It’ll prevent indie artists from having their work plagiarized over and over without payment from indie “devs” who honestly shouldn’t have the right to exist as “developers” if they can’t afford to actually hire artists and such.

It’d be one thing if they made an agreement to get assets from artists for cheap or for free as a favor, but just plain putting them all out of business permanently by letting a machine steal their work forever is another thing entirely.

Aren’t human beings also just primates too? I think this’d apply to us as well.

Thanks for sharing that, even despite the uncontrollable facepalm that resulted. What’s terrible is that despite the fact that this artist is so crazy and racist, his art is actually pretty good.

Maybe for now, but as soon as more people switch to Windows 11 or Microsoft apps that constantly show you ads and are basically spam / adware themselves, Linux will get more appealing.

Microsoft is unfortunately learning from social media companies. Not only do you PAY for the product, you are also the product, and get your personal info stolen and get served ads even while you pay.

It’s getting to the point where I’m seriously eyeballing Mint again, or Kubuntu. And I’m the kind of person that’s generally too lazy to even dual boot anymore.

Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint’s Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they’ve made some bad moves lately.

I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint’s Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they’d just made Saint’s Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.

At the point where they decided to “reboot” to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn’t get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who’d only heard of and experienced Saint’s Row 4 would get excited about.

They could’ve probably taken Saint’s Row up to 6 entries if they’d just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn’t know, I got distracted and didn’t play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could’ve probably stayed in business if they’d just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible “free to play” multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.

Not shocking, it’s Chicago after all. And it was 3 guys, and if it was reporters without security, they probably had valuable equipment to steal.

We basically are. The only good news is that young conservatives believe in and want to do something about climate change, so when the current crop of oil-funded deniers die off, we have some hope to limit the damage. That said, I’m seriously considering moving up north away north as far away from the equator as possible, and to an area with fresh water and farmland.

Then buying a gun. Never thought I’d need one after I left the Army, but as things get worse, I suspect that more violence will result due to scarcity and more likely: stress related to perceived scarcity that doesn’t exist. It’s always the fear that’s more dangerous than the reality. We can probably get by with easy to grow, nutrient-dense foods that are boring to eat, like beans. It’s the stress of not being able to eat “tasty” food that’ll probably get people to snap. Gunfights over steak, etc.

Not surprising, but disappointing. The premise was interesting (first person magic shooter) but the execution was tepid. The presentation / atmosphere, the generic graphics, the dopey dialogue, the lack of an interesting story. A lot of the success of games like Halo is how the world sucks you in with its atmosphere and storyline, I think developers really underestimate how much that matters in a single player game. Cinematogrophy is important, the feel of an experience is more than the simple gameplay of moving a character around and pushing buttons.

Honestly, probably the only way to save the Environment and Democracy. Too much power in the hands of the few leads to perpetual effective monarchy. It’s why the Founding Fathers were against large amounts of inherited wealth, particularly inherited wealth that creates dynasties in perpetuity.

I know people don’t like the Founding Fathers that much lately, and I see why, but conservatives really don’t understand them, and deliberately misrepresent them, because not doing so would undercut all conservative “policies”.

World’s a mess because of inequality and the concentration of almost all wealth and power into the hands of a small amount of sociopaths. I honestly think the only way to solve this permanently is to cap the amount of wealth and power any individual or family can have.

Well, this death’ll cause chaos that’s not good for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Hopefully it’ll mess things up long enough for Ukraine to gain more of an advantage.

The C is the grade those kids on got in “Temperature Understanding Class” because they’re almost failing.

Also correct if he’s thinking about cute dogs / cats / other animals that have more than 1 female in the group.

I agree, but he’s unfortunately better than the alternative. I would have hoped that a guy whose nickname was “Amtrack Joe” would’ve done better. I’m guessing he was worried about the midterms or the 2024 election, given that everything that makes peoples’ lives harder somehow gets unfairly blamed on him.

It just goes to show that Democrats are just a more sane conservative party with more tolerant social policies, they’re not actually all that pro worker. The Europeans are right about this.

I doubt the title of this article very much. Ukraine is getting F-16’s and probably JAS-39 Gripens very soon. Offensives and counteroffensives have to be slow and methodical by nature against entrenched forces, otherwise you’ll take massive losses for very little gains.

Ukraine is on its way to gaining air superiority, and more vehicles and air defense is coming into their forces every month, and the longer this conflict lasts, the more likely it is that they’ll gain more advantages over Russia as the sanctions keep draining them.

The lack of air superiority is hampering what Ukraine can do, and once that issue’s settled, I think we’ll start seeing more steady progress. Plus in the wide world, Japans and South Korea are settling their differences over WW2 and will probably keep cooperating, and part of that will be to send more stuff to Ukraine in order to help win there so they don’t have to fight WW3 with China over Taiwan.

It’s not just the West that supports Ukraine, it’s also the Democratic parts of Asia.

Kind of, but more “slightly amusing” than funny.

Sad news, but isn’t the Doge in the picture Kabosu rather than Balltze?

Yep, watermarked memes (and watermarked most things in general) are a scourge on the internet. I stopped following a Youtube channel that’s mostly playthrough’s of old fighting games because he suddenly decided one day to add an annoying (and ugly) watermark to the corner of ALL of his videos including the old ones.

Luckily, I’d found a similar one who was actually better at playing the fighting games themselves. I switched to that dude instead.

Agree. Even recently, I would have up to 5-6 cans worth myself (have since cut down a lot), but alongside the financial cost, there’s also the acid eating away at your stomach lining and the excess caffeine to worry about alongside the Aspartame.

Frankly, given the stomach issues and acid reflux that too much soda can give you, I would imagine that people (even sodaholics) would have to stop much sooner than 20 due to all the other issues involved with sodas before the problems with Aspartame would even come into the picture.

Not to say that I’m not leery of Aspartame, but diet Soda has other major issues beside it.

Not so sure about that, I feel like average people are waking up to technological bullshit like this more and more every year. Yeah there’ll still be an overly high amount of idiots, but I’ve learned that even older people can change and question things like this.

You can only get so many “We’re giving you 2 free years of identity theft protection because we got hacked and your personal information got stolen.” from big companies like your cell phone company, credit check company, etc. before you’re like “Hey, anything I put online can get stolen by criminals…”

Even if you’re a tech-unsavvy type. At some point the light bulbs turns on and you put 2 and 2 together.

Shit like this is why monopolies and oliglopolies don’t work. I hope people complain AND jump ship in big enough droves for this to change. Self-hosting and the old fashioned “buy your own music permanently” option are good too.

I don’t use streaming services, I just buy MP3’s (or AAC’s on iTunes or whatever they’re using nowadays, it’s been a while) and keep them locally and on the cloud. Never liked most Streaming Services’ recommendations anyway.