It's not that simple. The real problem is that Valve allows items to be sold in markets outside of Valve's control which allows third party gambling websites to operate. And you guessed right, they basically don't care about your age. Valve of course knows this but won't do anything, because they make profits off all transactions happening in third party markets. Plus the whole professional CS tournament scene is sponsored by these predatory casinos. Coffeezilla did an in-depth piece on this: https://youtu.be/q58dLWjRTBE
> Plus the whole professional CS tournament scene is sponsored by these predatory casinos
I once had a glimpse behind the scenes of the online sports gambling industry (only for a few months—turns out that was my limit of how utterly disgusting an industry I could participate in and still, literally, sleep at night!) and it answered a question for me.
The question was: “How did professional gaming get so incredibly big so very fast?” Its quick rise seemed to me to have started well before the broad normalization and rise of gaming in mainstream pop culture, so had always seemed to me like the cart coming before the horse, and I’d never been able to figure out how or why it’d happened that way.
The answer was gambling. Professional video gaming is all but completely a gambling industry. That’s where the money and promotion came from. Sponsorships, sure, but that’s secondary and would drop off to a large degree without the boost from gambling. And I mean gambling on the matches, not just sponsorship by gambling sites. It’s a betting industry.
(Online gambling’s also all wrapped up in right wing political money and funding right wing media[!] in, at least, the US, was another thing I learned that I hadn’t expected)
I think gambling came in more in later waves. The first wave of popularity (mostly StarCraft, LoL and fighting games) tended more towards funding from sponsors, and not gambling ones (red bull, monster energy, gaming peripheral makers, the game devs themselves, mobile games).
I don’t know much about lol or fighting games but the starcraft pro scene exploded after a gambling/match fixing scandal back in 2010! The first wave absolutely had this problem
> I once had a glimpse behind the scenes of the online sports gambling industry (only for a few months—turns out that was my limit of how utterly disgusting an industry I could participate in and still, literally, sleep at night!) and it answered a question for me.
I worked in online gambling for about 10 years in the UK. I found how charities and local/national government worked far worse and I was far more frustrated with their attitudes.
e.g. I found an SQL Injection vulnerability with dynamic SQL in a large UK charity (I won't say which one). I reported this to my boss. He kinda just shrugged his shoulders. Similar attitudes were present in local government. The gambling industry was the complete opposite and took security very seriously.
What bothered me the most about charities and government was that on the outside they were giving the impression of having a virtuous purpose. Whereas the gambling sites didn't, it was simply "Try to win some cash".
As a former addict (alcohol), I don't have much sympathy for people that blame the companies for the problems of addicts. The problem ultimately lies with the individual. I was the one that choose to drink. The brewary, the bar, or the off-license never forced the drink down my throat. People choose to go to the casino, in the same way they choose to go to the bar.
> The question was: “How did professional gaming get so incredibly big so very fast?” Its quick rise seemed to me to have started well before the broad normalization and rise of gaming in mainstream pop culture, so had always seemed to me like the cart coming before the horse, and I’d never been able to figure out how or why it’d happened that way.
Many of the classic videos games were made to relieve you of change in Arcades. Nearby to where I live there are still classic seaside arcade. They still have machines similar to Sega Rally and Time Crisis there. Video gaming and quasi-gambling have been intertwined since the birth of the industry.
> The answer was gambling. Professional video gaming is all but completely a gambling industry. That’s where the money and promotion came from. Sponsorships, sure, but that’s secondary and would drop off to a large degree without the boost from gambling. And I mean gambling on the matches, not just sponsorship by gambling sites. It’s a betting industry.
This is all professional sports (even going back to long ago as the Roman Empire). There is nothing special about professional video gaming.
The industry saw that people were interested in watching matches between highly skilled people. Any form of entertainment/news/sports is bankrolled by advertising and/or gambling.
Many of these large events came out of more grass roots events like large lan parties. These were pretty big in the late 90s to early 2000s.
> (Online gambling’s also all wrapped up in right wing political money and funding right wing media[!] in, at least, the US, was another thing I learned that I hadn’t expected)
Gambling tends to attract the more profit orientated which roughly aligns with what is considered "right wing" (at least in the US). I found the industry to be pretty apolitical as a whole. Many of the C-suite and above seemed to be actually relatively left-wing at least in some view points. It was odd when the top executives were far at least on somethings far more to the left than I was.
This doesn't look like a standard .net config (appsettings.json) to me. It looks more like a simple json serialization of an object. To get the framework behavior that replaces secrets with e.g. env vars one would have to feed this json into a .net ConfigurationBuilder first.
Considering that this represents one of many possible workflow objects (probably organized in a data structure and managed by other objects/methods), implementing secret replacement using a ConfigurationBuilder seems like abuse.
