This is what really shits me. “Oh, the sports companies won’t be able to fund themselves.” If that’s true, too fucking bad. Our laws shouldn’t exist to arbitrarily prop up certain industries even when we’ve decided that the industry is causing harm.

But also, it’s just fucking not true. You can make an argument and say “oh but gambling companies fund 60% of the sport league” or whatever number it is, and pretend that banning gambling would cut the NRL’s budget by 60%. But that’s just not how it works. They’re sponsors because they were the highest bidder, not the only bidder. You’d just go to the next highest bidder if gambling sponsorships weren’t allowed. In the short term, maybe a 10% loss of revenue at most. Realistically, in the long term, it’d be negligible.

Same goes for pokies at local pubs and clubs. Australia has 0.3% of the world’s population and 18% of the world’s poker machines. And if you look specifically at poker machines not located in casinos it goes up to a ridiculous 76%. The entire rest of the world doesn’t allow poker machines at local clubs like we do, and their venues do just fine. The cries that venues would die off if they couldn’t have pokies are just nonsense.

Reverse image search says yes, Singapore.

That bastion of socialism.

I doubt it. Other forms of AI could be useful, but generative AI? I doubt it.

And tbh even deep learning through neural networks doesn’t seem to be making the leaps we’d hoped for. AoE4 promised, prior to release, a machine learning–based AI would be delivered down the line. It’s now almost 3 years since release and we haven’t heard a thing about it.

Maybe eventually we’ll be able to easily train a machine learning algorithm to play any game at a wide variety of skill levels (or at a very high level, if not at customisable levels), but it doesn’t seem like it’s any time soon.

A century or so of oppressed masses and greedy elites did it.

True, and that’s important context if you’re trying to get a deeper understanding of how Julius Caesar came to have the power he held before his assassination.

But there’s enough of a problem you can see even if you just start at Julius, which is what I was concentrating on in my previous comment. The parallels to Trump are terrifyingly on the nose.

Oh I didn’t for one second think it was a true story. But it is a fun story that, with the exception of this one massive glaring hole, reads really well. Which just makes the one plot hole stand out even more.

Oh good, I’m glad someone else is asking this question. The whole story hinges on it, and it doesn’t make sense.

I don’t speak Spanish, but just looking at the alternative options Google Translate provides when you only input a single word, it’s possible that “tóxico” might be a clearer translation of “poisonous”.

While I still maintain my stance that anyone who votes 3rd party in a FPTP election is a moron, this does seem unfair.

The challenge was brought by Republicans, but it’s a challenge based on Libertarian Party rules of how they choose who to nominate. The only people who should have standing are Libertarian Party members.

If they had put in their nomination forms late or made some other error with the process of doing the nomination, then it would be fair for Republicans or Democrats or independent voters to challenge to get them removed. But an internal matter that the article says was completely uncontroversial internally should not be brought by outsiders.

It literally was though. Not a military intelligence tool, but a big business intelligence one.

Niantic was founded by Google and their first product, Field Trip, and their first game, Ingress (a much better-designed game than Pokémon Go, btw) were pretty obviously about gaining geolocation data for Google to improve their products like Maps and Shopping.

It’s a bizarre and (afaik) unfounded conspiracy theory, but I don’t think this reasoning works as a refutation. It’s still very possible that the experiment got out, and even if not they still needed policies to protect all the people they didn’t want to be affected because the targeting isn’t perfect.

Honestly I’m a light hobbyist myself. My exposure to history is primarily via YouTube channels like the excellent Historia Civilis (their series on Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Roman Republic is stunning) and via games like Age of Empires.

I just don’t understand how someone interested in antiquity can possibly fall for Trumpism. The fall of the Roman Republic was presaged by a guy literally trying to get elected to office so that he could escape prosecution for illegal abuses of power, and the legal system standing aside and saying “yeah, we’ll let you do that in order to maintain the peace” and then falling into civil war anyway.

How much of that sounds familiar…?

Man I wish she stood for the things Trump says she stands for. Banning fracking. Opposing Israel. Supporting immigration. Trump’s version of Harris sounds great!

I’m confused, why do you think “stop providing aid to assist in genocide” is the take of a tanky?

Ok this got a chuckle out of me. But yeah, I don’t see any problem with people expressing agreement verbally.

Imagine a real conversation where you’re only allowed to agree with someone with nods, never saying “yeah I agree completely” or any other verbal feedback.

Honestly I didn’t even read the article. Shared it purely based on the headline.

You say “handful”, but it still hand thousands of players, and the thing that makes me sad about this screw up is that of those who played it, it was probably someone’s favourite game…

…Is what I was going to say, until I looked at the Steam charts. It hit an all-time peak of 607 players, with estimates of total ownership ranging from 9.5k to 25.1k. It very well still may have been someone’s favourite game and I feel really sad for them that it’s gone, but wow the game still did so much worse than even my expectations based on the reporting.

See also: Born Sexy Yesterday

Oh neat. I should get around to watching it.

I’ll admit I’ve never watched Stargate, but I thought it was scifi? I didn’t realise it engaged with Egyptian mythology.