Valve didn’t invent lootboxes. The concept has physically existed for decades, they’re called trading card packs or kinder eggs or gashapon. The latter is the inspiration for what became known as lootboxes. The first “lootbox” was actually in the Japanese version of MapleStory in 2004 and it spread in eastern markets (because pay to win is more normalized there) and in mobile games. It wasn’t until 2009 when EA added card packs to FIFA. Hard to say if they were inspired by the lootboxes from the east of the insane football trading card market in the west, or by both. It was only after a year and a half later in 2010 when Valve added loot boxes to TF2. So Valve definitely didn’t invent lootboxes, they weren’t even the first in the west to use them. You could argue that they popularized loot boxes but even there is an argument to be made that Overwatch was a much bigger cultural hit than TF2 or CSGO or EAs FIFA games and normalized lootboxes.

I don’t mind the “Valve is bad” narrative, but at least keep your facts straight. The “strongest DRM” is also BS but others have already somewhat covered that part.

Up there as one of the most dangerous chemical compounds in the world, near 100% fatality rate.

Have you considered that it looks better because you’re used to seeing it that way? It’s the same with Fahrenheit vs Celsius, the one you’ve grown up with make more sense and is more pleasing to the eye.

Technically, you just posted a comment.

You’re not the only user. Other people may benefit even if you personally don’t. Getting software you don’t want is a compromise for getting an easy out the box installation that comes with what you want already pre-installed.

If you want a more personalized approach there’s always forking a distro and customizing it so that it suits your needs (which is how Nobara came into being).

But I’m that case if Linux gets 1 new user and windows gets 10 then proportionally Linux usage would decrease despite the absolute number increasing.

I would argue the absolute number is meaningless because without context that number has no value. If I tell you there are 3.4 million Linux desktop users does that number actually tell you anything? Not really. You don’t even know if it’s a lot or not because you have no frame of reference. 4% already has that frame built in and gives you an indication how Linux stacks up to other desktop OSs.

From my experience Hexbear isn’t as much full of tankies as it is full of anti-west people. Depending on who you end up interacting with you might not even call them explicitly leftist. I don’t see supporting Russian invasion of Ukraine as leftist, but you can find people in Hexbear supporting just that.

Feel free to provide proof.

Of course you can’t, because there’s nothing you can provide except your belief that it is the way you want to believe.

While it should go as without saying I think it’s pretty hard to take it that way when the following statements get made a) The legitimate Ukraine government was overthrown in a NATO croup, b) Ukraine government is a neo-nazi government, c) DPR and LPR are legitimate countries and d) NATO started the war in Ukraine. Every single one of those is a Russian state propagated talking point, all of them made around nuggets of facts (like the leaked chat where some US officials were discussing who should or shouldn’t be in the new government) but ultimately warped into something that can’t definitely be proven true or false. Thus whoever spreads those talking points wants to believe those statements as true, which begs the question of why to believe they’re true.