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Comment Re:Seems kind of sudden (Score 2) 17

>I mean I have put quite a bit of money into arcade cabinets back in the day so I'm not completely opposed to the idea of temporary entertainment.

I don't think there's any comparison here really. A subscription MMORPG is the modern equivalent of dropping a quarter into a pacman cabinet; a series of hard boosts and purchases, soft boosts with the expectation that the consequences persist- these things all assume the game will go on as long as it plausibly can. Games with a decent amount of active players being targeted for closure (to prevent the game from competing with the next thing) are just top scummy.

Obviously you can play all these games without spending a dime, but equally obviously that's not the intended way of playing these games. Done properly, the games that sell you stuff don't turn around and delete it the moment they have convinced themselves that you'll buy it again.

Comment +ads (Score 1) 42

Apple TV now means "the device and the shows". Maybe it won't be ALL the shows, but it will be plenty, and it will be free, and it will be on that Apple TV device. And then there will be a subscription tier- or more- that remove the advertisements.
That's my prediction!

Comment Re:People Hate Science (Score 1) 213

>Despite doubling their expected livespan

This is incredible but it's mostly down to germ theory, antibiotics, and to a much smaller extent vaccines; things that really help infants make it to childhood is a lot of the lifespan increase. Science hasn't been able to enlarge the max human lifespan, and there's still plenty of diseases that the treatment is lacking for, so I could see being disappointed in that. And lets be real, the fact that science was responsible for many of these gains in the past means nothing about how funding is spent in the future, nor does it speak to fields relatively far removed from what's being debated- "Semmelweis being correct when everyone else wasn't" is pretty far from string theory.

>they'll never have to worry about starving to death

Also strangely mostly down to a relatively few discoveries. And I'd pair this with the ability to access a lot more energy, as making a very large difference between modern life and most of human existence.

But one of the main points brought up by the article is string theory, and string theory had an era where it was almost exclusively considered the most respected academic darling, but many string theories got discarded when the colliders reached good enough energies that a lot of scientists expected to see something. Of course, none of this was ever going to block off string theory as a group, it just eliminated a set of them. Check this >10 year old article:
https://profmattstrassler.com/...
And you'll see that, theoretically, string theory is still perfectly healthy. But the article really smooths over what did get eliminated, which was lowkey what a lot of people were hyped about- a solution to the hierarchy problem ("natural supersymmetry" in that article), and string theory isn't helping with that, and high energy collisions have eliminated the types of string theories that would (not entirely, but like, to a degree).
While you'll find no shortage of physicists defending this, and pointing out *technically string theory never promised this*- including this wall street journal one which tries to politicize it by implying that the critics are conspiracy theorists- the simple fact is that the reason string theory got so much interest and funding wasn't because of the barely-falsifiable high-flying stuff, but because it implied that we were gonna get something better and more explanatory than the standard model, something that, once we had seen a few real pieces of, could have experimental results plugged in that would then yield even more insights into reality. That isn't happening, but that's why string theory captured so much for so long.

Isn't it fair to criticize a system that appears to have gotten kinda lost in the wrong caves, for about two generations of scientists? Even if just the magnitude of resources allocated, men and money.

Comment Handing Hegseth a free W (Score 2) 27

The system hates the American worker so much that they vetoed hiring cleared Americans to do the coding.
The system hates the American worker so much that they vetoed hiring cleared Americans to oversee uncleared Americans to do the coding.
The system hates the American worker so much that ONLY hiring cleared Americans to oversee foreign nationals working remotely was considered acceptable. And only, I'm sure, because they couldn't talk everyone out of needing cleared Americans to do the supervising. That was probably what they were trying to work on next lol.
That's the level of hatred. That's absolutely wild.
Anyway, way to hand Hegseth a big fat win, whomever you are and whenever you were when you implemented this shitbag policy. At least it's gone now.

For now.

Comment Same people complained both times (Score 2) 245

All those right-wing-ish libertarian-ish people who complained about cancelling are still the ones complaining about cancelling. What changed was people abusing an alleged "cultural moment" before were left-ish or left-coded (or whatever you want to call them if you don't like my words just insert your own), and now they are right-ish. Specifically "Collective Shout", a culturally right wing pressure group, was responsible for this exact campaign that got Steam to pull games. And they did it because of a perceived or claimed "cultural moment" where they could get up to THEIR shenanigans.
The anti-censorship, anti-cancel people are the same in all cases.

Comment How did he get caught? (Score 1) 18

The article gives us a vague description:
"The dedicated card and payment crime unit of the City of London police launched an investigation after receiving information from the intelligence firm WMC Global about the fraudulent kits being sold online."
How did they even know the guy was in London?
From Crown Prosecution Service:
"The investigation uncovered a large amount of digital evidence, which the prosecution used to build a strong case and successfully link Holman to the online offending."
And also:
“I hope this case sends a clear message to those intent on committing fraud: no matter how sophisticated your methods, you cannot hide behind online anonymity or encrypted platforms. Fraudsters like Holman will be robustly pursued by law enforcement, prosecuted by the CPS, and brought to justice.”

How did he initially get on their radar? Did Telegram provide authorities with whatever IP he logged in from, or maybe he just posted his email? Did he not really try to stay anonymous out of some belief that he wasn't doing anything illegal?

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IBM Advanced Systems Group -- a bunch of mindless jerks, who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes... -- with regrets to D. Adams

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