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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Like I agree with your general point but this has nothing to do with online games licensing besides its being pulled from digital store fronts. Brick and mortar stores can have product recalls as well and this would likely be in that same category of problem (its a bit weird with preowned games since publishers were already given their cut) so they can continue to sell those but a brand “new” copy may have suffered a similar fate but we have to remember Spec Ops the Line is from the 360 era so I doubt there would even been many “new” copies around. Also I can’t fault publishers from just “deleting” a game from existence because spending thousands for merely upkeeping the licenses for a game they realistically haven’t sold in major volumes for nearly half a decade (at minimum) seems a tad bit unreasonable. Most music labels likely aren’t even going to sell a perpetual license as well, so its a can of worms of people wanting to get their cut.


  • I mean the only reason smallpox was wiped from this earth is because it took 20 years of dedication by the WHO to fully wipe it out.

    The top 10 countries with measels cases as per the CDC are

    1. Yemen
    2. India *
    3. Kazakhstan
    4. Ethiopia
    5. Russian Federation
    6. Pakistan
    7. Kyrgyzstan
    8. Democratic Republic of the Congo
    9. Iraq
    10. Azerbaijan

    The top 10 is based on data from the dates of June 2023 - November 2023. Each one of these are over 3k cases and the top one being at 23k and #2 being 13k.

    So yes, some parts of the world has problem with Measles and unless we dedicate the time to fully eradicate it, it will never truly be gone. The antivax nonsense in the first world countries will only make this worse. Can’t wait for the fucking return of Polio (however polio may be the next disease eradicated since its currently only in 2 countries and there were 6 reported cases in 2021) or TB

    Note: WHO classifies all suspected measles cases reported from India as measles clinically compatible if a specimen was not collected as per the algorithm for classification of suspected measles in the WHO VPD Surveillance Standards. Thus numbers might be different between what WHO reports and what India reports.


  • No personal person (except maybe freelancers) were ever going to buy Adobe for its list price, it was always about getting businesses to buy it, its the exact same scheme that there is for Winzip. Also you are acting like it was some act of kindness when really if it was that case, they would have kept perpetual licenses around with their subscription plan but they did away with it since they knew they can rake in way more money with the scheme. The plan for Photoshop was around $600, their subscription plan is $22 per month. in 2.2 years, you have paid basically the same amount but one you actually keep the product in the other you have to continue to rent it. Apparently the " Creative Suite Master Version" was $3000, today creative suite runs for $60 per month, so that would be around 4.2 years to pay it off. I doubt most people are using every single new feature they add. Hell some companies avoid updating to make sure everything is compatible with their current workload. So having perceptual licenses just make sense in these kind of cases.


  • Clearly following the religious text.

    Deuteronomy 22:28–29

    28 If a man encounters a young woman, a virgin who is not engaged, takes hold of her and rapes her, and they are discovered, 29 the man who raped her is to give the young woman’s father fifty silver shekels, and she will become his wife because he violated her. He cannot divorce her as long as he lives.

    While not the same, it sort of catch the drift. Like people can worship whatever religion they want but Jesus this section of the bible is horrific and sort of highlight women as mere property (one of the countless examples in the bible), which should be expected coming from that time period but crazy this kind of thing is still expected to be followed unquestioned.



  • I think it is a mixed bag. Maybe there are people who are god damn idiots especially looking at these parents trying to deny “proven” vaccines, this isn’t a comment on the covid vaccines, I’m vaxxed and had the most recent booster but I can at least in a way understand people’s fear around it. I think Covid was able to slip on by because “2% VeRy SmAlL NuMbEr, StOp BeInG CoWaRdS!” maybe I’m wrong and this whole thing was a trial run for the next super bug that will come out in the coming decade but I think a disease with a mortality rate comparable to the black death (30-60%) with a spreadability of covid though may lead to people taking it slightly more seriously. There will be obvious exceptions, hell I imagine many industrial leaders will still push the front line staff saying its “fake news” so they keep making profit while not caring about their people. Then again a disease with that kind of mortality rate would probably collapse modern society for better or worse at the bare minimum greatly reform it, the after effects of black death are fascinating read.


