Just a minor correction: the 100$ one time deposit cannot be reclaimed manually. Instead, it gets automatically returned once your game hits 1000$ in sales.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/appfee

The purpose of this fee is to block low effort automated scam games from misusing the shop.

Many successful indie devs have voiced that the 30% is actually impossible to beat for them if they tried other distribution approaches. Some even closed down their existing alternatives including self hosted shops which would grant them 100%, simply because the overhead costs ruin the percentage for them, plus a whole lot of time and effort that have to go into maintaining that.

Yes, steam has a very strong monopoly position on the games distribution market. That is problematic for all the usual reasons with monopolies. What makes steam unique is that the company behind it, Valve, has demonstrated in all their efforts that maximizing short term profits is not necessarily their prime directive. This can obviously change at any time, so being wary is always good, but convenience is simply extremely attractive to everyone involved, devs and customers alike.

The Germans never got even close to where the sphinx is located in WW2. The Allied stopped the Axis advance in North Africa hundreds of kilometres west of there.

Oddly, this also seems like a very weird Nazi token. Hitler's name is misspelled: he never was called "Adolph", ever.

Also, the Nazi swastika is always supposed to be tilted at 45°, also not the case here.

Almost if it's not authentic at all.

Japan had a lot more wood-only city buildings back then compared to the colder climate in Europe, where more massive stone architecture was common. In Europe, cellars are also common/default, unlike in Japan.

During high heat firestorms, most of the wooden material burns up and the ash gets carried away. The photo definitely shows cleanup and very likely was not taken the day after the bombing, but a single firestorm definitely can produce these results, much like other examples in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Würzburg,... Except those had much more stone rubble standing afterwards.

Everyone wants cheap cars, but that's not what this is about. This is about fair and competitive markets and products.

China heavily subsidizes their car industry. Actually everyone had been doing that, but currently China is doing it more.

Subsidies become a problem when they don't serve to make necessities affordable in-country, but are used to boost sales in foreign countries, while hurting their local industry.

Now you might conclude that "why don't we just subsidize or own manufacturers more as well so cars get as cheap as China's?"

Well, where do you think the money for subsidies comes from? Taxes. So in the end, it's just another scheme to make the general public pay for things that only part of the population needs, and it reduces pressure on manufacturers to innovate, leading to stale products. Which is a big reason why Western car companies are not competitive: the West has done exactly what China is doing now. We have subsidized the car industry massively in order to push or products into the global market. Those subsidies were considered worth it, because it created a trade surplus, effectively meaning wealth is transferred from the global market to mostly the car industry leaders, and a bit of it trickling down to workers as well.

After a while, the subsidies lead to corruption, inefficiency and lack of innovation, and the bubble bursts. That's how you get histories like Detroit. Equivalents exist in almost any Western country.

A means to protect against subsidized products ruining the local markets is to impose tarrifs. The US has many of those, not only against China, but also against EU companies, especially in the car market. See chicken tax. American car manufacturers were so far behind after decades of heavy subsidies they couldn't even compete with European cars ( and apparently still can't, given that the chicken tax and similar tariffs still exist). In the end, tariffs run the same risk as subsidies: over time, a protected market means the industry can get lazy and keep selling the same, because competition is forced out of the market. Tariffs and subsidies are never a viable long term solution. Both can only serve strategic purposes: either providing actual essentials to ones population or nurture change ( eg subsidized regenerative energy build up) that only exist for a limited time. Tarrifs can be used to protect strategically important industry: e.g. military or technological cutting edge tech where you don't mind paying extra for the privilege of maintaining in-country know how and manufacturing abilities.

During IVF, you don't prepare a single embryo. You prepare dozens at once.

IVF is used when for whatever reason the natural process fails. This can be due to had sperm, bad eggs, trouble with the path to the womb, hormonal imbalances, and a large number of illnesses that fuck up this delicate process. So IVF has to fight a steep uphill battle, and you want multiple fighters in the ring to increase the odds. Why do it all at once and not over after the other? Extraction of the eggs requires intense, weeks to months of hormonal therapy. The extraction is also a surgical procedure, requiring a surgeon to access the ovaries. This is painful and has health risks, you don't want to this every week. Less time and less procedures also help reduce costs. IVF is expensive, quickly costing many thousands of dollars. Last but not least, IVF is an intensely stress- and painful time for the couple on a psychological level alone. Every failed attempt weighs heavy, every miscarriage is a huge loss. Those emotions should not be toyed with and it's clearly ethical to follow the medical process with the highest success chance and least suffering.

