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Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

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Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#881

Post by wilde »

seankimdesign wrote: post #863
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #734

If you've got an automated vetting process with a 99.999% success rate, but are dealing with billions of accounts, that's still tens of thousands of false positives. At that level, "percentage" is an insufficient measure. You want "permillionage", or maybe more colloquially "DPM" for "Defects Per Million" or even "DPB". You'll still get false positives though, so you provide an appeal process. But what's to prevent t…

Can you please elaborate on bad actors absuing the appeals process? Is your point about how everyone will automatically appeal, making it difficult for genuine queries to receive the human attention they need? Or is there another vector of abuse you were thinking of?

It’s even worse than that because the bad actors are doing this at scale and will have automation to auto-appeal while normal people will sometimes shrug and decide it’s not worth it. So your appeals queue likely contains a higher flow of bad actors than the distribution of FPs.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#882

Post by chrischen »

Google’s product philosophy is more like they are providing the technology, not the product. If the product fails, then it is your problem because they only offer up until what their tech actually does.

Had a similar experience with Google Ads where their automated systems shut off our paid ads just before Black Friday due to a technical error, and despite having constant human sales contacts none of them could do anything useful.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#883

Post by romwell »

roenxi wrote: post #168
romwell wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their new slogan is hilarious. It's not even one slogan, it's three: * Respect the user * Respect the opportunity * Respect each other The first one is obviously a joke, because nothing says "respect the user" like canceling a beloved service with millions of users, or "updating" the product while losing half the features. The last one makes you wonder why they had to put it into a slogan. Isn't it the baseline expec…

> Compare to The Mafia Code: Including that doesn't help your argument much. And apart from "do not be an informer" and "don't rock the boat" the mafia code is pretty much unarguably good advice. Employees should be following it. We'd all be better off if everyone was rational, honourable, independent and classy.

I thought my point was obvious, but no, it's HN and I have to spell out everything explicitly.

The Mafia Code isn't bad because it has bad stuff.

The Mafia Code is bad because it doesn't prohibit awful stuff.

The Mafia Code says nothing about being not evil, or, for that matter, not killing your enemies, not extorting non-mafia people, and so on.

It's all about being loyal to, and protecting the interests of the Family.

Which is what Google aims to be - one big family, which will take care of all your needs, as long as you follow the code.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#884

Post by romwell »

An0mammall wrote: post #174
romwell wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their new slogan is hilarious. It's not even one slogan, it's three: * Respect the user * Respect the opportunity * Respect each other The first one is obviously a joke, because nothing says "respect the user" like canceling a beloved service with millions of users, or "updating" the product while losing half the features. The last one makes you wonder why they had to put it into a slogan. Isn't it the baseline expec…

TIL the Mafia has a pretty decent, humane code of conduct.

> TIL the Mafia has a pretty decent, humane code of conduct.

Towards other Mafia people.

Which is a key point. People who aren't in the Family have different opinions of people on the other side of the tommy gun barrel and its humane usage.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#885

Post by josephg »

bogwog wrote: post #432
josephg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good reason to keep using gmail? I've only got good things to say about Fastmail - which is paid, reliable, faster than gmail and private. And they're reinvesting some of their revenue into making better standards for email. I haven't needed to contact support, but I think they have a manned tech support email address too.

If you're going to switch email providers to something like Fastmail, be smart about it and register a custom domain, and pay a little extra to hook it up to your new account (unless Fastmail lets you do it for free). Just get a domain like `Smith.com` and then use the email `John@Smith.com`. Then it doesn't matter if you're using Gmail, Fastmail, Protonmail, etc. You can switch to a different company whenever you wa…

I recommend everyone does this; not just if you switch to fastmail. Having your email identity tied to a particular service provider is a terrible idea. Email will probably be with us until we die; and chances are very high you won't want that particular email service provider for 60 consecutive years.

I used gmail with a custom domain for years before I finally decided to move to fastmail, which made the move pretty painless. That said, when I set it up gsuite with a custom domain was free. I don't think thats the case any more.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#886

Post by hbn »

amelius wrote: post #290
2malaq wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the good old Don't Be Evil days. I've asked so many people if they can remember Google's old slogan. Nobody does.

