No, it means we need a better study.

Here’s a source on that claim. The uncertainty here is due to the large margin of error, so the takeaway is that it likely has no effect, or perhaps a small positive effect.

Here’s the claim:

the study estimates that for every 100 games that are downloaded illegally, players actually legally obtain 24 more games (including free games) than they would in a world in which piracy didn’t exist.

…

points out a number of caveats for this headline number, not least of which is a 45-percent error margin that makes the results less than statistically significant (i.e. indistinguishable from noise). That said, the same study finds that piracy has the more-expected negative effects on sales of films and books (and a neutral effect on music), singling out games as one area where piracy really does seem to work differently.

I’ve thought about getting a dock for my Steam Deck, but honestly, I just either play on my desktop or Steam Deck, almost never on my TV. I also have a Switch for the TV, and I only really use it for party games.

Nah, a lot of people just buy whatever their friends have, and only own a handful of games (Madden, FIFA, etc) and just don’t think about it.

Look at how many people can’t afford the cars they own and roll negative equity into the next one, or look at how much credit card debt people have on average. People just buy without thinking too much.

Piracy doesn’t really decrease sales though, in fact it might increase them since it generates word of mouth from people who wouldn’t have bought it.

Because you can just plug it in to your TV and play. That’s the target demographic.

That’s a silly reason to pick a piece of tech IMO. I buy exclusively AMD because they offer great value, especially since they support their sockets for a long time. For their GPUs, they have fantastic drivers on Linux.

I honestly don’t care who owns them, I care that the quality is good for the price. I don’t find that to be true for Tesla, so I don’t own one. If he buys Intel, that won’t change my opinion of their products, I’ll still avoid them because he value isn’t there.

Right. They spend their free cash (and sometimes more) on R&D and infrastructure, which by definition means they’re unprofitable. Profit is what’s left after expenses, so if you have nothing left, you’re unprofitable.

China snooping shouldn’t even be the first reason it’s banned, only apps actually required for the job should be on government devices. That’s basic OPSec.

Fair point. I actually checked, and the “jackrabbits aren’t worth eating” is apparently an old wives tail. I mostly wanted to try them first since they’re everywhere and there are no limits to worry about since they’re considered a nuisance.

My goal with the rabbits is to get used to shooting rifles with inexpensive rounds (can get away with. 22lr or even pellets) and a fallback to target shooting if we don’t find any. Shotguns are fun, but throwing pigeons is hard, and you need to take turns.

I’d certainly go with shotguns next (pheasant or duck) since they are super fun.

Profitable means your revenue is higher than your expenses. Valuation is whatever someone is willing to buy your business for (i.e. what they think the company could earn in the future). They are completely separate concepts, and a highly profitable company could have a low valuation while an unprofitable company can have a high valuation based purely on the future potential of the company.

They can say what they want, but investors won’t invest if the ask is too high. These valuations are based on purchase of a given percent of shares, so you take the amount raised and divide by the percent sold and you get a valuation (a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist).

I don’t know about now, but Amazon ran a deficit for pretty much its entire existence. Amazon is a bit different though since it was part of an R&D strategy and they could’ve stepped off the gas at almost any point and been profitable.

Yeah, that’s another issue. I don’t know now to field dress a deer, nor do I know what to bring to pack it out. I’m not even sure I’ll enjoy hunting in the first place. I know my way around a gun (took my SO to a range on a date), but shooting a living animal is another matter entirely.

So I’m planning to go jackrabbit hunting first. They’re a nuisance animal, not good for eating (so no need to field dress), I can use a small caliber (SO doesn’t have experience with larger guns), and they’re everywhere. If I like that, I’ll ask around to find a hunting buddy.

Yeah, people look at me weird as well, but it’s mostly because my parents weren’t into hunting, and I have young kids and don’t want to risk them playing with my guns. Once the youngest is old enough to learn to use them properly, maybe I’ll go try my hand at hunting.

Yes, they do, I’m saying they could avoid US payment processors if they wanted to w/o really any change for users other than maybe changing the credit card they use to avoid the foreign transaction fee. That was the whole thrust of this comment chain.

I think Tuta does that since I’m charged in euros and subject to foreign transaction fees, so I doubt they pay US taxes. It’s no big deal, I just use a credit card w/ 0% FTF and I’m good to go.

And honestly, I probably wouldn’t use a VPN from them unless it was included for no extra charge. I prefer to keep my services separated.

I use Tuta, and while the search kinda sucks, it’s good enough, you just need to make sure you have all mail downloaded that’s being searched (last 30 days IIRC).

I picked them because they have similar privacy as Proton with lower prices and features I like (i.e. 3 domain names).

Surely that would be on the service, not the customer, no? They would charge a foreign transaction fee, which is annoying, but it can also be avoided by using pretty much any travel card.