Steve Dice

Another fun fact about plant naming conventions: all lettuces* are the same species

*except wild lettuce but nobody really considers that a lettuce. Still, I guess it would be more correct to say all of the food lettuces are the same species.

Irrelevant side quest that I went on while double checking this: DuckDuckGo now forwards some search queries to their chatGPT wrapper, which prompted (pun intended) the following interaction:

Yes. Even accounting for those idiots, car drivers still break more traffic laws. And it’s exponentially more dangerous when they do. This is what the article is getting at.

Yay. An argument from character. What did the head developer of Wolfire did that hurts its credibility more than… checks notes running an illegal casino for minors?

Yes. This is exactly what I mean when I say “you’re spreading misinformation” in response to all the “iTs OnLy AbOuT tHe KeYs” comments. Kudos for actually informing yourself before butting into a discussion.

They wording is specifically outlined on the lawsuit along with how it impacts competition. Read the damn thing.

G2A and the likes don’t count. I’ve also taken advantage of the poor economy of the 3rd world to buy cheaper games. You wouldn’t ask a watch store why doesn’t Rolex force the shady guy in an alley to offer the same prices they do.

makes you think I’m nothing more than a dumb internet troll with no meaningful opinions or thoughts worth sharing or discussing like adults

Holy fuck. I called you one out of all of those and it was the one who isn’t even a pejorative. I thought you were joking, because your comment sounded like you were joking. There’s really no deeper meaning to that.

No stopping to hunt for operators and symbols

That’s what I’m saying, using parentheses won’t make the operators and symbols go away. You’ll still have to stop and hunt for them, you’re just adding parentheses in addition to that.

because it isolates the problem into distinct, physically easier to read sections

That’s only true for simple expressions, though. Once you try to type something more complicated, parentheses get very confusing very fast. Anyone who’s ever had WolframAlpha refuse to evaluate an expression because of a missing parentheses knows what I mean.

As for your examples,

1+2+3×4+5+6

1+2+3÷4+5+6

In these, the version with parentheses is different from the one without because you want the operations to be done in a certain order that isn’t indicated anywhere.

1+2×3÷4*5-6

And in this one, you’re mixing several operators with equal priority on the same line while not indicating which one you want to be done first.

What I’m getting at is that you’ve provided the exact examples where you have to use parentheses so it makes no sense to ask which one is clearer because only one version is correctly written. It would be like me asking you if (24)+1 is clearer than 2*4+1 and concluding parentheses are confusing because you didn’t divine I wasn’t typing twenty four but instead wanted you to multiply the 2 and 4.

Finally, the order of operations isn’t just some arbitrary convention, it might seem that way when we limit ourselves to only numbers but its intuitiveness really shows in algebra. Take the polynomial:

2x²+1

Even if you’ve never heard of the order of operations, there’s absolutely zero confusion about which order you’re meant to do the operations. It would take a madman to decide that “+1” is part of the exponent or that you’re supposed to add the 1 to the x² and then multiply it by 2.

In this case, adding parentheses here would turn it into

2(x(²))+1

which is unnecessary and it gets annoying very fast. For example:

(2(x))+(3(x(²)))+(5(x(³)))+(8(x(⁴)))

vs

2x+3x²+5x³+8x⁴

You might say that’s not fair because this expression clearly needs no parentheses so I just added them to make it seem more confusing and you’d be right but that’s the point: there has to be an arbitrary line where we decide parentheses are no longer necessary and that’s the order of operations. We settled on that because that’s what works in algebra. When it comes to what’s intuitive in arithmetic, left to right is obviously the best (for westerners). Unfortunately for arithmetic, we’ve decided that intuitiveness in algebra is more important than intuitiveness in arithmetic.

Is that supposed to mean something?

lol are legitimately saying this was not a joke?

Parenthesis consists of only two symbols that only require two keyboard keys and a single stroke of a pen to write compared to the four keys and varying strokes of the standard operators

The humble ( ), however, is very easy to see, and it creates neat little windows that don’t leave much room for misinterpretation.

2*7²+5*3³ = accessibility nightmare

(2(7²))+(5(3³)) = readable with clearly defined order of operations

I mean, I guess I have no reason to doubt your word so I’ll just believe you were being serious and respond in kind.

Time savings you might gain from parentheses being easier to write and requiring less keystrokes is lost on you needing to use twice as many since they come in pairs.

Furthermore, with the exception of *, which we don’t even write most of the time, you still need to use all of the other operators even with parentheses, so using them everywhere isn’t even a trade off, it’s a net loss. This also means that parentheses will not help you differentiate between the operators because you’ll still be using them.

Finally, the only reason you find the example I gave easier to read with parentheses is because I used a lot of multiplication, but you have multiplication to thank for that, not parentheses. In most cases, it would have fairly simple expressions like this:

1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8

turned into this:

1+(2+(3+(4+(5+(6+(7+(8))))))

If you truly want to eliminate ambiguity, have a look at reverse polish notation. I find it confusing as hell but some people like it.

Bye.

Sorry that my mean words hurt you more than Valve abusing you.

Your search turned up nothing because you searched for nothing. Steam Keys are irrelevant here, you only keep bringing them up to derail the discussion to a greyer area where you can better defend your beloved corporate overlord. This was always about the price veto policy. Very telling how you flat out refuse to even address anything regarding that topic. Grow up.

No, it’s not. That’s an entirely different policy that you keep bringing up for no reason. That policy is also anti-consumer bullshit but I digress. What I’m referring to is the following shady wording:

Initial pricing as well as proposed pricing adjustments will be reviewed by Valve

I hope so but they’re already abusing cliffhangers so they’re not that far off from just completely stalling the narrative on every chapter except the last one.

I know you didn’t google anything or you would have said “nothing I found substantiates your point” instead of “these specific two articles don’t say what you said”.

But let’s assume you’re not lying and you did look up the situation. What’s your claim then? That Steam has no price veto policy or that they don’t abuse it? Because one is wrong and the other is incredibly naive. Talk about taking unfounded claims at face value.

Also, why do you keep bringing up Steam Keys? That has nothing to do with anything. Focus.

No, I think you deserve to be insulted because you are talking out of your ass about something you didn’t read. Again, this is about the price veto policy. This is not about Steam Keys (here’s me hoping italics help with your dyslexia).

And yeah, I thought you meant runescape on the EGS not on their site. It doesn’t matter because it has zero bearing on the discussion, I only addressed it because you didn’t read the thing you’re talking about.

It’s not safe from The Walking Deadification, though. And I’m sad to say, it seems like it’s already happening.

Ah, the classic spoon-feed me the answer or it doesn’t count as a source. Learn to use the internet, you’re not a child.

Again, this is not about Steam Keys, it’s about Steam using shady contracts to bully developers into price parity on completely unrelated stores. Yes, runescape is cheaper on Epic, the incredibly broad nature of these rules that allows for selective wishy-washy enforcing is also part of the lawsuit.

If you see something I am missing from the lawsuit please let me know, preferably without the hostility if you can manage.

The whole thing because you didn’t read it and, given that you keep bringing up Steam Keys, which is not what we’re talking about, I’m skeptical that you can read at all.

Yes, Valve enforcing price parity only when it’s convenient for them is also addressed in the lawsuit.

The rest of your comment refers to Steam Keys. That’s literally not what we’re talking about.