I was always so disappointed in the 90s to see ‘realistic’ looking graphics and then you play the game and realize it was just a point and click game

Modern farming is extremely reliant on gps and ‘smart’ planters, fertilizers, etc. Using tech to precisely control exactly how much seed, chemicals, etc is used can result in significantly less costs. My understanding is that Deere has bought out basically every company that has a decent implementation of this technology and is an effective monopoly on modern farming equipment.

You can move away from them, but expect your business costs to significantly increase as a result.

That isn’t sufficient for the people trying to pass these laws. They’re trying to get the government to enforce parental controls, not the parents. Those types of controls already essentially exist and yet they were deemed insufficient.

This is mostly because these people are not interested in protecting children, but rather shutting down anything they don’t like. The same way they tried to shut down abortion clinics by attempting to hold them to full blown hospital building standards. It wasn’t because it was unsafe, it was a way to harass the clinics they disapproved of.

I thought the same until someone shared some additional insights with me.

So basically for device verification to work, you have to prove to someone that you’re an adult, typically by linking your real ID. The problem comes from when you log in to a porn website and they try to determine you’re an adult by reaching out to that trusted 3rd party. Now even though the porn site doesn’t know who you are, only that you’re an adult, the ‘trusted verifier’ does know that you’ve visited the porn website. This makes that organization a huge security risk as it directly links your identity to visiting controversial websites.

Who would you really trust with that info? Corporation or government, both have major risks to collecting that info. What happens when FL bans porn and starts targeting people they know have accessed it via this database? What happens when LGBT info is labeled ‘adult only’ and requires this tech to access, creating a database of potential ‘undesirables’?

Once it’s created it’s absolutely positive that the data will be hacked and that the government will use this mechanism to target at risk groups.

The difference between this and in person ID checks is one of data persistence. Bars and such things just look at your ID, but don’t typically log it in a database. Compiling a persistent database of every ‘adults only’ only action is just too risky.

Will this just become obsolete the next time they update usb c to support something new? A tester that goes out of date as quickly as the cables it’s testing feels pretty pointless to me

Also the app is probably built on a mountain of dependencies all of which have updates and security patches and bullshit. Delaying those updates for too long makes finally making a real update a nightmare, so you occasionally release updates just to keep up.

Many of us would like this, but it’s dangerous or even illegal to get to some places by walking in large parts of America. And zoning laws make it really difficult to change.

As an American this is gross to me too

Honestly I assume most people with an American flag in their yard are racist trump fans these days

The recent trifold phone prototype by some Chinese company was the only version that interested me. It actually expanded to true tablet size and the proportions and thickness while folded matched the standard phone proportions. That actually felt useful and I could get rid of my tablet, so I wouldn’t mind the extra cost too much. The big issue obviously would be if it could have decent battery life, which I assume will be its critical flaw.

That’s the next executive’s problem. These executives will jump ship with their golden parachutes before any of that affects them.

90% of the games I play are now made by indie or medium sized studios/publishers. I’ve bought several AAA games in that time frame, but almost universally they’ve failed to hold my interest and I typically regret my purchase. I can’t remember the last AAA I bought that I would consider a ‘favorite’.

Also I’m growing more and more detached from what modern, AAA games even feel like. Opening up a game like fortnite or COD where they’ve shoved dozens of different game modes into an all in one program is confusing and overwhelming. It’s off putting to me and I feel like having a ‘get off my lawn’ moment.

There’s usually a hardware level power off function for when the device freezes and stuff. Can usually hold the power button for ~10 seconds will power off the device without needing to look at the screen

See this game documentary for more details: Cricket through the ages

It was crazy taxi and no other game could use the mechanic. And telling you where to go is pretty darn important to a lot of games

Fair, but given the degradation of gaming these days I think a lot of people who aren’t paying attention have an outdated and understated view of just how bad things are. A parent might be thinking: wow had a subscription, so this game with micro transactions isn’t all that bad, not recognizing just how tuned modern predatory gaming has become at extracting money and addicting its users.

WoW mostly addicted people to playing (consuming their time), you can go hours and hours of gameplay without inputting more money. But mobile games maximize extracting maximal profit for minimal gameplay. There’s no functional difference between a gacha pull and a slot machine pull. It’s an endless, mindless set of pretty lights where you just hit the buy button over and over and over. If you sat people down and made them watch (with a running cost total) most people would immediately see the resemblance to a casino.

I think it’s helpful to break things down into more granular levels of predation, just to help clarify how bad it’s getting, even if all of it is problematic.

I don’t allow myself to play any mobile games anymore. Spent like $300 on one of those idle games. Not worth it. I refuse to play any free to play titles at all, no matter the platform these days.

Haven’t played WoW in awhile, but do they now have ‘you can spend unlimited money’ mechanics? Previously it was just stuff like mounts and character transfers and stuff. I know you can also sell tokens for gold, but I thought gold kind of becomes irrelevant at some point. The best gear is bind on drop right? Theoretically I guess you can pay gold for boost runs, which probably counts as an endless money sink.

I kind of have a mental separation in my head between games with unlimited money sinks (like games with energy mechanics) where you can spend and spend and spend and it never stops, vs games that have a finite of things to buy.

It can still be way over priced, but there’s a maximum amount of money you can throw at the game. Even Diablo 4, with a relatively huge and highly priced number of cosmetic items has effectively a maximum price (though every new cosmetic increases that price). Vs Diablo Immortal allowing you to spend 10s of thousands of dollars and still need to keep spending. I think unlimited money mechanics should be outlawed or at least fully classified as gambling and regulated accordingly.

I how you’re doing better, but also this sounds like the start to a fun romantic comedy or bro movie. Two strangers doing research on the best bridge to jump off of becoming unlikely friends.

Discord is great as chat program. It should’ve only ever been used for that. It completely sucks as forum replacement. Discord should’ve had very little value to any decent organization.