Their anti-cheat

Honestly, this seams a bit unfair. My understanding is that VAC is free or very inexpensive and pretty decent, while other options are potentially better for some cases and more expensive. Valve making a reasonable anti-cheat available is a good thing IMO.

So it existing is a good thing, it just may be the wrong fit for a given game (e.g. more popular games probably need a more intense anti-cheat).

If a game isn’t detecting cheaters well enough, blame the game, not the anti-cheat system it uses.

Strong disagree on parental controls. As a parent, if I don’t trust my kids, they won’t get a device. Period. If I trust them, they will get a device without any limitations. Period.

I really don’t see the point in parental controls, all it does is encourage kids to learn how to get around parental controls. Instead of that, teach kids what it takes to earn your trust and go that route.

I’m a parent, and here are my only controls:

• Switch - passcode because my 4yo kept playing games when not allowed; I told the older kids the code, and will probably remove it soon
• my computers passwords - when my kids are allowed to play games or whatever, I’ll unlock it and tell them what they can and can’t use it for, with zero controls other than the underlying threat of losing privileges entirely if they misuse it
• tablet - each has a passcode, but the kids don’t use them much (only on trips)
• TV - again, 4yo kept watching when not allowed, and the older kids watched as well (but only when the 4yo did it), so they all lost access; will probably remove this soon

We do no internet filters, no enforced time limits (they have their own timers though), and no locks on specific programs. Either I trust them with everything or nothing. They know what they’re allowed to use, and they know the consequences.

I used the Arch Wiki entry about WireGuard. The trickiest part was some MTU nonsense.

Tailscale is a bit simpler and I think I just figured it out with some docs on their website.

Nah, put a traffic cone on 'em.

Why not?

Woo! That reminds me, I need to throw some money at them.

WireGuard on my VPS, because otherwise I’m stuck behind CGNAT and can’t access anything in my network from elsewhere. Or Tailscale, but that’s not really self-hosted.

Bummer, I missed the sale. Now it’s infinitely more expensive at $0.99, $1.99 if you get the orange box bundle.

Jk, I’ve had the game for years. If you haven’t played it, $0.99 is well worth the price of admission.

Yup. Government owned land with very few restrictions on use. They generally have turnoffs here and there for recreational shooting, usually against a rock wall or something. People will pull off, set up targets and have a blast.

Nice, that first one is right next to a bank too. So if you show up to rob the place, but forgot your ammo, then you’re set!

You can also just vandalize the vending machine and steal the ammo, which would probably be a lot easier than hacking it, or even vandalizing a gun store.

Yup, in my state (Utah), there’s no required legal process to carry a firearm concealed, and you can buy a firearm w/o any required checks from a private seller (not ammo though), but you need to prove your age to access porn. That seems a little… odd.

How about this: scan your state issued ID. My license has a barcode, and bars already scan it, so it’s a solved problem, no AI needed. The process should essentially be:

1. scan license
2. snap picture of face
3. send to police for lookup - needed to verify you’re not a felon or whatever, there’s more to it than just age verification
4. accept or reject transaction

The only AI that needs to exist would be at the local precinct, and used for related ID verification checks.

Or how about this, instead of all this BS, put the vending machine in the store and have a clerk check your ID like they normally would.

Ammo should never be an impulse buy, and I say this as a strong proponent of the 2A.

As a big proponent of the 2A and generally in favor of less restrictions, I also don’t see the point. Here are the times I’d need ammo:

• at the range - just call someone over and they’ll deliver it to you
• before going hunting - I’m heading to the hunting store anyway, I’ll just pick some up there
• a trip to BLM land to go shooting - pull from stash and refresh it w/ an online order
• when picking up a new gun - gun stores tend to have ammo

Vending machines tend to be in more urban environments, and if I’m there, I either already have ammo (if I’m carrying concealed) or I’m not carrying a firearm anyway. In the rare situation where I’m carrying a firearm w/o ammo (why?), I’m not going to stop and load my gun in public, so why go to the vending machine?

I don’t see any good reason for this to exist. Either order online or pick up along w/ other stuff at the gun store. A vending machine is going to be out of whatever caliber I want anyway and they’ll probably get restocked rarely, so even a mild convenience would likely end up being an inconvenience. So even if it was safe, it’s not solving any problems.

As someone w/ young kids, I definitely don’t want to make access to ammo easier for casual gun owners. Gun enthusiasts already know where to get ammo, this is just going to be a target for bored kids.

