The ACA needs to die a glorious, hot, fiery death
Agreed. It's an abomination. Single Payer is the only solution.
It's not the only solution, but it's usually the correct one.
However I wouldn't count on it, as Winston Churchill once said "you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else".
It's very flattering that a person was so bothered by my posts that they wrote a script to follow me.
Don't assume it's a script, I mean that takes a modicum of skill where as a room full of Russians or Pakistanis are cheap and require no skill what so ever.
Which one?
The one where you can watch a chubby, tanned bottle blond fuck thousands of average Americans.
I always liked Sony more than M$. It's been nice watching them out-innovate and out-maneuver Microshaft over the years. Now if we could just get them to rage quit from making desktop operating systems, that'd be great mmm'kay?
So life will be better if Sony and Nintendo are the only viable consoles? They don't directly compete with one another and MS has been very good about supporting their gaming hardware on PCs, including Linux ones. Also, MS really trailblazed the the games pass, something I am confident Sony would have NEVER done had MS not forced them.
You can love or hate MS. I have a slight preference for XBox over PS, but I am glad Sony is around keeping MS from getting complacent. I am personally intrigued by the SteamDeck, but only time will tell if it's a console experience...smooth, simple, seamless, and reliable like XBox/PS5....or a science experiment like the ASUS Ally...where with enough tinkering and sacrifice and working around it's idiosyncrasies , it MIGHT work.
But regardless of your preferences, competition is good.
Sony's going broke as well. They are both struggling to make money on their loss leader model these days as people are chafing under the "pay for everything" model they use. People are trying to find cheaper "Xbox/PS live "rape me"" subscriptions and buying fewer games (which publishers have to pay a fee to the console manufacturers to sell.
Nintendo is going to be the only one left because ultimately, Nintendo is the only one still making a console instead of a PC wannabe... as for the PC wannabes, they'll never be as good as a PC and are just as expensive (more so once you add on all your subscriptions for basic things).
Not that Nintendo is remotely benign these days either. I'll just stick to PC gaming.
Meta denies wrongdoing and says it will fight the case, arguing that courts have recognized AI training on copyrighted material as potentially fair use.
They did something and are now hoping for it to become legal.
Nononononono, this is one of those "one rule for me and another for thee" things. They still want their patents and copyrights enforced, especially against the little people.
It does seem to be a big trade-off. There is on old video of Gabe saying he doesn't care about privacy. From his point of view, people pirate things because there is no real "support" for the game after purchase. He cited the case that Russia was the largest country for game piracy but that their pirate community was effectively offering the service of translating the game to Russian and other support.
Gaben isn't the only publisher who's said this, Brad Wardell of Stardock has also said something similar, pirates dont matter or pirates are just unserved customers.
Ultimately they're right, if someone is going to pirate then you ultimately cant stop them. All you can do is make a product that people want to pay for, something good enough that people think "I'll separate myself from my hard earned Dollars/Euros/Pounds/Zloty/insert currency of choice here".
In the end, by trying to stop pirates all you do is punish your own customers, those who actually paid money for your product.
On one hand, I hate the idea of rent-seeking, gatekeeping storefronts taking 30% of every developer's revenue.
On the other hand, Valve seems to use that power to do things that benefit the consumer, sometimes. Look at all they've done to promote Linux as a gaming platform.
Or maybe that's just incidental, and they only look good compared to the actual Satan worshippers running the rest of these companies.
How are Valve gatekeeping?
They don't control PC gaming, you can self publish your game if you like and there's absolutely nothing Valve can do to stop you (unlike on say, Apple, Xbox or Playstation). Valve is the 600 KG gorilla in PC gaming because they do good work and deliver promises, for their 30% they handle a lot of things for you, payment processing, currency exchange, customer service (OK, here is where they aren't particularly stellar), content distribution, security, so on and so forth.
If anything, Valve has been a bulwark against other companies like Epic, Microsoft and EA trying to become PC gaming gatekeepers.
Also, please do not sully the good name of Satan by comparing him to the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft.
It's not trivial to get credit cards in the UK. Say you were bankrupted even a long time ago. Or, I heard, say you never borrowed money or you never once paid late fees, surcharges, etc.
It's not particularly difficult either. Most people haven't declared bankruptcy, been involved in financial crime or other rare event that will make you ineligible for credit. Given the number of challenger banks out there if the high street banks turn you down you've got options and options for days. Hell, a lot of the challenger banks are skirting the rules on credit to get new customers, Starling for one offers a line of credit (overdraft facility, effectively the same thing) on almost every account, default is £500 and can't be reduced to less than £50.
Meme stock -> meme economy -> meme civilization -> meme species.
I'm going to wait for Meme Civ IV.
The subsequent ones will be terribad.
Way back, there was a helicopter service from the roof of the Pan Am building to the airport in NYC. It was discontinued due to several people getting killed in an accident.
Which is always going to be a bigger risk with small aircraft, in particular with helicopters because they're vulnerable to high winds and more single points of failure.
Commercial VTOL flights are also notoriously uneconomical, you only really use them when no other form of transport is suitable.
It's good billionaires are going to have something to spit on us from. I'd hate for them to have to use lung power to do it because they're in a mere limousine.
You'd be lucky if it were just spit... Joby is Scottish slang for shit.
Didn't you guys have a 'no kings' movement?
What is the point of a government if one man can rule 300 million people by executive decree?
Wha....
Our King hasn't even been able to do that since before 1649 (ironically, the last time we had a Chaz in charge).
"applying the ban only to the use of personal data to set higher prices without establishing a baseline or standard price".
So you set very high baseline prices, then use personal data to offer varying discounts. That does look like a loophole.
How about "No dynamic prices or discounts based on personal or biometric data are allowed"? Put in an exemption to offer a discount to certain classes (student or vet discounts, discounts for seniors)
In the past dynamic prices (discounts) were used to increase turnover: get new customers in the door with offers, keep them coming back with loyalty programs, and have them buy more with volume discounts. Now, it is used to extract the maximum amount of cash from every customer. It seems that the MBAs who came up with this have fully embraced the first tenet of communism: from each according to their ability.
"How much is this item?"
- "How much do you have?"
A simple answer is, prices must not be changed during opening hours. This is basically how most countries regulate their petrol stations. A price is set at the start of the day and may not legally be altered until the following day (otherwise we'd have them changing the price depending on how many people are queuing up).
Even on Xbox you can still buy the games. You only need the subscription if you want to play online, but you can buy the lowest tier service without all the games.
You don't need a subscription as every game offered is still available for purchase separately.
Or rather rent, since digital purchases are not quite purchases, just a long term rental.
Any subscription is too much, I'll continue to play on platforms that don't charge you money for basic functionality.
I remember when Columbine happened. I also remembered when the Federal building in Oklahoma got blown up. Guess what WAS'T around back then? That's right: OpenAI wasn't a thing. But those events still happened.
Blaming a chatbot for a tragedy is like blaming McDonald's for your obesity: even if the restaurant didn't exist, you were going to end up in that condition because of your eating habits anyhow. The name of the restaurant might have changed but the song remains the same.
This guy had it in his head to shoot up the school, OpenAI or no OpenAI. Rounds were going to fly downrange even if AI didn't exist. This is some lazy logic.
This is just the only country in the world where this kind of thing happens refusing to admit why this kind of thing happens and trying to find any reason except the obvious to explain why this kind of thing happens.
The old excuse of "video games and rock and/or roll music" just ain't cutting it no more.
So they're back to trying to find any scape goat they can to avoid admitting the US has too many guns and an unhealthy love of violence.
In the long run, every program becomes rococco, and then rubble. -- Alan Perlis
