The answer to questions like these is always money.

The biggest news here is that semiconductor production is amping up in the states, which is good for national security and reduces reliance on Taiwan.

Yeah, and you can install extensions even if they’re not on Mozilla’s addon store.

They can either lose the Russian market entirely or capitulate to this demand, I think it’s pretty obvious what they’re going to choose. Mozilla may be an NPO but it still needs revenue to survive.

Calling into United:

Hey I see you charged me $400 for a replacement screen? Tell me, where did you buy the targeted ad data you used to display ads on that screen? Oh, an agency that I signed terms and conditions for at some point? Shit, alright then.

I mean, fuck United tho and they will not be getting and damn money from me.

I mean AI bullshit like Copilot being added to Windows then quietly paywalled, ridiculous products like the Rabbit R1, and the arms race involving products that aren’t ready for market or produced ethically. LLMs still just make shit up a lot of the time.

Yes. Tech is a hype-based sector where the actual value of products is obfuscated by marketing. When the AI craze settles down, hopefully we’ll stop seeing it injected into everything.

I would try using Lynx launcher and adding a full-screen widget for news if you want something more feature-rich.

I get that, but that’s just the vibe Valve has to me.

I really feel like this won’t/can’t be enforced.

I’ve only really played New Vegas extensively, but I think the biggest thing to remember is that when you’re familiar with these western-style RPGs, they seem like they have a bottomless well of content because you know how and where to find quests and such. When these games are new, you have to find content for the first time, and if you’re not sure where to look then it becomes frustrating and boring.

New Vegas is better at this than most fallout games because once you have a quest it often leads to a sequence of other quests. in FO3, half the game is just finding stuff to do. Never played 4 or 76. No one plays FO1 or FO2 anymore but they sometimes suffer from similar issues, especially FO1.

Build variety in these games comes more from the perks, skill pts, and SPECIAL stats you choose. They’re not quite as visual as the different classes in Skyrim, but they certainly do much different things.

Isn’t there evidence that as artificial CSAM is made more available, the actual amount of abuse is reduced? I would research this but I’m at work.

Seems good for industry and bad for the actual populous, considering things like this can still happen lol.

Hot take! I think it’s bad when anyone does it, not just China. Crazy, I know lol. I understand that these are the things that come with running a country but that doesn’t mean they are ethical, or even the only options.

Thank you for validating the fact that I am pointing out real things that are actually happening and not just saying “nuh uh” like others have been doing.

You come to my store to buy something, you hand me the bill, I take it and don’t give you anything in return.

Video cameras. Also the shopkeep develops a reputation and is easily identifiable.

Most scams are done irl with FIAT,

Technically the truth, but a MUCH larger percentage of the crypto ecosystem is devoted to scams. I don’t think that is just “growing pains”, the design of crypto, again, incentivizes this behavior because it gives victims no recourse.

at the end of the day you can’t protect everyone from everything, especially from their own gullibility.

Yes, but gullibility is the #1 problem and again, crypto has no safeguards or recourse.

For some people complete control over their money is a plus

Control but only within the system and ruleset that is made by those who control the chain. If institutions leverage their power in the space in a mass-adoption scenario, then they will be the ones making these rules and controlling what you can do, and the rigidity of crypto’s rules advantage them in that case, no the consumer.

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I would prefer for crypto to be gone. Based on my understanding of blockchain, I don’t see how it can be used as currency ever. Blockchains can be extremely useful, just not as currency.

The only thing you can really do about stolen tokens is have some authority de-list them and re-issue new token to the victim. That’s hardly a solution. It also extremely centralizes control, which runs antithetical to the purported benefits of crypto.

Crypto also doesn’t take power away from institutions. If institutions were to leverage their power in the space, they would become just as, if not more powerful than they are currently, assuming a mass-adoption scenario. The inflexibility of crypto always works to the advantage of those setting the rules.

Crypto is also incredibly power inefficient. Even with proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work, it is still factors less efficient than normal FIAT transactions, and as of yet I see no solution to that. One may pop up in some hypothetical future, but I have no faith in that.

Additionally, crypto will also always reward those who engage with it disingenuously, as it is not linked to one’s real identity and, again, is inflexible and impossible to truly regulate. In a mass-adoption scenario, scammers would become enormously more successful.

Most importantly, crypto is a digital asset whose store of value is implicitly tied to the belief that it can be sold for FIAT. It is almost exclusively a speculative vehicle, and always had been since its inception. Actual crypto purchases are disincentivized by how slow, inefficient, unwieldy, and volatile it is. Not to mention high transaction fees for the most popular coins. It is also deflationary, meaning one is disincentivized from spending it, which is extremely bad for the economy in a mass-adoption scenario. Gentle inflation is one of the core principles underpinning our economy. Having currency also be an asset that appreciates in value is objectively a bad thing.

I feel like I could keep going for a while but hopefully you at least understand why I feel this way now lol.

Yes, exactly my point. It’s way harder to scam with physical stores of value like cash, because there aren’t layers of obfuscation like there can be with digital stores of value. That is why scamming is so much less common in meatspace compared to crypto, where every single interaction, even with a vendor or exchange, is a potential landmine you have to be cognizant of.

With PayPal or bank transactions, those can be reversed and there are regulatory bodies to ensure consumer protections. Even with physical stores like cash, it is much easier to track someone and prosecute for illegal activity since they can’t hide behind crypto wallets.

Every store of value has some form consumer protections and systems of accountability except for crypto, and as such scammers are empowered by it.

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There will always be scammers, my point is just that Bitcoin empowers them. Scammers and fraudsters have many more tools through Bitcoin than they would with FIAT, and they are more likely to succeed and thrive.