The amount of Brave and Kagi spam in this thread is nutso. I can't be convinced it's not coordinated marketing by either or both of them.
I'm not saying that there aren't some satisfied customers, but at some point a normal human being says: "Hey, 30 other people posted this. Maybe I shouldn't."
I didn't say anything about DDG. Plus, the internet is full of influence campaigns and "organic marketing," so there's plenty of reason to be mindful and question what you're seeing/reading.
A suspiciously large number of people seem to "share their experiences" whenever anything tangentially related comes up. Authentic or not, it's raising spam flags.
I've lost 2 different gmail accounts, apparently due to Google deciding to change or not respect my security settings. It's hard to say for sure. Meanwhile I still have a Hotmail email address. (This isn't me saying Microsoft couldn't cause similar issues, but I've at least been able to get things fixed through support in the past.)
I'm of the same mind that providers can be underrated risks, because it doesn't always cross people's minds that the provider could be that seemingly incompetent. It's certainly a potential situation to consider when dealing with companies that have poor support. And unfortunately, not all of them have great support or self-service tools like account recovery codes.
That still doesn't disable all telemetry from being sent. There's a whole slue of settings that you need to change in about:config and then there's still no guarantee.
Even if you follow those steps you listed there and uncheck all those boxes you're shown in the standard settings pages, then Firefox will just continue to send out 'pings' when you interact with certain elements in the browser interface. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Mozilla is like one of those politicians that just won't stop yapping about traditional conservative family values, who is later found to have several extramarital children and numerous affairs with same-sex partners themselves.
They already did this way back with their other telemetry stuff. You had to disable it through about:config and then Mozilla introduced new flags/renamed them and even added a flag if you have disabled telemetry that you had to disable again manually.
It might be possible to disable this feature through a policy file [1] just like other features can be disabled, e.g. here's how to disable auto-update:
{
"policies":
{
"DisableAppUpdate": true
}
}
Create a text file named policies.json in a directory named distribution inside the Firefox installation directory. In my case that ends up looking like this:
I've heard a similar complaint from my dentist, who said practices are being sold to private equity instead of dentists coming out of school. My understanding is that her field, it's happening through Dental Support Organizations and Orthodontic Support Organizations.
They should mention inconveniences in the review, those are relevant.
My take is that while reviews can be weaponized (and Steam does attempt to flag that,) companies are throwing the phrase "review bombing" around to try and undermine legitimate reviews and concerns from paying customers.
Epic's choice to avoid reviews, despite the resources they have at hand, is pretty squarely anti-consumer and part of why they struggle to gain consumer trust with their store.
> to manipulate an online rating system with a semiorganized campaign of unfavorable user reviews, often as a general statement of disapproval for a creator, a publisher, or other business, rather than a genuine opinion about a specific product or experience
And yeah, that's not a bad definition. This situation seem to meet that definition. It's all relative, but I don't think needing to make a free account completely ruins the experience for 99% of modern online gamers.
>Epic's choice to avoid reviews, despite the resources they have at hand, is pretty squarely anti-consumer and part of why they struggle to gain consumer trust with their store.
I think it's simply a "lose more" scenario. The sentiment changed on Epic very quickly when they had a game people wanted on Steam, so it's a pile on reason to justify their reason to love/hate. It could be spun one way or another based on mood.
I'm not claiming that review bombing doesn't exist, if it didn't Steam wouldn't need systems to counter it. I'm saying that certain companies try to save face by falsely claiming that legitimate negative reviews, sometimes left in mass, are part of a coordinated campaign or stem from illegitimate intent/sources. Often the root cause of mass negative reviews is that the business legitimately prioritized the wrong thing, made some bad/anti-customer decision, or communicated poorly with their community.
In regards to Epic, I'm not sure which game you're referencing. I don't really get the sense that the sentiment has changed and last I saw the Epic Games store still wasn't profitable after 5 years [0]. Anecdotally, the people I know using the Epic Store either do it for Fortnite/Rocket League or just to claim the free games (and some of those people never go back to play them.)
As an aside, I think the Fortnite store may have some dark patterns, but overall Epic actually does a good job of knowing who the customers are and giving them what they want, to great success. (Apologies if I'm not using the correct terms for the Epic stuff, but I just don't use it.)
I'm not a lawyer, but in general I think it would come down to the laws where this took place, the nature of the work, and the impact on the employee's ability to fulfill their job duties.
My understanding is there could be a common law duty to the employer at play, even when the employee didn't sign a noncompete and there's nothing specifically called out in the employment agreement.
