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What guarantee did EA provide the Marne and Tonga projects? All they have to do is stop getting in the way.

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Quoting: eggroleWhile I don't think an <16-year-old should be on social media, I don't think it is the government's job to make that call. That is up to the parents. Now, you can argue there are bad parents, but that is the cost of freedom. Freedom to mess up.

You could also argue that there are bad drivers, and road kills are just the cost of freedom. The state shouldn’t require a driving licence, or sober driving!

Except one’s freedom to mess up does not extend to other people’s lives. Children are among the most vulnerable citizens and those who have the most to lose in terms of life expectancy. As citizens, they are entitled to the same protections. They are not property that one is free to abuse because of "ownership" (my child, my choice). Yes, the government should protect them from literally toxic environments, and no, being a parent does not automatically mean that one knows better than every subject matter expert.

Quoting: eggroleWhat are the costs of children smoking or drinking? What are the costs of a nanny state when people don't learn to take care of themselves (moral hazzard)? What are the costs of a bad parent? I don't have answers to those questions, but my gut reaction is always to limit what the government can do, especially when it comes to individuals.

And the costs themselves are not only one sided. For example how much does it cost the taxpayer when a child smokes? How much does it cost the taxpayer to prevent a child from smoking? A lot of bleeding heart types will say things like "no cost is too great to protect the child", but that simply isn't the case in a world of limited resources.

Provided that your country has public healthcare (and it really, really should), it’s already been shown, probably many times in many countries, that it’s cheaper to stop people from smoking than treat them (and people exposed to second-hand smoke) for smoking-related diseases through the course of their lives. It’s fun to complain about a nanny state for imposing rules that you don’t like, but it’s that same nanny state (aka every taxpayer) that has to pay when you "mess up", so it’s understandable that it tries to promote behaviours that don’t have a negative impact not only on yourself but also everyone else. As you mentioned, we don’t have infinite resources to undo the damage of irresponsible or outright dangerous individuals. The government isn’t a company and shouldn’t act like one, but it still needs to balance a budget.

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Quoting: seflasporin

Quoting: Mountain ManI was not expecting this to go anywhere. You can't reasonably legislate to a company that they must guarantee their product will continue to function in perpetuity.

That's not what they're trying to do, like at all. The most they would have to do is allow the community to create servers like Marne and Tonga did for Battlefield 1 and V.

Which is just another way of saying that a company should be legally mandated to guarantee their product will continue to function in perpetuity.

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If the artist sells their piece of art and they decide to destroy it, can they? Yes, but first they need to buy them back. Refund my game ad the EOL and I can live with that. 😝

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Quoting: SlaxerWhenever I think about it, I'm still in shock over how the majority of us have continued to elect the same people over and over again despite how bad things have become.

Lack of valuable alternatives? Personnally, I just can't relate to the values of the Reform party... Euh... Sorry... Conservative Party. And Poilievre is just a huge no-go. They are ruled out, right from the start. What's left? NPD? If you dislike interventionism, it's hardly a choice. Right now, Carney is probably the most centrist, in years, in the Liberal party. But everytime I have to vote, I must admit that I'm voting reluctantly.

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Quoting: Mountain ManI was not expecting this to go anywhere. You can't reasonably legislate to a company that they must guarantee their product will continue to function in perpetuity.

That's not what they're trying to do, like at all. The most they would have to do is allow the community to create servers like Marne and Tonga did for Battlefield 1 and V.

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I cant really say I'm disappointed because that would mean I would have some positive expectation about EU

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I was not expecting this to go anywhere. You can't reasonably legislate to a company that they must guarantee their product will continue to function in perpetuity.

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Quoting: dpanterPerformance is a bit rough on the Deck at present, they are working hard on improvements. Steam Deck support is a high priority, check the Discord and Steam forums where devs are quite active. One example here with responses about Steam Deck performance: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2929250/discussions/0/571540929904843611/

this is great news! I probably won't play this game on my desktop, so getting it working on the deck would be huge.

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Well, let's do this.

Orc Incremental (Proton) - Pretty decent incremental auto-battler that seems to take some RTS inspiration. Simple premise pulled off pretty well overall. It does get a bit old after a while, although I haven't tried the "Trials" mode.

Chonky Cat (Proton) - Very clearly a meme game, where you play as an extremely fat cat who is actually a normal cat skin from an asset store stretched over a large body, chasing a variety of birds and squirrels and such to instantly eat them. I guess it's fun for a bit, but doesn't seem to have had a lot of effort put into it. Probably good for streaming if you're into that.

