Yes, but if they can’t actually pull off the last part… uh… that doesn’t end well.

You make good points, my view is obviously America centric.

As I literally used to work for MSFT, in various parts of their city sized corporate HQ outside of Seattle, and a few ‘smaller’, though still massive by the standards of any non megacorp, ‘satellite’ campuses in other parts of the broader Seattle area.

…

I completely agree that refusal to do reasonable location specific pricing is a huge problem, and I’d say that basically stems from MSFT being astoundingly myopic, to the point of the management culture being cult-like.

Perhaps a sort of saving grace for international customers is that uh, the US dollar is currently crashing against basically every other currency?

Or perhaps that is an actual cause of why AAA game prices go up in USD: MSFTs costs are primarily in USD, so they figure out a way to smudge costs over the whole system in a way that trickles up to them in USD, by using their influence to functionally make everything else somewhat subsidize their attempt to grow or maintain market share.

MSFT gaming seems to be transitioning to pretty much abandoning being a ‘console maker’, and moving toward ‘we are an uber publisher’.

…

But anyway… I get that from the consumer perspective, yes, it makes sense to go with GamesPass…

The problem is that from a business perspective, what this does is destroy the economics of actually making a game.

It reduces sales, which reduces profit, which means now game publishers force game studios to cut costs, so they fire half their staff or reassign them, which destroys all the undocumented knowledge of the game studio, and then they are replaced with cheaper per hour paid contractors who don’t know that information, which results in sloppier, buggier games that ironically always go overbudget, overschedule, and don’t sell as well.

…

Maybe think if it as an infrasctucture style situation, with game devs as the road maintenance crews, and consumers of games as car drivers:

If you skimp on road maintenance, and then also make everyone drive much much more, by making public transit very expensive/shitty, and cars are now all a cheap personal rental service…

… eventually the roads give out, pot holes everywhere, bridges falling apart… and the entire system grinds to a halt rather rapidly, because now, a decade later, there aren’t any more talented road maintenance crews, they all quit from the shit wages and shit working conditions, their specialized vehicles sre in disrepair, and there is also not enough money to hire and train a massive new workforce to fix all the roads.

Yeah, it used to be quite common for PC gaming magazines to include a demo disk, basically, here’s the game and the first level or two, often you could fit a couple game’s demo versions on one cd.

GamesPass could easily do something like uh… hey, this game here, you can play for 2 or 5 or 10 hours, and then if you want more, you can buy it with… I dunno, a 1/4 to 1/3 discount if you’re subbed to GamesPass, and you’ve got the playtime.

Hey, uh, is Uber still cheaper than a taxi?

Oh, no, it isn’t, and also taxis, largely don’t exist anymore, and also public transit (the much cheaper to the ‘consumer’ option) is now 10 to 15 years behind where it should be.

Roughly the same business model there.

You’re trading short term low cost and convenience and broad array of choices for long term higher prices and the broad stagnation/destruction of the entire industry, fucking over all the people who work in said industry.

Arkane sucks now because MSFT forced them to make the kind of game they did not have experience in making.

It’s like hiring a plumber to fix your electrical problems, hiring a car mechanic to diagnose your skin condition.

This is the whole thing of large publishers buying out successful dev teams, then mismanaging the fuck out of them, then destroying them, by firing 1/4 of the staff, throwing another 1/4 all around their various other studios, then hiring a bunch of contractors for the remaining dev team to babysit / onboard for 6 months before they know how to do anything useful…

…all for a game that’s either a castrated, mutated version of what the studio is known for, of course with latest trending corpo buzzwords a ‘core features’, or is just something wildly different from the studio’s previous work.

This happens with extreme regularity in the history of the video game industry.

Almost like being rich is more likely to indicate someone is a pompous buffoon that takes credit for other people’s successes and blames other people for their own failures, than it is to indicate they are some kind of Ayn Rand style entrepreneurial ubermensch, mr ‘gonzo- rand 19’.

