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The dumb part is this vow doesn't even make sense on the face of it to protect national security.

I expect Cybertruck will sell in places with a big truck culture. The US, Canada and Australia probably I think they will sell terribly in Europe where trucks are generally quite rare and disliked because they're not practical on public roads. I also foresee that the EU might get pissed off with Tesla's laissez faire attitude to safety critical stuff like - "unbreakable" glass, door releases, position of indicators, pedestrian safety and force them to change design to comply with more stringent regs.

Masturbation makes hair grow on the palms of your hands - it's science people.

The incurably stupid and grifters.

They aren’t cheaper in epic, but more money goes to the publishers and developers. It sucks when a game studio you like goes under.

I’d argue they aren’t profitable because of steam. Everybody uses steam, and most people will wait 6 months to get the epic exclusives after the exclusivity runs out.

I guess as a studio it boils down to is would they rather get 70% of 10 million sales or 88% of 1 million sales. They have to make that calculus and also whether they're going to spend money to make, test, distribute and support multiple builds of the same game to capture as many sales from as many platforms as possible.

I once made an app for Android that I distributed on Play, Amazon and Blackberry(!) app stores and it soon became a huge pain in the ass. Since the stores have different banner / screenshot requirements, different upload requirements, even different approval procedures that could mean uploads took a week to appear. In the end I just gave up and used Play because it was the largest audience and relatively frictionless.

It's COMPLETELY possible to have an alternative app store that does these things. You could install F-Droid on your phone if you so wished right now. Many phones have Samsung's app store baked into them. Amazon also have an app store.

It would more correct to say that Google preinstalls Play store and enjoys the power of the default - this stuff is in all their licensed phones, it does the job and vast majority people lack a motivation to use anything else. But if people were motivated they could do something else it since the door isn't completely closed as it is on many other platforms.

I think this is just Epic getting pissed that they either have to agree to the terms of using Play, including give a cut of in-app purchases or go it alone and do their own thing. They could even have their own app store if they wanted - who knows if they had better terms than Google then maybe they could attract other games onto the platform, or find some other model, like curated subscription based gaming.

Google Play is a monopoly in practice, but it's not like other app stores don't exist and might even be preinstalled. Samsung's store is baked into their phones. AOSP forked firmwares (Kindle, Baidu, LineageOS, etc.) might not have Google apps at all. But even on Google android phones, Amazon Appstore, Samsung Galaxy Store, F-Droid etc. can be sideloaded. Even apps like Netflix are turning into app stores to give away stuff with a subscription. Any APK at all is available to sideload assuming someone wants to.

So it's a defacto monopoly and perhaps it is intended that way by Google knowing few people will bother to install anything else even when the door is open to do it. Is it any different from most other platforms though? Apple is completely shut. So are XBox, Nintendo & Playstation. Even Windows has a preinstalled appstore that Microsoft is pushing hard with things like Windows S ("safe mode") to stop people from escaping.

As for Epic, I think they're just pissed that Google wanted a quid pro cut of the profits. They feigning shock that in return for putting Fortnite in front of a lot of eyeballs, promoting it, facilitating millions of download/installation/updates that Google would want something in return. Epic demonstrated they could sideload Fortnite via an APK downloaded from their store so they can pick their poison - distribute a game entirely for themselves, or do it via a store subject to the terms and conditions.

I didn't and I don't know where you got the idea I did.

I know what it is thanks. I even contributed code a long time back to it.

I have a Revolut account and they're an actual bank these days in the EU but not a bank in other places like the UK where they're still waiting for a licence. N26 is also a proper bank in Europe. I wouldn't like to use an online bank which is not a bank since if the platform collapses then you have no guarantees on your personal savings and the platform could be doing all kinds of unregulated shady shit.

I should mention that while Revolut is a bank now, I sometimes get grief with it. e.g. I went to collect a car rental in the UK and the desk point blank refused the my Revolut card exclaiming it's a prepaid card when it was actually a Mastercard Debit, a world elite one no less. Didn't do me any good to argue though because they had some dumb rule and they stuck to their guns. If they had used their own eyes or stuck the card in the reader they could have seen what the card was but nope, policy meant they had to refuse it.

There are plenty of online banks that do all the stuff people want. So good luck with that. And enjoy all the hideously complex finance regulation & legal obligations that varies from one location to another.

I suppose I am not sure entirely what constitutes an emulator and what doesn’t, but I always thought an emulator mimics (emulates) a certain systems architecture, i.e. has to be slower by design than the real thing. In wine, however, windows system calls are replaced / re-routed to the underlying linux system calls which are often much faster, which is why wine often exceeds windows in performance executing windows binaries (assuming you can get them to run at all :)

WINE has a FAQ on the matter - https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Is_Wine_an_emulator.3F_There_seems_to_be_disagreement

Short story, it depends what you use WINE for and the perspective you're looking from. I think from a binary's POV that thinks it is calling Windows OS it is emulation.