Quoting: wytrabbit

Quoting: cprnIsn't it at this point easier (also cheaper and more scalable) to just have a desktop workstation...? And a cheap laptop on a side if you really need that mobility but, yeah, most people don't.

Depends on the job, but laptop and desktop workstations aren't necessarily exclusive to one another. You can have the desktop for your main work and the laptop to move around a building or to other buildings, but maybe you need the laptop to be capable of renders and data computing too where you're going. Maybe you need to bring the laptop home to finish work some nights, or any number of other excuses as long as you or the company you work for deem it worth it.

I don't argue. I'm just saying it's rare to really need that kind of power on the go. Most people don't. Most people would be fine not having a laptop at all but they pay for the misrepresented luxury.

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Isn't it at this point easier (also cheaper and more scalable) to just have a desktop workstation...? And a cheap laptop on a side if you really need that mobility but, yeah, most people don't.

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They say handshake doesn't happen with mouse because it's laying on the desktop. I just checked and have no issues clicking the mouse few mm over the desktop while the laser still catches on the surface and moves the cursor. Does it mean a VR user can stabilise his or her cursor by just resting a wrist on the table while doing the precise work?

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Honestly, I never bothered to check whether I'm using it correctly. I just run:

gamemoded -r

in terminal before running a resource intensive game but fail to notice a difference FPS or stutter wise. Am I doing something wrong or is it just a subtle change?

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Quoting: Mal

Quoting: cprnClearly, you can. Showing ID in a physical world is nothing more but using a 2nd trusted factor. In cards world it's called a 3DSecure gateway - using 3rd party API (in this case the bank or card issuer's API) to 2nd factor the authentication between two endpoints (i.e. buyer's browser and seller's website). But banks dictate the cost of each 3DS request and it's not cheap so small publishers skim on it (as well as other risk management services). This is the reality of what's going on and the true cause of the issue. Cards are flawed. Extra security to mitigate responsibility for those flaws costs money. Publishers don't like to spend money so they don't buy it. They get burned with chargebacks.

I know that ad hoc solutions exists. But they are expensive to implement and not very practical too. My argument is that in the grand scheme of things, the system doesn't work simply because transaction costs are hidden to the card holder and passed to the seller instead. Now ofc nobody like to see the commission charged on them (I don't like them at least). Yet in this situation the card holder is the one with the power to chose one circuit over another, while the seller is the one that is only being damaged by restricting itself to accept only certain circuits or making the payment process more clunky than necessary. So for the natural mechanics of market competition to occur, you need rules that create the conditions for a mindful choice by the actor with the actual decision power: the buyer. But this today doesn't happen, and often the most convenient payment circuits from customer perspective are the less efficient. Which creates a situation where the worse actually thrives over the better.

That's why I say that removing fees from sellers and charging them to buyers is part of the solution to create the conditions for the market quickly fixing the issue. First payment circuits being responsible of absorbing the costs of fraud use would force them to find the best tech solution to limit that or get an insurance to edge the risks. All while keeping the service convenient and the costs as lowest as possible in order to remain competitive with other circuits, given that those costs are charged to the one that can actually chose between one or another, the customer.

Let's agree to disagree.

I say 1 factor card payments should be dropped worldwide because 1 factor means it's a flawed payment method from the very beginning (i.e. it's never ever safe to pay with a card without 2nd factor and since all the middle-parties have access to this 1 factor - a complete set of information needed to pay with your card - you can only "trust" them to either not store it longer than necessary or store it safely and not re-use it without permission and never sell it illegally) and the system can only be fixed by securing them (i.e. adding a 2nd factor). As long as it's not done and people pay with their card everywhere, there will be card frauds.

You say the system is fine on a technical standpoint even though it's unsecure, but it doesn't work because of the punishment the merchant receives for allowing the fraud payment to occur in the first place because he was greedy, allowed unsafe payments and "saved money" on other forms of fraud prevention and risk management. You say this punishment in form of chargeback fees should be not only visible but also charged to buyers to force them to buy extra insurance or use that 2nd factor (knowing that 2nd factor won't work if the merchant doesn't use a 3DS payment gateway and that small merchants don't use 3DS payment gateways because they're cheap bastards) and that it should somehow be done without increasing the inconvenience of payment with a card.

On my last comment (in this discussion as a whole) I dare to say your proposal is exactly what we had before chargebacks. Take away the right to claim a chargeback entirely and you'll have what you want. Card owners paying for the security flaws of 1 factor card payments. Chargeback clause is a bad fix to a badly designed payment method. What you propose is 2nd bad fix to revert the 1st bad fix.

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Quoting: Mal

Quoting: cprnIt's so unfixable card associations invented insurance in form of chargebacks. It's as simple as that.

Chargebacks just charge sellers with the responsibility of identifying the buyer. Which makes also sense in the real world. You can ask for an ID card or something to identify the card holder. It's easy, fast, cheap.

But the evil is when lawmakers use real world common sense to regulate the digital one. Clearly you can't ask sellers to do something even large multi nationals have issues to do. Common sense is that the payment circuit identifies who is taking advantage of its credit service.

That and eliminating seller commissions would create the conditions to solve the issue in few years.

Clearly, you can. Showing ID in a physical world is nothing more but using a 2nd trusted factor. In cards world it's called a 3DSecure gateway - using 3rd party API (in this case the bank or card issuer's API) to 2nd factor the authentication between two endpoints (i.e. buyer's browser and seller's website). But banks dictate the cost of each 3DS request and it's not cheap so small publishers skim on it (as well as other risk management services). This is the reality of what's going on and the true cause of the issue. Cards are flawed. Extra security to mitigate responsibility for those flaws costs money. Publishers don't like to spend money so they don't buy it. They get burned with chargebacks.