Yet another example of:

C Suite / Upper Management doesn’t listen when a seasoned software engineer of some kind points out an extremely obvious medium/long-run problem with the business model they’re being asked to either functionally invent, or massively contribute to.

Was this written by Thor?

The word ‘standard’ does not appear in the article.

What are you talking about?

This is what is in the article:

The Trump package does, however, include a temporary tax deduction of up to $6,000 for seniors ages 65 and older, and $12,000 for married seniors.

But this only even affects people who have both SSI/SSDI and enough additional income to get over that standard deduction + the additional deduction.

https://smartasset.com/retirement/is-social-security-income-taxable

Combined Income = Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) + Nontaxable Interest + 1/2 of Social Security Benefits

If your combined income is above a certain limit (the IRS calls this limit the base amount), you will need to pay at least some tax. The limit remains unchanged in 2025 from 2024 – $25,000 if you are a single filer, head of household or qualifying widow or widower with a dependent child. The 2024 and 2025 limit for joint filers is $32,000.

The average social security payout is ~$1980 a month, or $23,760 yearly.

(not sure if thats before or after your $185 medicare deductions, ie premiums, probably before, but w/e)

So… if your only income is Social Security, chances are you never had to pay any taxes on it anyway.

What bumping the deduction does… assuming it is actually as described in the article… means that if you have another source of income, a pension or 401k, a trust paying you out, part time employment, whatever…

Well now you can take more of that money, up to I guess $31k for a single person, before you would start to get taxed.

…

So… woohoo, a fairly small amount of people can now live a life of poverty, instead of abject poverty, until taxes kick in.

For the record, with a 1/3 rent to income ratio, thats uh… now you can move up to $860 from $660 rental.

Or you can factor in that additional $200 a month as the cost of losing your food stamps (whole lot of social security recipients on that) and the just increasing cost of food now that no one is working the fields, because they’re scary bad icky brown people who need to all be fed to alligators, apparently.

Oh right and Section 8 was gutted, so a whole lot of Social Security recipients will either be getting kicked out of their housing (section 8 is a subsidy to landlords, many low income land/slumlords will go broke without it) or seeing their rents jacked up.

…

Oh right, theres also the whole… substantially gainful income thing.

If you’re on Social Security, see this tax deduction cap being raised, and then go get additional income?

Well, now you may not qualify for any payments from Social Secuirty anymore, at all.

SGI calculations and codes are waaaay too complex for me to summarize here, but arguably thats the point, to confuse the shit out of people and then either discourage them from economic activity, or just kick them off the benefits.

…

Also also, just for fun… that average of $1980 a month, average Soc Sec payout?

Assuming a month with 4 solid weeks, 40 hrs a week… thats $12.38 an hour, thats what you’re living off of.

I don’t even think you can get a full meal at McDonalds for one hour of that anymore.

I’m on SSDI, I got this email.

Here’s the full text:

Subject:

Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors

Body Text:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.

The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy.

“This is a historic step forward for America’s seniors,” said Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. “For nearly 90 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for older Americans. By significantly reducing the tax burden on benefits, this legislation reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security and helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned."

The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples. Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned.

Social Security remains committed to providing timely, accurate information to the public and will continue working closely with federal partners to ensure beneficiaries understand how this legislation may affect them.

It is probably only true in the sense that… ~90% of Social Security recipients have Social Security as basically their only source of income, basically for a single person if you make under ~$25k a year, thats under the threshold, and your benefits are not taxed.

So they’re just restating the status quo, and claiming it is actually a massive improvement because of this wonderful thing they did not actually do.

1984 shit.

Exactly.

The place is a literal tinderbox in terms of forest/brush fire risk, and its… beyond being a metaphorical tinderbox in terms of basically being a warzone…

…

In WW2, the Japanese sent mini hot air balloons up into the pacific jet stream, with rudimentary sensors, that would drop an incendiary bomb when they ‘thought’ they were over the US West Coast.

