So what are the odds of a bunch of democrats storming the capitol?

Oh, I get to choose health insurance too. Only it’s not linked to my employer. And they all have to offer the same coverage. And they can’t refuse you for the basic health insurance.

The OP mentions he uses Comcast, which is an American ISP. I myself live in ‘socialist’ Europe and I can choose from 13 different ISP on fiber alone. Surely OP who lives in ‘free-market’ USA must have an unimaginable number of options.

Why not switch to a non-shit ISP?

Laten we ‘t dan gewoon goed doen en 1 keer per jaar gewoon alle wetten een dag niet laten gelden zoals in The Purge.

That’s not a solution at all. First of all, depending country, you will need a gambling license. This is a PITA as gambling laws will differ per country. In my country gambling is heavily regulated and you would need to check ID and keep track of how much a person gambles. You have a duty of care and if you notice a person’s gambling habits are becoming problematic you have to refuse them.

You can put money and source code in escrow for this exact eventuality.

I can’t even imagine what it must be like to not be safe at school. The whole obsession Americans have with guns is completely alien to me. I don’t even understand why anyone would want to own a gun.

I just looked it up. It would have been a 10-mile (16 kilometer) ride for me, starting at 7 am each morning.

Plenty of kids in my high school class who rode 18-20 kilometers each way. We may not have any mountains but we have shitloads of rain and wind (the downside of a flat country is the wind has free reign).

Like any Dutch mom would say: “you aren’t made of sugar” (sugar melts when it gets wet).

Mind, students weren’t allowed to have backpacks on account of school shooting fears. So, carrying supplies home would also have been an issue.

No backpacks allowed here either. Books were leased from the school and backpacks were considered to not protect the school’s property enough. You had to use one of these. Thick leather books bags, that weighed a ton empty. They were actually so heavy that it was causing health problems (back issues) and they had to introduce a rule that the bag cannot weigh more than 10% of a student’s body weight. You’d bring this to school every day on the cargo rack of your bike

No school shootings though, because we have proper gun regulation.

There’s literally an intersection with no traffic lights where the rural road crosses the highway.

That’s not a highway as I understand the term. When I read ‘highway’ I expect something like this. By definition they are conflict-free (no crossings, traffic lights, access only through on/off ramps that allow you to match speed, etc.

Do you not have safety/design standards for roads where you are? Because that definitely looks like a road that would be required to have traffic lights. What is the max allowed speed on that road?

It looks like what would be a 80 or 100 km/h road here. 80 km/h roads are fine to cross safely if they are single-lane, dual-lane (2+2) or 100km/h roads always have traffic lights. Highways are 130km/h and never have intersections.

And no street lights.

That’s just insane. A road like that would be required to have street lights here. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a road that size without lights. The only roads without street lights here are narrow, low-speed rural roads (the kind where you have to slow down and drive partially on the shoulder when you meet an oncoming car) and they usually still have a light at intersections.

I don’t know what a “level crossing” is

A place where roads cross at the same level, so a normal intersection. As apposed to a non-level crossing like a tunnel or bridge, where roads cross at different levels. Traffic on highways moves too fast and is too dense for level crossings so crossing a highway is one of the safest crossings you can ever make because you never have to actually cross traffic.

Highways don’t have intersections, it’s one of the defining features of a highway.

Are you really unaware that four-lane highways criss-cross their way through the American countryside?

Sure, we also have highways that cross the countryside as well as E-roads (european international roads, which would be comparable to interstates). Not sure why that would be dangerous though, highways don’t have level crossings, ever. Doesn’t really matter if you go by car or bike, a level crossing on a highway would be suicidal.

First you’re talking about living in a rural area, then you’re talking about 4 lane highways. Which one is it?

It’s always fascinating to me that some people think everyone lives in a city.)

I grew up in a rural area. I had to cycle to high school every day for 5 years. Regardless of weather. 12 kilometers each way. Not just me, everyone in my school and pretty much every other school in the country. Plenty of kids who had to cycle much farther than me as well.

Walk?

Then fix that.

Or they could just bike to school like normal kids.

I don’t think it’s a token gesture. Microsoft is a software company; they want to sell software, not hardware. They don’t really care about xbox other than as a means to sell more software and gamepass subscriptions. Selling their games on as many platforms as possible is a logical move for them.

Really? Never heard of it. How does it compare to e.g. Visual Studio, XCode, Android Studio and the like?

So for the record I don’t know that this is relevant

My point was that you can’t really compare them because Steam provides a lot less value than Apple to developers, yet they still take a 30% cut. With Apple you get a lot more for your 30% than you do at Valve.

Followup question. Do you receive any of this stuff from Nintendo? Sony/PlayStation? They also take an 30% cut.

I don’t develop for consoles but a quick Google search shows that PlayStation provides support and even free development kits (special console hardware for development) to indie developers. They all obviously provide SDKs as they are the only ones who can.

Steam is great, but it’s just a storefront. Steam doesn’t get involved until your game is done and ready for sale. This is very different from Apple/Google/Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo who are much more involved in the entire development process than Steam.