It's also my understanding that if the employee acted to the detriment of the employer, such as compromising their own ability to perform job duties (as happened here) or competed against that employer, they may be in breach of that duty and could be terminated for cause depending on the specific laws.
So, if anybody is thinking about trying this, it's probably worth checking into local laws and potentially keeping records such as the hours worked for each employer. I would assume it's slightly more cut and dry when an hourly employee is in breach, since the hours are normally already tracked.
Remember, this was all done on paper before software with tagging and such existed.
I'll give a description shot, since I've been doing finance work recently. Other people can feel free to correct.
A company using double entry (as opposed to single) has a "chart of accounts." This means they have a bunch of imaginary accounts for tracking everything, including:
- Assets (e.g. cash on hand.)
- Liabilities (e.g. loans)
- Equity (e.g. investments in the company from outside parties)
- Income/Revenue: (edit: as PopAlongKid kid mentioned, I forgot this one. This could include sales revenue, but also things like interest.)
- Expenses (e.g. team lunch or a flight cost)
Some of these "accounts" may map to actual bank accounts: there is likely a liability account for a credit card or an asset account for the company checking.
Knowing all that, every time money is deposited or withdrawn (a transaction) the "double" references the fact that it's recorded in the journal (a.k.a ledger) of two accounts. (Edit: As bregma mentioned, one records where money is coming from and the other where it's going.) Often, an expense is often recorded in the checking "account" and the and the corresponding expense "account." E.g. a flight may be recorded in a travel expense "account," but you also record that the money came from the checking account. Every transaction is recorded in two places.
Beyond just being more accurate than single entry, this helps with important finance reports like Profit & Loss, since you can now see how money is moving around.
Edit: Now that I'm back on my desktop, these are a couple of useful links for understanding basic double entry bookkeeping: Accounting for Computer Scientists [0] and Accounting for Developers, Part I | Modern Treasury Journal [1]. What is a Sample Chart of Accounts for SASS Companies [2] illustrates some charts, which may be helpful for some folks.
> this helps with important finance reports [...] since you can now see how money is moving around.
This is the real benefit I've encountered. Any time I try to "simplify" financial recording for someone else and avoid double-entry, I inevitably end up wanting to perform a query that would be easy in a double-entry system but is not in any other system.
Right. I didn't mention that a chart of accounts can look different in different companies/sectors. Some accounts may be considered nested (software may even show them as nested.) Then you can roll the totals for all accounts of a type into a general category account like "Assets" or "Expenses." That makes it easier to answer questions like, "how much have we spent in total?"
>A company using double entry (as opposed to single) has a "chart of accounts." This means they have a bunch of imaginary accounts for tracking everything, including:
- Expenses (e.g. team lunch or a flight cost)
- Liabilities (e.g. loans)
- Equity (e.g. investments in the company from outside parties)
- Assets (e.g. cash on hand.)
Not sure why you didn't complete your list by adding "Income".
So double entry is defeated if you uses a computer to enter the entries. For example if you brought a laptop for 1000, but you accidently wrote 2000 AND the computer automatically entered 2000 in the asset account it would still balance even though it was a mistake to enter 2000.
In addition, you can still make the same mistake by hand for both entries. So I’m still not getting how double entries catch mistakes
There are several categories of mistake that you can make when bookkeeping. Some are caught by the double-entry system when a trial balance is prepared.
The error you've described is an "error of original entry" and will be invisible if you only look at the trial balance. It can ultimately be caught when you compare the banking ledger with what's actually in the bank.
Other errors that don't appear in the trial balance can be incredibly hard to detect and in fact, may never be noticed. This is where the real art of bookkeeping is IMO.
The types of errors that do affect the trial balance are things like forgetting to enter a purchase in the purchase ledger but entering the transaction into the banking ledger correctly. Silly errors really, but we can all need help to stop us making those.
When you reconciled the balance in your bank account / credit card statement against that in your set of accounts, you'd notice the error as the statement balance would be 1000 higher than reflected in your accounts.
In a general sense, it really doesn't matter, as long as you are consistent.
That said, there are accounting standards that define the general set of accounts for a particular industry, etc.
But every person having a set of books will want to customize it to some degree.
For instance in a personal set of books, if you want to track every person you pay, you might have accounts, 1 for every single person you have ever paid, ever.
That obviously can get pretty big! Others might not care that their electricity provider changed from Tootie inc. to Turtle inc, so they just have Utilities:Electricity as their account name.
Others might not care at all, and just have a very general "Expenses" account for things like that.
Make sense?
The important part is consistency of using the same accounts for the same transactions.
OK So it is somewhat open but you could use a set of standard accounts, I see.
