We use Discord for our D&D club (we're spread out), I can't see any of us being willing to give up that kind of information/privacy for Discord, we'll just use something else.

I've meet some crazy smart people from Harvard, average folks, and some that I was not impressed by.

I think that the varsity blues scandal and other recent admission policies that has come to light, showed concretely that some people sneak into place like Harvard and are NOT the cream of the crop, just wealthy and/or connected.

You are confusing The College Board for actual universities and colleges.

The College Board is a non-profit (questionable) that administers APs, ACTS, PSAT, SAT -- they don't run ANY schools nor define college/univ curriculum

As more and more schools, including elite private schools which are often Ivy feeders -- drop AP courses from their curriculum, The College Board is just trying to stay relevant and justify its existence and keep revenue streams.

They've been adding more non-college level course to their AP curriculum, which is odd since they whole point of Advanced Placement originally was to offer courses supposedly equal to 1/2 or maybe 1 year college level 100 courses typically.

I'm a teacher with 20 years in industry prior, and taught AP CS A (the Java based course). Few years ago they added, AP CS Principles, it's is a joke, you can literally teach the course in Scratch, yes, drag and drop block coding, enough said. The curriculum is level the of what my schools taught for MS.

Both the schools I've taught at dropped APs in favor of their own Honors courses. It allows more flexibility, and including more relevant material. AP CS A for example doesn't include any basic I/O, kind of important . While I'd say maybe about 3/4 of the content is good, there's definitely stuff they could drop in favor of more used/useful concepts. They also overemphasize certain things imo.

I think the College Board has 'diluted their brand' for a while, and now more and more schools are not giving credit, or only giving credit for a 5. Or, they might give you general grad requirement credits, but not departmental credit, meaning AP CS A might give you so a few units, but schools won't let you skip out of intro/100 level.

Which is my point. Harvard is failing in its mission as a high ed institution, 2000 kids a year is not enough -- it's NOT meant to be a fucking luxury brand worrying about dilution.

While their cost is certainly an issue, one of the biggest problems in higher ed (esp among so-called elite schools) if the stagnant enrollment size. The purpose of higher ed SHOULD be to educate as many eligible people as possible (notice I said eligible I don't mean let in people not meeting the standards), but schools like Harvard LOVE their low acceptance rate and 'elite' status, so they won't do it.

The US population has grown a lot since the 80s, but universities and college haven't kept up. Harvard has a massive fucking endowment, they could expand their offerings and enrollment if they chose to invest. They enroll a measley 2000 freshmen a year, how about adding 100 every year?

"That would be like a scholar only reading things out of copyright"

If that scholar uses that work for their own research or paper, they have to credit or cite it -- HUGE difference than what's happening with LLM training, it's not in any way comparable.

AI companies are making serious money using prior works to build their models, with no compensation or even credit/acknowledgement to those who actually generated the content or data.

Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

THAT is all the more reason I'm glad whatever those games were are dead.

I like games "designed to..." be fun, interesting, engaging, entertaining, thought-provoking, etc. When the design centers around monetization and that kind of mindset, I say a big 'fuck you', glad the projects are dead. There enough of that shit already.

I think a lot the supposed 'crash' in the industry can be blamed on whoever is making the design decisions, be they 'leadership', bean counters, or the programmers -- because many of us gamers remember when nerds were the ones who designed games they thought would be fun and want to play themselves -- not execs who want to just to suck every fucking penny they can out of people.

Yeah, going "gold" used to mean something with software - the installation disc(s) were actually a final polished product. I understand the occasional need for a bug fix, but now it's like the boxed game is just a placeholder for the actual game which hardy resembles what's on the disc, lol.

Agreed. I remember when Neverwinter Nights came out, there was substantial and well made manual, and a really nice cloth map of the game region. I loved those kind of extras, but without them, 'meh'. That said, I'm old school and sometimes I still like having a hard copy of game so that I can play when company X goes under or pulls their servers, etc.

I like how GOG.com handles digital distrubution -- not just the DRM-free part, but you can usually download the actual install file(s) and keep a copy to reinstall anytime if needed -- and they often have digital downloads of the manuals, wallpapers, maps, music, etc. which I appreciate.

I also avoid games that overly monetize with game passes, season passes, micro-transactions up the wazoo. I like playing many games and as you mentioned the live service model tends to want to monopolize a players times. The games I play most have the concessional DLC or expansion that I am willing to buy, but no subs, micros, etc. I may be in the minority but I shy away from the live service model since it feels like bean counters designing games and not gamers/programmers.

"online harassment campaigns targeting developers over diversity initiatives,..." OR it could be this kind of shit doesn't belong in a fantasy RPG.

https://youtu.be/tz5oehDRhbU?t.... (pushups for 'misgendering' someone?)
https://youtu.be/1JkPHdlJc20 (randomly interjection of "I am non-binary" into a dinner conversation)

I am left-leaning, but this kind of stuff keeps me from buying a game like this. I played the original Dragon Age Origins, totally loved it... THIS game is something totally different. I don't need someone lecturing and working out their own stuff in a game where I just want some escapism. NO ONE talks like this, especially in your classic fantasy/medieval setting. Not to mention this game is a disney-eque santitized version of Dragon Age when it comes to other dialog, storyline and violence. DA:O had some grim and dark stuff and difficult and ugly choices, this game is rainbows and unicorns