My only complaint about Ground News (and most media bias meters in general) is that factual papers will almost always be listed as left-leaning. Because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right that cold hard facts presented exactly as they happened with zero spin now has a left-wing bias.

Yeah, the military has to hold regular “you’re not as attractive as you think you are. Know your fucking number” meetings with the people who have security clearance. Basically, they have to be blunt, and straight up tell the people with clearance “you’re a grey and wrinkly old man who smells like wet beef. At the bar after work, you’re a 3. Maybe a 3.5 if you bothered to shower before getting to the bar. If a solid California 10 strikes up a conversation with you at the bar and seems really interested in your work, it’s because she’s a spy.”

They have to hold these meetings because honeypotting is so fucking effective on the sad sacks who have clearance.

Torture has proven effective, but only before the torture actually starts. Basically, the victim is more likely to divulge good information when they’re anticipating the torture, as an attempt to get out of it. Basically, before the torture, there is still some level of rapport between the victim and the torturer. But once the torture starts, the rapport is gone and the victim will harden themselves and refuse, or intentionally give bad info. Or they will simply say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to attempt to stop the torture, regardless of whether or not it’s accurate.

Basically, the only time the torturer has any actual trust in the info is when the victim is trying to delay/avoid the torture. Once it starts, the torturer can’t actually trust anything the victim says. If getting info was actually the goal, the torturer could simply start prepping for the torture and never actually start it. Essentially, keep the victim in that initial “if I keep talking I can avoid the torture” phase.

1. This hasn’t been a notable issue in a while. That’s why Plex’s https-by-default was such a big deal. With https, even your ISP can’t see what you’re streaming. They can see that something is being streamed, but not what specifically.

Also, you totally glossed over the fact that Plex is simply easier for non-savvy people to set up. Plex provides a unified login experience similar to major streaming services, which Jellyfin simply can’t provide; If your mother-in-law can figure out how to log into Netflix on her TV, she can figure out how to log into Plex too.

And the unfortunate truth is that Plex’s remote access is much easier for 90% of users to figure out. It doesn’t require VPNs or reverse proxies at all. You just forward a port and anyone with access can easily see your server. But my MIL’s TV doesn’t even have access to a Jellyfin app without sideloading. Not to mention the fact that I’d need to walk her through actually setting the app up once it is installed, because there is no unified system for logging in. And if I’m not using a reverse proxy for my Jellyfin server, then I also need to walk her through setting up Tailscale, assuming her TV is even capable of using it at all.

Any single one of those hurdles would make Jellyfin a non-starter if I want to walk my MIL through the setup over the phone, and they’re all currently present. And some of them will never be fixed, by design. For instance, the lack of a unified login page is by design, because a unified login would require a centralized server for the app to phone home too. That centralization is exactly what Jellyfin was made to rebel against, so it’s a problem that will never be “solved”; It is seen by the devs and FOSS enthusiasts as a feature, not an issue.

From a FOSS perspective, Jellyfin is a modern marvel. But it’s definitely not at the same level as Plex when you compare ease of setup or remote access. Jellyfin is fine if you’re just using it locally, or are willing to run Tailscale to connect back to your home network. But if you’re looking for true seamless remote access and need to consider the mother-in-law factor, then Plex is hard to beat.

That’s actually exactly what they did to fix it. They now allow you to flag sinks as bathroom or kitchen sinks, which simply controls whether or not the dish washing function can be accessed.

The way The Sims does it is actually pretty interesting. The individual sims have very little behavioral coding involved. They’re basically just monitoring their individual needs. The vast majority of the objects contain “advertisements” that they broadcast, and the sims can simply look for nearby advertisements to decide on what to do.

Basically, you have a sim. They are simply listening to advertisements that are being broadcasted by the objects around them. Maybe the kitchen sink says “Clean +3” while the shower says “Clean +7”. If the sim’s cleanliness meter is low, they’ll check for local “clean” advertisements and choose one. As their needs get lower and lower, they’ll be more likely to pick stronger advertisements. So a slightly dirty sim will be likely to choose the sink, but a very dirty sim will choose the shower.

Then once they get to the chosen object, the object basically goes “okay, here’s how to interact with me”. The sim simply pulls from that pool of interactions for the specific object. There may be flags for specific interactions based on certain conditions, or certain traits that make a sim more likely to choose one object over another. For instance, if your sim is a witch, they may have specific magical interactions available. Or if a sim has the Active trait, they may be more likely to choose fitness-based advertisements.

This makes adding expansions very easy. You don’t need to do a ton of coding for individual sims, to “teach” them how to use new objects. You simply add new advertisements to the objects you’re adding to the game, and make sure your interactions are properly flagged for the various conditions that can exist. And now those objects can be dropped directly into existing save files without any fuss.

Worth noting that this advertisement system is what caused the infamous “my sim is using the bathroom sink to wash dishes” complaint that plagued the series for so long; the bathroom sink was nicer than the kitchen sink, so it had a better advertisement. The sim wasn’t looking at advertisements based on why they needed a sink. They just knew they needed a sink to wash dishes, and picked the one with the strongest advertisement.