Makes sense. Probably it's important to keep somewhat of a registers of accounts available to avoid making mistakes and to write directions on where things should go
There's also GAAP in the US and IFRS in Europe, which are standards for how certain things need to be done to be compliant. It's not specific about things like account names or how your ledger should be structured, but outlines many expectations and rules/constraints that build confidence in the resulting numbers.
Agreed, but every industry/sector might have their own set of standards that usually are overlays on top of GAAP/etc. For example in the US for state and local governments there is GASB: https://gasb.org
The chart can differ in different companies or sectors. In my mind, it comes back to what you want to be able to report on.
Some companies may have a larger and more detailed chart of accounts so that they can have very specific breakdowns of things. I've heard of big charts where each of a company's departments have specific accounts and all departmental transactions go there while the rest are lumped into a "Sales, General, and Admin" bucket. (Although I think it's more common to tag transactions with a department code these days?)
That said, categories can be broken down into sub-types beyond Assets/Liabilities/Equity/Income/Expenses. For example, assets are categorized based on how quickly they can be converted to liquid money and if they physically exist. So, under the assets account you may have accounts for current, fixed, and intangible (e.g. trademark or domain name) assets and you would record those appropriately.
Edit: To answer the question more directly, it depends on the company and how they've customized their accounts or guidelines. But, there are general accounting practices that mandate the need for specific things and common questions to be answered, so a lot similar structures and guidance emerge that a company's finance team could use to tell you where something belongs.
It could also be a programmer who is within their legal right to start their own company, but who doesn't want their current employer harassing or singling them out for it.
Further common situations involve trying to keep details out of the public record because they can be abused by bad actors; ones who may be looking to spam you, engage in a frivolous lawsuit, or personally harass you/your family. At least these are some of the scenarios mentioned by companies that do asset protection.
Edit: In regards to harassment, think about the abuse retail, fast food, or other customer-facing employees endure for perceived slights. It feels easy to understand why average small business owners would want privacy and to keep things in legal channels. Personally, I think the government knowing who's in charge (Corporate Transparency Act) is a good halfway point, but it's not unrealistic to be concerned about leaks or abuse with that system.
This is the elephant in the room lots of people seem to ignore. Sure, you could sell your game solely on your own website, but what's your support like? What's your refund policy if the support sucks? Will you be there 20 years later? Will your new CEO decide to start enshittifying things?
People keep putting Steam on their desktop because Valve has spent decades cultivating customer's trust, meanwhile every other MBA has been burning it for short term gain. Partnering with Valve comes with access to things like APIs and tools, but you also receive a little bit of that trust by association.
Not only has EGS seemingly failed to build something with equivalent features, APIs, tooling, etc. but in doing so they've failed to show a reason to trust them. So if the lower cut isn't resulting lower prices, what's the value prop for customers? GOG has an angles: games nobody cared to make available for a long time and being DRM free. To me it looks like Epic took the MBA route and wanted to build a moat via console style exclusivity, but that's not trust. Free games aren't trust. Just being on the customer's machine isn't trust.
(Also, these letters aren't current. iirc Vale doesn't simply take a flat 30% cut in the current day)
This is exactly it. A company giving away a product for free to me doesn’t remind me of an honest actor, it reminds me of a casino with a “free spin” voucher, or a drug dealer giving samples. I’ve seen the “create a monopoly at a loss and then enshittify and raise prices” playbook over and over. Am I supposed to be so stupid and naive as to think Tim Sweeney is my friend? Every game he gives away just sort of proves how much of an idiot he thinks I am.
Steam has a track record of making their product better and better and the biggest scandal I can remember is when they introduced paid mods since that risked undermining the free mod market and GabeN did adjust the pricing afterwards and did personally get involved with the PR fallout. Otherwise the service has just gradually gotten better and better for the customer. Steam is privately owned instead of being owned by publicly traded companies and that helps with my confidence in the company.
After a lot of digging a few years ago, I settled on the IKEA Finnala. So far it's held up pretty well.
It's not as well made as quality pieces, but I worked from the assumption that any couch I bought would be trash. Some of the nice things about a buying into a system like the Finnala are that when an arm, cushion, cover, or whatever fails, I can just replace that piece; there are aftermarket covers and legs; if I move it can be disassembled; and if a new place is smaller, the whole thing doesn't have to be trashed.
I love quality furniture, but it doesn't always fit the bill for a society where people can't afford a single family house or put down roots. (Note: that still doesn't necessarily justify all the items being sold today that are destined for a landfill in a few years.)
I'm not saying that there aren't some satisfied customers, but at some point a normal human being says: "Hey, 30 other people posted this. Maybe I shouldn't."