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Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

"Well of course I know him. He's me."

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Talking is not going to get them to leave Ukraine.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Depends. Do I need to win or is a draw an acceptable outcome? If it's the latter, the blue whale. What's it gonna do, beach itself?

Are you able to read in your dreams?

I ask because it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t but I regularly have dreams where I continue books I’m reading irl (they usually devolve into naritive nonsense over time and then sometimes to blank pages, but the actual text is definitely deciferable), text messages, computer screens, and road signs, in both...

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

it’s considered common knowledge that you can’t

I've never heard that before. What I have heard several times is that text is not static, so if you read something, look away, and then read it again, it'll say something different. That I can corroborate, along with the idea that this is how you realize you're in a dream and induce lucid dreaming.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

As does Steam and Epic and every other digital store ever created.

What is your comfort activity (like comfort food)?

Mine is playing AOE2 in easiest (or standard if I want a bit of challenge) mode against 3 bots. I just build my economy, wall up (and laugh at the enemy soldiers attacking my walls in vain), reach imperial age and attack once my army reaches the population limit. I also send 104 in the chat so they don’t surrender and I can...

Sordid, (edited )
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Replaying old games that I have fond memories of. We're in an incredible renaissance of classic games getting source ports or updates that bring them up to modern standards, and I'm loving it. Daggerfall, Blade of Darkness, Jagged Alliance 2, Morrowind, Jedi Knight, Caesar 3... I'm sure I'm forgetting some many. They let me forget the present and pretend that I'm back in simpler, happier times, at least for a little while.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

The entire reason why the US entered the war was because of the attack.

No, that was a convenient excuse. Roosevelt must've thought Christmas had come early when he got the news.

Do you think if they did, they would’ve used them immediately to force a quick surrender instead of dragging out the war for years causing millions of deaths?

No, because B-29s didn't exist yet either, and they couldn't take off from aircraft carriers in any case. The US would've had to conquer its way across the Pacific to get within bomber range either way.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Explain how it was a convenient excuse?

Roosevelt wanted to get involved but had no way to get the public to go along with it. The Japanese helped him out.

if the US could have used nuclear weapons right after the attack to prevent entering the war, regardless of their transportation method, they would’ve

And how exactly do you imagine the US could've used such weapons against Japan without transporting them to Japan?

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Wow, that's extremely generous! Can I have Vane, please? I love games where you play a bird.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

That's less of a peaceful reform and more of a war crime.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Worse, we're throwing piles of money at them.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

In defensive terms, no, not really. They had to build it like this because these aren't really walls per se, it's just brick lining on the outside of an earthen mound, and mounds are, well, mound-shaped. https://gomadnomad.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Bukharas-Ark-Palace.jpg

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

It's _/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾_ shaped. It's not freestanding walls, the whole thing is an earthen mound with a flat top and its sides lined with bricks.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar
Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

They did. This is only the oldest, innermost fortification in the city. AFAIK additional layers of walls were build around it later.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

History repeats itself. The fediverse is going to go downhill too once it gets big enough for corporations to notice it. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Sure, but it'll be the same story all over again. The big platform will be ruined and the alternative option will be smaller and therefore not as good (since user base directly contributes to quality when it comes to community-based platforms; it's the users who post all the content, so fewer users = less content).

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Well if instances keep defederating each other, it does matter. Plus there's the question of stability. Sure, you could make your account on some tiny niche instance, but what if the guy running it decides he's had enough and terminates it? What happens to your account, your post history?

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Right? How the hell is a company that has never managed to turn a profit worth more than $0?

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

I get that, but who would want to buy a company that's never been profitable? It smacks of a scam. "Hey, bro! Buy my company! It never managed to make any money for me, but it'll be highly profitable for you!" Sounds like the company founder is looking to pull a fast one and laugh all the way to the bank while their investor is left holding the bag.

The only way I can see this working is if the idea is to build a large user base by offering a good user experience, i.e. not monetizing the platform very much, just enough so that it barely pays for its own operating costs. Then you sell that user base to someone else for the express purpose of shoving tons of ads down everyone's throat. In that case it's still a fast one, only in this scenario the users are the victims. But even then I'm skeptical. If that's the plan, why sell the company instead of enshittifying your platform yourself?

