The term MMO is about the game/server architecture more than the size of the game. MMOs are online games with a single (or sharded) persistent gamestate. That's it.
Most shooters have rounds that restart, breaking the persistence quality of the game. Other games like Minecraft emphasize individual / private servers and break the "single gamestate" proposition. The "Massively" word refers to that
single gamestate that many users can interact with, not how many do actually play.
To me, The "play offline" option is more against the MMO definition than the actual number of players.
There's 1655 calories in a pound of uncooked rice, so with 330lbs you are sitting at ~1500 calories a day for a whole year.
You wouldn't starve to death, but you'd absolutely want to supplement (both for more calories and probably for vitamins). But also you'd be eating that rice every single day pretty much, how else are you getting through that much rice?
Wouldn't you also need at least a little protein? and some lipids? For example, there is a lot more in Soylent than just rice flour. Oh, are we talking brown rice or white rice? That seems like it might make a huge difference, not only in nutrition, but also pooping.
For commoners in Feudal Japan, it would’ve been unpolished/brown rice, refining rice was labor intensive/expensive. When accessibility of white rice spread due to automation making it much cheaper, in the 1800s, it caused a huge epidemic of beriberi, which had once been a rich man’s disease, and killed a huge number of people.
There are famous stories of prisoners in Japanese prisons during the World Wars being healthier than their captors because they ate refined, white rice instead of the brown rice for the prisoners.
the biggest problem with white rice is the lack of fiber, the somewhat high glycemic index, and it has the same problem all processed grains have: lacking potassium, iron and magnesium. these days though white rice and other processed grains all come with added b-vitamins (before that started at the turn of the century, there were massive b-vitamin deficiencies popping up everywhere). white rice has less protein than most grains but at 9% of calories, that's still not bad though some variety wouldn't hurt.
don't get me wrong, white rice isn't the worst thing in your diet but i think it's great to diversify with some whole grains and lots of beans (a real superfood), many of which can be had for 2$ to 3$ per 2k calories.
The lameness is that brown rice is more expensive than white rice because it is a healthy choice.
I know, price is what the market will bear blah blah. There is just something that feels fundamentally wrong about a product cheaper to produce being sold at a higher price purely because its the better choice for your health.
Another cute principle in that category is convenience pricing. The 0.5L cola bottle with resealable twist cap is more expensive per liter than the 0.25L cans, purely because the bottle is more convenient to use on the go.
> There is just something that feels fundamentally wrong about a product cheaper to produce being sold at a higher price purely because its the better choice for your health.
You just described almost all food sold in the US. The cheapest stuff is pure garbage. The more you try to escape the preprocessed garbage and get back to the raw, unprocessed, untreated, food, the more you pay. Insane, but true. (And then we wonder why Americans are so unhealthy.)
Err (150kg)(3500kcal/kg) = (5.25E5 kcal/E_koku)/(365 days) = ~1500 kcal/day. So not great working in the field or fighting for the average guy. But I feel like this is one of those things where the average lord didn't count how many fish you caught or what have you. So I bet if you had miso, fish, and like some vegetables from the outside your house, you would probably survive alright.
EDIT: the actual point is that it's probably not literal. Ease of quantifying and transporting dried rice over long distances without refrigeration probably had a lot of how they ended up with a Koku as useful measurement.
The layoffs being "due to AI" is usually about freeing up the budget to build a couple datacenters and buy GPUs. And they have to layoff 14% of their workforce because they are buying those GPUs at many times the normal price thanks to the zeitgeist.
They aren't saying that they don't know what to do with the AI productivity boost, but rather they think it worth taking a huge productivity hit right now so they can invest in the future. Whether their vision of the future is realistic...
I'd argue there's easily more folks lacking said "scruples" in tech's private sector than the typical on the ground government employee or contractor.
Half of what actually makes money in tech these days involves active spying on consumers or manipulation of base human desires at scale. Not exactly the paragon of morality.
>Also, acquiring said clearance is not always straightforward
This, had a friend whose clearance was held up because he knew a bunch of foreign people, people that he had met through a government job with a lower level of clearance.
even if you lack sufficient scruples to be willing to pursue it in the first place.
What an absurd thing to say. As a Canuck, I may even spend some days wondering if I'll have to defend my country from the US, but I can clearly see that there are many governmental and military jobs that are incredibly valuable, ethical, beneficial.