Worlds Upon the Wind (Native) - Historical Japanese art themed roguelike deckbuilder. No combat in this one, the cards are used to accomplish tasks in rebuilding a shattered world. Not fast moving by any means, but very pretty and it seems like something a person could sink a good amount of time into. Card mechanics seem interesting, where they can be used either to supply required glyphs for tasks, or to be used for drawing more cards and similar tasks. I, for one, found it quite absorbing.

Industronaut (Proton) - Crashed astronaut survival/crafting game. Clearly going for the Subnautica/Planet Crafter vibe, but a bit more industrial/automated. Not a fan of the UI at all, and the process of making things feels very awkward. There are better entries in this genre, by a long shot.

Lone Voyage (Proton) - Exploration game where you're the sole survivor of an attack by an alien "swarm" which has destroyed everyone else. You have a little dude in a spaceship and no explanation of how to work anything. You've got a mining laser and apparently an auto cannon that I never figured out how to use. Or if it's actually there or just listed in your gear. Very poorly/not at all explained mechanics, pretty much immediate and unavoidable death when the swarm shows up or your engine inexplicably goes critical. Not well designed at all, recommend not bothering.

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Quoting: devlandMy take is that northern European social democracies have the best system so far. They are always governed by multiple parties working together to reach compromises and never one single entity that ends up pissing off everyone else.

If you like it that way, more power to you. Everyone has a reason for choosing their favourite distro 🫡.

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Performance is a bit rough on the Deck at present, they are working hard on improvements. Steam Deck support is a high priority, check the Discord and Steam forums where devs are quite active. One example here with responses about Steam Deck performance: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2929250/discussions/0/571540929904843611/

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Quoting: CaldathrasYep. It is the provincial governments that define the public school curriculum. And I agree that, with an idealogy-driven social activist as Premier, it would probably be very difficult to get a civics class into the curriculum.

Whenever I think about it, I'm still in shock over how the majority of us have continued to elect the same people over and over again despite how bad things have become. At 159 years old, Canada's a very young country - and very naive. We never had to fight the British to gain our "independence", and we've never had to go through anything in our history that truly made us ask ourselves what we actually value... until maybe now. I believe everything we're going through right now is a test that all successful countries have gone through to become who they are. If we pass this test, Canada will go on to be the best that it's ever been. I think we've just gotten lucky, and have had it easy for way too long.

Quoting: CaldathrasWhen I was in high school in the mid-eighties, my English teacher ran a segment that taught us how to recognize the manner in which advertising was manipulating us. It worked for me. For the longest time, I thought this was part of the official curriculum but I learned that this was never part of many Canadian educations, including my wife's education. I am grateful that my English teacher had the courage to add this to his course.

We never had that. That sounds fun though, I would've loved that course.

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Quoting: SlaxerDoes the EU have the power to influence or veto the way a European country governs itself? Are they funded with your tax dollars? If yes to either of those, then they are a government on top of your government.

1 - No. Each member is self governed. Members have the power to veto EU legislation, not the other way around.
For something to become EU law ALL members need to agree to it.

2 - The EU is funded with contributions from all members and all members get EU funds for their own development based on who needs the money the most. This last part is actually the most controversial aspect of the union because some countries think they pay more while getting less but they always ignore every other benefit the union gives them like cheap labor from all the corners of the union and tax free trade within the union.

They do work. The United States was formed out of a revolution.

I don't want to be disrespectful but the fact that multiple states are governed by one small group of people, i.e. the federal government, didn't exactly turn out well in the end since it allowed for a two party system to ping-pong the country from liberalism to wannabe autocracy in a never ending cycle.

The other big federal union, Russia, also didn't turn out too great either. :|

My take is that northern European social democracies have the best system so far. They are always governed by multiple parties working together to reach compromises and never one single entity that ends up pissing off everyone else.

Violent revolution doesn't work. The new people that take over eventually get corrupted by power like the ones before. Human history is a never ending list of examples where empires and kingdoms rose and fell one after another. We need to cooperate if we want to prosper as a species. Otherwise we'll just have more lords and serfs.

Anyway, we've digressed quite a bit but I enjoyed the conversation. :)

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Thank you for your response.

Quoting: HamishI have not tried anything other than the original PC campaign.

Ok, maybe it could be a material for your next article.

I was so happy for these two hours when I played Cursed Sands because it was the closest mod related to RTCW running on Linux.

Quoting: HamishI may have, but I would not mind another reminder. As the gap in releasing these articles shows, I have been through the wars a bit these last few months. I may have missed it.

I don't want to reveal this title publicly, so I sent you another email today.

It's great that you decided to publish a new article.