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

it's a lot easier to find someone who thinks they can do it than it is to actually successfully do it yourself

That's pretty much what I said, though. That's the core of the scam. You sell something you know to be worthless to someone too ignorant to understand that. Maybe I'm just extremely ignorant and naive in matters of business, but selling a fake company like that seems no different than selling pyrite to someone who can't tell it apart from gold.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

If the company can be made profitable, why isn't it? Why wouldn't the current owner rake in some profits before selling? Surely a company that is already profitable would be even more attractive for buyers.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Reddit has been around for 18 years, though. Surely that's more than enough time to start turning a profit if the company is capable of it?

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

The simple answer is that the "you have to be good" Christians are not the same people as the "Jesus forgives no matter what" Christians. Beliefs and doctrines vary wildly throughout Christianity, and different Christians often believe contradictory things. This isn't helped by the fact that the Bible itself, being a collection of many books by many authors, contains contradictory viewpoints. This allows believers to focus on the elements they like and ignore the ones they don't.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Two Worlds 2. You can create your own spells by combining different elements, effects, and modifiers. Among other things, this allows you to summon a rain of anvils and then form them into a vortex around yourself.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Eh, Starsector is a very different kind of game. And I don't just mean the fact that it's top-down 2D, it's much more of a management game. Freelancer is very aptly named - you're just one guy in one space fighter doing your thing. It's a space shooter first and foremost. If you try to play Starsector that way, you're going to hit an impenetrable wall very quickly. You need a fleet, and the larger your fleet, the less significant your own personal contributions in battle. But the game also limits your ability to command your fleet pretty severely, so the further you progress, the more your agency shrinks to just moving around on the map between combat encounters that mostly play themselves. I can't recommend Starsector to... well, anyone, to be honest.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

I have a sinking feeling he might have made a mistake.

Sordid, (edited )
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Both! Critically, the contents of box B depend on the machine's prediction, not on whether it was correct or not (i.e. not on your subsequent choice). So it's effectively a 50/50 coin toss and irrelevant to the decision-making process. Let's break down the possibilities:

Machine predicts I take B only, box B contains $1B:

  • I take B only - I get $1B.
  • I take both - I get $1.001B

Machine predicts I take both, box B is empty:

  • I take B only - I get nothing.
  • I take both - I get $1M.

Regardless of what the machine predicts, taking both boxes produces a better result than taking only B. The question can be restated as "Do you take $1M plus a chance to win $1B or would you prefer $0 plus the same chance to win $1B?", in which case the answer becomes intuitively obvious.

Sordid, (edited )
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

No information regarding the machine's accuracy is provided, but the fact that you are asked to make a choice implies that it is not perfect. The question explicitly specifies that the prediction has already been made and the contents of box B have already been set. You can't retroactively change the past and make the money appear or disappear by making a decision, so if your choice must match the prediction, then it's not your choice at all. You lack free will, and the decision has already been made for you by the machine. In that case the entire question is meaningless.

Sordid, (edited )
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

The free work Reddit moderators do has been valued at $3.4 million annually

That seems an extremely conservative estimate to me. The linked article says:

The team recorded the work done to keep 126 subreddits moderated for an average of 142 days, and analysed automated logs generated whenever the 900 human moderators took an action.

In total, more than 800,000 actions were recorded. Some actions contained full timestamps of when work began and ended; others only contained a single timestamp – for removing a post, say – and so the time taken was estimated at what the researchers believe is a lower bound.

The median amount of time any individual spent working daily is 10 seconds, but the top 10 per cent of moderators spent between 3 and 40 minutes working for Reddit. Two in every three actions were taken by the top 10 per cent of moderators.

There's a major problem with this methodology, which is the assumption that a moderator is not working unless they're taking an action. But that's not the case, is it? Sitting around keeping an eye on things and not doing anything because no action is currently required is still work! Just like a security guard. You pay them for all of the 8 hours they spend watching your stuff every day, not just for the thirty seconds a month spent actually apprehending thieves.

According to this Reddit post, there were over 70K moderators on Reddit six years ago. Even if they were only paid the US minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and each of them on average only spent fifteen minutes a day keeping an eye on things, it would still cost Reddit almost fifty million dollars annually. And that's based on a number that's six years old, which is certain to have grown a lot since then.

So yeah, Reddit is benefiting from free labor a lot.

Sordid, (edited )
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Welcome to capitalism. The technical term for benefiting from something that someone else paid for is cost externalization.

The fact that Reddit has never managed to turn a profit despite receiving an annual subsidy of (at the very least) tens of millions of dollars in the form of free labor really says something about the competence of its leadership, doesn't it.

Sordid,
@Sordid@kbin.social avatar

Reaction emojis that you have to pay Reddit money for.

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