Wikipedia says there are ~2M US governmental employees, and ~2M in the military. The military doesn't use such clearances. When it comes to securing data systems for the government, a clearance is required, even if it's about any number of domestic things, some of which, yes, are valuable and helpful, and needed.
It should be noted that there are all types of security clearances, including very simple ones. In Canada, we have (for example) 'enhanced reliability' and 'secret level II' for governmental work, the first being a simple background, criminal record check, with 10 year's history.
Selling services, even say... cloud based wordprocessing software as a service would require most employees to have such clearances. But of course, what is effectively selling paper and pens, eg wordpro software, is a morally bankrupt thing in your context?!
Description: Provides supplemental, nutrient-rich foods; nutrition education and counseling; and breastfeeding promotion and support to low-income women, infants, and children.
But I guess, because this requires handling money, and therefore a security clearance, you'd be ethically challenged to seek clearance? Or to write software for this?
To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting. You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Get your head on straight. Please.
Don't let whatever weirdo US team politics-of-the-day exists, leave you making overreaching statements. The US, as a nation, needs GOOD people in such programs, not ones feeling shame.
I personally feel the US is on a terrible course currently, but it won't be fixed by tearing it down further. And if a time does come to change that course, the framework you have, needs to be filled with good people.
Do you not realise that by acting this way, you're working to ensure that only morally bankrupt people will apply for such jobs? If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time? That even the most noblest of jobs, such as helping to feed poor children will only be filled by those with no scruples?
How is this attitude helping?
How is it any better than whatever other team the US has?
> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.
Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc. In that case if you consider some of the jobs to be morally bankrupt, you consider all of them to potentially be morally bankrupt. You could go through all the hassle then turn it down, or leave during a probationary period when you discover the details, but that is a significant wasted time risk to take.
> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them right now nor would I have at all at numerous points over recent years. And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related.
> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?
For some, it has become true. That time is now or before.
As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal, I entirely understand people not thinking that they've got the nerve for that. Especially given that the first thing a bad administration does to someone raising concerns is to sack and blacklist them in a way that will affect future employment opportunities.
> such as helping to feed poor children
The “but think of the children” argument cuts both ways: many governments have, directly or indirectly, done and continue to do, terrible things to children. It may not be possible in the short/medium term to do anything truly useful about that (you go try tell the current administration over there to refund the good works that have been gutted recently and see how seriously they take you!) and dealing with the crap until things stear back towards the good is too much for some.
Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.
> To paint every job which requires a clearance as morally bankrupt, to paint working for the government to be morally bankrupt, is frankly disgusting.
Sometimes you don't know the exact nature of the task until after you've gone through the rigmarole of applying, getting clearance, etc.
I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point? It certainly doesn't counter or answer the point I raise.
> You should literally be ashamed of yourself.
Many people state-side are ashamed of their government, and don't want to feel their reputation is tarnished by working directly for it, and quite frankly I don't blame them
Well I do blame them. And I specifically excluded the military. As I mentioned, the government is a vast and immense entity. Further, my response was to someone saying that to get a clearance would be morally bankrupt. I provided examples as to why that may not be the case. What you are doing, is painting all government as bad, because a specific team is in play right now.
This is literally what is wrong with the US currently. 90% of the issues are due to team politics on both sides. Politics before people. Politics before sensibility. Politics, instead of examining the moral and ethical considerations of each action one takes.
> If you make working for the government a badge of shame, it will become true in time?
As much as “join and fight the corruption from within” is a laudable goal,
You do not have to fight corruption to take a job feeding babies. Or the large amount of good that the government does. You can simply take and do that job. That's my point here. You're doing what the poster upstream did, painting the entire body of the US government as a single entity.
It's OK to say "I don't think this part of government is ethical, I won't work for that part of government", but to say that any government job is morally repugnant is disgusting.
> such as helping to feed poor children
The “but think of the children” argument
It's not a "think of the children" argument in any traditionally way. That argument is typically defined by taking rights away from someone, to "protect kids". This is simply feeding the poor, and babies. No comparison.
Not everyone has the fortunate needed to fight a bad system from within, or the desire to, no matter how many heartstrings you pull to try shame them into reconsidering the good within the bad.
The government is not bad. A tiny part (the current administration) is the problem.
To give context, you'd need a string of "one team" government for decades to turn the course of the entire government. Programs enacted by both US teams are currently in play. Some programs are decades old, and supported by both parties.