I like the story, atmosphere, and music in RTCW.

However, I don't consider RTCW as a modern game because it used the id Tech 3 from 1999. Similarly, MoHAA used the same engine, but EA showed how amazing a game could look with it. I can feel on some levels how graphically demanding this game is, even with a GeForce 7600 GS 512MB. Both are great retro games that I enjoy playing to this day.

I have to admit that I feel old when people mention Doom 3 as a retro game. That was the first game for Linux that proved that computers with 32-bit processors are outdated. It's hard to imagine that the unofficial Linux installer was published 22 years ago.

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: devlandThe only way to build something for everyone is through compromise. And compromise implies having political representation for all people including for those that don't want to play nice.

Compromise is not exactly easy to achieve in a capitalist society that advocates for competition over cooperation. There is no victory in compromise...

Myself, I would love to see more cooperation and compromise but it's not part of our current social mindset.

Agreed.

Look at the nordic European countries. Their social democracy works very well and it's based on compromise. They almost never have one party ruling over the others. It's always all of them working with the others to get some of the things each of them wants.

You get to a system like that either through years of education that pushes for cooperation or through strict laws that prohibit political majorities.

Capitalism banned monopolies but that's still ok in politics. We need to fix that.

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Quoting: Slaxer

Quoting: CaldathrasRead this to my wife. She feels that the only way to fix this would be to reintroduce a civics class into school curriculum, like they used to have decades ago when her father was a child. She also thinks it's unlikely to happen, just like old-school home economics.

I agree with your wife, that would be a great start, but how would we convince our public school districts to include this in the school curriculum? Our provincial governments have control over that. I dunno what it's like in your province, but the government here in BC loves to preach about how Canada is a terrible racist country that deserves self-hatred because it's fundamentally racist, and will continue to be racist forever. Obviously, this is not true, but this is what they like to remind people everyday.

Even though the Canadian government is required to post our Constitution (both the Constitution act of 1867 and 1982) on the government website, I really do believe that they don't want you looking into that too much. They don't want you to know anything about sections 1 and 33 of the Constitution Act of 1982 (and I'm paraphrasing here) where it basically says that Canadians have basic rights and freedoms, UNTIL a judge decides that we don't. What's the problem with that? Our judges are appointed by the Governor General based on the advice of our Prime Minister... which means the judges in our country will all favour our Prime Minister and his party - which then means that our rights and freedoms are just make-believe. This was demonstrated when NOBODY went to jail for implementing martial law because a bunch of people waved Canadian flags and ate hot dogs on the streets of Ottawa in 2022. It's a joke.

I love Canada, but I definitely don't like it right now. Either way... we'll make it somehow.

Yep. It is the provincial governments that define the public school curriculum. And I agree that, with an idealogy-driven social activist as Premier, it would probably be very difficult to get a civics class into the curriculum.

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Quoting: devlandThe only way to build something for everyone is through compromise. And compromise implies having political representation for all people including for those that don't want to play nice.

Compromise is not exactly easy to achieve in a capitalist society that advocates for competition over cooperation. There is no victory in compromise...

Myself, I would love to see more cooperation and compromise but it's not part of our current social mindset.

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Quoting: Slaxer

Quoting: Eocene84More examples of how our governments are almost completely under the control of billionaires. Humanity needs a revolution to overthrow all of these companies and the governments that do their bidding.

You forgot one very important part of the problem - us. We already do have the power to decide which companies should fail or succeed, and we already do have the power to demand that our governments behave like public servants - we always did. We just choose not to.

And it has happened. Just look at Bud Light and Target in the United States.

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Quoting: CaldathrasRead this to my wife. She feels that the only way to fix this would be to reintroduce a civics class into school curriculum, like they used to have decades ago when her father was a child. She also thinks it's unlikely to happen, just like old-school home economics.

I agree with your wife, that would be a great start, but how would we convince our public school districts to include this in the school curriculum? Our provincial governments have control over that. I dunno what it's like in your province, but the government here in BC loves to preach about how Canada is a terrible racist country that deserves self-hatred because it's fundamentally racist, and will continue to be racist forever. Obviously, this is not true, but this is what they like to remind people everyday.

Even though the Canadian government is required to post our Constitution (both the Constitution act of 1867 and 1982) on the government website, I really do believe that they don't want you looking into that too much. They don't want you to know anything about sections 1 and 33 of the Constitution Act of 1982 (and I'm paraphrasing here) where it basically says that Canadians have basic rights and freedoms, UNTIL a judge decides that we don't. What's the problem with that? Our judges are appointed by the Governor General based on the advice of our Prime Minister... which means the judges in our country will all favour our Prime Minister and his party - which then means that our rights and freedoms are just make-believe. This was demonstrated when NOBODY went to jail for implementing martial law because a bunch of people waved Canadian flags and ate hot dogs on the streets of Ottawa in 2022. It's a joke.

