The used-game market isn't nearly as important to new gamers as it is to older gamers. They're used to change, and for the majority of ALL gamers, it's not a big deal.

This decision was almost certainly backed by market studies and accounting projections. They realize there will be "resistance", but like the Borg, resistance is futile. There won't be enough of it to get anywhere NEAR break-even with the revenue increase this move is going to create.

In the end, it's all about the Benjamines. They're confident that when the dust settles, it's going to be a net-positive for their stock price. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters to them.

We need some new laws on the books though, enshrining strong consumer protection for digital assets.

oh no! AI is coming for my click-bait articles!

It's just another pebble on the "AI is good" side of the scale if you ask me.

Wikipedia has some great examples of what happens when someone that's been promised "points" (a share of the net profit) on a movie has enough money to sue the studios that try to rip them off.

They scurry under the fridge like cockroaches and settle for big amounts to avoid having their accounting practices further scrutinized. I don't see why they're so afraid of it, everyone knows they do it.

My expectation is that the mechanism that puts an end to it will be the IRS or similar. Like Al Capone learned, the government lets powerful people steal from the powerless, but it doesn't tolerate it when you steal from the tax man.

Sounds similar to the practice of "hazing" new pledges at college fraternities. Too many times the frat organizations kept saying "it's not our fault, we didn't know, they were acting independently!". Finally campuses basically said the buck stops with the org, it's such a common problem you can't turn a blind eye and say you didn't know it was going on. It's your responsibility to be actively LOOKING for it and making sure it doesn't happen. And if it still happens, you'll be held partly responsible.

Funny how the (severe/dangerous) hazing suddenly stopped after that. Hold the managers responsible for what goes on during their watch and suddenly they start doing their jobs.

The responses it provides are "the right responses, most of the time", so it comes with the same risks.

Like when you're working in the kitchen and swing your elbow and bump the handle of a knife and it flips off the counter and starts to fall. And you "instinctively" reach out to grab it, only just stopping yourself in time to avoid cutting your hand.

Your cerebellum said "I got this!", and it took your brain a split second longer to "countermand" the order to grab the knife. It took a little longer to process all the context of the situation, so it wasn't just looking at the "catch falling thing before it hits the floor". Your brain realized that on this specific occasion (when the falling item has been identified as a knife, and previously learned knowledge says it's dangerous to carelessly grab it) that was not a good idea. The cerebellum lacks the "memory" of the cerebral cortex, or the "processing power" to identify the falling object, so it's doing the best it can with the information it's got. In MOST cases it's a good response, so the CT provides a fast, strong response to reach out and grab it.

Computers that try shortcuts run into essentially the same problem. As a rule, computers are good at coming up with quick solutions to either very general OR very specific problems. They struggle in the middle-ground where analysis of context and history can change the desired response.

iirc that's entirely the job of the Cerebellum. It monitors stimulus on the way in and responses on the way out, and when it's seen it enough it creates "shortcuts" that allow for both faster and more automatic responses.

Indeed, the first one we learn is walking. (balance without a cerebellum is very hard) There's a rare defect where the cerebellum fails to form / fully form, and those people have a really hard time living all their lives on "manual mode".

Riding a bicycle is a good extension from walking, your cerebellum gets to go back into intense learning mode all over again.

I really don't see why any of this is "news", we've known about the concept for centuries, and the mechanisms behind it for decades.

or better yet, use previously established / tested / used bank routing numbers.

Regardless of how you do it, a method you've used in the past is more trustworthy than a new method, especially if the new method requires a lot of "weak links" (people doing things manually)

I'm a bit surprised they're not using Space-X for all of that by now? Maybe they need to periodically "refresh" the escape Soyuz docked at the station?

The EU is a Republic. The American Republican party is a Kleptocracy, currently led by the world's biggest grifter.

I immediately notice an issue. This "survival mode de-tuning" does nothing to make the buoy less buoyant. And they showed it just staying (vertically) stationary in high waves. That'll reduce power output of course, but the problem is it'll also generate enormous forces on the anchor.

"survival mode" on a wind turbine involves pitching the blades so that less or no energy is being transferred to the blades by the wind, which slows or stops the blades. (that reduces the "interaction" between the wind and the blades) Turbines have a "maintenance brake" that can hold the blade still but it's nowhere near strong enough to hold it in a high wind without pitching the blades, and the wind will tear the brake apart if you try to use just that to slow or stop the blades..

The buoy appears to be trying to use a brake to stop movement, instead of doing something to reduce or stop energy collection, and all that energy you're collecting has to go somewhere. If all you've got is a brake, the energy will go into whatever the brake is holding onto, or start mechanically deforming the brake. It'd be like jamming a stick in the spokes of your bicycle wheel to stop the bike.

They're setting themselves up for a "if it doesn't bend, it will break" sort of situation.

The most obvious response would be to reduce magnetic coupling at the generator, which would allow the buoy to move up and down more easily and thus extract less power from the water. Sort of like adjusting power to the field winding on a generator to regulate the energy being produced. (that's not as easy to do with a wind turbine because the blades just go faster and faster until centrifugal force shatters the blades)

Or pump water into the buoy to make it less buoyant, thus reducing the interaction between the waves and the buoy which would reduce the energy being transferred to it.

But the animation is clearly showing the buoy stopping the arms (braking) and somehow not bobbing up and down as the waves interact with it, so there's a whole lot of energy being stacked up on the internal braking and the anchor as the waves apply a huge up-and-down force on a stationary buoy. Nothing's bending, and something's gonna break.

This kind of reminds me of "solar frickin roadways", where there were obvious design issues that somehow got ignored all the way to large-scale testing. I'd LIKE to see this work, but they need to address this design problem before they do large scale testing and find out the hard way that it won't survive as designed. It looks like right now they haven't done any testing in locations that pushed their "survival mode" anywhere near the level it's going to need to well... survive.

one thing I missed, since they're "merving" the jet packs, I'd bet the idea is for the main service robot to remain in orbit after running around and attaching the packs, and then sit there waiting for more packs to be launched, and attach those to additional satellites. Makes sense, saves costs not having to launch another heavy and expensive servicing robot for each refueling, you just need to launch semi-autonomous fueled jet packs and let the "mechanic" waiting in orbit attach them.

pretty much all modern satellites carry de-orbiting or disposal-orbit capability. They either take themselves down into the atmosphere (aiming for "point nemo", google it) or go to one of the stable lagrange points to die.

The 1st amendment was added to protect citizens' freedom for political speech and other government "retaliation". It's not a free pass to say anything you want. It doesn't protect slander, incitement to violence, defamation, or the classic "crying FIRE in a crowded theatre".

This case seems to be pretty similar to USRDA labels, where "people have a right to know" certain things about what's being sold to them. And placing a recycling symbol (and even some with a number) when they know the packaging or product wasn't designed to be easy to recycle and is being thrown away by almost every recycling facility is pretty clearly "false or deceptive advertising". It's not so different from placing a "made in USA" sticker over the Made in China mark. I don't see how any court has concluded that they have ANY chance of winning this case, and that's usually part of the bar to meet for an injunction.

Lies and deception come with consequences, and this is one lie that the public is sick of seeing.

Funny how if it's someone we like, they used it. But if it's someone we don't like, they abused it.

Wasn't there a scene in Minority Report where the star was trying to run away from the authorities he kept getting his iris scanned by electronic billboards and signs as he ran through the crowded shopping plaza?

IIRC the advertisements and announcements that played started customizing themselves indicating they'd identified a criminal and showing is face and profile?