Don't Be Evil is so stupid. It's like Disneyworld having the slogan "we won't kill your kids".

It was a funny cute thing when they came up with it cause they were a landmark company built on the web, breaking new grounds in terms of how businesses will be run in the future, sticking it to the establishment, etc etc etc

Now they are the establishment. Their power and influence is on par with the US government, so it's an expectation that they should actually not be evil. But they fail at that in the most basic ways and they're not held accountable for it because "they're a private company, they can do what they want!"

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#887

Post by rodgerd »

nvarsj wrote: post #528

I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of…

> I feel like Google is a case study in an engineering only company. Everything is reduced to a technical problem. Incentives are aligned to solve technical problems. No one wants to work on something unless it is technically interesting and new. There is no incentive at all for delivering an excellent user experience over the long term - which usually can't be done with tech only, and involves a lot of dredge work of continuous introspection and improvement.

This goes well beyond Stadia - Google has an air of institutional contempt for humans, especially humans who aren't inside Google. Dealing with humans who are struggling with getting bounced by "the algorithm" is something they simply aren't interested in.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#888

Post by arendtio »

_qulr wrote: post #285

It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies. At the very least, companies must be legally required to present you in writing with the so-called violation of terms they're accusing you of, evidence of the violation, and a phone # or other immediate contact so that you can dispute the accusations. It's insane that these basic legal rights don…

> It's painfully clear at this point that we need a consumer "bill of rights" to protect us from these giant tech companies.

It isn't the only solution to this problem. Not using their products is another one. However, in some sectors (e.g. smartphones) it is next to impossible to not use their products, especially because they are build on centralized schemes. But regulating those things is probably harder than a consumer rights bill. But the downside is probably, that a consumer rights bill would not just affect the few large corporations, but many smaller ones too.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#889

Post by shakezula »

rkalla wrote: post #837
shakezula wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, we need better laws around customer service and data handling, absolutely. For (as far as I could ever tell) no reason, Facebook marked my account as a bot in roughly 2015 and refused to let me access any of my account data until I proof of identity. They wanted a picture of my driver's license and a picture of me to confirm. I never sent it in, instead emailing and asking if there was any other way to get v…

They did this to a lot of accounts back in the day and I suspected then (and now) that it was to encourage (force) people to upload high res pics of their PII information to have on file.

I had and still have the same suspicion. I had a lot of friends who said they had the same thing happen around the same time and they all just did it. The real tinfoil hat part of me wonders if it was to aid efforts being fed and ramped up by firms like Cambridge Analytica et. al. in anticipation for the 2016 election and their data collection ops as a whole.

Re: Terraria on Stadia cancelled after developer's Google account gets locked

#890

Post by vkou »

newswasboring wrote: post #753
vkou wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are equating a world without Facebook to a world without running water, you need to spend a week camping, where you leave your phone at home. You'll very quickly discover why they are not at all alike.

Oh if you think running water is important, try growing up in a desert. You will quickly realize still water is enough. WTF is this line of logic?

1. I'm not sure you understand what running water means. It's not water that flows down a river, it's water that comes from a tap. The whole point of running water is that a utility delivers it to your home, regardless of whether or not your town is in a rain forest, or the middle of a desert.

2. You'll die in three days without water. You'll probably be healthier if you spent three days without Facebook.

3. I can't collect water for myself where I live. I suppose I could walk down to the lake, and manually bring up a few buckets of water, but it won't be safe for me to drink. I suppose I can also go buy bottled water, at a ~million-percent markup. There is no economic alternative for me to get water, other than through the water pipes laid to my apartment, by my water utility. I am a completely captive customer for my utility. My water utility has monopoly control of special-purpose one-of-a-kind infrastructure that is used to deliver water to my apartment. That is why my utility is regulated.

4. Unlike with my tap water, there are plenty of functioning alternatives to... Whatever it is that Facebook does for me. If Facebook shut down tomorrow, my life would be mildly disrupted for a week or two, and then would go on with little change.

On the hierarchy of needs, we have air at the top, followed closely by water, shelter, and food, followed at some distance by electricity, and way down the street, that we can barely make out, by grabbing a pair of binoculars, we will see 'Facebook'.

It's just not that important.

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