Senshi

The high end PC part market, especially GPUs, is heavily controlled by scalpers as well, similar to brand new consoles.

Even worse? Senior devs that are confidently incorrect but are trusted completely because they created an "amazing" VBA macro for Excel 97 once.

Just a minor correction: the 100$ one time deposit cannot be reclaimed manually. Instead, it gets automatically returned once your game hits 1000$ in sales.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/appfee

The purpose of this fee is to block low effort automated scam games from misusing the shop.

Many successful indie devs have voiced that the 30% is actually impossible to beat for them if they tried other distribution approaches. Some even closed down their existing alternatives including self hosted shops which would grant them 100%, simply because the overhead costs ruin the percentage for them, plus a whole lot of time and effort that have to go into maintaining that.

Yes, steam has a very strong monopoly position on the games distribution market. That is problematic for all the usual reasons with monopolies. What makes steam unique is that the company behind it, Valve, has demonstrated in all their efforts that maximizing short term profits is not necessarily their prime directive. This can obviously change at any time, so being wary is always good, but convenience is simply extremely attractive to everyone involved, devs and customers alike.

The Germans never got even close to where the sphinx is located in WW2. The Allied stopped the Axis advance in North Africa hundreds of kilometres west of there.

I stand corrected. But I think any "odd" angles such as in this case, where the rotation seems to be somewhat at 20 degrees, would be even more uncommon.

Oddly, this also seems like a very weird Nazi token. Hitler's name is misspelled: he never was called "Adolph", ever.

Also, the Nazi swastika is always supposed to be tilted at 45°, also not the case here.

Almost if it's not authentic at all.

The device needing more power won't get it, simple. Depending on what device it is, it will automatically throttle down so it needs less power, but obviously it will also deliver less performance while so throttled. And if the power is missing during a very sensitive part of a process so there's no time to throttle down, your PC could blue screen or restart.

It's very unlikely to suffer any long-term damage from this.

Japan had a lot more wood-only city buildings back then compared to the colder climate in Europe, where more massive stone architecture was common. In Europe, cellars are also common/default, unlike in Japan.

During high heat firestorms, most of the wooden material burns up and the ash gets carried away. The photo definitely shows cleanup and very likely was not taken the day after the bombing, but a single firestorm definitely can produce these results, much like other examples in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Würzburg,... Except those had much more stone rubble standing afterwards.

Game passes exist for PC as well, and offer even more variety there.

Boot time should never take 30sec on PC as well. But most consoles are actually not much faster in boot and loading times. People tend to compare a PC booting from cold with a console just booting from sleep/hibernation mode.

Boot times on PC however can easily be further optimized, especially when not using Windows for gaming. A gaming Linux distro will be faster by leagues, even in a cold start.

It was announced that they all committed "schwere Verbrechen". That means it's all felonies and capital crimes. I do characterize people who commit capital crimes as scum, because those are by definition never small misconducts or accidents. Felony convictions for capital crimes need proof of malicious intent. So there really is incredibly little room left to feel bad for the criminals.

Why do people fall for these stupid populistic statements?

We in Germany value human rights. We have some of the most pro-asylum laws and culture in the world. Which is part of the reason right wing parties like the AfD get popular.

The problem is, not every human is a saint, not even asylum seekers. Some come here without having a valid reason for asylum, because they are not actually persecuted. Others come here with the express intent to criminally exploit our welfare system. There's lots of reasons to come here, but not all of them warrant asylum. These people should seek to immigrate properly like anybody else and not exploit our hospitality offered to people in need.

Now, under our previous Merkel government, we welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees in an unusually short timeframe. Our chronically overworked and slow bureaucracy became even easier to exploit, many could simply wait out time limits on their asylum requests, making them automatically accepted without any check for validity.

I was an active volunteer helping arriving refugees get accommodated in their assigned first quarters (often old empty barracks, I helped with trips to all kinds of bureaucratic necessities, but also got a central free Wi-Fi set up for everyone to use and stuff like that), and funnily enough the most vivid calls for stricter handling of asylum requests and punishments for rule-breakers came from all the legitimate refugees: those were some of the most decent people, and they hated being associated by their status with any criminal refugees. The assigned building security and police quickly learned that they actually had to be swift in picking up fresh offenders, before street justice would be applied by their "fellow" refugees.

In short: We have laws and we try to follow, them. It's not always easy.

Also, asylum is different from immigration, I feel many people forget that. If conditions in your place of origin have improved, you are expected to leave. Asylum is inherently temporary, contrary to migration. And if you violate the trust and resources your host nation has given you, you should suffer legal consequences, just like any regular citizen. Committing hard felony crimes is obviously not a nice way to repay that trust, and as consequence we ask you to leave. If you refuse to do so in a (very) sufficient timeframe, we can use it executive power (police) to force you.

Last but not least.... Each of these criminals even got 1000€ cash upon exiting the plane in their home country, just to ensure they have zero risk of having to live in inhuman conditions while they get reacquainted in their home society ( e.g. get an apartment and a job). Because that risk alone would be reason enough to make even the worst terrorist ineligible for deportation. Because it's a basic human right to not have to live in extreme poverty and/or hunger.

I think that's pretty much the opposite of "shitting on human rights" and definitely not what I expect many other nations would do with such foreign felons.

I find it amusing that you believe German bureaucracy to be versatile and efficient enough to be able to be steered so quickly by spontaneous political will.

No, deportations are rare because we take asylum rights as a basic human right extremely seriously and there are an unbelievable amount of reasons a deportation can be called off. Each of these deportations takes months, if not years of preparation by the interior ministry ( executive), leading to lots of legal consultations and usually legal battles in court due to appeals, intense diplomatic talks with the recipient country ( especially in this case, because Germany refuses direct diplomatic ties with the Taliban and Qatar had to play middle -man) and only then the actual forced deportation itself can be tactically planned and organized. And there's tons of very specific rules, even for how and when police may or may not pick up a deportee during the night and if/what charter flights can be used.

So definitely no spontaneous politicking. The change in policy to start enforcing existing extradition orders more rigorously started years ago when the current government got elected. It's a very slow and arduous process still.