> This doesn't look like a standard .net config (appsettings.json) to me.
Having done... enough .NET I don't see a serious consensus and it frustrates me. My favorite was the project that used dot ENV files. I have tried to convince them of it here, but nobody cares enough about the craft I suppose, of course there's more important things to be worked on, momentary change for increased dev experience is not worth it the business.
> I don't see a serious consensus and it frustrates me.
If you're saying that there's no one right way to do it, then I broadly disagree. There's the (very flexible) .NET Configuration system (1) - that is the right way to do it. You should start with appsettings.json and other sources, and end up with injecting IOptions<T> into your code. Consistently.
If you're saying that in your experience, far too many people don't use this system, then who am I to disagree with your experience? Sure, it happens. YMMV. I would be insisting that they move to the .NET Configuration system, though. If they're serious.
Actually I think .NET config is pretty good. You define a file, which can be overridden by environment variables which in turn can be overridden by command line parameters. Just reading environment variables is fine as well but then you have to do source .env before you run anything (unless you are talking about Python like approach where .env is just another config file essentially).
> Actually I think .NET config is pretty good. You define a file, which can be overridden by environment variables
Agreed that it's good. Partly because it's even more flexible than that. There are good defaults, but you decide which sources in which order are use. e.g. in our case it is
There are also providers for places where secrets are stored, such as Azure Key vault (1), which would be layered on last. And a test provider where you just supply some key-value pairs from code (2). Or roll your own (3).
By strategy, do you mean, the various hierarchies that people use? If so, I agree that sticking to a flat set of key / value pairs is usually fine. A little resistance to hierarchy is generally a good thing in software.
For the really simple flat case with key / value pairs and no grouping or hierarchies, I would recommend that you still use the .NET configuration to define and read the config sources.
Then when you need to read a value, inject IConfiguration and call config.GetValue<string>("someKey") or config.GetValue<int>("otherKey") etc. to get values from it in a flat manner.
If you do that enough, you might extract common code or but some other class over it for related settings. At which point you might as well declare a DTO and use IOptions<T>
However what OP has is a whole 80 line workflow definition. I don't recommend storing that kind of thing in the .NET config system at all.
Then if such a large file has sensitive values such as passwords, it will need some find/replace templating system to substitute them from config. e.g. handlebars with "{{somePassword}}" in the file.
Yes, agree about using the regular .NET configuration. That was my suggestion a few comments up. I can see why people might want to do something different (i.e. .env) but I wouldn't use that in a .NET project despite how ugly it is. It is ugly but works well.
>> If you do that enough, you might extract common code or but some other class over it for related settings. At which point you might as well declare a DTO and use IOptions<T>
I think it rarely needs to be that complicated. I overengineered the configuration system for something before and regretted it. People understand GetValue<T>(key) anything else makes them have to think for no reason.
If it takes you hours to figure out what's working and what's not, then it isn't good enough. It should just work or it should be obvious when it won't work.
I mean that’s like saying doing normal coding or working on any project yourself isn’t good enough because you put in hours to figure out what works and doesn’t.
That analogy is off, because LLMs aren't a project I'm working on. They are a tool I can use to do that. And my expectation on tools is that they help me and not make things more complicated than they already are.
When LLMs ever reach that point I'll certainly hear about it and gladly use them. In the meantime I let the enthusiasts sort out the problems and glitches first.
How does this relate to domain-driven design? It seems to be at odds with it, because in DDD it's kind of expected that the same concept will be represented in a different way by each system? But to be honest, I didn't read the whole blog post because of the UML vibes.
It doesn't. It's a blessing that they avoided the term "ubiquitous language" because that's almost exactly the dual of this concept, although people who have only ever heard the words and not dug any deeper won't know what the difference is.
Seems to be enforcing ‘ubiquitous language’ at the machine level - not some kind of mathematical dual where one is invertible to the other - but enforcing soft skills as hard skills.
‘protobuf specs dont have enough information for us to codegen iceberg tables so we will write a new codegen spec language’
what makes a duck a duck?
when we know which tables we can find it in
Except that "Ubiquitous Language" is supposed to refer to terminology within a specific Bounded Context. In DDD it is desirable and expected that there is a mapping between them. This proposal tries to entirely erase Bounded Contexts. This is what I mean about people not understanding the words.
So in the sense of "what do we do about terminology not matching across an organisation" this and DDD are literal opposite solutions: one says "erase differences with a central definition (and bear the coordination costs)" while the other says "encourage differences with local definitions (and bear the mapping costs)".
That isn't the part of the argument that needs a source - pretty much everyone who is anyone in the public sphere seems to have death threats made against them and threats of extreme violence are actually pretty common at protests. Guillotines at protests are a reasonably common fixture for example [0]. That is the reason the standard needs to be someone actually doing something before the police get involved - people say all sorts of threatening things in political contexts. It's pretty scary but it is better to tolerate it and let people get their emotions out into the open. They generally don't mean it.
