Well, that and the several billion dollars in Gaben's bank account.

Private companies are still corporations, guys.

Yeah, if it isn't it will be. If you extrapolate their current moves to a world where PC gaming is entirely controlled by them, maybe even from the OS level downwards, and there is also a set of console-like standalone platforms on handheld, set-top and VR segments.... well, that's a level of control over a massive media industry that I don't think anybody has had before. Especially not a private company whose ownership is two cheeseburgers and/or an unfortunate knife sharpening accident away from changing overnight.

I'll be honest, I don't think that's the reason. I also think those numbers may be different but they may both be indistinguishable from zero when plotted against natural languages. You're right about it being hard to define what counts as a "Esperanto speaker". I can't decide if that makes the Python comparison better or worse, though.

Man, I don't like the Steam monopoly on principle, but I have to admit I do struggle to pay attention to Epic exclusives. It's simply the launcher I open the least after GOG and Steam. I've though "hey, wasn't that Ubi Star Wars thing out" like two or three times and forgot about it between remembering that's an Epic thing and deciding whether I wanted to buy it.

But hey, since we're going multiplat again, I could use some newer Ubi games on GOG, too.

Oh, sorry, you misunderstood, I didn't mean you specifically, I mean you as in "why would you ever do this", as in "why would anybody ever do this".

Languages, as we've established, are complicated.

There is literally no other thing that needs regulation more. It's the entire reason contracts are a thing that exists. If anybody comes to you claiming they'll set your working conditions based on empathy, that's your cue to find a different job and a good union.

"The root of all modern languages" is a heck of a thing to say about Latin, and I'm pretty sure several billion people haven't quite gotten that memo. Calling a chunk of Europe and a thin slice of Africa "the entire Universe" is also a spicy take. Come for the programmer humor, recoil in disgust for the rampant ethnocentrism, I guess.

I mean, French is vulgar Latin at best. And even if it wasn't obviously spoken by all sorts of French people, elites or not, it's also the official language of a bunch of other countries, from Monaco to Niger. "Elites and certain circles" is a very weird read, which I'm guessing is based on US stereotypes on the French? I don't even think the British would commit to associating the French with elitism.

Russian speakers being "mostly autoritarian left" is also... kind of a lot to assume? I'm not even getting into that one further. I don't know if the Esperanto one checks out, either. "Esperanto speaker" is the type of group, and this is true, whose wikipedia page doesn't include statistics but instead just a list of names. Which is hilarious, but maybe not a great Python analogue. It may still be the best pairing there, because to my knowledge English speakers aren't any worse at speaking English than the speakers of any other language. They are more monolingual, though.

It just all sounds extremely anglocentric to me, which is what it is, I suppose, but it really messes with the joke if you're joking about languages specifically. One could do better with this concept, I think.

I think this thread is meant to flatter programmers and make linguists and sociologists extremely angry.

You can, in fact, ask that. It's just that you shouldn't have to because labor conditions should be regulated by law.

Anecdotal, but relevant: I had forgotten what the "smears" were supposed to be until I saw this and went "oh, right, they did that".

It is the exact opposite of that. Easily the best paced strategy game in years. This thing moves. It flows. If Anno had somehow managed to channel the narrative of Snowpiercer and the compulsive clicky crunch of Clash of Clans it would be this.

It's really, really good.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've promised mutually exclusive things to a bunch of council members and I have to somehow navigate a multi-party system without being forced to use the elderly for food.