> then either back to some waiting position

Uh what. Why would an Uber or Lyft driver go back to where they just came from? They're not limos at a base, or ambulettes at a hospital. They don't HAVE a waiting position. And they won't just drive around for no reason, wasting gas & mileage-wear.

This makes no sense, except in situations like airports, and even then ONLY if there's a sharp drop-off in potential rides between the airport and the surrounding areas - which is not the case in most major cities.

Hmm, wasn't there a book in which a dystopian society relied on regulations that were based on emotion? How did that work out for everyone?

There's a reason we (and every other civilized country) have a legislative process.
Part of that reason is so we don't change nationwide laws based on who whines the loudest.

Dear mobile camera manufacturers: for the love of every god/dess that ever existed, can we PLEASE have some sort of standardized lens/filter mount system for mobile cameras, FINALLY?

There are dozens of highly useful filters and adapters, which can -and are- be produced in mobile-sized versions. The only problem is, trying to attach the damn things. Your options are: hold it by hand (goodbye optical quality), over-the-edge plastic clips, or (I kid you not) double-sided tape. Your options if you have a protective case / battery case: damn near zero.

It's been what, about 20 years since phones acquired cameras? Can we somehow move *beyond* the "ugly plastic clip" / "double-sided tape" level of technology, and come up with something small, universalized, and magnetic/mechanical, so I can finally put a macro lens or a circular polarizer on?

Like, literally give me a magnetic ring with alignment cut-outs and a matching ring on the lens/filter. And a basic pack of lenses/filters. It's not rocket science.

Problem with buses: too cramped, run too infrequently, routes are rigid. Problem with cars: too expensive per mile, consume too much trafficspace per passenger. How about 12-15-passenger vans, that go along a (preset) route that can be varied (at the passengers' requests) by a certain distance? I.e. you can't detour a "minibus" to the other side of the city, but you can choose one that goes *roughly* where you need to go, and adjust its path by a block or 2. Basically, UberPool with more passengers. And more limited route options.

It's whatever, any basic simple game with multiplayer, even if it doesn't have anything advanced. All you really need for people to be assholes is group chat & a competition / goal / scoreboard.

Unless and until judges roundly throw out insane lawsuits against libraries, streaming content providers, and other all-access/equal-access purveyors of information, we will have these idiotic lawsuits along the lines of "my kid went to the library and found a book on explosives and blew his leg off, so I blame the library, not my own shitty parenting skills".

It's not the videogames themselves that are "toxic", it's the players.

People can be assholes in multiplayer Solitaire, too.

There's a reason multiplayer games include a warning along the lines of "online interactions are not rated by ESRB".

That's because the interactions among players are not, and cannot, be under the control of the game publisher - and it's ridiculous to expect the game makers to be responsible for the actions of the players.

I wonder, do these same people blame the cell phone company when they get a rude phone call or a telemarketer?

I had that moment when I decided to sell my Diablo II account, complete with the game discs.

And as I was writing up all the characters and inventory, for the sale post, I kinda thought, holy crap, how many hours did I invest into this game? Sure, I have every classic build of every class (Fire Sorc, Cold Sorc, Lightning Sorc, Poison Necro, Bone Necro, etc), and literally every unique item in the game (from Sigon's to Windforce), and 6 mules packed with gems and SOJs... but what did that cost me?

That was a sobering thought. Like waking up after a long bender and taking a look around.

Never really invested that much time into games afterwards. Will never get involved in something that forces you to play for hours, or on an ongoing basis. So no "crack" like WOW or EVE... gimme World of Tanks where I can get into the game, spend 15 minutes blowing things up, and then moving on with my actual life.

Game publishers use a lot of psychological tactics to get people addicted, and keep them addicted.

