I think if you sail past “homage” this far you’re well into “pastiche” territory if not “a copy”

the reason the nuclear analogy is apt isn’t the capability or the work it takes— on those you are right it’s more like trying to control biological and chemical weapons— it’s that once military AI exists it changes the geopolitical landscape like nuclear weapons did. If you have them and your enemy does not, doesn’t…

The problem with any attempt at regulation or limits is twofold— first that we have a global economy secondly the first-mover advantage is so enormous that it has serious risks.

What can you really do when half the country supports them? refuse to negotiate with half of the country, their interests and their elected officials? All that results in is nothing being done, ever.

That’s how functional politics should work, you get something, they get something, no one gets everything they want.  If you want to set the success condition as “we get everything we want they get nothing”, well that’s how you get nothing done at all.

This is very important to say, thank you. The campaign to close the mental hospitals was not “regan being evil” it was actually a widely popular bipartisan effort that was supported by all the leading mental health organizations and campaigners of the time.

Google doesn’t make an image search API available in a way that could do it.  So your own statement proves how hard, bordering on impossible it is.  Google has spent tens of millions of dollars to create Google Image and even then it doesn’t always get things right, is that reasonable to expect of any company that…

I think that the Hustler case is an even clearer legal precedent-- even if it claims to be straight-faced the context and other indica should clearly relay to a reasonable person that this is a parody.

This list seems heavily biased towards trendy itch.io-type microgames rather than actual full RPG systems. I’d rather take a copy of Shadowrun 3rd edition and the Rigger books than use a glorified pamphlet.

that’s what I do, I pick up everything that’s free, even if I don’t have a great deal of interest. I’ve gotten more than a few games that I had wanted to try but wasn’t about to drop a lot of money on because I was unsure how much enjoyment I’d really get or reviews were mixed (e.g. Death Stranding, Frostpunk,…

I would agree with that.  They were extremely professional and took great pains to systematically gather the evidence and cut off potential defenses, as well as make proving premeditation a slam dunk and take away any “robbery gone wrong” defense he might have tried to lessen the charges to a lesser degree.  Their…

this is the second-most Wisconsin thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The most Wisconsin being the conversation “’My name’s Miller’ ‘Miller with an ‘i’ or Mueller with a ‘ue’?’”

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I think the biggest problem is that the biggest downside is inherently tied to the biggest upside: these methods make the market much more efficient.

“all shades of bad are equally bad” isn’t a great take. Youtube demonetizes content at the drop of a hat and takes it out of the recommendation engine, as well as hiding things behind warnings and removing content aggressively. Instagram isn’t as good but still not as bad.

last Pride month I saw a hillarious post that was spot on, just a bunch of fictional “evil corporation” logos done in rainbow— Weyland-Yutani (Alien), OCP (Robocop), LexCorp (Superman), Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner), Umbrella (Resident Evil) and so on.

It made the point quite nicely I think.

a lot of these are in-jokes put into the scripts for the amusement of cast and writers-- but because star wars fans are some of the most obsessive on earth they dug them up and made them public.  It’s quite likely others of your favorite series have similar in-jokes in the scripts and they just aren’t made public.

my rent went up 100 bucks a month this year, that’s fairly normal around here, a job that paid “okay” when you got it doesn’t mean it even pays your rent today. 

Honestly, yeah, I am fine with it. I paid 70 bucks for Final Fantasy VII in 1998, and there’s been 25 years of inflation since then. If games had kept pace with inflation, they’d be about 150 bucks these days, even as dev costs have gone up. The difference is why so many developers are turning to predatory…

those laws only apply to people that follow laws, that’s the problem.  They’d just build in backdoors and collect the same data surreptitiously.

my biggest concern is it promoting antisocial and dangerous things like tutorials on how to steal cars, challenges to smoke hot peppers or snort fire extinguishers, and shit like that to vulnerable kids.  The spying sucks but honestly it’s nothing private companies aren’t doing, and then selling that data to the FBI. …