No, game mechanics aren’t subject to copyright law. Game mechanics can be patented in the US, so long as they’re unique and nonobvious (to someone with ordinary skill in the field).

Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering both had patents on their mechanics, for example.

And of course, patents in Japan are a completely different animal than patents in the US.

500 grams of what, though? Folgers?

The current average price per pound (454 grams) of ground coffee beans in the US was double that just a couple months ago, so spending $3.00 per pound would necessitate getting cheaper than average - and therefore, likely lower quality than average, or at least lower perceived quality than average - beans.

The sorts of beans that companies tend to stock (IME) that are perceived as higher quality aren’t the same brands that I tend to buy (generally from local roasters), but they’re comparably priced. For a 5 pound (2267 grams) bag of one of their blends (which are roughly half the price of their higher end beans), it’s similar to what you’d pay for 5 pounds of Starbucks beans - about $50-$60.

Often when a company says “free coffee,” they don’t mean “free batch-brewed drip coffee,” but rather, free espresso beverages, potentially in a machine (located in the break room) that automates the whole process. I assume that’s what Intel is doing.

At $10 per pound (16 ounces) and roughly 1 ounce (28 grams) of beans per two ounce pour of espresso, that means that if each person on average drinks two per day, then that’s $1.25 for coffee per person per day.

However, logistics costs (delivering coffee to all the company’s break rooms) and operational costs (the cost of the automatic machine and repairs, at minimum; or the cost of baristas, or adding the responsibility to someone’s existing job (and thus needing more people or more hours) if just batch brewing) have to be added on top of that. Then add in the cost of milk, milk alternatives, sweeteners, cups, lids, stir sticks, etc…

Obviously if they just had free coffee grounds and let people handle the actual brewing of coffee in the break room, it would be much cheaper. But if the goal is to improve morale, having higher quality coffee that people don’t have to make themselves is going to do that better.

That’s $3.33 per employee per work day, assuming 50 5-day weeks per year. Seems a bit high to me, but not exorbitant. If the figure included things that they’re not reinstating (like free fruit) then that would make sense.

That’s fair, but he would be able to play the games in the meantime. And since hardware generally gets cheaper as time passes, if he could set aside more than the subscription fee each month to save for his own hardware, he’d be able to game in the meantime. And if he ever had to cancel it, he’d be closer to being able to buy his own hardware than he is today - meaning more time total spent gaming.

How so? The games aren’t purchased on GeForce Now and he could just cancel his subscription if they changed the service in a way he didn’t like.

Call me crazy, but if adults are on a gaming platform meant for kids causing problems, then they should probably be the ones restricted from spaces, not children.

How would you possibly do that in a way that didn’t invade the privacy of every child who wanted to explore those spaces?

Understandably frustrating, especially if you’re new to investing. But it’s expected that the market will have both ups and downs.

The best advice I can give is to choose a good investment allocation and then stick to it. Contribute as much as you can each pay period or month and avoid looking at your balance as much as possible. You should figure out a rebalancing strategy, and you’ll probably need to look at your account to do that. Also, see The Best Order of Operations For Saving For Retirement.

Right now you have unrealized losses, but you haven’t actually lost any money (i.e., you have no “realized losses”) until you withdraw it. As it’s a retirement account and you just started it, I assume you aren’t planning to retire in the next decade, much less the next three years.

Is this your only retirement account? If so, why have you not been continuing to add money to it? If you wait to do that until the market recovers, you’ll lose out on all the gains between now and then.

I know you haven’t said you’re considering selling, but I recommend you check out the “Maintain Discipline” section of the Bogleheads investment philosophy, just in case that’s on your mind. I also recommend that you read up on dollar cost averaging (if you’re investing in a retirement plan every pay period, you’re already doing this).

You pointed out that the entire market has been impacted. I haven’t personally been paying attention in enough detail to confirm that (and my accounts that I just checked have gone up about 10% over the past three years, not down), but if so, that means you could change your asset allocation without selling low and buying high. I’m not saying you should change it, but if you take the time to learn about different investment strategies and decide a different one works for you, it’s nice to not have to sell your current investments while they’re underperforming relative to your new investments. (On the other hand, you can always change the allocation for your future investments without worrying about that.)

1. I was showing that my understanding of the word “asset” was based in fact. The 4th definition wasn’t relevant to that.
2. I literally talked about the 4th definition in the next paragraph.

If anyone’s operating in bad faith, it’s you. Are you drunk? You’re being an intentionally obtuse pedant and a liar (by your own definition). Try replying once you’ve sobered up, clown. Once you reread and realize how much of a dick you were, I’m sure you’ll apologize - unless I’m right about you being too much of a coward to admit when you’re wrong about something.

You could try reading the rest of my comment first.

Before I reply to your comment, I’d like to share this link. It didn’t change any of my existing understanding because Linus’s comment already made it clear that this was out of their hands, but maybe it’ll help clarify something for you.

