I can recommend against enders. I have two friends with them, and one myself. Between the 3 of us none of them are currently working, and its been like this since i found out all 3 of us had 3d printers. Keeping them working is like pulling teeth.

Friendly reminder to all:

They wouldn’t be able to finish stealing that car before a thousand hungry lawyers ate them alive. Why do we let media companies do that?

They would probably actually have a decent shot at getting away with it, at least at first.

And to answer your question, it’s because the anger that companies generate by doing this shit ends up turning into piracy. Why would you try to punish a corp for doing this (likely wasting your time) when a cheap VPN and basic tech literacy gets you what you want?

The effort ratios are way out of wack when it comes to digital products. It’s easy to get around digital bullshitery, not so much in the real world where we are all car dependant.

One day I’ll have more to do and you people will be rid of me.

And that day will be a sad one.

Star Trek: Tactical Assault for the DS

I was absolutely trash at it, but I loved it. And to be honest, I thought it was just a very hard game to begin with. There is only so much you can do to manage your shields, weapons, and position before the ship becomes overwhelmed.

The graphics and animations were solid too.

I think if you need to be payed to be loyal to Starfleet/The Federation, that kinda is a deal breaker given the philosophy of personal growth and societal enrichment.

Complete tangent, it’s probably not too hard to get around the limits of a replicator if they prohibit or limit alcohol. Presumably you could have it create all the supplies needed for fermentation and make your own batch.

It would take a bit, but you’d have as much as you’d ever want.

Overall seems to give a good picture how Treconomics, but I think he is wrong a in a few ways. The first being private property. There is definitely personal property, but no private property as “business” like the Sisko Family Restaurant and Picard’s vineyard aren’t charging anything from what we can tell. They operate like their customers are family, and you’re visiting them to eat/drink with/etc and then go home.

The second is his labeling of The Federation as a technically capitalist society. I don’t think that’s the case, as corporations don’t seem to exist aside from the ones that are owned and operated outside of Federation space. There are family “business”, but they don’t have stocks or a stock market. And because the “businesses” that do exist don’t charge or make profit, I don’t think it can be considered capitalist.

And they are indeed credited to and debited from each citizen’s “account.” However, the average citizen doesn’t even notice it, though the government does, and again, it is not measured in currency units — definitely not Federation Credits.

I think this idea of each Federation citizen having a welfare account is probably wrong. I think it’s more likely that it’s just assumed that you won’t abuse the replicators/transporters, with a set limit of how much of something a user can use it.

So you can maybe replicate only a handful of basketballs a day, a couple hundred hotdogs, etc. But there is an inbuilt limit to the machine and electricity provided to your home. But it’s not an account.

Sure, I agree that there is absolutely somebody/some governing body controlling and tracking energy use. But again, no personal account.

As for the rest of what he said there, I am pretty much in full agreement.

Our electoral system is inherently biased against 3rd party candidates due to the spoiler effect of first past the post voting. The only solution is election reform that regulates election finances, a switch to approval/STAR voting, and regulation on political ads.

It boggles my mind how my conservative father even remotely thinks anything positive about star trek, let alone being obsessed with it.

Steve absolutely nailed it. Though I think his 4th point about optimism being a core part of star trek was missing a subsection. Almost all of the characters, and especially the ones the show wants you to root for have shit loads of empathy for the people around them, and often times it even extends to outright enemies.

Whenever a crew member is losing control of their behavior because of a mind control space entity, the crew’s first reaction is a level of concern people only have for close family members. When Sisko is doing arguably immoral acts for the greater good, he is wracked with grief and empathy for those he had to hurt. Janeway on the other hand just wants her coffee lol.

All good things

https://www.npr.org/1204955269

If you think this description sounds suspiciously like Paradox Interactive’s Stellaris with a Star Trek Prime Directive attached, you’re not wrong. The mechanics of advancing your faction and winning the game (militarily, economically, or diplomatically) are nearly identical, and fans of Stellaris will recognize the game’s style in Infinite’s assets and artwork.

I’m fascinated to see what the next big move is for these businesses

They’re going to instill contracts just like cable companies did. Wanna watch XYZ show? Just sign this 2 year contract for noname streaming service!

People switching from service to service will not be tolerated for long. They must always extract more and more profit for their shareholders.

It’s only going to be a matter of time before they start requiring contracts, forcing you to stick with a service for long periods or face fees for dropping them.

They are capitalists, and so they must always profit more and more, never ending, for all of time. One of the things they will eventually do to hit that unsustainable proift motive is contracts. It’s what the cable companies did, and it’s only a matter of time.

Even uncontacted tribes in the middle of nowhere islands probably have microplastics in their blood too. After all, they likely are eating animals that have microplastics. Stuff like this always gets worse the higher up the food chain you get, and humans are pretty high up.

What I am saying is, I don’t think people who use duolingo are any better/worse off than most other methods.

I think that would go for most learning methods. When you don’t practice a skill you’re always going to get worse with it over time, especially if it is a language.

Doable but you need teachers to open source their lessons and vet them.

If an OS alternative was trying to completely replace duolingo, it would need far more than that. Duolingo has had extensive work put into listening and speaking lessons. Almost all lessons have a listening componentwhich is a ton of content to make up for. They have significantly better voice recognition than my phone. The amount of effort to get something like that working for a language, let alone dozens of languages is a high bar.

Take a look at any of the job postings that duolingo has, they’re only looking for Google employee level of skill for a reason (aside from how fucked the job market is).

It’s not impossible for duolingo to be replaced with an open source version, but it’s a giant undertaking.

The dictation software we have is pretty shitty though. It almost always needs proof-read, or re-dictated several times to get it right. At that point you may as well just send an audio clip.

Until the day that dictation software gets it 100% correct, it’s not going to be worth my time.

For now, the human on the other end will always have an easier time understand an audio clip than a machine, because human minds are more capable of using context and getting past regional accents.

/s

And for those unaware, the cost of homelessness does exist, and it is quite high. We pay for it through emergency services (police, doctors, ambulance, hospital beds), waste removal services, etc.

The problem needs fixed, and part of the solution is commie blocks unironically.