These were so much better than the radio transmitters. That brief period where cars only had CD players, no AUX or Bluetooth was the worst.

It’s ‘ugly’. Also the rules were set in the 80s and I guess people didn’t care then. And it’s not like a law has been passed removing their authority to do so.

HOA has banned solar and Gas heat is still way, way cheaper here. I could go heat pump, but I’d be paying 4-5x higher just to stick to my principals.

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.

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.

Steam is untouchable until Gaben dies. Then God help us all.

My introduction was the old Call to Power game. Still waiting for a Civ-like game that has a near-future age of gameplay. That was always the coolest part to me.

Feels like most of the similar games today are either historical/current or purely scifi. I like the transition point. To play out possible ways of advancing forward. How do we get from today to entering the stars? Those were fun scenarios to play out.

There’s a couple of mods for civ that covers this I know, but they’re all abandoned and somewhat buggy these days. Plus this sort of thing works best if the game is balanced around it to begin with.

Things I need a storefront/launcher to provide me:

• Reviews
• Wish list
• Beta/Alternate build installations
• Friend list, chat, game invite functions
• Mod browser
• Refund policy
• Excellent search and discovery tools

Nice to have:

• Forum for guides/support
• Game sharing
• Ability to move game files

If all you want is to launch a game, why keep the ‘launcher’ at all? Games used to just… start. No separate program needed.

Having messed around with these recently. Most of the current models have you use a ‘face fix’ pass. This ensures the details in the face aren’t blurry or messed up, but also tends to make all the faces look samey because they’re being generated and then generated again. Sort of a copy of a copy situation.

Works well for generic characters, but bad for faking real people.

Not familiar with the implementation, so maybe this is incorrect, but does Wendy’s tell you when you’re paying more or less? If not, my primary issue would be transparency. I know to show up for happy hour or lunch and I know what the prices will be.

I don’t want to have to memorize the prices because they quietly bump up everything on the menu by $0.50 at peak meal times everyday for an hour and don’t indicate that anywhere.

Ok, so data used was:

• My search history
• Knows I’m friends with her
• Knows both of us were in same location (either location or same wifi)

Ergo, friends search data in similar locations will be used as part of your advertising profile?

Wonder why I don’t get more makeup ads or something. Since the same should be true for stuff she searches for.

I also believe this isn’t true, but did have something happen that we couldn’t figure out the other day.

I was looking at this really specialized gaming keyboard on my phone (cyborg gaming keyboard). I showed it to my wife and we talked about it a bit. Later my wife, who’s not a gamer and never looks up any of this type of stuff, gets ads for this hyper specific niche gaming keyboard on Facebook. She never looked it up on her phone, she has no signed in accounts on my phone, she is not a target demographic for this device. The only connections possible that I can think of is that Facebook does know we’re married (though it’s never used that for this sort of ads before) and that we talked about it with her phone in the room.

It was freaky and I still can’t explain it.

Ok so 1 to… A few hundred? Thousands? Doing pretty well I think.

Binge drinking in celebration of first female president. Then binge drinking because Trump became president instead?

Seriously hope this is a ‘of those men likely to vote situation’. I mean not voting is bad, but I’d rather that than have my gender prefer trump.

Having done some recent research on the possible effects of an aging population, I think we’re all better off with a stable population rather than either a large or small one. China is for sure going to suffer for their one child policy in a few decades. Pretty much every 1st world country is on track for a painful time as their population ages out. The key is to make changes slowly so we don’t put too much pressure on one generation.

I agree that humanity as a whole could probably do better with a smaller global population, but even a medium shrinking of population threatens an extreme level of unrest and suffering as too many old people have to be supported by too few working people.

Most of those crabs (myself included) are benefiting from very low interest rates on their mortgages. Low enough rates to more than fully offset this one time incentive. So they should just chill and be happy they aren’t paying 8% interest or whatever it is these days.

Rather than malicious or a scam, this is closer to the class rep promising free vending machines. They don’t have the power to give this and they’re unlikely to convince the people that do have the power to actually do so.

That’s not really better exactly, it’s still deceitful, but only because they can’t actually deliver, not that they can, but choose not to.