And yet you know damned well what they meant, otherwise you wouldn’t have responded with the “well akshually” type of comment.

In America, the reason is basically “religion”. There are architectural standards which designers refer to for guidance, and the dude who did the architectural standard for restrooms was super hardcore religious. His standard called for big gaps in all the seams, to prevent people from masturbating in the stalls. Basically, he wanted people to be able to peek into stalls, as a sort of modesty check. And eventually, it just became accepted as normal, even though everyone (including Americans who were born and raised with them as the standard) hates the huge gaps.

In modern day, they’re mostly done to deter drug use. I guess the reasoning is similar, with the large gaps intended to allow people to peek into the stalls and see if someone is doing drugs.

Yeah, newer generations have been raised on tech that “just worked” consistently. They never had to do any deep troubleshooting, because they never encountered any major issues. They grew up in a world where the hard problems were already figured out, so they were insulated from a lot of the issues that allowed millennials to learn.

They never got a BSOD from a faulty USB driver. They never had to reinstall an OS after using Limewire to download “Linkin_Park-Numb.mp3.exe” on the family computer. Or hell, even if they did get tricked by a malicious download, the computer’s anti-virus automatically killed it before they were even able to open it. They never had to manually install OS updates. They never had to figure out how to get their sound card working with a new game. They never had to manually configure their network settings.

All of these things were chances for millennials to learn. But since the younger generations never encountered any issues, they never had to figure their own shit out.

If you do, I’d love to seed it. I’ve been looking for good copies of this for a while.

I have struggled to find good downloads for a lot of the older stuff. Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry both come to mind; I’d love to have them on my server, but haven’t had the time to drive all the way to my parents’ place to get my old DVDs to rip. And even if I did get the DVDs, there’s a non-zero chance that they’re rotted. So I tried downloading them, but finding properly seeded torrents for content that old has been a struggle.

Yeah, OoT feels dated by modern standards, but that’s largely because it set the standard for 3D games. Future games have built upon the mechanics, but OoT was what paved the way.

Basically, Trump’s war team accidentally added the lead editor for The Atlantic to a Signal group chat where they were discussing detailed war plans.

It immediately raised a lot of questions with uncomfortable answers. Why are they using Signal, which doesn’t comply with federal records keeping requirements? Why didn’t anyone notice the massive security breach immediately? What was discussed, and how would it impact national security? Did anyone besides the editor have access to the chat? Was Pete Hegseth (current Secretary of Defense, and a known alcoholic who has been caught drunk at work numerous times) drunk when he added the editor to the chat? Why does one of the chat members’ flight logs show them in Russia during the time that all of the sensitive messages were being sent? Along with a lot of other questions, that are honestly too numerous to list…

There are systems that will use a hidden hyperlink (which only a bot would see and use) which directs them to an infinitely long/wide junk link tree. It means they end up trapped in bot-purgatory and stop crawling the rest of your site.

The issue is that it means you end up consuming resources just to keep the bot trapped.

Blizzard is bad about this with WoW too. A lot of the content is only available as launch-day cinematics, and is vaulted once the expansion has launched. Getting the full plot for WoW as a new player is basically impossible, because so much of the game has been hidden from players.

It’s to create FOMO, and keep players active. If players know they can access content whenever they want, there’s no incentive for them to log in right now.

This is the worst way to go about doing it, because you should never assume a drawing is made to scale unless it is specifically marked as such. A protractor would be useless if the drawing isn’t to scale. Generally speaking, if a problem isn’t drawn to scale, it’s because all of the info you need to solve it is already present in the drawing. You don’t need to bust out the protractor to measure angles, because the angles can either be calculated from the available info, or aren’t needed in the first place.

Isn’t Gunzilla Games the company that released a bitcoin miner disguised as a mobile game? I swear I remember seeing something about them being banned from the various app stores for trying to bury miners in their shit, but a basic google search didn’t find anything.

Edit: It looks like they’re trying to use blockchain to mint in-game items as NFTs.

Watching Dutch slowly descend into paranoia and separate himself from Arthur (primarily due to Micah’s manipulation) was a wonderful bit of environmental storytelling. It was a B-plot that was running in the background whenever you return to the gang campsite… But Arthur only really begins to see it after it is too late for him to stop. Because by the time Arthur realizes what is happening, Dutch has already firmly made up his mind about Arthur, and Arthur has already started trying to get out of the life. And Arthur having doubts only serves to cement Dutch’s paranoia.

I was pleasantly surprised by New Dawn. I had some big complaints about 5, so I initially assumed New Dawn (being a direct sequel to 5) was going to be more of the same. It was an interesting take on the series’ formula.

Mozilla could remain funded if they stopped doing things like paying the CEO seven million dollars per year while laying off employees. If Mozilla dies, it will 100% be because of corporate greed.