theneverfox

There's different types of hacking. Finding and coding up an exploit? That takes skill

Then, they post it in a corner of the Internet somewhere to get appreciation for their achievement, or maybe even sell it on the dark web (or someone else sees it and packages it up in a state to sell/share)

Now, using the exploit? That's pretty easy. It requires some technical ability, but not much. It's just installing and configuring stuff, then using an app

So here's what I think happened. Someone found the exploit, and posted about it in a hacker community off the beaten path. One thing led to another, and somehow a group of edgelords get a hold of it. As a group, they manage to get it working, and act like edgelords

The original hacker might have been related, but real hackers are cautious or quickly caught - they probably solved the puzzle, maybe played with it a bit, then posted their findings and moved on to the next puzzle

That was my thought... Since the compacted soil is held in place and can't escape laterally, it's basically a wall in the middle of the pile

I'm not sure how much it'd do, but it'd do something

I don't think so... Intelligence isn't required for consent, it's informed willingness in the absence of coercion or manipulation. The other factor is the likelihood of harm - I think that covers the full ethics of what beings you can ethically fuck

There's a few ways to look at it

One of my parent's dogs once had sex with a handyman's foot to completion... By the time he realized what was happening it was over, and the dog wasn't very bothered. The guy was also very nice about it, but I bet he stopped wearing sandals to jobs

What if he was into it? It's not like the dog would care... He clearly knew what he was doing. If we're just horny dogs humping their feet, it's not like they're doing anything wrong by not kicking us off

It also reminds me of a YouTube skit where an 18 year old boy goes to an adoption agency to find a 16 year old girl to adopt, with clear implications. It's a dark joke, but I think it lines up with this nicely

Let's say there's an alien species far more advanced than us. We're too dumb to even understand the basics of their technology, so to them we're basically pets - they can keep us around, but we're at their mercy. Now, there's an issue - a human could believe, even falsely, that we have to have sex with them or there will be consequences. We could even believe it's expected of us - and that's not coercive

Now let's say that same species came to Earth, guaranteed the health and happiness if every human, and made tinder for humans who want to have sex with an alien. In that case, if you handle it correctly, you can minimize or eliminate coercion from the act

Maybe the aliens don't even have sex... Maybe they just think humans are cute, and they enjoy making us feel good the way we enjoy petting animals

I don't think intelligence plays into any of this - consent isn't about intelligence at all. It's about willingness in an uncorrupted state

The funny thing is, my friend is LGBTQ - it's not at all a dog whistle for them. It's very real frustration at beloved games and IP being ruined

But they hear "go woke go broke" so often that they've been trained to look for inclusivity to blame. We like talking about topics like this, and each time I have to walk them through it again - "yes, the game is inclusive, yes, the game sucks. Let's be precise and critique it, why does the game suck? What systems and processes keep causing this?"

I think my friend is doing this on purpose to help process the emotions, because it always ends with the same conclusion

"You think it's a bad game because it is, you feel like it's an attack because they went online and said you're a bigot for thinking it's bad, and we're all biased but you're self aware and this is coming from propaganda and very valid frustration, not hatred.

"Now let's talk about the mechanisms through which consulting companies ruin everything we hold dear, and brainstorm ways to mitigate or fix these systematic problems. And would you look at that, you're sounding just a little more like a leftist each time"

Identify the problem, trace it through the system, find the root cause, and brainstorm solutions/work arounds

There's just not true. The orange guy isn't a billionaire

We all thought human creativity would separate us from the machines

It turns out, humans just aren't very creative

It keeps traveling. If you splash some water, where does the wave go? Same question - it terms into something you can no longer see or hear... It never goes away. It becomes part of the world, forever

Music is what you hear - but it was only ever sound waves

Right on. The proof is in the pudding even their games I don't finish, like the gwent one, aren't bad or not fun, I just lost interest

I used this argument with my friend the other day - cyberpunk lets you play as a trans character, . People got upset when they found that out prelaunch... And then no one cared, the main complaint was bugs

It's not "go woke and go broke", it's "no one wants shit media, and inclusivity is not a substitute for quality"

Inclusivity isn't the problem, only bigots care if you make something great that happens to be inclusive. It's observer bias, not correlation - inclusivity is generally good. Gamers don't mind inclusivity, they'll get the experience they want and ignore the options they don't want

The problem is shit writing and gameplay

1. installers for games are usually just a script that unzips the game and makes some shortcuts. Steam installs all your games in a standard way in a folder of your choice. You can straight up copy that folder to another computer. You can use another launcher and just play your games, there are already many that can read steam's standardized format. I've done it multiple times to avoid redownloading my library

2. It depends how steam sunsets their DRM, but yes - obviously if a game has 3rd party DRM, that third party is in control. Steam could choose a user hostile way to sunset their own DRM, but they could release ways to deactivate it

DRM is bad, steam provides an easy way for developers to use steam DRM, and it's generally less user hostile than most DRM. To me, this seems like harm reduction

Ultimately, it's not up to steam what, if any, DRM a game uses. They manage their in house offering, but the developer doesn't have to use it if they don't want to

I think I read in the steam agreement itself - I could be wrong, but I generally have a source tagged to my knowledge, and the knowledge is tagged as a direct quote from the document

And yes, if a VC buys out steam I'd be horrified, but it's structurally resistant to that. It's largely employee owned and heavily employee managed, their handbook helped me understand the concept of how employee owned businesses could be the answer to many of society's problems

Doesn't steam have a clause to the effect of "if we go out of business, you'll get X period to download your games so you can manage them yourself"?

That is what tax is meant to be... But at the end of the day, what happens if you refuse to pay? Eventually, either the money is taken without your permission or people will show up to put you in a room under threat of violence

Yeah, this is coercive. That's what happens when you continuously act in bad faith in a community - eventually, people get fed up. This is just the chaotic version rather than the lawful one. It bypasses the states monopoly on violence, but it's also a very pure expression of the will of the people