Why is the Russian ambassador delivering this? We’re supposed to believe Russia has just been holding on to classified US documents and just decided to share them?

Buy or print a contour gauge: https://www.printables.com/model/57209-lockable-contour-gauge

Get the contour you need, trace it onto paper, then get whatever measurements you want, or take a pic and bring it into your modeling program.

It’s not exactly the same, but I would set it up so that once the players hit 100% doom, the final boss encounter happens. The big bad puts his final plans into motion, and the players have their one shot to stop it. Then the game is more about how much they can prepare, figure out, and break the BBEG’s plans before that final confrontation.

Also, I’d roll for how much doom accrues each session, potentially with a variable die depending on how much the players accomplished. That way it’s rolling dice and affected by the players actions, but ultimately you can still influence the the pace as you go.

There is absolutely nothing sad about that, it’s beautiful. That tendency is the only reason we have any form of civilization, so I’d say it’s worth people occasionally empathizing with pencils.

So what’s your point here exactly? Samsung is bad so it’s fine that their products explode? They have a shit reputation, so they should be exempt from basic safety regulations? It’s pointless to try holding companies accountable for bad designs?

You’re being an asshole and arguing against consumer protections. Why?

Yeah, typically you don’t want the sticks splintered up into the batter though…

I understood your point, I just don’t agree. There’s a fundamental difference in how it psychologically affects people, and your insistence that lootboxes aren’t that bad kinda just lends credence to my point.

Let’s not pretend either of us has any influence at all over what becomes law. Our stupid debate will certainly never affect a damn thing regardless. If I was writing laws, it’d be a very different place and general and I’m sure you wouldn’t like most of my ideas. I can complain all I want, nobody is listening anyway.

Regardless, I’ve enjoyed the spirited debate and you’re certainly entitled to your opinion!

Random distribution in a game is fine, the problem is entirely being able to use cash to get them. The solution is very simple, as you’ve pointed out, hundreds of games have already figured out less predatory ways to add content and keep a game alive.

The cash for randomization is fundamentally what makes it so insidious. Everything you’ve mentioned is wildly preferable to paid mystery bullshit. Seasonal outfits, battle passes, whatever. If you know what you’re getting before you choose to buy it, that’s your choice.

The part you can’t quite get is the outright advantage that loot boxes will sometimes give people decent stuff without having to grind, which all the current alternatives don’t do. I’d take randomized tables over mandatory grind any day, but I certainly don’t want to ban either.

This is the most Stockholm Syndrome shit I’ve seen on here. You do realize that the grind only exists to push people into buying the bullshit right? Games should be fun to play, with rewards coming regularly from normal play. If you’re ‘grinding’ through a mess of bullshit to avoid paying, or if you’re paying to skip the grind, then why are you bothering to play a game you don’t actually like playing? A little grind is understandable and fun, I’m looking forward to a little boss farming in BL4 later tonight. But that’s the fun part of the game, playing it and hoping to get something good.

It’s definitely appropriate that every other item on your list is illegal for minors in almost every country on earth. If I thought we could reasonably keep ‘blind boxes’ an adult indulgence I wouldn’t be opposed. But they are so deeply tied to children’s toys, I don’t think you could ever have them available for adults in a form that isn’t just begging for children to figure out ways to buy them anyway. It’d be incredibly hard to justify banning them only for children, especially on the admittedly abstract basis of psychological harm.

Setting aside that, I believe they should be fully illegal simply on a consumer protection basis. A business should not be allowed to sell a mystery product. There’s no justification for it IMO. There is no reason we should allow businesses to sell us useless bullshit and hope we get something we actually want. You can still have MTG, you can still have mobile games. But let people buy the shit they want, or don’t. If the business model can’t work, somebody else will figure it out.

But of course, there’s no fucking chance of that happening here in the US, so I keep hoping somebody else will tackle it (though Brazil’s attempt here wildly misses the bar unfortunately).