This didn’t exactly burn down the entire West Coast, the vast majority of them failed, got blown to who the hell knows where, dropped their firebombs over the ocean, into somewhere humid, failed to detonate…

… but a few of them did actually start minor to moderate forest fires, and/or blow up on fhe ground in a curious hiker or kids face, from California up to British Columbia.

Everything is much drier and hotter now, than during WW2, and military gear, mass civil unrest… yeah, whole lotta things in that situation can potentially start an actual fire.

…

Conversely: Imagine LA in a fire scenario like last winter, started by nature or random idiots or sparking power lines, whatever, but uh now its functionally under military occupation.

They’d likely attempt to assert some kind of control over infrastructure decisions, get in the way of legitimate local govt efforts to help with the fire, who knows maybe fail to evacuate a detention center in the path of a growing fire.

I give LA 35% odds of largely burning to the ground first.

Also, saying this is the kind of thing that might actually get the Sinaloa Cartel to do a hit on Jake Paul.

(or i guess i wish your life is so dull and uneventful such that you never need therapy again /j)

I would entirely seriously prefer this.

You’re talking to a high functioning autist who got two bachelors degrees simultaneously and then went off to work for various Fortune 500 companies…

… who came from a dysfunctional white trash family of abusive narcissists who all gaslight each other by default, all have various drug/alcohol addiction problems… as well as criminal records, fairly extreme religious views, fairly 90s white nationalist militia types.

Last time I talked with my dad, he was explaining to me how Tom Hank’s son killed raped and ate babies for their adrenochrome (Q Anon insane shit), and then proceeded to take me to his garage where he showed me how he assembles untraceable ghost guns by ordering parts without serial numbers separately snd then doing some light machine tooling to construct them.

… I am very much enjoying my having ghosted all of these fucking nutters, but quite seriously, when I tell therapists things like this, they often suspect I am delusional, exaggerating, lying, etc, to the point of trying to diagnose me with some kind of disorder involving persistent hallucinations.

either way the only reason I responded was to say sorry i disturbed you. not really sure i mean that any more, that was kind of a dick reply but whatever

you’re in ‘therapist’ mode, thats why you sense hostility from me.

you presume you have a better … at least potential, understanding of myself, of any topic you feel you are well versed in, than I do or potentially may, and you speak and ask rhetorical questions with arrogance and authority, presuming you will be able to prove yourself as correct.

then on a dime you will flip to acting offended or outraged, as if you have not been being rude the entire time, by not actually reading or understanding what I say, and by throwing in your own assumptions first, then coming to conclusions, then getting emotional over those conclusions… when you could have just asked for clarification in good faith.

I have already expressed to you mutliple times that I require a therapist who understands how to communicate with and to a high functioning autist… and you continue to exemplify why this is the case; you have no idea how to connect with an autist, as evidenced by the fact that you do not understand why I do not appreciate the things you have been saying to me, the way in which you have been saying them.

In less words: you could stand to be more humble, less conceited.

I mean, I explained why I don’t really need a basic therapist beyond just going over the basics of CBT, which I’ve already done now… but sure, ok, thanks?

For what its worth, I’m not the single downvote your comment here has.

Fair point.

But we’re on .world here, ie Reddit 2.0, ie, almost everyone is much closer to a normie who is way more uninformed than they think they are and way more confident than they should be.

But also, again… fair point.

I also like that the door isn’t actually the correct door, great for people with anxiety rofl.

Where’s the door?

Not in frame you nervous wreck, have fun!

Hahahah!

Either stopkillinggames.com has crashed…

Or the counter has exceeded its max possible value.

UPDATE:

We’ve done it.

Don’t stop signing up!

Get these damn numbers as high as they can go!

…

Clocked at about 16:13 UTC/GMT, or 4:13 PM UTC/GMT, Thursday July 3rd, 2025.

…

Fuck July 4th.

Gamers…

This is our independence day.

