Quoting: Doc AngeloSaying that this "must" be an infiltration is if you ask me exactly as stupid as saying that this "can not" be problematic in some way. We don't know, so why would we say something like this?

Who here thinks that Facebook doesn't do evil stuff at all? I think next do no one. We can't know what is happening. We shouldn't make strong statements when we can't back those statements up with facts and knowledge. Simply saying "it is not a problem because it's just a donation" is the same kind of baseless argument as is "this must be a buy-out".

Here's how I see it: Facebook is very obviously a company with a history of things that were not a good thing. Facebook has done a lot of awful things, and it is doing them right now. I think most people agree and for many of them, a few examples spring to mind.

So we should be aware and stay alert when such a company invests in something that is free. If you think the GPL has the power to fend of corruption of the humans who commit changes to that software, you should examine that train of thought. It wouldn't be the first free project to contain malicious code without anybody noticing, and it wouldn't be the first project to fall because of greed, even that of the creators, who I believe hadn't that in mind from the start. We are all just humans. None of us was "good" at every point in our lives. If we don't take that in mind, what good is the GPL? How much worth is the source being open, if nobody opens it, so to speak? If nobody would take a deep and good look in order to find anything malicious, of what use is it?

Of course are people going to be asking questions if such a big investment comes from such a company. That should be the expectation of any person not living under a stone for the last 10 years. The explanations from the dev team don't really bring anything to the table that is worthwhile. To be fair - there is not much one could say in this situation, because the expectation is of course that in the case of something malicious, the people behind that would still act the same: They'd say that there is no problem. That's just how it is, so everybody should take that in mind. The community, and the devs as well.

Quoting: https://twitter.com/dodgepong/status/1233107031965474822I’m sure there will still be people with tinfoil hats who think this is some evil conspiracy, but it really is not. If it was, I would be out — I have a full-time job, and the work I do for OBS is largely voluntary, so I can leave if I want to.

"People with tinfoil hats"? That is just a god-awful thing to say in this situation. Seriously.

So lets put that aside for a few moments. As far as I can see, the full-time job of Mr. Torell is producing live streams for events and competitions. His job is about using software like OBS. And it wouldn't be a completely baseless assumption that he is using OBS for his work. He needs that tool to make money.

See, I don't want to point out that there is a problem with that. Not at all. This shows how great FOSS is. One can use that software to create value, and even change it when you need it to do some things it yet can not. You can make the software better in order to create more value that you can sell and live on.

I'm just putting these words into perspective. Because when I first read them, I thought he has a full-time job that has nothing to do with OBS and everything he does for it is just a hobby. That's not the case.

I think that is an important bit to understand here.

Again, not because I want to say that Mr. Torell must be malicious, but... well, see my statements above.

On this stuff I think in terms of motivation. For corporations, the motivation is profit, sometimes with the personality of a lead person or two layered in, plus a certain . . . institutional style, about how they approach getting that profit. While on one hand I normally feel if I'm looking at a corporation in general, or for that matter Facebook in particular, that actual benevolence or altruism is obviously not going to be in that mix, on the other you can usually assume that they won't do harmful or illegal things for the sake of doing them; there has to be profit in it. A corporation's charter defines its "personality" as that of a psychopath--but a psychopath whose sole motivation is gain, not one of the actively sadistic ones.

So for instance, I really doubt Facebook would deliberately stick malware in an open source project they were helping finance. Spyware, sure--they're addicted to knowing about people. But anything that does actual direct harm would not enrich them and could get them in serious legal trouble, so why would they do it? Anyhow, if you're going to stick bad code of whatever sort into open source software, you don't do it by giving the project money. You do it by getting a programmer to write the code and submit it. You give projects money to gain influence over the directions the project goes, to make sure it prioritizes features useful to you. That isn't maybe great, but it usually doesn't retard the overall progress, it just hastens your stuff more, and often if a feature is useful to some big corp it's also useful to at least some other people, and with luck it's actually a generally desirable feature.
So yeah, I doubt FB contributing to this will make it worse. Some features important to FB will get a bit more priority, but since the money will speed overall development it probably won't actually slow down arrival of other needed work. Just, maybe check to see if the dang thing is phoning home.

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Quoting: scaine...then he waddled away (waddle waddle waddle).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtN1YnoL46Q [External Link]

Good lord, that has 419 million views. What the?

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Grapes? Well, as a Linux user envious of Windows' games, mine are mostly sour. Maybe some good Wine will help with that.

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Quoting: 14This is a power to the people kind of thing.

This is a power to the people with money kind of thing.
I do get that governments in general, and the US government especially, are often unaccountable to the people overall. But this is also mainly because they are instead accountable to people with money. One mechanism for helping people with money decide who gets what doesn't really make up for another such mechanism.
It is possible to have the best of both worlds IMO. The likes of Kickstarter and Patreon show the way. First, collect the taxes. Then, give everyone power to assign an equal share of the money--what do you want to fund in Gov-starter?

Back on topic, I'm sure that Facebook are here doing some combination of getting a tax break, public relations, and helping arrange for software to do what they need software to do in a way that's cheaper than writing it in-house. But one of the major virtues of open source is that it forces the results of that kind of thing to be probably fairly useful to a relatively broad set of people whether the likes of Facebook want such results or not. So I'm pleased that OBS Studio is the beneficiary of Facebook's cynical self-interested behaviour.

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Quoting: Nivve

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMy basic problem with current diplomacy in Stellaris is, agreements of most sorts cost Influence, and I need my Influence for grabbing star systems.

I like it, as you have to choose between having (early) allies or having territory. I always tend to go with territory

Yeah, me too. Just seems fundamentally more valuable. Which basically means I don't do diplomacy. Well, until late game maybe. So like, the diplomacy can be great and have a theoretically interesting tradeoff--but if the tradeoff is serious enough that you're better off not using the diplomacy system at all, it doesn't matter if it's any good.

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Went and found a video of a guy playing a bit. The basic combat concept seems interesting, with the 3d and the thing where you plan your moves and then watch a turn of simultaneous action unfold. The exploration and ship design give the impression of very basic, like very basic.

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My basic problem with current diplomacy in Stellaris is, agreements of most sorts cost Influence, and I need my Influence for grabbing star systems.

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There's the Juggernaut—a massive mobile starbase

A mod has to be created that combines this with those planet-buster ships. "That's no moon . . ."

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Quoting: razing32Hmm, barking orders into a microphone might very well convince my neighbours i am truly insane :dizzy:

Good lord, you wouldn't want that! They might vote you into office or something.

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Quoting: Liam DaweGot a reply today from Valve to clarify other sales.

Desktop client takes the initial platform, then two weeks playtime to count. All others (Android, browser) default to Windows then two weeks playtime.

So do ensure you're playing what you buy. I've personally picked up loads on browser and not got around to... so all Windows, damn.

So if I bought 'em all from my Linux Steam client rather than browser, it's OK if I didn't play 'em for a while? Makes me glad I can't remember my password . . . I never tried buying from the browser because then I'd have to remember how I log in. :D

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