All of the Pi engineers are former bcm employees, last I heard some of the pi people were even current employees. There seems to be some motion away from bcm though.

Who knows what kind of bullshit they will bake into the game, but if GTA V is any indication (who knows?) then you will still be able to play the single player game from e.g. a Steam backup* years from now.

* Never use Steam backups. They usually don't fucking work. Just back up the various directories.

That's not only a legal distinction, it's also a real one. If you're not depriving someone of something, you're simply not stealing. Anyone who thinks differently about that is just confused, and what's more, they were deliberately confused for the benefit of the copyright cartel. Thanks for letting us all know how confused you are.

You can play Grand Theft Auto Wherever at any time. Just go outside. Unfortunately, you can only play in so-called "roguelike" permadeath survival mode. (Funny, I don't look like an @...)

The first game I encountered that effectively did this was Half-Life 2.

You could install Steam from the disc, but then Steam insisted on being updated.

You could install the game from the disc, but then it insisted on being updated. The update was, you guessed it, a full download.

So really the disc was just a waste of space and money, it might as well have just had a code.

Fuck, the only thing I want less than truck that will make Jeff Bezos money is a Ford. Never another Ford. Never.

Better that than giving Bezos more money.

Nothing is free. UPI isn't either. Whether it is paid for with a surcharge, implemented in the product price, or funded by your taxes it is being paid for by someone.

Of course not, it's official rollout hasn't happened yet. The timeline is next year. But in the place where it came from it is universally accepted, and country wide adoption is rolling out in several countries right now (it requires bank level support, so the moment your bank has it then it's possible to use). And payment processors all over the EU support it. Heck I just used it to buy something from Aliexpress.

It's nothing like Zelle. Zelle is a person to person transfer system. Wero is a person to business system first and foremost. The thing is with Wero is that once it is implemented then a personal Zelle like system becomes as easy as having an app generate the appropriate QR codes. Most bank apps already let you do this. And some payment terminals are already starting down this path (e.g. if you're ever in Amsterdam and feed a can into a can deposit return machine it'll spit out a QR code which if you scan proceeds to close the transaction via Wero to refund you your 15c.)

Having used UPI (I regularly travel to Pune) as an end user there's no practical difference (except for the offline capability I didn't know about until just now) beyond the fact that it hasn't been adopted at a payment terminal level. But that's coming. Very few Wero transactions charge additional fees.

By the way there's renewed push back against UPI in India right now. The benefit of a government system is that it is centrally managed. The downside is that the taxman starts knocking on your door for small individual transactions. I'm not a believer in that pushback, I'm just saying that there's plenty of people the idea of the government directly looking into your transactions tickles some the wrong way.

Oh Iook, some drive by troll proved me right

Yeah, we need power, which is why nuclear is stupid. We could have more sooner with renewables.

AAA titles haven't had resale for a long time. Simply having the disc hasn't been enough to play a game for over a decade.

Physical hasn't been physical for a long time. There's virtually no major games released on disc that don't require you to download a massive update before you play on day 1 of release with all games having an online component locking you out if you don't apply that update.

For most games physical has been a complete waste of postage (or shelf space if you're old school and go buy things from shops).

It would be souless corporate but at least it would be pedo Nazis.

"meaning that these "people" would not be capable of speech or abstract thought (or really much more than rats or similar-sized animals are capable of)."

Brains are not equal. A parrot does a lot with a tiny brain for example. I think the rest of the argument is more compelling

At least not if you're American or european. The reason Japan has a tough time just building out wind and solar is that they have very very little land. The best explanation of Japan I have ever heard in my life is take the population of California, triple it, squeeze it in the Montana and then take away half the land because it's all unlivable mountains ranges.

Japan has a genuine land shortage. Now I haven't actually run the numbers it's entirely possible that they could still power their country with wind and solar but let's take it for a moment that they can't yeah they could have a reason to run nuclear power plants.

For absolutely every other country on the face of the Earth the only reason to fire up nuclear power plants is to keep AI data centers fed without all that filthy filthy wind and solar that could potentially overtake fossil fuels before the people who own all the fossil fuels have secured their ownership of the means of producing electricity...

What I'm saying is our civilization, assuming it survives and that's all stretch at this point, is going to use wind and solar to power itself. That's just what we're going to do. You can go look up the YouTube channel technologies connections they have a long video explaining the math I can't be bothered if you can't...

But the problem is there really isn't any reason for these giant wind and solar farms to be owned by individuals. There just isn't any good reason for it. They should just be built by the government and provide electricity is a free public good. The same way we have a military to protect ourselves there are just some things that a civilization needs everyone to have. We all need to have the military keeping other countries from invading and we all need electricity. And economies of scale are still a thing so throwing up your own solar panels is just silly.

So the people who are used to owning and controlling your access to electricity don't want to give up all that power and money so they are slowing the transition to ensure that when it's all done they're still in charge and you still have to do what they say.

Meanwhile we have ai data centers who want power now and they don't want to wait and there sure should not going to bother going up against the oil companies. So nuclear power is back on the table. Which is all fine and good except well, look you've read the history of Fukushima or at least I hope you have. You know the corners were cut and you know which corners were cut. Did you know that the public blamed the engineers instead of the CEOs and suits?

When the engineers warn that these nuclear power plants are unsafe nobody is going to pay any attention to them. When the plants melt down that's the only time anyone's going to pay attention to the engineers and they're going to pay attention just long enough to blame them instead of the wealthy CEO who has an entire team of people dedicated to protecting his reputation...