[X] has has been subject to death threats at a protest is a pretty safe blind claim. Particularly for politicians, public figures, rich people, identifiable races and political groupings. Some yobbo will write something stupid on a placard and wave it around sooner or later.
Maybe so, but it's still important to callenge okeuro49's claims. Extremist takes like that give off an air of believability despite being unsubstantiated. Relying solely on the common sense of the readership leads to situations where extremist views simply drown out the rest. It should not be seen as acceptable to present a wilfully distorted view of the facts.
JK Rowling is famous, wealthy, a public figure and female. I guarantee you she has received death threats and the police have shrugged it off as not a credible problem.
Whether they are public or not is more of an academic detail, but given the level of hostility aimed at her it is a pretty safe bet that someone has somewhere whether or not it was reported on the internet. If someone wants to die on the hill of every claim being cited then fair enough, at least it is a principled hill. But this is like asking for a cite that US political debate got heated. Rowling has genuine anti-fans out there, I've seen totally spontaneous wild hate sessions break out against her in my wanderings through the internet. It'll have spilled out into real-world protest somewhere.
The original claim was that people were carrying placards at a recent protest in London calling for the death of JK Rowling. It’s not obvious that this has in fact happened, and it’s reasonable to ask for evidence of it.
I'm just saying, I didn't even check before this comment. And who knew? bunch of death threats targeting Rowling with activists trying to make sure everyone can find her in meatspace in case the threat makes her quieten down. "Did she receive death threats" is really not the part of this to try and question. And if you want to make a point about did someone do it while at a protest - I mean yeah. Yeah they did. Maybe nobody bothered to record it, because that sort of thing is routine and boring.
If someone wants to attack the police response part that I have no idea about. Maybe they did respond and it was exemplary - that is the sort of thing that does need a source. But the death threats part is just another year as a public figure. There are a lot of death threats out there. And it'd spill over to placards.
EDIT And it turned out to be remarkably easy to find a citation, note the "decapitate TERFs" link 2 comments up. As expected. It's easy to tune out because in practice calling for the death of someone at a protest is in practice a pretty minor thing to do. Which TERFs do they want to decapitate if not Rowling? Is there fine print on the back of the sign that exempts her? Its Sky News so I I'll admit that is possible.
Ok, so lots of sources that don’t show what was originally claimed (i.e. someone holding a placard at a recent protest in London calling for the death of JK Rowling).
I don’t know why it irks you so much that people would fact check this particular claim. I agree that it’s not central to the original poster’s overall point, but it’s not ok to invent facts just because your argument could probably get by without them.
Some photos of the placards, including "Bring back witch burning ... JK" and "The only good TERF is a ____ one" with an image of a person being executed by hanging.
The TERF one was posted earlier but obviously doesn’t mention JK Rowling. As to the other example, thanks for posting a source rather than just expressing annoyance that anyone would be asking for one. I think it takes some Yogi-level stretching to reach the conclusion that the person holding the JK placard is “calling for the death of JK Rowling”, but it’s at least in the right ballpark.
I expect the holder of that witch-burning placard is very much aware that "JK" will be taken to mean "JK Rowling". It's no coincidence.
That so many of these activists are holding signs which advocate the torture and murder of women who disagree with them says everything about their movement.
Oh sure I agree that JK refers to JK Rowling. I just mean that the sign is probably an ironic reference to The Witch Trials of JK Rowling rather than an actual proposal to burn JK Rowling at the stake. It’s in extremely bad taste and I don’t endorse it. However, I personally don’t regard it as a case of someone advocating for JK Rowling to be killed.
The placard carried by the individual* said “bring back witch burning… JK”.
* I don’t see calling for such a thing as a typical female trait, but then again these protestors did also desecrate a Suffragette memorial, so I expect their ideas are a little confused.
It's an example of police ignoring death threats. It references Harry Potter, and JK Rowling is the most common target of the "TERF" epithet. In any case, it supports the claim that the UK police selectively enforce speech laws.
Ah so nobody called for the death of JK Rowling, but terfs in general, which she happens to be? A death threat by nonintrinsic affiliation if you will? Seems pretty stupid if you ask me.
Perhaps she could not make it her whole identity so that when people say "death to this specific type of bigotry", random people on the internet don't immediately make the logical leap to think people wish for her death specifically?
Hate speech laws are a very convenient tool for an authoritarian regime as their application is totally subjective. You could argue that saying "death to terfs" would mean only to end an ideology, but "death to Islam" would send you in prison as you are threatening muslims. In general, it's the same thing, but depending on the prevailing ideology, Police and courts can apply it selectively.