Anyone who thinks that a certain team gets into power, and then "all government bad" is not thinking clearly. What you need to do, is look at what each department and each program does. Determine if they are good. It absolutely does not matter which administration passed it, or when. All that matters is "is this thing good?".
The government should be viewed as series of literally tens of thousands of companies. Each has its own task, provides specific services, and so on. To paint them all bad is nutty.
> I literally said "every job". You're saying "sometimes" they might be. What is your point?
You are completely ignoring the “you don't always know the full nature of the task until after clearance” part. If you don't know it isn't one that will be a problem for you, it could be one that is. My point there is that bit.
> And I specifically excluded the military.
So did I. Hence I explicitly said afterwards “And that is before considering those who want “conscientious objector” status with regard to anything military related."
I stopped reading at this point because if you didn't bother properly reading my previous before blurting out a response, then explaining more, giving you more to not fully read, will likely achieve nothing beyond consuming my time.
First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate. That's back to old Usenet and mailing list ethics.
Regardless, absolutely, yes, I would take a job in Nazi Germany which required clearance, if that job was to feed poor children. What the hell? I literally used feeding babies as an example, please provide some context in where innocent babies should be left to starve. Children are literally the absolute concept of innocence, and a baby is beyond culpability!
That is... unless you're advocating some form of weird let babies starve, because of the crimes of their parents?! Which is effectively along the lines of suggesting ethnic cleansing???
Any form of ideological stance which is this extreme, is realistically actually inline with fascism, for it puts politics before people.
> First, referencing "Nazi" has an age old tradition of immediately meaning you lose the debate.
True. Though to be frank, before typing my longer response I did consider just telling you the same about the “but forget everything else and think of the children” line of reasoning.
First, I purposefully avoided drawing direct comparisons to the Nazis, I only used the extreme end of the logic to illustrate my point, that it's a spectrum and value judgement, not an absolute.
Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.
Along those lines, who said anything about crimes of parents?
Let me be more concrete: Would you feed children on camera so the propaganda apparatus can film a movie about a concentration camp titled "The Führer gifts a City to the Jews"? [0]
Everything you do can and will be instrumentalized by the regime. The innocents, too, are just a medium for their machinations.
There is a treshold at which even nominally good acts become morally reprehensible because they serve to sustain a harmful system. The only question is which system do you consider harmful enough to pass that treshold?
You're presenting your moral line as if it's objectively correct. I’m pointing out it's a judgment call with no easy absolutes.
Nobody said Trump is literally Hitler. But literal Hitler did exist, so it all becomes a question of where do you personally draw the line?. For you, it seems to be somewhere between Trump and Hitler. For me, it's somewhere before Trump. I'm not establishing equivalency, I'm establishing subjectivity.
None of that is relevant. Why? My statements have been quite clear; the government is not the party in power. And further, that there may be portions of the government that may offend, that saying "all parts" is obscene and inane.
Recall the original conversation. It's not the mess you've made of it now. Recall my objection was to someone saying that any government job was bad.
I cited a government department with a specific outcome. Feeding children. The counter with the Nazis, therefore, is inline with that statement of mine. Yes, in Nazi Germany, I would work for the government to feed children.
The sensible inference is that my statement is akin to the same for the current US government feeding children. You've now changed that condition to, instead, being some sort of actor for films about feeding children.
This is not what we were discussing. For the record, no, I would not star in a propaganda film willingly.
In as this entire conversation has revolved around how the US government has a myriad of programs which are ethical and moral, and how it therefore would not be untoward to seek clearance and work in those jobs, yes I stand my ground.
I have also indicated that if one found the job questionable, then don't take it! And naturally one can quit if the job changes.
It's such an enormous stretch to try to claim that every single possible job the US government has is reprehensible. The notion is absurd, see my other post about how some of these departments have been unchanged for decades. Lived through both parties.
So yes, there is an easy absolute here. That currently (because, no one can claim to know the future), there are government jobs which are moral and ethical. Period. Hands down. Absolute certainty.
You wonder about the "crimes of the parent". Well, if you refuse to feed children because their parents are in Nazi Germany, then presumably part of that has to do with their parents. For example, would you feed the children of dissenters? If the answer is "yes", yet when asked "would you feed the hungry children of Nazi zealots" you say "no", then you are indeed punishing babies for the crimes of their parents.
A child is a child is a child, and to feed that child is noble. To feed the children of your enemy is noble. To feed the children of someone who murdered your children is noble. To feed the children of those who wish you harm is noble.