Gambling is at least ok in my book because it’s only legal for adults and in specific, regulated locations. It’s still fucking idiotic behavior to engage in, but whatever, adults can waste their money, I don’t really care. It’s easy to avoid unless you live in Vegas.

I’m sure I’ll alienate most of the user base here, but anything that involves turning money into ‘pulls’ should be illegal for minors, and honestly probably just entirely. Magic, Pokemon cards, blind boxes, the stupid Lego minifigs I love to collect. Ban all of it, it’s bad for our psyche, it’s wasteful, it’s anti-consumer bullshit that should never be allowed. If you can’t make money selling your product directly, then you don’t deserve to run a business.

You’re right though, the gambling analogy perfect. I doubt paid loot boxes are significantly worse than letting children gamble. But still, there’s a reason we don’t let children gamble, and loot boxes certainly aren’t any better.

Gambling involves the opportunity to win something that actually exists. The fundamental issue with loot boxes is your gambling for code that can’t be sold, traded, or preserved past the lifetime of the game.

It’s a disgusting practice that preys upon people’s psychological reward centers and has been normalized by our obsessive consumption. It should absolutely be illegal.

You’re drawing nonsense conclusions.

People like to “protect” basic logic. This time it just happens to relate to someone rich. The person pointing out the basic logical flaws is certainly just as happy to do it in other situations.

Your assumption that it has anything to do with the wealth of the subject matter is your own bias at work.

Of course! It’s always refreshing to engage with someone with good intentions.

So, this would only be a misrepresentation if the authors were claiming to look for causes of Autism.

Good science is based on testing a hypothesis. ‘What causes X’ is not a testable hypothesis, it’s too broad, the variables aren’t defined. ‘Does Y effect X?’ is a testable hypothesis, and a solid basis for initial research.

The question of ‘what causes autism’ is a huge one that can’t be answered by a single study. Each potential factor needs to be evaluated on its own merit, and this study does exactly that (with admittedly questionable results).

However, something like the recent HHS report is exactly the place where it’s wildly irresponsible to present only one potential hypothesis as a ‘cause’. That’s where we would expect a high level view of a range of established factors (since obviously there is no one ‘cause’).

I understand your passion here, but it’s a little misguided.

The goal of this study is not to try to determine a singular cause for autism. That’s some outside political bullshit that’s relevant in a broad sense, but not the stated purpose of this study.

They set out to look at a potential link between Tylenol and ADHD, so they look at studies involving Tylenol and ADHD. It’s pretty straightforward. P-Hacking would be selecting only studies that did show a positive correlation between Tylenol use and ADHD.

Your climate change metaphor is just wildly off base, I don’t know what to say here honestly.

As others here have pointed out, the study is mildly flawed but the real issue is that the inconclusive results are being wildly misrepresented.

A search for those terms returns any study that looks at those terms, regardless of whether or not a link is indicated. How else do you expect to determine the validity of a hypothesis if you don’t look at studies that test that hypothesis?

This is the worst possible example dude. Music is literally vibes in the most fundamental sense.

‘Vibes’ is recycled hippie slang for vibrations, the idea that things have metaphysical or abstract good or bad vibrations that affect the things around them. An idea rooted in an appreciation of musical vibrations, and the way different frequencies and patterns of vibrations affect us emotionally.

Music has always been all about the vibes, words are secondary.

This isn’t even that though. This is just playing the game with a singular focus, they’re doing nothing to cut corners or speed up the loop, just not doing other activities in between.

It’s nuts to me that OP can even remotely consider this cheating.

It’s an AI interpolation filter over a lower fps video. Yes, it contains AI generated frames. No, that doesn’t make it a fabricated video.

Why would it be? Why would it matter? Claiming it as some kind of evidence of foul play is just loony.

It’s just interpolation, so probably all of 5 minutes. There’s enough misinformation going around, let’s not keep spreading the AI video nonsense.

Obviously technical debt has a monetary cost, that’s not the problem with what you posted. That doesn’t make all monetary costs technical debt.

This is just regular old debt, nothing ‘technical’ about it.