But then they’d have to spend money on shoes to send to Russia, instead of not paying their lawyers!
But then they’d have to spend money on shoes to send to Russia, instead of not paying their lawyers!
Accurate. In order for this to stop the punishment needs to be more than the cost of doing business. Thankfully, Valve seem to be hell bent on doing right by their customers, in most cases at least (just to leave room for scandals I haven’t heard about or forgot 😅)
If you think that an arbitration company isn’t going to end up sympathetic to the people signing their cheques after some amount of time in operation, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Even if the loser pays (and that’s not a guarantee, some companies foot the bill regardless to make it seem like the better option to the consumer), it’s still the company contracting the arbitrators and the consumer doesn’t get a look in on that, so future business is absolutely an incentive to put the thumb on the scale. “After all, both parties agreed to be bound and waive their right to trial, so what are consumers going to do?” is the logic. Most will drop it after losing arbitration, and there are savings on court costs there too.
I don’t assume arbitration wraps up in any arbitrary amount of time (🥁). I say it’s quicker than litigation because it is, every single time. Because it is quicker it is also cheaper, every single time. Small claims court is different again, and not at question here, just to head that off at the pass.
You however do assume a lot like my location and the location of the suit I brought though, based on my vernacular, and I’d recommend against that. “Mate’s rates” could put me in the UK, or Australia, or New Zealand, or even some places in South Africa and other former colonies. None of those would be accurate.
If you push everybody into arbitration, you’ve already got the arbitrator in your pocket and your costs will still be less than litigation in 99% of cases - even class action. I don’t think you understand just how long and expensive and unpredictable litigation can actually be, but I’ve brought suit before so I do. It took four and a half years to get an initial court date from first filing the complaint. Not the trial, just a date so the judge could hear the facts of the case and opening statements from attorneys. Four and a half years of paying my attorneys, as a private individual, with a lot less money than you might think. And they were giving me mate’s rates; I’ve worked with companies where the legal work billings were in the tens of thousands per day for a single participating law office. That shit is expensive.
Maybe Valve did this to fuck their customers, but they don’t really have a track record of that, and since in the majority of cases arbitration is without question an anti-consumer move, I’d say that if your aim is to paint Valve to be the villains for this then it’s going to be an uphill battle.
Arbitration is always cheaper and faster than the courts, because the courts are very backed up especially since the pandemic, and there’s a lot of admin cost which doesn’t exist in arbitration. That is why almost every other company is trying to force arbitration. So if the goal was to save money, forcing court would have the opposite effect.
Hey hey, you’re an honorary American now! Your flag and genocide kit are in the mail (don’t worry, we’re pretty sure we got the right address from that darkweb database).
But for real there’s not much you can do but keep an eye on it. If Europe has similar credit agencies to the ones in the US, then freeze your credit and keep it frozen until you need to apply for more (new card, car, house, etc).
Use a password manager so if an account gets compromised they can’t get into anything else.
And, as advised, watch for unusual activity (but forever, not just a few months, that’s just a false sense of security).
This should keep you largely safe. My data has been leaked in dozens of breaches, but I do the above, and while I’ve had two instances of card fraud, I don’t see hard enquiries into my credit that I didn’t make even after 6+ years.
Bad parents might have had an influence, but I had decent parents, and I still moved to the other side of the planet at 20. Do you think you would you have been happy, staying put? 'Cause me, I wouldn’t do anything differently (well, a few things, but not related to my moving around).
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He washes his paws in bowls
That’s adorable 😂 Such a hygienic boy!
Yes, and at wholesale rates it’s a pretty good bang-for-your-buck, as an advertising scheme. Advertising is a numbers game about getting as many eyeballs as possible on the product, and I know I actively check for free games on the Epic launcher most weeks. Even if I don’t ever buy anything because of that specifically, it keeps the app on my computer and keeps me checking back in.
Edit: And I shit you not I just opened it to check 'cause I can’t remember if I looked at this week’s free game. Turns out it’s a good thing I did too, the Fallout collection is free right now!
(dammit, see what I mean?)
I thought exactly the same thing. I love Massive Attack but maybe they need a new name like Moderate Perturbation or something.
Oh boy. If you think this is bad, you should try waiting a few weeks or months after you’re signed up this time, then sign up for a new account using your current details, just with a different email. Spoiler: if you can answer the security questions, you’re home free.
And remember that between the Equifax leak and more recent hacks, at this point, every sensitive detail for every member of the economy is now in the hands of bad actors. If they want your shit, or into it, they’ll social engineer it.
Should passwords have maximum character counts? Sure, to prevent overflow attacks (or whatever) by pasting five different analyses of the movie Primer as your password. It should be longer than 20 in any case. But are there other, way worse security issues? Yes.
And I thought mushrooms were complicated…
Stupid brain, filling in the gaps when I didn’t even want it to…
1password offers complete import from LastPass and both looks and works similarly. Same price, I think; better software, fewer and lower-severity CVEs, better handling of breaches when they do happen. It seems to offer everything you’re looking for.
Edit: well bugger, critical flaw for 1password Mac app: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2024/08/07/critical-1password-security-flaw-could-let-hackers-steal-unlock-key/
It’s been patched, but not a good look when I just said they don’t have super bad CVEs 😑 Still true, this is rare, but important to update and address it I think.
Np dawg, I gotchu 🙌 I barely remembered myself, it’s been a while!
Lol I think we were replying to the guy at the same time even - don’t worry, I gotchu (☞゚ヮ゚)☞
And no you right, about FromSoft and Sanderson - that guy’s a hero, in my book! I got my little sister into his work, she just finished the Mistborn/Alloy saga, so I gave her Stormlight to start on. So good.
I think this was a reference to Miyazaki saying it’s the size of Limgrave: https://gamerant.com/elden-ring-dlc-map-size-shadow-of-the-erdtree/
Like OP meant
Yeah okay Miyazaki, “smaller games”, like how SotE was “the size of Limgrave”
Check out some trailers for Falling Frontier, it looks like it has a lot of potential at least.
Also, Star Sector: https://fractalsoftworks.com