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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • My hate of the copyright-ownership side of Hollywood / Nashville / Atlanta, etc. has been burning white hot since the days that the RIAA was suing people using P2P networks. But, I had to admit that at least they could probably make a valid claim for copyright infringement. But this?!

    It’s interesting how it’s the “Performing Right Society” (which I’ve never heard of). The “performing” part of that suggests that maybe they have an issue with people sharing clips containing music, or live streaming games where they share music. But, again, why Valve? Sure, people can share clips with friends. And, occasionally you see developers streaming their games. But, nobody is really “performing” live streams on Steam. I suspect they just think Valve is rich and so they can strong-arm them and Valve will settle to make them go away. I hope they bit off more than they can chew. Valve is indeed rich, and they have a tendency to be stubborn. I think they might well fight, and fight hard.

    I wish a possible outcome was that the PRS ceased to exist. But, I suspect they’re like a flea or something, and even if you knock them off from this attempt to suck someone’s blood, you can’t kill them, and they’ll just find another victim.





  • If your infrastructure is all geared around getting everything in by port, it might not be possible to switch to getting it all in by truck.

    There might not be enough trucks, or enough truck drivers. If they can get enough trucks and drivers, the roads may not be able to support that much traffic. And, that’s assuming they even have enough ports, and the right kinds of ports to unload any ships that come in on that side.


  • Yeah. The story is on rails. It’s not an RPG where you can choose the good path or the evil path. I can imagine feeling bad about playing the evil path in a game where you had the option not to do it. But, if you want to see the story in a linear game like that you have click the mouse in the way required to get to the next save point. Feeling superior about not finishing a game like that is like feeling superior because you read a book where the main character is an antihero, and you chose not to finish the book.

    Besides, it’s “deep” for a modern AAA shooter video game, but not particularly deep or upsetting in terms of storytelling.



  • Obviously far fewer people lived there. They probably got their fresh water from a wadi or an oasis.

    They’re not going to starve because they have a reserve of canned and frozen foods (as it says in the article), but they won’t get fresh food for a while. And, if you live in a modern city, you also import all your food, often from across an ocean.

    The problem we’re seeing a lot in the modern world is that everything has been ultra optimized. Lots of just-in-time delivery, as little warehousing as possible. Products are bought for the lowest possible cost, even if that means they’re shipped from the other side of the planet. When it works, that’s fine. But, when there’s a disruption it’s deadly. I remember at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the price of bread in Egypt skyrocketed since all the grain they used came from Ukraine.

    UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, etc. are in a bad geographic situation. They have ports on the sea but to get anything into their countries it has to pass by the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can mess with that traffic any time it wants, and Iran isn’t exactly friendly with those countries, or particularly stable. I wonder if those countries have backup plans to ship things in via say Oman.


  • The number 69 has staying power. It was hardly new when it was used in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and that was in 1989, 37 years ago.

    How long will 6-7 last? I’m guessing not more than a year. I bet even now it’s being included as part of a script for a kids’ movie, and by the time the movie comes out the kids will all think it’s “cringe” (or whatever term replaces cringe).




  • The history of torpedoes is fun. The original ones were attached to a spar at the front of boats. The boat had a steam engine which they used to get up to speed to try to ambush and ram enemy capital ships. The threat these boats posed to capital ships gave rise to “torpoedo boat destroyers”, which we just call “destroyers” today.

    The first kinds of torpedo boats that launched stand-alone torpedoes did use torpedo tubes, but they weren’t underwater. Underwater launching of torpedoes only started when torpedo boats evolved into U-boats (undersea boats, a.k.a. submarines). Destroyers remained torpedo boat destroyers, but now rather than hunting small, fast boats on the surface using small, fast guns, they hunted stealthy boats that were underwater with depth charges.