Well, that’s sad to hear. I remember playing it in the beginning, and most of the servers I joined at least tried to protect the environment. I guess times have changed, it’s been a few years since I actively played it.

Have you ever tried out the game ECO?

That gave me a nice chuckle lmao

A console cannot be called a PC or replace a PC. It is a lesser category of product.

They can and are, lol, the definition for PC is surrounding the hardware. Whether or not the producer of said hardware has included software locks or hardware locks to prevent you from modifying the operating system on the device does not change that distinction, it only provides justification for closed ecosystems and locking down hardware a consumer has purchased, creating a monopoly over what that hardware can access. Hence why you are being called out for supporting said practices whether you set out with that intention or not. All of the devices you called out run on standard architectures for their computing resources which have drivers and kernels built in more than a couple operating systems already. If the software or hardware locks were not there, these devices would be capable of fitting into the narrowly scoped definition of PC you crafted. As others have pointed out the first gen switch can be loaded with Linux, as can a newer switch once you bypass the hardware lock. As can the ATM which runs windows server. Xboxs/Play Stations could run linux or windows as we have kernels built for ARM architecture, yet they are locked down. Allowing companies to redefine their devices allows them to skirt antitrust laws and parroting those same talking points only serves to reduce your ability to use/recycle hardware you have previously purchased.

You are a fucking idiot lmaooo, at least it’s entertaining seeing you properly roasted for your clear fucking misunderstandings and defence of closed down personal computing hardware. Bravo I’m sure some Nintendo corporate stooge is smiling at you for justifying locking down bought hardware to a closed ecosystem with outrageous prices for games. Why the fuck are you even using federated social media if you love locked down controlled ecosystems?

It’s more that you are seeing the f1 equivalent in bikes. They are redesigning these chasis, wheels, etc every year for competitive advantage. Add in all the customizations, being hand made, and using very expensive materials and you get very high prices. It’s easier to see the jump in cost because we can actually see those differences in price more readily from the $100 Wal-Mart bike to the 15k bike. How many times do you compare a basic econobox car to an F1 car? That would be insane, one is about utility the other is about pushing performance at all costs for competitive advantage.

I think most people forget when you get these bikes it’s like buying an f1 car in motorsports. That 15k bike is probably nearly identical to what the pros are running, like maybe they use a different hand grip or seat but for the most part that’s a completely custom chasis, redesigned from the previous year and up to spec to compete in a professional capacity right off the bat.

These bikes are at the same level as what is being used at professional levels. You can always get a cheaper bike if that’s not what you are into, but it’s like looking at an f1 car and saying it’s overkill for the road, well no shit, it’s made for the extreme end of the sport. Calling these bikes crazy is like conflating the price of an f1 car to the price of a civic.

Talk about completely missing the fucking point Holy shit, and this is why we don’t have unions. They need a collective to work properly and have an effect on the industry you disciding its bad because there isn’t enough backing is the exact problem that causes there to be few decent employers for fucks sake…grow the union and watch its power to work for you grow.

They use plain text and there biggest shareholder is the Tencent (the CCP let’s be real) are you surprised? It’s literally a data farm for China…

Not everywhere has bike lanes and then they are on the sidewalk, not to mention most laws allow them to be on the sidewalk or bike lane if they exist.

I wonder what the market would be for such a solution. Make a custom raspberry pi like small server that has a self hosted website with a decent UI to setup most solutions like email, nas, pihole, and maybe a media server. Sell the easy setup to those who can’t be bothered, while still being open source and promoting Foss alternatives. I’m sure you could even sell different server tiers for power users as well who don’t want to be bothered with it. Then you could always sell a security service in a sense that will have people at the organization maintaining and updating the packages on the server os for that identified hardware. Then anyone who is inclined could set this up on their own so long as they have the skills to maintain their security, otherwise for basically the same cost as most subscriptions you could be able to self host email, Nas, media and an ad blocker network wide. As long as the ui experience setting this up is just as polished as simple as setting up a Gmail account I feel like this could do pretty well.

It seems like it should be easy enough to get those financial advisors for market manipulation.

