That it was offered is nigh impossible to prove if the offer is only made verbally though. And conversely, if they make the offer an “official act” they are immune again.

Yeah but like I said, if you promise some other form of compensation on the level or above what they lose in benefits, you will still find people willing to follow these illegal orders. Hell you could find people willing to follow illegal orders even before this ruling, but now that the presidents right to give illegal orders is explicitly enshrined in constitutional jurisprudence this pre-existing problem is much worse. I doubt those people will care about a dishonourable discharge, on the contrary it will make them martyrs to “the cause” and they will be worshipped for it. And it remains to be seen how all this would play out in court, I guess it’s quite possible for the defence to argue that if the president has immunity for giving orders, their subordinates have immunity for following those orders.

All good points if true. However I will say that to my limited understanding a crime under a specific law having been pardoned, that same law can then not be used to prosecute this crime anymore. Meaning states would have to find a different (preferably state) law under which the same offence is punishable.

And that is all disregarding other issues like packed courts, republican controlled states, the vagueness of double-jeopardy in this regard, and the general chilling effect a presidential pardon would have on prosecutors to even press charges in the first place.

The loss of benefits is easily circumvented by promising a golden parachute along with the pardon, so I could still see a lot of fanatics doing the crime “for country and freedom” or whatever they tell themselves.

Overall this seems like a potentially dangerous erosion of checks and balances that is easily abused when put in the wrong hands. As the dissenting opinions in the ruling openly state.

Ok yeah fair enough, that sounds reasonable. But to my knowledge the UMCJ is a federal law, not a state law, so how does that line of argument factor in there? You cited that as an example of checks and balances that would prevent people from following illegal orders, but it being a federal law still means the president could circumvent it with the official order plus pardon combo, at least if my understanding of this new supreme court ruling is correct.

IANAL, but there is the presidential power to pardon. So the president could in theory give an illegal order (as long as it is an official act they have immunity) and promise a presidential pardon once the order is fulfilled (therefore extending immunity to the perpetrator). Meaning the president can entirely circumvent the UCMJ.

(not actually everything, but I get your hyperbole)

How is it hyperbole? All artificial neural networks have “hallucinations”, no matter their size. What’s your magic way of knowing when that happens?

That’s not really contrary to the point, but orthogonal to it.

What? According to the article based on which we are discussing this news that is the point (allegedly). And it is unrelated to your point yes. I’m not entirely sure where you even came up with your point to be honest.

Your argument is the same kind of “consumer rights” argument that I’ve seen everywhere on the internet, because you are implying that there is material harm to the people of Vietnam caused by Steam’s banning. Which is a fairly specious argument. It’s the loss of a luxury item. No one is materially harmed by it.

I guess the consumers, i.e. the people of Vietnam in possession of this luxury item, would disagree with that assessment. Especially if they have sunk significant finances and/or time into their Steam account.

It’s not like Vietnam banned insulin.

Nobody said it is?

And while you may not use the same language, you are effectively saying that every consumer on the planet should have free access to the best products available for whatever “thing” they want. In this case, video games.

Again, what? I’m saying people will want to keep access to something they already paid for, their games on Steam and the according metadata like savegames, multiplayer access, and such. Not sure how you managed to pull this interpretation out of what I said, but be assured it’s incorrect.

It’s a de facto argument for free market economic policies.

Since the whole logic chain that led you to this conclusion was already riddled with errors from the very beginning this is simply a non sequitur.

But if the Vietnamese video game industry is actively harmed by Steam, an American company, using its vast resources to outcompete Vietnamese publishers, then what is your opposition to this that doesn’t encompass a de facto defense of free market capitalism?

Not GP but the article didn’t say that Steam outcompeted local developers by “using its vast resources”. On the contrary, it alleged that local developers cannot compete on Steam with international developers, because those do not have to apply the local regulations:

Citing it as “an injustice to domestic publishers”, Vietnamese studios reportedly say that local game development “will die” if Steam is able to keep releasing games without the same government scrutiny as domestic games.

