Self-created incel-hell it sounds like…

Additionally, if you get the angle right the other way you can knock geosynchronous satellites out of orbit. You could literally fuck DirecTV satellites.

The regulations also only cover consumer routers… I foresee more people getting racks installed in their house soon, lol.

They make it illegal to distribute, install, use, etc. They make it illegal to sell, distribute, build, etc. any printer that can run on Marlin (hoping to force manufacturers to block anyone installing non-oem firmware on the machines at all).

I’m not saying it’s reasonable or feasible, but the people making the laws clearly don’t know or care about any of that.

Edit - If they make enough stuff illegal, they don’t need to catch you breaking the law when they decide to arrest you. They just arrest you and then figure out which crimes you were committing.

Lithium can be a pretty metal, but I’m not sure it looks its best in this state.

That’s kind of what they already want to do, or are trying to do with this legislation. And the age verification stuff has no exception for open-source. The people behind this stuff absolutely want to kill any and all open source, both hardware and software.

I believe the entire goal of RepRap was to build a machine that could build all the parts needed to build another machine. Most of the parts for a lot of machines are either 3d printable or bog-standard off-the-shelf parts that could be used for millions of other things. I have a feeling the really scary target would be software, something similar to the draconian age-verification BS being run around.

Not sure about the California bill, but the similar shit out of Washington state does have language for subtractive manufacturing as well as additive. They basically are targeting any computer controlled manufacturing.

It all feels so obviously stupid when there are people on the internet selling partially complete metal parts with instructions for how to finish them completely unrestricted. They obviously aren’t worried about stopping the “ghost gun problem”, they are worried about people having the means of production and the right to repair things they own.

Wait, so, are you just assuming every person that lives in Chicago is doing at least a little crime? wtf is this?

What does that have to do with anything here?? I don’t know about you, but my likeness is not permanently located in a public space…

Freedom of panorama (FoP) is a provision in the copyright laws of various jurisdictions that permits taking photographs and video footage and creating other images (such as paintings) of buildings and sometimes sculptures and other art works which are permanently located in a public space, without infringing on any copyright that may otherwise subsist in such works, and the publishing of such images.

Same scam as before, just made a lot easier by AI bullshit unfortunately.

What “better right for consumers” are you advocating for? The false claim that Steam bars anyone on their platform from selling cheaper is easily proven false by looking at any of the numerous websites that track prices of games from various storefronts and is the key point used by Epic’s legal team to try to garner support to break up steam in order to gain market share themselves and make the industry markedly worse.

Your post is thinly veiled “Valve bad, give money to Epic instead”, whether you realize it or not. So what is your plan to make the industry actually better?

True, which is why it is so easy to tell which one you are doing. :)

You’re just simping for a different billionaire out here regurgitating Tim Sweeney’s talking points verbatim…

Make it so I OWN my games if a dev isn’t okay with that they can sell somewhere else.

I feel like we might be more likely to be successful lobbying Valve to make this a thing than we are the government. Fingers still crossed as hard as they can be for Stop Killing Games going somewhere productive in the EU.

The interesting thing about Steam being a monopoly to me, is that the complaints are always that they charge too much… They aren’t undercutting all of the competition in order to maintain massive market share at all. The biggest complaint seems to be “they charge so much money, but I have to list my game on their platform or else I will get basically zero sales and visibility to my game!”

Yea, Steam is huge. The eventual total enshittification of Valve terrifies me, but not enough to just nuke them today and hope a better alternative materializes out of thin air tomorrow. From what I can see, their market share is purely a factor of offering a better product, so smashing them to bits just sounds like being forced to use even worse products.

I never said it was too big or too important to be broken up. I’m saying I don’t see how to split it up that actually solves the problem. I don’t think people are scared of Valve the Game Devs, maybe the hardware section but there were tons of other options on the market almost as soon as the Steam Deck took off. It’s the store that people take issue with, so how do you separate to make the store not a problem? Regionally? Have Steam NA, Steam EU, Steam Asia, etc. etc.? I suppose that is possible, but I’m unsure if I see how that actually solves the problem (even assuming you can get around people just buying from a different region’s Steam).

As for nationalizing it… I just don’t have any faith in the US government to not turn it to absolute shit on day one. Unfortunately, at this stage, I trust Valve and it’s Billionaire CEO more than I do the government. I hate to just resign myself to trying to make the most of the dystopia we’ve been given but… :(

What is and isn’t a Monopoly varies from country to country, and always turns into the same circular debate every time it comes up anyway. That’s why I was trying to avoid getting bogged down is “is it or isn’t it” and focus on “if it is, then what?” because I’m not sure a lot of people have thought that far ahead. Myself included.

Their policy is not that you aren’t allowed to sell your game cheaper on another platform, their policy is that you can’t sell Steam keys on other platforms cheaper than you are selling the game on Steam. Basically, you can’t use Steam’s infrastructure when undercutting “Steam customers”. Games that are on Steam go on sale on other platforms when they are not on sale on Steam all the time currently.

I mean, it definitely isn’t going to happen in the US anytime soon… We haven’t had any teeth behind our anti-trust laws in decades. In my lifetime we have basically seen Bell Telephone get rebuilt under AT&T.