There is no ground where not feeding children is reasonable. None. Nada. Ziltch.
Children are not a political game. Children are not something you use to do battle. Children are not something cease helping, because you worry about it helping the enemy.
I would feed the children of both Nazis and Dissenters, but not under Nazi command.
To do so reinforces and legitimizes the power structure, and that is what I take issues with. Children are not enemies, I am fully with you on that.
The enemy is power structures and me not supporting a particularly harmful one might save more children than the concrete act of me feeding them personally.
And yet you have not even remotely addressed how this translates to every US government job being a morally / ethically bankrupt job.
You wave your hands about, and cite far flung examples of how it could be, then there is not here, but then is not now, the future is not now, and we are speaking of the current.
If your concern is that it "could be" at some point, well I hate to break it to you, but that also covers every type of job you might imagine. "Could be" covers a lot of change and time. "Could be" is a wide brush to paint with, especially considering the object isn't even before us, but a misty, intangible, not yet formed thing.
When the US stops being the main topic on the internet then you'll know it's over. As it stands everyone is still fully obsessed with America. Their cultural dominance is far from over.
I'd expect the US to be the main topic on the English speaking internet far after its global dominance ends. I highly doubt that Canada or Australia (let alone the UK) are going to take English speaking dominance any time soon.
The Pax thing generally covers economic, military, and cultural dominance in a hegemonic way (the "peace" part is very relative, especially if you consider Britannica and Romana times). China might compete on some of those but still pretty far, they have little cultural export and lack global trade/influence. Europe is pretty far behind in everything but it'd be cool if they got their shit together.
It's kinda wild that you don't need to be a professional engineer to store PII. The GDPR and other frameworks for PII usually do have a minimum size (in # of users) before they apply, which would help hobbyists. The same could apply for the licensure requirement.
But also maybe hobbyists don't have any business storing PII at scale just like they have no business building public bridges or commercial aircraft.
Web is already mostly centralized, and corporations which should be scrutinized in way they handle security, PII and overall software issues are without oversight.
It is also a matter of respect towards professionals. If civil engineer says that something is illegal/dangerous/unfeasible their word is taken into the account and not dismissed - unlike in, broadly speaking, IT.
I just don't feel we want the overhead on software. I'm in an industry with PEs and I have beef with the way it works for physical things.
PII isn't nearly as big a deal as a life tbh. I'd rather not gatekeep PII handling behind degrees. I want more accoubtability, but PEs for software seems like it's ill-suited for the problem. Principally, software is ever evolving and distributed. A building or bridge is mostly done.
I, as a self-proclaimed dictator of my empire, require, in the name of national security, all chat applications developed or deployed in my empire to send copies of all chat messages to the National Archive for backup in a form encrypted to the well-known National Archive public key. I appoint Professional Software Engineers to inspect and certify apps to actually do that. Distribution of non-certified applications to the public or other forms of their deployment is prohibited and is punishable by jail time, as well as issuing a false certification.
Sounds familiar?
The difference from civil engineering is that governments do not (yet?) require a remotely triggerable bomb to be planted under every bridge, which would, arguably, help in a war, while they are very close to this in software. They do something similar routinely with manufacturing equipment - mandatory self-disabling upon detecting (via GPS) operation in countries under sanctions.
GDPR doesn't have any minimum size before applying. There's a household exemption for personal use, but if you have one external user, you're regulated.
The cards _could_ be copyrightable, would probably be essentially a coin flip if you took it to court.
No individual card text (limited to just the mechanics) is copyrightable but the setlist of cards might be. It would come down to how much creativity went into curating the list of cards that is released. It gets especially murky because new cards are always being released and old cards are being retired, so they obviously put a lot of creative energy into that process. You'd have to avoid pre-made decks as well.
Unless you have funding from an eccentric MTG-loving billionaire, I see why you'd comply with the cease-and-desist.
Yep, plus you've got to worry about the card names (unless you're giving every single card a new name like Wizards did with "Through the Omenpaths") and whether a judge thinks that "no we don't distribute the images, we just have a big button to download them all from a third party!" is a meaningful distinction or a fig-leaf.
Most shooters have rounds that restart, breaking the persistence quality of the game. Other games like Minecraft emphasize individual / private servers and break the "single gamestate" proposition. The "Massively" word refers to that single gamestate that many users can interact with, not how many do actually play.
To me, The "play offline" option is more against the MMO definition than the actual number of players.
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