Medical equipment is exempt. Your diabetic kit, a CPAP, etc. do not count towards your items.

Get off my law! Since the semi-recent trend of games to "must online" for no viable reason I've played so much less. The race to the bottom of 12yo trolling, cheat/anti-cheat wars, and "micro-transactions" which are often anything but...has happily pushed me out of most modern gaming. There's a few titles with solo mode that can be acquired by 'ways' and remove the BS lock-outs.

Otherwise, I spent maybe 50 bucks for a handheld emulator similar in size to a gameboy...despite claims otherwise it DID come pre-loaded with 1000's of old school roms. I can save-scum the hard parts and enjoy the fun parts and play thru every game from my adolescence through adulthood. Oh, and not a single one of them even has an OPTION to pay for extra lives. 3 and bye bye to this kind of nonsense from WB and their ilk

But "F2P" do get played even if they suck...because there's no barrier for entry they can get people and then addict them to the endorphin-reward cycle.

In general, it's about creating an addicting gaming mechanic with either a power-imbalance or artificial scarcity (or both) that can be solved by clicking the pay-now button.

They're always eager to convert someone from F2P, but even if they can't...yes, they'll get enough currency, resources, or whatever else to be easy fodder for the whales. The whole concept is just the direct monetization of the social media/gambling/doom scrolling/etc. addiction that companies are not only engaging in but actively encouraging. "you can get this free in 2 weeks if you click every day or right now by clicking pay-99.99 just once!" p.s. here's a leaderboard to see who clicked the most times!

This is something pretty much anyone can test for themselves:

Try using the calculator a smartphone vs the number pad on your keyboard to enter a number series.
While looking, your accuracy and speed be clearly better on the keypad - the tactile interaction keeps your fingers aligned.
Without looking, the touch screen becomes practically unusable.

It's the same reason that apple walked back their touch bar. Same reason flat/touch/projected keyboards never caught on and laptops that fight to shave .1mm of height still retain physically moving, tactile keyboards.

Now add in all the complexities of driving ... so yah. I'm not a fan of the 'common sense' argument typically but in this case it fits.

Besides data already linked, looking at and poking a screen until you manage to tap just the right spot (from significantly off-center in most cases) is a much more difficult task than twisting the left hand knob below the row of row of buttons - all of which you can feel - to do some task while driving.

For a touch screen you not only have to look away from the road, but also re-focus your eyes on a close object to change. The other you can do with a glance at most, even in a car you aren't familiar with. It's similar to the idea behind steering wheel controls - not only can you keep your eyes on the road, but your hands too.

Studies and above aside, how accurately can you use a touch screen without looking vs. buttons you can reach by feel?

If 10 million people file binding arbitration cases, you'd both bankrupt the company over the binding arb fees and flood/crash the arbitration process. TBH this should happen all the time but people are lazy af.

I mean ... you also can't use windows if you don't accept the EULA.

You can't use a very, very many products straight out of the box without agreeing to some nonsense. Whether it's enforceable or not is another matter and one companies to their best to avoid judgments against. If any individual chased after this with seriousness, they're highly likely to just refund you and "settle without admitting wrongdoing" to avoid a judgement others could reference/leverage.

Welcome to the utter nonsense of litigation in the USA.

Also, you owe me a 10% service charge for reading this post. I'll add it to you bill!

Binding arb is among the worst SCOTUS decisions in the modern age (corporate 'personhood' still takes the cake IMO). It's allowed companies to essentially circumvent most laws around their products.

There was a fun 'test case' where hundreds, maybe thousands? or people tried to leverage binding arb. Since it costs the company non-trivial money for each case, but typically far less than trials/class action...the idea was to make the binding arb cost them millions even if they won every case. I'm not sure how that eventually turned out but i miss that kind of malicious compliance.

you win the internet, for the day.

we'll email you the unlock code shortly.

and yet, newton, maybe the smartest person in all of recorded history, was very religious.

there's a YT talk by neil degrasse tyson where he addresses the fact that of the scientific elite (top of the top), its still close to 10% 'belivers' rate. to him, the story is that its not zero and should be.

neil is a true hero. I watch every one of his lectures. he kind of is the continuation of carl sagan. both athiests and not ashamed. they let new generations be ok with rejecting religion.

I find it difficult to understand why anyone with even a cursory understanding of the contemporary threat environment wouldn't instantly dismiss this idea from any further consideration the moment that it was articulated. All such payment systems divide into two categories: (1) those that have been exploited and (2) those that are going to be exploited.

My expectation is that while I'm writing this, and while you're reading it, scammers are already gearing up to find ways to trick people into enabling this; that they're figuring out how to code web sites that take advantage of it; and that they're registering domains, setting up hosting, etc., in order to exploit it the moment it goes live -- so that they can do as much damage as possible before it's picked up by tech/non-tech journalists and before word spreads that it's something to watch out for.

A lot of people are going to be hurt by this, and when that happens the developers responsible for this debacle will (a) refuse to accept responsibility and (b) refuse to financially compensate them. Whether or not the victims will close ranks and file class-action litigation is an open question, but I certainly hope they do: those responsible for this should lose EVERYTHING as a result of their utterly irresponsible conduct.

we have republicans. sadly, coat hangers are going to make an ugly return.

lets see how much time he gets in the lock-up.

there's another case I'm curious to see how it works out. several cases, in fact. and about a person who has done much more damage to the US, in countless ways.

lets see how the 'two tier' system works. if this guy gets 40 years, I'd expect that 'other guy' to spend time in the pokey, as well.

right? we have no kings in the US. same punishment for anyone who does anything of that level.

RIGHT?

what you just said can be said of the US, too.

the R's in our country are the equiv of the russians. they love the russian method of control and authority. the R's are trying to STOP funding of ukraine, so there's all the proof you need.

who gets there first? if the orange idiot wins, somehow, the US and much of the world loses. russia will win and a whole lot of negative things will befall the world as a result.

I dont know why the R's decided to attach themselves to russia and hungary but they did and we're stuck with their bad behavior until they finally change to something else (decades, likely).