I love Canada, but I definitely don't like it right now. Either way... we'll make it somehow.

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Quoting: LoudTechieThe entire capitalistic model is based on it.
Competition drives innovation, innovation drives productivity gains.

Some of the economic math is based on that idea, but actual capitalism isn't and never has been. The defining thing of capitalism is to invest capital, make back more than you invested (ie a profit), and reinvest. This works fine in a monopoly or oligopoly. The earliest corporations, like the British East India company, were defined as monopolies!

Quoting: LoudTechieConventional theories assume with the non-ponzi assumption no macro profits, but existing micro-profits in a small enough time-scale allowing for reinvestment.
Specifically above average efficient parties do make a profit, while others run a loss.

Maybe they do, but that's a bogus assumption. One assumption that goes along with it in the math is zero barriers to entry, which is never true.

Quoting: LoudTechieYou criticize me for bringing in the real world

Good lord what the fuck are you talking about?
(snipped a bunch of meaningless math with nothing to do with the real world, incidentally)

Quoting: LoudTechieYou appear to be right about the Turkish debt build up.
In, which case I will provide to you another example Pre-WOII germany all their debt was in ReichsMarc

No it most certainly was not. It was mostly in gold!

Quoting: LoudTechieIt takes a stance on the desirability of central bank independence and the desirability of the mass production of national currency. The only reason you don't believe those are important issues is, because as an MMT advocate you don't believe in currency inflation.

What the actual fuck? Well, if you didn't read what I said before you're not going to start now, so, well, see you around.

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Requires a Java 8 compliant system.

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Quoting: Slaxer

Quoting: CaldathrasAh, speaking to a fellow Canadian. What can we do between elections to control our government? The federal government/politicians have done everything they can to prevent it. We have no MP recall. The modern politician ignores citizen protests or invokes the Emergencies Act to silence them. Referendums are pointless, as the federal government does not have to legally implement or follow the results of a referendum. It's basically just a poll. (Look it up, like I did. Referendums, in most provinces, are binding, but not at the federal level.) So, what recourse - other than elections - do Canadian citizens have to influence and control the Canadian government?

The politicians gave themselves raises exactly because they knew that Canadian citizens are powerless to do anything about it. I agree that $209.8K for a MP backbencher is obscene. On the flip-side, at the local government level where I live, our elected officials are only paid $28.9K annually (as of 2023). It used to be $12.9K before that.

Ah, asking the important questions.

For starters, mass political ignorance is a huge problem here. Ask a random person on the street to name a single person in Mark Carney's cabinet, and I bet you most of them wouldn't be able to name a single person - nevermind the details of what our provincial and federal governments are even doing. On the flipside, ask them about American politics, and I guarantee you they'll talk your ear off about all the things they saw on American TV. They'll tell you all about the American problems that American TV likes to report on... and sadly, I really do believe that most people here vote for our Prime Minister based entirely on what goes on in the United States. It's pathetic. We like tell ourselves that we're proud of our country, but the truth is that the majority of us think so little of ourselves that we actually believe that another country is in charge of our own destiny. Most people either did not care about the Emergencies Act, don't even know that it happened, or if they did know about it, don't understand why its illegal use is a big deal and how it affects them. I hate to say it, but Canadian citizens themselves are a bigger threat to us than our government is. How do we fix this? Holy shit... well... I'll let you know if I figure that out.

Read this to my wife. She feels that the only way to fix this would be to reintroduce a civics class into school curriculum, like they used to have decades ago when her father was a child. She also thinks it's unlikely to happen, just like old-school home economics.

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Quoting: LoudTechieOfcourse I'm bringing in the real world, because you're proposing real change in real world policy.
Also all academic models are meant to meaningfully reflect the thing they're modelling and in this case it's an economy.

I didn't say you shouldn't. I said economists tend not to in part because it's too complicated, and this is understandable--not necessarily forgivable, but understandable. So at best, they abstract a lot of things they shouldn't abstract. If you're reading what I say this badly, it's hard to feel like it's worth talking--you'll just wilfully misinterpret some stuff and reply to your wilful misinterpretations and it's just tiring.

And not all academic models are meant to meaningfully reflect the thing they're modelling, and very few economic models. The point of most of the more dominant economic models is to allow the very wealthy to convincingly tell us it's raining when they piss on our head. Since it is not raining, this requires the models to depart from reality. Cf. Mont Pelerin society.

