people really don't understand what a blessing it is to not have sodas be free. that kind of culture with an expectation of it (and 'snacks') being free will create a lot of fatness in the industry
Curiously arbitrary to then not require that the definition include the ability to pay out whatever you got from the loot boxes in real money.
To phrase this in the most cautious way: The potential to win more money than you started with needs to be considered as a factor in the potential addictiveness or more importantly destructiveness of the entire process.
I used to think that, but I think that even ones you can't redeem back (such as FIFA?) can still be extremely problematic with people still spending thousands to get the item they want from the loot box.
I don't think it is - when you introduce a real money cash out you are firmly over the line into gambling territory. Something doesn't need to have _monetary_ value to be considered desirable by a wider group.
keep in mind that he is literally the only one who talks about the company that way from everyone whose ever worked there (many, many have left for various reasons since).
I also can't help but not overlook that he's an UFO nut. can't trust info from someone who can warp reality in a way to see only what fits his own preconceived notions even if they fly in the face of basic facts.
> keep in mind that he is literally the only one who talks about the company that way from everyone whose ever worked there (many, many have left for various reasons since).
That's not true.
There's been lots of criticism coming at Valve's management style over the years: There are many people who _hate_ it, but also many people who love it. It really depends on the type of person you are. If you really really dislike bureaucracy Valve's a great place to be, but also don't expect them to enact any quality-of-life systems: If your coworker wants you dead, then that's something you yourself have to deal with.
This is also why you see a lot of different opinions when looking through e.g. glassdoor: Some people that do the murdering love it there and thrive, but that system only works if people are there that can be murdered. Some people I know have described the atmosphere as "prison yard style": You trade rigid bureaucracy against a "you have to know who you have to know" bureaucracy. Richard Geldreich's account lines up pretty well to what I have heard about valve's emergent self-organization system.
> There's been lots of criticism coming at Valve's management style over the years: There are many people who _hate_ it, but also many people who love it.
Looking at it as a consumer, Valve didn't get anything released for many years, which imo would point at there in fact being a problem. Not necessarily what this guy is claming, but there did seem to be issues.
They have shipped HL:A and Steam Deck now, so maybe they've solved it or are solving it.
The measure of success for a corporation isn't number of products released, it's revenue/profit. Valve has higher revenue per employee than any other gaming company.
They have first mover advantage on a platform that's true, but even when competitors significantly undercut them they can't take any notable percentage of Steam market share. Epic is literally giving away free content every month and can't compete.
“I also can't help but not overlook that he's an UFO nut.”
Well, that’s your personal opinion but I’m not sure how his thoughts on UFOs discredits his view of the work culture at Valve. One can have metaphysical and spiritual beliefs and be an extraordinary scientist as well for example.
Many have left Valve but usually people in the relatively constrained game dev industry tend to be conservative in voicing their opinions if only for their future careers prospects.
I've heard/read such reports about valve from various other people, including friends I trust saying so privately. He is an outlier in how vehement his criticism is but is hardly the only one that throws that criticism at Valve (keep in mind workers face massive disincentives to do so publicly).
Nah, many people spoke out about ruthless insider politic cliques and how they were at a mercy of invisible forces with "totally democratic" decisions about their work being made for them.
things like replication crisis being a matter of discourse is part of the scientific process. scientists notice results don't add up and slowly over time the thing corrects.
no need to imagine this, this is already the case in this universe. at least if we're talking about actually computing something, not just writing down the equations on paper.
for example from everything we know at least so far there are some truly continuous non-quantized quantities yet all numerical solutions can ever produce is an ever increasingly good approximation of something.
some constants are irrational so we can never get true values of certain physical constants, etc...
Sort of but I think you are confusing concepts. Here we have a number spat out of an experiment that is compared to a number from theory. In that case it is fair to use a percentage as a comparison: "My best guess from my experiment is x and theory says y ... x compared to y is z%" "I've used a percentage because it is ubiquitous and easily understood".
However, the experiment should have some uncertainty in it that might be quantised unless it is being performed by $DEITY. We'll also note here that percentages, whilst great for simple number magnitude comparisons are easily the most abused "statistic tool".
What we really want is an estimate of error for x (your measure by experiment). You might be able to quantify your errors in such a way that you can write it down in terms of stand deviations about a mean or perhaps not.
Let's look at an example: Using a steel rule, mark a point. The rule is about 1mm thick. Most people will pin the rule with their dominant hand and sight the mark with their dominant eye. What could possibly go wrong?
Your hand naturally works about 30cm/1' laterally from your head. You probably don't know which is your dominant eye which adds or takes around 15cm/6". So when you naively mark a point with a steel rule you are probably at least 45 degrees out on a 1mm thick rule which is something like 0.5mm. So you soon learn to position your eye over the work but which eye? Most people do have a dominant eye for sighting. Point at something. Close one eye and sight at that thing, then close the other eye and sight at the thing with the other eye. The eye that does not make your finger apparently move is your dominant eye - it is the one that you naturally use to aim/sight with.