A somewhat shaky argument considering that the same is true for many other countries applying their own local regulations, which Vietnamese developers do not have to follow.

But anyway, what is my opposition that doesn’t encompass a de facto defence of free market capitalism? The damage to the users. What about all the Vietnamese people losing access to Steam’s online features, which are arguably necessary nowadays for many games, especially multiplayer ones. And for what? To benefit Vietnamese businesses? Not very socialist of you comrade Vietnam. *smh*

In any case, this is all pure speculation at this point, since both parties have yet to make a statement about the situation:

At the time of writing, there’s been no formal word from Vietnamese authorities or Steam about the “ban”, […]

That said, my current head cannon goes something like this:

Vietnamese devs: Dude, these regulations on games are killing us. We can’t compete on Steam with games like these.
The Party: Okay we hear you. *bans Steam*
Vietnamese devs: Wait, what? (← we are here)

Edit: formatting

pet open source projects that no one else ever seems to contribute to, not […] software that holds up civilization

SamePicture.jpeg

I’m involved in the development of an addon for the Classic WoW versions (Questie), and the thing I do there is such a convoluted process that not doing it feels like letting my fellow devs and the users down. But you can do development on the PTRs and beta servers, so I haven’t given money to Blizzard in a long time. Now you could argue that this is even worse in regards to supporting Blizzard than just paying for a game, but I rationalise it to myself with the fact that the newer clients will inevitably be used for private servers just like the old ones were (some already are actually).

Neither. Battle.net is Blizzards game launcher and store. They also own that domain, but the name usually refers to the binary.

The WINE_SIMULATE_WRITECOPY=1 %command% is the Steam launch option you set, with %command% meaning roughly “what Steam would do without any launch options set”.

The whole process was a bit finicky and I did it a few month ago, but from what I remember it went something like this:

• Download battle.net installer
• Add it as non-Steam game to run it
• Locate the newly created prefix in Steam directory
• Add the Battle.net.exe in it as a non-Steam game, then remove the installer (not the other way around or the prefix will be deleted)

Oh so that’s what you meant. Thought you meant don’t use Lutris at first because of how you worded it. That makes much more sense.

AFAIK you can set Lutris up to use GE or Proton builds.

Did that too a while back, but anecdotally it feels lees buggy through Steam, especially regarding updates.

Also clicking the Stop button in Steam doesn’t leave behind zombie processes off Battle.net.exe and Agent.exe, which I had to manually kill when using Lutris. Assume that’s due to Protons(?) pressure-vessel thingy.

there must be a bit more to it than that. AIM, Skype, and several others were viable options with existing userbases.

Once upon a time in a messenger landscape far far away there lived a king called XMPP. It had a lot of powerful children, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google+, and even Skype amongst them. And they all worked together in a big federation towards the commonwealth of all, freely sharing their metadata. But then some of the children grew greedy, jealously guarding their own gardens behind higher and higher walls, breaking down the federation. And thus the era of the warring messengers began. But prophecy foretells of a prince to unite all the disparate standards in one big Matrix again, completing yet another revolution of the XKCD 972 wheel of time.

For real though it was phone numbers. WhatsApp always worked based off of phone numbers, which is an identity confirmation method that was immediately familiar to most people at the time, even more so than email.

Just highlighting the propaganda for those unfamiliar with it. Seemed à propos.

Agreed. And the (probably unintended) irony is that the Berlin Wall was ostensibly built in order to keep the capitalists out. Be careful what you wish for, especially when it’s a wall. They work both ways.

Oh you are right, I misread that. Thanks for pointing it out.

it’s definitely more pro-privacy than Brave or FireFox. I’ve never had to jump through a captcha to use Google in those browsers.

You have this backwards. Google showing you captchas is basically them saying they can’t match your browser to any know (shadow) profile they have already stored. So they aren’t sure you are a human and if so which one specifically. Getting harassed with a captcha is essentially like a badge of honour for your browsers privacy settings.