It is entirely disingenuous to just pretend that LLMs are not being widely promoted, marketed, and discussed as AGI, as a superintelligence that people are familiar with from SciFi shows/movies, that is vastly more capable and knowledgeable than basically any single human.

Yes, people who actually understand tech understand that LLMs are not AGI, that your metaphor of wrong tool wrong job is apt.

… But seemingly about +90% of humanity, including the people who own and profit from LLMs, including all the other business owners/managers who just want to lower their employee headcount … do not understand this, that an LLM is actually basically an extremely advanced text autocorrect system, that frequently and confidently lies, spits out nonsense, hallucinates, etc.

If you think it isn’t reasonable to continuously point out that LLMs are not superintelligences, then you likely live in a bubble of tech nerds who probably still think their jobs or retirement are secure.

They’re not.

If corpos keep smashing “”“AI”“” into basically every industry to replace as many workers as possible… the economy will collapse, as capitalism doesn’t work without consumers who have jobs, and an avalanche of errors will cascade and snowball through every system that replaces humans with them…

…and even if those two things were not broadly true…

…the amount of literal power/energy, clean water and financial capital that is required to run the whole economy on these services is wildly unsustainable, both short term economically, and medium term ecologically.

… As best I can tell…

He actually, legally changed his first name to Thor.

And he has gone by Thor for… at least 5 years?.. in his Twitch streaming career.

I fully agree this is an insult to the old Gods, but … Thor is apparently literally his actual name.

His older username / online handle was ‘Maldavius Figtree’ or something like that, can’t say I am aware of his actual birth name.

Well, there’s at least two aspects here:

Fucking Thor, PirateSoftware.

Up untill Ross posted his ‘SKG is dead’ video… Thor had by far gotten the most views of anyone with a video discussing SKG.

And Thor… well, he was anti-SKG, and had been spreading a bunch of objectively false bullshit about it, actual FUDD.

So… about half of Ross’s video was dedicated to pointing out how Thor was wildly misunderstanding things, and fairly graciously and politely trying to correct these misconceptions.

So here’s the two sort of things at play I see, in terms of ‘why sudden surge now?’

1. Thor was just shown to be objectively, factually wrong. Thus, the immediate effect of this would be to reiterate and clarify and reinforce with more specificity what SKG actually is… and that could directly convince people to give a damn, to believe in Ross’s SKG over Thor’s misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.

But uh, almost certainly much, much more relevant:

2. Ross doing (1) created an absolute drama shit storm via the way youtube works now… which is very much just drama mongers and commentators reporting on e-drama. (1) kicked off an actual, organic, honest to god, truly viral explosion of many, many people who’d basically never heard of any of this before, mostly dogpiling on Thor for being such a disingenuous, egotistical asshole and liar, but also of course encouraging people to sign the SKG petition.

This kind of absurd, out of nowhere explosion of popularity of some topic, idea, meme, whatever, that spreads from person to person to person, from the ground up instead of top down… this is what something going ‘viral’ originally meant in the earlier days of the internet, 15 to 20 ish years ago.

You know, it spreads, from host to host, like a pandemic outbreak, shockingly rapidly.

These days we have everything hypermanaged by algorithms that silo you into your own content niche… and this was an exceptional enough of an event that it broke containment.

Videos like … this entire topic/event/story… used to be what the YouTube trending tab looked like… just totally random shit that for whatever reason, a bunch of people organically shared with each other, back when the algos were much, much more primitive.

…

Anyway… extremely ironically, a whole lot of the viral nature of this is due to Thor being just such an astoundingly massive piece of shit liar and manipulator.

He has a whole entire history of being astoundingly cocky, arrogant, dishonest, deceptive, intellectually inconsistent, rhetorically manipulative, etc, and it is genuienly… just astounding, i dont know what other word to use, to go through every single shitty thing Thor has done or said, not only in regards to SKG, but many, many other things Thor has done.

Basically, Thor is now a lolcow, a perfect person to milk by making content criticizing him, because he really is that much of an unbelievable, outrageuous idiot asshole.