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Quoting: CaldathrasAh, speaking to a fellow Canadian. What can we do between elections to control our government? The federal government/politicians have done everything they can to prevent it. We have no MP recall. The modern politician ignores citizen protests or invokes the Emergencies Act to silence them. Referendums are pointless, as the federal government does not have to legally implement or follow the results of a referendum. It's basically just a poll. (Look it up, like I did. Referendums, in most provinces, are binding, but not at the federal level.) So, what recourse - other than elections - do Canadian citizens have to influence and control the Canadian government?

The politicians gave themselves raises exactly because they knew that Canadian citizens are powerless to do anything about it. I agree that $209.8K for a MP backbencher is obscene. On the flip-side, at the local government level where I live, our elected officials are only paid $28.9K annually (as of 2023). It used to be $12.9K before that.

Ah, asking the important questions.

For starters, mass political ignorance is a huge problem here. Ask a random person on the street to name a single person in Mark Carney's cabinet, and I bet you most of them wouldn't be able to name a single person - nevermind the details of what our provincial and federal governments are even doing. On the flipside, ask them about American politics, and I guarantee you they'll talk your ear off about all the things they saw on American TV. They'll tell you all about the American problems that American TV likes to report on... and sadly, I really do believe that most people here vote for our Prime Minister based entirely on what goes on in the United States. It's pathetic. We like tell ourselves that we're proud of our country, but the truth is that the majority of us think so little of ourselves that we actually believe that another country is in charge of our own destiny. Most people either did not care about the Emergencies Act, don't even know that it happened, or if they did know about it, don't understand why its illegal use is a big deal and how it affects them. I hate to say it, but Canadian citizens themselves are a bigger threat to us than our government is. How do we fix this? Holy shit... well... I'll let you know if I figure that out.

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Quoting: SlaxerLike you said, education on the dangers of social media would be more effective at getting people to voluntarily reduce or eliminate the time they spend on social media.

Interesting that you should mention that. When I was in high school in the mid-eighties, my English teacher ran a segment that taught us how to recognize the manner in which advertising was manipulating us. It worked for me. For the longest time, I thought this was part of the official curriculum but I learned that this was never part of many Canadian educations, including my wife's education. I am grateful that my English teacher had the courage to add this to his course.

I mention this because social media employs a great many of the methods of manipulation utilized by advertising, including the use of advertising itself. Education on the dangers and manipulations of social media could be very useful.

SIDE NOTE: A friend who grew up in Germany told me that she was also educated on the ways that advertising is used to manipulate us.

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Quoting: ScottCarammellfriends list actually huge, easy multiplayer on java at long last. now all it needs from bedrock is controller support

Oh my God yes please, I really dont get how this is a feature that is still missing on Java.

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Quoting: SilverCodeEveryone throws shade Gabes way for the yachts, but he spends a ton of money on marine research via Inkfish. I wouldn't be surprised of a lot of the super yachts are actually used as vessels for marine researchers to live and work on.

didn't know about this until now looking into it it's kinda fire. $300 million for a research vessel whose findings are to be shared publicly for free with the scientific community. science should always be free, you really love to see it

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Quoting: devlandThat's not how the EU works.

Yeah, I bet. Though I am very skeptical of the EU, I'll admit that I'm being ignorant here. I don't know how the EU government works.

Quoting: devlandAnd, no, the EU isn't a government on top of another government.

Does the EU have the power to influence or veto the way a European country governs itself? Are they funded with your tax dollars? If yes to either of those, then they are a government on top of your government.

Quoting: devlandOverall, though, I think it's a good thing. Individually, member countries don't have nowhere near the same leverage when dealing with other bigger countries. But together we are strong and our diversity and adaptability are not only the union's strengths but also the defining characteristics of mankind.

If you're happy with it, I'm happy with it.

Quoting: devlandRevolutions don't work. They just replace one ruling class with another.

They do work. The United States was formed out of a revolution. Though not quite something I'd define as a "revolution", I did witness a nearly month long protest involving a lot of civil disobedience in my country a few years ago that yielded great results. It's not that revolutions don't work, I think you're just supposed to do them routinely, like changing out a child's diaper or taking out the trash. I do NOT condone violence, however, I think Thomas Jefferson said it best when he said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots and tyrants". I'll also add that revolutions do not have to be violent. They can be as simple as boycotting a game company for shipping an incomplete and broken game, or for including invasive anti-cheat software. Gandhi successfully revolted against the British government by starving himself.

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don't say it don't think it

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