I feel like this is an excuse to do away with physical gift cards to save money. If the "scamming" is primarily just a method of moving money, then ANY other gift cards for any other services can be used. This includes debit gift cards, Walmart gift cards, on and on.
Unless someone knows how this is only specific to Steam in some way?
This should scare the hell out of most everyone, as this is really about as bad as biological warfare. Just to put some numbers in perspective, China produces around 40 million drones annually. Consider how easy it would be to produce, say, one million drones that include an explosive device. Since these drones are autonomous the usual methods of interfering with their RF, or even for fiber controlled drones, the cutting of the fiber cable by a powerful laser, will do nothing.
This is the future, and it will revolutionize warfare. Pure volume of drones can defeat anything we currently have to defend against them. You just send a swarm of drones, or a drone one after another after another spaced 10 seconds apart, until whatever they are targeting has been destroyed. 10k drones targeting the US's ports on both coasts... destroy the bulk of imports and exports. 10k drones targeting tractors and other agricultural equipment in the US's breadbasket - famine. Really, it's hard to understate what these could potentially do.
Looks like they caught one of the hundreds of thousands of people that must be doing this same sort of thing. Most of the others just aren't making quite that much money doing it.
All computation is mechanical at its core
What about studies that indicate the possibility of quantum effects within the brain?
Well this is just classic medicine. If you go to an internist with an issue, they will try to address it with medications. If you go to a surgeon, they will try to address it with surgery (or do exploratory surgery to try and figure it out). Each works within their own area of expertise. My 94 year old grandma had a lump that was breast cancer. The surgeon wanted to do a full mastectomy at her age, which was ridiculous. Meanwhile the oncologist said, no, let's do a less invasive lumpectomy because I better know what her long-term prognosis is and what other tools (hormone therapy and the like) are available.
This is just a classic thing, and hopefully you have a general practitioner that is involved and can help make informed decisions, or you do that task yourself weighing the options.
These studies need to be taken with a big grain of salt. Essentially what this did was provide to AI and two test doctors the clinical data entered by a nurse who examined the patient, and based off that limited text information the AI tended to do better. The thing is... doctors see patients themselves, even in the ER. They ask their own questions, physically examine the patient, and collect their own data. So it is no surprise a doctor, given only limited 3rd party data, didn't make as good of a diagnosis when they aren't used to working that way.
Next thing is this: "game out thorny diagnostic questions". Okay, so what they mean by "thorny" is obscure and not your typical cases. So again, its no wonder a physician, given less than normal information and no opportunity to see the patient, didn't catch some rare atypical case. When strep is making the rounds, and a patient comes in with a sore throat and no other abnormalities, they will probably diagnose it as strep, and may not even bother doing a test. That's the way ER doctors work, and they don't look for some exotic other thing that could be causing the sore throat based on something obscure way back in the patient's medical records. Unless it was called to their attention.
So, in a million different ways, blocking a sizable chunk of the world's supply of oil is infinitely more effective than nuking a nation
This is still a ridiculous statement. The blocking of the straight can stop overnight, and it's gone. Done. Everything flows again immediately. It can be undone. A nuclear detonation cannot be undone. If the straight is blocked long enough then interventions will happen, and not just by the United States.
With the exception of the suffering of the Iranian citizens, and the world paying a little more to drive around in their cars, this is a GOOD thing. Countries in the middle east have been lazy and naive to not develop alternate routes for the straight. This event will prompt them to finally invest in that kind of infrastructure.
Global oil consumption is predicted to begin decreasing soon, and then these countries in control of the world's oil supplies will begin to lose influence quickly. These events also push countries and consumers away from oil, thus speeding the conversion to electric cars, and additional investment in solar and storage.
A lot of people are completely ignoring the religious zealot fervor of Iran's leadership, and are being very ignorant to how motivated their are due to their religious beliefs. I guess for non-religious individuals, or those who belong to much more peaceful religions, it is difficult to understand their motivation and just how bad they want to kill certain other people. Iran's ability to strangle the world's oil supplies and threaten the region with force needed to be dealt with at some point.
I seem to remember the Iraq-area wars that the US was involved in going on far longer and less of an oil crisis happening this fast.
That would be because even during those wars and conflicts, we didn't have an orange-painted pedophilic retard with delusions of grandeur causing a weekslong blockage of the major shipping lane through which ~35% of the world's crude oil trade flows.
The closest we've seen recently was when the Ever Given got stuck in the Suez during 2021, and even that only lasted for 6 days. Plus, it wasn't as big a deal because less oil was being used worldwide during pandemic countermeasures.
The closest in the past 100 years is when Treasonous Klanbitch Ronny Reagan betrayed the USA and convinced the Iranian Ayatollah to cut off shipping to hurt Carter in the 1980 election, in trade for guns and other military supplies that the Treasonshit Republicans paid out later during Reagan's terms.
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing. -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president, Litton Industries
