plumthreads (u/plumthreads)

plumthreads commented on 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study gamesindustry.biz/72-of-d... · Posted by u/mrzool

galagawinkle489 · 2 months ago

Indie game development largely owes its existence to Steam. I know I would spend a lot less on indie games if I had to buy them from their own websites or, god forbid, through an awful laggy "app store" run by Ubisoft or Microsoft.

plumthreads · 2 months ago

If competitors offer passable services for selling indie game developers, then indie game developers would be able to earn more money (due to competition).

This is why developers are hopeful for alternative services.

plumthreads commented on 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study gamesindustry.biz/72-of-d... · Posted by u/mrzool

teroshan · 2 months ago

I'm still finishing my first read, but I really recommend Cory Doctorow's latest book [1] "Enshittification:Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It" which covers the subject of tech monopolies and much more.

Reading it I learned about the term "monopsony" which is "a market in which goods or services are offered by several sellers but there is only one buyer" which is usually conflated with monopoly.

[1] https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification

plumthreads · 2 months ago

This is really the key here. Many people are commenting their experience as a games buyers, but this article is about the developers. Monopsonies are usually linked to lower wages in labor markets. In this case lower profits for developers from selling their games.

plumthreads commented on The profitable startup linear.app/now/the-profit... · Posted by u/doppp

kijin · 2 months ago

Linear founders had "savings" from previous exits. Some of the early ones really were ramen-scale from what I can tell.

So that's one way to come up with the capital you need. Start something, grow it, sell it for $$, and invest that $$ in a new company that you hope will be worth $$$$. Rinse and repeat. You don't have to make it big on your first try!

plumthreads · 2 months ago

A $4.2 million seed round from Sequoia also didn't hurt. Maybe they were able to eat pizza instead of ramen because of that.

plumthreads commented on Does the Bitter Lesson Have Limits? dbreunig.com/2025/08/01/d... · Posted by u/dbreunig

mtlmtlmtlmtl · 5 months ago

Stockfish being so strong is not merely a result of scaling of computation with search and learning. Basic alpha-beta search doesn't really scale all that well with compute. The number of nodes visited grows exponentionally with the number of plies you look ahead. Additionally alpha-beta search is not embarassingly parallel. The reason Stockfish is so strong is that it includes pretty much every heuristic improvement to alpha-beta that's been thought of in the history of computer chess, somehow combining all of them while avoiding bugs and performance regressions. Many of these heuristics are based on chess knowledge. As well as a lot of very clever optimisation of data structures(transposition tables, bitboards) to facilitate parallel search and shave off every bit of overhead.

Stockfish is a culmination of a lot of computer science research, chess knowledge and clever, meticulous design.

plumthreads · 5 months ago

While what you mention is true, I'm not sure how it undermines the bitter lesson. Optimizing the use of hardware (which is what NNUE essentially does) is one way of "increasing compute." Also, NNUE was not a chess specific technique, it was originally developed for Shogi.

plumthreads commented on A cryptocurrency scam that turned a small town against itself nytimes.com/2025/02/19/ma... · Posted by u/lxm

trhway · 10 months ago

>the dire externalities that are enabled by crypto. Every single crime you can think of, is easier to do now because of crypto.

replace crypto with railroad in the 19th century. Or even just Internet in the 90-ies. Or AI in 20 years.

plumthreads · 10 months ago

Those technologies offered actual utility, that's the difference.

plumthreads commented on Looking at some claims that quantum computers won't work blog.cr.yp.to/20250118-fl... · Posted by u/gjvc

peepeepoopoo101 · a year ago

There's an awful lot of handwaving in this blog post. I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced. The author mentions how some devices that can seemingly solve exponential time complexity problems also require exponentially high precision, but there doesn't seem to be a strong argument for why that doesn't apply to quantum computers. We haven't experimentally demonstrated quantum computing at sufficient scales to prove that the required number of physical qubits to perform error correction doesn't scale exponentially.

plumthreads · a year ago

I got the impression that DJB was criticizing the arguments for why quantum computers won't work. Not trying to demonstrate why they will work.

plumthreads commented on Who Pays for the Arts? esquire.com/entertainment... · Posted by u/Caiero

abe94 · a year ago

With respect to the very literal reading of "funding the arts". A number of these platforms do in fact pay you a share of revenue. Youtube, and spotify are both platforms that artists, and new artists are paid on and can use for exposure.

For the other platforms, yes you need to a do a little more work to make it a living, but the broader point is its much easier today for a much wider range of artists to get exposure than it was before, yes there are vagaries of the algorithm and yes some content will not be favoured, that doesnt mean it isnt a better situation today than before

As for "working for free" this is a very reductionist view. The relationship can provide value for both parties, you may disagree about the split of value and who benefits more but there are plenty of artists who have become popular without paying for ads.

plumthreads · a year ago

I recently read Cory Doctorow's "Chokepoint Capitalism" and William Deresiewicz's "The Death of the Artist" which both decry the sentiment that somehow Big Tech has been a boon for artists.

The reality is that anti-competitive practices in these companies has made them more of an extractive monopoly rather than a market to connect artists and art "consumers." To your point on revenue sharing, both Youtube and Spotify have laughable revenue shares to the point that even well known musicians have to tour nonstop to make ends meet. At what point does "exposure" benefit the artist more than it benefits the platform for having free art?

plumthreads commented on Carlos Ghosn: How I escaped Japan bbc.co.uk/news/business-5... · Posted by u/phpnode

NoImmatureAdHom · 4 years ago

I don't know why the downvotes, this is the correct perspective. You need to take the base rate of criminality into account, and comparing Japanese in Japan to Japanese in America isn't unreasonable.

You could also look at the rate of crimes per capita in each country. For instance, murders per capita: 4.96 in the U.S. vs 0.26 in Japan [0]. If we take this to represent base-rate criminality in that population, then we have a 19:1 US:Japan murder ratio, with only a 16:1 US: Japan incarceration ratio. Japan incarcerates more per unit murder.

Of course this is a toy model, it's all a big feedback loop, etc., but I hope it serves to illustrate the point.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

plumthreads · 4 years ago

You're claiming Japanese in America are representative of Japanese in Japan which is not the case. It's straight up racist too.