute dealbraker for me as I play games at home and at work, so if I can't sync saves automatically then I won't buy a game from there(#1 reason why I haven't bought Metro Exodus for instance, game which I am otherwise super interested in).
Yes, that would be an option if my work allowed any services like that(and yes, it's slightly odd that dropbox/google drive are not allowed, but Steam cloud sync is).
Oh but it's not a technical issue - both dropbox and google drive would install and work fine, we have full administrative access on our machines with no restrictions. But it is against policy.
One man's Junkware is another's charming indie. GOG is a curated store and, among others, initially denied Zachtronics game Opus Magnum. I personally appreciate the fact that Steam and Itch don't curate.
The link you provided doesn't say what you claim it says. The parent post is discussing giving away free games, not acquisitions. What is unhealthy about the way Epic is trying to attract users? I know they've received some negative press but I have yet to see a good argument for this.
From the update at the very top of the article the GP linked:
> Epic has offered an update on the confusingly worded statement issued to press earlier today regarding Rocket League's future status on Steam, now insisting that it has "not announced plans to stop selling the game there".
Even if they do pull future sales of Rocket League off of Steam why is that a problem? Valve has purchased game companies. I've never seen anyone complain that you can't buy Left 4 Dead on GoG.
When EA pulled their games from Steam, Valve replied in kind.
One thing that irks me is that Valve seems way more committed to interoperability, open standards and its consumers' wellness than its competitors (likely as a result of being privately owned); while the competitors in question use every trick in the evil corporate playbook to try to increase their marketshare. We've seen how they play, and the friendly façade is likely to change to ad more value-extracting one once/if they gain marketshare.
Valve made L4D2. Or at least did a significant portion of the work. The problem with Epic is that they are either paying publishers for timed exclusives, or purchasing publishers outright in order to create artificial monopolies, and restricting consumer choice.
What Valve did on L4D2 isn't relevant. My point was that Valve did the same thing with L4D as Epic is doing with Rocket League. Talking about L4D2 does not show that this point was wrong.
> competing on quality, price, customer service, etc, etc, etc.
What metric are you using to define quality and how would it make people use this store over Steam? How much cheaper would you need to sell games to get people to go to the Epic store? Would developers put there games on the Epic store if the price had to be so low that they made more per sale on Steam? Good customer service being a factor requires having customers to experience it. It helps long term but won't get your first wave of customers.
Quality in this case could be website design, the overall quality of games, or discoverability of good games.
Price in this case would be margin. If Steam takes 10%, Epic could take 5%. Games makers could pass the savings on, or increase their own margins.
Yes good customer service requires customers. What's your point? Your first customer experiences good customer service, mentions it to their friends, who then shop with you, who then mention it to their friends. It's called word of mouth. It's a powerful marketing tool.
Website design won't drive customers to a new store instead of Steam. Epic is curating their store so that should already cover quality and discoverability. Apparently they think that isn't enough.
> Price in this case would be margin. If Steam takes 10%, Epic could take 5%. Games makers could pass the savings on, or increase their own margins.
Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12%. Very few games have chosen to reduce their price to go with the increased percentage.
For a web based store customer service only matters when things go wrong. Most customers should get a fairly standard experience of paying money and receiving their product. Do you consider Steam's customer service bad? Would a marginal improvement in customer service convince you to deal with the hassle of installing another launcher, setting up a payment method on a new store, and splitting your game library?
You asked for a viable strategy, this is it as evidenced by the fact they're already trying it. Is it guaranteed? No. But nothing in business, or life, is.
I asked for a viable alternative strategy that didn't also involve paying for exclusives to initially attract customers. Apparently Epic doesn't agree with you about this being viable by itself.
This is really a big part of it for me. I have no problem using multiple launchers, but Epic has given me little reason to think that they'll secure my payment info or account details.
I've seen several comparisons showing that Epic's prices are not actually lower than Steam's (in general).
Can't find them right now, and don't have the time to do a thorough comparison, but looking at the first three games on the Epic Store front page that also have Steam pages with prices seems to confirm this. That's "Oxygen not Included", "Vampire: The Masquerade® - Bloodlines™ 2" and "Outward", all of which are priced the same on both stores (€22.99, €59.99 and €39.99, respectively).
> If paying for exclusives is bad what viable alternative strategy should Epic be using to get users to their store?
Offering the games DRM-free (the audience that GOG is aiming - though I am really concerned about what GOG is currently doing with GOG Galaxy and cloud synchronisation).
Epic are trying to do with gaming what Disney are doing with TV -- not pay distributers when they can do that but themselves, and use a strong monopoly on a sector of popular material to leverage their way in to distribution.
Don't know latin in any way shape or form. Just was curious and used this like a small puzzle. Added a bit more context to words that weren't very self explanatory.
TOTUS - all/whole
VESTRI - your
ARCANA - secrets
NOCTI - night? - 'used in formation of compound words' [0]
NOBIS - us/we
EST - to be - "can be translated as 'it is,' 'he/she is,' or simply 'is.' It is the third person singular of the present tense of the verb 'to be'" [1]
Sooo my guess would be something along the lines "All the secrets of the night belong to us?"
If someone knows any better I would love to be corrected.
The amount of disrespect you have shown for someone that is just telling you 99% of federal workers have absolutely no leverage says a lot.