youtube is plagued with these bots that either copy someone else’s comment (normally positive of the video creator in order to avoid being auto deleted) or use some chatbot to come up with phrases, the picture is always some attractive woman or sometimes just straight up images from porn, when you click on the profile the banner image or profile links will contain a link to either a scam site or an onlyfans page. They generally also bot upvotes on their comments in order to get better visibility

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There’s also the privilege of living in a location where vegan alternatives are readily and frequently available, vast swaths of the US are in what’s known as “food deserts”, locations where “residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within convenient traveling distance” (https://foodispower.org/access-health/food-deserts/) these locations also tend to have high obesity or diabetes rates due to the fact that the only food easily and cheaply available is high in sugar. Add in things like the increased price for even simple vegan foods (like rice and beans) and you might be starting to see the picture, as much as some people would LIKE to be vegan it is literally not possible for them without either taking on substantial additional costs or completely upending their life.

A lot of the reason people who are otherwise pro-vegan (like myself) tend to dislike online vegans is that they will, consistently and smugly, while in a location and economic position where its easier to get vegan options, berate people for eating animal products without ever considering the possibility that its MUCH harder to get non-animal product based foods in certain areas

That’s a smart solution, I’ll have to look into trying it on my work PC (where they force me to use windows 11), thank you for the recommend!

Windows 11 introduced start menu ads recently in update KB5036980, thankfully they can disabled, but I’m not 100% sure it will stay that way

relevant article from The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/24/24138949/microsoft-windows-11-start-menu-ads-recommendations-setting-disable

Lol welcome aboard the DF party ship!

I still remember my most recent fortress mode cyclops, even though its been almost half a year. I had 2 squads who I had been training using training spears, but forgot to change equipment before sending them to kill it, by some miracle, they dodged all of its attacks for about 20 attacks despite having no dodge skills at all, then one of them either punched or bashed the cyclops in the face and got lucky, knocking it out. What followed was around 20 in game days of a circle of 14 dwarves mercilessly beating a puddle of bruises that was once a cyclops, as training weapons do next to no damage, occasionally it would wake up, then immediately give in to the pain again, with the only non bruise damage coming from whenever a dwarf would decide to punch, kick, or bite instead of using their main weapon. It FINALLY ended when one of dwarves punched it in the head, tearing the brain through the skull, putting the poor thing out of its misery.

My dwarves went in competent speardwarves and came out around grand master level, all very dehydrated.

Yeah but its great! Best book game ive ever read!

A lot, as in a large amount, its hard to put a finite number on something like a large part of a large community I am not a part of nor interested in.

I am not the only one who has noticed this, here is a skit video from 4 moths ago demonstrating this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTBCzH1UyNY

As for sources there are TONS, it takes 5 seconds of googling to find a whole page, including:

https://medium.com/illuminations-mirror/where-are-the-nft-bros-c6571ba4f1fd

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhochberg/2023/03/18/at-sxsw-it-was-goodbye-nfts-and-hello-ai-music/?sh=5f3e442e54c6

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-crypto-bros-are-coming-for-ai-2023-12

https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/2/23582772/chatgpt-ai-get-rich-quick-schemes-hustlers-web

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/ai-generative-art-trend

Hell, just open one of the NFT marketplaces like opensea, I went to the art tab and the top trending is AI “art”

Also, a large amount of those NFT bros have lately been pushing to allow AI companies to steal artist’s works and otherwise generally licking big AI companies’ collective boot, so not exactly a great look for the future of the industry

Also NAL, but it seems like they aren’t arguing for server functionality but rather just the ability to play offline at all, which opens up the third option of requiring games to be patched to remove sever requirements if being shut down, in any case this will be a fascinating case to follow, and I hope they go through with the lawsuit.

Exactly! I’d put money on a group abusing it, admitting to abusing it, and the game devs still being charged in the near future.

That clarification makes it even worse, this is obviously an attempt to push free to play or indie games out the window while making major bank.

The fraud detection will not help at all to prevent abuse especially in cases like steam family sharing where other “users” won’t have to pay to install the game!

There’s literally no reason to charge per game install here, the only possible reason is greed