Viewing profile — BlueTemplar

Those Microsoft pawns ?

There are people that pre-ordered their latest PC that are currently waiting for the remaining batches to become available, finish paying the PC price in full, and have it shipped …

Facebook/Meta is a great example indeed when one remembers that they took part in a genocide, and still haven't faced consequences for it.

The current kind of car is extremely good at doing what it does. It's just that most of the benefits are short term, and for the car user (and the oil salesman), while the costs ar…

Yeah, it's infuriating when poorly implemented.

What kind of 'infrastructure' did China have when they had "fallen out" with Google (in 2010?), that the EU does not have now ?

For the worst, you mean ? The current arrangement has been torpedoed a long time ago already, with the Patriot Act (2001) (though it took many years to understand the extent of it)…

No, I want to insist on Bitcoin's intellectual legacy. Before ~2011, only a handful of niche nerds at the intersection of cryptography and (goldbug) economics had heard of related …

> You can't even buy a fucking game without it being encrusted in anti-user DRM. You very much can. And notably, exceptions that do use it tend to be from giant public corporations…

It is. I guess that it's more of an issue for banks in smaller countries ? (But how come SEPA is not more widely used even for B2C sales then ?) Sounds like the digital euro might …

Yeah, it's uncommon, but bank wire does exist, and while (like cheques) it's typically used for paying rent / utilities / sending money to non-businesses, it does seem to become mo…

I never had a credit card. I cannot remember having an issue paying with debit cards.

That network still exists, and can now even be used preferentially over Visa/MasterCard, in particular when paying online.

My debit card is both MasterCard and CB. And a few months ago I noticed that I could pick either network when paying online.

Those would be easy in comparison to the Marvel (Disney) ones. 6 expected sets ! Not to mention that it's the Arena workers, they are downstream of the card design process.

2011 is when it had its first big public boom - and bust, accompanied by even generalist press reporting on it. And the nerds at Valve would have been *in particular* aware of it. …

"Break the law" is too weak of a term since it includes routing around the monetary systems overseen by incompetent / corrupt / totalitarian governments.

That last example postdates Bitcoin, and even Bitcoin entering public consciousness (in 2011), so why bring it up ?

'stable'coins are a lie though. They just hide the risk, they do not make it go away. (At least bank accounts are insured up to a certain amount.)

If you think that 'teenager' is too old (which I am skeptical about, considering the current popularity of Roblox), replace by 'kid'. ---- More complications, more points of failur…

It's certainly possible that Valve is not being truthful about the lottery. (Would that be illegal for them to do ?)

Concert/game tickets are in a extremely different situation. SM doesn't become completely worthless past a certain (near, known) date.

Imagine buying the SM for a teenager in your family that doesn't have a Steam Account yet.

One issue here is that one, very important for the future of Valve, type of target customer here is first time Steam users : teens without a console nor a (gaming) PC. April 2026 i…

> If you know MSRP Giving a list price would make no sense in the case of an auction, in fact would be misleading, (maybe even illegal ??), and not just because of these issues. Mo…