One would think until you see the actual suits brought against these entities where, just like fox they argue its purely for entertainment purposes and any rational person would understand this and not treat it as truth (i.e think when cramer called bear sterns a great investment about a week before tanking, or the fact we have an etf which does the opposite of cramer that makes like a 20% yield ytd). It’s fucked to say the least in that regard.

If a large firm says a stock will do better than otherwise expected and then sells their clients’ stocks as soon as the price rises, how is it anything except simple market manipulation?

the world of venture capital and algorithmic trading has entered the room

Yeah it’s not done that simply. The basic game plan is as follows:

You never tell your clients directly what is great or not you point them to journals which can pump out articles like MontleyFool or yahoo finance who love their little disclaimer of this is not financial advise. Once you have primed the clients to want to invest for this upcoming ipo the next steps can follow: See YOU don’t have to sell the stock when your funds are managed by a trading algorithm like Aladin used by all your big firms from Blackrock to Citadel, because now you get to say it was an automatic sale based on risk assessment made by your algorithm with zero human interaction. So, you had your buddies in the VC world give inflated investment offers to the budding company in question, allow a couple rounds of investments with some nice articles about put out from those financial jourals along this journey, which serves a dual purpose one allow other firms to persuade investment from clients and two that when the company decides to go public their growth goals become untenable and the initial IPO crashes. You as a VC want to hedge your bet right? So you make some equity swap deals with some unsuspecting banks under a couple of different shell corporations. These swaps allow you to essentially open a net short position, but thanks to some great CFTC regulations that came out barring reporting requirements on these swaps it’s been even harder to see what’s inside them. As an addition, since these are equity swaps, the bank does not need to report their position to the SEC nor does the entity in question who created this swap with the bank in the first place as they technically don’t own the assets on hand (this is how archegos blew up and took creddit suise along with it). Now when the IPO hits your buddies down at the hedge fund’s algorithms are going to see the risk in the reported financial data from the IPO and the over valued IPO share price. Place in some articles from something like the MontleyFool about how all of a sudden this IPO doesn’t look so great and those VCs are going be screwed. Now you have the ammo, tools, and contracts set up to profit from the downside of this IPO. Then as a bonus by utilizing derivatives, you can short more than a hundred percent of a companies shares allowing you to profit in your equity swaps that have been going unreported obscenely. Now your coffer is full again you can pick up the next chump who is claiming to be the next ‘Steve jobs’ or at least pickup their assets for penny on the dollar when the company proceeds to bankruptcy. Then by the beauty of delisted stocks and warehoused FTDs on stocks who have been delisted no one ever has to know you shorted the fuck out of a company nor do you ever need to by back the ‘shares’ remember the scheme takes advantage of derivatives which bet on the price of a stock and allow you to buy/sell the shares at the price the contract was for.

There is a lot more nuance here in practice and some aspects were simplified for brevity sake, even if it already seems like a wall of text. The simple answer is its not simple to prosecute and yes the SEC is a mainly captured organization. Gary Gensler has been making strides in some regards but your previous heads, people like Hester Pierce and the constant revolving door from regulator to head executive at trading firms shows another issue with the system. Read the comments on SEC proposals. Another decent starting point if you haven’t had any exposure to these issues is taking a look into the problem with Jon Stewart and his episode on the stock market. It’s not perfect but can give you some insights into how rife with conflict of interest wall street and the SEC truly are.

If you live in the eastern part of the US, you might find it interesting to look up water rights west of the Mississippi; it is an absolute madhouse.

I’ll have to check out how the west coast allocate water than should be an interesting rabbit whole to dive into.

Spent a year in Colorado not long ago. The water that fell from the sky was owned by someone else before it even hit the ground, though I think I heard that there were some changes specifically in regards to rain barrels since I left.

I mean, even if that’s the case, who enforces the rights to “sell” that water? I’d assume it’s some lower level employees or still municipality government that could just also up and not give a shit that some billionaire has staked claims to sell this water to whoever they please instead of allowing it to flow to those in need. Almost all the claims of ownership from those obscenely rich are more or less just expected to be respected and enforced by those who suffer from their exploitation, most systems could continue on tomorrow and gain efficiency I’d we gave the middle finger to the wealth hoarders and banks.

