Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down

>Are you sure that Bitcoin payments work much better because the amount of payments has dissipated?

I don't know. On the base layer, payments are all just transactions on the Blockchain, like any other. So it's not easy to see whether a transaction is a payment or an "investor" speculating, or something else. Then there's also other layers, like Lightning.

My guess is the relative percentage of retail Bitcoin payments, compared to speculative transactions, is now lower than 2017, when Steam accepted Bitcoin. I don't know if absolute amount of payments has reduced. Maybe?

You could look at historical charts of average Bitcoin fees[0], which gives you an idea when retail Bitcoin payments are practical, and when the fees are too damn high. Fees often got above $4, sometimes much higher, in 2024 for example, which would unacceptable for something like buying a game from Steam. Though, still, that doesn't show what impact Lighting is having on retail payments.

[0] https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...

You're conflating authority, the authorization to do something, with autonomy - the ability to use that authority at your own personal discretion. The law grants a regulatory agency the authority to do something that they would not otherwise be able to do, like nationally ban widgets. But the law does not also inherently grant them to the autonomy to do so entirely at their own discretion. For agencies under the Executive branch, the President is free to direct them to utilize their authority at his discretion.

[dead]

There's something really funny about the adjective "NSFW" being used to describe a video game, as though other video games like the Legend of Zelda are somehow "suitable for work".

> But you still said that you think most of the EU's are bad, so I'm opening the discussion with multiple that I consider to be good.

I understand your point, but I see no reason to invest time defending the EU's positive aspects. What's the point?

> Of course not, but being able to explain the decision, and thus prove that it is wrong, and have humans being able to correct it, is good. It means that stuff like United Healthcare Group using algorithms to decide if care can be paid for, with a terrible failure rate, and employees just shrugging "computer said no" cannot happen in the EU. The fact that this kind of things are considered as "EU is killing AI with too much regulation" is really concerning to me.

I don't see why "asking for less regulation" concerns you. The EU seems to listen to people like you, not people like me. I should be the one who's concerned, haha. I'm worried because bureaucracy is a slow-acting cancer. It's a process that's easy to start but incredibly difficult to stop or reverse.

The problem with bureaucracy, regulation, and welfare is that they all come with a price. Increasing costs require a strong, cutting-edge economy to sustain them. Yet, no one seems to be concerned. In the US and China, new technologies are constantly being created, while in Europe, innovation is stagnating. No one seems to care that Europe's wealth is fragile, based mainly on "old" companies or banks.

Of course, no one is against welfare; my concern is its unsustainability. As an Italian (living elsewhere in Europe), I find the situation worrying. The demographic decline is dramatic, and pension and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In Italy, a worker under 40 often earns less than a retiree. With such a sharp demographic decline, retirees have enormous political power.

Europe is aging, and so is its appetite for innovation and risk. Yet, we keep adding costs upon costs. Even if the goals of initiatives like GDPR, the AI Act, and the Green Deal are "right", we can't deny that they come with a price. This added cost inevitably makes companies less efficient in Europe. This is a simple consequence. Can we truly afford this?

How long can we keep going? The rope will break sooner or later. And why doesn't anyone seem to care?

> How is the EU killing the car market, exactly?

1) https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/dragh... 2) "The Draghi report: In-depth analysis and recommendations (Part B)" 3) Page 146

I think this report its quite comprhensive to state what its not going that well in EU.

I dont agree with everything in the document, but i think its a good starting point.