Those AOL prices were insane. It has admittedly been so long that I'm not sure I trust my memory, but I seem to recall per-minute pricing that could rack up over $20 per hour just from playing any of their text based games. I begged and begged my parents to let me just try one for a few minutes and they very wisely said absolutely not.
A few years went by and suddenly playing MUD / MOOs was free. I honestly miss those days, text-based has a vibe that no graphical game can ever replicate.
My dad worked for a studio that sold a game to WorldPlay. WorldPlay games charged by the hour, but the developers received AOL accounts that bypassed this charge. Theoretically I could play any WorldPlay game for free, but mostly I played my dad's game, which was free anyway as some kind of "check out our new game" introductory promotion.
There was a small regular community which got wiped out when WorldPlay started charging for it. The studio got more free accounts and gave them to regular players so that the game didn't just evaporate immediately, which meant everyone suddenly had a minor name change. After that, the game evaporated.
Yeah, so many of us with stories of angry parents over too large an AOL bill. If I recall correctly, my month where I did that was in Modus Operandi, the detective themed text game. I don't remember exactly how I spent all that time in MO one month, but I know part of how I spent that many hours was logging into my AOL account from my grandparents' place and a friend's place, in addition to what I was doing at home, which contributed to why my parents hadn't tracked that much "screen time" in that era. Amazing to consider how many things changed since then, but also how many of those concerns are the same even if the reasons for the concerns are different.
Yes, it was crazy. $2/hour in 1997 dollars! Agreed… I think only Pubg has come close to replicating the intensity of emotion in PvP (which was my main interest in playing)
I assume TikTok and similar apps are always doing this stuff.
The thing I'm curious about is whether the GDPR / DSB complaints are likely to have any result. Is that likely to just result in some cost of business fines and TikTok goes on with life? Or could those complaints bring about substantial repercussions?
The expected result is that the complaints will rot in the queue for years and eventually either closed on a technicality or result in a token fine. That's the reality of GDPR "enforcement".
The population as a whole has a rapidly dwindling appetite for tech billionaires trying to impose "tough decisions and sacrifices" on everyone else, so Bill's probably in the right lane. He has already been the target of a vast array of conspiracy theories.
I don't know if that's accurate to software developers, but it makes me cringe a bit as a game developer. I upgraded from a 1060 to 4060 and suddenly did waaaay less optimization; it just wasn't top of mind anymore. Of course, that bill still comes due eventually..
I've read that there are tribes who spent a month or more at the peak of biting insect season hiding in their tents and filling them with smoke. The bugs swarm so thickly that they can kill cows. Not by biting them to death, but by clogging their nostrils until the cow suffocates.
You're being downvoted but I get where you're coming from.
The dismay is from not needing to speculate, wonder or theorize about why he did this pardon. It's a quid pro quo pardon for helping the Trump family make billions of dollars in under a year using the office of the president. The corruption is entirely flagrant and open.
Yeah, it's a forum of smart people, but none of those smarts are oriented to dealing with this kind of problem. There's a system but it's non-functional, laws but they're ignored, the tools are raw political and social power. It's going to take a while to figure out what to say and do about the slide from normal, functioning democracy into semi-theocratic banana republic.
Yeah the whole "successful businessman" schtick is pretty much a trope in US elections. Before Trump it was Ross Perot, before Perot it was others like Wendell Wilkie. Trump had that going for him AND the celebrity status like Reagan. These things are basically status buffs for elections in the US.
Yeah I'm similarly confused by the idea that it was great a decade ago. SoMa, which more or less includes Moscone, has been gritty for at least 20 years and probably much longer than that.
Similar for a lot of other parts. Market anywhere between 6th and City Hall has been grimy for a long time. The Tenderloin, I'm assuming, has been the way it is for a century (since it derives its name from police getting higher pay for patrolling it). That stuff is all stumbling distance to the downtown core, tourists and business visitors.
Every change this admin implements needs this examination first. Everyone is in here having earnest discussions about policy pros and cons, but it ain't that country anymore.
The companies the admin favors are being given backdoors for every policy that's presented, and the way to become favored is to present bribes, whether they come in the form of gold plaques, lawsuit settlements, crypto investments, or stock market collusion.
Quite a while back the exponent podcast did an episode that has stuck with me for a long time about what they called “principal stacks” as an analogue to protocol stacks.
The idea that I left with was to look at the hierarchy of principles not just the set of or claimed principles.
At this point it seems as if the top of the principal stack for those in power isn’t even more power anymore, it’s just grift.
That's the ultimate expression of capitalism isn't it? The richest are obviously the most competent to solve government (see Elon Musk) and whoever is in power must become richer by exercising their power. For money is the reason for everything, and the ultimate mark of prosperity. I mean, if the President is 3 billions richer since he retook office, that means everyone is more prosperous right?
I’ve had this conversation with friends for a while…the idea that capitalism has crossed over from a theory of economics to an epistemological perspective.
To me the end game if this is incredibly dark because it is substituting something that can be fought for and won and acquired through malevolent means as a basis for making truth.
In my view it's a pretty straightforward calculation. Nothing is free, no knowledge is instant. Start off knowing your time investment to learn anything is greater than zero and go from there..
If you do a Google (or other engine) search, you have to invest time pawing through the utter pile of shit that Google ads created on the web. Info that's hidden under reams of unnecessary text, potentially out of date, potentially not true; you'll need to evaluate a list of links and, probably, open multiple of them.
If you do an AI "search", you ask one question and get one answer. But the answer might a hallucination or based on incorrect info.
However, a lot of the time, you might be searching for something you already have an idea of, whether it's how to structure a script or what temperature pork is safe at; you can use your existing knowledge to assess the AI's answer. In that case the AI search is fast.
The rest of the time, you can at least tell the AI to include links to its references, and check those. Or its answer may help you construct a better Google search.
Ultimately search is a trash heap of Google's making, and I have absolute confidence in them also turning AI into a trash heap, but for now it is indeed faster for many purposes.
A few years went by and suddenly playing MUD / MOOs was free. I honestly miss those days, text-based has a vibe that no graphical game can ever replicate.