The problem with the stock market is something we could be debating for hours here (fails to deliver, repacked bonds getting rating upgrades, margin requirements getting waived for big firms, lack of any transparency within the equities swap market, most trades being made off market, 401ks being used for locates in predatory shorting, etc). So I’ll just touch on one thing here before it shoots into something completely morphed from the original discussion.

Even then, do keep in mind, when someone sells a company it isn’t just burning their connection to it; someone else is buying it. Usually some middle-class chump who didn’t understand the company was dying, and is indeed covering the loss by losing his retirement fund to it.

I know which is why I specifically stated we bar those bigger investors from pulling out to con the middle class/poor worker thinking they can make it big off some investment advice from a paid wall street mouth piece like Jim Cramer or countless other ‘financial advisors’.

those poor people depend on having a useful currency to trade for tools to make more food. If you crash the economy the little piece of paper we trade around right now will become worthless and we will be back to bartering until someone prints new paper or mints a new specie to use.

You are too ingrained with a monetary system you cant even imagine a system in which one doesn’t exist. The miner doesn’t need a currency when his food and tools are provided for. The metallurgist doesn’t need to sell tools when they can give away the excess. The farmer doesn’t need to sell his food when he can give away the excess. We don’t need constant accumulation to distribute resources in an efficient manner. Especially when the only reason these excess products weren’t given away in the first place is profit motive. Not to mention most of the labor intensive work could be outsourced to robotics where we not hoarding the physical resources for profit and war time motives, making them overtly expensive.

We live in a time where automation and robotics could allow us much more freedom and dignity however we have allowed those at the top too use that efficiency to hoard profits and resources as power management tools instead of utilizing these resources for growth and equity across our species.

This in particular is an interesting idea. Would be interesting to see what “good” a “psycopath” could do within certain limits.

There are definitely many avenues in which they could excell at. I mean decisions which need complete objectivity maybe something they excell at consulting for where as if you allow them access to gaining unmitigated power your in for a bad time as we see today.

Scarcity is not a creation of the uber rich, it just exacerbated by them.

40% of food is thrown out in the US every year, food scarcity is not an issue in the US at least. Sure there are certain decisions that need to be made but once again, these decisions are not required to be done by the billionaire class and are already being handled by your lower level municipality workers. It wouldn’t delve into chaos because Joe stopped telling investors why they should invest, we simply need to forget about there bullshit profit motives and manage resources without a dollar valuation and instead based on how scarce the resource and its utilitarian value is when utilized in a specific process.

Scarcity is not a creation of the uber rich, it just exacerbated by them.

Exactly scarcity is the the means at which we can judge how something can be utilized, when you complicate that with dollar valuations instead of the utility and efficiency it can generate you end up in a corrupt broken system extracting wealth to those who can name prices, instead of proper resource allocation that can benefit all.

Right now it is mostly decided by economic power and a byzantine set of rules and laws dictating who owns the water.

As stated it’s currently handled by municipality workers who can continue with the current process or switch to one which values the utilitarian output of a decision versus its economic value. None of the issues described are solved by or aided by the inclusion of a billionaire class, instead they, as you stated, exacerbated by such classes of individuals.

Are you stupid? You know The Unscrupulous Man described in Ancient Greece? Countless times throughout early history they are frequently described based on their personality types and ways to “deal” with them…

I completely agree though with a caveat. I can’t imagine a just way we would completely eliminate people like Putin.

You institutionalize them instead of giving them the keys to castels. Vikings turned their psychopaths into their most vicious fighters and isolated them from the rest, we decided to put them into positions of power both goepolitically and economically, then glorified them and it’s now killing us. Before that psychopaths have been described and usually killed off on the spot. If we ever get to be a space fairing civilization it might be smart to utilize them as resource allocators on multi generation ships as their lack of empathy could actually benefit the survival of the whole in those situations but not when we allow them to use accumulation of wealth as their tool as it drains everyone’s resources.