Explaining the process: You extract many eggs and fertilize them with sperm at once. Then you wait for them to do their first couple cell divisions, usually until they are a count of 4, 8 or 16 cells, varies by nation and its laws. The more splits, the easier to qualify the health and success chance of the embryo.

Even during this early stage, multiple of the embryos typically fail to divide properly and are then discarded.

Then, the most vital and hopeful embryos are selected and implanted during another surgical procedure directly into the womb. Again, always multiple. This is because some embryos will die during the process, others will not attach. In the end, you only need one embryo to attach and get supplied by the womb, then you're on track to getting pregnant.

All the other good candidates are frozen, so you have them ready for possible future implantation attempts. It's common that the attachment process doesn't work at first try.

Once your pregnancy is carried out (miscarriage is always a big risk up until the end during IVF) and you are certain you don't want more kids, the rest of the frozen embryos are discarded.

With this new interpretation of the law, doctors and lab techs would be mass murderers.

Where do you live that providing your government id to a business is standard? In Germany, the only one outside of a judge to be allowed to request that is law enforcement ( even then only with proper cause ). Of course, some businesses are legally required to request and process your ID number ( e.g. when booking international flights, medical insurance companies etc), but these are under tight federal control and supervision to ensure data safety.

Age verification sometimes is a thing for purchasing 18+ things ( media or drugs like alcohol & smokes), but even then businesses will only ever perform a visual check of the date of birth on your ID. Technically they can never demand to hold your ID, not even for a short time just to better read the date. You only have to show them your ID. And actually recording and/or storing any of that information would be insanely illegal.

Germany / Europe might have its issues, but we at least try and take our freedom and data privacy serious. I would never dream of handing my ID to a generic business like a club for anything more than the age check.

Choosing your real name as a nickname kind defeats the purpose though. 🤔

To each his own. Some prefer the original audio simply because it is foreign, making it easier to mentally dive into a fantasy world. Others get taken out of the immersion by having to read subs and not focusing on the screen all the time.

Isn't it great that nowadays we have a real choice, so everyone can enjoy media how they want?

"Help" is a inflammatory hyperbole. IBM had good financial relations with Nazi Germany, and its tech was heavily used in many bureaucratic endeavors, just like in many other nations. This included holding a census, organizing many of the fairly recently federalized infrastructure systems such as railway, telephones, etc. Remember, Germany was only merged a couple decades before from a mix of dozens of highly individual states with history going back almost a thousand years. So it was a lot of work to do in short time, and Germany was never before and never since(!) as centralized as it was under Nazi rule.

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that IBM as a company was even aware of, much less actively and intentionally "helped" the Holocaust. With that logic, everyone that did any business with Germany in the 1930s "helped the Holocaust". I think a more nuanced view is beneficial for all. Don't dilute the blame from those that truly deserve it.

I find it odd and oppressive how important this detailed oversight and control seems to be to employers. Home Office compatible jobs are mostly computer and thus "brain work", and here productivity never has related linearly correlated with "time staring at monitor". In office there would be plenty of smell talk, coffee breaks, diddling with smartphones and other ways to relax in between. These breaks are an important part of the productivity cycle, giving the mind a chance to process ideas and problems. In other countries/cultures there's more reliance on the concept of good faith: I work at a company that uses home office contracts by default. I can go to the office if I want, but I don't have to. Last time I've been there is five years ago, long before COVID. The company does not track our computer activity ( illegal here anyway) or working hours at all. Obviously it is still my duty to task the hours I spent working for clients for billing reasons, but that's it. The bosses expect that we spend our time in a manner that is beneficial to the company. If one runs out of work, it is expected to notify one's boss so be take can be found and assigned. Of course they still keep an eye out for slackers, but the metric never is working hours or office hours, it's "what have you spent your time on and how has it benefitted the company?" This approach leads to us employees reciprocating the trust shown. This is the first job I never minded putting in extra hours at critical days, because I know I'll just plan on more off hours or even off days during calmer weeks, giving myself to balance the hours. And no, I don't have to get approval from my employer to do that, as it is expected I schedule my time offs in a manner that is least disruptive. This means I just ask a colleague working on the same or similar projects if he's gonna be there so clients have a point of contact in case of emergency. I don't think I ever can work for a conservative, controlling employer again after having enjoyed this level of mutual trust and maturity in the working environment. It's almost as if I'm self-employed, but with all the benefits of being salaried.

Funny enough, Google is being sued in the EU right now by commercial weather service providers precisely because Google is showing their own weather results at the top of any other possible search result, which they consider unfair competition. Recent EU legislation restricts market leaders from using their near monopolistic position to gatekeep other content.

https://www.heise.de/news/Wetter-com-klagt-gegen-Google-9304318.html

So I doubt this feature will be pushed further right now.