I believe the conspiracy theory goes that when marijuana was first banned, a farming industry (cotton? can't remember) lobbied/convinced Congress that hemp was also a massive part of this "drug craze" in order to shut down hemp farmers who were able to produce better quality textile material at a lower cost, thus making it harder for these farmers to sell their own crop.

(Oh-ho, a former Fark admin? My condolences. I remember my days as a TFer fondly, but I eventually got fed up with the over/slanted moderation and cliques.)

I'm going to the model of 'invitations' where you have to know someone already in the community to get an invite -- because then if we get someone being an ass, we can suspend their friends' accounts, too (giving them some external pressure to not be a dick), or prune the whole tree of accounts if that doesn't help.

Even if that helped with trolling*, this is an excellent way to create an echo chamber/circlejerk. Since your friends likely have similar opinions to you, the site will maintain a steady consensus about topics for some time. By the time invites branch out to people who have opinions that are very different (but still reasonable), they'll be awash with mob mentality the moment they make their first counter-consensus post and likely just leave.

If you're not trying to have a serious discussion site or are going for the insular angle, that would be okay, though.

* I think that once you hit a certain (fairly low) threshold it will become nearly ineffective against trolling. "Friend" will become "anyone who asks me for a referral"/"uses the referral codes I post on another site", much like the early days of Gmail and pretty much any invite-only site, and trolls will use this to not only cause the general site anguish, but extra special and indirect harassment upon the person who gave them the invite

Considering Jezebel's reason for existing, I'm wondering why they're only dealing with this now. I would have thought that such troll antics would have hit them years ago (or at least as soon as the Kinja commenting system allowed images without a moderated queue, which I believe has been far longer than this troll has been at it.)

Heh. In the gaming circles I run in, if anyone links to Kotaku the link is ignored and the user posting it belittled. They are very much pandering for clickbaits; I can recall seeing links for a few "outraged" pieces that the entire rest of the internet (except the SJW side of Tumblr) had no problem with (sadly I can't think of a specific example at the moment aside from the Dragon's Crown thing.)

And, while we're bringing up nasty habits of Gawker, I'd like to remind Slashdot about Gizmodo's CES 2008 TV-B-Gone incident. I think that's when a lot of people on the internet realized that Gawker, in general, is trash.

The lone exception is Lifehacker; while they do a lot of the "blurb 'n' a link" stuff, they do have some detailed articles that can be useful. Like Slashdot, their major usefulness tends to be in the comments (except that they're stuck with that horrible Kinja system.)

unfair genetic advantage

Why does it have to be "unfair"? Why can't it be "(pseudo-)luck"? If someone else wins the lottery and I don't, it would be quite silly for me to call the whole thing unfair.

(I added "pseudo-" because genes aren't completely random, and what potential there is for gene development is based on what genes the parents pass along. I, with my predominantly German/Scottish heritage, could not have "lucked" into being born with Asian features.)

I'm on vacation right now doing business from my hammock, and I'm more productive than I usually am in my office

A bit off topic, but if you're doing business from your hammock you're not on vacation. Telecommuting, sure, but not vacation.

Please stop thinking you are, the acceptance of that idea by you and others is ruining life for a lot of people.

Most of the rest of us enjoy doing things in groups

If by "groups" you mean a number of friends/relatives, you would still have a far superior experience at home if everyone pooled the money they would spend on tickets and instead bought a large and very nice TV(+sound system.) Can't find hard data on a quick search, but this suggests that even the lowest per-team ticket average is $106; so amongst 5 friends you can get a 50" TV, or a 40" and decent sound system, according to a quick check from Amazon. You don't have to compete with surrounding noise to talk, snacks/drinks are all to your liking (with the only limit being supply), people aren't in a single line and have to shift around to talk to someone else, and you save money on gas. Added bonus: Nice TV afterward (you could raffle it off amongst those who paid, or sell it and split the proceeds amongst those who chipped in; it's not like you can take the stadium seats home with you after the game, so you're not out anything more.)

I can understand a sense of camaraderie with fellow fans might enhance the enjoyment, but I don't consider merely being around people of like mind "socializing", and from my (admittedly limited; 2 or 3 games in my life) experience attending people don't really strike up a conversation with someone next to them.

buy an automated car

I agree with you except this (extremely minor) point. When we get to the point where automated cars are simply another part of life, I believe that car ownership will stop being a normal part of life. Instead, most people will belong to auto clubs or co-ops and pay a nominal monthly fee (likely tiered for miles/month + other perks) and call for a vehicle from their club ahead of time that will be sent to their location to pick them up and drop them off. Only gearheads, rural folk, and the rich will actually own cars--and then rarely automated cars, outside of collectors of early models--because it will be far cheaper to belong to one of these than pay insurance+gas/electricity+loan payment+maintenance while living in the city or even suburbs.

Sure, it might mean you wait, but if these clubs are run properly then unused vehicles will be parked in a distributed manner so you're only waiting 2-3 minutes. Need to go somewhere right fucking now? The clubs would have allowances for X priority calls/month, with high charges if you go over without setting up something ahead of time. The clubs could even have agreements with local city that their cars can have an "emergency" mode (enabled by club dispatch), where it gets priority in traffic for, say, getting a woman in labor to the hospital or to a dying relative.