Not quite, but vending.com has vending machines. I think they run a few thousand each, so they’re not exactly cheap…

it takes upwards of 20 years to build a reactor. Even if that gets expedited through modern technologies, we’re still talking something like 15 years until they come online, and you’re still paying all the upfront costs throughout that time

From some reading, it seems a lot of that is bureaucracy (non-safety related), construction delays, and lawsuits. I wouldn’t be surprised if we could get that down to 10 years average with a concerted effort, assuming we can build multiple in parallel.

Whereas solar can go from concept to grid in 2 years, and batteries aren’t much worse.

Sure, on a small-ish scale. A nuclear plant will put out way more electricity than a typical solar project will. So while the time to getting value from it will be a lot shorter w/ solar, they tend to chip away at existing infrastructure instead of completely replacing plants.

The desert has the benefit that solar can be really well calculated

Oh yeah, solar is incredibly effective here, the main problem is storage. Hydro isn’t really a thing since our dams are intended to keep water for summer use, and they refill when we’d want to be generating power. Warm water also isn’t feasible at scale, and promising technologies still aren’t proven. I’m especially interested in hydrogen storage, since it could be really useful for long-haul trucking (we’re a pretty big hub for that) in addition to storage for winter generation.

I was interested in EVs being used for overnight power storage (basically recharge during the day while at work), but it seems like that hasn’t materialized.

centralized heating that provides for a whole city block

I don’t think we’d need to go that far, putting in buried heat exchangers on new construction isn’t that expensive, and I’d expect coordinating billing and whatnot would be more annoying than it’s worth (need an HOA, and HOAs can really suck).

The better option, IMO, is to create mixed-use zoning near transit hubs, which would encourage use of mass transit and allow for those economies of scale you’re talking about without annoying planned communities w/ HOAs (i.e. business below you could pay your heating/cooling bill). Maybe that’s what you were getting at, my point is that it doesn’t make as much sense for residential areas IMO, but it could make sense for mixed zoning areas.

I do want to point out that I’m not obsessed w/ nuclear or anything, I just think it’s a good option to replace existing base-load plants running on coal and natural gas.

OG Prince of Persia because of nostalgia playing on the Game Gear. It’s not good enough to go back and play today, but it was quite different from the other games I had at the time and I enjoyed it.

Sands of Time wasn’t bad, and is worth playing today.

What we need is battery arrays

I absolutely agree. My support for nuclear is not instead of renewables, but in addition to it. Nuclear is a proven technology, and at least in the US, we have a lot of space where we can store waste relatively inexpensively (nobody’s going to care about a massive landfill in Nevada).

The problem with going for 100% renewables is that I don’t think we can really keep up with battery production, and if we push for dramatically increasing our energy storage capacity (whether that’s chemical batteries, pumped hydro, etc), it’s going to cost a ton to transition. Solar is cheaper than nuclear, but solar + battery backup currently is not, especially if it needs to run over the winter when solar generation is much lower.

I’m not saying we should stop installing battery-backed solar projects, but that we should add nuclear to the list. Our electricity demand will only continue to increase, so we need multiple solutions to replace coal and eventually natural gas. One of the major cost and time limitations for nuclear is construction, and that’s because we don’t build many of them. If we line up multiple plant projects at the same time, we can make better use of our engineering resources (it’s a lot easier to build 10 of something back to back than 10 of something months or years apart), which will make nuclear more attractive compared to other options.

gas can not stay the main way to heat homes

Agreed, and I’ve actually been looking into heat pumps for my own home. I already have an external AC unit, so theoretically the transition shouldn’t be that hard (air ducts already exist).

The problem is that, in my area, winters get pretty cold, and heat pumps are a lot less efficient at heating when it’s cold. The solution is to dig a deep hole to bury the heat exchangers so they get a more consistent temperature to maintain efficiency, and that’s a really expensive project for existing structures (not bad for new construction). The transition to heat pumps is going to be very slow because of that large upfront cost/poor efficiency in winter.

Even if this wasn’t an issue, there’s still the massive problem of existing electricity production (in my area) being fueled by coal and natural gas. If I switch to a heat pump, I may be polluting more than if I stuck with gas (it’s pretty close last I checked). My state (ignoring transportation) gets something like 1/3 of its energy from coal, about half from natural gas, and most of the rest comes from solar (and a little from wind). We need something to handle that base load supply, and installing batteries is going to be expensive (esp. since hydro isn’t really an option in our desert) and probably take many years regardless. Nuclear can be built today, and in my area, it can be built on the other side of a mountain range from the bulk of the population.

Warm water is an amazing energy storage medium

I doubt we have enough water here in the desert to handle that. We already have problems with our existing inconsistent water supply for regular users, locking up even more water is going to be a really tough sell.

How did you manage that??