within the first ten posts after the user joins

So, this algorithm only needs nine more posts than a troll will actually make per throwaway account, then?

That's some mighty fine police work there, Lou!

As in if someone anonymously puts up a poster on private land that defames you, you actually get to challenge it in court and if it's found to be libel it's taken down.

Uh, no. Not even close to how it works in reality.

If I put up a poster in my front yard (in the United States) defaming a Japanese doctor, a Japanese court has zero ability to make me take it down.

Look at this from a less "I personally approve of this ruling" angle - If a Saudi court rules that the New York Times needs to recall an issue for an offensive cartoon, would you expect the NYT to actually round up every printed copy in the US, or just to stop the delivery of that day's issue to Saudi addresses?

Are you somehow incapable of understanding how export control laws work? If they're banned from certain US technology and for purpose, then any route around that through any 3rd party would be illegal.

Aaand... China cares about that why?

"Yes, we'd like to order 33,000 ThinkStation P700s, please? Yes, two E5-2697's, please. No, no OS. No memory either. Also no storage. Video card... hold on, let me ask our chief res... er... office manager... Okay, yes, how many Tesla K80's can you fit in one of those? Let's go with that, then. Do you take UnionPay? No? Hmm, gold bullion? Wow, rough checkout process here! Paypal? Great! Oh, can I get a tracking number when you ship it? Thanks."

Are you somehow incapable of understanding that you can't magically stop someone from getting milk while continuing to sell them live cows?

"US: No more supercomputer simulations for you!"
"China: Okay, we'll just go back to actual above-ground nuclear testing"
"US: But you signed a test ban!"
"China: Come and stop us."

This seriously cannot end well. China already has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, this goes so far beyond the scale of our pissing contest with Iran as to make it almost laughable (if it didn't potentially involve the world ending in a nuclear holocaust).

we live in the Surveillance Age now and will probably be for the rest of our lives.

Probably true - But I'll still use encryption for my private files and communications. I'll still refrain from screaming what I had for breakfast into the ether. I'll still make up random information when registering for any service that doesn't need real info to perform its core function. I'll still "fuzz" personal details when relevant to discussions on sites such as Slashdot. I'll still bait telemarketers even though they probably know more about me than I do. And, I'll still make Officer Twitchy get a warrant to search my phone, even if it means I get shot in the back trying to peacefully walk away.

Accepting the reality of something doesn't mean you should just give up - We all unavoidably die, why don't we all just commit suicide now and save ourselves the hassle of wasting all that time working and sleeping and exercising-so-we-can-live-longer and such? Sometimes, "accepting" something means "fight harder anyway".

And with this, we learn the real solution to the Fermi paradox - Not warlike tendencies among apex predators capable of becoming sentient, not resource starvation before getting off-planet (though close to that), not Reapers or something similar, not the actual absence of habitable planets - But simply the ease of developing ecosystem-destroying technology vs the complexity of understanding the chaotic interdependence of planet-sized ecosystems.

We had a nice run, humanity. Maybe the Blattarian race that succeeds us in a few million years will do better.

Wow, just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

/ Dating myself
// Hurry up, Rosie, or we'll miss the movie!

Quit playing obtuse. The Hawaiian Department of Land and Natural Resources gave the University of Hawaii an exclusive lease to use that land. Whether that department consists of "Natives" or haole, you racist, your elected government made a deal on your behalf.

You don't get to go back on that deal just because some BS "native rights" movement has grown in popularity over the past few years.

With the exception of companies that treat employees so abusively that they just leave in the middle of the afternoon in a torrent of obscenities, for the most part it works as follows:

Employee finds a new job. Employee gives two weeks notice (or more, sometimes). Employer escorts employee off the premises immediately and pays them for two weeks of "vacation".

or...

Employee gets called to a random meeting. On entering, employee sees his manager, one HR person, and possibly one random middle-management "witness" (point #1 - If you ever encounter this situation, immediately demand to have your own witness present, because they legally can and will lie to you about every materially relevant aspect of the ensuing discussion). They hand employee a pile of papers, ask for a bunch of signatures (point #2 - You have no obligation to sign a damned thing, this counts as your last bit of leverage to negotiate for things like prolonged severance, and some of it, such as anticompetes, you do not ever want to sign at an exit interview no matter what they offer you). Employer escorts employee off the premises immediately and pays them for two weeks (or as negotiated) of severance pay.

And yes, for any European friends reading this, that counts as the norm in most of the US. Companies really only deviate from that script in one situation - They so desperately need the employee that the employee actually leaving would temporarily cripple a significant portion of the company. In that case, they play nice and pretend to let you stick around for an extra two weeks - Meanwhile, your computer access drops to the point that you can't do anything but play solitaire (if even that), and you suddenly have a shadow ostensibly there to "facilitate" your knowledge dump (because rookies from security make excellent facilitators, of course).

We agree completely - I didn't mean to disagree with you, just clarifying about UI. :)

If 70% of your salary is not enough to make ends meet, you are living well beyond your means.

Most states cap that - Mine caps it at just about $350/week. That doesn't even cover my mortgage.

Hah! I've defeated your algorithm - With the exception of #5 (and somewhat #2 - I put in my 40+ hours, but have never really done all that well at making sure they happen between 9am and 5pm), I do all of those regularly!

You did not mention doing anything aside from playing old games and buying very few games, if any, now. But go ahead, get an attitude about it.

"Make no mistake, I still game regularly - Between the occasional non-obnoxious modern release".

Attitude? Well, one of us seems to have attitude, anyway. Or at least a reading comprehension problem...

The only way that people with your view will make a difference is if you go out of your way to support the few devs that push quality products that meet your requirements.

And as I mentioned, I do. Drop in the bucket, though, and such content becomes increasingly rare.

these years now that feel like the golden age of online gaming will be the dark ages of games as historians of the future try to recreate what online play was like now for many titles.

While I agree with your premise, you overlook the fact that many of us in the "first gen" of gamers already view this as a "dark age". Personally, I have a fairly impressive game library, spanning a dozen platforms and worth probably tens of thousands of dollars (at original retail price*) worth of games. And I basically stopped buying games about a decade ago, with a few notable exceptions.

Make no mistake, I still game regularly - Between the occasional non-obnoxious modern release, and the back catalog of once-great games that I still haven't played (just finished Fallout a few weeks ago, no idea how I never got into that when it first came out), I figure I have enough material to keep me content for the rest of my life. But I will not play any game that depends on any aspect of the game under the exclusive control of a third party. Open servers and a really viable single-player mode, or GTFO, simple as that.


* Not that I actually paid full retail, which counts as an entirely different problem with modern games - Reselling a game used to mean putting it back in the box (or putting everything you had left in a ziplock bag), and passing it along to someone else for a few bucks. Now, if you even have the option of reselling it, you usually need to do so with the "permission" of the publisher. Fuck that!