Depends on the game. Borderlands 2 did fast travel in a creative and amazing way. If you die, you're digitally reconstructed ("digistructed") into a new body, complete with memories; so if you need to travel to the other side of the world, it's the same process - you're scanned into the system and digistructed somewhere else, makes no difference to the system which "3D printer" you're coming out of. Thing is, you're in a gameworld complete with spaceships, robots, AI, lasers, etc - having a matter-to-energy/energy-to-matter converter is perfectly normal and sensible.

Also, at one point, the sudden and surprising LACK of fast travel becomes a challenge and a chapter in itself.

But yeah, Fast Travel in games whose gameworld you can walk across in 5 minutes is frankly ridiculous.

So FT isn't a bad thing in itself, as long as it's appropriate to the setting and actually needed.

Anybody who appreciates a well-designed & clean interface, and exact controls that do what you want, when you want, and align things with an almost-prescient clarity.

It's AutoCAD "align this node precisely to the virtual guideline extending from that object, then create 24 clones and distribute them evenly around this curve" mentality vs PhotoShop "drag things around and feel creative" mentality.

"A feature I find funny in new games is the ability to press a button and the game reveals the path the player is supposed to take. The Tomb Raider games do this."

It depends on the game.

Dead Space 2 & 3 - the challenge is the dark environment & mutated bastards jumping at you from every corner. The challenge isn't pathfinding. So yeah, "Press right stick" to light a path is good in this case, because it doesn't take away from the main game, it's still dark and creepy and tense, but at least now you know which dark and creepy door to go through. Oh and it's done seamlessly, since you're in a powered suit with AR/VR display, so it MAKES SENSE for the system to draw a glowing line. It's not like a 3D path overlaid on a dungeon.

Or Borderlands - thanks to the sheer size of the environment, and the fact that it's split into different areas, yeah, you kinda need waypoints and markers. The goal of the game is to have fun, chuckle at the odd humor & cultural references, and kill bandits and Hyperion robots with a huge variety of weapons - not to laboriously crawl over every inch of a million-square-mile map looking for that one f**king key.

TL;DR: waypoints and pathfind hints aren't necessarily a bad thing, as long as they're done for a reason, with style, and without taking away from the challenge of the game.

1.) Yeah, the movement that was started by Hillary. But hey, who cares about facts, right? And as icing on the cake, why the fuck did it take SEVEN YEARS to produce that birth certificate? Answer me that. These people can find out what beer someone drank in high school 35 years ago, but when it comes to basic documentation, suddenly it's a great mystery of life. No, really, seven years. Why? 2.) Nastiest protest ever? Really? I'd rank JFK getting his head Gallaghered as a little more intense than that. But again, American history has apparently started 20 years ago for some people. Still, even in that timeframe - when did Republicans set things on fire & break windows protesting against Obama? Show me 1 mass example of that. Because I can show you at least a dozen from the other side.

The subway network in St. Petersburg and Moscow was designed as a massive interconnected bomb shelter; it was further upgraded with blast doors capable of withstanding shockwaves from nuclear weapons, dedicated air filtration systems, etc, etc. The East Coast subway system was built before the Cold War days, and by the time the nuclear threat materialized, the system was so developed that it made no sense to change it.

The point of this device - or any other at-home/POC HIV screening test - lies in the "screening" part of the name. It's NOT designed to provide a 100% reliable answer, it's designed to SCREEN OUT those who are definitely infected, and definitely past the window period. Would you have sex with someone whose test results are DEFINITELY positive? I don't think so. There ya go. That's the point. If the results are inconclusive / not available, then use your discretion and use protection. But willingly stare down the barrel of a loaded gun? Let's prevent those situations.

Yes, I can completely imagine it. Instead of asking "hey, are you clean, have you been tested?" - which is perfectly acceptable (at least in major cities, I can't vouch for West Podunk, ND) - and *trusting* the person's answer (because we all know humans are 100% honest, 100% of the time, right?) - how about asking "hey, I'd like to not die in 15 years, so stick your finger in there and let me be a little more certain?".