And also, the guy has to be hot.

No. Different comics, different artists, different themes. - But some similarity in visual style.

I honestly don’t have a strong sense of how Tate can be so popular. But if I had to guess, I’d say the “no sense of community” is probably the biggest thing.

The internet has become a gathering place where communities and social bonds are formed. I can imagine a heap of people who are struggling socially in the real world seeing, and then seeing Tate and his community offer an ‘answer’ to that - supporting those who feel rejected, and putting the blame squarely on others. That’s what I see as the draw that brings people in. They feel safe and secure in their haven of hatred. Any opposition to them is from people that are weaker and less important. – Which then makes leaving the group almost impossible, because you’d have to degrade your own view of yourself - joining the people who you think are weaker and less important.

So this Tate thing is rot that has taken root because of a gap in more healthy support structures. (I don’t see an easy solution for it though!)

:)

Yeah, maybe “trash” is a bit harsh. But it definitely isn’t on the same level as 2; and it has a lot of problems. Even the turning off power thing was a bit weird. I’m certain the top-side could easily outlast the under-city in that kind of standoff. I’m not really sure why they needed the power back so urgently. There didn’t seem to be a lot of critical infrastructure, and most people living there didn’t have any tech that could use the power anyway.

Master was said to be really smart and knowledgeable and important, but I don’t recall seeing him demonstrating that at any point. He seemed to just command other people to fix stuff and do stuff. And even when he lost that command, he was still never shown actually doing anything or sharing knowledge. So it was a bit of a mystery to me why the others thought he was important.

… And why was he in the thunderdome cage? “Two men enter, one man leaves” was a big deal; and the guards definitely did not want to open the gates. But then suddenly, inexplicably, Master is just standing right next to them in the cage. Like, wtf is he doing in there? – Ok… I’ll shut up. I do take back saying it was ‘trash’, but I definitely don’t think its a good movie.

Yeah, I definitely don’t blame her for the movie’s faults. She was very good.

To clarify, I didn’t mean “basic” as a negative thing. (That’s the kind of word association that someone might have if they grew up with the Marvel universe - but I’m older than that!) I was trying to say that it was tightly focused on the core ideas. I like that movie. It was not a criticism, but it was not exactly what I expected.

Fair call. It didn’t occur to me to do that, but I understand why you’d prefer it. Originally I was actually naming the groups; but I changed my mind.

It’s pretty standard to play both extremes simultaneously, and people just pick whichever they want to relate to at any given moment.

eg.

• (such-and-such group) are lazy, but also they are taking all the jobs.
• They are stupid, but also have secret organisations that control the world, with mind-control, and lasers that control the weather, etc.
• They are snowflakes obsessed with inclusiveness, but also they want (target-minority-group) to take over.
• They are against free speech; and we must silence them.

I’m sure others can think of more, and variations on those.

The full list: https://code.gouv.fr/sill/list

Hold on. That page does not list VLC or KeePass. Is there more info about this other than the list? Or is the info in the title of this post incorrect?

[edit]

I see now. The page does not list VLC or KeePass, but those two both do come up if you put them into the search box. The software listed on the page is a very long list, but it is apparently on the ‘most popular’ stuff - not the entire list. (Although it is strange to see a heap of niche stuff, and stuff I’ve never heard of on the ‘most popular’ list while VLC doesn’t make the cut.)

I’m not sure this list is a very strong endorsement by the French Government. It seems to just be listing free software options, and then asking other people to sign up to say which ones they use.

It does kind of feel like the UN could use a refresh. In particular, the veto powers given to certain countries feels bad. There may be good reasons for that system, but the system is not good - and the details of the reasons have definitely shifted over time such that the choice of countries with veto power is now highly questionable.

My point was that “lose money on every prompt” would be true in a technical sense regardless of how much people were paying for a subscription. The subscription money is money in, and the cost of calculations is money out. It’s still money out regardless of what is coming in.

As for whether the business is profitable or not, it’s not so easy to tell unless you’re an insider. Companies like this basically never make a ‘profit’ on paper, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t enriching themselves. They are counting their own pay as part of the costs, and they set their pay to whatever they like. They are also counting various research and expansion efforts as part of the cost. So yeah, they might not have any excess money to pay dividends to shareholders, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t profitable.

I find the dynamics of lichess.org vs chess.com very interesting.

They are similar in terms of features. Both have decent interfaces, puzzles, matchmaking, live viewing boards and broadcasts for tournaments, training programs, etc. But chess.com has ads, and features locked behind subscription paywalls where lichess.org does not. (Everything is free on lichess, except for the little logo next to a user’s name to say they have supported the site with donations.)

But on the other hand, chess.com seems to have a higher number pro players; and probably a larger number of players overall.

I think its very interesting to think about why that is the case. Why would more people choose the version that is more expensive, but does not have more features?

I’ve thought of a few reasons, but I think probably the biggest effect is that chess.com has more money to splash around (because it sells ads, and asks for user subscriptions), and it uses big chunk of this money to advertise itself. eg. by sponsoring players and streamers, offering larger prizes for its own tournaments; etc.

And although I definitely think lichess is better, since it is generously supplying a high-quality product without trying to self-enrich, I do sometimes think maybe what chess.com is doing is ok too: in the sense that it is not only self-enriching, but also supporting the sport itself a bit by paying money to players, events, and commentators. Lichess does this too - but less of it, because they have less money.

(Note that chess.com also does some really crappy stuff, such as censoring any mention of lichess in the chat of their twitch broadcasts. That definitely does not help support the sport.)

I reckon this is a really good game, and it’s great to see it on GOG.

Missing features always feels bad though, even if those features are not important. (The multiplayer modes are ok, but the playerbase isn’t there anymore anyway. I never used snapmap at all.) But it’s kind of a philosophical thing. Missing features just make it feel like a worse. But on the other hand GOG does have one cool feature compared to the previous release: DRM free. Not as visible, but perhaps more important.

(I still probably won’t buy it on GOG though, because I don’t love the game so much that I need a second copy.)

People don’t usually interact with a hammer by talking to it. They interact by holding it, placing it, hammering with it. Respect for a hammer (or similar tool) would be based around those kinds of actions.

Whereas people do interact with a chatbot by talking to it. So then respect for a chatbot would be built around what is said.

People can show respect for a hammer, a house, a dinner prepared by their spouse, their spouse, a chatbot, etc… but respect for each of those things will look a bit different.

Well sure, answering the queries continues to cost the company money regardless of what subscription the user has. The company would definitely make more money if the users paid for subscription and then made zero queries.

I watched one random episode of BBT after it was recommended to me by a few people. That one episode was enough for me to decide that I never want to see that show again, and also that I should disregard all recommendations from the people who said I should watch it.

I’d try this, but I don’t know what address to email them at. All of the support / contact instructions are a labyrinth of automated systems, with the fallback option of using the ‘community forum’. Google doesn’t seem to want anyone to contact them for any reason.

I thought that too at first, which is why I tried every other available option first. But that theory is disproven by the fact that the first attempt with the number told me that the given number was not registered to the account (and so I still couldn’t log in). Clearly they were comparing the entered number to something they already had.

It is possible to have multiple discussions about topics, each focusing on different topics with different levels of depth. For example, I can say “climate change is bad because it make home insurance prices go up”. That’s a shallow take on a narrow aspect of climate change, but it still makes a sound point. It doesn’t mention larger more important problems, but it also doesn’t ‘hurt the cause’.

Maybe not. Often when a post appears on the main home feed, people will upvote or downvote based on that post in isolation rather than in the context of its sub-community - because the all the posts are from different sub-communities, and it isn’t obvious which is from where.