  • once we have gotten past the ethical quandaries and doing it the right way. It would be cool to just synthesize voices for npcs and PC from a list of “character types” and maybe add accents for the main PC. So all games can have voiced audio (could be cool if it can also work in a retroactive way, like play a classic CRPG but have fully voiced characters would be pretty neat), which can be a mixed bag in modern day since realistically there is a budget and voice acting can take a ton of money if done right. So it means we as gamer if we can mod in new quests, we can use such system to truly expand thee game. Like I love real VA performances so I can see this as a “stopgap” so you can get the main questline done and many of the “good” side quests done but you can use this AI trained voice for the more smaller tasks that may not get as much love or as I said use it for modding.



  • You know ignoring your comment that the war has been going on for 3 years. Its only been a year and halfish maybe closing into 2 years. Its laughable that a country like Ukraine whom’s military budget before this was several fractions of Russia’s is able to hold them back in open fucking warfare. I know you are gonna say whatabout Vietnam or “War on Terror” but those were insurgencies (ignoring the ethics of the US being in those wars since really we shouldn’t have been) the US and Nato trying to capture territory typically goes smoothly as we seen in the Gulf War and Desert Storm basically being called the 100 hour land war



  • I mean it isn’t but sort of is at the same time. It firstly depends on what kind of kickstarter it is. There are many ways where its just a system for a publisher to gauge interest in the project. Those are typically just preorders however many others are just throwing money into a well and hoping something comes of it. I get people’s hatred of crowdfunding and it can easily be a trap. Where a ton of people are just there to get the money and leg it or who are simply too incompetent to use the funds properly. Hell even experienced developer can be too incompetent, double fine studios/Tim Schafer is a poster child for this. While I love their work, they had a horrid run with crowdfunding and I guess it should have been expected since they are always late and overspend on their budget when they were working with publishers.

    Now with all the negatives said, I think crowdfunding in all its forms can lead to wonderful project that simply couldn’t have existed due to a lack of interest by publishers. Hell I doubt we would had Baldur’s Gate 3 without crowdfunding and this isn’t talking exclusively about BG 3 since the Divinity Original sin games really got the ball rolling for Larian Studios. Crowdfunding can lead to the rebirth of genres once thought dead.






  • Please take a moment.

    A detective testified that surveillance video showed the two suspects going to the car as they both put their hands on their waistbands, as if to indicate they both had a weapon.

    Now please consider what you just said, while acknowledging the context.

    On a more serious note, are you implying cops have futuresight? I sure hope that is what you are implying. Since you have to be a fool to take a fucking threat lightly no matter the age of the individual who is perpetrating it. I’m sorry but a 5 year with a fucking gun can kill someone, sure as hell a 13 year old implying they have a gun who is trying to car jack someone may be seen as a credible threat. its unfortunate that this young man didn’t find a way to be a productive member of society and with his death he will never find that. We can’t lose sight that if you bring/suggest you brought a deadly weapon into a situation you have forfeited your right to life (you can’t infringe on another person’s right to life and expect no pushback for it) until you are disarmed and immobilized. You may take this as pro cop talking points but no this is being a fucking realist, it can happen to anyone at anytime.

    Cops should be held to some of the highest standards. They are in theory the enforcers of the law and the public would lose trust if that gets abused. That is why we are currently in the situation we are in right now. Cops are being recorded and rightfully so. The justice system already favors cops. So I’m 100% down for being skeptical of cops but in this case I’m sorry you are way out of line.





  • Except you are going with a hypothetical but I’ll take the bait, seeing as it also goes against the spirit of the declaration of independence, although they did betray that spirit because they ignored the plight of the slaves, I think the removal of the clause of that women can’t own property or vote would be just but again the 2nd amendment has a huge part in our founding myth so its basically going to be impossible to remove. Also do you not think people in the Rural areas are safe from the wilderness? How the fuck are they going to ward off coyotes, foxes, razorbacks, bears, etc. You were suggesting a blanket ban of all firearms.

    " Would they have included the second if they had known it would lead to hundreds of shootings every year?"

    Also seeing as they literally just won a revolutionary war and failed to make an initial government to form a new one but the nation at that time was based on state militias. I think they would have still included that.


  • Firstly the first 10 are a bill of rights. While technically yes they can be amended it does set a very bad precedence that you are advocating for the repeal of one of those. Not even getting into how unlikely that is since there has only been one amendment that has ever been repealed (18th). You think its a good idea for a nation to get to pick and choose which “natural rights” you are allowed to have at the moment? So if they decide that the 4th or 5th amendments should just disappear, you aren’t going to have an issue with that (Yes, the justice system and police really do love to test the boundaries on those 2 but at least having a line is a good thing)?