What's more, it's not enough to integrate and pay for 3DSecure. G2A has that integration but over 95% of US cards doesn't have 3DS active. At least a year ago you had to call your bank and specifically ask them to activate it! If you do, you'll be bothered with 2nd factor every time you make a payment but at least nobody else is able to use your card (in theory). Still, people don't want it because if the 2nd factor is used during transaction, your card issuer can't claim a chargeback from the seller - 3DS cedes all the responsibility onto you.

Do e-commerce platforms have an alternative way of securing card payments? Sure they do! And it's almost free! I remember G2A once made a survey about adding extra security to card payments on their website and it came out very negative. It was rumoured they'll do it anyway and that's how Kinguin came to life, BTW. All they wanted to do is what Steam does now: one time 2nd factor authentication of each new payment method (e.g. new card) by charging a small random amount they later refund, and you have to tell them what amount it was proving you have access to the card's statement (i.e. you have credentials to your online banking). According to that survey (numbers are from the top of my head, it was years ago) G2A would loose around 50% of their card payments, realistically maybe up to 20%, but they are a big platform that lets people sell licenses for many many different games - not 10, out of which 7 are outdated. While people might feel incentivised to register their account and jump through hoops to add their card to that big platform, they wouldn't feel the same about a small publisher. Small publisher would probably loose about 70-80% of sales this way.

It's better than loosing 95% but still too much. So card payments security remains unfixed.

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Quoting: NanobangIf I understand how this all works (and that's a mighty big "IF") it seems to me that the core of the problem lies in the keys themselves.

It would seem that the fix for Dev/Pubs would be to either stop issuing keys or expect that they'll need to spend X dollars/euros/etc each year in determining whether a key is fraudulent or not and then rolling that into the asking price of the game.

If the devs want to sell games through their own site to individuals then they could sell actual digital downloads only---wouldn't that remove them from the key market entirely?

If someone like Humble Bundle wanted to sell the dev's game, then Humble would license the right from the devs to also sell actual downloads. If Humble wanted to sell versions of a game that could be downloaded within Steam, then similarly they would need to take that up with Steam in addition to obtaining the right to do so from the dev/publisher.

Maybe we're seeing the beginning of the end of the key reseller market entirely. A system that sprung up to fill a niche until another (largely criminal) system obsolesced it.

But like I said, I don't understand this whole thing very well. This is just what I'm able to glean from what little online reading I did before writing this.

Yes, keys aren't the best solution to distribute digital licenses. API to add license directly exists, though. SEGA's website games2gether.com is using it for example. You log in with your Steam account and press "Redeem" - voila, you have the game in your Steam library. No need to deal with keys at all.

The real issue, though, are card payments. Whole world is dumping them for better payment methods but US unfortunately doesn't. Americans were fed with ads about how convenient and safe cards are until they believed it but the truth is cards are unsecure by design. It's so unfixable card associations invented insurance in form of chargebacks. It's as simple as that.

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Quoting: x_wingG2A has their own countermeasures [...] a purchase secure [...] without having to execute the chargeback. [...]

They have, but why do you think these countermeasures exist in the first place? Because G2A doesn't want their fraud rate to go up. And yes, some percentage of their customers does fall for that but most just pay with a card specifically so they could claim a chargeback in case they've been wronged. I work for one of the biggest IPSPs in Poland and G2A used to be our customer (they might still be, not sure, I don't deal with customers any more). When dealing with them fraud prevention was the most important subject while talking about any new payment channel.

I don't understand this. People don't expect eBuy to "clean their act" and take care of counterfeits or to check if every goods sold there are legit and not stolen. Why is it not the same when it comes to similar platforms but dealing with licence keys? How's that different?

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Quoting: Eike[...] With every new release of Debian, I wonder how much I'm missing by upgrading instead of reinstalling. Any ideas?

Yup. I have this very same feeling with every distribution. Maintainers always add new default apps that are often superior or just have better integration with some other apps, change default configs... And all I do is "upgrade, yes I'm sure, prefer mine, prefer mine, prefer mine, done".

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Quoting: Patola

Quoting: cprnAFAIUit just means you're using logical partitions instead of the primary ones. In the old days (probably still a case but I'm not sure) you could have max of 4 primary partitions. (...)

No, no, it's so much more than that. Basically you virtualize (ideally) all your storage in a very friendly and flexible manner. You can use the "Unix way" of separate 'partitions' (logical volumes instead, with well-behaved legible names under /dev/name_of_vg) / /usr /opt /var /tmp /home, even set them different ways like mirroring or pinning to a drive, you can at any time dynamically expand them (without stopping anything), you can create or destroy new swap spaces at any time, you can even migrate a logical volume to another disk/media without stopping anything, you just do not feel constrained anymore by space, if your drive is next to full you just buy another drive and add it to the volume group so you keep expanding your logical volumes (which host the filesystems) as you need... It's a whole new world of possibilities, basically you feel liberated from concerns of disk space and fragmentation, and if you screw up you have easy and quick ways to repair it. Also you have new features like using your faster SDD for caching your HDD which makes the Linux LVM much better than the enterprise-grade LVMs for corporate Unixes like AIX and HP-UX.

Ha, now there's a difference between sounding smart and actually being smart. :D

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