The Navy isn't in the wiretap business.
The Navy has conducted some extremely consequential wiretaps. A fantastic book about the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...
Readit Newsnugget commented on Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission nytimes.com/2025/09/05/us... · Posted by u/nomilk
nugget commented on Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation wsj.com/business/media/li... · Posted by u/winstonprivacy
My horror story of Ticketmaster; I recently bought standing-room-only tickets on short notice (<1wk) for an event near me, declining the additional fee to be able to refund my tickets. After more discussion with the others I was going with, I bought seated tickets instead through SeatGeek. Understanding I declined the ability to refund, I attempted to sell my tickets, but their system kept encountering an internal error preventing me from selling the tickets.
I reached out to support for assistance, and after several days of wasted time and run-around, they finally sent my issue to their engineering team saying they'd get back to me in 5 business days. Keep in mind I said I bought these tickets a week before the event, and they'd already wasted a few days giving me the run-around, functionally meaning I wouldn't be able to sell my tickets.
I attempted to charge back the purchase since they did not provide what I paid for (tickets I could sell), and they fought me and won somehow.
So thanks Ticketmaster, for sucking me out of hundreds of dollars for nothing more than bytes in your database that I couldn't do anything with. I hope they go bankrupt.
For anyone who is in my shoes and hasn't used Ticketmaster yet and might be tempted to give them a chance thinking all of these horror stories are just unlucky people- don't. I was naive to think that all of those companies with bad reputations are just the loud minority but Ticketmaster is the only one I've had the misfortune of finding out is seriously awful. Use SeatGeek or countless other platforms instead. Gun to my head to use Ticketmaster again I'd probably take the lead instead.
Have you considered pursuing them in small claims court?
nugget commented on Factors that act(ed) as drag on the European tech/startup scene addxorrol.blogspot.com/20... · Posted by u/zdw
No reserve currency status is what lies at the root imho. Hard to compete with free money.
Also, in this climate regulation and local market heterogenity create specific local niches in which many startups can initially thrive.
I’d say brain drain is the root problem. It’s hard to build a competitive ecosystem when the most ambitious and skilled people move away. From Europe, they move to the US. From within the US, they move to one of a few cities, most notably San Francisco.
I thought (and still think) their product is a great idea.
Some people here seem to think my objection was being asked to use the product. It was actually the content of the message I was asked to send that bothered me. It wasn't "explain how your experience would be useful in this role", or "explain your feelings on the technical aspects of this product". It was something closer to "show me how excited you are to work here".
I don't know why but at the time it felt like being asked to grovel. My stupid pride, I guess.
In my experience as a founder, excitement to work in a particular area is way more important than experience/skills. Ideally you have both. But lack of enthusiasm for a product, especially a niche product, kills a culture.
nugget commented on Health risks of travel in early-modern Britain dralun.wordpress.com/2023... · Posted by u/Petiver
Travel is still risky. Automobile accidents are, by a substantial margin, the leading cause of death in young people.
It may have been somewhat more risky back then -- in terms of fatalities per mile traveled, if not fatalities per hour traveled -- but I don't think that's perfectly clear. A fall from a horse, which has happened to me more than once, is a lot less injurious than an automobile accident. It would be interesting to see a comparison table.
Besides, the risks didn't stop every enterprising English and Protestant German youth from embarking upon the Grand Tour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour
I’m pretty sure the opioid epidemic is the leading cause of death in the US. Enormous numbers of Americans are dying from fentanyl and other poisons, but the media doesn’t like to cover it and the Government doesn’t like to talk about it.
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nugget commented on Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source ramatak.com/2023/09/15/un... · Posted by u/TMM2K
> I think the only reason Unity went this route is because they don't want to be seen to publicly break the promise of no revenue ...
Not quite. Unity merged with a company that sells mobile ads: ironSource. They are direct competitors of AppLovin, the dominant player in that market. The terms and backroom deals that Unity is offering devs will waive these fees if they use Unity's ad products instead of AppLovin. This is clearly an attempt to abuse their position in one market (game engines) to bolster their position in another market (mobile ads).
Unity seems to be attempting this in the most deceptive and deceitful way possible, establishing the new Runtime Fee and then offering a temporary 100% "waiver" of the fee if you use their other (presumably inferior) products.
As soon as the pressure fades, the waiver will be reduced to 50% and then eventually dropped completely - but of course the new fees will remain.
They must think the average game developer has no business sense whatsoever.
Based on the backlash, my prediction is that Unity either quickly reverses course (damaging their brand a little and perhaps costing the CEO his job) or stubbornly doubles down (damaging their brand a lot and giving Godot and others an opening to eventually rival them).
It’s not the fact that Unity wants to make more money from its engine that has gotten people so up in arms about it, it’s the way it was structured.
If they simply took a percent of revenue, everyone would have shrugged, you might have had some indies complaining, and the world would have kept on turning. Instead, they made a couple of compounding missteps. An install based fee creates a massive amount of uncertainty about how much you will owe at the end of the month, creating potential cash flow issues. You are at the whims of Unity in terms of how they calculate it, and praying that they properly handle all the edge cases and potential abuses, despite all their incentives giving them plenty reasons not to care that much. And then on top of all of that they made it retroactive to all existing games on the market using their engine. Companies had a very reasonable expectation that they could rely on the terms their games were released under. All that trust has now been upended. Unity has shown they are willing to change terms retroactively with little notice. Now when evaluating Unity as an engine you will have to take into account not only the current fee structure, but also the risk that they will add additional fees retroactively that have the potential to completely disrupt your business model.
The Unity CEO and management team seem actively hostile to game developers. They view them more as adversaries than allies. Their first principle may be something like "How can we extract more revenue from our developers?" rather than "How can we make developers more successful on our platform [such that we all enjoy more success]?". I think that cultural value is the root of a lot of these tactical problems and missteps.