• 0 Posts
  • 38 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 5th, 2023

help-circle
  • This is known as a red herring fallacy, the fact that it fused her labia doesn’t change the nature of the situation, nor does it increase the gravity of the situation.

    “She placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it. In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap. Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants, which absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks and groin.”

    Additionanally:

    “According to a 2007 report, McDonald’s had not reduced the temperature of its coffee, serving it at 176–194 °F (80–90 °C), relying on more sternly worded warnings on cups made of rigid foam to avoid future injury and liability (though it continues to face lawsuits over hot coffee). However, in 2013 the New York Times reported that it had lowered its service temperature to 170–180 °F (77–82 °C). The Specialty Coffee Association of America supports improved packaging methods rather than lowering the temperature at which coffee is served. The association has successfully aided the defense of subsequent coffee burn cases. Similarly, as of 2004, Starbucks sells coffee at 175–185 °F (79–85 °C), and the executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America reported that the standard serving temperature is 160–185 °F (71–85 °C).”

    So not only did it not change the temperature at which most major brands serve coffee, the temperature that was proposed as reasonable by the defense attorneys was also still hot enough to cause third degree burns. I get that she might want them to pay for damages, but she literally dumped it on herself, the reason she was so seriously hurt was because she was 79 years old. If you’re buying hot coffee that’s freshly brewed then it should be obvious it’s hot enough to seriously burn you. If it’s over 150 F then you will get major significant burns.

    As to the idea that they had been warned:

    “Other documents obtained from McDonald’s showed that from 1982 to 1992 the company had received more than 700 reports of people burned by McDonald’s coffee to varying degrees of severity, and had settled claims arising from scalding injuries for more than $500,000.”

    McDonalds purportedly sells more than 50 million cups of coffee per year, over 10 years that was 500 million cups of coffee. 0.00014% is hardly a “warning.”










  • No, you misunderstand what I mean.

    Ah I see, you’re correct, I did misunderstand you. I think your point is true, but still lacks finesse in describing the relationship between developers and digital store fronts. I also think you’re disregarding the benefit that the additional 18% cut the developer gets to keep as well as creating partnership options rather than being stuck with a defacto monopoly.

    I also don’t think it’s fair to compare GOG or Humble Bundle with Epic or Steam, their purposes and market share is so much smaller than Steam. Epic isn’t trying to compete with GOG or Humble.

    Also, you’re correct that the developer is making money either way, but they are making a larger percentage on sales through Epic. You’re probably right that the developers aren’t taking that into account, but they are materially benefited by its success. If they fail to account for that benefit and Epic fails then it will mean they make less money overall.

    I think instead of your McDonalds example a better one would be contractors for a large business. Maybe your business frequently uses an electrical contractor and due to special circumstances the field is exceptionally limited (specialty license or security clearance). There is one contractor available and they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want. So far this company has been really fair and not abused their power, but a new contractor becomes available. The new contractor has an inferior service line and is a bit slower, but they’re also cheaper. You could just ignore the new contractor and what happens happens, but in the real world it’s fairly common for businesses to diversify service contracts to maintain a pool of available contractors.


  • Sure, but the idea of fostering a mutually beneficial preferential relationship between two companies is far from new. I’m not saying that the developer has to take a loss, but they could decrease the sell price on Epic while still making more money than on Steam, GOG, or Humble Bundle. If doing so causes more people to switch to Epic it also means they’ll make more money in the long term and in the short term.

    I’d argue that the statement that Epic is just as much a customer as the consumer isn’t really true. Epic as a storefront is different from Gamestop as a store front. Gamestop buys the product at a given price and then marks it up to make profit, Epic provides fulfillment and gets paid a percentage of the sale. Epic isn’t a customer in that sense because they aren’t buying and reselling the product.

    Yeah, the developers can say fuck it and not help out Epic, but it just furthers the limited monopoly that Steam is. They can’t complain that Steam takes too big of a cut and then make businesses decisions that are counter to that complaint. It’s like complaining about Reddit but choosing to stay there.

    I would agree that Epic is a customer in the sense that they are paying for exclusivity, but I think that contract should also include a reduced sale price in it.

    EX: Epic pays the developer X dollars so that the first week of the release it’s sold at -Y% of the MSRP exclusively on Epic. After that they can sell it on other storefronts for the MSRP for Z months (with no sales) or they have to refund the X dollars.




  • Well it shouldn’t be at a loss. As the person I responded to pointed out, Epic had a lower fee than Steam so the developer can sell on Epic for less than they would on Steam and make the same amount of money.

    Doing so wouldn’t be at a loss, but it wouldn’t make as much profit as possible.

    If the developers did choose to sell on Epic for less than it would bolster the Epic store and potentially lead to more people moving to Epic.

    If Steam’s fee is 30% and Epic’s is 15% the developer could sell on Steam for $70 and make $49 and they could sell on Epic for $60 to make $51. That’s a 4% increase in profits.

    If the Epic store takes off and a large enough user base switches they could maybe increase the Epic price to $62.5 which would result in an additional 4% increase in profits.

    Epic’s deal is that they’re offering a lower rate, but the developers aren’t sharing the benefits of that to help Epic grow. If they did the long term profits would likely exceed the short term.


  • I’d really like to know what the level of input creators have over the ads that appear in their videos is. It feels like some videos are just whatever Google throws out there while some videos seem to have no ads and finally some seem to have very limited ads.

    Is there some sort of dial that the creator has behind the scenes that determines how shitty the ads for their video are?

    Ads on YouTube used to not be so bad, a 5 second ad that was so unintrusive that I’d just let it play, a 15 second with a 3 second skip, and it also didn’t feel like the same quantity of ads.

    Before an ad would roll at the beginning of the video and I’d likely quickly skip it. If the video was fairly long there might be an extra ad in the middle. Sometimes the creator might also have an embedded ad, but I generally don’t mind those.

    Now it’s a double 15 second ad at the beginning, only the first one is skippable. Then there is another double ad every 15 minutes, plus the embedded creator ad, and if you make it to the end of the video there is an end of video double ad before it auto plays to the start of the next video and next set of double ads.

    Make the ads short and unintrusive or make them long, skippable, but rare. I hate having to constantly tab out to go click the skip button every few minutes.

    When the YouTube ad blocker ban started I was on chrome with uBlock and it seemed to be refreshing the block even with uBlock. I thought to myself, “Hey let’s try it with the ads, I’ll whitelist YouTube and support the content creators.” After about 3 days I said fuck it, dropped Chrome and updated uBlock again; I haven’t seen an ad since.


  • If the developer chooses to do so themselves then it’s likely ok, but forcing the developer to do so likely violates some sort of law.

    I imagine that when Epic instituted it’s lower percentage they hoped that developers would sell exclusively on their platform for higher profits. Instead the developers decided to sell on both platforms and just make a larger percentage on the Epic sales. From the developer perspective it would have been wise in the long run to lower prices so that Epic could grow, but that hurts their short term profits and also stymied Epic’s potential.

    If Epic’s store grew to truly rival Steam more developers might have jumped ship, but to do so prematurely would be losing a large portion of the potential customers.

    Ultimately Epic had to develop a full Steam clone quickly while all Steam had to do was not suck for the end user.