I mean, we can point at the legal system, but as you said, casinos just find new loopholes to circumvent the law. Ultimately, Valve is the group with the power to remove any gambling-adjacent mechanics from their games, but they have been pretty flaccid regarding changes because they know that they will lose money from it.

Crackdowns won’t stop the gambling on CS, legislation and enforcement won’t change it, but making items non-tradeable, or damaging item value or appeal through any method, can stop the gambling - but at the cost of CS’s financial success and overall appeal.

It’s a bit weird (skip to 10:41 for specifically the pay system)

Gonna piggy back off this to drop a decent summary from coffeezilla about valve’s lootbox gambling problem that Valve has consistently dodged responsibility on. It’s really not new news but folks should be informed/reminded of it nonetheless.

I don’t watch CoffeeZilla in any large amount, but this pretty well sums up the situation in this instance.

prior comment edited for ya.

you’re correct, they do not strap guns to improvised attack drones. they’re not necessarily single-use either, though. A kamikaze drone will detonate its payload while its still attached, which is an option. There is plenty of footage of IADs which use a servo to just physically drop a payload onto targets from above, and those could potentially be used over and over. I think the kamikaze version is able to be more effective, for a variety of reasons, but both versions seem to be seeing use.

it’s not necessarily with a bullet. Most improvised attack drones drop explosive payloads, since it’s both simpler to set up and simpler to use. Outfitting a drone with a gun takes making a complicated system for aiming it, while a payload drone just needs some 3d-printed parts, some extra wiring, and usually just a single servo.

GarandThumb did some tests in a video a while back. IIRC he did both choked and not, along with different types of shot and slugs. everything but birdshot was pretty effective out to a couple dozen yards? I’ll track it down and drop a link after I’ve rewatched.

Nelson Mandela was released on the terms that he would preach peaceful protest, as the movement he had formerly been leading was a serious threat to the South African Government.

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was a proponent of peaceful protest, though it could be argued he was losing faith in it near the end when he was assassinated. right after his death, the Holy Week Uprisings occurred, which saw immediate action from the federal government to pass the Civil Rights Act.

At the same time, acts of violence lie on a spectrum, and I think there is a fair amount of conversation to be had about what degree of violence and what type of violence are most effective.

What do you mean by ‘cheater’? Like ‘scammer’?

I’m not following.

Markets were originally decentralized, and while that has its problems, a decentralized market is miles better than a monopolized market.

Like, are you thinking of Etsy or Amazon or something? Because those are all run by a single point-of-sales and logistics collectives.

What we’re talking about is basically building a means for getting all the websites around the web of small shops and such (or in this case all the various game store fronts like steam, itch.io, GOG, and EPIC GAMES) and giving you client which allows you to browse and order from them simultaneously. All that store’d have to do is add the protocol to their server and add themselves to a list.

Each server would likely have to utilize a payment service. In that fashion it’d be no different than how stores host their own websites you can order from. In my mind, the federated protocol would simply be a means for a person to browse stores similar to how one can navigate a mall or market.

For games, the further benefit after would be that via a client of the protocol, you could then download your games from the various stores in a singular library page.

Federated marketplace protocol really should happen at some point.

Like, it seems like a very clear solution to an online monopoly risk. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

Psychopathy as a diagnoses is bullshit. People disassociate in different ways during traumatic events and as a coping mechanism for heightened stress all the time, and this reads exactly like that.

This does clearly show the kid is well-conditioned for being a cop, though. He seems like he’d be great at ‘just following orders’. at the same time, he’d probably be good as a paramedic or a fireman too, since all those occupations require you to emotionally disassociate to get your job done effectively.