No, it's not the same thing at all, the same way saying "death to nazis" and "death to Germans" isn't the same thing. Being Muslim or a German is something you're generally born into because that's what your parents are, while the other two is something you actively choose to be a part of your identity as a full-grown adult.
A random dude you meet named Ahmed doesn't automatically translate into "he hates all non-Muslims", the same way a random dude named Hans doesn't automatically translate into "he hates all Jews".
On the other hand, openly affiliating yourself with terfs or nazis does automatically translate into you wanting some marginalised community to vanish or at the very least to make their existence more difficult than yours.
Following your thinking, given that no one is born muslim (it's a religion, apostasy exists), it's ok to say "death to muslims", just as it is ok to say "death to terfs"? If you tell me that the muslim religion isn't discriminatory, I'd like you to do some wikipedia reading about it first. You can start with the status of women, for instance.
The original post said that people had placards “calling for the death of JK Rowling”. It may be that the poster’s overall point does not rely on this specific factual claim. But don’t try to muddy the waters around this: it’s a straightforward factual claim and people are right to ask if it can be sourced. So far it has not been.
If there was a protest where people had signs that said “death to <slur>” while screaming “fuck <member of group targeted by slur>”, and calls were made to defecate on that person’s art, would you say death threats were made about that person?
Please take a moment to substitute various groups and people.
The legal system does not operate according to blanket statements. Police make a judgement of whether the death threat is credible. This depends on how specific the threat is and whether it occurs in the context of likely violence.
This service is pretty much what I, a software developer, am scared off. I expect that it will be used in order to quickly cobble something together and then hand it over to a dev for "polishing". And this sounds like a total nightmare to me.
If used like that, this service will effectively turn my job into that of an assistant to a machine.
It will happen. Product managers will essentially vibe code and make a thing that mostly works before handing it to developers for 'polishing'.
This could go two ways:
Dumb PMs - "I did most it myself in a week, it shouldn't take developers long to polish".
Smart PMs - "I made an unmaintainable, un-extensible proof of concept (at best) which cannot (and should not) be used as the basis for the real thing. But if(f) it's a better medium for software specifications/requirements than traditional written/visual specs, then it may add some value. The software development process hasn't otherwise changed a whole lot."
Also worth noting that in some ways, a working prototype could be worse than verbal/visual specs, since making the interactivity/clickyness could make it look like it's demonstrating a whole lot, whereas all the tricky little details a dev needs to make the real thing are missing or unspecified.
I wouldn't be scared because in practice we don't see this! Instead we see 1. devs appreciating getting an interactive mockup and 2. the PM having a better sense of what it's like to build technically. (It's pretty cool seeing how AI tools like Magic Patterns help non-technical software professionals naturally learn more about web dev concepts because the best prompts reference code.)
At big companies, Magic Patterns designs are used created & used at the beginning of the product lifecycle for brainstorming and iteration. And there's still a human in the loop in the process: the PM prompting Magic Patterns. The value we create is not the actual raw code, and so we are not seeing teams telling their devs to simply "polish" it. The handoff still is very similar to most dev/design handoffs today, except it's a Magic Patterns design versus a Figma design.
But there is no irony, because it's two different meanings of the word "hacking": firstly "gaining unauthorized access", and secondly "focused programming".
I always hated that there is this second meaning. Especially since IMO it's being used to "steal" some of the glory associated with the original meaning.
When did this second meaning emerge anyway? Is this site here partially at fault?
They both stem from the more general meaning of hacking as looking for clever outside-the-box solutions to a problem, showing disregard to the intended/expected/typical way of going about that sort of thing. It apparently originated with this meaning in the late 50's at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club.
Oh nice, I wasn't aware. I always associated hacking with "gaining unauthorized access" and googling for the first definition confirmed that I'm my eyes. Didn't know it was the other way around and the term is actually much older than I assumed.
Both are derived uses, but breaking in seems slightly more distant than the more recent usage of hackathon.
"Hack job" predates computers. The oldest form known means "to cut irregularly or inexpertly", with industrial revolution era uses similar to to people saying "AI slop" in the last year or two: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/211750/where-did...
"The" jargon file says "[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe]", while other sources claim it's the name of a tool that functions much like an axe or a mattock, or such an action as one might use the item for:
"""In fact, the OED also defines hack as a tool for breaking or chopping up, dating from before 1300:
He lened him þan a-pon his hak, Wit seth his sun þus-gat he spak.
And hacker follows. From 1620:
One good hacker, being a lusty labourer, will at good ease hack or cut more than half an acre of ground in a day."""
Are you suggesting Apple was not innovative, or that he did not have a role in Apple's innovation?
We can pretend all day that the Apple II, the Mac, iMac, macbook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad would have been exactly the same without Jobs. But in the reality we currently inhabit, he was the person overseeing them all.
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