I realize now that this comment on that post was made before this one (“What’s free about delisting maintainers based on their country of residence?”) by the same person. It’s disingenuous for someone to act like this is about “country of residence” when they already engaged with a post clarifying that it’s because of sanctions against specific companies.

that you unironically think asset means property

I unironically think that because it does mean that:

1. assets plural

a. the property of a deceased person subject by law to the payment of his or her debts and legacies

b. the entire property of a person, association, corporation, or estate applicable or subject to the payment of debts

2. ADVANTAGE, RESOURCE

a. an item of value owned

b. assets plural the items on a balance sheet showing the book value of property owned

When I do a search for “state asset,” the results I get are all related to property, resources, etc., things that belong to and can be exploited by the state - for example https://www.epa.gov/dwcapacity/state-asset-management-initiatives-documents

Searching for “asset” specifically I see a tertiary definition reading “A spy working in his or her own country and controlled by the enemy” as well as the wikipedia definition, but that still means “spy,” not “paid lobbyist.”

just that incredibly obtuse

I’d apologize for not being well versed enough in counter-intelligence lingo to properly interpret the comment, but even with a proper interpretation, the comment I replied to was still incoherent, so I’m not really sure what you expect here.

It feels weird to say that it was incredibly obtuse of me to not spend more time trying to figure out what someone meant when they were, as far as I can tell just mad that Linus and other Linux maintainers didn’t ignore what their attorneys advised, regardless of what impact that might have had on them personally, and spouting a bunch of nonsense as a result.

Maybe I’m wrong, though. If so, would you care to explain how this was a violation of the GPL and/or how all of the 4 freedoms I listed were violated?

Right? It’s weird how so many people upset about the situation in this thread are incapable of explaining why it’s a problem without lying.

Like, I get that it sucks to be removed as a maintainer because of reasons outside your control. But being, or continuing to be, a maintainer of a project isn’t a right that’s integral to that project being free.

I’d honestly even consider it a good idea for Russia to get the FSF to fight this considering it’s a blatant violation of the GPL.

How is telling someone that you won’t accept their contributions anymore a violation of the GPL?

Literally none of those freedoms were impacted. Everyone is still free to use the program as they wish, fork it, make changes, etc… Linux doesn’t have a new license that says “anyone but Russians” can use it.

he then followed up by gloating about Russian maintainers

How did he gloat? He explained the change. If your complaint is that he was abrasive, I feel like you’re not familiar with Linus.

Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.

It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting
reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to
"grass root" it by Russian troll factories isn't going to change
anything.

And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm
accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US
thing.

If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read
the news some day.  And by "news", I don't mean Russian
state-sponsored spam.

As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call
brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian
aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of
history knowledge too.

Sounds a lot more like he’s frustrated than delighted to me.

Calling your former volunteer contributors bots

He didn’t call the contributors bots.

He called the people submitting reverts and complaining about those maintainers, who weren’t contributors themselves, “troll farm accounts.”

and state assets because of their home country

When did he call anyone a state asset? To be clear, being a troll or a paid actor doesn’t make you someone’s property.

He also explained that this was a legal matter:

> Again -- are you under any sort of NDA not to even refer to a list of
> these countries?

No, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that
I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.

I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random
internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have
been riled up by them.

First, you’re acting like the decision was made by Linus or another member of the team and that they weren’t following the law.

Second, even if that weren’t the case, it’s still completely free. Unless you can name one of the following freedoms that was impacted by those actions:

• Freedom 0: The freedom to use the program for any purpose.
• Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
• Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute and make copies so you can help your neighbor.
• Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.

What “not at all free dogmas” are you referencing, and why is “free” in scare quotes?

Yes, but have you seen some of the decisions the Supreme Court has come up with?

Do you only experience the 5-10 second buffering issue on mobile? If not, then you might be able to fix the issue by tuning your NextCloud instance - upping the memory limit, disabling debug mode and dropping log level back to warn if you ever changed it, enabling memory caching, etc…

Check out https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/server_tuning.html and https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/php_configuration.html#ini-values for docs on the above.

You could’ve scrolled down to the bottom, clicked on “Links,” then clicked on the repo link

The repo has instructions to install a Snap or build from source. If you build from source, it looks like you should download an archive from the releases page rather than just pulling from master.

The unicode standard has stated that U+2019 is the preferred character for apostrophes since at least the late 90s.

And it’s not like using a curved apostrophe in typesetting was novel even then.

as opposed to U+2019 being posthumously appropriated

U+0027 was also an ASCII character. The death of ASCII as a common format is the only one I can think of… what death are you referring to here?

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_single_quotation_mark

The Unicode character ’ (U+2019 right single quotation mark) is used for both a typographic apostrophe and a single right (closing) quotation mark.[1] This is due to the many fonts and character sets (such as CP1252) that unified the characters into a single code point, and the difficulty of software distinguishing which character is intended by a user’s typing.[2] There are arguments that the typographic apostrophe should be a different code point, U+02BC modifier letter apostrophe.[3]

In other words, U+2019 is the typographic apostrophe character. It’s also the right single quote character. There are people who think that the typographic apostrophe character should be something else (and having read their arguments, I agree), but in practice, it isn’t, and certainly wasn’t back in the 90s / early 2000s.