This also helps with suburban sprawl and city traffic, because now most people don't need a garage, drive way, or parking spot. Bus terminals could be expanded for pick up and drop off of passengers of these cars (and perhaps even storing them), with most streets having a "quick stop" lane that can be used during lighter traffic.

We're probably 20-30 years out from this being standard, but when it is the whole auto-buyer thing is going to have a huge upset (if dealerships are only concerned about Tesla's direct sales now, they haven't seen anything yet...)

Might wanna watch out on the snow days though, in case you get dumped on when the snow falls off

This sounds like an amazing beginning for a Rube Goldberg machine.

Looks like Japan has considered that angle. I don't know about naming something from Japan "S.T.A.R.S.", though...

It's more like Amazon Video, but "Amazon Video for games" doesn't get as many clicks.

Perhaps it's time to have editors share a byline on the books. "Written by X, Edited/Proofed by Y" The second line can be in smaller print, but it would still have the same effect: If someone is a new author and they pay an established, individual editor/proofreader, more people will be interested in their work because the editor was interested in taking on the job. Sure, there will be ones who take any job and churn out material, which can make this second "by" a good negative indicator as well as a positive. The ones that are known to be picky and have a good track record of picking can help authors get started without having to involve an entire publisher.

It will be a weird symbiosis, as accomplished authors will move to unknown editors in order to pay less, but then those editors become known and in turn find unknown authors they can make more lucrative contracts with... It's not a huge divorce from the current publishing industry, but there will be far more choice and it will be far more decentralized, so it's still a vast improvement without the entire industry becoming print-outs of FanFiction.net.

Likely the "proofing" is more important, because basic editing (typeface, spacing, etc.) can be done by computers.

Aye. Nintendo not only lost a ton of the "casual" market with the confusing name and GamePad (everyone had tablets, it wasn't novel nor interactive; IMHO they should have doubled-down on the Wiimote and made it even more accurate with some sort of haptic feedback), but they couldn't make up sales with their core market because they had nothing in their core franchises. Pikmin 3 and Wind Waker HD can only do so much, and NSMBU was just more of the same.

However, that's starting to turn around with a lot of their core (and some not) franchises on the horizon. The biggest is Super Smash Brothers (with the boring titles of "SSB for Wii U" and "SSB for 3DS".) The 3DS version comes out first, but WiiU looks to be early 2015 ("Q4 2014", currently). Super Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 8 both saw a surge in numbers, especially with the MK8 numbers posted for the past month. They've shown a new Zelda and have Hyrule Warriors coming out to tie over fans in the meantime. No Metroid or Star Fox, sadly, but those aren't nearly as big as Mario or Zelda. (And I'll take "no Metroid" over "Team Ninja Metroid" any day.) There are also some cult-classic sequels, Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles X, that will move less units but still create some fervor. (I'm holding off on buying a Wii U until Xenoblade Chronicles X, personally.)

Once the core franchises get core hits, sales will jump, and with those expanded sales might come more (competent) third party games, creating a positive feedback cycle. It won't be as big as when developers went "Oh shit!" when the Wii unexpectedly sold like hotcakes and started trying to pump out titles (leading to a glut of shovelware), but there is potential life in the Wii U yet.

I just hope Nintendo learns from their mistakes this gen (poor name, poor control setup, poor hardware) when the next rolls around.

Ooh, Comcast collection stories. I might have you beat:

I went to university at an interesting place that did three months internship, three months classes, repeat until you graduate or declare bankruptcy. During the work term I had my own place instead of my campus place, so I had to get my own services. Not knowing better at the time (mid 2004) I got Comcast. All was well and good, actually, and I realized that I had paid for one month too many and called them about it. I recall the lady being nice and saying they would happily refund a pro-rated amount and I gave them my forwarding address.

I quickly forgot about it. Then, in Oct 2005, I got a collections notice (I didn't actually receive it until Christmas 2006 because they sent it to my school address while I was on work term) that stated I owed Comcast that exact same amount they actually owed me (about $35.) To Comcast's credit, I was able to get someone on the phone on Christmas Day who saw the error and cleared the collection amount. (I didn't dare try to actually get the money owed me, as that would risk repeating the whole thing. )

Never again will I give Comcast a red cent. I will invent a way to do TCP/IP over two cans and a string before I get any of their services. If anyone asks me I will yell at them until I am blue in the face for them to avoid Comcast. I haven't dealt with the company personally since that holiday phone call, but I haven't seen a single good thing about them in the news since then; this could be selection bias, but I'm not worried about being wrong in this case.

Why even bother spoofing the IP? Hack the account of the bot, or set up your own for potential future targets, and inject apparent changes. While this will eventually be found out (far easier than to figure out IP spoofing), if done with a trusted account in the right circumstances I could see an immediate backlash being disproportionate and causing things to escalate quickly.

Basically, wait for the hay pile to build up on the camel, and play that final straw at the right moment...