That 0.5mm doesn't sound much but that is enough to make a woodwork joint look crap. Once you combine it with the thickness of a pencil strike and other factors, you start to appreciate that carpentry can be tricky.
Now let's do some physics where the measures are really minute and you can't simply move your head 6" to limit your errors. Now we are really going to have to do some science.
The principles are the same though: understand your limitations as best you can and then compensate.
The mass estimate in this isn’t story isn’t from a single event, it’s “based on an analysis of about 4 million W bosons produced at the Tevatron between 2002 and 2011”.
So the "measured" mass is not a single value but a set of samples with varying masses? And those samples have a standard deviation from the theoretical value?
As I understand it, the mean of those values is seven standard deviations away from the theoretical value, and you should only expect a result that extreme to occur by chance roughly once per 3.9e11 reruns of the entire experiment.
But I would caution that precision is so important to both physics and statistics that what I think I understand may be quite different from what’s actually going on.
No, it's the average value taken from (naturally) slightly varying measurements of (hopefully) the exact same mass. In the standard model, all particles of a given type are assumed to share the same properties, including the same mass, and so far we have no reason to believe otherwise.
In the context where your measurements allow you to measure discrepancies a seventh of that error, that’s a huge error (for the purpose of THIS experiment). There might be some experiments where the difference doesn’t matter at all, or other experiments where the dependence is linear, so the answer also shifts by 0.1%. But the dependence could just as easily be some complicated nonlinear function which leads to a large discrepancy compared to the measurement precision.
you and everyone else concerned about the preying on vulnerable thing should be aware that we have literally no evidence that such a thing is happening. the absolute worst thing we know off in practice are extreme edge cases (i.e. not applying to 99% of people even within the whale demographic) of above average earners spending their money on waifu shit instead of buying themselves a car they don't need.
the more regularly occuring thing is probably that parent's don't properly set up their kids phones and then they buy a few hundred or worse thousands bucks of something they shouldn't. but again those occurances are rare and don't cause really cause any actual damage, especially since you can get refunds for this stuff if it gets expensive very easily. kids regularly do stuff a lot more expensive than that. in fact kids themselves are a lot more expensive than that as a baseline.
the supposed exploitation of things like loot boxes has literally zero evidence behind it. all you will find are a few genuinely bottom of the barrel studies (as in that australian government study from some years ago, should literally be taken as an example in a book of how not to run a study).
and the constant comparison to gambling is really tiresome, because it's obviously not the same. people play themselves out of all their belongigs regularly with actual gambling, because their goal is to make a profit with gambling and their last gamble will surely turn it around. such a thing isn't possible even in the few online gaming markets remaining where you can resell your items for real money because its a big hazzle to liquidize all your assets.
People often contrast loot boxes with Magic the Gathering: "At least you can resell your cards", but this makes it more like gambling, not less! CS:Go has far greater potential for economic harm & fraud--due to resale--than the much hated Star Wars loot boxes.
doing mostly 'cog in a machine' type of work in order to make enough money to be safe and have some extra for fun and future planning is a core part of nearly every human life on the planet and most people get on fine with it, without wanting to kill themselves.
in fact for most people the situation is significantly worse, OP is in a privileged position in a relatively well paid industry with relatively non-menial work and is still complaining. there is no other way around it, there is something wrong with OP.
and before all of this corporate stuff developed, people were mostly farming all day which is hardly an improvement.
depression need not enter the picture. imo being a privileged baby having way too high expectations of what life is supposed to give you is all explanation necessary in this case. imo OP needs to stop being a baby and grow up. this might be caused by reading too much about how awesome other people have it and being jealous / not able to cope that OP is not in the same situation, but whatever the cause, the effect is obvious.
This is generally called an existential crisis.[1] Being rich and privileged can actually cause this to happen. If you are poor you really don't have the time and energy to worry about the meaning of life because you are focused on not being homeless, or hungry, or unsafe, or alone.
You sound angry and defensive about your own solution to the problem. It’s not obvious how that is a more healthy response than to be depressed about it.
Cows and chickens rarely kill themselves even in industrial farms, that doesn't mean they have a good life.
>imo being a privileged baby having way too high expectations of what life is supposed to give you is all explanation necessary in this case. imo OP needs to stop being a baby and grow up.
I have a ton of debts and I've spent about 90% of my life living in poverty, I've spent my first year of college sleeping on the floor of a storage room with no shower or toilet.
Does that look like privilege to you?
Maybe you're too simple minded to realize that just because you have it a bit better than some people doesn't mean you're in a good situation.
What's the point of being safe if most of your life is spent making some rich guy's life better? The fun I got after work was never nearly enough to outweigh the stress and the waste of time at work.
According to your way of thinking a fed homeless man should be happy because he is fed.
A hungry homeless should be happy because he is not handicapped.
A blind homeless starving man should be happy because he's not also deaf and an amputee.
Where does it stop exactly? At death? Everyone who did not yet die of torture should be happy, otherwise it just mean they're a privileged baby who is expecting too much of life?
